#Wis's uninteresting life

[astrow1zar6]

Astrology Observations- 013

I notice Cap Mercurys think so maturely even from such a very young age. These were those kids that always wanted to hang around people older than them. They are old souls at heart and sometimes it’s harder for them to connect with more childlike energies. People their age can see them as boring because of their serious demeanor.

Leo Risings never like to show the sides to them that make them look bad in anyway. These people have big egos so any assumption from others that they aren’t anything but great can take a big toll on their self esteem. They come off so confident but most are really insecure & don’t think they are interesting so they tend exaggerate a lot of facts about them to keep people thinking they are really interesting and amazing. (U guys don’t need ti do that people already think you are before you even speak)

Capricorn risings always look so annoyed when people are speaking to them. Most of the time they are. They have very honest expressions and when someone says something stupid or uninteresting they are more willing to show their uninterested while most are just willing to smile and take it out of being polite. This is why they can come off as rude or snobbish but really the just don’t have time for bullshit. (I definitely think Wednesday Addams has this placement) many don’t know they are being rude but most don’t have the energy to be fake if they really don’t like what the others saying. Very Real people many mistake them for being Scorpio risings.

Venus in Scorpios were probably shamed a lot for their their sex appeal/drives. I notice these people have a very provocative vibe to them that causes a lot of ppl to sexualize them ( especially the women). I’ve seen women with this placement be virgins and still get slut shamed. People always assume they sleep with mad people even if it’s not true.

Moon in 5th housers are actually very secretive about their talents. A lot are so talented but most tend to keep their hobbies and interests to themselves unless they really trust you.

When someone with Venus in the 7th house likes you they will talk about their future a lot with you. This one guy had a big crush on me and would always joke about getting married and starting a life someday ( he made it sound as a joke but in a way I can tell he meant it). Also can be obsessed with weddings. I have a friend with this placement who says she’ll only wanna get married to experience having her dream wedding lol

Venus in 2nd house women always have people buying them things bro. They don’t even have to ask and men will be buying them expensive gifts or paying for their food or trips. Definition of pretty privilege.

Mars in Aquarius like very eccentric things in bed. It’s almost like they enjoy the opposite of what should be expected in bed. Like the women would like to take normally the male role in bed and vice versa a man with this placement could like a very submissive role. The weirder and more out of place the more turned on they get. Can also be really experimental they are willing to try anything once even if it’s outlandish.

Mars in Aries are usually natural athletes. They have amazing endurance and can become pros faster than most.

Virgo moons usually have bad stomach problems or eating disorders. They are also always giving unsolicited advice no one asked for. They feel this need to solve everything but it can come off as kinda judgmental.

Mars in Pisces are usually victims to bullying. They usually have a hard time asserting themselves and standing up so they get pushed around a lot easier by stronger more dominant energies.

Cap moons are always in denial of their feelings

Mars Square Venus synastry can be really awkward at times in a friendship. Theres this bizarre sexual and touchy tension usually that both aren’t fully comfortable with. The mars person can come off a little too strong and can treat the Venus as if they own them. This attraction can be one sided sometimes with the mars person wanting the Venus and the Venus getting repulsed and distancing themselves. I’ve seen the mars person get jealous if the Venus would hang out with others whether it be other friends or family. And if the Venus is dating someone else this can get really heated on the mars end. Venus will feel the attraction but I notice it’s not as strong.

Venus in 5th house synastry is soooooo flirty. These are those cheesy cringey couples that are always acting like little kids around eachother. It’s actually a really sweet placement. This person will be able to bring out your inner child.

Venus in Libras are always crushing on someone. They jump into relationships I think faster than people with Venus in Aries the only difference is that they can maintain longer term partnerships & don’t bore as quick (even if their feelings are a little superficial). They just don’t know what to do with themselves when they are alone.

Scorpio risings I notice get really strong reactions out of people (like Lilith/asc people) their words make others blood boil even if they really don’t say anything offensive or rude. Most people are jealous of their authenticity which is why a lot of Scorpio risings are quiet and not as willing to open up. People just hate on them so intensely for the littlest things. They also have this ability to know if people are genuine or not which can be intrusive to certain people causing intense reactions. They can see thru everyone’s mask which can make other feel uncomfortable to be around them. This is why they usually have few friends and the friends they do have are as authentic as themselves. Literal human lie detectors

Men that have a water sun with a water moon are BIG SIMPS

Cancer sun women will be passively rude to you if they don’t like you or are jealous of you. They won’t straight say it but they will say little comments in a nice way that’s actually really rude. Then usually play victim if confronted

Everyone’s crush in high-school was either a Scorpio sun or a Libra sun/rising. Tell me I’m lying

[cheesecakethots]

Part 2

Your mother had described meeting her soulmate, your father, as the most influential moment of her entire life, despite the fact it had been so ordinary.

They had simply been passing each other in a busy marketplace, and happened to brush hands. The static and pull they both felt only meant one thing, and the rest was history.

Your siblings met their soulmates before you, your older brother even having met his as a young child. Maybe that’s why you were chosen, and not them. Maybe that’s why they didn’t fight for you, after all.

The village you live in had a harsh winter, with no crops being able to grow and people starting to freeze to death in their own homes. You had known the village leaders were the superstitious type, but you almost scoffed aloud when they declared the hardships faced must’ve been the work of a vengeful spirit or yokai.

You had been woken up when some of them dragged you out of bed, still in your flimsy old nightgown that did nothing to protect you from the frosty bite to the wind. Your father didn’t intervene, didn’t cry, didn’t do anything as he watched them carry you away. Your mother had broken into sobs when you screamed at her to save you, but still did nothing. Your siblings didn’t even bother to leave their rooms to watch you be hauled off like some livestock on route to a chopping block.

The woods were long and hard to traverse, but it wasn’t long before they had taken you to the centre, using old and frayed rope to tie you by the waist to a thick tree trunk. They didn’t turn back when leaving, didn’t so much as spare you a glance while you screamed and screamed and screamed.

You stopped after ten minutes, instead allowing yourself to cry silently, hoping that you would wake up soon with your parents ready to comfort you, your siblings waiting to laugh off your silly nightmare. No such thing happened.

It’s been about half an hour now. Maybe less. Maybe more. You’re certain at this point that no hungry spirit is going to find you, and instead you’re going to die a slow, cold death, all alone. Well, maybe not slow.

You don’t hear the soft crunches of snow in front of you, too busy staring at your own feet that are starting to go blue.

“Hm, what do we have here?”

Your eyes glance up. For a second you believe that you’re hallucinating, taking note of the clearly wealthy man in a large hat before you, as well as the men in armour situated behind him.

The man raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

Mouth opening and closing, you attempt to splutter out something, but what comes out is a shaky, unsure breath.

He scoffs, moving closer, “Speak up, will you? Or is your throat frozen?”

A cough leaves you, your throat feeling scratchy and dry, but you spit something out nonetheless.

“Th-They l-l-left me h-here,” you stammer, your voice shaking and teeth chattering wildly. Every breath you take feels as though the ropes around your torso are tightening and tightening.

“Who left you here?” He asks, despite the fact that he sounds rather uninterested.

“Th-The village. M-My fa-family. They left me h-here to die,” you whisper, and you’re surprised by the bitterness you somehow have the strength left to conjure. You look up at him, tears still streaming down your face, “H-How cou-could they throw me a-away like that?”

Something in his expression shifts, and he takes another step towards you, head tilting to the side as he considers something.

“Why did they leave you here, then?”

“Sa-Sacrifice to a yokai. T-They thought it w-would s-stop the wi-winter and help the cr-crops grow.”

He chuckles, but there seems to be little amusement in his tone. “How ridiculous.”

You cough again, your body shivering all the more. You’re going to die soon, you know it.

“What would you offer me if I were to save you?”

Hope doesn’t crawl into your veins at his words, instead a dry sob leaves you, “I have n-nothing left to give. Nothing.”

“Not even your gratitude?”

His eyes meet yours once again, and you can’t help but note how very pretty they are, despite the fact you’re on the verge of death.

“I-If you save m-me, I’ll forever be indebted to you.”

“Hm. It’ll have to do.”

The ropes holding you up fall before you can even realise what’s happened, and in turn so do you, landing on your hands and knees, your body quaking violently.

“Up. Otherwise you’ll freeze to death here. Stand up.”

But you can’t. Any apologies you have die on your tongue when he tuts, kneeling in front of you.

He reaches a hand out to roughly pull you up by the wrist, “Archons, I have to do everything aroun-“

His grip on you leaves as fast as it came, and he stumbles back on his feet a little, watching as you peer up at him, eyes wide.

You don’t have much time to consider the consequences of what has just happened, as your body finally gives way, and you collapse into the snow in front of your soulmate.

[soapymansuds]

OKOKOK, I just saw a Reel that gave me this idea and it’s rotting me from the inside out so I’m giving this to you. You’re welcome ig?

Tags!!!! SWF, Ghost, Soap,Price, Gaz, Male Reader, Motorcyclist Reader, The circus??, Use of Y/N, He/Him pronouns, Spelling errors, Grammar errors, was written in the middle of the night, Author is still getting used to Tumblr formatting please be gentle with him, OOC

It had been a long few months. Between missions, paperwork, and training, the team barely had time to rest. So seeing as the latest pile of papers was dissipating and nothing particularly interesting seemed to be happening, Captain had an idea.

“You’re kidding, right?” Ghost chides from his seat in the commons with a disapproving tilt of his head.

“No, no I am not. We’re going to the circus.” Price grins, arms wide as if attempting to force the boys to accept the idea. “C’mon, we’ve been working so hard, we deserve a quick break, and this seems like the perfect opportunity. Nothing takes your mind off things like overpriced beer and overly fried foods.”

“Well I for one, m’excited! I havnae been to the circus since I was a tot.” Soap claps, standing to join his captain in rousing the troops. His first order being to clap Gaz on the shoulder in encouragement. He shakes his head with a chuckle but stands with them anyway sighing, “Hell, why not.”

They all stare expectantly at Ghost, who pinches the bridge of his nose with a shake of his head before standing up with a groan. “Fine.”

“Alright.” Price claps his hands in front of himself. “Let’s get going then.” He grins, squeezing Ghost’s shoulder appreciatively.

~time skip~

As they finish parking and piling out of the Jeep, Gaz takes a moment to acknowledge the obvious. “More of an arena than a tent, dontcha think?”

“More airflow I s’pose.” Soap shrugs, slinging an arm over Ghost’s shoulder as they find the entrance.

Once inside, the stench of grease and children floods their noses, but Gaz seems to be the only one fazed, with a gentle shake of his head as if he could shoo the smell away.

“Right, well I’m off to find the booze. Have fun lads.” Price grins, tipping his hat as he wanders off. Gaz is next as he spots the rows of carnival games, walking off silently towards the sharp shooter game.

“So what catches your eye L.T.?” Soap nudges Ghost, who seems uninterested in anything really. He shrugs as they keep walking, searching for something to stare at until he’s allowed to leave. The hum of a motor catches his attention as they near a crowd circled around a fence. The closer they get, the more they can see. A ramp, a hoop, a big metal ball, and a motorcycle. But to their surprise, the motorcycle seems to be driving itself, nearly hitting the ground and it spins in circles on its side. The bike is pearly white, prismatic reflections dancing in the sunlight as it moves.

“Oh! A trick rider! Always wanted to be one when I was young.” Soap pulls Ghost closer to the rail to get a better view. As they approach, they notice the rider. A man a bit shorter than the two, fully covered in red and black leather gear with a matte black helmet. His visor is golden and stretches oddly to his chin unlike a normal helmet. ( https://images.app.goo.gl/UKZg4c2wA4JpYGkt9 for reference)

He raises his arms at the applause, and despite not seeing his face, you can tell he’s smiling. Suddenly, the bike changes course, bumping off a ramp and steadying itself upright. It points straight at the rider and keeps moving like it’s going to hit him. He doesn’t seem to notice and the crowd erupts, desperate to warn him of the danger. As they start screaming, he looks over his shoulder, and within inches of his life, he grabs the bike by the handles. He bounces into the air, standing upside down above the handles. The crowd cheers louder still as he spins the bike around, and falls beautifully into the seat. He skids to a stop mere inches from the boundary. Mere inches from where Soap and Ghost stand. Soap’s grin, wide and dopey, seems to draw him in.

He takes a moment to size them up before nodding, seemingly to himself, and waving them in. Beckoning them past the border and towards himself as he turns the bike back towards the center of the ring. They stand for a moment, unsure what to do before he nods his head inward once more and they hop the steel rail.

He takes a moment as they enter to hype the crowd for their arrival as if they were planning to be their from the beginning. He then leases them to the huge metal ball, swerving in front of them to drop the ramp and ride in. They stand outside the dome, but Soap’s smile never falters. Even as the rider waves them into the sphere.

As they get in, the rider drops his kickstand and hops off the bike, both to close the door and to talk to his new “assistants”

He lifts his visor just barely as he turns back to them. “Alrighty boys! Welcome to the Doom Dome!” He raises his arms and the crowd follows with avid cheering. “There are a couple of rules, and most of them are Do. Not. Move. Got it?” He grins and it’s just barely noticeable under his visor.

“Sir, yes Sir.” Soap laughs with a goofy salute. Ghost simply nods. The rider tilts his head at him with a floppy smirk, trying to decide if he’s unamused or just the quiet type.

“Words, Big Boy. I gotta know you’re hearing me.” He extends a hand, an attempt at breaking the tension. “I’m Y/N. And you are…?”

Ghost seems vaguely taken aback by the statement, but shakes his hand on instinct, mumbling out “Ghost.”

“Ghost!” The rider calls at the crowd and the scream in excitement. “Anddd…?” He reaches for the other man’s hand, who takes it, grinning like an idiot. “Call me Johnny.”

“Johnny!” The crowd roars again. “Alright boys, I need you back to back. Can I put my hands on yah for a sec?” He hold his arms up just barely before both men nod at him. “What did I say about using your words?” He juts his hip dramatically, crossing his arms with a giggle. Both men respond “Yes sir.” quicker than even they had expected.

“Atta boys!” He grins, placing a hand on both of their chests and maneuvering them to be back to back. Once he’s satisfied with their position, he swing a leg back over his bike. “Now don’t move. Kay?” He gives them a thumbs up, which they return, and he slaps his visor down. He swings his arms up to instigate the crowd, successfully causing them to starts screaming. Ghost notices for a moment that the crowd has nearly doubled since they left it, and he finds himself grateful to be in here not out there. But the though doesn’t last long as a tire is suddenly directly in his view. It spins wildly for a moment before disappearing as quickly as it had appeared. He feels the wind as the bike loops around him, adrenaline playing with his nerves just slightly. He can feel the excitement radiating off Soap in waves, and as he turns over his shoulder, he’s sees the exact wide eyed slack jawed look he was expecting. Soaps eyes trace the biker’s every move like a dog following a treat and Ghost can’t help but chuckle. As he turns back to facing forward, he flinched back just barely, as a hand reaches off the bikes handle and reaches down to tap his nose lightly as he passes. He follows the hand as it reaches out for Soap, ruffling his Mohawk as he circles.

His hand lifts back up to the bike as he begins looping vertically. The motor roars in both their ears as the bike does loop after gravity defying loop and Ghost can feel himself grin at the dizzying sensation of it all.

As the bike slows down, eventually stopping in the same place it started, the crowd goes wild. He drops the kick stand again and opens the door of the dome, waving for Ghost and Johnny to follow him. They do as instructed and he leads them to halfway between the crowd and the dome. As he stops, he fidgets with the underside of his helmet before sliding it off completely.

Soap can’t help but stare at him, hair tussled from the helmet, smile stretched ear to ear as he takes both their hands in each of his and raises them to the crowd. As if declaring them victorious. They defeated the Doom Dome. The crowd continues to scream as he lowers both their arms and steps forward to thank them. Soap looks ver the smaller man to Ghost, who shares an understanding look. This guy was down right pretty and neither one knew what to do about it. But as the crowd dies down and wanders off, he turns back to them, grin as wide as ever.

“Y’all did great!” He laughs, picking up his helmet. “You ever done that before?” I tilts his head curiously and the boys can’t help but think he looks like a puppy. All dopey grinned and doe eyed.

Soap answers first. “Na, we’ve never been in a Doom Done before, but it’s been my dream since I was a wee tyke! Wanted to be jus like you when I grew up.” He laughs, ruffling his hair a touch.

“Woah! Y’all ain’t from around here, are yah? Is that Scottish I’m hearing?” His eyes grow impossibly bigger.

This time, Ghost speaks. “Yeah, we’re just visiting.” And Y/N’s head tilts towards him.

“Oh! Well it was real nice of y’all to stop by our little circus!” His eyes close appreciatively. “Hey, I tell you what. You boys seem nice. And you said you wanted to be a rider when you were a kid, yeah? Here. Have my number, in case y’all ever wanna learn to ride! I got a couple o’ old practice bikes in storage. I’m sure they’d be happy see some use!” He pats himself down a moment, before pulling out a pair of business cards and holding them out to each of them.

Soap takes it gladly, and while Ghost is vaguely more apprehensive, he takes it anyway was Soap beams at the card. “I think I’ll have to take you up on that!”

“Please do! I’ve got to skedaddle, but it was real nice meeting you boys! Come back any time, Kay?” He waves as he wanders back to his bike and walks it out of the arena.

~I don’t know how to end this, so this is it. Xoxo, K.O.~

[teddypickerry]

hii bb!! love ur stories sm

do u think u could do a angst jess mariano imagine where the reader is in a relationship with someone else and jess get really upset and jealous and ends up confessing his love to the reader x.🤍

𝐒𝐀𝐅𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐄 !

pairings! — jess mariano x fem reader

warnings! — cheating (kind of), cursing (…LMFAO), lowk jess being a fluffy bitch so watch out

a/n! — this is kinda out of character for jess imo??? BUTTTT I LOVED WRITING IT. i love this idea + jess just being a fucking lovebot. i want to kiss his face (if you can’t tell from the picture)

THE TEENAGE BOY sat on the steps of the Stars Hollow gazebo, his eyes locked on his best friend laughing with another guy across the town square. They were both drinking coffee and seemed lost in their own world, completely oblivious to Jess's presence. He'd known you'd been seeing a guy for a few weeks now. But anytime he'd ask about him, you would change the subject. Jess was doubting himself at this point. Why would his best friend lie about her very own boyfriend to him?

It was a few days later that Jess was finally blessed with his presence — Daniel was his name, a pretty boring name for the burnout that he was. He wasn't anything special to Jess. Just a tall guy with greasy hair and a shitty sense of humor. To you, he was a good time. Something that most of the Stars Hollow residents lacked.

Friday afternoon marked four weeks since Daniel first locked eyes on you, vowing to his friends that he was gonna win you over. He wrote his number on a cigarette that he offered you which was quite the distinctive ask out. Ever since the boy had entered your life the other boy in your life, your best friend (the asshole + idiot) Jess Mariano, had been a bit slaggish. It wasn't that he was rude to you outright but he seemed uninterested and... different.

You finished your afternoon of homework by replacing your jeans with a pair of comfortable shorts, awaiting a much needed night in. A knock on the door kickstarted your heart a bit, not expecting anyone until later (the takeout guy and your friend Rory, who are not the same person). When you opened the door, revealing an intense Jess. He didn't say a word as he sunk into his jean jacket in the cold weather. You stepped aside to let him in, the worried look on his face enough to suffice as an excuse to let him in. Despite his asshole attitude the past few weeks. "What's going on?" Your voice was hesitant, unsure of the possibilities of Jess's ulterior mood.

"It's... it's Daniel. I don't fucking trust him," he muttered like it was nothing making you sigh. "I can't explain why, I just... I dunno. He looks at you like a freak and I don't think he's good for you." He admitted straightforward whole fumbling with his pockets. It was a rare sight to see Jess anything less than... how do I put this lightly? A cynical, judgmental, cocky bastard. 

So this was a sight to see. He was confident in his words but an internal conflict was dragging him down revealing an inner mood. "What are you.." Your voice trailed off in pure confusion. Reminiscent on the idea that this is why Jess has been so on edge lately. "Where are you even getting this from?" A stern look took over your face.

"Listen to me, Y/N. Something's off about this guy. Everyone can see it." Jess snapped before he sighed and attempted to calm himself down. He didn't want to get angry at you, that was the last resort actually. "What if we just followed him? Just for one day? We would find something-"

"What the hell? No!" You interjected in genuine question if your best friend had gone mad. "Can you stop accusing him of being a dick? Does this get you off?"

The two had gone silent as they both swallowed your words. There was a hint of regret on your behalf even though Jess was showing signs of insanity. He stepped forward, his hand placing a gentle hold on your arm. He was desperate and it showed. "I'm telling you, something's wrong with that guy. I can't tell you why... or how, I just feel it. Believe me, please. For me?"

You contemplated his words for a moment before looking him in the eye directly. Now or never. "Is it that or something else?" You hushed, a hasty breath releasing. "What do you..." His voice was soft, which you'd never experienced from Jess. He tried to sound curious and failed miserably when he took a deep breath.

Another silence fell over the two when she tried to decipher what he was thinking. She had no idea which route to take. "Are you upset that we don't see each-other anymore? I know I've been distant lately but you can't just put the blame on Danny, Jess."

Safe route.

His hand ran down her forearm to play with her fingers unintentionally. Jess was silent which showcased his answer. You were right and he didn't want to admit how much that affected him, or how much that was apart of the problem. He also half expected you to say something else but realized how idiotic that thought was. "It's true... but only because I care about you. I don't want you to get hurt or whatever... you know?" Once again, safe route. Or as I would say... bullshit.

"Are you sure about that?" Your voice came just below a whisper hardly enough for either of you to hear. His face seemed to harden at the accusation he wanted you to believe him. "Can't you just believe the 'I miss you' lame thing?" He attempted to joke with a straight face. You didn't budge and let out a soft breath before glancing away. "What do you want me to tell you, Y/N?" Jess's voice raised into a heavier tone seemingly upset with his best friend's lack of belief.

"That you love me," you uttered even shocking yourself. Jess quite literally couldn't believe his ears. He didn't waste anytime to do the thing he couldn't stop thinking about anytime he saw you. Jess stepped forward with your faces nearly touching. "I do love you."

Now was your opportunity to not waste any time. You leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. A sudden surprise for Jess, which he obviously appreciated. The short but passionate kiss was ended with a soft breath, only for him make an attempt to take the lead. He took a deep breath and pulled you back into him. A deeper and more intense kiss coming over the both of you. You were soft and sweet in his arms that were now tangling around you. Due to dire need of oxygen (sadly) your lips were pulled apart. The elephant in the room needed to be addressed and no I'm not talking about your dad's elephant hat. "What are you gonna tell the asshole?"

"Jess," You warned teasingly being brought out of your trance. "That I'm the asshole. I shouldn't have stringed him along like this. I know we weren't exclusive or anything but... I feel really bad. Because I've been in love with my best friend for a long fucking time."

Jess had to bite down on his lip to stop himself from kissing you again. A new addiction of his has occurred and they were called your lips. This conversation was heavy on your heart, you needed his advice rather than his spit. "How do you think he'll react?"

"Well how would you react?" You scoffed before pressing your head against the wall. "He'll take it out on me, not you. I'm sure." This was the time Jess realized this situation would have consequences to be dealt with. Something he was never too fond of. He liked living life his way, not with a barrier. The thought of Daniel being pissed at you made him want to knock him out, which to be fair is something he's wanted to do for a long time. Jess pressed his lips to your cheek softly, in an attempt of comfort. A sweeter Jess was something you'd never seen. But you weren't arguing.

"I'll talk to him if you want... I promise to call him Daniel and not Dickwad." Jess teased with his nose pressed to the side of your face. You giggled before turning towards him. "That might not be the best idea since I just spent my evening confessing my love to you."

"Fair enough." Now was his turn to laugh shining his crooked grin you were so fond of. "I'll wait outside with a crowbar for him and a kiss for you." Jess's joke made you playfully roll his eyes before leaning in for a soft kiss. You wanted to take in as much as this moment as possible. It was still unbelievable. "I'm yours, I'll be there for whatever you need. Like your own personal Bosley?"

"Does that make me your angel?" You teased while he replied with his lips touching yours for the seventh millionth time that evening. But you knew you'd never get sick of this feeling. Neither of you could bare to hold back as you fell deeper into the kiss. When you finally pulled apart he was full of energy and adrenaline. He could run a marathon screaming about how he was kissing the girl he loved loudly. He wanted to know how you felt about him too. "Tell me I'm the only one for you," He whispered intensely. Jess's look was pure fire as he intensely looked into your eyes.

"I love you, Jess Mariano. Only you."

"Good. Now let's watch Detroit Rock City."

"Hey!"

[kylobith]

Memory Lane

Characters: Astarion, Tav, Rolan, Wyll, Astarion's parents, Karlach, Shadowheart, Gale, Lae'zel

Tav: Gender-neutral/Non-binary Half-Drow Sorcerer

Tropes: Angst, Friendship, Platonic Relationship, Found family, Healing

Word count: 10,605 Read here on Ao3

Summary: Now that Faerûn is saved from the Absolute and everybody is learning to resume their lives, Astarion is submerged by a desire to recover memories from his past. Before Cazador, before his transformation. And Tav is determined to help him.

Could it be that there is somebody out there still waiting for him?

(Inspired by this post by @a-darling-thing)

Everyone is safe.

The streets of Baldur’s Gate bustle anew in the late hours. Taverns and inns have long been rebuilt as havens of peace after the narrowly avoided end of the world. Some have complained that their restoration has been privileged over the many homes lost. Others claim that it is a question of boosting morale amid darkness. No matter your opinion, if you venture the streets of Baldur’s Gate, you will hear cheers and songs belted out by souls who have seen too much gloom. Most lost dear ones. Most looked death in the eyes and got to live another day.

Everyone is safe.

There has been word from other lands that life is resuming and prosperous. The Shadow-cursed Lands were given breath again by the light of the Nightsong, and a small group has been working relentlessly to make it liveable again. No good-hearted soul should be barred from settling there, they believe, and they know that, soon, children’s laughter will fill the air again along birdsong.

Everyone is safe.

But not all are sane.

Sat in one of the red armchairs of Sharess’ Caress with his gaze empty, Astarion drowns his boredom and anguish in exquisite wine. Swirling the rich burgundy nectar inside his glass, he lets out yet another sigh, not bothering to acknowledge salutations from grateful survivors who recognise one of the city’s saviours.

There is a dimness to his ruby eyes that has not faded since he was rid of the tadpole gnawing at his brain. Shadowheart has never questioned him about it—she was never one to pry, after all. How could he even put the words on this ache that has seeped so deeply within him that it planted its claws into his bones?

No matter how often he has attempted to clear his mind for a good rest, it creeps back in and churns his guts with an uneasy anguish. It has been weeks since he last tranced for a full day or night. Most of the time, he finds himself staring at the ceiling with his eyes wide open.

And he drinks.

Drinks again.

Until the feeling becomes somewhat dulled.

But not quite.

Around the corner, a silhouette enters the corridor, passing by the few groups of talkative people. It heads straight towards Astarion, and he deliberately ignores it. He would recognise the aroma of this blood in a crowd of thousands. As they sit in the empty chair beside him, he sighs and chugs the rest of his wine. He tosses the empty glass onto the table and decides to take full swigs from the bottle instead.

Screw appearances. For once.

‘You look like shit.’

Astarion scoffs.

‘Good evening to you too, darling,’ he muses sarcastically.

Tav rolls their eyes and leans back into the armchair, drinking from a foamy mug of ale. Since the vampire does not utter a single word, uninterested in carrying out this conversation if it started this way, they decide to take the matter into their own hands.

‘Astarion, you look like you haven’t had proper rest since the Nautiloid. What’s going on? Really going on?’

At last, the pale elf casts a cold glance towards their former travel companion. He wants to play coy as he always does, sweet talk his way out of this conversation and possibly make his way downstairs to pay for company to warm his sheets. After all, that has always been the only way for him to not feel. Ministrations betwixt the sheets always do the trick. Dissociating would perhaps allow him to sleep soundly at last. Lose touch with his hurt by twisting the dagger into old ones whose pain he has long grown accustomed to.

But his tongue burns with the will to spill out all the words entrapped in his silent heart. That lump that has been occupying his throat for weeks now threatens to rupture.

Tav is safe. He tries to remind himself of that every so often when he catches himself spiralling with nightmares and terrors that leave him in dire want of a friend to vent to.

When has Tav ever let him down? Without them, he would not have fed properly for the first time in two centuries. He would never have survived the tadpole on his own. His hubris and unbridled cockiness would have caused his death at the first encounter out of the Nautiloid. But Tav has never minded.

Tav accepts him. Perhaps too blindly at times, truth be told. But they give him the space he needs to explore his newfound freedom. When sewer creatures and rats fail to fill his belly, Tav always offers some of their blood to keep him alert and healthy until they can find something better on the surface. They buy books in the city to keep him company when the sunlight makes his city hostile to his very existence. They often keep him updated on life out there, and even on gossip they could not care less about, but they know will keep him occupied for a few hours.

In other words, Tav is the only person he could ever express his distress to. Only they could understand.

Astarion groans and slams the empty wine bottle on the table, making the toppled glass quiver.

‘I know it’s stupid, alright?’ he starts with a disgruntled expression etched onto his refined traits. ‘Ever since we saved the city and killed Cazador, all I’ve been craving is to move on. To start over, I suppose. But…’

Attempting to find the right words to express his angst, he clicks his tongue.

‘Now that almost all is possible, that I’ve got eternity ahead of me, I can’t stop thinking about who I was before it all. Before the Gurs attacked me that fateful night and Cazador found me.’

Tav wipes some foam sticking to their upper lip with the back of their sleeve, which, honestly, makes Astarion want to screech considering that their garment is made of silk.

‘You mean your past when you were still alive?’

‘Is that not what I said?!’ Astarion snaps, before exhaling slowly. ‘My apologies. I’m still trying to figure out what I want.’

His friend listens attentively and considers his words. It does not surprise them in the least to hear this plea of his. If anything, they have been wondering when he would eventually voice this desire to uncover his past. As much as the vampire strives to build a secure and comfortable future for himself despite his predicament, he is somebody who inherently lives in the past. Nobody can blame him for that. Tav certainly does not.

‘What is it you want to know about your past, exactly?’

Astarion’s eyebrows raise and crease his forehead. In all honesty, he has never thought about that. The lack of memories is usually what he broods over, but never has he thought of questions he would seek answers to if, suddenly, all his memories could be restored. Would he like to know what his favourite dish was? Would he rather remember his usual schedule and routines? Or, perhaps, would he prefer to reminisce about what made him feel alive then?

As one of the waitresses passes in the corridor, Tav orders another bottle of red for him. Before long, an uncorked bottle of elegant Waterdhavian spirits is placed in front of him, beside a clean cup. Without waiting for him to reach out, they serve him a glass and bring the chalice to his hand.

‘I think I want to know about the people who raised me,’ he mumbles with a frown. ‘It’s silly, I know, but I wonder if I still have family out there.’

Tav smiles and gently clinks their mug against his cup.

‘It’s not silly at all, Astarion. They could tell you stories of your youth, and help you remember. And I’m sure that they would provide for you and introduce you to members of your clan whose births you missed.’

Astarion exhales sharply out of his nose with a corner of his lips raised. His eyes roll towards Tav.

‘You’re indulging me again.’

‘Indulging you in what, exactly? Supporting you in wanting to rediscover your path is hardly indulging you. It’s not a far-fetched wish, I’ll have you know.’

They grin at each other and drink.

‘Even if I wanted to go down this road, I wouldn’t know where to start. Besides, my situation doesn’t quite allow me to investigate either.’

With a shrug, Tav sets down their ale on the table, belching before leaning back.

‘I could look for them for you. Tell me anything you remember, and I’ll work from there.’

Astarion cocks an eyebrow again and stares at them for longer than he thinks.

‘You would do that? For me? But what’s in it for you?’

‘If you still think I do stuff for you for my own gain, then what’s our whole adventure been for? Perhaps I just want to see you happy, ever thought about that?’

‘Hah. I don’t know if I want to be happy myself. There wouldn’t be anything left to improve.’

‘I suppose. But your heart would be lighter,’ they insist, poking his arm. ‘Come on, Starry, let me help you. Do you remember anything?’

The pale elf sighs and chugs his first cup of Waterdhavian red, exhaling as it coats his tongue and drops down his throat.

‘Ancunín.’

It is the half-drow’s turn to eye him curiously.

‘Sorry?’

The vampire runs a hand through his hair, still staring into emptiness.

‘Ancunín. It was my surname, once.’

‘A pretty one at that.’

Amused by the compliment, he clicks his tongue again and playfully rolls his eyes. He tosses a leg over the other and shakes his foot.

‘And I’m the smooth talker?’

‘Most of the time,’ Tav responds with a snort. ‘Ancunín, then… Very well. I’ll start from there.’

The next morning, when the city rouses from its slumber, Tav is already out and about, determined to find anything about Astarion’s family. Since a part of the city’s archives have been displaced until the building in the Upper City is fully rebuilt, their first instinct is to head to one of the centres of knowledge in all of the city.

As they cross the threshold of Sorcerous Sundries, they are welcomed at the reception by a familiar figure.

‘Welcome to Sorcer—oh! By the gods, Tav, it is good to see you here!’

Tav grins and embraces the tiefling, who leans over the counter, nearly climbing on it.

‘Good morning, Lia. Everything still going smoothly for you in the city?’

‘Oh, yes,’ the bubbly young woman chimes, ‘Cal and I bought our first house in the Lower City. It isn’t much, but it’s quite an upgrade compared to the rocky road!’

‘I am glad to hear it.’

Lia beams with joy and Tav can see her long tail whipping the floor excitedly behind her. It seems that the tiefling is truly happy to see them again.

‘But I assume that you aren’t here to talk about the house,’ she whispers. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Is Rolan available? I would like to ask him something about the part of the city’s archives that was brought to Ramazith's Tower.’ ‘Oh. Well. He should already be up, I believe. Go upstairs, third portal.’

‘Thank you. Send my love to Cal for me, will you?’

‘Will do!’

Without further ado, Tav climbs up the stairs above the front desk to find the upper floor, where four buzzing portals offer passage to different locations. The contraption is identical to the riddle that Lorroakan set up with the Nightsong, but there is something so incredibly Rolan about it.

The plaques which bore the different answers to the simple question that helped Lorroakan narrow down the flow of visitors to only let the serious ones in have long been tossed into a broom closet and forgotten. None of the portals bears a riddle of any kind, and passage to the wizard’s tower is left to chance. The fear of what is on the other side of each threshold is enough to deter any visitor and leave the tower secluded in its own peace and quietness. Zero is precisely the number of visitors that Rolan loves.

Following Lia’s instructions, Tav steps through the third portal and finds themself transported to a brightly-lit observation floor. Astronomical instruments and tools are posted at each window, ready to be manipulated and appreciated. Between a few richly ornamented bookshelves bearing nothing but volumes on the universe, the sky and celestial bodies, there is a mahogany desk illuminated by the lofty arches of the balcony. Piles of scrolls and open tomes bear witness to an ongoing, arduous research.

Tav glances around, hoping to find somebody. Anybody. But there is no soul in sight. Since they do not wish to impose, they are retracing their steps towards the portal, when a grunt resonates in their back.

‘Ugh, Lia will really let anyone in. Excuse me!’

Before leaving him a chance to begin one of his numerous grumpy monologues, Tav turns around and waves. The other tiefling gasps in surprise.

‘It’s you! I was wondering if you even made it out alive! Mh. Should I be surprised that you did? Not that I care.’

Tav snorts and approaches him. Despite the animosity that the wizard has often held against them, he allows a smile to play on his lips, wrinkling his amber eyes and creasing his freckled nose.

‘Morning, Rolan,’ they chime. ‘Love what you did with the place. You gave it a homely feeling.’

At the compliment, Rolan’s orange-red complexion darkens around his cheeks.

‘Thank you, Tav. What brings you here after weeks of not hearing from you?’

‘I was wondering if one needs any special permission to have access to the city’s archives that were brought to you.’

The wizard gestures towards a seat in front of his desk, while he sits behind it, ignoring the mess.

‘Not that I know of. Why do you ask?’

‘I’m trying to find anything about Astarion’s family and see if, perhaps, there are any survivors in the city.’

‘Ah, yes. Him.’

Upon the mention of the vampire’s name, the wizard scrunches up his nose. Nevertheless, he seems to give it a thought, folding his hands before him.

‘I do have some records from previous censuses. Would that be of any help?’

‘Most likely.’

‘What information do you already possess? I have some free time on my hands, I can help you look,’ Rolan adds with a smirk. ‘For once, it is you who needs my help, after all. How could I sleep on this opportunity?’

Tav shakes their head in amusement and takes out a crumpled piece of parchment from their pocket, handing it over to the tiefling. He grabs it and peeks inside, only to find a single word scribbled on it.

‘Ancunín?’

‘That’s his surname. All I know and all he can remember is this name, and the fact that he grew up in a noble family.’

‘Mh. Researching noble families from the city should not be a daunting task. Crests, acts of inheritance and the like should be kept within the archives. I would not be surprised if all records from the nobility are kept together. Hopefully, it is the case and our research will be all the quicker thanks to it.’

He drags himself out of his chair and beckons Tav over as he walks away. They follow him, avoiding small talk as they quickly realised during their adventure that it is one of Rolan’s pet peeves. Talking to say nothing? It makes his skin crawl.

The wizard leads them to the lower floors and into one of the high-security vaults where he has been keeping and guarding the documents entrusted to him. Memorising the orthography as well as the archival system used by the authorities, he begins to browse the collection, his clawed fingertip grazing the worn-out back of the numerous volumes on a shelf.

‘I see a registry of Upper City families here. Look for an Ancunín family in there while I keep looking. There is a desk in the corner.’

Tav grabs the heavy tome that Rolan hands them and carries it over to the unoccupied desk in the corner, supporting it with their hip. Despite their attempt to be careful, they inadvertently slam the book on the table—earning a disapproving glare from their host—and open it. Their outstretched finger trails down a pages-long list of clan names, hoping to find the only one that matters. In the background, the flipping of pages and the weight of books sliding onto the shelves make for the only distraction available.

‘So, any luck?’

They look up and close the tome with a shake of the head.

‘I don’t see Ancunín in there. Perhaps he didn’t live in the Upper City.’

‘Mmh. Let’s keep searching, then. Bring the volume back, I wouldn’t want to lose any of the archives. The authorities trusted a tiefling to guard their belongings, I would not want to waste this opportunity.’

When Rolan instructs them to do it, they are already halfway through the room with the volume in hand. They place it back carefully and join the tiefling in the search for other possible traces of the Ancunín family. As they peruse the archives together, Tav eyes the wizard with a lopsided grin.

‘Busy with research, I noticed. What wonderful things are you studying?’

Rolan drops an arm by his side, flattening his heels against the polished floor and flicking his other wrist.

‘It is an incredibly fascinating subject, really, so much so that academics from all around Faerûn gave it its orthodox name, “None of Your Business”.’

Tav rolls their eyes and snorts, resuming the task at hand.

‘Always a pleasure to talk to you, huh? Well. At least you learnt sarcasm on your journey.’

Their comment is welcomed by a grunt, followed by a good-humoured chuckle. A few seconds later, they find two volumes compiling deaths in Baldur’s Gate for the past three centuries and take a seat at the desk to go through the lists together.

‘The death certificates are kept separately, from what I know,’ Rolan declares while opening one of the volumes and flipping through the first pages, ‘but if Astarion technically died in the city, his name should be recorded in there.’

They start reading the names, careful not to touch the pages too much considering how old the ink is.

‘Mh,’ the tiefling breaks the silence again, ‘from what I gather, each deceased person has the death certificate number written in the last column. If you find Astarion, you should write down the number and visit the part of the archives that is guarding certificates and official documents. Perhaps the names of his relatives are stated on it, although I suspect that you are more likely to find this information on a birth certificate. I’m not sure how bureaucracy works here, exactly.’

‘It’s a mess, that’s all you need to know,’ Tav sighs. ‘Hopefully, I can get my hands on a possible birth certificate by finding his death certificate?’

‘Possibly. I imagine that they are kept together.’

For the next hour, they go through the lists of deaths occurring roughly around two hundred years ago. Since Astarion did not give Tav a precise date—either out of forgetfulness or by omission—it only makes the search trickier for the both of them. Before either of them grows frustrated, they agree to broaden their focus by a span of sixty years around the two-hundred-year mark. Rolan agrees to research prior dates and Tav, later ones.

Without fail, another hour later, Rolan taps the page he is reading.

‘There he is.’

Feeling excitement well up inside their chest, Tav drags their chair over to sit next to the tiefling and have a look at the line that he is showing them.

In elegant calligraphy, typical of official records, the vampire’s name is squeezed between countless others.

Astarion Ancunín. Born 1229. Dead 1268. 39. Exsanguination. Buried (LCNE). 0181901781413

The mere sight of his name among all of the others makes Tav’s heart tighten. They bow their head almost in solemn reverence as they read it, despite knowing that they will find Astarion in the sewers later to inform him of their findings. Even with the excitement of having found a clue in the puzzle of the pale elf’s past, it is quite odd to find him in such a register.

For the first time since vanquishing the Absolute, it occurs to them that this simple entry in the record could have well been definitive, had the company failed their mission. While some of their former companions still had people to mourn them, who would have shed a tear for Astarion? Everybody thought him dead already. Even Cazador was no longer around to brood over the loss of the remaining piece of his black mass.

Tightening their fist against their thigh, Tav vows to themself that they will find at least one person from Astarion’s family and reunite them. Even if that means having to dig up a body in the middle of the night and cast Speak with Dead.

Rolan nudges the piece of parchment with Astarion’s surname on it against Tav’s other hand. He hands them a quill, already dipped in ink.

‘Write the certificate number down,’ he speaks gently. ‘You will need it.’

They obey mechanically, copying the number from the register and the dates of birth and death. When they hand the quill back to the wizard, they scrunch up their nose.

‘Exsanguination. Bullshit. Beat up and left for dead!’

‘Don’t get sentimental, Tav,’ the tiefling’s firm tone scolds at once. ‘Records can be deceitful and they sometimes embellish facts, even if we believe them to be models of truth. Besides, the causes of death omit gruesome details as much as possible so they can be standardised. Just… rejoice in the fact that he’s still undead and well, I suppose.’

‘You’re right. Sorry.’

Rolan furrows his brow and gently pats their hand, before standing up and collecting the books.

‘Now, your best bet is to go to the city’s archives directly. Ask them where they keep the certificates, if they’re still on-site or if they’ve been displaced.’

‘I wish I could. Don’t they require special authorisations to visit the archives, now? It will take me weeks before I can have one. If I ever do.’

Once the wizard has placed the registers back in their spot, he pats the dust off of his hands and turns around to face them with a shrug.

‘Didn’t you travel with the son of the Grand Duke? The devil with one eye?’

Tav snaps their fingers with a gasp.

‘Wyll! You’re right! And, if that’s not enough, Grand Duke Ravengard does owe me for saving his life.’

‘Didn’t he already pay that back by fighting against the Absolute?’

‘That was… the right thing to do. But still, surely, he can put in a good word for me.’

‘Mh.’

It is not until the next day, when Wyll has found a window in his schedule, that Tav meets with him. Escorted by two members of the Flaming Fist, they are brought to the Blade of Frontiers’ shiny new office in the Upper City. Upon entering, the familiar figure of their former travelling companion, now devoid of devil horns, stands up from the chair and the guards are dismissed with a simple order.

Wyll beams with joy at the sight of his visitor, and he wastes no time bypassing his desk to approach them with his arms wide open.

‘Tav, my friend! Ah, what a sight for one sore eye!’

The warlock lets out a hearty laugh and the pair joins in a tight embrace, patting each other’s back.

‘I’m so happy to see you, Wyll,’ Tav chimes. ‘Look at you! You look amazing! And look at this office! Who knew that you were cut for bureaucracy after all?’

‘Ah, nevermind the office, I am hardly ever here,’ he responds with a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘They deemed that I should have one for my administrative tasks, but truth be told, I am never happier than on the field itself.’

‘Not surprising. But I thought that the Fist had their headquarters in the southwest?’

‘Most of the building is under maintenance due to the Nautiloid shellings. This is all temporary.’

Tav nods and glances around, genuinely impressed by the office in itself. But before they can truly admire it, Wyll clears his throat.

‘What can I help you with?’

‘I was wondering if you knew of a way to have access to the city’s archives. There is a document I wish to consult, and possibly related ones if I can find them.’

‘What sort of document, if I may ask?’

There is no use lying to Wyll, they realise. Not only could he be the key to the archives, but he is a friend. A dear one at that.

‘Astarion wishes to know whether he still has family in the city. From before his transformation, that is. I found a register at Ramazith's Tower with the code on his death certificate, which, Rolan said, is probably kept in the Upper City.’

‘I see. Well, as an esteemed member of the city’s bureaucratic system and the son of Grand Duke Ravengard, I can escort you to the archives myself and give you access.’

Tav’s eyes widen.

‘Really? Would you mind?’

‘Not at all! Hopefully, it won’t take too long. I do have an appointment with a recruit later on. You have the reference, you said?’

‘Right here,’ they answer, patting their breast pocket.

‘Then, shall we?’

Wyll grabs the keys to his office and locks the door on their way out. As they head towards the archives, they share news of their life now that the tadpoles no longer writhe inside their heads and danger is out of the way.

He reveals that his father, upon regaining his position as Grand Duke after Gortash’s death, named him a Blaze of the Flaming Fist. Most of his time has been spent learning the methods of the company, ensuring the proper logistics of his unit, and then filling in countless forms that left him drained by the end of the day. Despite appearing incredibly busy with his new tasks, with a bit of prying, Tav makes him admit that he has started to court a noblewoman from the Upper City and that they sometimes meet when he does not need to work for promenades through gardens or along the coast. When they ask him whether he loves her, he merely clears his throat and averts his gaze, which twinkles strongly enough for them to catch the hidden meaning behind his shyness.

As they almost reach the archives, Wyll turns to them and grins.

‘You know, I think it is a beautiful thing, what you are doing for Astarion. I knew you to be selfless, but this further proves the kindness of your heart. Not that I needed convincing, mind you.’

‘Don’t give me too much credit,’ they respond with a brief chortle. ‘I don’t even know if my new mission will succeed.’

‘But, still, this is a beautiful gesture. By the way, how is our vampire friend doing?’

‘He lives in the sewers and only comes out at night, now that he is vulnerable to sunlight again. Sometimes I bring him provisions and entertainment during the day, or we go out at night, depending on his mood.’

The new Blaze shakes his head with a sorrowful expression.

‘It breaks my heart that he can no longer enjoy the sun. It is the least that he deserves, after all of his ordeals. But I am glad that he’s got you. I wish I could visit him from time to time, but I doubt that he’d be willing to see me. He never really warmed up to me.’

‘In all fairness, sometimes it doesn’t sound like he’s warmed up to me either. But I think that, deep down, he would appreciate it. He still sees Shadowheart sometimes, but now that she has moved away, their encounters become rarer.’

‘Mh. I suppose.’

At the main gate, the guards instantly recognise Wyll and his uniform and they instantly salute him. When he explains the purpose of his visit, they clear the passage and let them both in. Inside the building itself, they are guided by one of the recordkeepers to Tav’s desired section and search for the certificate with the help of the reference number they provide from the parchment.

In no time, the librarian returns with a folder under their arm and beckons them over to one of the reading tables, illuminated by rows of candles. Settling the folder on a cushion due to its old age, she opens it and reveals the original copy of the death certificate. But, as Rolan suspected, there is no mention of Astarion’s parentage.

‘Sorry to bother you again,’ they say to the archivist, ‘but do you know if the birth certificate for this person still exists? He was born in 1229 in Baldur’s Gate.’

‘I will have a look for you.’

Tav and Wyll patiently wait for her to return, sitting at the reading tables and eyeing each other every so often, sharing awkward smiles as they refrain from chatting and disturbing those working nearby. Thankfully, it does not take long before she comes back with another folder.

‘This is the birth certificate of Astarion Ancunín,’ she whispers to them, unveiling the document. ‘If you are looking for his parentage, their names figure right here, but time has faded the ink, I fear.’

‘It remains quite legible, I believe,’ Wyll responds as Tav squints to read the handwriting. ‘The mother’s name seems to be Arallia…’

‘And his father, Elaith Ancunín,’ Tav completes the thought. ‘Is there any way to find out if these elves still live?’

‘I can peruse the latest census,’ the librarian answers, ‘but you must keep in mind that it is nearly three years old. With the attacks on the city, who knows what became of them?’

‘I would greatly appreciate your help, ma’am.’

Before they know it, Tav is back in the sewers, shuffling their feet while holding up a lantern to guide their own steps to Astarion’s latest hideout. But even before they reach it, they hear a soft whistle coming from their side. In the darkness, two bright blood-coloured irises shimmer and invite them in. Yet there is no fear. As menacing as these appearances look, they know that it could only be their friend.

‘What are you doing here?’ Tav whispers as Astarion presses a finger to his lips.

‘Minsc was looking for me again.’

‘Has it ever occurred to you that he, maybe, very maybe, cares about you?’

‘Darling, do not take me for a fool!’ his grumpy tone emerges. ‘If I let him in, he will never leave!’

Tav rolls their eyes and follows him to his new lair. Once inside a makeshift shed, they both sit on the same bedroll that he travelled with during their great adventure. Despite having known mud, rocks and fungus, the thing is now smelly, stained, and rotten. Perhaps they should remember to get him a new one, one of these days.

‘So, any news of the search?’ he inquires, trying to play coy yet betraying his excitement with a nibble on his lower lip.

‘I have some, indeed.’

They smile at him and pat his shin.

‘I found your parents.’

Despite the reveal, Astarion’s reaction remains lukewarm. He huffs and crosses his arms with a crinkle of the nose.

‘Let me guess… Dead, I presume?’

‘No, actually. Very much alive.’

Within a heartbeat, Astarion’s arms loosen and his eyebrows shoot so far up his forehead that Tav worries that they will go past his hairline. There is a candid look in his eyes, a remainder of innocence in the gaze of a man who has so often relished in killing various creatures and would have been willing—more than once—to slaughter many more. It is as if his inner child has pierced through the thick armour that his hardships have driven him to forge for himself, letting himself known after being kept buried far into the depths of his person for over two centuries.

Astarion takes a moment to digest the news. How thrilling. How exciting! How so, very, frightening.

‘Do they still live in the city?’ his hushed tone inquires, almost afraid to ask.

‘I found their address in a census from three years ago. We don’t know if they survived the assault on Baldur’s Gate, but we could try. Would you like me to make contact?’

After long seconds of internal deliberation, the pale elf nods. And if his heart has long stopped beating, he can perceive the ghost of a tremor.

Three days later, Tav and Astarion find themselves on the doorstep of a grand villa in the Upper City, once the sun has mostly set and is hiding behind clouds. Dressed for the occasion, adorning fine embroideries on silk garments, the vampire cannot stop adjusting his clothes every few seconds, making himself look messier than he originally did. Swatting his hands away this time, Tav fixes his collar and sleeves for him.

‘Stop fidgeting!’

‘I’m nervous, alright?’ he hisses. ‘I don’t even know what I’m going to tell them. How do I even greet them? How did I usually do it? I can’t remember a damned thing!’

‘Calm down. Let me take the first step, maybe. And, in doubt, let them approach you first. And don’t behave like a cat if they hug you.’

The door opens and one of the servants of the house bows to them.

‘You must be Tav. We have received word of your visit. Our masters await you in their sunroom. Please, follow me.’

With one last shared glance, the pair follows the servant, and Tav discreetly slaps Astarion’s hand as he attempts to fix what does not need fixing in his appearance. Before he can protest, they raise a finger to shush him.

The maid walks them through the lavishly decorated home of her masters. The walls, adorned with elvish art and family portraits, are far from Astarion’s taste when it comes to interior design. In fact, he finds their choice so similar to Cazador’s that his stomach tightens the longer he stares. Yet, as they pass a gallery of portraits, he recognises none of the faces. And worse even, he does not see his own.

For an instant, he starts to doubt that Tav found the right people after all. The research went so quickly, he thinks to himself, it is bound to be a mistake. Perhaps they found somebody related to him but from a completely different branch of the Ancunín clan. Maybe they coincidentally have the same names. Mayhap they are not related at all.

He has no time to spiral further down in his doubt, for they now both stand at a door, whose glass is elegantly ornamented by the wooden motifs found on every other door they have passed. As the servant opens it and bows to herald their arrival, Tav places a hand on Astarion’s back, handing him a handkerchief.

‘You’re sweating,’ they whisper.

‘Thank you.’

As he quickly wipes his forehead and upper lip and sees the maid returning, he shoves the handkerchief into his pocket and straightens up. She beckons them over.

‘My masters are ready to see you. May I serve you refreshments?’

‘That… will not be necessary,’ Astarion responds, forgetting that Tav might be thirsty or hungry for mortal sustenance.

The maid steps aside to let them into the sunroom and Tav enters first to ease both parties into the reunion. They face two figures sitting stiffly in broad armchairs. On the left, a tall man with long blonde hair watches their display with an air of unspoken disdain. He pinches his thin lips, accentuating the wrinkles around his mouth and his natural frown. At first sight, they can already tell that he is no social animal. His fingers incessantly pick at the brass upholstery nails marking the border between the forest green velvet and the mahogany frame.

Beside him, a woman around his age squints at Tav. With her hands joined on her lap as she keeps her knees tight together, leaning away from her husband, her pose itself communicates that she is the judge in the home and the decision-maker. Her gown, closer to a court garment than to a lounging robe, suggests that she is often the one to speak to guests and visitors, while her husband remains in his own bubble or mulls over information conveyed to them before they deliberate in private and come to a mutual agreement. Or what he believes to be a compromise.

The cascading waves of silver-white hair shielding her pale blue eyes add an air of mystique to this woman. She is a painting come to life, blessed with the elegance and poise of the moon elves. Any glance cast towards them is stolen by her ethereal appearance, and it can be asserted, without a shadow of a doubt, which parent Astarion takes after.

Tav instantly understands that if they want the reunion to go smoothly, they have to impress her.

‘Lord and Lady Ancunín,’ they greet as they bow. ‘I sincerely thank you for accepting to receive me in your grand home.’

‘Your letter came as a surprise, I must say,’ Lady Arallia Ancunín speaks up in a cold tone. ‘Now, speak of your intentions.’

Within a heartbeat, and despite the fog that has long occupied his memories, Astarion recognises them. His breath hitches at the realisation and his eyes widen. Here they are, in the flesh; the two people he used to call ‘mother’ and ‘father’.

Tav does not need to introduce him. Arallia instantly peeks over their shoulder at the taller man standing behind them, and she hardly shows any surprise.

‘Oh. It’s you.’

All eyes turn to Astarion and, for once, he is at a loss for words. His usual cockiness and insolence are long gone in the face of his family, and if anything, it is as though he is shrinking from the attention.

With a supportive grin, Tav simply nods, giving him the strength and courage to step forward. As they did before him, he bows.

‘Lord and Lady Ancunín.’

Arallia scrutinises him without as much as a twinkle in her eye. She inspects every fold of his clothes, driving him to the brink of insanity as he becomes self-conscious over the way the light even reverbs on the embroideries. Do they insult her eyes?

‘I was wondering when you would come to our door.’

‘Who is this, dear?’ the man whispers to his wife.

Tav frowns in sheer disbelief. Perhaps the man they thought to be Elaith Ancunín was another man after all. It is possible that Arallia remarried after all this time. But the shape of his jaw still leads them to believe that it is his father. He has to be.

Arallia clicks her tongue and turns her head towards her husband without truly looking at him.

‘Oh, it’s um…’ she mumbles with a distracted wave of the hand. ‘Ah, what was his name again?’

Astarion’s world collapses in less than a second. She recognised him, yet forgot his name. Her own son, her flesh and blood. He expected shock since he has—literally—returned from the dead after more than two centuries, but oblivion? No, that was never one of the prospects. How could one forget their child? He never sired any, nor would he ever be able to, but he is sure that even a millennium after their death, he would have remembered everything about them.

All the worst scenarios flood his heart and Tav’s heart shatters at the sight. His shoulders slouch and his face falls.

‘Astarion,’ he sighs. ‘My name is Astarion.’

‘Yes. That.’

The vampire lowers his head and stares at the ground, a much more welcoming sight than his parents are. Tav squints and shifts their attention back to their hosts.

‘You said that you expected to see him again?’ they ask. ‘So, you knew that he wasn’t dead?’

‘Everybody knows, now. The mighty saviours of the Sword Coast! Among which my son, can you believe it?’

There is no hint of pride in her voice, nor of admiration. Merely contempt. Unabashed derision. As Astarion discreetly takes a step back, shaken by her reaction, Arallia raises an eyebrow.

‘Why the long face, child?’

‘Nothing, Lady Ancunín.’

She scoffs and stands up, crossing her arms against her midriff.

‘What did you expect when you showed your face here, boy? That we would cry and hug you? You are not a toddler anymore.’

‘N-No, I didn’t—’

‘You had two centuries to visit us, to let us know that you were alright. But you never came. As far as I am concerned, this ship has long sailed!’

Elaith rubs his upper lip with a finger, humming to himself.

‘It is no surprise. The boy has always been trouble,’ he declares without as much as a look towards his child.

‘Do you remember how needy he was, dear?’ Arallia adds with a short gasp. ‘Always begging for attention. Constantly! He would do anything just to get us to talk to him. I cannot handle people like that. So very impolite and embarrassing, really. It is just as well that he remained with his nanny.’

Astarion’s eyes darken and Tav gently holds the cuff of his sleeve. They cannot believe it. They are acting as though their guests are not even here, as if they are the audience of a play unfolding in that damned sunroom.

‘And now, look at him,’ Arallia continues, her upper lip curling up in a snarl. ‘A saviour of Baldur’s Gate! A hero! But I see you for what you are, boy, do not blind yourself with fantasies. I see your red eyes; I see your fangs. You are nothing but a monster.’

This is the last straw. Astarion spins around on his heel and shoves the door to the house open, storming off past the flabbergasted maid. Tav calls his name but hears no response. They turn to glare at their hosts.

‘With all due respect, Lord and Lady Ancunín—and there is none on my part—you are the only monsters in sight. You should be ashamed of yourselves and the disgrace you are to your son. He has brought nothing but honour to your clan’s name.’

They give the outraged elves a mocking bow and withdraw from the home, whispering a ‘thank you’ to the maid who showed them in. Once they slam the front door of the villa, they frantically look around, but there is no sign of Astarion. Cursing under their breath, they sprint towards the flashy sigil on one of the brick walls past the heavily guarded Baldur’s Gate. They reach out for it with their destination in mind and vanish from the surface of the Upper City.

When they emerge from the portal into the sewers, they search the countless corridors, nooks and crannies for the pale elf. They run until they are out of breath, scanning each side and calling out his name until their voice cracks and turns hoarse. Inside their chest their heart maddens, tightening at the idea of Astarion suffering alone, wherever he is. All they hope for is that he is not about to do something drastic.

Under their short breath, they pray that he is nowhere near water. They beg fate that he is keeping as far away as possible from particularly sharp objects. They despair at the idea that he might be drinking his sorrows away for the night on the shore, waiting for the sun to come up again. He would never do such things, would he?

Gods, if Astarion’s misery successfully leads him to such lengths, what would they do?

They come to a halt in a narrow corridor, whose end is nothing but a cramped chamber with a rotten wooden plank leaning against the wall. They lean over their knees, gasping for air, pressing their body to recover quickly enough so they can find their friend as quickly as possible.

But just as they start walking away, a soft whine resonates from behind the wooden plank. They snap their head around and slowly approach it with their dagger in one hand and the other outstretched in caution.

‘Hello? Is someone there?’

No response.

‘I’m pushing the plank to the side.’

As they do it, the dim light of a nearby torch reflects on the huddled-up silhouette of a man rocking himself back and forth. With his elbow resting on his knee and his fingers woven through his hair, his widened eyes peek through the gap between his forearm and his bicep.

‘Go away.’

Tav sheathes their dagger and kneels, reaching out their hand.

‘Astarion…’

‘I SAID GO AWAY!’

With a surprisingly strong shove, he topples them off their legs and glares at them as they fall into a puddle of dirty water. When they look up, all they see are the cheeks drowning under the salty tears and the look of unadulterated agony in his eyes. His traits contort and scrunch up as a strangled sob leaves his throat.

‘This is all your fault,’ he scolds. ‘You couldn’t stop yourself, could you? Being a hero, a helper, as always, without thinking about the consequences! Helping gets you off, doesn’t it? Well, I sure hope you’re happy.’

Tav’s brow furrows and they crawl up to him.

‘Hey, it is not me you should be after, it should be them. Redirect your anger at them. You were miserable and you couldn’t move on so long as you didn’t know for sure if you had a family. I searched for you and found them. They decided to be awful.’

Astarion scoffs and buries his head into the crooks of his elbows, shielding his head as though the weight of his torment is threatening to come crashing down on it. His weeping is muffled by his sleeves, but its intensity does not go unnoticed.

‘I knew it,’ he gurgles. ‘I have never been loved. I am unlovable.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You heard them! So needy… Always demanding attention… That is why I have always been alone. When I was a slave under Cazador’s yoke, I was lonely, but I least I found comfort in the idea that once upon a time, I was held and loved.’

He roughly rubs his eyes with the palm of his trembling hand.

‘But I have always been lonely. It is in my nature. I remember it all, now. Calling my mother and reaching out to her, but she would never pick me up. And my father… He would shrug and walk away as if I were nothing but a stray dog on the street.’

The vampire glares at them.

‘And that’s all I am, now. A filthy beast in the sewers!’

As he raises his fist to punch the wall, Tav swiftly catches his hand and resists the force he puts against their palm.

‘Astarion, you are none of these things,’ they speak softly, hoping to make him see reason. ‘Gods, they are the beasts, not you!’

He rolls his eyes with a scoff and drops his hand on his lap. Despite knowing that he has never been comfortable with promiscuity, they sit beside him and enfold him in their embrace. Gently rocking him from side to side, they fail to see the shock on his face.

‘And by all that is sacred, you are loved, Astarion. Shit, I never thought that I’d say this out loud, but I love you. I’m not sticking by your side out of pity, or out of obligation. I do so because I want to. Because you’re worth the effort it takes to bring you everything you want from the surface.’

‘How can you say that?’ he whimpers. ‘You’d be better off without me.’

‘Nonsense,’ they grunt, before pressing a brief kiss on the top of his head. ‘I was so scared when you disappeared. I was afraid that you’d gone and get yourself hurt, or worse. I know it hasn’t been easy on you, living here on your own and never seeing the sun again. And now, this. I swear to you, if I could ease that pain singlehandedly, I would. I would carry it with you.’

Astarion clings to them and cries on their shoulder as they clasp one another. Tav gently rubs his back, feeling tears sting their eyes in turn.

‘Losing you would’ve broken me, Astarion. Don’t you dare think for a moment that you’re unloved.’

Another moment passes where they give the vampire the time to exteriorise their pain and process the failed reunion with his parents. When, at last, he regains some of his composure, he pulls away from their embrace and leans back against the wall.

‘I never thought it would end like this,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t know what I did wrong.’

‘You did nothing wrong, Astarion. All of this is way more telling of them than it is of you. Do you want me to tell you what I found out about them at the archives?’

He eyes them curiously.

‘They are drowning in debt. Your mother has been cast away from the Grand Duke’s court for cruel comments, and most noble circles are barred from even speaking to them. Your father lost his livelihood a century ago and he relies entirely on your mother. But you? You risked your life and sanity to save the city that has been so hostile to you. Perhaps that wasn’t your goal at first, but you couldn’t bear to see your home defaced in the name of evil. You could’ve run away at any given moment, but you didn’t. You saved them, and you saved all of Faerûn. Your parents do not even hold a candle to your achievements and your growth.’

If blood could still flow through his veins, he would blush at the sincere praise that Tav presents him. It surprises him, to say the least. While they are never afraid to give compliments, they never pay them lightly. Certainly not to flatter anyone. He relaxes against them and slowly leans his head until it rests on their shoulder. ‘Without you, I would never have made it,’ he confesses. ‘You saved me from myself, more than once. You saved me from my blindness. I could have sacrificed seven thousand souls for my own gain, and sometimes it still haunts me that I didn’t. I wouldn’t suffer so…’

‘You would have lost yourself in that power. Nobody remains intact when such ambitions are given to them. Honestly, between you and Gale, it was hard to juggle,’ they add with a brief laugh.

Tav links their arm through his and gently grazes their fingertips along the sleeve in a comforting gesture. A bashful grin tugs at the corners of Astarion’s lips as he finally gets his thoughts in order.

‘What I mean to say is… Thank you. For everything.’

‘You don—’

‘Ugh, accept my damn thanks, will you?’ he groans. ‘It is not every day that I say it. Hold it against me for that one time, if you so wish!’

They look into each other’s eyes and crack up. Tav runs his fingers through his hair, and while they did anticipate a rejection, Astarion does not move. The tension in his shoulders alleviates.

‘Come live with me.’

‘What?’

Astarion frowns and stares at them, unsure whether he heard them well.

‘Come live with me. I mean it. I have enough money to buy a small house now that I sold all the armour I gathered during our journey and all the weapons I’m not using anymore.’

They shift to face him.

‘Think about it. It will be more comfortable than the sewers, and cleaner, and you can receive as many visitors as you want. It will be your home as much as mine.’

‘Darling, I cannot picture myself ducking whenever I want to pass a window to avoid sunlight.’

‘You wouldn’t have to! I can make sure to buy one of those homes with a large cellar, and that could be your flat. We’d have a common space on the ground floor, then I could have my room and a washroom upstairs, that’s all I need. We can build direct access to the cellar from outside in case you ever wish to bring some conquests.’

‘Conquests?’ he repeats with an eyebrow raised and a smug smile. ‘Darling, please, it’s less embarrassing to say “lovers”.’

Tav smirks and shakes their head.

‘It would be home, Astarion. I can still provide for you. You’ll never smell the sewers again and you can decorate the place as you like. I’ll give you full permission. Even for my bedroom.’

‘This is a dangerous game you’re playing, you know that?’

‘Maybe. But I trust your taste.’

Astarion considers the offer for a few seconds, then nods.

‘I… would like that. If you are sure that it would not be a bother to you, then…’

‘You’ll never be a bother to me, Astarion.’

The vampire and the half-drow share a smile. Tav holds out their hand, and he stares at it for a moment, before shaking it. They both entertain hope for the future. Perhaps things will be alright after all.

‘In the meantime,’ Astarion coos, pulling out a small frame from under the flap of his blazer, containing a painted portrait of Arallia he snatched from the lobby on his way out, ‘would you be interested in a game of darts?’

It takes quite a few weeks before Tav manages to purchase the small house they promised for Astarion and themself. Located in the bustling centre of the Lower City and within walking distance of the Elfsong Tavern for his entertainment, it contains almost everything that they compromised on during further discussions on the matter. It stands tall enough to overlook the bay, with a covered balcony for late-night contemplation and drinks.

Tav claimed the attic for their bedroom, not requiring more than that for themself. After years of moving from home to home in the Underdark back in the day, elementary comfort has always felt more familiar and safer than a bunch of lavish rooms, which they would not have known what to use for.

The front door stood at the top of the outside stairs leading to the middle floor. As agreed, this part of the house hosts common facilities, including a basic kitchen, a living room, and a washroom. Another enclosed space brought them much strife when it came to finding a use for it. Then, after a long brainstorming session, they decided that it would become a small library for the both of them and that they were free to borrow books from each other. He has read all of them already anyway.

As for the lower floor, at street level, it is dedicated to Astarion’s comfort. A private and spacious bedroom with an en-suite bathroom is hidden from view at the bottom of the stairs, behind antique doors that clash with the rest of the place, but which he has already grown fond of. On the other side, a walk-in closet enables him to store and cherish his clothes, with enough space for him to mend them if he wants. Only, the floor is not underground, as Tav promised, and the sight of the windows permanently barred by shutters pains the vampire. But for now, this will do.

On the day of moving in, they gather his clothes and belongings in crates and carry them to the house in the middle of the night. Within a few hours, the place is squeaky clean and each of their possessions has found its place within their humble abode. They spend the rest of the night bringing furniture in from the nearby Guildhall and designing the future improved dressing room for Astarion, drinking wine and laughing over the simplest things.

When daylight shyly pierces the windows of the living room, Tav quickly shuts the blinds. Astarion sighs; he did not think that witnessing the sunrise yet missing it at the same time would be so difficult.

Around midday, they drop everything they are doing and stretch out their sore limbs. Tav’s attention is drawn to the frame above the front door, still bearing Arallia’s portrait, but pierced by darts and riddled with empty holes.

‘Astarion, when is your birthday?’

Sprawled across the couch, he lifts his head and raises an eyebrow.

‘I don’t remember. Why do you care?’

They shuffle their feet towards him and place their hands on his hips. He has never looked so comfortable and at ease since they met almost a year ago. And they were incredibly proud to witness it.

‘I’ve been thinking. Since you don’t know when it is, do you think that today, since it is the start of your new life, could become your new birthday?'

Astarion kicks his legs off the cushions and sits up, dumbfounded by their question.

‘Mh.'

A smile plays on his lips.

‘I would like that, actually.’

‘Oh, perfect.’

‘Why?’

Tav trots up to their cloak, hanging from a peg by the entrance, and reaches into the breast pocket to take out an envelope, which has already been opened. They play with the paper for a second, enjoying the gentle crumpling sound it creates, before facing him.

‘Follow me.’

Utterly confused, Astarion hoists himself up and walks over to them, shrugging and eyeing the envelope. They open it and carefully read its contents, without letting him see any of it. Then, they shove the paper into their pocket and beam with joy.

‘May I cast a spell on you? It will not harm you, and it has been tested. No danger here.’

‘Uh… Sure. I suppose. As long as there is no wild magic outburst that brings our house down before we have even lived in it.’

They nod and concentrate for a few seconds to summon the Weave into their fingertips. As their hands glow with a powerful light, they utter an incantation and touch Astarion with their palms. Swirls of coloured light wrap around his limbs and then vanish as quickly as they initially appeared.

Astarion looks down at his body, expecting to feel different, but he does not.

‘What is it supposed to be doing? Nothing’s changed.’

As a sole answer, Tav unlocks the front door and opens it. Astarion yelps and frantically steps back, stumbling over his own foot as he flattens his back against the opposite wall, wanting to avoid the intruding sunlight threatening to reduce him to ashes.

But then, there is a cheer. He cracks an eye open and sees Wyll, Karlach, Gale, Shadowheart, and a simulacrum of Lae’zel on his doorstep. Although the Gith is not nearly as excited as the rest, they all chant in unison.

‘Happy birthday, Astarion!’

With his jaw slacking, the pale elf stares at his former companions.

‘What are you all doing here?’

‘We’re here to celebrate your new life,’ Shadowheart responds with a grin.

‘A new house! I’m so proud of you, soldier!’ Karlach squeals, jumping up and down.

Tav comes over to Astarion and wraps an arm around his shoulders.

‘How about we head out to the tavern?’

The vampire scoffs and rolls his eyes.

‘It’s midday, Tav.’

‘Try it.’

‘I-I can’t.’

Wishing to show him that it is safe, Tav slips away from him and crosses the house’s threshold to stand among the rest of the group, right under the sun. Astarion shakes his head nervously, with anger pooling in his guts.

‘Now what kind of sick joke is this, Tav?’ he growls.

‘Come to us, Astarion. It’s safe.’

Tav smiles and holds out both of their hands. Hesitating at first, the pale elf slowly peels himself off the wall, staring at the inviting hands awaiting him. His whole body is trembling. His teeth are chattering. What is going on?

He cautiously steps into the halo of sunlight, but nothing happens. Forbidding himself from crying victory, he tells himself that it is not direct exposure. The real thing would reduce him to cinders. Yet, as he continues his progress, the star’s warmth gradually enfolds the skin of his outstretched hands.

Then, before he knows it, he is standing outside, surrounded by his friends, and, right above him, the sun welcomes him within its glow. Nothing is burning. There is no pain. Nothing.

He is outside. And it is warm.

He stands there for a long moment, speechless, while the others affectionately squeeze his shoulders and arms.

‘Welcome home, Astarion,’ Gale murmurs.

He turns around to face them all.

‘H-How?’

Tav pats his back.

‘Rolan, Gale and I have been devising a spell to protect you from sunlight for weeks. It is not permanent, so no hasty behaviour, please. Whenever you want to go outside, I will cast the spell on you.’

‘You—’

Words escape him. Refuse to linger even a second longer on his tongue. As tears well up in his eyes, the group gathers around him to share a tight embrace. Despite his contempt for physical contact, knowing after all this ordeal with his parents that he is free at last and loved overwhelms him. He would almost grow sappy from the sensation if he were not so… Astarion.

As they pull away from him, Shadowheart presents him with a beautifully decorated hammer.

‘We all pitched in to commission this hammer for you,’ Wyll says. ‘The designs engraved on the sides were inspired by that mirror you carried around at camp.

‘I drew the designs and I had Gale replicate them so they could use it,’ Lae’zel’s projection explains. ‘I do not see the beauty in those motifs, they are nothing but primitive, but they said that you would appreciate it.’

Astarion picks up the hammer and admires the craftsmanship, albeit with astonishment.

‘Why a hammer, though? That was never a weapon I really used.’

‘We found your headstone in the graveyard of the Lower City,’ Karlach adds, pointing her thumb over her shoulder. ‘Wanna go smash it?’

He adjusts his grip on the hammer, weighing it in his hands, then smirks.

‘It’s show time.’

The whole group cheers and descends the stairs, while Tav stays behind to lock the house. Astarion looks over his shoulder at them and shakes his head.

‘You sneaky little thing!’ he muses.

‘Why, are you complaining?’

‘Not in the slightest.’

They walk side by side, already laughing at the banter that fuses among the group, now that everybody has gathered again. Astarion spends his time with his head tilted back to embrace the sun on his face, sighing in relief.

‘How did you even manage to get Rolan on board for that spell?’

‘I might have promised him a date.’

‘You devil.’

Tav throws their arm around his shoulders and soon, they all enter the graveyard.

Everyone is safe.

The soul cast out from the light against his will has taken his first step back to bask in its glow.

Everyone is safe.

And Astarion is loved.

[salamandergoo]

Flames & Asphodel & Elysium & Love

Written for the @strangerthingswritersguild April Fools Day exchange! This was written for @blaqcats-fics using the prompt “Hades/Persephone Retelling with Hades!Eddie and Persephone!Steve, but has like badass bringer of death vibes for Steve.” I hope I brought the badass vibes for Steve lol

Link to ao3

Steve reached out a hand towards a rotting tree and brushed his fingers over the mushrooms growing out of the decaying bark.  The tree was long dead, it was a home for insects and fungus.  But he knew it had been a home for far longer, the remnants of a birds’ nest in the branches above his head, a hollow containing left behind acorns in the trunk.  Even from a sapling it had provided leaves for other creatures.  There was a certain nobility to the cycle of life and death.  The tree would fall soon, it would decay into the earth and provide nutrients to the plants that would grow from the soil under his feet.  It was… “beautiful,” he whispered.

“A dying tree?”

Steve jumped, turning to face the voice.  There was a crack in the ground and a figure sitting on the edge of it, watching with intense eyes.  “It’s not dying.  It’s already dead.”

“…right.  I hardly think it’s the most beautiful thing in this clearing.”  He smirked and…

Oh, he was flirting.  And oh, Steve kind of liked it.  “Look closer.”  He held out a hand to the stranger and lifted him to stand.  “Look at the moss.  The mushrooms.  The grubs and beetles.  When this falls, it will protect salamanders and snakes.  It died, yes, but it has yet to fulfill the entirety of its purpose.  What could be more beautiful than that?”

The stranger started a moment longer before his expression turned to a wide grin.  “You are Persephone.  Quite passionate about death, I see.”

Steve’s nose scrunched.  “Yes, but please.  Call me Steve.”  He sighed and looked back at the mossy patch right at eye level for a moment.  “Of course I am passionate about death.  Life relies on it.  It’s everything.”  He turned away fully and sighed.  “You are…?”

“Hades.  But I have a feeling we’ll get a little more cozy, so you can call me Eddie instead.”  He rose to his feet and his curls settled on his shoulders after he shook them out.  Steve wanted to reach out and touch, arrange his hair artfully to frame his face.  He wondered if it was softer than it looked or if it was rigid and unkempt.

“Oh, you assume we’ll see more of each other?”

“A god can only hope.”  Eddie gave a sweeping bow and reached out to take Steve’s hand.  He looked up through his eyelashes and brushed his lips to Steve’s knuckles.  Steve’s heart jumped like he’d been struck by one of Zeus’ lightning bolts.

“I see.”  He didn’t want to seem too charmed, not yet.  “I think you only like me for my fascination with decay,” he teased.  “I am hardly interesting beyond that, especially to a god of such status.”

“And what is it that makes you think I could possibly be uninterested in a beauty like yourself?”

“You are the ruler of the Underworld, an entire realm.  Compared to that, am I not… inconsequential?”

“Far from inconsequential my darling,” he purred.  “Without death, my realm is inconsequential.  Without spring, the fields would not be sown.  You are far too important to mortals to even consider yourself inconsequential.  You might be everything.”

“Everything?”  Steve laughed and covered his mouth to attempt to hide his blush.  “You are too much.  Too kind, I would think.”

“Too kind?  Too kind, he says.”  Eddie chuckled, low and warm and it made Steve’s belly feel like a torch in a temple.  “I have never been accused of being too kind, neither by mortal or god.  I should think you are the kind one.”  He looked around the small clearing, grimacing at the dead deer laying just beyond the tree line.  “Is there beauty in that too?”

“Of course.  Life is cyclical.  While the deer’s life is over, it will feed creatures of the woods and sky.  It is a home for flies and a feast for vultures.  And they too, will meet their end eventually.  But we get to observe life over and over again.”  Steve’s eyes sparkled as he gazed at the deer and then up at the tree again.  “Life is a beautiful thing.”

“I suppose it is.”  Eddie was looking right at Steve.  “Say, have you ever been to the Underworld?  I think I would like to show you what comes after for the mortals.”

“You think?”  Steve held out his hand for Eddie to take.  “I suppose a look wouldn’t hurt.”  He wasn’t smiling.  At least, he was trying not to smile.  He allowed Eddie to lead him towards the large break in the earth and peered down warily.  He couldn’t see much, just the distant flickering of flame.  “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Trust me, gorgeous.”  Eddie took Steve’s other hand, back to the break.  “Just look in my eyes and you’ll be okay.”  He took a breath and then yanked Steve forward, pressing their bodies together.  Steve stared into his eyes and could hear the way the earth sealed itself above them, could feel hot air rising up as they fell, faster and faster until they stopped.

His feet touched rocky ground and he could hear something panting behind him.  Something wet touched the back of his neck and he yelped as he let go of Eddie’s hands and turned around.  A great beast stood before him, three pairs of eyes staring and three noses sniffing the air.  “Hello there.”  He held out a hand and touched the wet nose of the middle head.  It sniffed more intensely for a moment before bowing submissively. “Oh, hello.”  Steve couldn’t hold back his giggle as he pet soft our, scratching up towards the large pointed ears.  “Beautiful…”

“That’s Ozzy.”  Eddie grinned and scratched one of the ears.  “And these are Judas,” he pointed to the head on the left.  “And Maiden.”

“Maiden?”

“Yup.”  Eddie opened his arms and grinned as Maiden leaned in and sniffed him.  The heads were each as large as Eddie’s torso, but the beast was gentle with him, even with three mouths of sharp teeth and razor-like claws.

“Ozzy,” Steve murmured, grinning when the wet nose pressed against his cheek.  “And what does this baby… these babies do?”

“Cerberus is a guardian.  Souls try to escape and wannabe heroes try to come and ‘rescue’ them.  Cerberus helps keep order.  Three heads are better than one, isn’t that right baby?” he cooed to the dog.  His massive tail wagged, thudding against the stony ground.

“This is the great Cerberus?  I thought he would be… scarier.”

“To mortals, he is terrifying.  But he is a sweet boy at his core.  He just has to do his job.”  Eddie stepped back and wiped drool off his robes.  “There is still much to see.”

“I hope everything else is half as exciting as Cerberus.”  Steve waved to the beast with a soft laugh.  “He is very sweet.”

“The sweetest.”  Eddie took Steve’s hand again to lead the way.  He was sure footed and almost seemed to glide through his realm, it was like it existed just for him.

Steve supposed it sort of did.  Zeus had control of the skies and Poseidon ruled the seas.  And Eddie had the Underworld with its rocky ceiling seeming as far away as the sky felt from earth.  He’d expected Hellfire and dank air and the screams of the damned, but it was sort of like a well lit cave.

Until they came to a river of fire.  “Huh.”  He crouched down and reached out to touch the flames.  Were he mortal, he’d be burned to the bone in hardly a second, but it was just a tickle to his godly skin.  “Wow… nothing lives in there?”

“It leads the way to the deepest pits of the Underworld.  For the worst of the mortals, they must traverse through the Phlegethon to reach their eternal punishment.  Of course, I don’t dole out the punishments, I simply oversee the order of things.”

“No,” Steve agreed.  “You are no master of death.”  He rose to his feet and considered Eddie a moment.  “Death is not your domain.”  He grinned.  “It is mine.”

“Harmony.”  Eddie offered his hand again and Steve, again, accepted.  He liked holding Eddie’s hand.  Liked being guided like this.  “Without you, my domain does not exist, without my domain, there is no place for souls to continue to.  We balance each other, Stevie.”

“I suppose we do.”  He walked along the edge of the river, the heat of the flames dying down as they continued further away.  Clear water ran near his feet as they entered beautiful fields, full of grass and flowers.  Souls milled about, but Steve was more interested in the flowers.  “Asphodel?”

“Yeah.  This is where most souls come.  Those who were not cruel but not exceedingly exceptional.  There is peace here.”  He began to gather stalks of the flowers and weave them with deft fingers as Steve watched.  “The mortals will lay these at the resting place of their loved ones on earth.  I think there’s a beauty in it, don’t you?”  His tongue poked out as he tied the flowers into a sort of crown.

Steve smiled and reached out, cupping his hands against the flowers.  They grew brighter at his touch, bloomed fully and seemed to stand out among the other white flowers.  “Yeah.  There truly is.”

Eddie reached out to gently lay the crown on Steve’s head.  “Come, I’ll show you where the exceptional go.  The ones who did the most for the gods and their fellow man.  Heroes of legend and the chosen of the mortals.”

Steve’s face felt warm as a late spring’s day as he followed Eddie.  He liked the Asphodel crown more than anything he’d ever worn, he thought.  It had been crafted by Eddie’s hands, made of something from his realm.  He found himself appreciating the realm a little more with each step that he took.  He knew death.  He knew it well, like a friend.  But he’d never seen what came next, had only heard stories.

And he could see the seed of truth in many of those stories, but they failed to mention the good.  The way Eddie’s smile lit up his eyes, the way he showed so much care for all that he was surrounded by.  Steve even felt cared for by the lilt in his voice, the way his eyes crinkled when he grinned, the curve of his lips when he smiled.  He seemed so genuine.

“Are you lonely?”  The question slipped out before Steve could think about asking.

“Lonely?  Nah.”  Eddie looked over his shoulder.  “I’m not alone down here.  You haven’t even met the furies yet.  Red is a real spitfire, I think you’ll like her.  And one of Iris’ children is totally infatuated by her, he brings messages all the time, it’s-“

“You are not alone, I see that.”  Steve reached out this time and took Eddie’s hand.  “But that does not mean you aren’t lonely.  I never see you on Olympus.  I rarely hear of gods traversing down here.”

Eddie went quiet as they stepped into a golden field filled with a rainbow of flowers.  Steve still preferred the asphodel.  “I… have never been asked that.”

“No?”

“No.  I guess… I’ve never considered it.”

The air was warm like they were under the sun, but Steve could tell the difference.  A mortal likely wouldn’t, but he knew the way the sun felt on his skin.  Eddie seemed deep in thought and Steve politely looked away, watched as the souls of mortals and living demigods ran through the fields, all seeming so happy.  It was beautiful, but he’d rather follow Eddie than stay there.

“I think I might be,” Eddie confessed, voice almost too quiet to hear.  “I rule  the Underworld, but have few equals here.  Few who would choose to be here.”

“And if… I would choose to be here?”  Steve stepped closer until he was face to face with Eddie, almost close enough to feel his breath.

“Why would you?”

“It’s beautiful here.  I’ve never seen anything like it, I want to see more, to experience more.  Tell me, Eddie, where is your home here?”

Eddie’s pale skin looked warm as he looked away, even with the golden light shining down, the blush was clear to Steve.  He liked the way it looked on Eddie, the way he tugged at his hair to try and hide it.  “I suppose I should show you.”

He turned away from the fields and Steve took his hand as they walked side by side.  The palace was in what Steve assumed was the center of everything.  It wasn’t lifeless and empty, it was warm and cluttered and so… beautiful.  It felt like Eddie.

“I like it.”  He looked around with a smile.  It felt like home in some way deep inside of him.  In a way his mother’s home in Olympus had never felt.

“You- you do?  I mean.  You do.  Of course you do.”  He grinned.  “Stevie, listen-“

A knock at the door took their attention.  It swung open to reveal Lucas, son of Iris and messenger of the gods.  “Oh.  Hey, that was… easier than I thought.”  He gave an awkward wave.

“Max isn’t here, dude.  She’s busy.”

“I’m not here for Max.  I have been sent by Zeus.”

“Zeus?  The fuck does he want?”  Eddie’s face scrunched up.  Steve wanted to bite him.

“Steve is being summoned.  His mother is looking for him.  It’s been a whole thing, we should get going.  Steve?”

Steve hesitated, looking at Eddie.  “If mother is summoning me, I can’t… I have to go.”

“Will you come back?”  Eddie’s voice was soft.

“I want to.  I do, I want to stay here with you, but I can’t ignore a summons.  I don’t know what mother would do, what Zeus would do.  I can’t do that to Lucas, he’s-“

“A good kid, I know.”  Eddie sighed.  “Just wait here.  I’ll be right back.”  He turned and hurried deeper into the palace.

“…so, Max?”

Lucas looked away, tugging at his robes.  “I’ve only met her a few times.  In passing.  I’m not- it’s not a thing.”  He cleared his throat.  “…Eddie?”

“Might be a thing.  Not sure yet.”

“Huh.  That’s cool, man.”  He nodded.  Another few moments passed in awkward silence.  “Is he coming back…?  Should we… leave?”

“No, no, he said he’d be back.”

“Cool.  Cool.”  He rocked on his feet.

Steve breathed a sigh of relief when Eddie came hurrying back.  “Sorry, sorry, couldn’t find this, had to look.”  He held up a pomegranate, sliced in half.

“Oh.”  Steve’s eyes went wide.  He knew that eating food in the Underworld bound you there.  Everyone knew that, mortals and gods alike.

“You don’t have to, but… this would make certain that you would return to me.”

Steve held out his hands and accepted the pomegranate, digging his fingers into the fruit to remove several seeds.  “I will return to you.”  He leaned in and pressed a delicate kiss to Eddie’s lips and shoved the pomegranate back into his hands.  “I will come back.”

He lifted his hand to his mouth and bit down on several seeds, fingertips sticky with red juice.  He could feel them in his gut upon swallowing.  “I will see you soon,” Eddie murmured as Steve walked away with Lucas.

On the way back to the peak of Olympus, Steve could taste Eddie and pomegranate on his tongue.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hi sex witch, i realise that this is not an actual sex ed related question and I hope this isn't overstepping any bounds.

I'm sort of in a weird spot right now a la my sexuality and am trying to figure out if I actually want a relationship and if what I feel is romantic attraction or Friendship levelled up. I've known for a long time that I'm Demisexual or Ace, and I thought I knew that I still felt romantic attraction but now I'm less sure.

How did you come to realise that you were aromantic? In that discovery did you ever wonder if it was a sort of 'mental block' or something similar that would be better off working through? (I ask because I'm sort of stuck in that state of mind right now, and I'm just curious to see if it's a common experience or not)

I realise that this is a fairly sensitive topic, and I really don't mean offense by asking.

I also realise that no two people's experiences will be the same but I was interested in hearing about it from another person's perspective.

I hope you have a great day whether or not you give this ask the time of day.

I've asked you other things in the past and it's always been brilliantly helpful. Thanks a lot for everything you do.

hi anon,

no worries about overstepping boundaries :) this is a pretty reasonable thing to ask of someone, and I'm happy to talk about it!

there's a funny story that I tell about the moment I probably should have known, but didn't yet have the language. in sixth grade my class had an assignment that involved making a collage timeline of the rest of our lives (a proto-vision board of sorts) and I think I was the only kid in the class who didn't put getting married on my timeline. everyone else did, as far as I can remember, and most of them also included having kids. being a pedantic little fuck I pointed out to several of my friends that it was really unreasonable to assume they would find someone they liked enough to marry who liked them back, to which everyone told me (paraphrasing) to shut the fuck up and stop being a little bastard.

but it still seemed very strange to me, because even when I was very young - back when I barely had the language to conceptualize being gay, let alone aromantic - I never imagined my life with a romantic partner. romantic pairings were interesting in stories, sure, I ate that shit up from a very young age! the star-crossed lovers shit going on in American Dragon: Jake Long did a number on my developing brain, and my Barbies and Littlest Pet Shops got up to INSANE relationship drama, but for myself it never really felt, like, relevant? not unpleasant, just uninteresting.

but I still had crushes on people as I grew up, and more importantly I had crushes on people of various genders, so during my teen years I was WAY more preoccupied with repressing my burgeoning bisexuality than drawing any conclusions about my romantic orientation

spoilers: the bisexuality won.

in college I had a friend who identified as asexual at the time, who spent maybe a year trying to convince me that I was aromantic. and I didn't want to hear it! I don't know why, honestly; maybe some part of me, despite loving the community I had found coming into my queerness, was still subconsciously afraid of being too different and grappling with the consequences.

so instead I did this uuuuh real dirtbag thing where instead of just acknowledging to myself that I was pretty fundamentally uninterested in romantic relationships and that that's fine, I spent the first half of college leaning hard on self-deprecation to explain my single status. oh, me? why aren't I dating? well, I'd probably be a really bad partner. yeah, I suck. I mean, I'm so busy all the time! and I'm weird.

(at the time I know I definitely had friends who assumed I was Like That because my parents were divorced, which is hilarious old-fashioned and also categorically untrue. I was Like This way before my parents got divorced!)

it actually took a relationship ending pretty badly to make peace with the idea that maybe I didn't want a relationship at all. I won't get into the details on that, because it involves another person and we were both very young and accidentally hurt each other a lot in ways we didn't mean and I don't think anyone was the villain, but I don't want it to come across like I had one bad breakup and then swore off romance, a thing I'd previously been interested in, forever. it was more like I found myself in a really heightened situation - they really desperately needed a good and attentive romantic partner after getting out of a bad relationship, I wanted our friendship to stay exactly the same but with a sexual component - that made very, very obvious what I was actually looking for in non-platonic relationships. which was, I guess, actually pretty platonic relationships, but with genitals involved.

haha just kidding, I actually didn't get that part through my skull until I spent an entire summer crying constantly, dissociating frequently, and spending way too much time on BAD dates having even worse sex that made me feel gross! but we got there eventually.

that part probably isn't super relatable to you if you're somewhere in the ace realm, sorry about that.

anyway, once the dust settled and I felt halfway human again I was feeling vulnerable and open to change - finally willing to see myself in a new way and reckon with parts of myself that I hadn't been before. I remembered what my buddy had always said about me seeming Really Aromantic, and I let it settle on me. how would I feel, if I actually was aromantic? how would it change my life, how I thought about myself?

and if I can use a cliche with you? it felt like a weight rolling off my shoulders. I suddenly had a whole sturdy base to build a better understanding of myself on, an easy way to justify the way I lived that didn't require throwing myself under a bus.

thinking of myself through the lens of aromanticism felt like a huge, HUGE relief, and frankly I think that, more than anything, is the best way for anyone to decide if they should be applying any identity label to themselves. which brings us back to you! I actually don't believe in the model of sexuality and gender that posits a secret innate Right Answer buried in each person that they'll discover if the just find the right terminology. all of the words we use are the result of our time and place, right? people like us existed all through history with different words for themselves, and they'll exist way after us calling themselves things we can't imagine.

so basically: I came to realize I was aromantic because calling myself aromantic felt like loving myself, and if that's the case for you than I strongly recommend you do it, too.

happy pride xoxo

[simpforchuchu]

Hi I love your work! Could you do dating Himuro dating head Canon? I loved the one that was for sameoka!

Himuro Reiji | Dating Hcs

a/n: Hii! Reiji was not a easy one but i tried jdjdjd Here is your request. I hope you like it 💕🥰

Sorry for the grammer or spelling mistakes.English is not my main language so...

Thank you and love you 🥰

Warnings: usual hnl violence

• I know he definitely gives off a maniac vibe but he is only like that in fights.

•  I know he gives a cheater vibe too

•  I'm sure he looks like a playboy with his demeanor, looks and cocky attitude.

•  A womanizer and flirtatious person can easily flirt with anyone but I think if he's in a relationship he'll stay away from such things.

•  So he's just flirting with you and that's just how he is towards you

•  I don't think he will fall in love with someone easily.Or not someone who wants to be in a serious relationship.

•  But when he falls in love, his whole world will become only you.

•  He may like someone who is shy but will be more attracted to someone who is rebellious and uninterested

•  He'll even definitely enjoy the little teasing and bickering

•  He will do anything to get the attention of someone he likes.

•  It's okay for him to fight dirty and he's someone who will do anything to protect you.

•  "I'll kill you if you touch her" type of boyfriend

•  He's fun, that's obvious. He wants to make sure that you will never be bored with him.  It's also important for you to be someone who likes to have fun.

•  It doesn't matter if you cant fight or defend yourself. He is always there to protect you.

•  Too girly or tomboy ?  No problem for him.  He doesn't care about things like that if he is interested in you. 

• But he'll be happier if he gets response when he flirts with you.

•  'Enemies to lovers' may be the love that suits him best

•  I think he can be easily impressed by someone by the enemy side

•  Someone who is cool when they like someone, he will not get excited easily.

•  He knows that he is handsome and is not afraid to use it.  His confident demeanor can be frustrating sometimes

•  I think he's a surprisingly good listener. His reckless demeanor is not for you.He will listen to you, even if he can't find a solution, he will make you feel good by kissing or hugging you.

•  PHYSICAL TOUCH 🤩

•  Long and passionate kisses, someone who can easily increase the tension between you

•  He can be childish at times but not too much. He is not afraid to be himself next to his lover. But you'd never see him like that with another person

•  He doesn't trust many people.You may be the only person he trusts in his life other than Gandhi.

•  Cliché but romantic

•  Heart shaped cakes, flowers, a small flower necklace or cute hairties...

•  Your hairtie or the necklace you bought for him... they are always with him. 

• He can kill anyone who touches them.Really.

•  He doesn't know anything about taking care of sick people, so he will definitely panic.

• You will understand even if he doesn't want to show it, so you may need to calm him down first

•  I don't think he can cook but he makes me think he has no problem with money.  That's why I think he'll often buy food and come to you

•  The cake you made for him, the little gift you bought, or the smallest thing that reminds him of you... I'm sure they're all the reason for his beautiful smile.

•  I think he likes to sleep. He's quite energetic, but he loves daytime naps. 

• He likes to sleep on your knees at school or in a park

•  Jealous.Definitely jealous and overprotective.That's why I'm sure you'll argue sometimes.

•  He prefers expensive gifts on special days and with a nice dinner.Quality time is very important to him.

•  He's not easily injured.But if he gets hurt, I don't think he'd want to scare you. 

• So if his face is really bad, he will lie and cancel your date

•  He has a lot of enemies, so I don't think he would want anyone to know you except Gandhi.

•  But he still spends most of his time with you

•  He is not very knowledgeable about periods, he learns it all with you.

•  He'll be pretty panicked when he sees blood on your skirt, but when he realizes what it is, he'll be very shy to tell you. 

• He'll take off his jacket and wrap it around your waist and walk home with you

•  He's not very tall so he likes to bury his head in your neck when he hugs you

•  He's pretty proud, I don't think he'll cry easily. He doesn't want you to see his face when he's crying.

•  He absolutely loves the adrenaline, someone who can fight someone just because he's bored. 

• But I think he'll be more careful after you

•  He's not as bad as people think, and he'll prove it to you every day.

HnL taglist : @straysugzhpe @tiddly-winx 

[separatist-apologist]

We Never Go Out Of Style

Could end in burning flames or paradise

Summary: When Gwyn breaks up with her boyfriend on the eve of Nesta's destination wedding, Nesta Archeron has only one objective: set Gwyn up with her high school crush.

Note: Based on this tweet from @heathermcwrites: "One of my bridesmaids just broke up with her bf who was supposed to come to my wedding & I was sad for her for about 3 seconds until I remembered that her crush will also be at the wedding (single) and I'm now more committed to this 2nd chance romance than to my own marriage."

"I should also note that this is a destination wedding so there are EVEN MORE opportunities for uh…shenanigans"

Read More: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | AO3

Only insane people wanted to be up before dawn in paradise. Nesta, who was still working out, was among them. 

And Azriel, who seemed to have an insatiable libido. He kept her up all night with his hands and tongue and cock and then, when Gwyn was wrung out and exhausted, he woke her again before dawn like she was a substitute for his morning run. It had been fun at first, but when Gwyn felt him shift beside her in the bed, her body coiled like a spring. 

Some small part of her felt a little raw from his attention. If Jonathon was obsessed with cutting her down with his endless opinions, then Azriel was uninterested in what she said at all. His attention was always laser-focused on her body, on drawing pleasure and in return, receiving it.

And for Gwyn, who was grumpy at five forty-two in the morning, she wanted to know what else he liked about her. Azriel slid down her body, settling between her legs. Gwyn recoiled her foot, catching him against his cheek.

“Fuck,” he whispered in the dark.

“Go masturbate,” Gwyn ordered, twisting on her side. There was a beat of silence, and then the sound of the sheets rustling as he joined her back in the bed.

“Did I do something—” “I don’t want to hear another word before ten am, Az,” she told him, relaxing as he wrapped strong arms around her body. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling deeply.

“I wake up early,” he told her just as she’d begun to fall back asleep. 

“Not on vacation,” she mumbled.

“Especially then,” he replied, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. Gwyn squirmed away before he could tempt her. 

“Well, go for a run, then. Nesta does yoga on the beach—you should join her.”

Azriel grumbled something undecipherable, but a moment later he was pulling away and padding for the bathroom, just as she’d suggested he do. She heard the water from the shower hit the tile and Azriel pulling open the glass door. She snuggled back into the bed, curling around his pillow to drink in his scent. She’d always been a night owl and never, in her life, had she ever been a morning person. 

Gwyn didn’t hear Azriel leave, already fast asleep. When she woke to bright sunlight filtering through the dark curtains pulled over the sliding glass door, she found Azriel wandering back in the room with a tall cup of what she hoped was coffee in his hand.

“It’s eleven thirty,” he told her, hazel eyes watching her warily.

“Good,” she replied, sitting up to take the offering from him. “Did you go to the beach with Nesta?”

He nodded, running a hand through his salt-sprayed hair. His brown skin seemed to glow and his nose was slightly pink from the sun. Gwyn took a sip of coffee, wincing from the bitter, stale taste. Still—it was better than nothing and she needed it if she was ever going to get out of bed.

“What's on the itinerary for today?”

“Nothing today,” he said, perching on the edge of the bed. His face betrayed his obvious relief. “But Nesta is talking about taking a hike.”

Gwyn groaned. “What is the point of a resort with a swim-up bar if we’re always leaving it?”

“I was asking myself that very thing this morning when you kicked me out of bed.”

“I’m not trying to fuck you in the pool,” she grumbled, unable to meet his eye. Azriel only grinned, running a hand through his dark hair.

“I wish you would.” She let him see her very theatrical eye roll before reaching for her phone. There were, blessedly, no texts from Jonathon that morning. Only the one from the day before when she’d posted that dim photo of her and Azriel at the club, specifically to rile him up.

Call me. Now.

Which of course she hadn’t. Gwyn wondered if finally, Jonathan had taken the hint. They were done and she was moving on. Had moved on, even. She could still feel Azriel’s cock from the night before when she stood. She didn’t want to hash anything out with Jonathon when there was the promise of more blazing in Azriel’s hazel eyes. 

He plopped in a chair, long legs stretched in front of him while she busied herself with getting ready. She was only a little disappointed when he didn’t follow her into the shower. She supposed it was only fair, given he’d likely stood under the punishing spray that very morning and fucked his own hand while she’d slept peacefully. Gwyn skipped pleasuring herself in favor of getting in and out so she had enough time to dry her hair without being rushed.

She was plaiting it when she stepped back into their shared bedroom. Azriel was scowling at the phone half hidden in his large hand. He hadn’t noticed she was parading about utterly naked and that irked her, too.

“Something bothering you?”

He glanced up at her, eyes sliding back to his phone before her presence fully registered. Azriel’s head snapped back up, eyes wide as he drank her in.

“Yes,” he said immediately, so predictable she could have set her watch to him. “Jesus, Gwyn, get in the bed.”

“I want to eat before Nesta drags us on a humid, ten-mile hike—”

“Did it sound like a request?” he growled, rising to his feet. Her stomach clenched at his tone, at the dark heat radiating from his gaze. 

“Az,” she murmured.

“I’ll make sure you get breakfast,” he promised, though Gwyn couldn’t be sure if he meant actual food or his cock. She didn’t move as he paced towards her, calloused hands banding about her waist.

“I want waffles,” she warned him, arms wrapped around his neck.

“All the damn waffles you want,” he agreed, angling his head for a kiss. And oh, had she really kicked him out of bed that morning? Caffeinated and showered, Gwyn couldn’t for the life of her remember why. That was his magic, she supposed. Azriel was more than a distraction, was far more fascinating than what was hanging between his legs, and yet sometimes Gwyn felt so dizzy from wanting him that all she thought about was his body pressed against her own.

There would be no bed. Gwyn knew that with utter certainty the minute he pressed her roughly into the wall. Good. This was how Gwyn liked it—if they’d gotten in the bed he’d have been far too tempted to take his time, to drag things out for as long as humanly possible and Gwyn was far too enamored with him to ask him to stop. She liked to give just as good as she got, besides. 

He hoisted her up, one large hand spanning the cheek of her bare ass while she raked her fingers through his thick hair. His mouth was sweet and tasted distinctly of champagne—Gwyn would have bet anything Nesta’s early morning yoga involved mimosas. 

With his tongue in her mouth, licking and stroking as he ground his lower body against her own. Gwyn gave in to the pleasure he was offering. They’d be back home before she knew it where jobs and other responsibilities would keep them from each other. Fully awake, and practically burning with arousal, Gwyn wanted to keep him just like this. Selfishly, she liked the secret of him, that what they had was only between them. 

She reached for his cock, already hard in his shorts, and rubbed with the heel of her hand. 

The front door clicked open with a whirring beep. Azriel dropped her to the ground, eyes wild.

“Hello?” he called, quickly adjusting himself in his shorts. Flip flops clacked over the tile.

“Hey Az,” called Cassian. Gwyn was naked. She and Azriel exchanged a glance before he pressed his hand over her mouth and leaned out of the door frame that extended from their bedroom into the living room.

“How did you get in here?” Azriel asked, his voice appropriately calm. Gwyn closed her eyes, trying to get a grip on her pounding heart.

“I have a key,” was Cassian’s response. “Now a bad time? Nes wants to take a hike and I’m trying to pregame a little before we get out there but I can’t find Rhys.”

Azriel shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Not really.”

“C’mon. Do a shot with me.”

“You want to hike after doing shots?”

Gwyn pressed a kiss to Azriel’s palm. Tell him no, she hoped it said. Think with your dick, not your liver. It was an unfair choice, given what she knew about the man before her. Azriel loved to fuck almost as much as he loved to drink. Gwyn could see the war in his eyes before he shook his head no. Azriel’s cock won out, which meant she won out. She kissed him again. 

“I’m not getting drunk–and you shouldn’t either. No one will be able to carry your dehydrated ass back down the mountain.”

Cassian chuckled. “We’ll see. If you see Rhys, tell him I’m looking for him.”

It seemed too good to believe that Cassian would leave. Gwyn didn’t move until she heard the door to their room swing shut. Azriel swore softly. “Why the fuck does he have a key?” Azriel dropped his hand to walk to the door. While he pulled the latch, Gwyn arranged herself on the bed, drawing up one knee while parting the other so when he walked back in, he’d have an unparalleled view of her body.

“We need to get new keys,” Az said from the other room, his shoes slapping loudly against the tile. “If we leave—holy fucking Christ, Gwyneth.”

She blinked up at him innocently. “Leave?”

Azriel’s mouth had fallen open, his eyes so dark they might have been wholly black. The knot in his throat bobbed and then Azriel was pacing towards her. She squealed when his fingers dug rough against her skin, dragging her to the end of the bed. 

“Is this what you want?” he asked, thudding loudly to his knees. Gwyn pressed her toes to his throat, holding him back.

“I like you like this,” she admitted, drinking in the sight of him. Az’s skin gleamed in a shaft of golden light, casting his dark hair in hues of midnight blue. Some nights, after Az had thoroughly wrung her out, she’d trace the tattoos over his skin and ask him why he’d gotten each one. A few had interesting stories, though too often he chuckled and said, “Because I liked it.”

She was learning he made a lot of his decisions like that. On a whim, seemingly—based on a gut feeling and little more. Gwyn considered herself cautious. She was a planner, someone who thought her decisions through. In fact, the most spontaneous thing she’d ever done was kneeling between her legs, waiting for her to let him eat her out. 

“Pretty, pretty Gwyn,” Azriel's whispered, bringing her back. He kissed her inner thigh, gently removing her hold on his throat to spread her out beneath his large, rough hands. “This is why I can’t get anything done. In my head, I’m right back here.”

“Why are you still talking?”

A sultry smile spread over his face. “I fucking love when you’re mean.”

Gwyn lifted her hips in offer. “I love when you’re silent.”

Azriel grinned, so heartbreakingly lovely that Gwyn almost forgot what they were doing. Almost. Because when he lowered his head and finally put his mouth on her, Gwyn couldn’t remember anything but the decadent slide of his tongue and the push of one of his long fingers into her body. 

It didn’t take much convincing for Azriel to replace his mouth with the twitching cock between his legs. Gwyn, writhing against him, had begun tugging at his hair while whimpering, Az, please–and he knew exactly what that meant.

What she wanted.

“Is this what you need, baby?” he moaned, slotting himself against her soaking pussy. “Do you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes,” Gwyn pleaded, digging her nails into his shoulder. 

“Are you going to ask me nicely?” he replied, his voice far too breathless to be believable. Gwyn was all too happy to play along when the muscles in his back flexed beneath her open palm and his lips teased against her own.

“Please fuck me,” she whispered. 

Azriel thrust himself into her in one long, if not brutal stroke. Gwyn exhaled, stretched and full just as she liked to be. 

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” he whispered hotly against her neck.

“Yes,” she whined, rolling her hips to match his pace. 

“My good girl needs to be fucked hard, doesn’t she?”

Gwyn tightened around him. “Yes.”

And he was fucking her hard. Gwyn knew she’d feel every stroke the entire way up whatever mountain Nesta intended for them to hike up. It would be well worth it, she decided as she drew up her legs, wrapping them tight around Azriel’s rib cage. 

“Your pussy is so fucking tight,” he breathed, slipping a hand between them to rub at her clit. “Are you always so wet for me, baby?” Gwyn couldn’t respond, given she was currently screaming her orgasm into his shoulder. Azriel shuddered, his body jerking and his breath ragged. He was never going to be loud like she was, which somehow made it hotter. There were no theatrics, no pretending. Azriel did exactly what he wanted in order to get both her and himself off.

“How badly do you want waffles?” 

Gwyn smiled, holding him tight even as his hips began to settle. “Not that badly.”

Azriel exhaled. “Good. I’m not done with you yet.”

AZRIEL:

You don’t know her like I do.

Of everything Jonathon had texted to Azriel, that sentence was the one that stood out. Azriel kept coming back to those words, replaying them over and over in his mind until they’d become a mantra. 

You don’t know her like I do. 

Azriel hadn’t responded. Tagged in one dimly lit photo with Gwyn perched in his lap had been enough to bring Jonathon straight to his DMs. What kind of confidence did a man like that need to DM Azriel? His profile was nothing but shirtless thirst traps and expensive cars. They couldn’t have been more different. Azriel couldn’t write, wasn’t academic and had a sense of style, and on the flip side, Jonathan had the kind of hands that looked as if they’d never seen a hard day's work in his life. 

And stil fucking Jonathon, with his ugly haircut and his even uglier ties, had a point. He didn’t know Gwyn half as well as Jonathon, though he desperately wanted to. Every time he slowed himself down enough to have a conversation with her, he found himself between her legs.

“Something on your mind?” Rhys panted, catching up with Azriel trailing at the very back of the hiking group. Despite all the shots, Cassian was dominating the trail with Lucien Vanserra. The pair had set a brutal pace that competitive Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie were trying desperately to match. Middling between them were Elain and Eris Vanserra, coated in a thick layer of sunscreen and debating the merits of some celebrity scandal Azriel had never heard of. Feyre and Mor were gossiping loudly about some bitch at work, leaving both Rhys and Az, lost in their own thoughts, to bring up the rear.

Azriel looked over at his best friend. If he was going to confide in anyone, it was always more likely to be Cassian…unless he was doing something he knew he shouldn’t. Rhys knew it, too. Azriel nodded his head towards Gwyn’s vanishing head of red hair.

“I had sex with Gwyn.”

“I knew it,” Rhys replied, earning an elbow to his gut.

“You didn’t know shit,” Azriel retorted hotly. 

Rhys wheezed, holding his side as he coughed. No one paid him any attention, which was lucky for him. The last thing he needed was word to spread. 

“Don’t tell Feyre.”

“I won’t,” Rhys managed, straightening himself out. “What’s the problem, then?”

“The problem is her bullshit ex,” Az grumbled, fishing his phone out of his pocket and pulling open the DM. He and Rhys stopped dead on the dirt path taking them up a brutally steep hill so

Rhys could read it and Azriel could wipe the sweat off his forehead with the hem of his shirt. 

By the time he was done, Rhys’s thumbs were flying over the keyboard. “Don’t–”

“Too late,” Rhys said smugly, handing back his phone. “What a fucking loser. You don’t know her like I do–who talks like that?”

“You when you’re drunk,” Azriel grumbled, shielding his screen to read Rhys’s response.

Sounds like you don’t know her either if she dumped you. Get fucked. 

Azriel couldn’t help his snort of laughter. Rhys sure did have a way about him. Middle finger in the air, always doing whatever he wanted regardless of who he pissed off. Azriel had always admired that quality. 

“Do you like her?” Rhys asked, cutting through the bullshit as they resumed walking. Azriel ran a hand through his hair. 

“Yeah,” he admitted. “A lot.”

“Then who gives a fuck what that guy thinks. Or Nesa,” he added wryly, as if Rhys wasn’t also angling for Nesta’s approval when it came to Feyre.”

“I’m trying not to overshadow her wedding you fuck,” Azriel retorted, calves aching from all the exertion of the day. He’d spend the morning fucking Gwyn within an inch of her life, utterly obsessed with the breathy little moans coming from her lips. Azriel wished he could bottle that sound and listen to them when she was too tired for his attention, if only to recapture a little of her magic. 

“Fair,” Rhys agreed with a casual shrug that told Azriel he absolutely would have wrecked Nesta’s wedding if it meant a chance at Feyre. A good friend would have asked Rhys how that was going but Azriel was a best friend, and Feyre was the kind of forever girl Rhys was willing to hinge his whole life on. If he wanted to talk about it, he would. Rhys had never been shy. 

The two lapsed into an easy silence, catching up with Feyre and Mor by virtue of their long legs. Rhys slung a sweaty arm around Feyre’s neck, taunting her with thinly veiled innuendo while Azriel and Mor exchanged awkward small talk, the pair chaperoning the increasing barbs traded between Rhys and Feyre with nervous glances. 

Rhys fell back when they reached the overlook, letting Feyre stalk forward with Mor. “This will be next year,” Rhys said with far too much-undeserved confidence. Azriel would have laughed had Rhys not seemed so determined. “We won’t be fucking hiking–”

“Watch your mouth,” Nesta snapped from a wooden railing, a smile plastered on her face as she took a selfie with Cassian. Azriel plodded forward to look at the sweeping view. He could begrudgingly admit it was a nice panoramic look of the island they were staying on. He didn’t think it was worth a day of hiking, and when Rhys offered to pay for a private boat, everyone moved a lot quicker back down the trail.

Azriel was grateful for Rhys and his ridiculous money. The boat was more like a yacht, and by the time they made their way, dripping with sweat, to the docks, it was waiting with cold water and even colder beer. Azriel chugged a bottle of water before he took the shot of tequila from Cassian’s hand.

“You regret doing that sober now, don’t you?” Cassian joked, walking to the side of the ship as they cruised out into the open, cerulean water.  

“A little,” Azriel agreed, bracing his forearms against the rail.

“You gonna tell me what you were doing?” Cassian questioned, back facing the water and beer in hand. “Or who you were doing?”

Azriel rolled his eyes. “Don’t do this.”

“Can’t believe you’d tell Rhys before me.”

“He has a big fucking mouth.”

“He’s just excited to see you moving on. Who was the last one–”

“Don’t say her name,” Azriel ordered, swiping Cassian’s beer to chug it. He didn’t want to think about his exes. 

“Fine. Gwyn is cool as fuck, Az. I’m not surprised you like her. I’m surprised she likes you—okay alright Jesus Christ I’m getting married in a week.”Azriel lowered his fist, pointing instead at his friend. Cassian didn’t have the decency to look ashamed or apologetic. “If you fuck up our wedding photos, Nesta will murder you.”

“Just…don’t tell Nesta, alright. Let Gwyn do it.”

“Oh Nesta knows,” Cassian scoffed, gesturing for another drink from Rhys. “You didn’t think it was weird you two got put together? Your room has been sitting empty all week. Nesta is using it as a bridal suite.”

Azriel blinked. “Your wife set me up?”

“Soon-to-be-wife,” Cassian clarified as Rhys brought them both new drinks. “And yeah. You and Gwyn are her little science experiment. I won’t tell her what’s going on but she’s gonna figure it out.”

“Great,” Azriel grumbled. “That’s not fucking obnoxious at all.”

Though, if he was honest, Nesta had done him a favor in a way. What if he’d gotten the room he was supposed to? Halfway across the resort from Gwyn, who was on her own? If they’d parted ways after the airplane, catching each other on occasion. Time would have made it awkward and Azriel would have filed her away with every other one night stand he never wanted to think about again.

“She means well,” Cassian was saying, but the conversation was morphing as Rhys began discussing the bachelor party and how they’d fuck Cassian up one last time before he became Mr. Nesta Archeron. 

But Azriel’s eyes had wandered to Gwyn in a bright blue two-piece hugging every inch of her skin obscenely. Her hair was unbound and hanging in thick waves down her back. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she threw her head back to laugh at something Emerie had said. She was beautiful. 

The light bounced off her cheekbones, casting Gwyn in a golden glow that made her seem like a goddess. Azriel gripped the bottle of his drink, unable to drag his eyes off her. She didn’t notice him at all, staring like she was the sun, the moon, the very heavens the stars hung from. 

You don’t know her like I do.

Azriel swallowed.

Maybe he knew her as she was. Without the careful veneer she’d painted over herself so Jonathon would find her palatable, and without whatever mask she wore in her day to day life. Azriel knew Gwyn. 

Just Gwyn.

And he was starting to suspect he loved her. 

His Gwyn.

[yaboisorzoi]

"Your Choices Don't Matter"

There is a screed that I see come up in discussions of certain games, predominantly (though not exclusively) within the RPG genre. What do Mass Effect, Deus Ex Human Revolution, and Life is Strange have in common?

If you guessed “your choices don’t matter”—or at least, guessed people saying that about the games—then that was the angle I was going for.

This is a statement that I take particular issue with on a fundamental level. Less so for the statement itself—there is nuanced discussion to be had there, and to be discussed below—but for how judiciously it gets thrown around and the sweeping judgments it makes on the games it castigates.

The crux of my problem with this statement is in the contrapositive: detractors say that your choices don’t matter. I ask, what does it mean to have your choices matter? What makes anything matter? What does it mean to matter in the first place?

When you say “your choices don’t matter,” you’re implying that you wish your choices did matter. What does that look like?

This is the topic I want to delve into today. Strap yourselves in, it’s going to be a long one.

What Is A Choice?

This may seem like a pretentious and self-masturbatory question to ask, but bear with me for a moment. I’m just laying down some groundwork and declaring some definitions. At the broadest level, a choice in a game is any time the game expects mutually-exclusive input from the player. If you are given one skill point, and you have two skills you can place that point into, then in its broadest form, this is a choice.

This isn’t a very interesting choice, though. In fact, I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would consider something as mundane as leveling up a character as a “choice.” You could make the argument for games with complex leveling systems, like Mass Effect’s infamous column of skill points, or Anarchy Online’s truly Goliathan 65+ independent skills you can place points into every time you level up—games where the number of skills available to you far outstrip the number of points you will ever have available to put into them all, and where specialization is a genuine decision to be made and committed to.

When talking about choices, people are almost always referring to narrative choices. These primarily take the form of either dialogue or setpiece actions (or sometimes one serving the function of the other). I am among those people when it comes to this discussion.

With that out of the way, let’s move onto the more interesting conversation.

Choices? Consequences.

When talking about choices in games, just as often people are talking about their unspoken counterpart: consequences. And when saying “choices don’t matter”, people often mean to say “choices don’t have consequences.” So let’s talk consequences.

I personally like to split consequences into two categories. The first of those categories is what I refer to as mechanical consequences.

When I say a consequence is mechanical, I mean that there is some measurable, quantifiable change within the core game systems that reflects that choice. The most obvious mechanical consequence is a stat change: I make the change of increasing my character’s strength, there is the mechanical consequence that my attacks now do more damage.

Much like how character-leveling is widely considered an uninteresting choice, though, I don’t think it is particularly controversial to say that stat-changing is considered a particularly uninteresting consequence. So let’s jettison them from the discussion now.

There are far more interesting ways to engage consequences mechanically. Possibly the most immediate execution of mechanical consequences is the classic “who lives and who dies” decision. This is a classic and a fan favorite, from Kaidan or Ashley on Mass Effect’s Virmire, to Doug or Carley in Telltale’s Walking Dead. A stark binary decision, the consequences of which are immediate: of the two choices, one of them is going to die. They will go poof. They will be written out of the story. And their absence will be imminent and persistent.

Choose to feed Kaidan to the nuke gods, and you will never get to talk to him about his rough time growing up as a biotic, about his conspiracy theories regarding the intentional exposure of expecting mothers to Eezo, or about his classmates and instructors in the academy. Toss Ashley’s pragmatic ass out the atomic airlock, and you’ll never learn about her feeling persecuted for her grandfather’s failures, about her dad’s one-sided fight in raising four daughters, or her surprising love of poetry.

No matter what decision you make, you’re getting entire slabs of content cut out of your playthrough, never to be accessed again. Every time you look at your roster of surviving characters, there will be a hole there in the shape of the one who died—as a consequence of your choice.

Next up, let’s talk roleplay consequences. As one might expect given the name, a roleplay consequence is one that has no mechanical significance, but instead plays into the immersive fantasy of roleplaying. This is most common in, perhaps unsurprisingly, roleplaying games. Though you can find them really in any game, since you could argue any game has you literally playing a role, from Quake 2’s role of being a stranded space marine, to Civilization’s role of being the deathless immortal leader of a historical society.

What makes a roleplay decision a roleplay decision is that it, in some way, informs the personality of the character you are playing as. Is your Shepard serious or jokey? Is your Lee protective or dismissive?

These choices tend to have little to no mechanical significance, beyond changing the flow of the immediate conversation. The most obvious and immediate example of this is the dialogue wheel in Fallout 4, which is often humorously referred to as “Yes, Sarcastic Yes, Yes With More Information, and Yes But Later.”

Of these four options, the last two have some mechanical benefit. “Yes With More Information” is mechanical in the sense that it provides the player with more context with which to engage with the world, which I’d argue has some mechanical merit. The last is clearly mechanical, in that it delays the quest being entered in the player’s log and consequently stalls any triggers that only activate if that quest has been accepted by the player.

The first two options though, “Yes” and “Sarcastic Yes”, I think are far more interesting within the context of discussing roleplay consequences.

Choosing either “Yes” or “Sarcastic Yes” have the same mechanical consequences: the quest is accepted. There is no functional difference between them. So then, one may rightly asked, why the distinction? If saying “Yeah sure I’ll do it” with a straight face and “Yeah sure I’ll do it” while rolling your character’s eyes both result in the same outcome, why would you ever choose one over the other?

If one is only concerned about the mechanical consequences of a choice, then there is no reason to ever choose one over the other. But the choice exists. Surely there must be a reason for it?

Two Choices and a Cosmetic Walk Into a Game Development Studio...

And this is where we start getting into the crux of my problem with the “your choices don’t matter” argument. I put it on equal footing with the “cosmetics don’t matter” argument in defense of being apathetic toward aggressive microtransactions in games. I’m sure you’ve all witnessed that argument unfold—someone begins complaining about how a given game has character skins, vanity items, or other cosmetics objects locked being a paywall or behind lootboxes or behind battlepasses, and someone else chips in with “cosmetics don’t matter, so why are you complaining?”

The argument there of course falls apart once someone puts an iota of thought into it—if cosmetics didn’t matter, then why are they there? Why do artists spend time making them? Why do engineers consume resources implementing them? Why do publishers insist games have them?

And, perhaps most importantly of all, why do people buy them? If cosmetics didn’t matter, then people wouldn’t buy them, right?

The simple answer to it all is that cosmetics do matter. They just don’t matter mechanically. It turns out, people play games for more reasons than just pushing buttons to make the fancy calculator machine crunch a bunch of numbers. In the case of cosmetics, online gaming especially is as much a social affair as it is an interactive one. People buy cosmetics because they want to express themselves to other plays. They want other players to think they’re cool.

Why do people spend money on cosmetics? Because having that dank hat with a huge feather on it makes them look cool.

Why do people pick Sarcastic Yes over Yes? Because delivering witty one-liners, cracking dad jokes, and rolling one’s eyes plays into a personality that the player is pursuing. If they are roleplaying as a badass pirate, then they don’t want their badass pirate saying “Okay I’ll give the starving children bread.” They want their badass pirate to say “I’m not a charity—you best have money in hand, or starving children will be the least of your problems.” They don’t want their heroic paladin saying “Okay I’ll fight the demon.” They want their heroic paladin saying “My holy quest to rid this world of taint and evil shan’t rest until this foul creature’s head lays before my feet.”

Just as cosmetics are important to players in social games, fitting into a particular role is important to players in roleplaying games. It’s really that simple.

So now, let’s finally get back to that statement which started this whole discussion: “your choices don’t matter.”

What choices are these people talking about? What do they mean when they say they don’t matter?

If by “choices” they mean “choices with mechanical consequences,” and by “don’t matter” they mean “have no measurable consequences”, then that is just patently wrong. Mechanical consequences are definitionally measurable. That’s what makes them mechanical.

If instead they mean “choices with roleplay consequences,” then one could make an argument that they “have no measurable consequences”. By the same token, one could argue that they do—and indeed, that is what I just spent the past several paragraphs arguing, in a clever ploy of exposition where I answered the question before the reader even knew the question being asked: the consequences contribute to the role being played, and as such, with necessity matter to the roleplayer.

And yet, people still bang this drum. Are they just wrong? Or is there something that we are missing? Perhaps we should take a different approach here, and see what it is that these people are referring to specifically.

It’s All About the Destination

This is a spoiler warning for Bioware’s Mass Effect trilogy, Eidos Montreal’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and dontnod’s Life is Strange. I will be discussing these three games’ endings explicitly and in detail.

When people level the argument “your choices don’t matter”, I almost always see them being thrown specifically against a game’s ending. The Mass Effect trilogy is an epic 60-hour-journey spanning three games, wherein you are tasked to make countless decisions, both mechanical and roleplay, all throughout its runtime.

In the closing moments of the game, you are tasked with making one final decision: do you destroy the Reapers that threaten the galaxy, do you take control of them and use them for your own purposes, do you use poorly-explained space magic to inseparably combine the Reapers with the sentient life they are so determined to exterminate, or do you tell the annoying space kid to go fuck himself and damn the galaxy to death and destruction?

It’s an epic decision fit for capping an epic journey. And yet people use it as a quintessential example of “your choices don’t matter.” The options laid before the player are fixed. No matter what choices you made throughout the game, you will always be presented the same options. Save Ashley or Kaidan, same four options. Kill or spare the Rannoch queen, same four options. Punch or don’t punch reporter al-Jilani, same four options.

The consequences of the choices vary a bit more than the choices themselves, with one of several different montages playing for each option, depending on the major choices and overall “war assets” score the player has at the end. But each of them all broadly speaking hit the same beats: the Reapers are destroyed, the Reapers are controlled, the Reapers are synthesized, the galaxy is fucked.

In Deus Ex Human Revolution, you are given a similar decision at the end: you can choose to reveal the truth of the Illuminati conspiracy to the masses, blame the extremists so that cybernetic technology can continue unimpeded, cover up the involvement of the Illuminati so they can continue pulling their strings in the shadows, or be an enlightened centrist prick and take no measurable action at all. These choices are mostly static, with two of them depending only on a single decision to rescue a different major character. And again, the consequences are slightly altered montages that all hit the same major plot points.

In Life is Strange, you are given an even simpler binary choice: save Max’s best friend, whom she has literally torn reality itself apart several times over in several bids to prevent her from dying, and in doing so let an entire town of people be killed; or let said best friend die, preventing the catastrophe that is looming from occurring and allowing the townspeople to live without ever knowing they were in peril. These choices are both static, always available to the player regardless of the decisions they made, and their consequences are similarly static.

In all three cases, the accusation that “your choices don’t matter” is levied against them. And from a mechanical standpoint, seeing how these are the endings of these stories and there is no continuation beyond them? I’d say that’s fair. There are no mechanical consequences of these choices.

But from a roleplay perspective? I’d argue there are no more important choices to be had in these games. As stated before, Mass Effect is an epic 60-hour journey where the player is set upon with a singular mission: destroy the Reapers and save the galaxy. Throughout their journey, however, they are presented with two alternative solutions. The Illusive Man suggests that throwing away the sheer power of the Reapers in blind eradication is foolhardy and short-sighted, that by controlling the Reapers and redirecting their powers for the good of the galaxy, so much more could be accomplished. And the Catalyst suggests that the Reapers’ programmed mission of exterminating all sentient life before it can become a threat to itself could be short-circuited by infusing the Reapers with sentient life, providing an out to an otherwise seemingly-endless cycle.

It is up to the player, then, to decide whether their Shepard has remained undeterred in their original mission to destroy the Reapers; if the Illusive Man’s argument of harnesses the power of the Reapers to help the galaxy was able to sway their opinion; or if the Catalyst’s suggestion of a way to perpetually and permanently break the cycle is the best option. Or if they just really hate the Starchild and are willing to destroy the galaxy all to give it one final middle finger.

It is up to the player to decide if their Adam Jensen has become disillusioned with the march of technology and the damage it has wrought; if they are blindly devoted to the vision of men like David Sarif and their plans for a cybernetic future; if they believe that humanity is best served with the shadowy Illuminati guiding its technological evolution; or if he is a filthy centrist.

It is up to the player to decide if their heartwrenching journey of trying and trying to stop Max’s best friend from dying, only to not only be met with failure every time, but to actively make things worse for everyone with each attempt, has led to her finally learning that she has to let go and let Chloe die, or if the constant string of catastrophizing failures has only hardened and resolved her unrequited and undeterred love for her best friend, and she is willing to let an entire town of people die so that she can finally be with the one person for whom she’s literally unraveled reality in her attempts to save.

All these endings are the absolute culminations of their stories, and the roles the player has been sitting in throughout their recounting. They are the final exam of the class that has been the last 10, 20, 60 hours of playtime that has been committed to them. They are the ultimate test of what kind of person their character is.

I can’t think of how these choices could possibly matter more. They are, by all accounts, the single most important choices in their respective games. They are what these games have been building up to since their beginning.

To say that these decisions don’t matter isn’t just wrong. It’s patently absurd. It’s staring reality in the eye, and rejecting it outright. If you accept the thesis that roleplay decisions hold any merit at all, then you cannot in good conscience say that these final decisions, these literal ultimate decisions, have no meaning.

So then, if it’s not the choices themselves that people are saying don’t matter… what, exactly, are they talking about? When people say your choices don’t matter in Mass Effect, or Deus Ex Human Revolution, or Life is Strange, what exactly do they mean?

The Illusion of Choice, But Not the Illusion You’re Thinking Of.

They are talking about a small facet that I glossed over in my previous descriptions of these endings. They aren’t talking about the choices themselves, but the conditions behind the options—or more specifically, the lack of conditions.

When someone says “your choices don’t matter in Mass Effect,” they mean that no matter what you do in the 60 hours of gametime up to that point, you are always offered the same four choices: destroy, control, synthesis, rejection. When someone says “your choices don’t matter in Deus Ex Human Revolution”, assuming you did all the side-quests and so saved both Sarif and Taggart, they mean that you are always offered the same four choices: reveal, deflect, obscure, be a spineless coward. When someone says “your choices don’t matter in Life is Strange”, they mean that you are always presented with the binary choice of Save Arcadia Bay or Save Chloe.

When these people say “your choices don’t matter”, they’re talking about how the choices you make either have exactly zero, or effectively zero, impact on the choices that are given to you in your final decision, in the ultimate choice of the entire game.

Don’t they, though?

Mechanically, no, they don’t. We’ve established that definitionally: we just plainly stated that these games have no systems in place to take in as input your previous decisions and use them to change the options available to you.

But as we’ve discussed at length, there are more than just mechanical consequences to choices. Roleplay consequences are just as significant, especially in developing and expressing the type of person your character is. A dogged Shepard will destroy the Reapers, as per their original mission. A greedy Shepard will take control of the Reapers for themselves, to shape the galaxy as they see fit. A gentle Shepard will synthesize sentient life and artificial intelligence in a bid to craft a better galaxy for both. And a truly badass Shepard will tell the Starchild to go fuck itself and damn the galaxy in the process.

It doesn’t matter that the game has no mechanical systems that gate off the available options to these final decisions, based on some metrics that the programmers deemed important enough to influence the ability to even entertain the idea.

For the player who has been truly engaged in the story, who has truly fallen into the role of their character, the options honestly don’t even matter at all. After 60 hours of trudging through Hell to get to the Catalyst, you’ve already decided what your Shepard is going to do. By the time you’re on Panchea station, you’ve already made up your mind what Jensen thinks of the Illuminati, David Sarif, and William Taggart. By the time you’re on that cliff with the storm raging below, you already know whether Max’s heart or her brain dictates the choices she makes.

In truth, the final choice having options at all is irrelevant. The game isn’t suggesting that your choices don’t matter. If anything, it’s asking you exactly the opposite: do you think your choices matter? If you do, if you truly and sincerely believe in the choices you made, in the journey you crafted, in the personality you sculpted for your character, then there is only one right option. The others may as well not even exist.

If you have to stop and think about the decision you’re making, by the time you come to the end of your character’s journey, then it’s not the game whose saying your choices didn’t matter.

It’s you.

[str0yberries]

Late Night sessions - TeruAoi

Teru found it adorable how Aoi gets tired after explaining the FNAF lore, so it wasn't surprising to see her curled up like a ball sleeping and snoring like there's no tomorrow. The older boy was used to the sight of his girlfriend mumbling even in her sleep making his heart do a little gymnastics routine.

The exorcist looked over at his watch and realized that he could technically play right now, that way Aoi wouldn't have to wait for him and his friends to finish playing one match. He didn't want to leave her all alone and uninterested; though he had a strong urge to play at least three matches, he resisted. He quietly padded over to his pc, got on discord, hopped on a call with some of his friends, and waited in the lobby. It was refreshing to know he still managed to maintain a friendship with some of his old friends.

The youngest Minamoto made it clear to his friends that he was only gonna play one match since his little lady was over. Soon enough, they immediately started the match. Obviously, the blond made sure to focus on the game but he would occasionally look over his shoulder to look at Aoi's sleeping form. Still as cute as ever.

Okay, one match might've been a little too much to ask for but, the purple-haired girl was still asleep so she wouldn't mind him playing another match... would she?

"No, you fucking idiot!" he loudly mumbled (if that's even possible).

"Dumbass, I'm already at the— what. Why the fuck are you attacking now?!"

"Fuckface, only attack when you're told! Holy shit you're dumb," he groaned to his teammates who also reciprocated the anger.

"Who the fuck are you calling dumb?! I'll fucking beat you up!"

"The enemy's on cooldown, we could totally wi— WHY ARE YOU ATTACKING?!?"

He had a short temper and was always irritable, so seeing him raging over some stupid game wasn't new. Plus, Aoi knew the struggles of losing since she was a perfectionist after all; however, the loud clicking of the mouse, loud mashing of the keyboard and loud slams on the table were bothering her sleep. She woke up to Teru quietly yet angrily swearing at his teammates and himself. The purple maiden was a little too tired to tell him not to be loud so instead opted to sloppily stand up and tugged on his shoulder.

"Shit dude, wrong way—" the older boy was surprised at the tug when he saw Aoi practically drooling beside him. Shit.

"I guess my beloved is awake, hm? You can go back to bed, the match is almost over."

"Hmm... okay!" Aoi replied in a soft and quiet voice but didn't even bother going back to bed. The older boy took his headphones off to assist his lover back to her bed but was caught off guard when the smaller girl pushed him back on his chair.

"Oh, h-hey! not right now A-Aoi..." Teru said with a panicked and rosy expression, blushing harder than he thought he would.

Aoi took the opportunity of sitting down on Teru's lap. Her arms finding their way around the exorcist's shoulder while she adjusted herself to a more comfortable position. Usually, she wouldn't be the one leading such PDA, letting Teru hold her as he pleases due to his love language being physical touch. But right now, she was too tired and exhausted to care. With another sloppy smile, she simply utters.

"Shut up Teru, you're too loud..." and just like that the blond happily complied. With that, his room was suddenly filled with Aoi's quiet snoring and his teammates yelling: "DUDE, WE'RE GETTING OUR ASS BEAT HERE! WHAT THE FUCK." over the mic but he was too focused on the love of his life sleeping on him. Slowly, his hands snaked around her waist as he carefully moves his chair closer to his pc. Trying his best not to wake the Kannagi up. So with one -maybe three- clicks of the mouse, he leaves the call, quits the game and shuts his computer off.

He lets out a content sigh as he pushes her bangs out of the way, leaving a kiss on her forehead.

"Goodnight, Grumpy."

[recentlyheardcom]

Withdrawing money from your checking or savings account may not seem like a suspicious activity. After all, it's your money. Even if it's a large amount, like $10,000, who's to say withdrawing it would call for an investigation?Turns out, withdrawing $10,000 or more from your checking or savings will prompt your bank to file a report with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit (FinCEN). It sounds more serious than it actually is, but if you withdraw $10,000 frequently enough -- or worse: break up $10,000 into smaller withdrawals -- you could find yourself under legal scrutiny. To avoid any problems with FinCEN, here's what you should know. Why banks report withdrawals of $10,000 or moreEver since the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, banks have been required to report any transaction involving $10,000 or more to the federal government, whether it's a cash deposit or a withdrawal. Often, a bank's software will automatically file a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) electronically for transactions that exceed $10,000, even if you're not aware of it.Though it might seem like a violation of your privacy, the Bank Secrecy Act helps the federal government track and prevent financial crimes, like money laundering. When banks fail to report large cash transactions, criminal and suspicious activities can fly under the radar. For instance, between 2004 and 2007, the bank Wachovia -- now a part of Wells Fargo -- allowed about $400 billion in drug cartel money to flow through its banks largely because it failed to report transactions to the federal government.When a $10,000 withdrawal can become a problemTo be clear, a $10,000 withdrawal isn't a criminal activity per se. In fact, FINCen likely receives so many uninteresting CTRs a day, you won't trigger suspicion through a large withdrawal alone. But there are some activities that will put greater vigilance on your bank account. The most common is called structuring.Structuring involves breaking up a large cash transaction, like a $10,000 withdrawal, into smaller parts specifically to evade the Bank Secrecy Act's reporting requirements. For instance, if you withdraw $12,000 in total from your checking account, but break it into three $4,000 withdrawals, the transaction might be seen as structuring. Featured offer:save money while you pay off debt with one of these top-rated balance transfer credit cardsOf course, you could have good reasons for making a series of withdrawals totaling $10,000 or more. But if you do it frequently enough, your bank could report it as suspicious activity. Once flagged, structuring can embroil you in a legal investigation. At that point, if you're caught intentionally evading a bank's reporting requirements -- even if you're just a private person who doesn't want the government keeping tabs on your life -- you could face criminal or financial charges.How to safely (and legally) withdraw $10,000 or moreThe best way to withdraw $10,000 or more is to simply do it. Don't try to break it into smaller installments, or get smart and Venmo your friend half and have them withdraw it for you. If you don't want your activities tracked, don't do anything suspicious that will make your bank report it to FINCen.Truthfully, unless you are engaging in something illegal, you have nothing to worry about. FINCen knows large withdrawals and deposits happen everyday, and it's not concerned with legal cash flows. It's only when you behave suspiciously that you could find yourself under investigation.If you're concerned, you can always talk to your bank. Otherwise, just keep withdrawing as you normally would, and you won't run into any serious financial problems.These savings accounts are FDIC insured and could earn you 12x your bankMany people are missing out on guaranteed returns as their money languishes in a big bank savings account earning next to no interest. Our picks of the best online savings accounts can earn you 11x the national average savings account rate. Click here to uncover

the best-in-class picks that landed a spot on our shortlist of the best savings accounts for 2023.

[pannimanagementteam]

Panni, Md General Surgical Procedure Residency Washington College In St Louis

When autocomplete outcomes can be found burn up and down arrows to evaluation and enter to decide out. Touch system users, discover by touch or with swipe gestures. Public collections could be seen by the public, including other shoppers, and may present up in recommendations and other locations.

More importantly, the climax is not impactful sufficient. One of the explanation why Kirumi labored so nicely was because of its climax, which packed a punch in a quiet way. Here, neither can we get a grandstanding message nor a shifting second of realisation. Instead, we've a matter-of-fact resolution that feels too simplistic and convenient, and leaves us feeling mildly underwhelmed. Jamin, Hauer, and Panni were servants of the Gaudeamus household of Rhodos Island, and each of them had particular powers relating to the elements. Panni secretly is in love with Laocorn.

Help support Wordnik (and make this web page ad-free) by adopting the word panni. Another sixty nine phrases are included underneath the topic Early Panni Notables in all our PDF Extended History merchandise and printed merchandise wherever potential. This net web page reveals only panni a small excerpt of our Panni analysis. More data is included underneath the subject Early Panni History in all our PDF Extended History merchandise and printed products wherever potential. This web site, and all its contents, are Copyright © 2022 by New York University.

In whole contrast to his debut film, the excellent thriller Kirumi, together with his sophomore effort Panni Kutty, director Anucharan goes for a breezy rural comedy drama. The film is sweet fun, revelling in situational humour that keeps it entertaining until the very end. The casting feels right, and the actors liven panni up the scenes with their camaraderie ensuring that there isn't a uninteresting second. Add panni stirati to considered one of your lists below, or create a new one. I’d like to enroll to the JACQUEMUS e-newsletter.

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But this low-key approach can be what stops the movie from making it a compelling watch. Anucharan seems to be going for a slice-of-life comedy that captures the easy moments in life with his writing, nevertheless it also lessens the seriousness of the stakes that the protagonist faces. So, we are never absolutely concerned in his quest. Beyond the principal characters, the supporting ones are somewhat useful, so after a point, we get the feeling of watching a premise that would have labored better as a short film.

Rome2rio makes travelling from Panni to Rome simple. Yes - Wi-Fi is out there on each Frecciarossa and Frecciargento companies, and may be accessed freed from cost. Services require both a mobile phone number or bank card for verification purposes and permit access for twenty-four hours. There are 7271+ motels out there in Rome. Panni is a funny woman who loves shopping and hanging out along with her associates. She may be very sweet and is amongst the most wonderful individuals you'll ever meet.

The average daily shortwave photo voltaic vitality reaching the bottom per sq. meter , with 25th to seventy fifth and tenth to ninetieth percentile bands. The average rising diploma days amassed over the course of the year, with 25th panni to 75th and tenth to 90th percentile bands. Based on rising diploma days alone, the primary spring blooms in Panni should seem around April 10, solely hardly ever appearing earlier than March 23 or after April 27. In this report, we use a base of 50°F and a cap of 86°F.

Then, when you arrive at the retailer of your selection, use the Instacart app to inform us. Depending on the shop, a shopper or retailer employee will deliver the groceries to your car, or you probably can decide them up on the designated space. This report illustrates the typical climate in Panni, based mostly on a statistical analysis of historical hourly weather stories and model reconstructions from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2016.

[weirdlywisely]

So after seeing tros again I can say for sure I was extremely disappointed

Moreover I loved tlj (tho I know it's not a widespread opinion) so I was hoping for something else and something a bit more ambitious...

Basically I expected something interesting and unique and got some bland useless and frankly boring movie...

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. The more i think about it, the more parallels i find between lore olympus and another less-known webtoon called "the shadow prophet". No, i don't imply they are in any way similar genre- or plot-wise or that one copies the other but hear me out: the themes

Shadow prophet, like LO, deals with age gap (and does not romanticise it at all), nepotism, utopian society with dubious morals and leaders, privileges and how bad their impact on all of the involved can get if something goes wrong and paints them in a way that they are constant obstacles for everyone involved instead of, yknow, making life easier for every character RS prefers thus diminishing any possible deeper conflict that'd make some actual plot or character progression. Even tho it is a made up futuristic scenery, it blends well with sentimental traditions shown though clothing and rituals and such, so there is a good lore explanation for the mixing of the old and new (where LO is all over the place so it ends up in cherrypicking whichever gets the stans to squeal more).

No, i will not elaborate on the plot bc everything is a spoiler. First season is only 40 episodes yet tells miles and miles more than LO's entire run so far

It also has neurodivergent and disability representation done well, at least in my opinion

It has gorgeous art too (i'm actually gonna go and say it's the most unique and beutiful artstyle i've seen on webtoons). It also utilises music made specificaly for the episode (just like for purple hyacinthus) and even gifs so it is quite a unique experience

The biggest joke? This comic updates on sundays as well🙃

(This is, again, by no means a comparison of these titles, as they are completely different from each other, but it is staggering how some themes are way too similar, but painted differently and send different messages. Anyway, please check out the shadow prophet, the author is gonna be back with season 2 soon)

2. I feel like LO has a bit of HP energy to it, and by that I mean people in power praise it as some groundbreaking work, when really you pick it apart and see its a mean spirited, uninspired story that happily conforms to every regressive status quo bias (gender roles, classism, racism, misogyny, etc) under a cheap veneer of liberal "feminism", and that is why it's marketed as something It's not. It can pretend it's progressive under a female MC + creator while it challenges absolutely nothing.

3. Persephone's AOW wasn't just poorly planned/executed, it's also that RS is too scared to let her darling be "problematic", leading to what seems to have been at least three retcons to it because of a small but loud section of fans being disappointed. A confident writer not only would had seek out help from their editor to plan this out, but they also wouldn't buckle under minor bad faith criticism to flip flop so easily on their own story. It makes it clear she's just making it up as she goes.

4. What’s wild to me is RS created fantasy racism in this story yet seems to have zero awareness that she’s framed the race who is discriminated against (the nymphs specifically) as the bad guys who “deserve” their mistreatment because they’re bad no matter what and they’re in the wrong for daring to stand up to their oppressors. We don’t see any male nymphs or this discrimination play out against satyrs either, so it’s hatred that’s both racist AND misogynistic. Like what the fuck?

5. The retcon of the AOW is also Rachel admitting she doesn't want Persephone (a literal Greek goddess and Dread Queen) cannot be anything but an already perfect, heroic person, which not only makes her an uninteresting character, it makes an uninteresting story. What is there for her to learn from? To grow? To overcome? She's by design supposed to only be static, which is a huge problem considering she's supposed to be the lead character and is supposed to be "growing up".

6. I'm kinda confused by the trial because the punishment is kinda how the myth's ending would go with the half year separation (except now it's a set amount of years that zeus will eventual forgive), but it's not that's not the myth because apparently now the myth is supposed to start (four years in? thats not good writing) so how would the half year punishment even happen then? persephone kills more people with winter and they go on trial AGAIN? like none of this seems planned out at all.

7. this isn't even just about RS but I just hate how many of the WT creators are white women who pretend to care about diversity and yet when they show their cast of some new comic theyre making or some OC they thought up it's just the same brand of skinny white people (bonus if the antagonist is the only one who just happens to be darker skinned). like put your money where your mouth is and give us an ounce of body fat and melanin, i'm begging 😭

8. Just wait till Rachel Smythe and other creator’s of this retelling, realize that the Abduction of Persephone mainly focuses on Persephone and Demeter, not Persephone and Hades. Idk why, but I find that a bit contradicting to Rachel’s “basic knowledge of Greek mythology” statement 😭🤷‍♀️

You’re basically developing an unimportant character in the myth when you should be developing Demeter and Persephone, plus their relationship. Hades is there just to set the plan forward; he has no other need in that myth but to explain the seasons and keep Persephone as his queen. 

9. Yeah actually I don't think we talk enough about how Hera had her own son see photos of a woman in the most terrifying position of her life. I know it was to like, get rid of them but Persephone didn't know who Hephestus was and she still doesn't know how Hera handled it afaik, which again, takes away a lot of her agency because she's only gotten to tell 1 person on her own volition about what happened, everyone else either assumes, finds out through prodding even when she's uncomfortable, or uses their powers. It's just weird that it's very brushed over that Hephestus has seen what Apollo did with his own eyes  because he'd have to see them to get rid of them. 

10. there's some LO fans who are just desperate to make it deeper than it is and how it "deals with serious topics" which like one) no it doesnt but two) you guys can enjoy a shallow romance comic, no one cares. a lot of us like shallow stuff for mindless entertainment. trying to make it deeper than it is only opens it up to bigger scrutiny when it doesnt meet even the bare minimum, and only puts more pressure on RS to work outside her comfort zone to where we end up w/ this degraded mess it is now.

[tabloidtoc]

Star, May 10

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Meghan Markle having twin girls (oops!)

Page 1: Famous for doing his own stunts, Tom Cruise helicoptered in to the tiny English village of Levisham to film aboard, or rather hanging off of, a vintage train and along for the ride was his Mission: Impossible 7 costar Hayley Atwell, who was spotted running along the top of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway car and while the pair, surrounded by crew and tech experts, were total pros, it's an open secret on set that their romance is going strong and Tom and Hayley hang out non-stop when the cameras are off and are pretty much joined at the hip but not in a showy, PDA way; it's a very discreet thing they've got going on -- off-camera, 58-year-old Tom and 39-year-old Hayley enjoy quiet nights holed up in Tom's London digs, eating meals specially prepared by his private chef and they'll watch movies or read books or just chill out doing their own thing -- chilling out isn't Tom's forte, as audio leaked of him berating the film's crew for violating COVID-19 protocols, but things have calmed down considerably as the spy flick, due in theaters May 2022, closes in on its wrap date, but the ensuing publicity push will put Tom and Hayley's relationship front and center, but don't expect the devoted Scientologist to jump on any couches (a la Katie Holmes) announcing wife No. 4 as Tom has learned the hard way about putting everything out there and getting picked to pieces; this time, it's all about subtlety

Page 2: Contents, Cher got up and personal with the World's Loneliest Elephant Kaavan, who she helped relocate to Cambodia

Page 3: Brie Larson in a swimsuit with butterflies on it during a getaway to Hawaii, with headphones at the ready Brooke Burke was itching to cut a rug with friends before teaching a silent disco cardio party at the Rafi Lounge in Malibu, Maria Shriver and Christina Schwarzenegger enjoyed some quality time on a stroll in L.A., Boy George sporting a bold look on The Jonathan Ross Show in London

Page 4: In a recent interview, AnnaLynne McCord revealed a shocking diagnosis: for years, the 90210 alum has been battling dissociative identity disorder (often erroneously referred to as multiple personality disorder) -- she told Dr. Daniel Amen she is absolutely uninterested in shame about opening up despite the stigma surrounding mental-health issues because that's how we get to the point where we can articulate the nature of these pervasive traumas as horrible as they are -- for her part, the 33-year-old traces back her troubles to sexual abuse she suffered as a child and as had many of the 200,000 people diagnosed with DID each year, she suppressed those horrific memories and it was only within the past few years that they began to resurface, largely after she sought treatment for PTSD related to another sexual assault and she doesn't have any memories of abuse until around 5, then from 5 to 11, she recounts incidents throughout and then, when she was 13, she has a singled-out memory and it was at that age that she developed what doctors call a second personality identity: as Little Ann, the Georgia-born daughter of a pastor said she was balls to the wall, middle fingers to the sky, anarchist from hell who will stab you with the spike ring that she wears and that helped her survive her nightmarish situation -- ironically, acting created the same dynamic, making it sometimes difficult for AnnaLynne to let go of characters she'd played and all of her roles were splits but she didn't even realize she was doing it

Page 5: Jennifer Aniston wasn't exactly touched when Justin Theroux gushed about how much he still loves her in the issue of Esquire -- complaining about feeling like a hermit during the pandemic, 49-year-old Justin nearly got misty discussing FaceTiming and texting his ex, saying he cherishes their friendship and they can not be together and still bring each other joy and he'd be bereft if they weren't still in touch and he'd like to think the same for her -- but 52-year-old Jen, whose love life has been low-key since the pair's 2018 divorce, has stayed on good terms with most of her exes including Brad Pitt but doesn't want anything more than a friendship with Justin and sure, it's flattering but she's just moved on and wishes he would too, and that goes double for some of her friends who griped that Justin tried to milk Jen's connections to further his career -- in the end, Justin needs to know he's got no chance whatsoever of winning Jen back and she doesn't feel anything remotely close to passion for him anymore

* Roseanne Barr showed off her newly svelte frame on Instagram -- back in 1998, she lost 100 lbs after undergoing gastric-bypass surgery, but yo-yo'd over the next decades but now she's determined to keep the weight off by totally changing the way she eats and she's growing her own fruits and vegetables and has a whole new appreciation of food

* Five months after he entered the Federal Correctional Institution, Mossimo Gianulli finished up his stint at his plush Hidden Hills home and now, the 57-year-old, who along with wife Lori Loughlin, pleaded guilty to paying a $500,000 bribe to get their kids into USC, can't wait to get back to normal and his biggest priority, besides spending time with Lori and the girls, is to get out there on the golf course -- the designer, worth a reported $70 million, still has to perform 250 hours of community service while Lori, who finished up her prison stint in December, is chipping away at hers, doling out meals at L.A.'s Project Angel Food -- Lori and Mossimo have resolved not to dwell on the past and they want to move forward with a positive and grateful attitude

Page 6: Fans of Angelina Jolie's stunts in movies like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Mr. & Mrs. Smith are looking forward to her return to the screen as a wildfire fighter in Those Who Wish Me Dead and in the upcoming Marvel flick Eternals but 45-year-old Angie would rather be behind the camera and she explained the real reason behind her comeback is she loves directing, but she had a change in her family situation that's not made it possible for her to direct for a few years and she needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so she went back to doing a few acting jobs -- that change in her family situation, of course, is her divorce from Brad Pitt, ongoing since their 2016 split and with no bitter end in sight and it could drag on for years

* Catherine Zeta-Jones says it's no secret her 20-year marriage to 76-year-old Michael Douglas hasn't been easy and it wouldn't be normal if there weren't any ups and downs -- it's another Michael, her Prodigal Son costar Michael Sheen, who has friends whispering as both are Welsh and only a year apart, the two have been having a lot of fun shooting the serial-killer drama and they had never met before the series but they keep discovering how much they have in common -- while Michael, who has been linked with Kate Beckinsale, Rachel McAdams and Sarah Silverman, has been with Anna Lundberg for two years, friends can't help worrying because it's a little to close for comfort

Page 8: Star Shots -- Marlee Matlin kicked back during a portrait session in La Canada Flintridge in California, a loaded-down Irina Shayk in a Victoria's Secret photoshoot in NYC, Gavin Rossdale and his dog Chewy leaving tennis practice in L.A.

Page 9: Kelly Clarkson and her battle advisor Luis Fonsi on The Voice, John Stamos at the drive-in premiere of his new series Big Shot in L.A.

Page 10: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley toting her $3800 Bottega Veneta Shell bag in NYC, Niall Horan and Anne-Marie jumped into a classic Jaguar XK120 for a music video in Essex in England, Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci on the set of House of Gucci on a bicycle in Rome

Page 11: Jay Leno takes a selfie with a fan, Kate Hudson and her daughter Rani busting out some mommy-and-me moves

Page 12: David Beckham filming a commercial for Maserati, Kaley Cuoco working out with ropes, a windswept Olivia Culpo held on tight to pup Oliver while enjoying a sunset ride aboard a boat named after her dog, Miles Teller looked both ways during a cruise in his blue Ford Bronco which is the same car he flipped in a 2016 accident

Page 13: Garrett Hedlund hit the pavement in a jog in Hollywood, Johnny Depp got behind the camera at the photocall for his film Minamata during the Barcelona Film Festival, friendly exes Sara Gilbert and Linda Perry masked up for a walk in L.A.

Page 14: 2021 ACMs -- country celebrates its best in Nashville -- Elle King and Miranda Lambert kicked off the 56th Academy of Country Music Awards by rolling up in a hot ride before performing, Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley, co-host Keith Urban

Page 15: Maren Morris and Ryan Hurd performed together, Carrie Underwood

Page 16: Margot Robbie inline skating during a beach day in Malibu, Kate Beckinsale carrying her two cats and her dog as she tried to read, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend and their daughter Luna took a silly mid-game family selfie while playing Hedbanz

Page 18: Normal or Not Normal? A sleepy George Stephanopoulos was caught yawning on the Good Morning America set -- normal, Emily Blunt kicked back a little too much at The Jonathan Ross Show -- not normal

Page 19: With a $1400 rainbow Gucci sweater wrapped around her shoulders Selling Sunset's pregnant Christine Quinn with her dogs in L.A. -- normal, Chelsea Handler works out with her dog on her back -- not normal, Zach Braff stuck his tongue out as he took a silly selfie filming the Cheaper by the Dozen reboot -- not normal

Page 22: Fashion -- stars shine in metallic frocks -- Becky G, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Karen Gillan

Page 23: Miranda Lambert, Cynthia Erivo, Renee Zellweger

Page 26: Travis Barker didn't hold back in his birthday tribute to girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian -- sharing a series of sexy shots with 42-year-old Kourtney, including a NSFW video of Kourtney sucking his thumb and the rocker's risque pics quickly went viral, as did Kourt's TMI essay posted to her health and wellness site Poosh titled "Rough Sex: Love It or Leave It?" -- definitely leave it, if it were up to the pair's kids; 17-year-old Landon and 15-year-old Alabama, who are 45-year-old Travis' children with ex-wife Shanna Moakler, are mortified by their dad's behavior and like most teenagers, the two are active on social media and can't avoid the new couple's loved-up posts and Travis' kids are happy that he's happy, but the PDA is weird and takes some getting used to, while Travis' stepdaughter Atiana De La Hoya, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have a problem as the 22-year-old posted a heart-eyes emoji -- as for spending time with Mason, 11, Penelope, 8, and 6-year-old Reign, Kourt's kids with ex Scott Disick, the pair try to restrain themselves but still the lovebirds are happily oblivious and have a hard time toning it down and Kourt and Travis are just being themselves and going with the flow; they're in love and want the world to know it

Page 27: After 10 months of dating Australian model Vanessa Valladares, Zac Efron is officially back on the market -- 33-year-old Zac called it off with the 25-year-old after things got too serious, too soon and they spent every moment together and it was too claustrophobic for him, as Vanessa, who quit her job and gave up everything to be with Zac, became a fixture on set as he worked on Down to Earth with Zac Efron and he felt guilty that she was giving up her dreams and aspirations to be with him -- despite their split, Zac, who had put his L.A. home on the market and extended his stay in Australia after meeting Vanessa, has no plans to rush back to the States because he has made a lot of friends there and feels at home

* Like many planning their vows during the pandemic, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost had to get strategic when it came to their big day -- Scarlett said they wanted it to feel like it had an intentional intimacy as opposed to being something that felt like they were restricted by all these things -- the intimate and small event the pair threw was at their $4 million Palisades, N.Y. home in October and the ultra-private pair kept their guests safe, and the guest list was tiny and it was understated but lovely, just what they wanted -- now Scarlett and Colin have settled in to married life and Scarlett and Colin both like to steer clear of the spotlight which makes them perfectly suited for each other

* Vanessa Hudgens revealed the surprising way she was introduced to boyfriend Cole Tucker, who she's been dating since November -- 32-year-old Vanessa and 24-year-old Cole met on a Zoom meditation group and Vanessa admits that the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop is just perfect for her and Vanessa and Cole, who debuted their romance on Valentine's Day, moved their budding friendship offline after feeling sparks via the virtual meeting app and they started communicating on their own and found out they have a lot in common -- now Vanessa, who dated Austin Butler for nine years before their 2020 split, is zooming ahead and she doesn't want to rush or jinx things, but she's saying Cole could be The One

Page 28: Cover Story -- Prince Harry and Meghan Markle: Twin Girls -- it was a somber, but loving occasion as the royal family celebrated the life of Prince Philip and amid the pomp and truly touching moments, like Queen Elizabeth sitting frail and alone, viewers waited to see what would happen when Harry and Prince William reunited for the first time since Harry and Meghan stepped down from senior royal duties in March 2020 and just weeks after their bombshell TV interview rocked the monarchy and tensions had been running high before the funeral, but everything went better than expected as William and Harry bonded and united in grief at the loss of their beloved grandfather, the estranged siblings along with William's wife Duchess Kate Middleton, waved away their waiting cars, opting to walk the half-mile from St. George's Chapel to Windsor Castle together and the trio chatted easily as they strolled -- back home in Montecito, Harry has been by pregnant Meghan's side around the clock making sure she takes it easy and the couple are in full-blown prep mode and Harry has been helping baby-proof their mansion and designing the nursery and Harry's been on his hands and knees making the house baby-friendly and he's got the latest, state-of-the-art safety devices installed around the pool -- Harry's promising visit with the royal family has given him one less thing to worry about, but still he and members of The Firm will always have different perspectives and after dismissing William and dad Prince Charles as trapped by the monarchy, Harry was persuaded by Kate to take the first step and she went up to Harry to suggest he have a heart-to-heart with William and their father, then she stepped back; Harry felt nostalgic being back home and it's a work in progress -- Harry made headway with his grandmother as well as he and Queen Elizabeth had a private meeting and spoke for three hours and seeing Harry's face made her smile again and Harry loves his grandmother very much and he's promised to bring his kids back to England later this year and he wants the Queen to spend quality time with them

Page 31: The Home Birth Brigade -- Who needs hospitals? These fearless celebrity moms opted to welcome their babies in the comfort of their own homes -- Ashley Graham, Eva Amurri, Hilary Duff, Gisele Bundchen, Gigi Hadid

Page 32: Kim Kardashian: Billionaire Bachelorette -- months after officially filing for divorce Kanye West, Kim is majorly ready to mingle -- Kanye's miffed that fans think he's the one who got dumped when he simply let her file first

Page 34: Not Boyfriend Material -- celebs share tales of dates gone bad, and guys who definitely didn't deserve a second chance -- Patricia Arquette, Mindy Kaling, Jenny Slate

Page 35: Awkwafina, Emma Watson, Kelly Clarkson

Page 36: For Mom -- for Mother's Day, express gratitude to the No. 1 lady in your life with the perfect gift -- Naomi Watts cofounded the ONDA Mama Box

Page 40: Entertainment

Page 48: Parting Shot -- in honor of Earth Day, Alison Brie kicked off the second year of the Planet Oat Project by planting trees at Rancho Sierra Vista -- the 38-year-old also took to Instagram to bring awareness to the wildlife restoration initiative, noting that a startling three million acres of trees in California have been destroyed by recent wildfires