#and I can’t afford a new blade like that

[necromimetics]

my hands a year and a half ago: heavier weapon? pommeling? no problem. i have the strength for precise point control under any conditions

my hands now: this epee is 30g heavier with a slightly more forward weight balance than the previous ultra light weapon you custom built for me :( a thousand curses be upon ye

[moviesismylife]

BAT BOYS react to the ✨pheromone✨ perfume

Note:

I don’t know if y’all have seen the viral pheromone perfume on TikTok, but apparently it’s supposed to make men go craaazzzyy, so I thought I’d make a little post on how I think our favorite bat boys would react to you wearing it✨

Enjoy x

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rhysand

I open the door to my mate’s office, and spot him hunched over some paperwork at his desk. As soon as I enter, his head snaps up to me.

“My love, thank the cauldron you’re here.” He says relived, as he looks me over.

I smile at him. “You needed my help?”

He nods, motioning for me to come over. I swiftly pad over to him, standing next to his chair, where he’s seated. Placing a hand on my hip, he drags me closer.

“Could you help me file all these? Seems there were a lot more than I expected.” He looks at the large pile of papers placed in front of him on the desk.

“Of course.” I say with a little smile.

“Perfect.” He grins back, and pulls me down onto his lap.

I yelp a little at the quick motion, but settle myself comfortably, my back facing his chest. He nuzzles his head in my neck, as he always does, wrapping his arms around my waist.

Flipping my hair to one side, I lean forward to grab a small pile of papers to read over. As Rhys’s nose brushes over my exposed neck, he stills. I hear him sniff. A short pause, then another sniff. And another.

“My love…is this a new perfume?” He asks casually, as he continues to brush his nose over my bare neck.

“Mhm.” Is the only response I give him, as I start to read over the file in my hand.

He sniffs again and again, nuzzling his head further into my neck. Then he uses one hand to angle my head to the side, to give him more access to my pulse point.

“Where did you get this…it smells…” he trails off, continuing to nuzzle my neck.

I smirk a little, knowing the perfume is working.

“Fuck…I don’t know if I’ll be able to do the paperwork.” He runs his nose repeatedly over my neck and collarbone.

I tilt my head to the side to look at him. “Rhys.”

He doesn’t move his head from my neck, letting his hand hold it in place on the other side, so he can have free reign. His other hand moves down and under my dress, trailing up my thigh.

“Rhys…” I say again.

“Hm?” He murmurs into my skin.

“We’re supposed to work.” I say.

“I think we can afford a break.”

“No you can’t-“

In one swift move, he’s moved me from his lap, and shoved me onto the desk, papers flying everywhere, and my legs spread wide.

“Rhys!” I swat his chest, but he only buries his head in my neck again, and moves both hands under my dress.

Giving up, I move my own hand to his hair, grinning a little at my accomplishment. Seems the perfume works.

Cassian

My sword clangs with Cassian’s, as I try to swing at him again. But he recognizes my maneuver, and knocks the sword out of my hand, turning me swiftly, pressing his own blade to my throat. His other hand splays at my front, and he leans down to my ear, whispering. “Nice try princess.”

I roll my eyes, and try to get out of his grip, but his strong arms keep me caged. I’m about to speak, when I hear him sniff my neck. I feel his head nuzzling deeper, and then another sniff, as his nose brushes my skin.

His sword drops to the ground, but he keeps me caged in his arms. The hand that was gripping the sword, now coming to hold the back of my neck.

“Fuck what is that.” He curses as he inhales the scent of my neck again.

“A new perfume I got from Mor. You like it?” I ask, grinning knowingly.

“Sweetheart I love it.” He sniffs my neck again.

I let out a little laugh. “It’s supposed to make males go crazy.”

He groans in response, his hand on my front, moving to grip my hip harshly. The hand on my neck stays firmly planted, keeping my head at an angle for him.

He runs his nose over my neck, sniffing repeatedly. “Fuck is it supposed to make us hard too? Because that’s what it’s resulted in.” He curses, pushing me flush against him, and I feel the bulge of his pants brushing against my clothed backside.

“I don’t know. The effects were not written on the package.” I say casually, but angle my head more for him.

He groans, and presses into me, making me let out a little moan. “Training’s over.”

Azriel

Standing in the kitchen, I stir through the pancake batter, when I hear Azriel trudging down the stairs.

“Leaving me in bed love? That’s new.” He says, as he comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my middle, and nuzzling his head in my neck.

“I wanted to make pancakes.” I say, simply continuing to stir the batter.

Suddenly I hear him sniff my neck, and run his nose over the exposed skin. He repeats the action a couple of times, tightening his grip on my waist.

“New perfume?”

I smile a little, knowingly, as I answer him. “Mhm. You like it?”

His grip tightens as he draws in a deep breath. He mumbles into my skin, “I love it.”

He continues to run his nose over my skin repeatedly, as if he can’t get enough of the smell.

I chuckle as he does this. “You really like it.” I say, as I push my behind back into his front, leaning back towards him. “Would you like to know what it is?”

“Very much so.” He mumbles, and his grip shifts to rest low on my hips, his hands pressing against the curve of my bottom.

“It’s called pheromone perfume. Supposed to make males go feral.” I smirk to myself knowingly.

His breath becomes heavy, and his grip tightens further. “Clearly it’s working then.” He says, burying his head into my exposed neck again.

“Mhm. Except you’re distracting me right now. I’m trying to make pancakes.”

“I’m not allowed to flirt with my mate?” He says, before nuzzling his nose into the skin just above the nape of my neck, then placing an open mouthed kiss to the spot. His hands are still tight on my hips.

I let out a laugh at that. “Yes you are. But don’t you want pancakes?” I tilt my head a little to the side to give him more access to my neck.

“Pancakes can wait.” He says, one hand leaving my hip to move up to my neck and gently lift my head back, exposing more of my throat. “You can’t though.”

I laugh even more at that, stopping my stirring, and turning around in his grip. “Alright then. If you insist.”

“Oh, I do insist.” He says, moving his hand from the back of my neck, to gently tug my head towards him, as he closes in the distance between us, and kisses me deeply.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[comfortless]

Dungeoneer!König and his gf... I mean, traveling companion

but really this is how most of their practicing plays out. 😵‍💫

content/warnings: 18+. minors do not interact. sliiiight dubcon, breathplay?, masochism (without real injury), masturbation, oral (m receiving), absolutely unhinged “flirting”.

König knows his way around a blade. From the delicate daggers that thieves pluck from cloaks when the chance to strike is opportune, to the curved, dainty shashkas. His favorite would always be the doppelhänder, long things that strike fear into any man who sees it swung toward him. It’s why he chose to pay good money for one now, tossed a sack of gold at the blacksmith’s feet and demanded to have an exceptional blade crafted for him within a fortnight or so.

He really can’t afford to be too choosy nowadays: he doesn’t live on his own anymore. Before, his course was decided by tattered parchment pinned to whichever acceptable sliver of wood a wandering messenger could find. Now, it’s dictated entirely by the little knight who parades around like the finest tease in all the land. Even the world, he would gamble.

She whispers molten sugar into his ear on nights she’s drunk, lonely or especially sympathetic. Perhaps all three. She climbs into his bed: a tattered, linen sheet on the rough, cold ground most nights. Sometimes, it’s softer, a feather-stuffed mattress at an inn. Those always reeked of sin. Something carnal right where a couple must have lain together only a night prior, yet to be drowned out and washed away in the streams by some hapless innkeeper. It’s all went to his head, more than a little.

The lady knight sits across from him, tapping the rim of her mug of ale with such disinterest on her face that it’s König who feels sympathetic now.

She chose this tawdry place. Chose to don some silly armor and pretend it’s taking her to kneel in service to the King. The jobs never dwindle, but the motivation does. She never knows what she truly needs, but König always seems to.

“You want to fight? Me?,” she asks, to the wooden table rather than to him. Sluggish and gloomy with her own disappointment in this place, her own perceived shortcomings, something that he can’t fix. The King should have his head on a spear for not giving her everything she’s ever asked for, woman and benevolent thief or not.

“It has been a while, hm?”

She nods once, curls her mouth into a subtle smile that sends his heart swooping and something stirring down below.

“I suppose I’ve gotten comfortable.”

He knows well enough that he can make her less so, always seemed to with his groping and hovering. Even if she’s fed into it, a moth to flame, he’s never seen her bed anyone this entire aimless journey. It’s the rush of adrenaline that sends fire into her belly, makes her eyes shine and her legs tremble each time, never the flirtations.

König’s yet to win a bet, but this time he would wager that playing nice won’t grant him a thing. It never has with what’s dwelling in each dark corner of the kingdom’s underbelly, and it never has with her.

So when the sparring begins this time, it’s real.

The look of shock and betrayal comes immediate when she’s easily knocked back, her blade landing in the grass at her side.

“Again.” And again, and again, she says it as though the exhaustion isn’t already evident in the way her breathing grows heavy. Each time it’s the same, because the only thing he holds back from is severely wounding her. Even if he could, even if he knows roughing her up a bit is just how this should go.

“You are tired,” he observes, cocking his head to the side as she scrambles to search for her sword beneath the dim light of the moon. “Do you need a break, little knight?”

The look she shoots him is something akin to scandalized. König’s never been the one to taunt her like this. It’s new and tentative, and he prays it’s something she likes. The dresses and sparkling gifts from the dungeons did fuck all for any sort of progression, and by the end of the night she would know how dull all of this has become to him, too.

“I am not—“ A parry, a feint, a jab that lands on the air rather than striking true. Not enough. “I’m fine.”

It’s never been in this impromptu plan to shove her down, but that’s what happens when she doesn’t take it seriously. She moves towards him again. Steel clatters against steel, sinks forgotten into the grass. With a hand adhered to the back of her thigh and another at curve of her back, he drops her down too. No briny sweat clings to his temple, all of this is more simple than even the training he had as boy.

She doesn’t even kick at him, docile as any doe when she makes the assumption that all of this is playing pretend. Just another game: he’s less fit to be a monster than even the weak things dwelling in the dark in her eyes.

“I do not want your mercy,” he growls against her neck, weaves his fingers into her hair and tugs her head to the side. Just a little. Just enough. “Be sincere. Hurt me.”

“What are you talking about?” Her voice is a mere peep, lost to the wind that whips by and tousles all but the man affixed to her.

Explanations have never come easy for König. Not with words, not even with letters. He’s killed men without telling why, left wandering ghosts and their wives bereaved time and time again. It’s not something worthy of an answer, nor a thing he ever thought she would even ask. It’s never questions with her: only orders. Even a tamed horse can lash out, kick its master right off to trample if it sees fit. König is no different.

He licks a stripe up her throat, relishes in the way her breath catches and her hands rise to dig nails into his arms. His teeth catch right along her jaw, inhales against her cheek, and when she grows tense below him, claws her way down to his forearms, he knows she’s finally well aware of how this ends.

His hands study the expanse of her body, fisting the linen of her tunic upward to reveal all soft flesh and no more tricks. There’s an aching bruise on her neck, chest, below her ribs before the knight finally presses her palm to his forehead and kicks a rib to wind herself away.

“You’re so…” The word she searches for dies on her tongue when she scrambles over him, feels how greedy he truly is when his hips tilt skyward and the throbbing erection presses against her rear.

“Stupid, hm? Say it.”

She curls a hand around his throat and squeezes, her eyelids sinking to shield the dazed glimmer there as he slips a hand into the front of her trousers. A callused thumb brushes over her clit before drifting further, down where he realizes that he’s found a new treasure. She’s already wet.

“You are. Big fool. Brute..,” she grits out, delivers another blessed press of her hand. All another feint, because she remains stationed above him. Even mimicking the groan that rattles his throat beneath her palm with a sigh of her own. “I could kill you. You know that I…”

The knight dips her head to press against his chest as he spears a thick finger into her, and a greed surges through him at this sudden compliance. Poor thing is so winded that she does little else than blanket him and shiver whilst he grins as though he’s devil-possessed or the luckiest filth in the world. The thought of her fitting any cock- let alone his- seems unimaginable, so obscenely tight as she squeezes around one digit that it pulls even an appreciative grunt from him.

“You could try it.”

Her fingers dig into the skin at his neck, and none of it is enough. She’s so gentle with him, because maybe she even believes that she could. Killing wild men without masters or loyalties, just like the men in the stories she fancies. König guides a hand up to help her, presses down around his throat with more ferocity as she lifts her head and stares down at him like he’s truly gone mad.

“You want a leash..?,” she huffs, pretends she isn’t leaking onto his hand.

“Only if this—“ Another finger, a deliberate curl of both as they press to something soft deep inside of her. Something that makes her whimper rather than bark. “—is holding it.”

She only looks at him, sulky and humiliated when she’s pleasured, stumbles over some other mumbled insult as her back begins a slow arch. He guides his hand back to her thigh, pets along her softness and watches her with such adoration, a pleased purr rumbling in his chest.

“Look at you… cute thing.”

“Not a thing.” Her hissing only further goads him, because she does nothing to pull away, can hardly meet his eyes even with fire and hatred on her tongue.

“Ja… meine dame, is that right?”

Her breath catches as she grinds herself where she’s been impaled, legs trembling as his thumb brushes over the bud in repetition. It’s too soon, but he allows her to have her rapture, gaze drifting from her hair to the curve of a hip as her cunt gives a greedy pulse. All armor is shredded and ripped away, no defenses, catapults or blades, all are exchanged for soft cries and a burning ache. The hurried breaths she takes come almost stilted as she gives his fingers another generous squeeze, and he only feeds them into her with unhurried hunger.

“I want to feel it,” he huffs into her hair, savors the way she tightens the grip around his throat until his voice fetters to a whisper. “Just once, please.”

“No… not..,” is all she manages before the wave reaches the shoreline and she unravels over him. He feels the walls of her cunt throb as her head ascends to his shoulder, burying herself there in shame or bliss. The orgasm is soon but drawn out, some pent up need finally freed to open air, the very same longing that remains prevalent and urging inside of him. He fucks her through it with a bitter fervor, spearing and scissoring the fingers inside until her thigh draws up from around him and she detaches entirely to sit up at his side.

König is quick to rise before her, already untying the laces of what keeps him from the hope of sharing that same rapture she must have felt. The little knight only stares up at him with perplexed curiosity as his cock springs free, thick and long and angry after so many long months of suffering a callused fist or neglect. The tip drags over the seam of her lips as he takes the base of it into his palm, and the drooling maw above her only groans at the barest sensation.

“I will bite it off,” she declares, follows it up with a charming grin as though she hadn’t bruised him deeply hundreds of times prior to this.

“Ja, after… I don’t care.” And of course he does, but this is the closest he’s gotten to anything and he would be a fool not to take it, teeth or not.

She swallows pensively, then rolls her tongue over the slit of the enraged weapon in her face. Beads of salt aren’t fitting for a woman’s tongue, he knows, feels horribly dirty and miserable at the sight for a mere second before she takes him in earnest. Her lips wrap around him, send sparks of the purest euphoria through him.

“Is this how to shut you up, meine dame?”

Everything is gilded gates and ethereal meadows, the only damnation he suffers is the fact that he can’t move without bruising her: too big to feed himself down her throat, too untamed to hold himself steady should she ever allow it. He settles for her pace, watches in wonder as she allows half of him to reach into the warmth of her throat. The panting beast above her curls his hands into fists at his sides, certain that touching her would be the end of this boon of fortune.

Her tongue flicks over the weeping tip each time she draws back, hands grasping at his thighs to keep herself upright. Even when her teeth graze over the sensitive flesh, the cock in her mouth only twitches in agonized bliss. He melts before her, trembling in such pleasured fury that his nails threaten to break through the hardened skin of his palms.

“Ha… I need to… I’m going to come.” Only then does he reach for the back of her neck, forcing her in place to bear the taste of what’s to come. She doesn’t fight it, gazes up with a furrowed brow and delivers the gentlest bite along him. A warning or a dare. “Next time will be… fuck…”

Her titan crumbles before her as though wounded, can’t keep his hands in place then as he grasps at her face and his body grows taut. His hips press forward only to stutter as he tries in earnest to keep himself somewhat contained. She gags quietly when the thick ropes of seed meet the end of her, abrupt but as endless as the broken, pitiful noises that rise from his chest then. It’s miraculous how she swallows it all, bitter and hot as it spills in generous spurts.

It’s he who pulls back, giving the cock already softening a few more pulls before collapsing in front of her with acute love tucked away behind the glassy blue of his eyes. His little knight could feign indifference all she liked, but even those pretty tavern wenches and noble pricks she bats her lashes at could never have had a taste of what had just occurred here.

She wipes away spit and come with the back of her hand, tries her best to shoot him a look of disgust, but König does not miss the way that her eyes seem to twinkle in the same way his do now.

“I want to taste you, too,” he rasps, chest still rising and falling with rushed intakes of air. Even after he can’t keep himself from ruining any bit of sanctity or sanity within reach. Punctuates his statement by reaching toward her again, only to be pulled into the comfort of an awkwardly positioned embrace. His face lands against her breasts, and though he languidly runs a hand up her back, the other takes a tit. He toys with her in his palm, brushes a thumb over her nipple and rises up to kiss her cheek, silent pleas.

“You’ve had enough fun,” she answers, pulling his hand away with their fingers intertwined.

“You have more than just a mouth.” He flashes her the biggest, wettest puppy eyes he can manage. That may get him a scrap from her plate, but it’s worth nothing here. “I would make a good vater, yes?”

[neuvistar]

BIOHAZARDOUS ! signed: satoru gojo . wc 2.3k

— featuring ┊satoru gojo x fem!reader (bits of suguru)

— warnings / content warnings ┊all consensual! heated arguments (quite literally heated), mentions of cheating, toxic behaviours (don’t date red flags guys), car sex, vaginal fingering, titsucking, riding, he’s kinda mean here ngl . 18+ MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. | 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐆𝐎 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐔𝐆𝐔𝐑𝐔’𝐒 𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐄? (tbd soon.) tags. @yuutx

— a/n ┊ok guys ☝️🤓 so the whole point of this title is kinda ironic… yk how the definition of biozardous is like it’s toxic n shit n poses a threat 2 humans??? YEAH. it’s like how toxic n stupid people poses a threat 2 everyone bc of their toxicity n how it’s dangerous (don’t get into relationships w red flags guys 🙅‍♀️) this is also a make-up post for not posting my silly tattoo artist blade sooner but it’ll be posted at some point!! AND guys i love gojo i swear i don’t see him like this at all!!! this was jus created all bc of that one frat boy art i saw 😢

suguru crossed his arms over his broad chest, his hard stare drilling into one of the motorcycles he was inspecting. he chuffs out a gentle laugh, knowing exactly what was wrong with the bike before leaning down with his screwdriver, unscrewing a few screws here and there. his ears picked up the sound of footsteps, glancing to his side.. his eyes follow your every movement, a mixture of gentleness and curiosity in his gaze. he watches as you turn away from his direction, packing your bag thoroughly. he can't help but take in the view of your hair. you’ve.. always been beautiful to him, but his thoughts are quickly pushed aside as he clears his throat and calls out to you, “leaving already?” his gaze was soft, soft as they always were, the creaking of the metal echoed through the garage while you gathered everything.

“yeah, my boyfriend’s pissed. i didn’t tell him i was working for you here,”

“yeah? he’s that type of guy?” suguru cocked his brow at you, holding the screwdriver firmly against his palms, “y’know, sweetheart.. i’m not sure if you can handle satoru. listen, i’ve heard some things about him. i know i can’t be judging your new relationship but i don’t think he’s good for you.” you pause, eyes lingering momentarily on him, lips curving into a grin. “i’ll be fine, suguru. i know he’s far different from you, but i think i’m alright, thank you for checking up on me.”

suguru’s eyebrows furrow, the hint of concern marrying his otherwise stoic facade. he nods, walking over as his towering stature looms over you, offering a semblance of protection despite the bond that faded away between you and him. "alright, i believe that.” he waves a hand dismissively, shooing away any lingering doubts or fears, even as his own heart rate accelerates with the aspect of more challenges, he was worried about you. he watched you finish packing, holding the bag firmly against your side, “i’ll be off then. i’ll see you tomorrow.” just as you were about to exit, suguru immediately took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb against your skin, “wait.” he stared at you with a sense of worry, pressing your hand against his cheek. “.. if you ever want us to go back to how we used to be.. i would accept that in a heartbeat. you know that, right?”

“yes. yes i’m aware.”

“ … i’m glad.”

…

yet to your dismay, your boyfriend saw and watched the entire thing while he was inside his car, seeing it all unfold right infront of his eyes. satoru bit the side of his mouth, clenching his jaw as frustration flowed through his veins. you had a lot of explaining to do.

you knew he saw, you knew that fact for sure. you were dreading every step you took to his car, but you couldn’t afford losing your composure now.. you had to act natural. once you opened the car door, you were met with a familiar silence that caved in between the both of you. three.. two.. one..“well, i hope you come bearing good news.” and.. there it was. you couldn’t help but glance towards his direction, a firm yet smug expression on his face. you sat there with your knuckles all white, from how tightly you were gripping your bag. “satoru.”

satoru groaned, rolling his eyes at your stern tone, knowing you were about to ramble him on how he shouldn’t be jealous because of something small like this. "you think i’m blind, huh? i’m practically a natural, baby," he retorted, attempting to lean against the window of his car beside him, "still not over him?" his grin was crooked as he tried to hide the smugness. "you think you found someone better than me?”

“toru, why are you always like this? every single damn time, it’s getting repetitive.” you turned away from him, staring off into the sunset, his voice ringing inside your ears. “i could say the same thing about you, [name]. you go crazy even at the sight of another girl being in my presence. so i think this is even.. am i right?”

“does that girl you hooked up with a few months ago count as even to me just speaking to someone i used to be acquainted with? you’re insane.”

"oh, come now," satoru drawled with a click of his tongue, rubbing his temple. you knew you were getting on his nerves, but that didn’t matter in a situation like this! "you don't seem to understand what i’m sayin’ at all. she was just a hook up. nothing more. it’s been months, baby. plus, weren’t we on a break?”

“nothing more? are you just disregarding the fact you practically cheated on me? even if we were on a damn break, that doesn’t mean you can go whoring around with another woman behind my back. are you fucking sick?”

despite the irritation twisting his face, satoru forced a smile. “and i suppose you're here to save poor, fragile me from my own recklessness? how cute." he chuckled softly, his eyes filled with mockery. "if you really cared, you wouldn't be working for your ex when i told you not to.” your body paused, frozen in place. amidst the silence, he could tell there was pure frustration radiating from your body. you glanced at him, raising a brow. “excuse me? why are you dragging suguru into this.. he hasn’t done anything!”

satoru raised an eyebrow, a smirk forming on his lips as he noticed your reaction. "he has. he dated you.” he chuckled dryly, shifting uncomfortably on the car seat. "working for suguru?" he let out a low whistle, shaking his head. your boyfriend’s smirk widened, turning into an annoyingly charming grin. "or maybe you're just another pawn in his grand scheme, huh?" he leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest, his expression challenging. "whatever. just do your job, babe. don’t bother fucking around with my business. tell suguru i said hi. and next time, bring some smelling salts for when he faints from surprise that we’re still together.”

unexpectedly, the sound of the seatbelt unbuckling rung through satoru’s ears. his breath hitched when he felt your hands pull on his shirt, tugging him towards you with a cold look in your eyes. “me working for someone i am not romantically linked with at all is nothing compared to you going out with someone you hooked up with months ago.” you leaned even closer.. “i’m not afraid to break up with you, right here right now..” satoru snorted at your words, barely suppressing a laugh as he took in your delicate display. hm. you were smaller than he was, that’s for sure. “your determination is almost impressive," satoru spoke, leaning forward slightly as his crystal gaze drifted downwards momentarily before locking with yours again. with a sardonic grin, satoru tilted his head at your words looking amused. "you need to separate us? sure thing, doll. just like you need to separate yourself from suguru’s puppet strings.”

you were tired of arguing. you knew one thing and one thing for sure, you were not gonna stay here with him. atleast not for long, until you have the last say in this. “then if you wanted to break up, you could’ve just told me straight up. don’t waste my damn time like this.”

"oh, believe me, i’ve considered it," satoru retorted, chuckling softly. "but then i’d lose all this fun, wouldn't i?” he gestured vaguely around his car, a smirk playing on his lips. "maybe i just like this sort of thing. it keeps things interesting. and besides, where would you be without me?” his gaze flickered to you, holding your stare for a moment. "i’m taking you home after this. i’ve got more important things to do than argue with my girlfriend who thinks she's got me figured out."

“i don’t want to figure you out.” you argued, the tone of your voice held such rage.. it was almost enough to break through him. “fuck you and your ego. you’ve done nothing but ruin every single relationship you’ve been in, yet you complain? you’re a fucking jerk.”

“whatever floats your boat then.” he muttered under his breath as he sank back onto the car seat, his body screaming at him to rest. but there was no peace to be found, not with his mind swirling with thoughts of the long heated argument you both just had.

… quite literally, heated.

now this.. you didn’t know how you even ended up like this.

“fuck, satoru…”

you were seated on his lap, breathing heavily with your shirt all ruffled up, your breasts in display for him like eye candy as satoru sucked on your delicate nipples. your skirt hiked up to your stomach as he held you gently. satoru groaned, his lips still wrapped around your nipple, fingers probing deeper into your warmth. he released your pert nipple with a pop, trailing kisses down your chest as he slowly slid a finger inside your heat, licking his lips at the damp feeling of your slickness coating his digit. “shit, you're so wet for me, baby," satoru whispered against your ear, his voice thick with amusement. your boyfriend then added another finger, stretching you out. with a slow, steady motion, satoru’s fingers pumped within you slowly inch by inch, allowing your body to adjust to his digits. satoru devoured your moans, he knew he wouldn't last long with you all pretty like this. he reached up and cupped your face, thumb brushing against your cheekbone in a gentle caress.

“satoru, you fucking jerk…” your breath hitched your breathing grew completely ragged and uneven, your skin flushed and your eyes fluttered shut. yet, satoru couldn't help but smirk as his fingers delved deeper inside you, drawing out your moans that were like perfect melodies to him. “you’re so tight, baby," he murmured, his voice low and seductive.. coated with lust. he wanted more of you. he could feel his cock twitch painfully against his briefs, desperate to free itself from its confines. “makes me want to bury myself inside you right here, right now." he paused, letting the words hang in the air between them, “right infront of your workplace. it’d be nice if suguru caught sight of this, wouldn’t it?”

your boyfriend’s cock throbbed the more he spoke, desperate to be inside you as soon as possible. satoru’s mouth was completely busy, his tongue lavishing attention on your sweet nipples as his fingers danced within your folds. he could feel your arousal building up through your aching body as you trembled with pleasure, and it only fuelled his own desire. he sucked harder on your nipple, slowly pushing another finger deeper inside your wetness, crooking it slightly to hit that sweet spot you loved so much. “you’re not really mad at me, aren’t you?" he whispered, his breath hot against your skin. "you like feeling me inside you, making my cock feel good like this. after all… that’s why we’re dating, right?” … this asshole. you could feel his other large hand cupping your breasts, thumb brushing against the nipple he was licking just a few minutes ago. "i could do this all night, y’know?" he murmured, his voice husky with desire, “keep your pretty little stubborn ass right here, right in my lap, and never let you go."

“you should let me go.”

“oh but i won’t.“ his eyes locked onto yours, with a slow, calculated motion, his fingers were now replaced by the head of his cock. true inch by agonizing inch, he pushed inside you, feeling your tightness enveloping him, and he knew he was lost. “you know why? this pussy is too good for me to give up to someone else.”

“satoru!” you gasped out loud as you felt his member slid inside your entrance, the uncomfortable space of the car taking a toll on you as your ass nearly pressed against the steering wheel.

"wow, look at you," satoru soothed, his voice low and cocky as he held you close against his body. “taking it so well like always," he whispered as his lips brushed against your ear. his hips rocked gently as he pumped his cock deeper into your warmth, the car creaked and groaned around the both of you. satoru savoured the feel of your body wrapped around his, swallowing your moans and gasps of pleasure. “shit.” his fingers dug gently into your hips, holding you firmly in place. the sounds of your passion mingled with the rustling of your clothes and his.. the soft moans that escaped your lips were enough to hypnotize him, he’d always been obsessed with them. satoru’s hands roamed against your body, tracing your breasts, the dip of your waist, the swell of your hips. his lips pressed against yours deeply, his tongue dancing with yours as he picked up the pace of his thrusts, cock thrusting deeper into you with each pass. you hated how your body responded to him, your own hips meeting his, and especially how your pussy was squeezing him tight as you came messily all over his cock, your sweet moans muffled against his lips.

satoru’s own orgasm washed over him, his body tensing as he emptied himself into you, the feeling of you enveloping him like a velvet glove drove him to the edge, making him want to ruin you once more a second time.. but he can wait. the taller male’s breath came in ragged gasps.. holding you close against him, heart pounding in his chest. “such a sweet girl like you shouldn’t be with me, babe. i almost feel bad for you,”

…

“you know i’m trouble, don’t you?”

[n0tamused]

Broken Memories

Genre: angst

A/N: More older stuff to post, hope you all enjoy. I did a quick proofread but knowing me I'll just say that there still may be some grammar mistakes :p

Lofty clouds sail over the Xianzhou Lofu, welcoming some distant warmth to befall the people after what felt like years and years worth of rain. Fresh air brings in the freshness which the rain left behind, feeling like a new slate of paper ready to be written on, but Blade just watches on in solemn silence. Tendrils of pain and ache make its way through his body in steady, continuous waves, not letting him relax, but not letting him move either. For him, only the present moment exists, and in a twisted way he is forced to accept it. His life knows no end, so he makes scarce peace with the present.

Remembrance of days already long and gone make their way to his head, when white locks fell down his back instead of raven black, and when he had friends to speak off, company to talk to, and dreams to dream about. In the long faded and broken memories he sees himself, Yingxing, strike a hot piece of metal over and over again until he gets it to the desired dimensions. Deft hands grab onto the pincers and tools and a bucket of cold water to mend the metal, and the process flows on effortlessly under his watchful gaze. Yingxing feels even more anxiety pool in his chest unlike he usually feels, his gaze fixated on carving the blade to have a more intricate design - this was no ordinary blade in the end, made to be given to some soldier or some higher up as compensation, no - it was a gift. It had to be perfect. Beyond perfect.

The dagger was curved and elegant, and in his hands it demonstrated to perfect balance between the point and hilt, and many little details were put into it in colors of gold and rose gold, your favorite gemstones, your favorite color in the leather grip, your favorite shapes, and about anything else he could incorporate into the dagger without overthrowing its aesthetic and its practical use. It shines beautifully under the pale sunlight, the rain clouds drifting away after days worth of rain. Yingxing smiles at his work, lifting it up above his head until he sees the reflection of his own eyes in the blade, full of mirth and under one eye there’s a smudge of charcoal. He can’t help the pride that makes his chest swell, and neither can he afford to wait for the following day to give it to you. So he makes quick work of packaging the blade and following the narrow roads, searching the entire city until he finds you and just gives the gift to you right then and there, in broad daylight with little introduction. Red paper is wrapped around the wooden box, not in the most skilled way, but in a caring way, and he relishes in the compliments you rain down upon him when he explains what it is, or even why he gave it to you. For once he feels really seen. His life-long mission is for once cast aside in favor of admiring this little side quest he ventured upon. And he feels like he could throw everything away if it meant seeing your joy every day. That evening you have invited him back to your home, served him tea and shared your events of the day, along with more passionate comments about the gifted dagger. 

Blade sighs, remembering your smile, your face, and he remembers how different it now looks in his distorted memories. He is forgetting.. He knows the face he sees in his memories is not the one he knew, he feels it in his bones and in his blackened heart. There is just something missing. The visage of his eyes can’t focus on your face nor the details of your clothes or your hands when they gripped his.

The broken dagger in his lap is unfixable - Yingxing is no longer here to mend it as before. Blade can only hold onto the essence of its memories until the whole world goes dark, and that says plenty of his grief and regret. His chin tilts down to look at the dagger, his finger jabbing at the broken blade as if it was a foreign object to him, something extra terrestrial, as if he didn’t pour his heart into it decades before. Perhaps he did pour his all into it, maybe that’s why the dagger followed the same fate as he did, as the smith poured a piece of his soul into his art. He can only hope the dagger does not represent you.. he hopes you’re out there, somewhere, happy, healthy, alive..

Ⓒ n0tamused. Do not repost, translate, edit, and/or copy any of my works. Likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated.

[pompomegranate]

bite me

⇢ miguel o'hara x f!reader

⇢ warnings | 18+. very explicit smut. i will block you if your age isn’t anywhere on your blog.  slight blood drinking/blood kink, injury, and again, smut. more extensive n/s/f/w tags on ao3.

⇢ a/n | ok look i know gwen called miguel a vampire as a joke but what if. WHAT IF. miguel is a vampire here but i don’t waste time talking about logistics, this is all about the biting lmao also the title is absolutely ripped from enhypen’s new ep

⇢ ao3

Miguel never loses control unless you plead for it.

His hands gripping your hips, he splays his fingers as wide as he can – digging the pads of them into your flesh – because he can never get enough of you.

You can’t stop the moan that spills from your mouth but he happily swallows your whines with parted lips while he finally touches you where you need him to.

Where he lacks experience he makes up for with zeal – the same determination behind the mask – and it’s all for you.

It’s not as if Miguel wasn’t pursued (he was, heavily and annoyingly so); he just didn’t care to let anyone catch him until you came along.

Confident strokes of the rough pads of his fingers draw another whimper out of you. He smiles against your lips and laughs, low and deep.

“Please – Miguel, please –” You know you look pathetic begging for his touch, but you can’t bring yourself to care.

Lust takes precedent over embarrassment and Miguel is acutely aware of this. He pulls back, eyes flashing a bright crimson – his smile morphs into a smirk as his fingers still work your clit slowly, gently.

“Impatient. I’ll get you there.”

There’s a finality inside of his promise and it makes you ache for more of him. You grind against his hand, desperate for a steadier rhythm –

“Ah, ah – let me savor this.”

“I need you now,” you breathe, greedy and wanting. Your palm cups his cock, hard and pulsing beneath your hand.

Miguel lets out a deliciously gravelly sigh of his own, lids fluttering shut as you rub him through the fabric of his pants. When you stop, his gaze flickers across your face – he’s considering his options.

He could tease you, could draw this out until you’re a writhing mess beneath him. Or he could fuck you now, fast, heated, hasty.

In a perfect world, he could exercise restraint every time and devote hours to worshiping every inch of you.

Instead, he caves, folding to your collective desire.

He tears his shirt off from between his shoulder blades, thoughtlessly throwing it aside before flicking the clasp of your bra, slipping the straps off of you with more care than he afforded himself.

You take in the sight. Thick dark hair lines his pecs, trailing down through the ridge of his abs, convening in a dense patch of hair beneath his belly button that disappears into the waistband of his bottoms.

He brushes his lips the dip where your shoulder and neck meet, peppering kisses up your throat towards your jaw.

God, you’re already a shaky mess and he’s barely touched you. The anticipation is always your least favorite part – you want him – no, you need him now.

He kisses you again, sloppy and open mouthed, easing you backwards towards the bed.

Your knees hit the mattress and you fall back, face to face with his waist. The outline of his cock is visible, straining against the cloth.

He watches you, brows lifted ever so slightly, a silent question in his expression.

What will you do next? Suck his cock or demand that he fuck you – now?

You tug his shorts down and take his tip in your mouth, a clear answer.

There’s something so invigorating about the ability to make a stoic man whimper.

Miguel’s are your favorite – they start out gruff and low, the bass of his voice ricocheting against the walls, like they’re too big to contain him, but they evolve into desperate sounds that egg you on, inflate your ego.

His shaft, wide and velvety smooth, slides in and out of your mouth – his hand snakes to the back of your head, cupping it with a featherlight touch.

You nod up at him, cheeks hollowed around his cock, fluttering your eyelashes to feign coyness as if to teasingly say, Fuck my throat, Miguel. You know you want to.

His pupils are blown, tinged with red, teeth sinking deep into his bottom lip as he bucks into your throat. Strokes long and precise, fingers tangled into your hair, Miguel O’Hara fucks your mouth relentlessly.

You can’t tear your eyes away from the sight – Miguel panting, gasping, groaning, lips forming praises followed by your name. You can barely bring yourself to blink – you don’t want to miss any of this.

Spit bubbles and drips down your chin onto your chest, gasping breaths around his length but you’re more than happy to oblige because you know it’s just a matter of minutes before you’re spread open for him and he’s fucking your cunt just like this.

His chest heaves, muscles rippling down his front as he pants expletives – he’s close, and you can feel him pulsing against your lips.

When you pull away for the last time, you trace your tongue along his prominent underside vein, eyes fully trained on him. 

He’s out of words when you do that, resorting to growls as he eases you down onto the bed. Tugging your underwear off, he flings them across the room unceremoniously, the wet fabric disappearing into the shadows.

You’re laid bare on the bed, spread open, mouth curled around pleas. 

“Bite me.”

His sharp canines glint in the faint moonlight, extending fully on command.

“You’re insatiable,” Miguel says with a grin, before flipping into the perfect position to drive the both of you wild.

He’s sat on the edge of the bed, you on his lap, arms wrapped around your back – you’re completely at his mercy.

His tongue darts out to wet his lips, his breath shaky as he snakes a hand between your bodies, teasing your cunt with his tip. Sliding it through your folds, bottom to top, lingering right on your bud of nerves – 

Your legs squeeze around him, trembling as you do so. All you want is him. His cock, his mouth, his fingers, any part of him that’s fucked you thoroughly before – any way he’ll have you, you don’t care.

“I can’t wait, Miguel, please, now –” you beg.

He sinks into you, stretching you out deliciously slow, half-lidded gaze focused on your reaction.

Your head lolls to the side as you relax into it, lids fluttering shut until he sucks his teeth at you.

“Don’t look away, my love,” he instructs you, firm but tender. “I want to see you – I want to hear you.”

He inches deeper, deeper, until he bottoms out, your flesh meeting his.

And then you move.

He’s so strong that you’re weightless in his arms, being trained up and down on his cock like a whimpering fleshlight. One arm around your waist to keep the pace, he uses the other to touch you.

Teases your nipples between pinched fingers, palms your tits roughly, before finally settling on thumbing your clit. You don’t know what to focus on more – the sensation of him inside of you, building up the pace to a steady rhythm that’s driving you wild – or the feeling of his calloused digit, messily rubbing and flicking, his attention spread thin (not on his hands, or his cock, but on your expression).

You instead focus on his broken sentences, a mix of curses and praises. They sound all the same to you.

“Shit, you feel so – good – so fucking – tight –”

If that weren’t enough, he finally looks away from you, finding yet another patch of your body to worship.

His fangs, razor-sharp, drag across the skin of your shoulder. They press just enough into your skin to sting, but it doesn’t hurt quite yet – it’s like lightly touching a fresh bruise, but followed by his soft lips, rough stubble.

You can’t do much else but lock your arms around his neck and pull him close. Miguel smells smoky and sweet, like luxury cologne and a celebratory cigar – he feels even better.

He trails his teeth to the base of your neck before going higher, smiling against your skin when you gulp beneath his lips.

It’s not because you’re scared; the complete opposite, really. You’re excited.

He’s still fucking you, but his pace slows to a crawl, hips rolling to keep the slightest friction. Even though he’s comfortable with biting you, he’d never want to hurt you. There’s a precision required to achieve both pain and pleasure and Miguel has it down to a science.

Mortality is vulnerability as far as he’s concerned, and the fact that you share your life with him is something he never takes lightly.

“Ready?” He asks, widening his bite in preparation. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”

“I’m ready.”

He chuckles. “That’s my girl.”

You suck in a sharp breath when he finally punctures you, the pain as mouth watering as his cock stretching you, filling you.

He’s everywhere – inside of you in two different ways, body flush against yours, but you can’t get enough. Unintentionally, you pull him closer, grip him tighter, bury him deeper in you.

You cry out. Your neck burns, every nerve on edge as the pleasure zaps throughout your body, from your fingertips to your toes.

A heat blazes through the area underneath his mouth, a rumbling grunt coming somewhere from the back of his throat, chasing the electricity of his bite.

This is pure fucking bliss.

The sensation of his fangs and his cock have you so pathetically eager; slack jawed and jellied bones, you focus on your hips, fucking him back with no remorse, uncaring about whether or not the wound in your neck rips open – nothing matters more right now than cumming on Miguel’s cock.

You lean back and Miguel tilts with you, your clit pressed against his thick patch of neatly trimmed pubic hair, the last stimulant to shove you over the edge.

He pulls back, retracting his teeth but laps up the stray drops of blood eagerly.

“You taste – like heaven, my love – shit –” He pants, eyebrows pulled inward. “Are you – fuck – are you alright?”

He always asks you this after he bites you without fail, and every time you’re enveloped in pleasure. You nod, unable to form words as he drives into you, picking up his speed. 

The bedroom is obscenely symphonic, all loud moans and slapping skin.

“Lay back,” you say instinctually, barely registering the glint of lust in his eye when you push him down.

“Tell me what you want,” he mumbles, hands settling at the bend of your hips, thumbs caressing you.

“Just talk to me – I’m almost there –”

It’s true. You’ve been on the cusp of an orgasm and you want to come with Miguel moaning underneath you.

“Fuck, you feel so good around me –”

Miguel’s hands slide up from the base of your stomach to your tits, cupping, squeezing as he does so.

“You take it so well, my love – no one does it like you –”

You sway your hips front to back, elongating your strokes, and his lids are threatening to close all the way.

“Open your eyes.”

They flash open, Miguel’s gaze salacious and fiery as he obeys your command. He loves when you take charge.

Your palms, flat on his muscled chest, give you the right amount of leverage to bounce, and he meets you halfway, curling his hips underneath you at an angle that has you nearly weeping – it’s so perfect – he’s so perfect for you.

“Are you –” he moans “– are you close?” “Yeah, baby, I’m close,” you manage through pants.

“Good – I don’t know how much longer I can hold out,” he says, then draws you close till you’re chest to chest.

And then he picks up the pace, really driving into you – harder, harder, until you’re biting down on his bare skin to cope with the sensation. You’re nearly overstimulated, so close that you can taste the orgasm that’s about to flood through you.

“That’s it, yeah,” he purrs into your ear, palms lifting and settling you on his dick with no effort on your part.

“Come for me – fuck – I wanna feel you squeeze my cock with your –” he’s pulled you all the way up to his tip and back down again. “God, I can’t even think straight you’re so good –”

Miguel comes, a mix of expletives and whines, and keeps fucking you, teasing your clit, your nipples, anything to get you there and you –

You say his name, broken and desperate like a prayer – gratitude laced in your tone because fuck, this is the best it’s ever going to be and you’re on top of the world, with him, with Miguel O’Hara.

The both of you finally come down. You crash on the mattress next to him, curling against his side, slotting against the taut ridges of his muscles perfectly.

The first thing he does is run a featherlight over your neck and the wound he’d left there.

“How was it? Was I too rough?” He’s concerned, the foggy afterglow disappearing as soon as he remembers that you bled because of him.

He’s always been afraid of pushing the limits to the point of losing his composure – and hurting you because of it.

“No, no,” you reassure him with a kiss on the jaw. “It was perfect, Miguel.”

You kiss away the rest of the dreamlike haze, floating back down to Earth with a view of the city bathed in moonlight outside your open window.

You’re right – it is perfect.

[bitchesgetriches]

20 tips to stay cool without air conditioning that anyone can try

1. Close your curtains and blinds—especially in sunny rooms.

Windows let in visible light. But unless your windows are fairly new and high-tech, they also let in lots of radiant heat. Curtains and blinds will help keep that extra heat out.

Thick curtains are a great investment because they work in all seasons. They block the sun in the summer, stop cold drafts in the winter, and act as additional soundproofing if you live in a noisy area. They’re also among the easiest beginner sewing projects. But if you can’t afford them, no worries! Hang an unused blanket or towel instead—it may not be pretty, but it’s better than nothing.

I hate living in a cave, so I open my blinds throughout the day as the sun moves. Just closing the curtains on any sunny, south-facing windows for the hottest parts of the day will make a big impact.

2. Install window film.

The next level of window protection is window film. Renters, don’t worry—you can install this yourself without getting help or permission from your housing shortage profiteer of a landlord!

To install window film, all you need to do is cut it to size, spritz the window with water, and let static cling hold it effortlessly in place. It comes in a lot of fun patterns, and can also double as privacy film if you choose a pattered or frosted design.

3. Shut the door to any rooms you aren’t using.

Whether it’s summer or winter, closing the doors to unused rooms will help regulate temperatures. It’s much easier to heat/cool one room than five.

My partner shocks me every day by going upstairs an hour before bedtime and turning on the window AC unit in our bedroom preemptively. If the door it shut, it will be pleasantly chilly by the time we’re ready to turn in. I just… what is it even like to have proper executive function like that?! So glad I’m the beneficiary of his amazing neurotypicality…

4. Open your windows at night.

In many areas, the overnight temperature drops by 10° or 20°. So once the sun has gone down, let all the accumulated heat out of your house by cracking your windows open overnight.

If possible, open them from the top rather than the bottom. Hot air rises, so that’s the stuff you want to GTFO overnight.

5. Create airflow with box fans.

Box fans are incredible. They don’t cost much to buy or run, but they make a huge impact on quality of life in a hot climate.

Believe it or not, installation makes a huge difference. If you put your box fan in the wrong spot, it’ll only make your heat issues worse! The placement and direction of airflow has a huge impact on its efficacy! (More on this in the next section.)

If you place a box fan in a sunny, south-facing window that looks out over a boiling-hot parking lot, you want it to push that hot air outside, not suck it all back in. But if you have a window that’s on the cooler north side of the house, maybe shaded by a big tree, flip it around so it’s pulling the cooler air inside.

If you have just one, point it away from the biggest source of heat and try to sit near it. If you have two or more, point them all in the same direction to create airflow throughout the whole house.

6. Point your fan blades in the correct direction.

Notice how fan blades are tilted at an angle? Depending on which direction they’re turning, they will either push air in, or pull it out.

The same goes for ceiling fans. If you’ve never changed the direction of your ceiling fan blades, you’re using them wrong!

Ceiling fans in the summer should run counter-clockwise, to push hot ceiling air down to cool.

Ceiling fans in the winter should run clockwise, to pull cold air up and distribute heat evenly.

For box fans, you physically flip the whole unit around. For ceiling fans, hop up on a chair and look for a little switch on the side. You’re welcome.

7. Install AC window units.

Okay, okay, when I said “without air conditioning,” I should’ve stipulated that I really meant “without central air.”

Depending on your area, the age/design of your building, the floor you live on, and your personal tolerance for heat, fans and such may not be enough! If you need the sweet relief of air conditioning, window units are a life-saver. (Literally.)

We have a small 5,000 BTU unit for our bedroom, and a larger 10,000 BTU unit to cool our entire first floor. It doesn’t make the whole house frigid, but it lowers the temperature from “a warm summer day in Hell” to “a warm summer day on Earth, in a good timeline.”

Obviously they use more energy, which equates to money and carbon emissions. So the best thing you can do is to get an energy-efficient model, make sure it’s the correct size for your home, turn the unit on only as needed, and use it in combination with all the other methods suggested here.

8. Run a dehumidifier.

Humidity sucks. It reduces the efficacy of all of our bodies’ built-in cooling systems, plus many of the other techniques suggested here. A dehumidifier will help remove moisture from the air, making the heat feel a lot more bearable.

9. Avoid cooking with heat indoors.

The winter is a wonderful time to simmer soups, bake bread, and make your kitchen a source of continual warmth and satiety. Not so, the accursed summer! Cast your high-effort pie-baking aside until the howling of wolves summons autumn.

THIS IS SUMMER. SUMMER IS FOR SANDWICHES. And caprese, and smoothies, and Choco Tacos. END OF LIST.

Grow the list of meals you can make that cook quickly, with little or no additional heat. If you must apply heat, do it outside on a little Smokey Joe. Or wait until the heat of the day is long past.

10. Line-dry your clothing—or only use dryers at night.

After stoves, clothes dryers are the hottest appliance. So put your clothing in the dryer only after the sun has gone down. If you’re rocking a low-maintenance wardrobe with no need to iron, you can set it to go right before bed and safely forget about it until morning.

(Or, y’know, five days after, when you go to put another load in, if you’re trying to be more like your hero: me!)

If you have the space (and your climate is something closer to the Sahara than the Amazon), consider line-drying your clothes. Piggy has strung a retired climbing rope in her backyard for just this purpose… the smug, crunchy bitch.

11. Unplug unused appliances.

This tip is just perennially good in all situations: unplug shit you ain’t using! Lots of appliances pull phantom power, even when supposedly turned off. This adds heat to your house, dollars to your power bill, and unnecessary carbon to the atmosphere.

The average American household spends $100+ each year to power devices that are turned off. I can think of many things I would rather spend that money on, such as…

17 blocks of pretty good Parmesan cheese,

10 blocks of really, really good Parmesan cheese with those crunchy flavor crystals, or

25 store brand cannisters of shake Parmesean cheese because, listen, we’ve had it up to here with your out-of-touch neoliberal cheese snobbery!

So if you’re not using it, unplug it fully. Make it a habit to flip your power strips off as part of your bedtime ritual. (Or follow the next step, for all of the benefits with none of the work!)

12. Use programmable power strips.

I must confess that this article started as an attempt to answer a cheap-person question that has plagued my marriage for years. “Is it cheaper to run your window AC on a low setting all day? Or to blast it at full strength to cool the room back down after it’s gotten boiling hot?”

The tl;dr is that it is better to run it only as needed. Your AC doesn’t have to “work harder” to cool the room; it is programmed to run efficiently, regardless of the room’s temperature.

If you’re someone who really struggles with high heat, and cannot wait for your home or apartment to be brought to a comfortable temperature, here’s what you do. Get a programmable power strip. You can set it to turn your AC on an hour before you get home from school or work. In general, these things are great, and they pay for themselves within a very short time.

13. Use LED lightbulbs.

LED light bulbs cost a bit more than incandescent (old-fashioned) bulbs. But they consume 1/8th the energy, die less frequently, and run much colder. Incandescent bulbs reach a surface temperature of 250°, whereas LED bulbs are closer to 100°.

The rise of LED bulbs may have killed the Easy Bake Oven industrial complex—but it has also spared our homes from much unnecessary heat.

14. Sleep on breathable sheets.

The best sheets for summer tend to be linen, bamboo, eucalyptus, Tencel, and cotton/poly blends. They are breathable, moisture-wicking, or both.

The worst sheets for summer are flannel, fleece, and pure cotton. These are fantastic insulators best left to the winter months.

15. Try a cooling pillow.

Bedding technology has come a long way in recent years. You can get whole mattresses engineered to please hot sleepers.

But since mattresses are a big investment, start with a cooling pillow. They’re filled with materials designed to let heat escape from your head and face.

16. Dress down.

I’m not saying you should get naked… but listen. If you come around my house in the summertime, you are absolutely going to have to wait at the door while I put some pants on.

The easiest, most environmentally friendly way to control your body temperature is to dress appropriately for the season. So make sure you’re in shorts and a tank top before you reach for the thermostat.

It’s too hot for modesty. Save the planet. Slut it up.

17. Eat and drink cool stuff.

Staying hydrated is the best way to aid your body’s amazing natural cooling system: getting schwetty. Ingesting cold foods and liquids can help lower your body temperature by 2.4° for about half an hour.

Look, Bitches Get Riches has always been a pro-ice cream, pro-iced coffee, pro-gazpacho blog. But we’re done hiding our allegiances in the shadows. If you don’t know, now you know.

18. Take a cool mid-day shower—not cold!

Taking a cold shower will actually work against you. The sudden shock of cold will make you feel cooler, but it will also kickstart your body’s temperature regulation systems, ultimately warming you up.

But a cool shower is great—especially if you don’t dry off immediately. Let the water evaporate slowly off your skin for maximum true cooling.

19. Hold a cold ice pack to your neck.

Here’s a fun tip: if you’re ever helping someone experiencing heat stroke, the three most effective areas for rapid cooling are the neck, the underarms, and the groin. These areas have major arterial blood flow, with blood vessels very close to the skin. So cooling the blood there has the quickest positive impact.

Plus, anyone who’s ever had long hair will tell you it’s a disgusting swamp back there when it’s hot out. The back of the neck is nature’s furnace. So if you can’t shower, place a cold washcloth or ice pack against your neck for some instant, easy relief.

20. Escape!

Sometimes retreat is the best option. If a really bad heat wave is coming, and you live on the 4th floor of a city apartment surrounded by shimmering pavement, you could be in very real danger.

The hottest part of the day is between 12 and 4 p.m. On really bad days, plan to use that time to go somewhere to escape. You can run errands in air-conditioned stores, do your work at a local coffee shop or library, catch a movie, go swimming, or do anything to get you out of the house.

While you’re away, leave your windows cracked to let the worst of the heat escape. And remember to check on any elderly or disabled neighbors, as they are especially vulnerable during heat waves.

- 25 Tricks to Stay Cool WITHOUT Air Conditioning

[thosehallowedhalls]

A Midnight Chat

Book: Blades of Light and Shadow

Pairing: Tyril Starfury x F!human!MC

Rating: Teen

Word count: 613

Summary: Raine interrupts Tyril's reflections.

A/N: For @petalouda85 who gave me the prompt "fireflies." Drabble 19 of my 30 days of drabbles.

Tyril hones his sword, his eyes on the horizon. Fae fish continue to appear every now and then, their scales glinting, and sea fireflies dance an intricate choreography that’s breathtaking in its splendor. The moon shines bright and clear against the depth of the sky, casting a pure glow on the deck of the Sun Maiden.

Too bad he’s too caught up in thought to appreciate any of it.

His mind, as usual, is on his mission. It has been almost a year since he set out on this quest, a year since he left Undermount, disgraced and betrayed. Since he lost his best friend to the darkness of the Shadow Court. And he has almost nothing to show for it except a few killings of people who were no more than pawns.

Perhaps his luck will turn now that he’s encountered this party of adventurers.

His new companions are… interesting, he thinks diplomatically. Determined, clearly, and not without abilities. He senses a tremendous amount of raw, if dormant, power from the priestess; and he thinks the rogue’s less reputable skills might prove useful.

Then there’s Raine.

He’s still surprised by the strength of his reaction to her. It’s rare for him to crave someone at first sight. He rarely craves people: his infatuations tend to begin small, a mild interest that grows into something bigger and more intense as he gets to know its object. But as soon as he laid eyes on Raine, he wanted her.

He doesn’t like it. He can’t afford to lose control, not even of his own emotions. Perhaps especially not of his own emotions.

“Still watching the fae fish?” A voice asks, and for an absurd moment, he wonders if he summoned her.

“Not anymore.”

She walks up to him and rests her elbows on the railing. “Mind if I ask what’s on your mind?”

“You may ask. But I may choose not to answer.”

“You can say you were thinking about me, Tyril,” she teases, unaware of the fact that her words are at least partially true. “I won’t judge you.”

“If you must know, I was contemplating the requirements of my quest.”

“Considering your scowl, they might not be very nice.”

“Requirements are rarely ‘nice’.”

“You got me there. What are these requirements?”

He looks at the sea. “Control. Of myself, of my circumstances as much as possible.”

“That doesn’t seem like something that would be too hard for you.” When he turns to her, she waves a hand in his direction. “I mean, control seems to be your thing. Self-control at least. Of your circumstances…”

She breaks off, a look on her face that he’s seen in his own reflection. It’s a look of regret. Of helplessness.

“Yes?”

“Well. Are we ever truly in control of our circumstances?”

He leans against the railing. “Perhaps not completely, but I believe we can bend them to our will on occasion.”

“An optimist. I like it. Well.” She straightens and gives him a little wave. “I better go back to bed.”

“Raine.” He might not know her, but he thinks he knows what she needs right now. When she looks at him, he gives her a solemn look. “I will assist however I can in the search of your brother. You have my word.”

She smiles, a little sadly. “Thanks, Tyril. I appreciate that.”

Once she’s gone, Tyril’s thoughts don’t immediately turn back to his quest. Instead, he thinks back to his last words. He didn’t stop to think before he said them, which would alarm him on any other day. But now, remembering the look in Raine’s eyes, he can’t bring himself to regret them.

[cittielinks]

criminal on the loose!Yoo Joonghyuk x blind!Kim Dokja.

Yoo Joonghyuk has been running for almost 3 hours now. The adrenaline of being able to steal a billions worth of jewelry slowly faded away and the heaviness of his feet of constant running is tiring him up.

But he needs to hide, the police are still behind his tail, and he can’t afford to get caught not now, not when Mia is still waiting for him at home. 

Yoo Joonghyuk saw a shabby house in the middle of the forest, it’s so hidden that no one would be able to locate it if they don’t stare at the area hard. Yoo Joonghyuk quickly slip inside the house and hid. He slowly maintains his heart at a normal pace then he heard footsteps and murmurs.  His breath hitched as he saw a flashlight in the cracks. After what seems to be 10 minutes the footsteps run on the other side.

Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t move for another 15 minutes. 

When he finally feels like he is safe, Yoo Joonghyuk slumped on the ground and sighed in relief. then he heard a noise. 

“Fuck—“ someone winced in pain then followed by a groan.

Yoo Joonghyuk stood up, accessing his surroundings once more.  He took his sharp blade from his boots and then proceeded to look for the voice. Worst case scenario Yoo Joonghyuk would have to kill someone. he had killed before and killing one more doesn’t matter.

When Yoo Joonghyuk opened the door as silently as possible, he saw a man thin and pale as snow wearing an overly big-sized green cardigan trapped in a dangled wire along with what looked to be a crane. Yoo Joonghyuk stopped in his tracks, the man clearly looks in his direction, in fact, the man looks like he was staring at him with dazed misty eyes. A blind man? Yoo Joonghyuk thought. such a shame, his eyes look like a holder of thousands of stars, though misty looks beautiful. 

“Fuck these wires, why did they even exist. Han Sooyoung I swear I’ll kill you—“

the man mumbled as he desperately tries to free himself. 

Yoo Joonghyuk shook his head and then slowly walks towards the fallen man, his blade ready to strike at any moment then floor boards creek. 

‘Shit’

The man stops struggling the tries to move his head. 

“Is anyone there?” The man asked softly, fear laced unto every word. 

“…”

“Hello?” 

For whatever reason, Yoo Joonghyuk decided to respond. Maybe bc he knew the man won’t harm him or maybe bc he needed new entertainment, maybe Yoo Joonghyuk knew he could kill the man at any moment, or maybe bc the man was pretty enough to warrant his mercy. 

“I’ll get it out for you.” 

The man sighed in relief and smiled. 

“Thank god! I thought I’d be stuck like this for a month until Han Sooyoung comes back.”

The man said. 

Yoo Joonghyuk placed the blade back on himself and walked towards the man, he untangles the wires and helped the man hold his crane. Yoo Joonghyuk cautiously leads the man to a chair and sits him down. 

the man giggled and then nodded. 

“thank you so much!” he started.

“Though I didn’t get your name. Who are you? Are you Han Sooyoung’s friend?” He asked very curiously. Yoo Joonghyuk inhaled then lied his way. 

“I’m Joonghyun. Sooyoung’s friend. Uhh they told me to take care of you until they come back”

Yoo Joonghyuk clenched his fist as he stares at the man who was in deep thought. The man nodded and murmured something. 

“I hope she didn’t blackmail you into helping me.” 

“No, she didn’t don’t worry.”

“Thank god! I needed a bit of help and Sooyoungie’s not here with me to help for another month. In any case, Please take care of me. I’m Kim Dokja! I hope you don’t mind taking care of an ugly blind old man.” 

Yoo Joonghyuk nodded and then almost slapped himself, the man— Kim Dokja couldn’t see him nodding so he made an affirmative noise.

——

For days Yoo Joonghyuk was on guard around the pretty blind man and yet he still help Kim Dokja eat and clean. He never knew how idiotic the man is until he started babysitting him. 

Kim Dokja would not eat his meals unless he was reminded to eat, he would always sit outside just to get fresh air without wearing something warm. 

Sometimes the man would hole up in his room doing something Kim Dokja only knows. 

How Kim Dokja survived all these years, he will never know.

——

It was around 15 days into his stay at Kim Dokja’s sorry excuse of a house. They were cuddled up on the couch with some cocoa and warm blankets, Kim Dokja found himself leaning unto Yoo Joonghyuk’s chest. Yoo Joonghyuk never questioned it, Kim Dokja has a privilege.

“Hey,” Kim Dokja murmured. Yoo Joonghyuk hummed letting the man know that he is listening. 

“What color is blue?” Kim Dokja asked softly. Yoo Joonghyuk stopped tinkering with his phone and stared at the man who was closing his eyes. It took Yoo Joonghyuk a few minutes to respond.

“I don’t know” He answered truthfully. He was by no means poetic, he could never describe colors in something Kim Dokja could understand. 

“It’s okay, I’m just curious,” he said as he fiddles with his hands. Yoo Joonghyuk gazed at his companion and then holds Kim Dokja’s hands.

“Blue.. Blue is everywhere.” Yoo Joonghyuk started. Kim Dokja snuggled closely to the taller man. 

“Blue is the color of the sky when dawn finally breaks free from the night. blue is something that engulfs everyone, it's vast and pretty and when you finally get to see the world, I hope blue is the first color you see.” 

Kim Dokja giggled. 

“Thank you,  Joonghyun-ah.” 

—— 

Then for a couple of days, Kim Dokja would always ask Yoo Joonghyuk about which colour is which. It never dawned to Yoo Joonghyuk that he never thought of killing Kim Dokja not until Kim Dokja kissed him on the cheeks.

This can’t happen. This shouldn’t happen. His goal is to entertain Kim Dokja then kill him then return back to his old life.

That was the goal.— that IS the goal. 

Yoo Joonghyuk reminded himself every day. and every day he tries to distance himself lest he starts to fall in love with a man whose vision God took, he doesn’t want to fall in love with a man whose only wish is to see and to be seen. 

But he can’t. He can’t stop himself from falling in love with the man who has held him when he felt too little, he can’t stop himself from falling in love with the man who wishes nothing but to see colours. He can’t stop himself from falling in love with Kim Dokja

It’s finally the 30th and in a few days, Han Sooyoung would return home. And today, Yoo Joonghyuk decided to leave before Kim Dokja knew what happened within the 30 days was a lie

Today they are both on the couch, cuddling as they hold hands. Yoo Joonghyuk’s eyes never left Kim Dokja who was trying to read braille using one hand. 

This is the last time. Yoo Joonghyuk thought, his hands tightening at the thought of not seeing Kim Dokja after this.

“hey, Jonghyun-ah.” 

“What is it now, Kim Dokja?” 

Yoo Joonghyuk chuckled as he saw Kim Dokja pout. 

“What color is white and black?” 

“ White… white is the opposite of black.” 

“That’s it? You suck Joonghyun-ah!”

“Oh yeah?” Yoo Joonghyuk huffs as he poked Kim Dokja’s cheeks.

“But seriously!” 

“White is the absence of color, White is pure and something that can’t be attained easily as it’s not really a colour in a general sense. Same as Black. Black is something you know well. Black is the opposite of white it does not penetrate colors as this is empty and cold.” 

“You made it sound like black is bad.” Kim Dokja puffs his cheeks. 

“Really now?”  Yoo Joonghyuk raised his eyebrows and smiled gently, 

“Black.. I feel like although it sounded empty and cold. Black is something that is constant in my life. It’s there when I tried to open my eyes and it’s going to be there when I’m at the end of my lifeline. So in a general sense, I do not think black is something to be called empty and dark.”  Kim Dokja murmured.

———

When the day is finally over, Yoo Joonghyuk carried Kim Dokja unto his bed and tucked him in. 

Yoo Joonghyuk stared at Kim Dokja one last time. He can’t help but pressed his lips on his forehead and whispered good night to Kim Dokja. Just as he was about to leave, Kim Dokja grabbed the hem of his shirt.

“You’re not gonna stay?” he asked. 

Yoo Joonghyuk wanted to stay but he can’t he had already asked for too much and he couldn’t ask for more. 

“No, but I’ll see you tomorrow” No we won’t— 

“Then… good night, Joonghyuk-ah.” 

“What?… you knew?”

Kim Dokja nodded, he tries to locate Yoo Joonghyuk but with no eyesight, he stared in the wrong direction. 

“I knew for a while, now. Everyone was looking for a Yoo Joonghyuk. When you barged in, I was ready to end myself.”

Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath once again hitched in fear. He held Kim Dokja’s hands almost suddenly and tighten his hold.

“I thought maybe you’d kill me any minute so I played unto your charades. But I like being with you and I thought that as long as you willing to have me, I’d give you my little life any day.” 

“…”

“I’m sorry, Joonghyuk-ah.” 

“T-then Han Sooyoung? What about Han Sooyoung? Is she not real?!” Kim Dokja shooked his head. 

“She’s real, she was supposed to visit me two weeks ago but I told her not to because you’re here.”

Yoo Joonghyuk was silent, it has not yet understood what is happening. Kim Dokja knew? all this time? 

“You don’t hate me?” Yoo Joonghyuk asked, nervously his body trembled as he gaze at Kim Dokja intensely. 

“I like you, Joonghyuk-ah. Just what are you saying?” Kim Dokja laughs

“Your life is mine now. I won’t let you go.” 

“It’s always yours.” 

“I’ll let you see the whole colors, I promise.”

“Hmm!” 

——

 “Kim Dokja, 30 years old,  blind last seen at XXX has been filed missing. If you have any information please call the police. Thank you—“

Han Sooyoung sighed as she turned off the television. Her friend disappeared all of a sudden. Everyone said he was killed by a bear, some say he was murdered. She was set to visit him last week but when she finally arrived, the house was in shambles and there was no Kim Dokja in sight.

She could just hope that Kim Dokja is safe and happy.

[needfantasticstories]

Summary: Wild and Twilight argue. More missed connections ensue.

(Constructive feedback is welcome!)

Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 6: Wolf

Chapter Text

“Hands off it!” Wild tried to wrestle the slate away from Twilight as soon as the pair solidified.

“You’re not going back there!” Twilight lurched back, keeping it out of reach, and shoved it into his bag before Wild could stop him.

Wild lunged for the bag, but Twilight held it behind him. “Why do none of you trust me? I know what I’m do—” 

“No, you don’t! How many more monsters are hiding in that lair that you don’t know about, Wild? What else is in there that you have never seen? The weirdo that took them isn’t from here either, so you have no idea what you’re walking into! 

“I know the Yiga better than anyone! I know where they’re keeping them! We could have done more! What can we even report? That the Yiga have some big spiders now? That doesn’t tell us anything ! If you all would stop smothering me, we’d never have…” Wild dared not say the accusation on his tongue. 

But Twilight understood it all the same, and his glare grew sharp. “Wild. We can’t afford to be reckless.” He delivered each word like a blow, hoping the kid finally got it through his head. 

“You mean we shouldn't do things like run after shadow-infected lizalfos in a foreign era that none of us recognize? Like that, Twilight?” Wild spat, matching Twilight’s glare with his own. “Sometimes we have to take that chance, because it might never come back!” Wild turned away, pacing a few steps back and forth. He tried to close off the memories of his former companions, dressed in blue like him, and the young princess’s cold and doubting stare. “I know you all don’t see me as a hero like the rest of you. Trust me. I get it. I don’t have a Triforce, I failed my whole world, and I barely helped Zelda save this new one, but I can fix this , Twi. This is the one thing I know. This is my world, and if nothing else, I can find them here.”

“That’s…” And Twilight paused, choosing his words carefully, “I’ve never doubted your courage, Wild. That’s the problem. Look, we don’t know a damned thing about that other creep, and that shadow is still out there somewhere, doing Hylia knows what. This isn’t about you, or the Yiga, or me. I know I don’t always do right, but I know this now: a team can do more than one soldier. We’re all brave enough for whatever comes our way: I get it, I want to get in there too, but we can’t afford to lose you here, not when you’ve got to lead us.”

Wild could not believe what he was hearing. “Why don’t you , out of anyone, trust me?” Wolf was never this afraid!  

Twilight threw his arms wide, exasperated. “It’s not about trust, Wild. You’re as good as any of us, but think about it! What if they caught you too?” he demanded, tone descending coldly. 

Wild wanted to scream that this was ridiculous. “Twi, there are a million things that could happen! We can’t panic about that every time the Yiga show u—”

“Answer me!” Twilight roared, eyes terrifyingly sharp and bright. He closed his eyes and wiped his face. Taking a long breath, he tried again. “If they get you, how are we ever supposed to have a chance?" 

Wild stopped pacing and looked incredulously at his friend.This was not Wolf yet. Twilight didn’t know his future influence in Wild’s era. He didn't know how someday he’d be trapped in his canine form to guide Wild as his memories slowly returned. Who knew how it would shape Twilight’s future if he found out? And now he had to somehow hide all that from everyone who knew Wolf. His wolf . His partner in reckless adventures too numerous to count. Was this really the wolf that would storm a moblin camp armed only with sharp teeth and Wild’s nearly-splintered bow, scrounging arrows from the monsters? Was this the wolf that would lead him to boko camps for fun simply because it wanted to play ? Who was this young man, so angry and afraid? 

“I know you, Twilight, and you’d do everything you could to get me out.” Wild answered, punctuating his frustration with a furious wave. “You wouldn’t stop looking just because of some what-ifs. That’s not how we’ve survived.”

“And how do you expect us to do that? How would the rest of us start? We don’t even have maps yet. All we’ve got is one horse and two days without sleep, Wild, but only you have this.” Twilight shook the bag with the slate inside, still clutching it behind his back. “We wouldn’t be able to find you for weeks . None of us know your world like you do. You’ve got to lead us here, kid, not rush off on your own. Don’t make my mistake. That’s what chasing Shadow taught me, if nothing else.”

Wild sighed, and crossed his arms. Apparently that lesson didn’t last , Wild thought, missing his reckless, carefree canine friend. But he understood, at last, what Twilight was saying. They needed his maps. They needed his tools. Perhaps not his plans, but his slate and at the very least, his experience. 

“I trust your strength, Wild. But we’re relying on you to be smart about it.”

It stung. But he was right. He needed to think like Warrior now, strategize. He’d never been in charge of anyone except himself. He was always the sword in battles—point him the way, and he’d fight. And he worked on instinct in the wilderness, alone (except for Wolf) for weeks at a time. And when Zelda came back, a divine miracle, Link and Wolf drifted, following her lead, trying to find their place in her wake. It was a pleasant year. Peaceful. Then the portal opened between one step and another, and no one here had seen his wolf since.  

“Fine.” Wild answered at last, “What do you propose, then?”

“You show us how to get around, and we plan. Wars or Time or Four, they’ll figure something out fast.”

  Of course .

“They’re probably close, and still waiting for our scouting report. We’ll make a plan together, Wild. And Zelda is down there too, right?”

Zelda!   

I swore to keep her safe . Like a torch flaring to life, Wild had almost forgotten his purpose here—to protect the princess. How could he lead the other heroes and guarantee Zelda was safe? 

“Fine. We’ll wait here and talk to Zelda. I mean Flora. She needs to know about Hyrule and Legend anyway.” Wild pulled out his glider, but stopped for a moment, considering. “She studies a lot of history, too. I can explain just how excited she is to meet you all, and interrogate you about your different eras, though she hasn't shared much with me yet. But there’s a chance she knows something about this demon that could help us.” 

The ranch hand gave a single, small laugh. He recognized the same devotion he felt for Dusk. And from all he’d told them, Wild shared something with his Zelda most of them did not: the loss of their entire generation. The pair had little to cling to from their own time, a century ago, besides one another. Just thinking of all the rebuilding the two had ahead, compared to his own land, daunted Twilight. He was grateful he didn’t truly understand this level of ruin, based on the broken statues and toppled walls they’d passed in Faron. Rebuilding Dusk’s castletown from a failed attack by Gannondorf proved hard enough.

Wild had opened his glider. “I’ll meet you down there. But stay human!” He ordered, and he leapt, soaring down over the fence to land at the stable’s entrance.  

Twilight rolled his eyes. Give a kid a little authority, suddenly he gives orders like a king. “Idiot,” Twilight grumbled with as much affection for the kid as frustration. He used his clawshot to descend quickly, and landed in the verdant valley.  

Sheep lazily nibbled within the low wooden fence. A pair of cows huffed and sneezed, their coats heavy. Thin trees ringed the perimiter and kept the wind from overwhelming the stable’s canvas, breaking the gusts from small valleys nearby into gentler breezes. 

It felt homely, welcoming, not so cold or stuffy as the palaces and city inns. With a yawn, Twilight jogged to reach the stable,  rubbing his eyes, weak to the pull of sleep despite the afternoon sun. They hadn’t slept since leaving Time’s ranch in the dead of night over a day and a half ago, and the drag in his limbs grew harder to resist. Still, he shook himself and hurried to enter the stable, jumping over the little wood fence and ignoring the livestock with some effort.

Before he could reach the tent’s entrance, Wild’s agitated voice came from the stable owner’s booth, and Twilight rushed to his side. Another problem, already? Today was not their day.  

Wild, clearly flustered, was pulling at his own ponytail, scowling as he spoke to a man in a booth. Clearly they’d been discussing something before he arrived. The Champion stopped to wave a hand Twilight’s way like an afterthought. “Padok, this is a friend of mine. Call him Twilight. Twilight, meet stablemaster Padok.”

“Oh! One of the friends Lady Purah mentioned would be coming?” The stablemaster’s arms were spread wide as he leaned over the counter, and he turned to peer over at Twilight. Padok was taller than Wild, but hunched and leaned as if to hide it. His side ponytails, bound in twine, reminded Twilight of the style Dawn preferred, albeit less elegant. A woolen cap, pointed at the top, covered his ears against the chill winds rustling behind them across the wild plains. The rest of Padok’s clothes fit cold weather too: long, thick leather gloves, a heavy white shirt, red handkerchief to warm his neck and a rustic blue vest with heavy leather stitching to insulate his core. 

They were in for a cold night. 

Wild might forgive him for taking his wolf form if it meant more blankets for the others.  

“Pleasure,” Twilight waved at the man who stared back—-not at Twilight’s eyes, but at his forehead. Twilight’s irritation only grew as the man continued to stare, as if uncovering some puzzle. 

He scowled. The man jerked his eyes back to Wild with a startle. But kept glancing between Wild and Twilight, apparently too afraid to ask the question on his mind. 

“When did they leave?” Wild demanded, fiddling with the holster that usually held his slate.

“About an hour ago. They didn’t say where.”

“Did she leave a message? A note?” Wild asked. 

“Not that she told me of.” He shrugged. “You seem awfully worried, Master Link. She’s safe with Purah, if anyone.”

Wild muttered, “Unless she’s tinkering with Sheikah explosives.” But he knew that wasn't the reason for his unease. What else did the demon know? What did it want? Wild just wanted to see Zelda, if only to assure himself she was safe, since the others had yet to arrive. Looking out at the unoccupied fields, he sighed. There were no shrines near enough to the path his brothers walked. They could either wait here, go on foot to meet the others, or…

Wild raised a brow at Twilight and held out his hand. “I need the slate. We need to make a quick side-trip.”

“Wild, we need to stay put. Lets wait for the others first.” 

“I said we’d meet after scouting and after making sure Zelda is safe.” Wild nodded. “And it’s fast. I promise.”

“How quick?”

“We’ll be done before the others arrive.” 

“Fine.”

“Don’t make me regret it.” He handed the slate back to Wild, and Wild made a show out of scrolling away from the canyon and to a new location—a small tower with what might have been a windmill on top. 

Wild reached for Twilight’s hand. With a shudder at the odd tingling to come, the Ordonian eyed the slate and reluctantly obliged.

They appeared just outside the door of a tall, quaint cottage. 

Oh . Twilight thought, looking closer. A quaint cottage with a giant machine sprawled over the top. 

And a stone frog over the door. 

A stone frog with red glasses. 

And a forge with bluenfire. 

And a red Sheikah eye on the door.

Perhaps quaint was an understatement. 

They knocked, but no one answered. 

Wild opened the door to an empty cottage.

“Symin? Purah? Zelda?”

No one answered.

“I don’t like this.” Wild signaled Twilight to follow. Wild put a hand up abruptly.

“What is it?” Twilight grumbled as he stood awkwardly in the doorway.

“Wait...” Wild strode to a wall and pulled a picture off, laying it face down and covering it with a stack of papers. “There. Come on in. Symin at least should be here, but—”

“What was that, Wild?” Twilight stared at the papers Wild had thrown over the mysterious picture.

“Just…something private.”

“You mean embarrassing private, or—” Twilight stepped closer, wondering if this was another clue to the mysterious silk clothing Wild had blushed about a few weeks ago.

“No, it’s an I don’t want to break a timelineprivate.” Wild gave him a dead-cold stare and Twilight knew he meant it. A bit taken aback, Twilight offered a short hum to acknowledge he understood, and avoided the desk entirely as he looked around the chaotic laboratory, despite how his fingers itched to grab the papers away.

“Does Flora come here often?” he asked, purely to distract himself from the tantalizing stack of papers. 

“She does, yeah. And Kakariko. But she has plans to build her own place to pursue her own interest. She loves old cultures, not just the Sheikah but all the old civilizations. The less she knows about one, the more interested she is.”

“Do you tell her much about us?”

Wild smiled and showed the inventory on his slate.

“Nine hundred ninety-nine books? How can you even fit that many… you know what, nevermind. Aren’t you worried about breaking the timeline?”

“Not for us. They’re mostly Four and Sky’s old school books. From what I can tell, we’re so far down the timeline that we already have a lot of these legends. Got a few strange ones from Wars though. But if one person can handle this knowledge, it’s her. Besides my weapons, the rest is seeds, spices, some preserves from Malon, and the black blood samples. I don’t have much else, except a few pictures of your eras. I wish I could get one of all your Zeldas.”

“And you’re worried about the timeline?”

“I’m worried about your timelines, not mine. To this era, you’ve already happened, so I don’t think we’ll be changing anything. Though Four insisted on the blacksmithing books.” 

Twilight considered that. What could they learn here that would affect their lives, their futures? Would it change them? Would they cause their own futures to alter now that they’d come? But hadn’t that already happened, if it happened now?  

Wild looked around the too-quiet lab. “Where is everyone?”

“Wild, we really don’t have time to wait. Let's get back to the stable.”

With a sigh, Wild tapped the slate and they left the lab behind. 

A stream of blue light appeared.  Two women appeared outside the door. 

“Impa was right! You haven’t slept since they arrived! Don’t worry, Princess. I’ll get them all settled. You’re as bad as Link, you know that? He’s not going anywhere, and you need rest! Go on upstairs. I’ll come back for you soon!” the bespeckled, teenage-looking centenarian ordered and closed the door.

Zelda gave an undignified grumble. This was the last place she wanted to be, but there was no arguing with Purah and Impa when they agreed on something. 

She started for the stairs, admitting that perhaps she was a little tired, when she noticed the picture missing from the wall. Confusion wrinkled her brow, and she found the bowed stack of papers, and lifted the picture. Link, herself, Purah all smiled back at her while Wolf’s tongue lolled happily. It had been taken before Link...no...before Wild left. Why had it been turned facedown on the table?

“Purah!”  Zelda threw the door open in time to see the researcher press a button on her pad with a dramatic tilt of her wrist, leaving Flora alone at the lab. “Wait!”

But the girl was gone. 

[razorblade180]

What’s it saying?

Deep into Menagerie’s desert, the orange glow colors the sand as well as a secluded house. Jael, a young girl in training, walks out with her new blade. It’s seen no real battle but has earned countless experience in training with the best, her father. The man currently sat by the oasis her mother made. He was waiting for, his legs crisscrossed and his sword stabbed deep in the sand between them.

Jael eagerly approached. Anytime spent with her father was time cherished in her eyes. She sat down in front of him and mimicked his stance, blade and all. He couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm.

Adam:That eager to train?

Jael:Of course! I’m always willing to learn from you. Even the boring stuff.

Adam:Heh, the “boring stuff” will be the root of all your success. At the very least, it’ll make your failures less grand.

Jael:I was joking. I know stance practice matters. It’s just a bummer when that’s the entire lesson before you go off on another mission. Standing in the sand gets dull. Unlike my blade.

Adam:Heh. I suppose I can’t fault you for that. However, today we focus on your semblance.

Jael:Really? Okay. You’ve always said I was pretty talented with it. What’s there to learn outside of a science lesson on gravity?

Adam:Semblances have the opportunity to grow and evolve. You’re not like most people; gaining a semblance three years ago at the tender age of eight. It’s rare.

Jael:Yeah? But you told me you got yours really early to.

Adam:Yes, I did. But not without reason. Jael, tell me, have you heard the common philosophy behind semblances?

Jael:Mom talked a little about it. I also read a few general things after I got mine. Some people believe personality defines what you’ll manifest, but people also think you act like what your semblance was always going to be.

Adam:Heh, you really are a smart kid.

Jael:Our house is stuffed with books. I get bored sometimes. What do you believe?

Adam:Personally, I could go either way to an extent. What’s important is the question itself and the conservation you’ll have with your semblance.

Jael:I…don’t think I follow.

Adam:I got my semblance right after the worst moment of my life. A typical thing really; stress induced moments force the body to act. For a very long time though…I never really pondered why it formed the way it did. For it to be exactly what I needed felt more like a response rather than predetermined circumstances.

Jael: A response. So…what I felt, or rather asked, is what this is about?

Adam:Precisely. Can you think of why it’s gravity?

Jael:…..*looks away* Well…life is heavy I guess.

Adam: “Life is heavy.” Heh, I can see that. A young girl growing up in a place like this, it’s far from ideal. I’m sorry it’s not always accommodating.

Her head snapped back towards his direction in disbelief.

Jael:No! I’m not blaming you or mom! I don’t even hate this place. I just…*grabs her chest* Life really feels heavy. Even now; especially now.

Adam:…..Are you angry?

Jael:I-I can’t afford to be. “Everythings in moderation.” I get it, I really do but it’s soooo tiring. I’ve learned so many interesting things, was hurt falling down step before, and have even seen a grimm; and yet in all those experiences it feels like I’m only living in those moments half the time. Even with my meditation! I-

Her words fell short as she felt a faint flutter. The family taste of iron hit the back of her throat, and Jael quickly took a breath. The practice routine of breathing slowly and checking her nose for blood only served to prove the point that her life was like a boiling pot she mustn’t let spill over. Hell she couldn’t even cry without making her family and herself scared! Jael gripped the sand beside her as she held her head down in silent frustration and anger.

Adam gave his daughter a moment not to collect herself, but to simply exist in this difficult moment. Somedays he wondered if the gods put a cage around her life because he never made the choice to stay in one. If that were the case, then they were crueler than any warden. Then again, despite the medical problems, his daughter beat the odds. Stubbornness was one of the few things he was thankful she got from him.

Jael:If I was given the power to use gravity because of how I feel, then I don’t know if that’s a good or horrible thing. I can’t tell what’s stronger. My dream of feeling free like everyone else, or that sometimes I get so angry that I wish I could bring them down to my level so they get what it feels like. Am I…am I a bad person?

Adam:Of course not. You’re upset and handling an issue that was out of your control. It only makes sense to feel jealous towards those who don’t have your problems, but…don’t hold it against them. It wasn’t in their control either. Believe me, I know that doesn’t sound comforting.

Jael:.You’ve the conversation. What did you hear?

Adam:…Myself. It took quite a while, but I eventually sat with my Anger and it told me its name was Guilt. It screamed in my ears, telling nonstop that ever since I lost everything to my rage that I deserve nothing else but standing in the line of fire and takes what’s coming at me like I deserve. Either let it finally do me in or throw it all back screaming like I’ve always done. My semblance is my retaliation and rebellion. I wouldn’t call it as noble as a similar semblance I’ve come to known, but even so, that doesn’t mean I can’t stand in line of fire and retaliate for others. Like my daughters for example.

Jael:If that’s the case, then I think I know even less about myself than before.

Adam:I wouldn’t cut yourself short. You feel shackled, unable to stretch your wings like other people. I’d switch places with you in an instant but I can’t. So…I’ll do the next best thing and help you make your semblance into a key. Bear in mind, it won’t be easy.

Jael:*raises head slowly* What…are you talking about? A key?

Adam:If your life feels heavy then let your semblance lighten the load. With enough practice, a bit of skill, luck, and rigorous effort, some people learn to use their semblance’s in meticulous ways while others are capable of incredibly long applications of their talents. Starting today, let’s make you into one of those people and keep the pressure off your heart.

Jael:You, you think I can do that?

Adam:I can’t promise you it’ll be anything perfect but as I’ve told you, and like I’ve been reminded of, you’re a talented person. Let’s fight together for a sense or normalcy in our own right.

Jael:A sense of normalcy, huh.

It sounded so…average. So mundane and simple in a way that was so glorious despite the distance. Jael couldn’t help but let the idea of such a life bring tears rolling down her face as she watched her father get up, walking towards her with his arm stretched out for her to reach. Her left hand raised up slowly on its own as she was still enraptured by such a dream. A sense of normalcy.

Jael:Yeah, I wanna fly too.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

Plane Shift: New Phyrexia - Human Subraces

For the past 2-3 years, I've been working on a homebrew D&D 5e supplement for New Phyrexia, and it occurred to me that I could publish/share it in installments here on Tumblr! Today, I'll put up human subraces. Core-born Phyrexians and playable myr (among other things) to come! PS:NP was written to take place during Scars of Mirrodin block or earlier, since that's when my campaign is, but its contents--including these subraces--are forward compatible with other points in the timeline.

--

Like their relatives on other planes, the humans of Mirrodin are ingenious, ambitious folk who strive to leave their mark on the world. They are divided into five distinct ethnic groups: the Auriok of the Razor Fields, the Neurok of the Quicksilver Sea, the Moriok of the Mephidross, the Vulshok of the Oxidda Chain, and the Sylvok of the Tangle. Your Mirran human character has the following traits.

Type. You are a Humanoid. You are also considered a human for any prerequisite or effect that requires you to be a human.

Ability Score Increase. One ability score of your choice increases by 2, and another increases by 1.

Age. Humans reach adulthood in their late teens and live about a century.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language of your choice (except  Phyrexian).

Size. Humans vary widely in height and build, from barely 5 feet to well over 6 feet tall. Regardless of your position in that range, your size is Medium.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.

Ethnic group. Choose one of the five Mirran human ethnic groups for your character to belong to.

Auriok

The Auriok are a nomadic people, specializing as warriors, spellcasters, and diplomats who form alliances between tribes and with the other races of the Razor Fields. Each Auriok tribe is led by a champion who is responsible for their people's well-being. Auriok skin is bronze-colored and embedded with gold, and their hair is bleached white by the constant light of the suns.

Auriok Combat Training. You are proficient with the longsword and shortsword.

Diplomatic. You have proficiency with Insight and Persuasion.

Neurok

Having thrown off the yoke of slavery under vedalken masters, the Neurok have risen to a dominant position in the chrome-spire settlements on the Quicksilver Sea, based in their capital at Lumengrid. They are scientists and inventors, among the first to notice and study the increasing amounts of glistening oil on Mirrodin's surface. Silvery, chrome-like metal adorns Neurok skin, and their hair, often hidden under elaborate, multi-eyed headdresses, is brown, red, or blond.

Breadth of Knowledge. You gain proficiency with any combination of three skills or tools of your choice.

Cantrip. You know one cantrip of your choice from the wizard spell list. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it (choose when you select this race).

Moriok

Carving out a living in the inhospitable swamp of the Mephidross, the Moriok endure constant exposure to its necrogen gas and battle the harsh urges its fell magic draws out. Lead-like metal emerges from underneath their skin, often forming visors over their eyes. They are tall and pale, decorating their bodies with dark leather and ornaments of tooth and bone.

Inured to Necrogen. You are resistant to poison damage, and you have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned.

Relentless Endurance. When you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you can choose to drop to 1 hit point instead. You can’t use this feature again until you finish a long rest.

Vulshok

Renowned blacksmiths, warriors, and geomancers, the Vulshok people create armor and weapons of the best quality that can be found on Mirrodin. They are divided into six tribes based on their smithing specialization: Anvil, Blade, Hammer, Helm, Shield, and Spear. The iron spikes on their skin afford them a degree of natural armor. Vulshok are heavyset and sturdily built, and ember cores are embedded in their chests, glowing red-hot in moments of strong emotion.

Expertise of the Forge. You have proficiency with smith's tools.

Heart of Flame. You have resistance to fire damage. In addition, you know the produce flame cantrip. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it (choose when you select this race).

Iron Skin. You gain a +1 bonus to your AC when you aren't wearing heavy armor.

Sylvok

The most insular of Mirrodin's humans, the Sylvok are druidic hunter-gatherers who place emphasis on tradition, nature, and harmony. Unlike the canopy-dwelling elves, Sylvok inhabit the undergrowth of the Tangle, subsisting off gelfruit and the meat they hunt. They view artifice as a form of worship, using their skills to venerate the natural world through imitation. Their skin is decorated with intricate patterns of copper that imitate the look of plant growth.

Expert Navigator. A lifetime spent in the twisted growths of the Tangle has made you sure-footed and adept in tough travelling conditions. You ignore nonmagical difficult terrain.

Sylvok Magic. You know the druidcraft cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the animal friendship spell once per day; you must finish a long rest in order to cast the spell again using this trait. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells (choose when you select this race).

Tangle's Lore. You gain proficiency in a skill of your choice from among Animal Handling, History, Nature, Religion, and Survival.

[banshee-king]

New models revealed! And although I am overall happy I also have some nitpicks to complain about.

I thought the Striking Scorpion Kill Team vs the Scouts was bad because of the mono-loadout of the Eldar vs all the customisation options of the Scouts, but GW did it again! It actually looks like Mandrakes might have LESS options than Scorpions if the squad leader can’t be upgraded. There’s no lore reason this time why 1 in 5 Mandrakes can’t take a different weapon, so what happened?

Now, maybe the models two-handing the blade/Baleblast respectively actually have different weapons, maybe the sickle blade will get different rules to the other blades. But they only mentioned the Glimmersteel Blades in the article, so if there were any other options I think they’d have mentioned them. Was it too hard to add a Bewitched blade? Soul-siphon dagger? Hex-tipped spear? No room on the sprue for one option?

New Kroot look cool though. I really like the Krootox Rampagers. The original Krootox (whilst it’s new model looks nice) is a bit confused since melee/ranged hybrid units can struggle to be good. You’re paying extra points for a unit that can’t shoot in melee, can’t melee from afar, never using 100% of its strengths. A dedicated melee unit in the Rampagers is great for the T’au.

The two new Shapers also look cool, and I like them in concept, but I would have preferred if one was a Psyker. It’s just that I hate redundancy, Xenos aren’t Space Marines so they can’t afford it. The T’au get blasted for being a stationary ranged army, with too many battlesuits and not enough alien auxiliaries. So ranged Kroot or melee battlesuits doesn’t interest me as much as say melee/psychic aliens.

Which is why I’m mixed on the new Kroot Carnivores. In a vacuum I love them, but weren’t the Farstalkers meant to replace them? The kit adds a whole 1 new gun to the range. Instead of that couldn’t we have gotten an entire new alien species? I love Kroot but I don’t want Codex T’au Empire to just be T’au plus Kroot. Personally, I’m happy with Kroot having 3-4 units, then a bunch of other species getting a unit each. You could have a tunnelling species, a stealthy chameleon species, a wall-climbing species, a small teamworking species whose basic units are like Skaven Jezzail teams. Anything that isn’t made immediately redundant by Fire Warriors.

I’m still overall happy with plastic Kroot/Mandrakes, don’t get me wrong, but I’m just a little disappointed with the execution.

[notmuchtoconceal]

The Mandrake, Pt. 1 of None

The girl’s skin is green with the softness of battered flesh.

If she were brown, her innards would be tart and firm, but she’s mostly tasteless mush. What remains of her face is a wrinkled depression implying the outline of eyes and nose. A slanting molar column mars the slope where her body tapers from stem to base.

A faint gurgle bubbles from her insides. The skin beside the teeth flaps in and out, spewing what sounds like “kill me.”

Bulges of necrotic tissue, still shaped like breasts, shoulder blades and fingers, slicken against the latex suit of her dermis. The name she had as a human is classified. Lost among an avalanche of file folders in a mountainous region of dusty filing cabinets.

She sits in a field outside a plastic pseudo-suburb and smog’s gushing from the mortar lungs of cutout factories mid in the near-distance. With midday resurging, the black veil recedes and decaying radiation shines in a vast tanning bed of yellow dawn. Crows gather on the tops of power lines and radio towers, hunger gleaming in pebbles black and shining with acid rain. Within minutes, the flock could descend as a hurricane of feather and sinew and pick apart the girl to a slimy pit of black bone.

The birds are set dressing placed here to inform me that this is a wet operation. Or, due to the impairment of the target, a thankless execution.

Sickle Cell’s dressed all in white, looking a bit like a barn owl resting on top of a ceramic mall mannequin. Under a wide umbrella, in a beach chair, she’s lounging in a matching sundress and hat with oversized circular sunglasses, the rims of which gleam impeccably. She crosses her legs, squeaking leather boots that she can’t possibly afford, and enters into a staring contest with the girl’s eyeless visage. It is one not one which is unfamiliar to the eye which trains itself on remaining untrained. The subtle curvature of her apricot lips and the tautness of her cheeks display mutual sadness and repulsion. She gives this look to herself in the mirror after coming home from dinner. Behind those opacified lenses, her eyes are running down the curvature of the girl and she’s laying that impression like tracing paper over the memory of her own body.

“Do you pity it?” Sickle asks.

Sweat’s soaking through my new shirt. My jeans are shit, but my back’s held up rigidly straight to draw attention to my upper body.

Certain details are not clear to me. As the hot sun beats down on my head and the long walk simmers in my legs, it’s best to put-off dwelling on them until the last possible second.

“Can’t feel much of anything, sorry. Slept through breakfast and skipped lunch.”

“I know; I’m a bit peckish, too. I still can’t help but feel something for her. It, I mean.”

Kneeling down next to her, my fingers run through her expertly mussed hair.

“Are you planning to meet somebody later?”

Her shoulders retract as she looks at the horizon. She slips off her sunglasses and sunlight strikes her eyes in a golden censor bar as she lingers with a dignified melancholy—a look that you can’t help but dismiss as a display of holier-than-thou mock-sentiment.

With a deep breath and the smells of ash, burning fat and dry dirt fill my lungs. Plastic glove on my hand, my legs swagger toward the girl.

“What’re you doing?” Sickle asks.

“We were tasked with this case for a reason, love.”

The scarecrow standing ten feet away is a hanged-man with a noose made of straw intestine. A burning hot pole enters his rectum and pierces the cap of his skull. This tells me the girl committed a crime worthy of two deaths. The fingers of his right hand cover his lips while the fingers of his left hand cross behind his back. This outs the girl as an informant or snitch. The cosmetics caked on his face tell me the girl had an active nightlife, possibly moonlighting as a hair metal singer or party clown.

I linger on the scarecrow’s bright yellow sundress and the string of doll-heads hanging from fishhooks in the straw rope.

Kneeling beside the girl, dry grass scratches my knees through frayed denim knotholes. My fingers run delicately over her exposed teeth, which have the soft smoothness of porcelain. The textures of her flesh alternate between the weave of canvas and the chunky ripples of papier-mâché. Living animal warmth radiates from her skin. Her body muffles the audible machinery of digestion and blood circulation.

She reeks of lilac perfume and red wine. The latter could be either a leftover from her last night as a human, or the onset of fermentation. On her back is an unspoiled patch of milky white skin emblazoned with a tramp-stamp depicting two worms wrapped around an oar.

I snap my fingers and weakly mumble “totally called it” and it’s only a few seconds later, after a few crows caw like they’re congratulating me, that I wish I’d made more of a show of things.

“Did you check for STDs?” Sickle asks.

“Hell no. I’m not reaching into those fetid depths unless my life depends on it. I bet she has more crabs than a Red Lobster.”

She moans softly to herself. “I could go for some crabs right now.”

“This bitch has the mark, dearest. She was definitely one of CHERRIE’s. From the detail in the tattoo, I’m going to say she was classy enough to be more than a fuck-toy, but from the location, too slutty to be in his harem of silk-clad vampire wives.”

“You think he ever wined and dined it? Candles, violins, clam chowder. Everything.”

“He’s totally the kind of asshole who deludes himself into thinking he’s sophisticated. We’re going to interrogate the vegetable to our heart’s content before commencing with the execution.”

“Are you positive that it’s no longer a person? I mean, it still has teeth!”

“Flytraps have teeth.”

“Not human teeth, dear.”

“What differences does it really make?” I shrug my shoulders and only realize now how heavy my upper body really feels. “We’ve got calcified husks specialized for tearing and grinding. They’ve got thin sensory prongs. It’s the difference between a meat-grinder and a steak knife.”

“Is feeling up an empty bra as fun as groping a full breast?”

“That depends on how lacy it is, now stop changing the subject. This woman, dear Sickle, is going to die because she deserves to die. That decision was made by people smarter than you, who are more willing to assess reality by hoisting their responsibilities on me, a capable agent.”

“What reality is that?” She slides her sunglasses back on. “That all life is equally worthless, but the law carries weight to a degree that it’s pointless to question it, though you'll question everything else?”

“Sickle, you need to lose that tone. It’s simple pragmatism, come now. If we wanted to determine if she was more human or vegetable, we’d need to perform a dissection, so she’s fucked either way. We could kill her, leave her here, rip out her guts and throw them at geese. It’s all going to accomplish the same amount of nothing, so it’s sensible to drain the last remnants of her miserable life pursuing information.”

That shuts Sickle up for a bit.

The crows caw like they’re laughing at her. Now that she’s drained her capacity for rational argument, she attempts to implore my emotions in a passive-aggressive manner without seeming at all obvious about it.

“It’s different, you know. Wishing harm on something and witnessing it. I knew it a bit. We weren’t friends or anything. In fact I frequently found it irritable on good days and obnoxious on bad days, but I’d never wish this on anything, not even my worst enemy or my best friend.”

I’m not paying much attention to her.

My body stinks of sweat and rotting fruit salad. My hands finger the cap of a bottle of cologne in my pocket and I’m pretending to stretch and yawn so I can discreetly spritz myself.

“Dearest, you wouldn’t have the imagination to wish this on her.”

She’s rummaging through a white leather purse. “I used to think it was a convenience to hang out with someone who felt so little. It was nice to not be expected to fake tears when I had none to shed.”

“Always a pain, isn’t it, love?” I ask. “Doesn’t it diminish the worth of empathy to falsify it so regularly? They blow soldiers to bits in deserts, cork children with assault weapons, and I’m expected to fake tears for a fruitcup like a thunderous orgasm in the great porno theater of life.”

Sickle opens an eggshell compact from her purse. She can’t see her own eyes. “Cruelty is understandable when it’s either anonymous or personal. I weep for the dead children. Really, I do. I’m only human after all. They’re so young, so unsure of everything. The girls I watch after look at me with such warm smiles that it crushes my heart whenever they so much as frown. I suppose there’s a sort of lull in the spectrum of human empathy. I simply cannot be bothered to care for someone I barely know. Nothing needs to be said about the raw nerve of a loved one in pain, but with strangers, there’s a sort of purity in aimless victimization.”

Crouching over Sickle’s lap, the prongs of the umbrella poke my scalp. My hands fall upon her shoulders and my face slides inches from her nose. She has to smell the cologne. In the reflection of her sunglasses is the first haircut I’ve had in months.

I lick my lips and whisper in her ear. “What I’m taking from that stirring oratory is that I’ve got carte blanche to torture the veggie.”

Her lacquered gaze glides along the barren earth. She pushes me off, takes two steps toward the girl and stops as if lost in thought.

I smell my forearm and spritz myself some more.

The crows look like they’re nudging and shushing each other. When I walk up beside her, she’s giggling.

“Maybe instead of an interrogation,” she says, “we can perform a firsthand investigation of certain, uh… dineries in the area to see if we can find any… um, physical evidence of occupation by hostile forces. You said yourself that this mystery man might take his prospects out for dinner.”

“Why do I bring you out on field work? You’re a useless combination of hungry, lazy and female.”

She whines so suddenly her glasses fall off.

“I want crab legs.”

“Crab legs do sound nice.”

“Fried shrimp.”

“Oh fuck, fried shrimp…”

“Lobster.”

My stomach rumbles. “Maybe we can just nibble on the vegetable?”

“You’re not even sure if it’s still human. That could be cannibalism.”

“Jesus Christ, can you go five seconds without pointing out another ethical ambiguity?”

“Why? I was planning to make a game of it.”

“I bet she would taste good with applesauce.”

I had anticipated she would moan the word “applesauce” in the throes of muted orgasm, but her mind is elsewhere else and she’s probing the girl with squinting eyes and not a hint of appetite.

“Can it hear us?” she asks.

“Does she have ears?”

“I don’t think so? What’s that thing on its side?”

“The beginnings of an asexual budding?”

“Throw a rock at it.”

I hoist a chunk of broken granite from the base of a pile of stones. The edges scratch my naked palms. I whirl and toss it through the air and watch it rip through the soft flesh of her growth. A glistening bright red wound, like overripe watermelon in the harsh sunlight gushes a rivulet of blood and fluorescent mucus with the viscosity of corn syrup.

The girl lets out a horrible shriek that rips through my ears and forces the perched crows to take off and block out the sun.

I can’t even hear my own obscenity over the ringing in my ears.

‘I’m going to fucking kick that thing, I swear!” yells Sickle.

“She’ll scream again, you bimbo! Don’t fucking touch her!”

Sickle reaches up to her ears and watches blood run down her palm.

“I won’t,” she says, “but only because I’m thinking of the glop it’ll get on my new boots”

“Can you repeat that darling, I fear I’m a wee bit deaf in one ear.”

“Huh? What did you just say? Try talking into the ear that isn’t bleeding.”

“She’s developed the perfect defense mechanism to endure any interrogation. How could she have started evolving so soon after transmogrification?”

“Nope, still can’t hear you,” shouts Sickle.

“No method of polite coercion will get her to talk if she can scream that fucking loud.”

“I’m still trying to figure out how you expect it to talk when it doesn’t have a mouth.”

“Our only hope is to forsake the threat of pain and force upon her the fear of an instant death.”

“I like that you’re not answering my questions.”

“She’ll talk if we drag her up someplace high and suspend her on the edge of vertigo. There’s no way she’ll be stupid enough to scream and risk us letting her go, as that will set into motion her rapid descent to a delectable splat on the pavement.”

“It really is the only way,” she’s twirling her sunglasses on her finger. “There’s no way it would talk if I sat down and tried to ask it questions. We are, of course, one-hundred percent positive that it wants to withhold information. Poor dear would never think to buy protection.”

I reach under my shirt and spritz my chest. “You really need to learn how to mix business with pleasure, you know that?”

The girl mumbles something again. It sounds like “For fuck’s sake, will you shut up and kill me already!”

Sickle walks up to the girl. “Hey sweetie, how are you feeling?”

The girl screams something unflattering about Sickle’s figure.

“Oh fuck you, fat ass!” she says. “You’re one to talk. That’s not an apple bottom, it’s a bean-bag bottom, bitch!”

“Sickle, stop while you’re ahead,” I implore lucidly, so sick of saying. “The interrogation is a delicate art and frankly I’m Bosch at a triptych and you’re a kindergartener with finger-paints.” I walk up to the girl and calmly ask, “Well, fat ass, what’s your relationship with CHERRIE?”

She says, “Eat a dick, faggot.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” I rub my chin. “Sickle, darling, cover your ears.”

Yanking the penknife I always carry in my pocket, I stab her with dozens of vigorous jerks until she screams so loudly, my blind furor slows to a wobbly stutter. White circles flash against my collapsed eyelids and I fall back into the sun-drenched dirt. Red sticky heat fills my ears and runs down my cheeks. When I open my eyes, Sickle’s face is hovering over me, out of focus, her mouth flapping with hysteric jaw contortions, but no words are coming out. When I push her aside and try to stand up, my head throbs with a pulsating buzz and a static whine fills the silent vacuum of the world. My arm is numb and my elbow is on fire with a peroxide burn. The girl’s twitching like she’s in the onset of an epileptic fit. An assortment of fluids, all some shade of green, red or brown, pours down her corkboard flesh as it succumbs to black splotches of rot.

I sit down on the dirt completely of my own volition. I don’t stumble backwards and land on my ass. Sickle pulls a cluster of movie theater napkins from her purse and clutches two wads to my ears. The cheap pulp scratches at the swollen cartilage and bloats with blood so quickly that after a minute it’s not soaking in anything.

Ten minutes later, after standing hunched over a particularly eroded bit of soil sutured by railroad spikes, blood pouring ontp the ground and not my clothes, my hearing comes back.

Sickle’s mumbling to herself about how I either don’ t think things through or over-think everything for so long that I end up not doing anything and that I should really pick one or the other already.

I turn to her and say “I can hear you clearly now.”

She smiles and says, “Well, thanks for that brilliant display of your interrogation skills.”

“Do you have any bright ideas, love? I’m ready to chuck this bitch off a building regardless of how much she talks.”

She puts her sunglasses back on. “I propose we retire the old phrase ‘draining blood from a stone’ and from now on use the far more topical ‘stabbing information out of a vegetable’.”

‘You were a fool for ever questioning my blood-lust, dearest” I turn to the girl, and with the solemn voice of an executioner ask “What say you, veggie? If you speak now, we will grant you entrance to immortality on your own terms. If not, we, who are now death incarnate, will make you suffer to your last breath.”

The girl does not answer.

She continues to twitch and bleed and I can’t tell if she’s purposefully biting her tongue or vocally impaired due to the severing of a vital nerve.

Frankly, I don’t care much and mournfully intone, “Then suffering you shall have.”

Sickle pauses. “You should light it on fire,” she says. “It might explode.”

“I’d rather crush it under something heavy,” I say. “There’s something immensely satisfying about the splatter of cracking bones.”

“These are all pie-in-the-sky ideas, dear. You don’t have anything that can burn or crush. You’ll need to be more down to earth and I don’t think you can do that on an empty stomach.”

There’s a gnawing rumble in my guts. I say, “Let’s leave her on the train tracks and call it a day.”

“Who knows how long we’ll be waiting for a train to pass by? It could take hours. I don’t want to sit here all day. I’m hungry now.”

“You’re right. Who wants to be a passive observer when it comes to murder? I want blood on my hands, goddamn it.”

“Did you ever think about witnesses,” Sickle says, “who’s to say whether or not this is murder?”

“Darling, you can’t expect the common man to decide for themselves what deaths are justified. Their sense of right and wrong are as shapeless as puddings left out overnight. There’s no objective measurement for the value of a human life. When a soldier is shot, we mourn. When a gangbanger is shot, we sing praises and thank Christ that thug is off the streets. Really, though, they’re both thugs; but time and money goes into a soldier, while a gangbanger becomes what he is because he comes from a home with neither, but some people even the government don't fuckin wanna buy, praise the fuckin secondhand market!”

She flutters her eyelashes. “It’s like when I was five and you let Gabrielle eat the neighbor woman’s cockatoo and the old lady spanked you with a cane. Then you cried because nobody cared that I let her tear a bunch of ‘filthy, disease-ridden’ pigeons to bits of pillow stuffing?”

I stop talking for a while. She’s smiling. How can she be smiling? I stare at Sickle’s face and see only obsidian self-portraits. My own eyes stare back at me; eyes that see my own slumped shoulders and wonder how someone who loves me can be so cruel and why, as time keeps moving and I don’t say anything, the smile settles into practiced apathy. Her cheeks slacken into silk bed sheets unruffled by sleeping bodies and my teeth are pressing together so hard that my jaw aches, and she’s about to speak, but I open my mouth and talk like nothing happened.

“It’s polite to say that human beings are irreplaceable,” there’s a tension on my vocal cords, “but they’re an infinitely renewable resource. The only value inherent in a human life lies in the whole of their collective experiences. Why do you think we take pity when celebrities or geniuses are on death row? The problem is we extend that sympathy to those who don’t deserve it. It’s all right to kill a senile old man because his brain has atrophied into a viscous mixture of dust and mucus liable to confused with aforementioned overnight pudding, left out on the same counter as the catfood, not at all east to conflate at two in the Am. It’s all right to kill a child in the womb because they have worthless brains made of undifferentiated jelly, and hardly have much flavor without the fear of death. There is always a correct amount of drama to indulge, my dear”

Sickle stands in silence. What I can see of her face shows the collision of guilt with composure. I raise my hands and invite her to stumble into my arms where I’ll coo her and tell her that she’s not guilty; that she’s not a predatory hawk, but a sweet canary whose love warms the frozen cockles of my heart like some kind of nasty microwaveable meal.

She doesn’t move.

She says, “I’ve seen septic tanks less full of shit than you.”

I move forward. “But none have smelled so nice, have they? Did you notice my new cologne? I got it yesterday. Here, come smell me. I used like half the bottle.”

“The only things I’ve done today are smell you and listen to you, and frankly, I’m a bit tired of both. Let’s get this thing out of here. If you’re gonna kill it, stop talking about it and do it already, because it won’t be daytime forever.”

“Do you think she’s going to be heavy?”

“I never imagined you carrying it, dear. I assumed you’d have no qualms about kicking it on its side and rolling it.”

“Hey, I’m sorry.”

“I know. You’re always sorry.”

“You’re not the only one who can dress up like a high-class whore, you know,” I spritz myself until the skin on my neck is irritated. “This shit cost me like five dollars.”

The girl screams when I push her onto the hot pavement.

She rolls a few feet before she seems to jump and wobble back onto her base. A leathery punching bag is sweating olive oil. With my still gloved hand attached to my still numb arm, I inspect her stab wounds to find the landmine field of punctures exploding into lumpy clusters of fluid-filled sacks. I continue to push and roll the girl. When the weight of her body pushes down on the growths, they act like a spring.

It takes careful diligence to hear the watery boing sound, as each one’s eclipsed by a perfectly timed scream. By the end of the block, she’s either exhausted or too overwhelmed with pain to let out anything more than a tired yelp and frankly, I’m tired of pushing her.

I collapse on the curb and languish in the oppressive sun. The concrete grain’s cutting into the thin layer of flesh around my pelvic bone.

“All right, Sickle,” I say, “I’ve done my part, now you kick her the rest of the way.”

“You’re kidding, right?” she asks, panting as if walking beside me was already too much work for her. She fans herself diligently. Looking around, as if it must be here. “You don’t even know where you’re going!”

“Then it’s hopeless. I guess I’m going to sit here all day and stare at your massive thunder-thighs.”

She takes the bait and gives me a look that says, “It’s on now, bitch.”

Her eyes run up and down the girl’s body. There’s two dents in her flesh: a footprint on the left bottom and a handprint on the right top. Sickle rips off her sunglasses in a way that I think she thinks is dramatic.

Practiced shit-talk is running through her mind. Inches away, she folds her arms and gives the girl a look that says, “What you gonna do, bitch?” Both hands on the girl now, she’s straining for a powerful shove, but dry-heaves, slips down the slope and rubs the pavement with her cheeks.

I’m too embarrassed to laugh.

She starts to cry. “I got dirt on my new dress!”

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” I ask, “I regained my breath. I can take back over if you like.”

“No,” she wails. “I’m not being bested by a vegetable.”

I watch until my body aches through osmosis.

She pushes, slips, gets back up. Over and over. Can’t hardly move. The glucose engine that’s my brain’s runnin’ on empty. My bones and fibers rotate the useless analogue coil.

A Coke machine’s beyond a factory gate.

My autonomous body shuffles that way. Can’t read the sign, pull quarters from my pocket, probably enough. Click, click, click, beep, buzz, plop. Oh, it’s cold. Blood’s pouring back into my brain. My throat’s massaged internally with a glycerin clam.

I walk back over to Sickle and ask, “Making progress?”

“Of course,” she says, “I’d managed to shove it at least two inches this way.”

“Good work. Now how many inches in a city block? At this incredible momentum, it’ll only take us however many minutes that is.”

Sickle dashes at the girl with her elbow as hard as a battering ram. There’s a wet plop and warm droplets of sticky gunk splash my face.

I back away, but she keeps charging and charging. Sickle stares at a massive brown stain seeping into her dress. It soaks through to the skin, making the material cling to the outline of her tits. Chunks of mushy flesh stick to the dimples in her chest and melt to yogurt between her cleavage.

I wave at her while discreetly rubbing my nipples. She yanks on her neckline, and the dress turns from shrink-wrap to garbage bag.

I ask, “Do you want to find a sprinkler or something?”

She screams and tugs at her hair. Pointing at the girl, she yells “Die, bitch, die!” Sprinting in place with her squat legs, she’s throwing out all the weight her little body has, but the growths swell up into speed bumps.

Now Sickle’s barely standing, hunched over with her hands on her knees and sucking in air harder than a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. Throttling my hands around her waist, I lift her up, give the girl a good kick and we’re halfway down the block before I dry-heave and fall over.

We lie in the grass, our lungs contracting and Sickle lets out a cry with the staccato vibration of a cough.

“Why are we so out of shape!” she cries. “You said you were going to start lifting weights!”

“I did start,” I say. “The hard part was continuing.”

The girl’s toppled over in the shade beneath a tree. She’s laughing and rolling from side to side. Laughing really isn’t the most accurate word to describe it, but I think it’s what she’s going for. It’s a sort of guttural bubbling from the intestines buzzing through pussy lips.

A sound that makes your asshole clench.

Sickle sits up. “If I was that ugly, I don’t think I’d find much of anything funny.”

“I’m sure she meant to cry. She’s so stupid, she screwed up a reflex.”

With each laugh, the flap of skin on her mouth balloons out, sucks in and clings to her throat lining.

“Shove it, fish tits!” I kick her teeth and what starts as a scream breaks down into dry hacking.

“Hey, move aside!” Sickle runs up and spin-kicks the girl’s soft flank. “You ruined my outfit, fatty!”

Juice splashes my pant legs and Sickle’s white boots. My foot breaks through the girl’s skin, into some kind of warm pothole and with a loud shlorp I’m sucked in up to the ankle. Burning petroleum jelly seeps between my toes. Pricks crawl up and down my foot. The hole clenches tighter around my ankle as white plumes of steam whisk from the girl’s pores. Sickle runs to my back and gives me the Heimlich as the tendons in my jerking leg tighten into a hemp rope. I plop loose and fall on top of Sickle. The scorched wrinkles of my red foot are tender in the sun.

My shoe is still inside.

I wiggle my toes, peel off the other shoe and shove it in the hole.

Sickle stares at me with wide eyes and flat eyebrows.

“Really?”

“This makes it even,” I say.

An old woman no doubt owns the house we’re squatting in front of. White siding sags and grey shingles on the roof thin into the gutters and walkway, exposing patches of rotted plywood. Angel statues swallowed up by shrubbery, flowerpots shaped like nesting fawns asphyxiated by vines, plywood dogs clawed by twisting branches.

Sickle heaves a stone garden gnome holding a sign saying “Welcome” and drops it on the girl’s teeth. My shoe shoots out of the hole with a wet plop and the other inches out in slow contractions. They’re both coated with yellow mucus and reek of burning rubber.

“Thanks,” I say, and drop the shoes down an open sewer drain.

“Listen,” she says. “I am very, very hungry.”

“Are you still on that? Now that fish tits isn’t screaming, we can probably take another stab at interrogating her.”

She slides her sunglasses back on. With a breathy giggle that comes off more like a bitter sigh she says, “Listen, I’ve got a dinner date. I need to be leaving soon. Do you understand?”

I scratch my neck.

“Well, you look like shit now, so you might as well ditch it.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option. You’re going to have to find some way of getting me there, or find someone else to help you move this thing.”

My fists clench.

“I should have left your ass at home and forced Key Lime out here instead,” I say. “He’d whine a fraction as much, then do twice the work, and he’s the laziest guy I know.”

“Oh, but I work so hard at being lazy!”

“He can help you push the damn thing and I can stroll behind and whack your ass with a newspaper. Tell him he owes you for staying over in your room the last few days.”

“He hasn’t been staying in my room; I haven’t seen him since last week.”

At this, I sit up. “What do you mean you haven’t seen him? I haven’t seen him.”

“Why would he be with me?”

“He’s your best gal-pal. Why wouldn’t he be with you?”

“I have a life outside of him.”

“Does he have a life outside of you?”

Her pleading eyes tell me she knows I’m right, but she’s going to pretend I’m not.

“I don’t have any idea where he could be,” she says.

She dials his number, I crouch down beside her, and we press our ears together into two funnels of cartilage tuned into the digitized ring of the dial tone. “Hey…” comes a groggy voice.

I say, “Key Lime, where the fuck—”

“I’m not here right now. But if you’d like, you can leave a message and I can get back to you… Except, I probably won’t, so don’t be angry next time I see you and ask why I didn’t call back. I don’t understand phones, okay? Now how do I get out of here? … Push what button? Hurry up, I think it’s still recording…No. No, I think it’s still on … Don’t yell at me. Okay, fine, if you know how to do it just take it!”

She sighs. “My poor boy,” and the beep flares out. “Hello Key Lime, it’s me. We’re near the train tracks down by 69th and K—”

“He doesn’t understand streets.”

“We’re across the street from the Baskin Robbins! We’re trying to move something. Come help us.”

“You couldn’t mention a different landmark?”

She glares at me. “If you come we’ll get you a smoothie, you don’t have to ask. Good-bye.”

“Ask him where he’s been for the last few days.”

“We’ll ask him when he calls back.”

“He’s not going to call back, we’re wasting our time.”

“It was your idea to call him!”

“What, you do everything I say now? Flash the next car that drives by.”

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that with a dry t-shirt.”

I pat her on the head. We somehow roll the girl out to a busy street and this is where we need to make things count if we want anyone to help us haul the fat skank away. I collapse against her rough, leathery hide and the smell of fermentation is so strong my first instinct is to pull away, but I think I’m getting drunk just sniffing her, so I lay still in a stupor.

My shirt’s soaked through with sweat and my eyes fall straight across the street. Sickle steps up to the corner, pointing at the girl, and then waving at passing cars. A guy stops, asks if she’s a hooker and drives off.

Her face puffs up in a cantankerous balloon and I laugh for a good minute before realizing I’m part of the punch line.

I turn to Sickle. “We can run with the hooker thing.”

Fifteen minutes later, Sickle and I stand on the side of the road, my jeans rolled up to my knee and my long, pretty legs nestled between her thighs, sticking out through her dress, her two legs wrapped around my hips and joining into a stump wiggling behind my ass. My back hunches into an arch under her linen dinner jacket and the effect was that we look like a single woman with a lumpy hunchback, two disproportionately long legs and a mysterious fifth limb that could be a tail or the gaster of a giant ant. We are an entity that nobody but the vilest degenerate would find doable. It’s at this moment that a thin Chinese man in his fifties, whose eyes flutter with a pronounced effeminacy, gilded and regal as a celluloid closet star, pokes his head out of one of those organ-harvesting execution buses that go from prison to prison, then out to the cobbler fields.

“Hello pretty girl,” he says. “Do you need lift?”

Sickle flaps her mouth in such a manner that nothing matches the high-pitched whine squealing half-muffled from beneath her jacket.

“Oh kind sir! I am but a lowly street performer who seeks fame and fortune in Las Vegas or Fown, but I’m so, so hungry. I would do anything and I mean anything for a quick bite to eat.”

“How hung are you?” he asks.

“Not too young for you, stud.”

“What do you do in act?”

“I give this here vegetable a lap dance. I get as nude as indecent exposure laws will permit me. And then some.”

“Oooh. I like and then some. You get naked as duck in butcher window?”

“Honey, please, I make duck in window look like virginal school-girl.”

“I am intrigued and perhaps possibly aroused. All right. You get in back of van now.”

“You are simply too kind, sir. I have always benefited tremendously from the sexual neediness of strangers.”

“Do you need help with vegetable?” asks the Chinese man as he opens the driver side door.

I grab Sickle’s arm and pull it back against her head and we fall back so the only thing keeping the two of us upright is my other arm planted against the warm pavement, and Sickle now looks like a melodramatic plantation whore in some life-threatening woe, like perhaps she dropped a handkerchief, or will perhaps be encroached upon by a solar body.

“Oh please sir!” I moan. “This sun has become intolerable! I’m hotter’n a cross at a Klan rally!”

The Chinese man lets out a prolapsed evil laugh as he sashays contemptuously from the driver’s seat.

The doors at the back of the bus fly open and out walks a cute girl, probably about nineteen, flashing a toothy smile with both her mouth and her long necklace of human teeth. The driver hauls the girl in both arms and throws her to the girl. She stumbles backwards into darkness.

The driver turns to us and says, “Please get in.”

[a-reader-and-a-writer]

Just Passin' By

Fandom: Outer Range, Rhett Abbott, f!reader

Word Count: 2147

TW: Kissing, Lead Up to Smut, Rhett Picking the Reader Up, Mentions of a Death in the Family, Reader with an Accent

Note: Thank you to @yespolkadotkitty for sending this thought that then blossomed into a full fic! And thanks to @hederasgarden for beta reading for me! 💖

Walking into the hardware store, you didn’t see a single other person around. As you approached the counter, you called out. After a moment, the owner came walking out from the back room and you smiled at him. “Hey, Al. I got a call sayin’ my part was in?”

 “Sure thing. Let me just go check in the office.” He returned your smile before disappearing once more into the back.

Al had been good friends with your brother and he was one of the few people who had an idea about how much debt your brother had left you when he died a year ago. Between the medical bills and the funeral expenses, the idea of being able to live paycheck to paycheck sounded like a dream at the moment! You had considered selling the house and moving away, but there were too many memories within those walls. Besides, in the middle of big ranch country, no one was interested in your measly little piece of land.

As you stood there drumming your fingers on the counter, you felt someone slide up beside you. Turning slightly, you jumped when you saw the silent newcomer. “Jesus, Rhett! Way to scare a girl to death! I thought I was the only one here. I didn’t see you when I came in.”

Your old classmate smirked from underneath his cowboy hat. “I was in the back corner. I gotta pick up some nails and wire. One of our fences was damaged in that storm a few nights ago. What are you lookin’ for?”

You leaned heavily on the counter. “My mower crapped out on me again. I’m tryin’ to fix it.”

Rhett’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve still got that ol’ push mower? I thought it broke a few months ago.”

“It did. But I managed to patch it together well enough for it to still kind of work, but this time the engine completely gave out. I’m tryin’ one last ditch effort to keep it goin’.”

“Why don’t you just throw in the towel and get a new one? They got basic ridin’ ones that ain’t too expensive.”

“I can’t afford even that at the moment. Plus, it’s only a 3-acre property and the house takes up a lot of that. It’s not like I’m tryin’ to cut your ranch or anythin’. As long as I can get it to work, it’ll do.” You sighed, but it quickly morphed into a soft chuckle. “You wanna know a secret? I’ve always hated cutting the lawn. It’s killer on my allergies and I’ve always been terrified I’m gonna cut off my hand messin’ with the blades. But if I don’t do it, the grass will just grow outta control and before long, I won’t even be able to step outta my house. So, I push my fears to the side, take a bunch of Claritin, and struggle to keep this mower alive.”

Before Rhett could respond, Al came back out with a small box. “Here you go. This should be what you’re looking for.”

“Thanks, Al. Can you just add it to my tab? I should be able to come pay it off at the end of next week.”

“Sure thing. And let me know if you have any problems with that and we can figure it out.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

You grabbed the box and turned back to Rhett. “Well, I guess I better get goin’. But it was nice seein’ you. It’s been a while.”

“Yeah. I was just thinkin’ the same thing. Maybe-” Suddenly, Rhett’s phone began to buzz. Pulling it out, he glanced at it as he shot you an apologetic look.

You just nodded. “It’s okay. I’ll talk to you later. And good luck with the fence!” Before he could say anything else, you hurried out of the store.

The next morning, you got up early and went to the garage to try to fix the lawn mower. But after three hours, you were having very little luck. Just as you were about to throw in the towel and give up for the day, you heard the sound of an engine approaching outside. However, it wasn’t a sound you were able to easily place. Not a car or a truck. It was deeper yet sounded like it was coming from a smaller vehicle. Furrowing your brow, you wiped your hands on your jeans and headed to the front door. Peering outside, you saw something you would have never expected in a million years.

Rhett Abbott was currently in your front yard, sitting atop of his father’s big blue tractor with a mowing attachment hooked to the back. He was driving along the fence line, the tractor spitting out freshly cut blades of grass. As he glanced up and saw you staring, he smiled and slowed the machine to a stop.  

Finally coming to your senses, you ran over to the tractor just as he shut off the engine. “Rhett? What the hell do you think you’re doin’?”

“What’s it look like I’m doin’? I’m mowin’ your yard.”

“Well, I can see that. But why?”

He shrugged. “I was passin’ by and thought ‘what the hell’.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose. “You were passin’ by….. on a tractor?”

He grinned at you as he leaned forward on the steering wheel and tipped up the brim of his hat, revealing more of his face. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

You stared at him for a long moment before shaking your head with a chuckle. “You know what? Go for it! Just don’t you dare run into my rose bush!”

Rhett pulled his hat down low as he dipped his head and said, “Yes, ma’am.” Then he started up the tractor once more.

With another shake of your head, you turned and walked back into the house, slyly glancing back over your shoulder to catch one more look at the cowboy before the door swung shut.

About a half-hour later, you heard the engine of the tractor cut off once more. Climbing off the couch, you hurried into the kitchen and poured a glass of iced tea that you had just made. After sticking a single lemon slice on the edge of the glass, you hurried outside.

“Here. I figured you’d be thirsty so I made you some-” The glass almost slipped through your fingers as you caught sight of Rhett.

He had climbed down from the tractor and was standing with his back to you. His bare back. Apparently, he had gotten hot in the summer sun and had just removed his hat and his shirt as you came walking out. You watched the muscles in his back ripple and stretch as he finished brushing the stray grass from his machine. Then he turned to face you, running his hands through his sweat-dampened hair.

He smiled when he saw you standing there. Gesturing at the glass of tea, he asked, “Is that for me?”

You nodded silently and handed it to him. As your fingers lightly brushed against his, you felt a spark of electricity dance up your arm. Quickly, you pulled your hand back tight against your chest.

You stood there with your mouth hanging open slightly as you took in the sight before you. Strands of Rhett’s hair stuck to his face where it had been plastered there by sweat while the rest of it curled softly behind his ears. As he tilted his head back to drink from the glass you had handed him, his throat bobbed with every gulp as the liquid traveled down his elongated neck. When your eyes drifted lower, you watched as sweat dripped across the tattoo on his right peck. As he shifted and his muscles twitched, it looked almost as if the bull were trying to buck its rider off its back and you had to stop yourself from reaching out and running your hand over the black ink.

You could feel your face growing warm at the thought so you shifted your gaze lower, but that was a mistake. Bull riding took incredible core strength, and Rhett Abbott had a very incredible core. You could see every taut muscle on his lean frame, leading all the way down to the top of his jeans. Surprisingly, he wasn’t wearing his usual large-buckled belt today and his pants sagged low on his hips. Just a fraction lower and-

“See somethin’ you like?” Rhett’s voice cut through your thoughts and your eyes flew up to his face. A small little half-grin pulled at one side of his mouth, and it was clear he knew what you had been staring at.

You felt the heat rush to your face once more. “I, uh, I was admirin’ what a great job you did. I don’t think this yard’s looked this good in quite a long time.” Rhett’s smile grew larger, obviously not buying your explanation, but he didn’t challenge you on it. “Can I repay you somehow? I mean, I can’t actually pay you, but can I do something for you?”

“It was no trouble. Like I said, I was passin’ by and with this thing-“ he patted the side of the tractor “- I knew it wouldn’t take very long.”

“Uh-huh.” You still found it next to impossible he just happened to be on his tractor this far from his ranch. He came over here specifically to help you out and you just wished you could do something to show your gratitude.

Rhett shifted slightly as he nodded towards the hose connected to the side of your house. “Do you think I could just rinse off real quick ‘fore I go? It was hotter than I expected today.”

The thought of Rhett hosing off in your front yard almost brought you to your knees. You could just picture the way the water would darken his hair as it soaked it through before trickling down his bare torso. How his jeans would slip even lower as the water weighed them down-

You snapped your attention back to the man in front of you instead of the vision of him in your head. “You don’t have to do that! I do have an actual shower inside, you know. It would be more private, and you could actually adjust the water temperature.”

“Oh, the hose is fine. I don’t want to put you out or take up more of your time. Unless…..” He hesitated, glancing at you before quickly looking away. But in that instance, you were able to catch the question in his eyes. The way his eyes trailed over your body, how his tongue ran slyly over his lips. And it seemed that maybe you weren’t the only one who had been having daydreams.

A coy smile curled on your lips as you took a few steps closer to him. “It’s no problem at all. And I have a really nice shower. Fancy shower head, great water pressure, and it’s big. Could easily fit two people, maybe more.” Reaching out, you ran your hands down his toned arms. “If that’s the issue.”

Rhett’s eyes narrowed slightly as he examined your face, no doubt trying to gauge exactly what you were offering. Quirking your eyebrow, you gave him the slightest of nods. Instantly, his lips were on yours as his hand cupped the back of your neck. You blinked in surprise before melting under his touch. His lips were surprisingly soft and it was an electrifying contrast to the rough scrape of his hand on your skin. The hand not on your neck slid down and grabbed your hip, pulling you flush against his hard, sweaty body. You gasped softly as you felt him already straining against his jeans.

After a moment, Rhett lifted you up and your legs immediately encircled his waist. As you began trailing kisses across his jaw and down his neck, the salty sting of his skin on your lips, he moaned softly. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted this.”

Lifting your head, you nipped playfully at his lip. “You could’ve stopped by anytime.”

“Oh, believe me, sweetheart. After this, I’ll be stopping by all the time.” Then he captured your lips once more.

He began carrying you into the house as you rolled your hips into him, tightening your legs to pull him in closer. Feeling him shudder beneath you, you grinned. It was exhilarating to know you could elicit such a reaction from the strong, controlled bull-rider.

As he stumbled through the door, he muttered, “So, where’s this shower I’ve been hearin’ so much about?”

But you shook your head as you brushed his sweaty hair off of his face. “Later. First, I want you like this and I can show you the shower after. But right now, let me show you the bed.”

Taglist: @loverhymeswith, @babblydrabbly, @lorecraft, @nerdysuperchick, @hederasgarden, @yespolkadotkitty, @green-socks, @skvatnavle, @mayhem24-7forever, @callsign-fox, @callsign-phoenix, @wildbornsiren, @lt-natrace, @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy

[sloelimbs]

wait wait wait I wanna request a drabble too! what about eddie and chrissy vs a hawkins heatwave?

“What… what are you doing?” Really, after five years, she should be used to walking past doorways and glimpsing Eddie doing Weird Shit. She’s not, though. Especially when it looks like he’s trying to contort himself into the refrigerator. He and Dustin are holding corners of one of their good sheets, both with beers, both damp with sweat, making the most out of Uncle Wayne’s magnet collection.

“Freezing fort.” Eddie doesn’t look at her, deep in concentration, eyebrow furrowed and holding a length of twine between his teeth. The other end of it disappears under the cotton.

“If you make my yoghurt turn, Munson, I’ll kill you.”

“Foods in there.” Dustin points with his beer hand, and at least he looks at her and smiles. She raises her eyebrows at him and ducks her head to see the cool box, and then shakes it at them both. “We emptied it beforehand, Chrissy, no fear.”

“You’re not supposed to drink if you’ve been smoking.” Not that she’s trying to be a nag, but Dustin isn’t even twenty one, and she can’t help worrying, especially in this heat. Water would be better, surely, than beer. She just doesn’t get the appeal. Why would she want to drink bread?

“This isn’t fucking working. We’re just going to boil alive.” Eddie throws the sheet down in disgust, and she rolls her eyes, and reaches to wipe a line of sweat from beneath his shoulder blade. She’s willing to bet that it would work with a few more pairs of hands, but their friends are all waiting.

“Come on, you couple of losers, come outside with everyone else.”

“You’d think by now we’d be able to afford decent air con—.”

“Eddie. Come the fuck on.” He feels hot in her grip, and her fingers slide over his bicep, but she pulls at him anyway. “Bring the beer. We’re going down to the lake, it’s stupid to hang around in the sun trap of the trailer park. Come on.” She presses her mouth to his shoulder and tastes salt, rests her chin against the bone to blink imploringly up at him. It usually works, but he just scowls vaguely.

“Ugh, but the walk—.” He’s so fucking grumpy. The heat doesn’t agree with everyone, she guesses, but she knows exactly what will get him outside and enthusiastic again.

“I bought a new bikini.” Immediately, the cool box is shoved back into the fridge and the whole thing is slammed shut, and Eddie’s halfway out the door with one hand clutching the beer and the other wrapped around her wrist.

“Dustin! Get your motor running, man, there are chicks in swimwear waiting for us!” It’s enough, the five summers they’ve had together, to erase any others they’ve had separately. Chrissy laughs the whole way to the lake, and feels no shame in stripping down to bra and bottoms. They’ve beaten worse horrors than the sun, after all.