#and holy hell is it exhausting to try to communicate with them

[half-man-half-lime]

I swear to fuck (bad podcast) is like Lucy with the football. Like every time I think "oh, maybe this time they'll do a good job!" And then every time they come up with bad ideas I couldn't even have imagined.

Like "we have to consolidate characters (they don't), Labyrinth is out so instead Burnscar is Faultline's long lost sister who got kidnapped by Cauldron, she shows up to tell Faultline she abandoned her family, and then for drama's sake Faultline is watching paralyzed on the ground when Grue kills Burnscar, the ultimate betrayal" like what the fuck!

How did you even get there! Am I genuinely supposed to go Constructive Criticism mode just to debate the finer points with a bunch of people who will never change their minds over an idea that is, fundamentally, fucking stupid?

"Coil has to survive longer so it's not a letdown when he dies early on in the season" stop extending tension! I will spray you with a fucking water bottle if you try to extend tension! The tension serves the characters and conflict, not the other way around! Stop making mysteries that weren't really mysteries and didn't even need solving!

[raimon-eldritch-chronicles]

A Guide to Interacting with Raimon (GO)

The Raimon Soccer Club -or Anarchy Raimon, as most of soccer fans now call them- are back... but they're not the same. Not even Endou, Kidou, Gouenji, hell, even Otonashi. They all changed. Whether for the better or worse, no one can say.

These are a few rules and reminders to know, when you're interacting with them.

Whatever you do, NEVER ask anyone else from Raimon about what happened when they were kidnapped; only ask either Tenma, Shindou, or Amaryllis. And pray that they're in a good mood enough to share a few bits.

You'll see some of them staring, eyes blank, at either the void, an object, or you, this especially applies to Tenma. If it's the third one, don't worry, they're just observing you. Making sure you're okay.

You'll hear them making oddly accurate animal sounds, or weird screeching. You'll hear either Kurama, Kirino, or Hayami hiss. You'll hear Tsurugi howl. You'll hear either Akane or Kariya chitter. Hell, you might even catch Kidou suppressing a low grumble if you're lucky. Don't mind it, they're just communicating with each other.

They also have weird animalistic habits. You'd see Tsurugi snacking on a dead sparrow. You'll see Nishiki stand in an antique shop for half an hour and stare at shiny objects. You might find Hayami perched on an absurdly high place and come down unscathed. Don't mind them, this is normal for them.

Some of their habits, or of the team members, aren't completely animalistic though. You'll hear Aoi sing in an old tongue, lullabies serenading of infanticide and death, but also of nature and healing. You'll see Sangoku aching to touch the flames inside of a stone oven or a furnace, and he does. He'll pull his hand out, completely undamaged by the intense heat. Kurumada once stayed in his father's garage, making makeshift versions of weapons that have been lost eons ago to modernity. You'll hear about how menacing Ichino and Aoyama have become, always bargaining for anything with others, and twisting their promises and their words to those people, like it's a contract with loopholes. You'll see Amagi eat rocks like it's a snack. Again, this is normal for them.

They're still great soccer players. The only issue is that their hissatus will feel like it's real. Like it's not just energy. Their flames become scorching hot and it feels can burn you if you're not careful. Shindou's melodies become mesmerizing, you'll blink and suddenly he's past you. Kirino's mist is thicker and it makes it not only hard to see, but to breathe too. Shinsuke's jumps leaves craters in the ground. Don't ask why this is happening; they don't know either.

Amaryllis is...quite enigmatic. She just appreared out of nowhere after the Teikoku-Raimon match in Holy Road, you've never heard of her, and she's just as capable of a soccer player as the rest of Raimon is. You've heard of rumours that she's an experiment of Fifth Sector's, which is why she's crazy strong like that. There's something familiar in those ruby red eyes of hers and that blonde hair, as well as her tan skin, mixed with vitiligo. You want to ask her questions. Don't. She'll never answer.

Speaking of her, if you try to interact with her, she'll be skittish. She'll run from you and into Raimon's arms. Let her be, foxes are skittish with people they're not familial with and loud with those they love.

Raimon's coach Endou, Teikoku's trainer Kidou, Seidouzan and Dragonlink's coach Gouenji, and Raimon's guidance counselor, Otonashi, they also changed. Be wary of that. They're just as unpredictable as Raimon is now.

You don't know why, but there's a faint trace of formaldehyde and acid from those four. Their skin is a bit too cold and somewhat pale at the fingertips if you look close enough. Their eyes seem to be hollow, but alive still. Their smiles still are the same though, albeit laced with exhaustion.

There's a feeling creeping up your neck about those four. They look human, but they don't feel like it. They're feral. Endou acts a bit animalistic, grumbling, screeching, chittering, growling in response to emotional stimuli. Kidou always has a device in hand, always on an article or research paper or news headline, always wanting to know and learn more. Gouenji subtly and unconsciously mimics other people's behaviour; their accents, bits of their outward personality, their habits. Haruna is always drawn to flora, especially since it's spring now. She always talks to bees and butterflies, gossips with squirrels and other rodents, and always has a scent of flowers mixed in her formaldehyde stench.

That's not the worse part about those four. The worse part is how when they get agitated, you see their anger manifest physically, in uncannny, unsettlng ways. You'll see Endou's eyes go dark, the subtle hints of a creepy smile growing on his face when he's mad, small scales and feathers popping up beside them. Gouenji's eyes become a bit bloodshot, black veins subtly growing underneath, and he bleeds from his nose. The siblings' faces look like they're about to split, revealing whatever horror show is underneath. Try to calm them down, you don't want to see them fully pissed.

Speaking of being pissed, Raimon seems to act more like a pack now rather than just a soccer team. You make one of them even just a bit uncomfortable, all of their eyes are on you. All of them.

And finally, if you find someone about to get killed -don't worry about yourself, they wouldn't want to kill you, either because you're a friend of theirs, or they don't like the idea of staining their hands with even more human blood than necessary, or because they think death is more of a mercy than a punishment for you- by them? Pray.

Pray that that person's death is quick and painless; otherwise you'll be stuck hearing their screams of agony, and you may realize that Raimon is ruthless, not just in soccer, but with lives of others as well.

[maidofmetal]

so fucking brutally exhausted of all the discourse in the cri/pp/le and m/ad punk tags i understand there are different experiences and challenges to each specific type of disability i understand the need to specific space especially when discussing structural and systemic ableism and with dealing with doctors and symptoms and life in general these experiences are and can be so so different and that’s important to consider but it’s sooooo goddamn fucking isolating trying to go through either tag and just seeing ableism hurled at eachother. i am currently more housebound than i have been in a while due to a broken wrist a broken wheelchair i currently cant use my prosthetic because of alignment issues that is causing my hip bursitis to worsen, my periods have gotten so much worse lately (did you know endometriosis can be asymptomatic. and i would not refer to my past periods as asymptomatic because they were always horrible but holy shit compared to what i have going on now 🫡) i have anywhere from mild to severe chronic pain and fucking severe and UNTREATABLE lifelong mental illness. i am in constant distress all the fucking time right now because of both my body, my brain, my past traumas, my current situation the years of untreatable mental health weighing on me and looking towards my future and feeling so fucking hopeless about it. getting out is really difficult for me right now. i’m hoping to be able to get to community meetings at some point in the near distant future but i’m exhausted of trying to find comfort in either of those tags only to be met with the worst fucking takes i have ever seen. i understand that people see both of these disabilities and separate. i understand how able bodied NDs (looking at you adhd and autism onlys) can communitcate their struggles in ways that can be ableist, uniformed and invalidating towards physically disabled people (honestly even toward severely mentally ill people y’all need to work on that 😒😒) but you also have to respect the people who see our physical and mental disabilities and inherently intertwined. and trying to separate them or take away the context in which we became disabled is so fucking hurtful and harmful. sometimes scrolling through the tags i feel like y’all want me to rip my body from my brain because it doesn’t easily fit into ur physical vs mental disabilities. but bodies don’t fucking work like that and i’m just left feeling more and more isolated from both mentally ill and disabled community. fucking hell when i learned about cripple and mad punk i was so excited because i have always been loud and unapologetically disabled but i have become so disappointed in trying to find community amongst u. i feel like i can’t be my whole disabled self in either community. i can’t rip apart my body anymore than it’s been ripped apart. fucking punks my ass.

(if u try starting slur discourse i will kill you 🔪)

[burning-basilisk]

I am the entire IT department of this place.

I am Help Desk.

I am Sysadmin.

I am executive management. Mainly because both of my actual bosses (On-site General Manager and remote corporate overlord) have no hard technical background. I was a software engineer for 7 years before this. And holy shit the whiplash.

My formal title is "IT Operations Manager", but I have nobody to manage. It's only me. I have complete authority over the IT infrastructure and am spending like 30% of my time doing help desk work. One minute I am setting top-level security policy, and the next, I am using a knife to pry an ethernet cable out of a laptop because apparently using the plastic tab to pull it out isn't intuitive for everyone.

I have learned a hell of a lot in the last few months.

But the thing that inspired this post, that I really want to talk about, but am struggling to find people to discuss with...

If I am walking across the facility to deal with an issue, there's like a 30% chance that someone will walk up to me with another issue that I need to deal with. I haven't implemented a help desk ticketing system yet. Haven't had the space.

But if I happen to be exhausted or in a bad mood when I respond to them, they will be hesitant to tell me when things break. This makes my job worse. I am not THEIR manager, but I'm still one of the Top Brass in this place. It doesn't matter how soft of a person I actually am, the workers here still don't want to upset me, and will swerve the hell away from me if they think they might be.

Even if I didn't care about being liked and was totally Machiavellian about how I treat people at work, this is bad.

I've read so much about the emotional labor of customer service.

Turns out, management has emotional labor, too. Except here, nobody will tell me when I'm being unapproachable. And it's also nobody else's problem.

If I can't be consistently friendly to the people around me, they will be disinclined to communicate with me. If cracks in the infrastructure appear, I won't know until something catches fire.

I cannot safely express my frustration or even exhaustion to *anyone* here, without making my job harder, regardless of how good of a rapport I may have with them.

I am the only computer professional in the building. Even the most well-meaning instance of "He is tired and overworked, let's not put more on his plate" could keep me ignorant of an impending disaster.

The entire intranet got completely fucked because someone plugged both ports of an IP phone into the same dumb switch, and I was up until 3AM trying to figure out what the fuck happened and I still haven't had the space to properly research how to overhaul this place's hackjob of a network out of the stone age. But they don't want to bother me with silly shit like helping people move cubicles when the job I was actually hired to do was implement automation into this manufacturing process.

My Corporate Overlords swear that they are working on hiring me help. But maybe I'm not squeaky enough of a wheel to get some grease.

/rant

[faithnfrivolity]

Chris Kratzer wrote...

"You may not like what I'm about to say.

You may not like the way I say it.

My writing is both message and art, and most importantly, purposed on giving real voice to the spiritually oppressed and chasing the evils of toxic Christianity out of the shadows.

Reading ahead is your choice.

……………………………………

They don't give a f*ck about you.

You think they actually care?

You think they have your best interests at heart?

If they are following conservative Evangelicalism, if they are believing it all the way, they don't give a f*ck about you.

They can't, and they won't.

How do I know?

This is how.

Their faith system insists that self-love is dangerous. It's evil and leads only to debauchery. In their minds, self-love leads you away from God and towards the devil. You are depraved, fallen, evil, and a "sinner." Nothing to love, only everything to hate.

Therefore, in order to turn and be faithful to God, you must suppress your heart, hate your humanity, deny your mind, and see yourself as inherently wicked and separate from God. And even if you "come to Jesus" and somehow, your faith in Christ makes you into a "new creation" you must constantly face an inner battle to shame your so-called "flesh" and embrace the so-called "spirit," or else.

It's a never-ending religious treadmill of spiritual exhaustion and desperation. Under conservative Evangelicalism, there is always something about you to despise, demonize, condemn, or pin down. Therefore, any spark of self-love is to be quickly filled with apprehension, fear, conditions, and rigid restrictions, and ultimately should be snuffed out just to be sure there'll be no chance of embracing evil.

So, with all of this, when they attempt to follow the highest instruction of Jesus to "love your neighbor as yourself," they actually do just that. They love you just the way they love themselves, which is with hate, fear, conditions, shame, condemnation, and deep apprehension.

Shackled to insecurity and self-degradation, they can actually do nothing else but hate you, because, in essence, they hate themselves. All their inner shame, condemnation, and fears of love are directed and projected upon you. This is why hate feels like love to them.

In the end, seeing themselves as fundamentally flawed, and you as the same, they exchange loving you for making you into their spiritual project to entice you into joining them in their misery-ladened desperate pursuit of finding righteousness and acquiring special standing with God. Not because they love you, but actually because they hate themselves, and misery loves company.

This is why they don't give a f*ck about you.

To them, you're a project not a person. A notch on their belt, not a human to be served. If they can get you to buy into their religious plight, it makes their self-righteousness seem real, special, and true, and their hate seem like love.

In fact, receiving any sense of lasting community and genuine care from them comes only when they convince you to hate yourself enough that you join their religious misery of trying to overcome it. There is no interest in you beyond you joining them in learning to fake it and convince yourself, as they have, that you and Christ have, and are continuing to make yourself uniquely whole, saved, righteous, and separate from everyone else.

That's right, as spiritual, good, and holy as they can make it all look, they don't give a f*ck about you any further than your willingness to join with them in their shallow, religious hell of self-righteous believing and living.

In fact, you can be sure that their teachings on hell, eternal suffering, biblical inerrancy, and needing Jesus, are actually all just tools of submission and conformity. The ultimate narrative for the ultimate exploitation.

Yup, it's true.

They don't give a f*ck about you. Your eternal destination, your well-being, your happiness, or your success. They just want you to comply or get out of their way. Get on board or get buried.

This is why they don't give a f*ck about the environment.

This is why they don't give a f*ck about fostering true equality.

This is why they don't give a f*ck about solving poverty.

This is why they don't give a f*ck about their worshipping of a lying, criminal, racist, sexist, adulterous, and gluttonous president.

This is why they don't give a f*ck about stopping mass shootings.

This is why they don't even give a f*ck about abortion as it's just a political bait to hook their base.

This is why they don't give a f*ck about breaking the law, abandoning the vulnerable, or enabling the rich.

If it doesn't serve white, heterosexual, patriarchal, conservative Evangelicalism, they don't give a f*ck.

Need proof?

Just see how they treat you when you leave their church.

See how they treat you when your child reveals they're gay, or you no longer see being queer as a sin or contrary to God's design.

See how they treat you when you stop tithing.

See how they treat you when your disabled family member disrupts their polished worship service or needs special assistance or accessibility.

See how they treat you when you question the leadership or want equal representation of women, queer people, and minorities in all levels of leadership.

See how they treat you when you no longer see the Bible as inerrant or Jesus as the only way to salvation.

See how they treat you when you no longer have the time or energy to serve in ministry.

See how they treat you when you challenge their biblical interpretations or visions for ministry.

See how they treat you when you ask to see the church budget - including salaries, expenses, and priorities.

See how they treat you when you suggest that the church should revolve around serving the community without agenda or expectation of return, instead of a weekly slick worship service.

See how they treat you when you doubt it all and wonder if Christianity is just one big scheme.

It won't take much and it won't take long to see that my 20 years of having been a conservative Evangelical pastor have revealed the truth they don't want you to see… they don't give a f*ck about you.

Grace is brave. Be brave."

[lucigoose]

road trip [laura kearny x gn! reader]

a/n: @tywrites THIS ONE IS FOR YOU !! also holy BALLS i wrote this in like 3 hours ??!!??? god behavior!! im very....... not proud of this piece though i guess that's the karma? like its okay but normally im much more descriptive. maybe it's because it's my first time really posting my writing ANYWHERE but i swear im better at description and plot developing than this. i am just nervous cause i never post on tumblr as a writer am i welcomed with open arms to this community??? hopefully i am cause id die if i wasn't allowed to write...... i hope i do better next time cus this was not my best. also can someone tell me how in the balls to do the read more thing?? ANYWAY REQUESTS WILL OPEN SOON

the ride to hackett’s quarry summer camp was long. incredibly long. the trio had been in the car for what felt like an eternity, mindlessly chatting about topics that were generally exclusive to the kind of boredom someone would feel on the road trip to a summer camp. nothing too special, only small things that would help them feel a bit less bored by the service-less ride. perhaps the lack of service or entertainment would train them for the summer camp experience that was globally known as some ‘relaxing’ two-month break from social media and technology. a cure for addicts, some might say.

  laura was in the front seat, staring out at the empty, dark stretch of road that looked like it hadn’t changed in miles. max was the one behind the wheel, driving only according to the phone’s map that shouted an occasional ‘turn left’ or ‘turn right’. [name], meanwhile, was laying sprawled out in the backseat. a pillow was behind their head and their legs were curled up, nearly falling off the side of the carseat. they were almost asleep, eyes heavy and slowly closing to pull them out of consciousness and into la-la land.

when their eyes finally shut, just as they were about to let their fingers slip away from consciousness, their eyes shot open from laura’s sudden voice and the nice, calming music cutting off. “max, how much longer until we get there?” she asked, fully awake unlike the other two in the car. max briefly glanced at her, then put his eyes back on the road. “laura, we’ve gone the whole trip without any, ‘are we there yet?’s and i’d prefer we don't break the record.” he joked. laura rolled her eyes. “max, we were supposed to be there by now. are you positive we’re not l-” she was cut short, instantly scoffing when max’s voice cut through her own. “don’t! say it. laura, we’re fine. we can’t be that far from it, besides, we’re in northkill, right?” he said, giving laura a comforting smile. laura only gave him a suspicious look before sighing and staring out of her window. 

the road was really the only thing she had to look at besides thin, creepy looking trees. the road didn’t even really have the yellow lines in the center, and it barely had enough room for two cars to even be going the opposite ways. it gave off the vibes of some dumb horror movie. hell, their scenario at the moment was certainly similar to one of those cheesy slasher movies where the main character doesn’t have enough sense to call 911. 

laura was snapped out of her thoughts when [name] made a small grunt from the backseat from stretching. she turned her head more towards them. “you doing okay back there?” she asked innocently, with much less of an attitude than she was giving max. [name] hummed a bit as they finished stretching, then responded to laura’s question. “i’m okay. you guys woke me up, i think.” they said with their words slurring and stringing together with exhaustion. laura narrowed her eyebrows apologetically. “oh, were you trying to sleep? my bad.” she said, roughly nudging max in the side. max whined quietly, then said a dazed little apology. “huh? oh, yeah, sorry.”   

[name] smiled and shook their head in response. “don’t be. if max needs to admit we’re l-word right now, then he should.” they said smugly, drawing a laugh out of laura. “right? at least someone here agrees with me.” she responded before shifting her annoyed gaze over to max. max rolled his eyes solemnly before speaking with a glance over to [name] and laura. “you know, if columbus hadn’t gotten himself lost and landed on these golden shores, there’d be no united states of america. bye-bye hotdogs, see you later apple pie.” max explained in some pathetic attempt to redeem his stubbornness. laura raised an eyebrow. “yeah, well, columbus also had no idea he wasn’t in asia. he was just another guy who didn’t wanna admit he was lost.” she teased. [name] piped up from the backseat. “fuck columbus, with all due respect.” they said, clearly not really meaning the ‘respect’ they’d included with their statement. laura nodded. “someone said it.” 

the car was back in silence for a few minutes, leaving the trio to their own thoughts again. [name] wasn’t exactly awake, but definitely wasn’t as dizzy and dazed as they were a few minutes ago. they’d adjusted their position so their legs were a bit more comfortable, and so that their pillow wasn’t practically falling off of the seat. without laura or max arguing back and forth, they let their thoughts wander free. their first thought was to imagine what it was really going to be like at hackett’s quarry. curling up in front of fires singing kumbaya, telling ghost stories and eating smores. something like that, right? but with more kids involved. that was the only real part [name] wasn’t exactly stoked about. the kids. but hey, laura and max were doing it, so why wouldn’t they do it, right?.. right. maybe they were just in it for the money. 

laura yawned and stretched out her arms, before turning her head to look at [name]’s much more comfortable position. “you’re lucky you have a pillow. and the whole backseat to yourself. i’d give my left leg to curl up in the backseat with a pillow.” she said, and [name] gave her a tired smile. “give me your left leg, then.” they said jokingly, and laura let out a scoff and a chuckle at the same time. “are you saying i should join you back there?” she asked rhetorically, but [name] answered. “yeah, you should.” they jested, and laura smiled at them. “i should.” she almost sounded.. serious. it was hard to tell though, because laura’s jokes were typically sort of unreadable. she reached down to the side of the seat and pulled up on the small lever, causing the seat to recline backwards a little. [name] looked up towards laura, only to see her hand reaching out towards them in some sort of an offering. [name] raised an eyebrow. “..you’re not getting m’ pillow.” they said assumingly, and laura shook her head. “no, hold my hand, dumbass.” she teased but so.. demandingly. [name] laughed airily before stretching their arm out to interlace their fingers with laura’s. 

her hand was warm. and very soft. even if the position was awkward, with laura's arm stretched back in an odd sort of way to go behind the seat, and [name] having their arm stretched out a bit too far to reach laura's hand, the warmth of her touch made up for the discomfort. she exhaled slowly and lovingly ran her thumb back and fourth against the back of [name]'s hand, making a comforting pattern of little shapes and circles. she laid her head back against the seat, shutting her eyes temporarily. [name] spoke in a tired sounding voice. "your hand is really warm." they noted, and laura smiled. "yours is really cold." she said matter-of-factly.

the position was bliss. laura wanted to fall asleep like this, to sleep with her fingers interlocked with [name]'s, but the cramp gradually growing in both of their arms stated otherwise. laura was stubborn, though. she held [name]'s hand a bit tighter, taking a deep breath in and out. [name] could've stayed like this forever, just like laura wanted to, but they weren't entirely keen on their arm cramping up. as much as they wanted to bask in laura's comforting touch, with the way she rubbed her thumb lovingly over [name]'s hand, their arm wasn't up to date with the plan. slowly, as to not startle or upset laura, they pulled their hand away and rested their cramped arm by their side, staring up at laura's blonde hair that was highlighted by the moon.

laura hummed. "why'd you pull away?" she asked, rolling her head over a bit and straining her eyes to try and look at [name] as best she could. "my arm was cramping. wasn't yours?" they questioned, and laura nodded. "well, yeah, but i didn't mind." she flashed a smile towards them, before closing her eyes once more to try and get a bit of sleep. her hand felt so empty without [name] holding it, though. sure, she could hold one of max's while he drove with the other, but that was dangerous. and [name] was so much warmer, and sleepier. they could sleep together. but not with one in the front seat and one in the backseat.

laura sat up a bit, using her elbow to prop herself up. "max," she spoke suddenly. "can you pull over for a second?" laura requested, making max glance at her with a confused expression. "..why? is something wrong?" he asked, hesitating. laura shook her head. "no. i just wanna do something. it'll only take, like, a couple seconds. then we can get back on the road." she explained, and max thought about it for a second. [name] sat up. "laura, are you doing what i think you're doing?" they questioned suspiciously, and laura shrugged. "i might be." she said vaguely. [name] laughed. "laura it's not gonna-"

but in no time, max had already pulled the car over.

"just hurry up, laura." he pushed. "it could be dangerous." laura was already undoing her seat belt, and unlocking her car door. "i know." she said dismissively before getting up and out of the car. laura shut the door to the car and stretched out her legs, groaning a bit as she did so. she took a few steps towards the backseat, but she could've... sworn she saw something. she turned to look at the darkness within the trees, her eyes scanning over each space with curiosity and suspicion. her eyes flashed over a flutter of movement that seemed to disappear in an instant. what was that? it was too fast to have been a bear, which was common in these parts. but it seemed too tall to really be something like a fox. her thoughts were interrupted by loud, sharp sounding knocking against the window behind her. she jumped a little and turned around to see [name] getting her attention and motioning for her to open the door. when she opened it, she was greeted by [name]'s pleasant voice. "what were you looking at? everything alright?" they asked, and laura glanced behind her before nodding. "just.. thought i saw something move. anyway, scoot over." she demanded, and [name] obliged although retorted a bit. "laura, this is never gonna work." they insisted, but laura got in the backseat regardless.

laura sat down and slammed the car door, not really bothering for a seat belt. [name] clutched their pillow and blanket, letting laura move around a bit. "so can i just.. not lay down anymore? is that privilege taken from me?" they asked, and laura laughed a little. "just wait a second." she reassured, moving her body around to be a bit more comfortable. she was sort of diagonal, sitting in a comfortable position but still sitting up. without any explanation, she pat her lap. [name] stared at her blankly for a moment. laura explained. "ill be your pillow. lay in my lap." [name] smiled warmly at her explanation. "really?" they said, almost annoyed but not necessarily denying the idea. they sort of threw their pillow at laura, before laying their head down so that laura's thigh pressed against the back of their neck and the little dip between her thighs served as a comfortable pillow for [name]. laura smiled down at them and stuffed the pillow behind her while [name] got more comfortable. max turned back to look at them with a sweet smile. "we ready to roll, campers?" he asked dorkily, and laura nodded with a laugh. "yeah." she said simply, and max grinned before getting the car back onto the road.

laura cupped [name's] face with her hand, gentle and loving and so very careful. she absent-mindedly played with [name]'s gorgeous hair, twirling it around in little spirals as they shut their eyes. the light in the back of the car finally shut back off again, making the two relatively unable to see eachother. but they didn't need to see eachother. for laura, feeling [name]'s heartbeat calm and slow beneath her and having her hand near them was enough. [name] reached one of their hands up in an offering position, the same one laura had used on them minutes before. laura intertwined her free hand with theirs, the position being so much more comfortable than it was before. no more arm cramps for them.

[name] shut their eyes comepletely. "night, laura." they mumbled softly, and laura's eyelids drooped a bit deeper before she mumbled back. "goodnight, [name]. sleep well."

maybe this road trip wasn't all that bad. maybe being lost wouldn't be so horrible. maybe the kids wouldn't be godawful. maybe, just maybe, hackett's quarry would be pretty enjoyable for these two months.

maybe. just maybe.

[sugar-petals]

can you give us more thoughts about domestic yoongles? the taemin's one (wich I love) just made me miss the cat boy so much ;o;

i have a phd in househusband yoongi so let me fire out some ideas for ya.

myg at home headcanon

🐱 word count. 1.9k | fluff, slice of life, slight nsfw mentions, x reader, bullet points

The doorbell sound is a recording of Yoongi imitating a doorbell. He’s such a meme. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

Seemingly, he teaches himself a new recipe every week. To perfection. Yoongi is very particular about sticking to the recipe and wielding his kitchen tools in the right way. He collects knives, olive oil, and still hates cutting onions.

He separates sleep time, work time, and couple time as the holy trinity. For each, he switches his mood.

Blushes easily no matter for how long you’ve been together.

Establishes his own radio show where he DJs at one point.

Yoongi keeps an extreme track on the garbage schedule. He knows exactly what is due when. Separating the trash is a must. That includes sorting out fake friends trying to get between your relationship. Your social circle as a couple is extremely deliberate.

Yoongi deems himself a terrible host for guests. Unless Hoseok is there to drag him out, it's true he rather stays in the kitchen or at the barbecue preparing the menu courses rather than making small talk. He leaves the hospitality bits to you, however you want to go about it.

What he lacks in conversing with guests, he makes up in bed, God is absolutely fair.

He sings and hums pretty often and has his own vernacular of extraterrestrial uwu noises. It's an alphabet that you have to yet decipher but it's incredibly cute.

Self-made paintings everywhere around his house. 

Yoongi hasn't gone clubbing since grammar school. The most he does is going to a restaurant at lunch with very close friends. And always in a work context. His private life is so secluded from everything else and paparazzi just don't spot him anywhere, Dispatch thinks he must live abroad.

Very well, he does consider his big ole house a separate country. It's a living organism with a studio, gym, trophy room, small-size basketball court, and vastly equipped kitchen. A home theater as well, he likes American movies (like Inception) and Korean action genres, and you can stream whatever you fancy in there whenever you like. 

Yes, he has underwear with cute little bears on.

There's even a little pond in the backyard. Yoongi, Pisces he is, likes fishes after all. Sometimes he sits at the edge of the 'Little Ole Min Lake (LOML)' and stares into the water for literal hours with his chin parked on his palm.

His fridge is so high-tech and futuristic, even Yoongi is rendered clueless by its AI sometimes. The washing machine, too.

Yoongi watches RuPaul’s drag race. What did you expect? He finds it so humorous.

Owns lord knows how many comic collections.

Favorite holiday destination: New York.

Christmas is basically 50% you unveiling new music equipment to him in the garage and Yoongi almost fainting at the sexiness of it. The other 50% is spent holding hands and orgasm after orgasm until the new year since you loose track of time.

Goes on long rants why he’d marry you again every weekend.

Making you presents is his specialty. Always accompanied with a hand-written note. He writes a lot of things by hand for you in general. Texting, basically never. Always on paper.

No sex without a blanket and socks on. Yoongi gets cold very very easily and just doesn’t like showing skin. You buy him a heated blanket for his birthday, he even uses it in his studio chair.

Chronically addicted to making out.

Matching black outfits and glasses.

Laughs at even your worst jokes or phrases you didn’t expect you even uttered.

Yoongi owns the phoniest, most secretive-looking black car ever and nobody knows about it. Even he forgets he owns it, in fact he genuinely acts like it just doesn’t exist. Hilarious. And that guy has a level 1 Korean driver's license. Which allows him to drive trailers and busses and fucking trucks, and construction machines, let that sink in.

It's really a genius curse. Yoongi being put to the test will always deliver but he won't choose to execute his full skillset if he doesn't have to. Well, pragmatic. He's not as phony as he thinks he is, which is even more hilarious.

He uses that behemoth of a car so scarcely because he'd rather have things delivered to his doorstep and he's stingy with gas. Also, he doesn't like traffic and driving because of the traumatic shoulder accident and his tendency to space out. Translation: You drive that thing... that monster... it really is an impressive, fast, and scary machine. 

If someone devious ever even remotely manages to invade his privacy and get past the doubly-installed security system, he has enough money to deal with it no matter what.

If it concerns your privacy, he's a red belt. And owns Jin's number if a taekwondo master is required. Jimin's if it needs someone with kendo skills.

If Yoongi needs someone to go on a complete rampage, Jungkook lives just down the block. He can sprint to Yoongi's bunker I mean mansion within 45 seconds. 30 if it's very urgent. 20 if the reward is an instant ramen splurge with Yoongi's black card.

He has a sexy, glamorous sword collection hanging on the living room wall anyways, so. Who the hell is dumb enough to mess with him and his expensive lawyer in the first place.

But just in case, who knows... Yoongi settles matters shruggingly, anonymously, and with cash and he's too exhausted for violence, but don't underestimate his deter-min-ation and network for emergencies. Also, he is Agust D after all.

He will bonk a naughty burglar or kidnapper across the head with a wooden cooking spoon or take him down by throwing a basketball if the situation requires it. Damn, his reflexes are so fast, a feral cat in motion. So, lean back and sip on your drink of choice. Things are cared for.

If Yoongi is the one being kidnapped or a highly skilled stalker invades the property at night when he's fast asleep (nothing can wake this man during certain hours, strong REM right here): Don't forget that honeyboy is a Dodgers fan. There are signed baseball bats everywhere in this damn house.

In that sense, your parents visiting you here for the first time thought you were an undercover thug couple. Not to worry mom and dad, you both just like sports very much okay.

Yoongi walks around in all black clothes and the rooms are all seemingly dark. Even if you live together, you don't know his skin care routine. It's clear to you he's some sort of vampire.

Since Yoongi always forgets to remove his makeup, you made it a habit to wipe it down when he's about to pass out. He won't lie, he enjoys that kind of affection.

Holly is your resident child. You're essentially a family.

He insists to tackle this by himself, Yoongi sees his therapist monthly. Not shifting responsibility is something he's stubborn about and he pours his emotions into writing. You will do conversation about deeper stuff, but he says it's mostly up to him and his own mind. He dislikes burdening you or opening up too much and it's something to respect rather than force him about. If he wants to share a thought, he will. It doesn’t mean he can’t trust you or sucks at communicating (we know that he’s direct). Yoongi simply can’t put that much pain in such few words nor should you alleviate it for him.

Calls from the manager faze Yoongi as much as Jimin is bothered by gravity. If he’s busy kissing your body slow mo, who the hell dares to disturb his worship. 

This man had so many let-downs and interpersonal catastrophes in his life, he's super discerning with people. Because he rolls that way, during their first meeting Yoongi uses his psychology certificate on your friends. You see him squint at them, he listens very closely. After they pass the vibe check aka meow radar, he befriends them, too.

Yoongi doodles Grammy trophies everywhere to manifest them.

Yoongi shaves his legs.

All the sex toys he’s ever bought are black. Gotta vibe in style.

He spends ridiculous amounts of time in the studio but he's yours for the remainder of the night, breakfast, and he makes a lavish lunch and dinner.

Um, consider his head parked between your legs. The Hongkong line was not a joke.

Doesn’t mind you squishing his cheeks whenever and for how long you like. 

Every other weekend he gets flowers, vouchers, and gifts — not because of fans, they don’t know where his house is, but because he donates so much.

Namjoon often drops by and cleanses the area with his crystals.

Yoongi is a photography major so you can ask him to take professional, ceiling-high black and white shots of you.

Feeding each other food lovingly. Man, this guy got lips.

He set up a library just for you, in the exact historical aesthetic you like the most. Send him the link to any book you want, it's basically in the online shopping cart already. As I said, he wants to make you presents like every week.

Sometimes he sits on the other end studying English videos and vocab while you read. And yes, he's already 95% fluent but pretends being merely intermediate. He knows technical terms even native speakers have never heard of.

He collects pajamas and earrings.

Swears on the phone.

Namjoon being the horniest member is a cover-up story. Yoongi masturbates almost unreasonable amounts of times, by himself and in your arms when going to bed. Not gonna lie, it’s a sight to see his hands at work. He’s almost equally obsessed with fingering you once you ask him.

Yoongi was the one asking you to move in and almost had a nervous meltdown before meeting up with you to tell you just that. 

He’s the little spoon and of course a sleeping burrito to hold tight.

Finds you equally attractive in any state or styling. Yoongi practices what he preaches, he always reacts the same and says the same. 

Jams out to outrageous beats Namjoon sends him by dancing in the studio. You walk in on him every time. Was embarrassed at first, now you dance along.

Has bought you a life-sized Yoongi pillow and customized you a giant Shooky to hug when he’s not at home over night.

Owned a wine cellar until he quit drinking. Turned it into a piano room instead.

Only you know Yoongi has a serpent and dagger tattoo.

Scrubs the bathroom religiously.

The house smells like restaurant food and his extravagant perfumes half of the time.

Sometimes he has to remind himself he’s married to you and not his coffee machine. He shall be forgiven. You can’t complain that he doesn’t love you enough, nor is he ever not adorable when drinking his latte.

Never wears short sleeves. It can be scorching and he’ll wear a jacket. 

Tell him and the cap stays on during sex.

He grows his hair out and puts it in a low bun. The bangs remain.

Yoongi has installed the most fire-proof building in the entire city it seems. That he wanted to be a firefighter when he was young definitely shows. Figures the house has to be protected from heat: His blasting studio music and Yoongi himself are just way too sizzling.

Still melts into a puddle when you kiss his nose.

Couple sunrise watching. 

© submissive-bangtan 2017-2021. all rights reserved. do not repost or translate. all depictions fictional.

[hms-no-fun]

I guess this is less a question than it is a critique?

I love godfeels in general and I do realise that it was a story about more than just being trans - it was a brilliant dissection of just how little thought Hussie actually put into how fucked up the powers he was giving to literal children and the things he wrote them as doing were, but there was one point that kind of irked me.

Specifically it was the bit where Dirk, who is (at least in as much as godfeels is concerned) kind of a metaphor for transphobia actually sort of has a point? Because there was that whole thing where June actually did kill most of her friends, topple a building and massacre a bunch of innocent people. Dirk's point that "John Egbert never did anything like this, it's only June that did something like this" is... irritatingly valid?

Once it's revealed that Dirk can somehow remember retconned timelines, his initial actions become irritatingly justifiable? At first his actions have less to do with transphobia and more with the "holy shit this previously quiet, agreeable person suddenly KILLED ALL HER FRIENDS."

Yes, Dirk's manner of confronting June about it is creepy as hell. Yes, Dirk's core motivation is incredibly egotistical and shitty - she's incredibly powerful and these recent changes in her life put that power even further outside Dirk's ability to control it. But a timeline verifiably exists wherein, under the influence of Trickster Mode, she kills a bunch of people including some of their mutual friends. Dirk, as much as I despise him, had a right to be concerned about that.

Real transphobia doesn't have a justification like that? And yes, eventually Dirk does slip into the standard transphobia motivation of "you are not the person I need you to be for my world to make sense in my head." Eventually it's all just trying to beat the world into the shape he wants it to be. But it didn't start that way, it started with June actually posing a threat to people he cared about, and it feels... unpleasant? To have some avenue for "well, actually, he had a point" like that.

you’ve got some real chutzpuh bringing this to me, kid. i respect that!

this is a quagmire i was very aware of while writing gf2 and that i’ve gotten some pushback for in the past, and i’ve always tried to respond to it earnestly and in good faith. but this is a really complicated question to get into for me, more complicated than you might realize, so there’s gonna be a lot of stuff here that might seem irrelevant or dismissive and i’m definitely gonna repeat myself more than once. just try to walk with me here and if you’re still unsatisfied by the end, my askbox remains open. just know in advance that this is a LONG one.

so, to start, a couple quibbles:

first, i don’t agree at all with the idea that andrew didn’t put much thought into how fucked up it was for baby teenagers to have godtier powers. i cannot think of a single arc in the main cast that doesn’t, on some level, involve the character in question realizing how traumatized they are by the heights of power and corruption they ascended to before even being old enough to vote. act 6 is fully half the comic and it’s practically an academic exegesis on just how fucked up it is for teens to have godtier powers. how else would you describe the post-juju quadruple dialogue between the Alphas on their death slabs but as an exhaustive deconstruction of the aftermath of sburb-related godtier trauma? you’ve got Dave’s decision to stop using time travel, Rose’s whole thing about communing with the horrorterrors, i mean shit Alternia as a whole is just “what if kids had superpowers and could kill each other would that be fucked up or what,” not to mention two of the most important conversations in homestuck proper (at least for me) are Jade’s discussion with alt-Calliope about the crushing loneliness of being a Space player, and its immediate followup in Jade’s conversation with Davepeta about the unmitigated freedom of being an anything player. that’s a lot of tension for one dog to process! just because characters never come out and explicitly say “wow, isn’t this fucked up” doesn’t mean the author is unaware of how fucked up it is. but also isn’t that literally Dave and Dirk’s last conversation before the end of act 6?

second, i want to challenge your read on where Dirk in gf2 started. yes, there’s an element of his attack on June that is “you are a danger to my friends,” but it cannot go unstated in any discussion of this work that at this point in the narrative Dirk is explicitly preparing for the events of the meat-timeline of the homestuck epilogues. which, you know, involved more than his fair share of below-board friend torture. this isn’t a trivial fact, as much of what occurs in gf3 is a result of godfeels not being the epilogues (hence the subtitle Divergence Syndrome). so we need to understand that, like June, his decisions are never motivated purely by altruism. yes, he’s worried about his friends, but specifically what he’s worried about is that they won’t experience the specific series of traumas that he thinks will make for a better story. just because WE don’t know that for sure until a bit later doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

but these quibbles are largely surface-level and don’t, i think, get to the core of your criticism. what we’re really talking about here is interpretation, and i think more broadly we’re talking about media literacy-- which is NOT me suggesting that YOU SPECIFICALLY are in any sense illiterate! but rather that this particular line of criticism, i must admit, always comes across to me as woefully shortsighted. it’s a criticism filtered heavily through a post-tumblr lens, and i promise i don’t mean that entirely dismissively. it’s a lens i used for a very long time myself, and it still colors a lot of my approach (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). so i’m coming to you now as someone who has grown out of that approach, and who genuinely wants to suggest an alternative. but i’m getting ahead of myself.

the chief disagreement i have with your criticism begins when you say that Dirk “is kind of a metaphor for transphobia.” you’re not wrong here, of course, but i think you’ve stopped at one circle inside a much larger venn diagram. Dirk is only kind of a metaphor for transphobia insofar as the entire cast of godfeels 2 is kind of a metaphor for transphobia. including the people who aren’t violently retaliatory!

what really motivated me to write gf2 in the first place was my dissatisfaction with the black & white morality tale quality of most conventionally popular transgender narratives. i identified with John Egbert the most of all the cast of homestuck, but when June hit critical mass in 2019 i really felt that a lot of the depictions i was seeing just... weren’t all that genuine to my experience. and look, i’m not saying there’s anything wrong with a “June comes out and is accepted by her friends and gets to have a nice time” fic. i’m glad they exist and i’ve read & enjoyed a fair few in my time! but that wasn’t the kind of story i wanted to write, because as a trans woman that just wasn’t my experience of coming out.

my experience of coming out was that no one was ever outright transphobic to me. my friends were initially very encouraging! but as time wore on it became clear to me that their surface level acceptance belied a deep almost metaphysical rift between us, an inability or unwillingness to understand what was actually going on with me. by the time a year had passed, we weren’t on speaking terms anymore and i blamed myself for all of it because those were the terms they couched our conversations in. they saw me as mentally unwell in ways that they insisted had nothing to do with my gender, and they said i needed to “get help” for reasons that had nothing to do with my gender. gender never even came up.

and the thing is, i have no doubt that’s what they genuinely believed. but the fact that it only came to a head the way it did after i came out is really hard for me to ignore, you know? this is why Rose’s “I just have some concerns” comes up over and over again-- a lot of trans people aren’t in the best place when they come out, so it’s easy for well-meaning friends to question whether this is genuine or if it’s just another part of their mental illness. i sometimes wonder how much my friends actually believed me when i told them i was trans, because i was so goddamn depressed and i’d had so many supposedly life-changing revelations in the past that led to absolutely fuckall. from their perspective, how was this different from any other time i swore up and down that i was on A Better Path?

now, obviously they were WRONG, and i wish they’d supported me better. but they also had full-time jobs, they had their own lives and mental health struggles to deal with. so i understand, you know? i’m still mad about it, and i can’t ever really forgive them for how much it hurt me, but i don’t hate them. and i certainly don’t think they’re transphobes. it’s just that most day-to-day transphobia isn’t a conservative saying “you’re not a real [gendered noun],” it’s little shit that no one but you even notices and if you try to bring it up, nine times out of ten you get told you’re just reading too much into things, you’re making everything about gender when it has nothing to do with gender, etcetera etcetera. but it all adds up for us, you know? that’s microaggressions innit

but this gets us to the real sticky part, the part you’ve probably been silently saying muttering “this is a copout you’re not ACTUALLY addressing my question” over: retaliatory violence. and here’s as good a place as any to say that if you haven’t watched my video about writing everything before gf2.3, i suggest giving it a watch as i discuss this topic pretty thoroughly there. i imagine i’ll be saying many of the same things now, just with a bit more perspective.

let’s start with mental illness.

i’m on medications for bipolar and adhd. i wasn’t always. in the years before i came out, i was a bitter, lonely, confused mess of a person. as a child and teen i had anger problems, i had violent fantasies, i felt a really deep desire to react to the smallest injustices delivered onto me by my bullies with cartoonishly over-the-top violence. not all or even most of these fantasies were justified. i was an edgelord teen who loved quentin tarantino movies, of course i was shitty. the friends i mentioned above, like i said, i do understand where they were coming from. they didn’t have access to my mind, they had their own lives to live, and just as they weren’t communicating with me, i wasn’t communicating with them. at the time i blamed myself for everything that was turning sour in our relationships, but i still had nightmares and fantasies where i’d scream in their faces for some kind of recognition or acknowledgement only to become outrageously violent when they failed to do so. i felt guilty for those fantasies, they reminded me of being 17 thinking to myself “man if i weren’t so anti-gun i’d make a really good school shooter.”

that’s a vile thought, right? that’s the kind of thing if someone said it to you out loud, you’d probably have a few concerns.

but i didn’t say it out loud. it was just a thought that popped into my head from time to time. what matters, what really matters in any material sense, is that i never even came close to acting on it. a thought isn’t real, an image of fake violence isn’t real, an unacted-upon desire to inflict violence isn’t real. fiction, too, is not real. and through my entire adult life, the only consistent outlet of any worth i’ve had has been fiction.

the question of how “acceptable” it is for traumatized people to process their trauma in fiction is, i must admit, rather obnoxiously contentious. i’ve seen ostensible leftists genuinely say without a hint of irony, “yeah, okay, fine, you have every right to explore your complicated feelings about [traumatic event] in fiction, but you shouldn’t post it anywhere.” so, what, people who have flawless, frictionless transitions are allowed good representation, but when a messy transition is depicted that’s just universally bad representation? if a queer character isn’t shown to be unambiguously good and correct, then that’s... that’s bad? why doesn’t it count when i say that i feel better when i read a story that reflects how fucked up my life is? why’s it gotta be that every story needs to be for everyone? why’s it gotta be that my story that i started writing for my own reasons with no expectation of getting paid for it, no expectation of any kind of substantial audience, ought to stand as an unimpeachable argument in favor of trans women’s infallibility? trans women aren’t infallible. charlotte clymer exists. caitlyn jenner exists. it flattens and diminishes the humanity of marginalized people to insist that it’s a flaw when a story doesn’t make it unambiguously clear that not all marginalized people are bad. it’s not my job as a trans woman to make sure you, the reader, know that not all trans women are bad. i assume that you know this. i assume that you can look at the circumstances of the narrative and understand that this has always been a speculative scifi story about a world that operates on very different rules than our world, about people who are capable of things that no one in our world is capable of.

you know how sometimes you’ll have a conversation with someone and they’ll say just the most catastrophically stupid shit, but as much as you WANT to roast them for it you know it’d be rude and unproductive? well what if you could roast that person, get it out of your system, and then retcon the whole exchange out of existence? as i’ve said in other answers, the horror of retcon is that it puts you in the driver’s seat of your own personal groundhog day, unlimited and consequence-free throughout time and space. i know this probably seems utterly irrelevant to the substance of your criticism, but to me it’s everything. the feels in godfeels have always been rooted in the dreadful existential weight of knowing that you could get away with doing absolutely anything you wanted with terrifying ease.

homestuck is a violent story. how many times do we see those teens get stabbed to death? so for me, as gf2 soared out of my hands and grew in scope, it felt obvious and natural to take that premise and combine it with the messiness of my own coming out. to explore gender and violence together. when i wrote the scene where Callie gives June her juju, i knew that i was stepping into REALLY dangerous territory, because June is transgender, and a trans person who kills her other queer friends for being above-average in their transphobia is bad transgender representation.

right?

i think that’s the core of what you’re driving at with your criticism-- that Dirk, the emergent antagonist of godfeels 2, the guy who’s essentially demanding that June detransition Or Else, has a point when he says that June is dangerous and can’t be trusted to have anyone else’s best interests at heart. you point out that, in real life, transphobes don’t have a point when they attack trans people, and that’s true. i agree with you.

the first thing i’ll say here that i think will drive you up the wall is that tried and true age-old canard: depiction isn’t endorsement. June Egbert is a character making choices; Dirk Strider is a character making choices. they have their reasons, some good, some bad, but i tried very hard not to make it so the narrative took a side as such. obviously to an extent that’s impossible when our perspective is so thoroughly fixed through June’s eyes, but i tried to show in Dirk’s narration (especially in his fight with Roxy) that he’s not a mustache-twirling villain over this. he’s a guy with a plan who doesn’t know how not to have that plan anymore when something essential to the plan changes. he has his own doubts about what he’s doing. in fact i think you could make a very compelling case that, from Dirk’s perspective, June and Terezi systematically turned all his friends against him for their own diabolical ends. and like, hey! arguably the realityquake is a direct result of June refusing to do what Dirk told her to do. that’s kind of fucked up, right? to which i say that nowhere did i ever promise that June would be The Good Guy of this story. no one who has that kind of power over others is ever ever ever simply The Good Guy.

the second thing i’ll say to this point is that growing up queer in this world is messy. i’ve already enumerated my mental unwellness, now let me add that many of my trans friends share a similar spread of ailments as well as a similarly messy upbringing. something we never really talk about, for i think pretty obvious reasons, is the fact that just by virtue of how awfully closeted queer people in general are treated, a lot of us do have really checkered pasts. to be clear this is by absolutely NO means a universal generalization, i’m not saying all or even most trans people are like this. but a number of us are. and i’ve gotten so many messages from trans people who read godfeels and felt seen by it, felt seen by the very problem you’ve astutely identified. what’s to be done with their testimony in this conversation? is it irrelevant? are they wrong? would you go to them and tell them, well, sure, i guess you can say that, but it’s still problematic and needs to be...

needs to be what? that’s what i’m really trying to understand now. what is it, exactly, that you want from me. if you’re saying the moral quandaries of gf2 need to be interrogated, yeah, i agree. you see something problematic in godfeels 2, and i agree with you that it’s problematic. i put it there on purpose. i thought a lot about that choice. i did it because my life has often been problematic, in ways both fair and unfair, and because most of those problems just don’t have easy answers. sometimes there are good guys and bad guys, sometimes someone is absolutely in the wrong. but a lot of times the reality is a lot greyer than that. and just because we’re seeing painful pushback against even the meagerist of trans rights on a global scale doesn’t mean that my depiction of a problematic trans woman is somehow immoral or counterproductive for “the trans community.” which i know is not what you said, but it’s hard for me not to jump to this conclusion when this is always where it leads. if i seem overly defensive it’s because i’ve had to field a version of this question SO many times over the years, and while you may think yourself disconnected from any wider critical perspective (i have no way of knowing this, obviously), i see an undeniable continuity in terms.

i put scare quotes around “the trans community” because there are plenty of trans communities where i have never felt particularly welcome. as a non-passing trans woman who leans butch, there are so many pillars of the lgbt spectrum that’d criticize or disavow me it makes my head spin. generally i’m okay with that. not every space is or should be for everyone, just the same as not every work of fiction is or should be for everyone. and i don’t want a fucking thing to do with transmed gender essentialist circles anyway.

godfeels is not for everyone. it is a story about violence, ignorance, trauma, guilt, and a whole charcuterie board of other messy emotions besides. i have never been interested in looking at a fictional character and saying “this is a purely bad thing in a cosmic sense that they’re doing,” because i just don’t find that interesting to write about. someone can choose to hurt a lot of people in an act of what could be accurately described as evil, but that person still CHOSE to do what they did. their actions made sense to them, even if they don’t make sense to us. even if they scare us. and i think it’s important to decry the actions of real people in the real world when innocent people get hurt. but fiction is not the real world. yes, obviously fiction effects reality in some ways- it shapes how we view the world, how we view each other. but so often in these conversations, there’s simply no sense of scale or severity. what negative social affect can be attributed to a homestuck fanfic written by a trans woman when huge swathes of the american populace are using fuckin marvel movies to justify escalating the war in ukraine? what about jk rowling weaponizing her gargantuan fanbase against trans people? i cannot fathom holding up even the truly vilest of fanfic as representative of some grave social ill or as setting back perception of a marginalized group with any kind of longterm conviction when we are surrounded on all sides by corporate propaganda that cynically puppets the corpse of the liberal lgbt movement to lend their worthless backwards trash an air of Progressive Clout. like i’m supposed to be impressed that there’s a trans person in the background of an otherwise pro-imperialist nightmare of bad CGI and rampant labor exploitation. did they employ trans people? did they get a trans person’s perspective on that character or on the narrative as a whole? did they even talk to any trans people? who gives a shit about depiction or representation, we could have a million trans characters in cinema and still be completely fucked as a demographic if those characters were all written by cis white men who think the feminine essence theory is good feminism. what i care about is whether or not trans people can stay fed and pay rent, and that includes trans people whose lives and stories don’t mesh with the popular narratives about trans people. if your politics involve telling problematic trans women to shut up, to hide their trauma, to get out of the limelight lest our enemies use us as ammunition in their war against all of us, then i’m sorry but you’re just a conservative censor doing the job of a GOP politician for free at absolutely no one’s behest and to everyone’s detriment including your own. when the conservatives come for queer people, they won’t care who among us is “respectable.” queerness itself is their enemy, and they’ll kill the based just as surely as they’ll kill the problematic.

and that’s where it really comes down for me, you understand? i’m totally aware of how soupy this moral dilemma is. i fucking wrote it! i think it’s an interesting tension to have to sit with a character who knows that even though they had (what at least felt like) a good reason, even though it literally hasn’t happened anymore, they still did something terrible that they regret and that they’ll remember for the rest of their life. the flashbacks we see in 2.3 of June going door to door to get folks on her side are explicitly framed by a recurring guilt and doubt that June feels at every step of the process. she knows that she fucked up with the retcon, and she knows she made everything worse by dangling Dirk over a volcano, but she doesn’t know how to talk this out, and Terezi just sort of assumes that their only option is a full-on combat scenario. also, man, once again no one questions Terezi’s role in this! the eponymous “good plan” of 2.3 is HERS. the only part of that plan that’s genuinely June’s is her choice to take Jade to fight Lord English, and it’s the part that ultimately saves the day.

Jade, of course, having had her own past meddled with retcon-ways by June’s own admission in gf1. so we have a June who in the past tried to intervene in someone else’s life to make it “better” from her perspective, now turning around and intervening in that same life for essentially the same reason. only this time she’s giving Jade a choice. or is she? does Jade have a choice? did I as the writer give her a choice?

again, you’re seeing the same thing i’m seeing. you’re seeing that June and Dirk both Made Some Points. you’re seeing that June is not a paragon of virtue even though she’s transgender. the difference is that you think your reaction is not the intended experience. yes, i say, it is problematic, it is uncomfortable, it is unpleasant. but problems exist to be solved, and i’m not the person who can give you the answers. if June isn’t a perfect trans woman, if she did in fact Do Some Things Wrong, then that just makes her human (which, as you’ll recall, was a question very much on June’s mind in gf1). i’m not interested in saying whether or not any of these events are Good or Bad in a cosmic or moral sense because, yet again, that’s just not interesting to me as a writer.

and this is what i mean when i say that you’re coming at this from a decidedly post-tumblr perspective, because again, you’re seeing what i’m seeing, but you’ve stopped at a smaller circle inside a larger venn diagram. this is not a story about how trans women are unambiguously good and correct at all times, it’s a story about lateral violence among queer friends who also happen to be unfathomably powerful gods. these are not normal 23 year olds! if we are to tell a story that even remotely attempts to explore the minutiae and consequence of what these characters are capable of, we simply cannot relegate ourselves to the realm of what is possible and/or acceptable in our reality. the whole point is that it’s not possible in our reality! it’s fiction! and the circumstance that June and Dirk find themselves in in gf2 does not resemble any real life circumstance that exists in the material world. yeah, transphobes in real life don’t have a point and they can get fucked. but if Dirk was like a texas neocon, if Rose was more explicitly TERFy, or if June hadn’t literally murdered her friends and then retconned it, would that be better for the story? like yeah, sure, a TERF would be an obvious villain, a texas neocon would be an obvious villain. despite all appearances i do in fact know how to write a trans character who is not hashtag problematic, i just don’t want to do that. i don’t want to write obvious villains. i don’t want to write obvious conflicts.

all of my favorite art sits balanced on a razor’s edge of some taboo or other, and stares you directly in the eyes and demands that you reckon with it for what it is. i like art that makes me uncomfortable, that pushes into weird difficult messy philosophical territory, because at least when it happens in fiction it doesn’t result in me becoming homeless. that’s the kind of fiction i want to write. and i know full well that we don’t live in an environment that is particularly friendly to that kind of fiction. right now everything in life feels like a mortal peril, all our rights as queer & working people are being slowly pulled back, our very bodies demonized, our youths tormented by cruel governments, so it’s natural i think to react to fiction flirting with this difficult territory in ambiguous terms the same way you would to this shit in real life. that’s the smaller circle in the bigger circle, get it? you’re correct in your acknowledgement of a problem, but the tumblr lens is one aggressively opposed to reading that problem in any terms other than outright dismissal and condemnation.

it’s a binaristic lens, you understand? it’s checking a work of art against an abstract scorecard on a pass-fail basis. and it leads to the elevation primarily of children’s media, which tends to be binaristic in its morals. and that’s not strictly bad! i love steven universe as much as the next gal. and it’s fine if someone doesn’t want to engage with more difficult media, i totally get it! sometimes i’m in the mood for garbage. i talk all kinds of shit about marvel movies but i fucking LOVE thor ragnarok. the thing is that when i talk shit about marvel movies i KNOW who i’m pushing back against and i know why. i can have my annoyances with writers, directors, actors, etc, but the real problem of the mcu is its ideology & its status as above all else a product for mass consumption, which is the problem of hollywood and the problem of america. virtually all american media is produced by a small handful of corporations who have unilateral control over what gets made and what doesn’t. the result is a media culture built around an ideology that TRIES SO HARD to make itself invisible because of course americans don’t want politics in their media. but the politics are there, because everything is political. and when every movie, tv show, and news broadcast tells you to be afraid of black people, to be afraid of trans women, to be afraid of russians, to be afraid of chinese, that gets us to now, that gets us to a culture that simply has not been given the tools to analyze media in any terms other than those dictated by the selfsame corporations that produce that media. so the tumblr lens, the social justice lens, it can identify a problem in a text but it always falls short when it tries to find a solution. and it falls short because it’s not materialist, it’s not based in any kind of class awareness or political dialectics. it’s not even really based in a particularly feminist politics! hell, the sjw keystone that is the bechdel test originates from a comic and artist that absolutely refuses the binaristic ideology that has led to its popularity.

a truly materialist critical analytic lens would understand that, like in activism, a diversity of tactics must be supported. you do not have to like the art made by every trans woman to understand that you have more in common with the most loathesome working class trans woman you’ve heard of than you do with anyone who has ever sat in a position of real political power in your lifetime. a materialist lens would understand that selling out the problematic in favor of the acceptable is the cutting off of one’s nose to spite their face. when you create an environment where the first thing an artist must consider is whether or not it tics all the right representational boxes, all you really do is put a chilling effect on subversive, difficult art. you don’t have to like subversive, difficult art. you don’t have to like that Dirk kind of has a point about June’s actions. but when you come to me with this criticism as though there’s anything i can do about it, as though i’ve somehow messed up, that doesn’t feel the same as other criticism to me. if you say “parts of chapter 8 are too long,” i can take that and use it as feedback in the future. if you say “i don’t like how little agency June had in gf3.1,” i can disagree and present my own case as to why lack of agency is such a persistent theme in godfeels, but i also understand that it’s a difficult story and that one can certainly get The Point while also not necessarily enjoying the experience. but when you say “this is bad because it looks bad in a real world political context,” i mean, god, what do i even DO with that? again, for the millionth time, you’re not telling me anything i don’t already know. i wrote it. i made you feel these emotions. i wanted you to feel these emotions. there is a reason i wanted you to feel these emotions. but they are, fundamentally, YOUR emotions, not mine. only you can understand them.

so sit with them. reflect on them. ask yourself why this part of the story makes you uncomfortable, why you feel compelled to read it the way you do. don’t worry, no one can read your mind. i mean it, anon. there’s no wrong answers here. what’s beautiful about fiction is that it lets us sit in uncomfortable, taboo emotions and events and situations without fear of retribution or judgment... unless, of course, you problematize the very existence of difficult art. unless you create an environment in which everyone is afraid to tell ambiguous stories of any stripe lest they be subject to a vicious harassment campaign. that’s the environment that ruthlessly attacked Isabel Fall over ‘i sexually identify as an attack helicopter.’ that’s an environment so shortsightedly, bloodthirstily fixated on whatever problematic thing they notice first that it is practically designed from the ground up to annihilate all outsider art and leave only the most corporate friendly pro-empire propaganda in its place.

to close out here (fucking finally lmao), you might say i’m putting words in your mouth here, but i’m just trying to follow your logic to its conclusion. if it is a strictly negative problem, a pure flaw in the work, that June can in some sense at least be partially blamed for the violence done to her, what do you suggest is the solution? in the event of a rewrite, what would you suggest i change? are you looking for an apology? an admission of guilt? maybe it’s something else, i don’t know. maybe you haven’t even thought that far ahead. i’m just asking you to understand that your criticism exists in a context that, whether you meant it this way or not, has a demonstrable chilling effect on the very art you claim to love. i get scared when i get criticism like this because it’s framed like an accusation. it’s framed like i did a crime, which implies the specter of punishment.

and trans women, as we know, are the favored whipping girls of social media harassment campaigns.

anyway, i hope that gives you a thing or two to chew on

[dizzydancingdreamer]

I Need You | The Mikaelson Boys

Hey lovelies! Here’s another Mikaelson Brother’s fic. This time it’s a firefighter AU. I don’t know why I was so inspired but oh well, here it is anyway. Please do ignore the blatant plot holes and dropped plot points. I wrote this purely for the fluff so the rest doesn’t matter too much! I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Until next time, all my love!

Description: The brothers are firefighters and they come back to the station after a long day only to find an unconscious woman in their fire station. It turns out she’s their mate and she's seconds from death. From there it’s pure fluff/smut. Honestly the plot of this is weak, I just wanted something majorly fluffy.

Pairing: Female!Reader x The Mikaelson Boys

Warnings: THIS IS AN 18+ ONLY FIC!!! It’s not a full blown smut but it does get heated. It’s hella light smut. Honestly the warning should read something more like “inappropriate actions for on duty firefighters towards a civilian at the workplace”. Take into mind that I do not condone this behaviour outside of my fics but that they are soulmates and it’s all consensual! The other warning is angst. This is super graphic at the beginning but after that it gets better.  

Word count: 7.3k

Tags: Angst, smut, fluff

P.S. This is only in the boys’ perspectives for like five nanoseconds, after that it’s completely in the reader’s

Tag list: @activist-af​ @corishirogane3​

(Pictures not mine, mood board is!)

“Remind me, Elijah,” Klaus runs a hand through his hair, shaking some of the soot from his blonde hair, “why we decided to do this again?”

Elijah huffs indignantly, also shaking out his hair and shrugging the heavy coat off his shoulders. His hoodie underneath is soaked through with sweat and it follows the same path. Klaus already stands in just a t-shirt, the navy material glued to his skin. 

“Don’t you remember, brother?” Kol hops out of the truck from behind the wheel, his bare chest exposed, spare the straps keeping the bottom half of his turnout gear on, a cheerful grin on his lips, “He wanted us to give back to the community. I believe his exact words were firefighters or soldiers.”

It’s true, Elijah had wanted them to do something meaningful with their lives. Well, with a fraction of their lives. He wanted them to be a family again and what better way to do that than to take on a career built on teamwork. Honestly, he had expected them to last maybe six months before quitting but now they were three years deep and he couldn’t see them going anywhere for a while. Somehow station 32 in small town Virginia had become a home base for them.

Elijah leans against the brick of the old fire station, closing his eyes for a moment, “just be happy I didn’t suggest doing both.”

“What makes you think I would follow you to war,” Klaus laughs but it’s hollow, the strain of the day settling over his bones.

They haven’t had a day this strenuous in months, sixteen calls in one day and it’s only eight. Human or not, that’s a lot of heavy lifting. Klaus would do anything for some sleep. He sags against the wall next to his brother. Despite the sleep tugging at his body he can’t seem to relax. Something is keeping his spine rigid, something he can’t quite place his mind on. Oh well. 

Elijah chuckles, his eyes still shut, “you followed me here didn’t you? Face it, you needed this as much as I did.”

Klaus doesn’t speak, he just hums his agreement, something entirely unlike him but brought on from the exhaustion. His shoulders remain tight, his muscles stiff. The air feels like it's buzzing lightly, charged with something he doesn’t have enough energy to think about.

Kol laughs through his own fatigue, stretching his arms behind him, ignoring the way his bones click slightly, “I, for one, need a shower. I smell like flames and I hate it. I suggest you two do the same,” he turns from his slumped brothers, “I can smell you from here.”

Elijah pulls himself from the wall, rolling his shoulders and peeling his eyes open, “come on, Niklaus, you can take a nap for a few hours. I doubt the rest of the night will be eventful, half the town should be asleep by now.”

“I hope you’re right.”

The two brothers catch up with Kol easily, grabbing their discarded gear on the way and heading towards the locker room. Kol is the first to step through the door, adamant on jumping in the shower before his brothers take all the hot water like they usually do, when he stops suddenly, all of his senses on high alert. Something is wrong, terribly so. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, catching the faintest hint of sweetness, like vanilla and oranges, mingled with something sharper. Something too familiar. 

“Kol, what are you-” Elijah doesn’t get to finish his thought.

“Blood,” Klaus pushes past both of them, his eyebrows furrowed, “I smell blood. Someone’s here.”

Kol nods and steps further into the room, directly followed by Klaus and Elijah. As they push forward, towards the showers, the scent of fresh blood intensifies. So does the vanilla citrus perfume, magnifying and tangling around each brother. The room is electrified because of it, drawing them quicker to the heart of the locker room. The distinct sound of three heartbeats fills the room, each one louder than the last. Thump, thump, thump. 

When they turn the corner they freeze, each heart skipping a beat in the same moment. There, in the middle of the showers, is an unconscious woman. A naked, unconscious woman slumped over in a pool of her own blood. Her body is battered, more blue and black than any other color. Who knew a vampire's blood could turn as cold as theirs is right now?

“Fuck,” Kol’s voice is the first to break the tension, dropping to his knees with a dull thud, his heart strings snapping violently in his chest, “fuck!”

Klaus is in front of her in a flash, his teeth ripping into his wrist without a second thought. Kol turns his head away, squeezing his eyes shut. There’s no way he can watch this. The sweet smell wraps around him, taunting him almost. The overwhelming sense of loss wraps around him like a noose, his throat closing harshly. Why now, why like this?

“Is that,” Elijah, too, sinks to the ground, his hands splayed against the concrete, his eyes glued to the horrific sight in front of him, “is that who I think it is?”

His muscles tighten, an indescribable pain rippling through his entire body. He feels like he’s drowning. No, like he’s burning alive. Fuck, it feels like both at the same time. He wants to scream but no sounds are surfacing. This can’t be happening!

Kol’s voice is sharp and cracked, too many emotions to decipher leaking into his words, “yeah, it’s her. It’s our mate.”

Klaus presses his bleeding wrist to her mouth hard, tears streaming freely down his face. He couldn’t care less about how he looks, not right now. Not when it feels like someone is ripping his heart straight from his chest. 

“Come on, love. Wake up. I need you! Wake up!”

                         *          *          *           *          *          *

“Wake up. I need you! Wake up!” 

You tear your eyes open suddenly, bright lights flooding your senses. You gasp as you regain consciousness, something that you realize too late is a mistake. Your mouth is filled with a thick, hot substance, one much too metallic and familiar for your liking, that you inhale by accident. It fills your lungs quickly, your chest burning, and you roll over, hacking up mouthfuls of the disgusting fluid. It feels like your entire body is engulfed in flames. Like you’re dying twice. 

The concrete is freezing against your fiery arms and, when it finally blurs into focus, you realize it’s also covered in a deep red liquid. You run your tongue over your mouth, the tang making your eyes widen. Your heart stutters as you finally come to an understanding. Blood. The floor is covered in blood. Your blood. This time you vomit, and almost scream when you see it matches the liquid around you.

“Shit,” a voice sounds from behind you as a pair of hands slides over your back, startling you further into the sticky redness, “holy shit you’re awake. Oh thank god!”

You flinch away from the hands, turning too quickly to face whoever it is behind you. Mistake number two. The walls start spinning around you and you have to grasp the wet stone beneath you and close your eyes for a moment. When you finally open them again you’re met with a pair of warm, brown eyes. Your heart stutters again, but you don’t have time to wonder why you don’t feel as afraid this time.

“Who are you? What the hell is going on?” you run your eyes over him, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, “I don’t- where am I?”

Each of your senses are on high alert, your heart beating so loud you’re afraid it’s going to jump out of your chest, as you allow yourself to finally take in your surroundings. You're in a shower room of sorts, with rows of lockers on your one side and the tiled rows of shower stalls on the other. The smell of fresh blood hits you full force and you almost vomit again. You suck in a deep breath, ignoring the burning in your lungs as you try to force the feeling away. Your eyes catch some writing on the wall; Station 32. You look back to the man in front of you, zeroing in on his navy t-shirt with the same logo. 

What the hell are you doing at a fire station? 

He shifts closer to you and you stiffen. A pained expression laces across his face and your chest stings, worse than it did when you were coughing up the blood. He closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them again there’s a sheen of tears. You swallow thickly, your own tears forming at the sight of his. What on earth is happening?

He sits back on his knees and runs a red hand through his blonde hair, maring the light strands with blood. You tense further at the sight. For some reason you want to stop him from spreading more of the blood over him. He’s already kneeling in a puddle of it, and his arms are soaked, painted in a cruel crimson. Even his t-shirt is drenched.  You grind your teeth together, your jaw clenching harshly. He places both his hands on the floor and takes another few inches towards you.

His movements are slow as if not to startle you, “hey, it’s alright. You’re safe now. I’m Klaus, I’m a firefighter here. You’re at station 32, Lexington, Virginia.”

His voice is heavy with emotion, making what you can only assume is a strong british accent even stronger. Your heart tugs harshly when he speaks, begging you to move closer to him. You wrap your arms around yourself, ignoring the increasingly sticky feeling over your entire body. You can’t stop a few tears from slipping down your cheeks.

“How did I get here?” 

A new voice, one just as accented and gravelly, pulls your attention from Klaus, “we aren’t sure, darling. We just got back ourselves. Gave us quite a shock, actually. How much do you remember?”

Your eyes wander around the blonde and land on two more men, two brunettes. You lock eyes with each of them, your heat racing once more. You suck in a breath at the wave of emotions that hit you. Sadness, confusion, longing, comfort. Love. It all hits you at once and you have to close your eyes before the room starts spinning again. When you open them again, they’re closer. Far enough to keep you from tensing, settled next to Klaus. 

You tuck your knees to your chest, wrapping your arms around yourself, suddenly feeling very exposed. One of the men, the one with dark brown hair cut close to his head and concerned brown eyes, notices and wastes no time pulling the t-shirt from his chest and settling it on your knees. It’s warm and a touch damp but you don’t mind, gratefully shuffling it over your head and passing him a grateful nod. It lands mid thigh, circling you in a heady wood scent. Your cheeks flame as you try not to lean down and smell it directly. When you look back at him his eyes are glinting.

“I’m not sure,” you press your palms against your eyes and immediately regret it, the stickiness now smeared on your cheeks and eyelids, “I don’t remember much. Only bits and pieces from this morning but nothing after that. Wait, is that normal? God, why can’t I remember anything!”

All of a sudden you’re panicking and the room begins shrinking, at least it feels like it is. You can’t breathe, your lungs constricting painfully. There isn’t enough oxygen in the room. Was there ever enough? You’re racking your mind for any little thing that you can remember but it’s pointless, you’re going too fast and your mind can’t make sense of anything you’re seeing. You see a sink, one covered in blood. You see teeth. No, you see fangs. You smell the forest, one heavy with pine trees. None of it makes sense!

You claw maniacally at your chest, trying to suck in enough air to clear the fog in your head. Nothing is helping, your body is on fire and sticky and you just want to scream until it all makes sense. The shirt feels three sizes too small and you want to tear it over your head. Just before you can, though,  you’re pulled onto someone's lap, someone who smells like pure water, and you can finally suck in a proper breath. The flames that were lapping your skin slowly start to fade, giving over to a cool sensation that soothes your achy bones. 

“Deep breaths, love,” Klaus’ voice washes over you like a lullaby, his hands rubbing down your back, “that’s good, just like that. We’re going to figure this out but for now you just have to breathe. You’re safe now, I promise you that. We can start with an easy one, what’s your name?”

You sink into his chest more easily than you would like to admit. His arms circle you tighter, his head resting on yours in an entirely unprofessional way but you don’t care. You’ve never felt this kind of need before. You’re afraid that if you leave his arms now then the flames will come back.

“Y/n,” you murmur into his shoulder, “my name is y/n.” 

A pair of hands rub over your shoulders, drawing you into them slightly on instinct, “darling, I know you’re scared but we need to see if you’re seriously hurt. We found you in a lot of blood,” whoever is speaking his voice is rough and he has to stop to clear his throat, muttering a curse under his breath, “do you think you can let us check you over?”

When he brings up the blood, it’s all you can smell again, and you scramble from Klaus’ arms, narrowly making it before you’re vomiting again. This time you don’t puke up any blood, thank god. Just bile, which isn’t much better. The metallic scent is all around you and it’s all you can do to hang your head and suck in as much air as possible. You feel so dizzy it physically hurts.

“Shit, Elijah we gotta get this cleaned up. It’s only making it worse. C’mere love,” you’re pulled into the warm chest of a man you’ve yet to interact with.

You lock eyes with the last man, losing your breath at his honey brown eyes. He smiles softly and you feel your cheeks go hot. You bring your hands to your lips quickly, all too aware of how close you are to this man and the fact that you were just throwing up and are soaked through with blood. You blink back a few tears, embarrassment streaming through you. You glance down at his chest which is now covered in your blood. The man furrows his brows, shaking his head lightly. You can almost hear his thoughts; don’t worry. 

Elijah, the man who gave you his shirt, nods at Klaus, standing quickly, “you two take her to the captain’s bathroom, it’s nicer anyway and more private. I’m not expecting anyone else tonight but I’d rather them not see her like this,” he turns, locking eyes with you, his rough tone softening drastically, “baby, are you okay if they help you clean this blood off? They’re not going to hurt you, we just need to get you cleaned up and warm to make sure you don’t go back into shock.”

The word baby rings through your head, hitting you directly in the chest. Tendrils of warmth unfurl through your body and you find yourself nodding to everything he says. Elijah sags, relief taking over his body. It doesn’t last long though, the tension filling his frame as he looks back around the room.

“Kol,” the man under you tenses, “take her upstairs now. Niklaus, do you mind helping me with this? It’s-” Elijah looks at you again for a moment before he has to look away, “It’s going to take two people.”

Klaus stares at you longingly, the pained look back in his eyes. It makes you want to pull him into your arms, blood or no blood, and hold him. You tense at the thought. Where did that come from?

He looks at you a moment longer before crawling over to and running one of his stained hands over your cheek. He leans down and kisses the top of your head, rubbing his cheek against your matted hair. Sparks dance down your spine at the simple touch, lighting your body like a christmas tree. Too many emotions surface again, confusion and longing being the top contenders. 

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can, love,” he whispers to you before standing himself and addressing Elijah, “yeah, let’s get this over with.”

Elijah nods at Klaus, his shoulders sagging slightly, probably out of relief again. Looking around one last time it’s obvious the job is going to take some major man-power. Thankfully the blood is contained mostly to the showers, but even so it’s coating almost every surface from there on. Looking at it makes you chest heavy again but before you can lose it Kol stands, pulling you up with him. 

He holds you easily, bringing you level with Klaus and Elijah. Elijah strides over to you, taking your face in his hands. Your heart pounds mercilessly at his touch. It takes all your willpower not to jump into his arms and curl around his bare chest. You try not to stare at his taut muscles. Now is definitely not the time to let lust join the myriad of emotions  running through you. Even as you force your eyes away, though, your body ignites and you have to stop yourself from clenching your thighs around Kol. Fucking hell, what is going on?

Kol’s arms tense suddenly and when you peak back at him, his eyes are shades darker. You swallow thickly, trying not to think too much about the heated look in his eyes. Or how much you don’t want him to stop looking at you like that. You peer back at Elijah, who holds a similar expression. You have to suck in a breath, the room temperature instantly raising ten degrees. 

Elijah leans his forehead against yours, his thumbs grazing your cheekbones gently, “Kol’s going to take you upstairs now, okay baby? He’ll take care of you, help you wash some of this off. You’re in control here, alright? No one else is going to hurt you.”

You nod lightly, your forehead rubbing against his, “okay, Eli.”

He sucks in a sharp breath and presses a hard kiss to your head before releasing you. Kol shuffles you further up his body, drawing your attention to him. He grins at you but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Before you can process what you’re doing, you’re cupping his cheek in your hand. His skin is soft and so warm. He sighs quietly, sinking his cheek into your touch, his eyes losing some of the tension.

“Let’s go get cleaned up, darling.” 

You lower your hand, choosing now to wrap your arms around his shoulders instead. His muscles under your fingertips are glorious, warm and firm. When you rest your face against his shoulder, you breathe in the faintest hints of nutmeg and flames. It’s absolutely intoxicating. His shoulder is hot against your cheek and you finally give into your cravings to curl your body around his, wrapping your legs tightly around his torso and clinging to him for dear life. He holds you against him with everything he has, taking the steps two at a time. 

You can’t bring yourself to open your eyes until you feel him enter a separate room, one much smaller than the locker room you were previously in. You’re greeted with a spectacular sight; a spacious bathroom with a wall of showerheads and the biggest clawfoot tub you’ve ever seen. You almost jump from his arms at how badly you want to get in it.

He sets you down on a vast countertop, the cool marble biting into your bottom. You shiver lightly, a warm blush spreading down your neck and chest. He places his arms on either side of you, staring at you with a mixture of tenderness and caution. You have to will yourself to keep looking into his eyes and not at the way his arms flex from how he’s leaning. God, where did all these wanton feelings come from?

“Okay, darling, where are we going from here? What do you need me to do?” his accent is fuller due to the acoustics in the bathroom and you nearly keel over from how hard it slams through your body, tugging at every nerve south of your belly button.

“Um,” you clear your throat lightly, swallowing the sudden scratchiness, “do you think there’s a toothbrush anywhere around here?”

Kol grins knowingly, leaning down and opening a drawer next to your thigh. The heat rolling off his body rushes into your legs and when he resurfaces with a new toothbrush and a cheeky smile you’re practically panting.

“Thanks.”

You brush your teeth quickly, making sure to scrub the remnants of the past thirty minutes or so from your mouth. It instantly makes you feel a little better, knowing you can speak to Kol without your breath being a biohazard. You set the toothbrush down, looking back to him appreciatively. 

Kol cups your chin gently, spreading heat like butter through your bones,“Do you think you can stand? If you can, I can wait outside while you get cleaned up. You can take as much time as you need, darling. I’ll be right outside the door.”

Your heart pounds quickly at his suggestion, your throat closing painfully. You don’t want him to leave you alone, even if he is just outside the door. You don’t know how to ask him to stay, though, and you don’t want to cross any boundaries. You’re so damn conflicted that your chest aches.

“Okay.”

He nods, his eyes a touch less bright than they were a few moments ago, and he backs away hesitantly. You use all your energy to push yourself off the counter, using it to keep yourself upright when your feet touch the floor. Your legs feel like jelly and you wonder for a moment if you have any bones. You shake your head lightly, scolding yourself. Don’t be stupid, y/n, of course you have bones. However, when you go to take a step towards the bathtub you almost revoke the sentiment. Your legs crumple around you, bringing you to a pile on the floor. 

“Fuck,” Kol is next to you in no time at all, his hands rushing over your legs, most likely checking for damage, “I knew that was going to happen I don’t know why I let you do that, darling. I was trying to give you space. Are you okay? Elijah and Klaus are going to kill me.”

He mutters the last part under his breath but you still catch it, “it’s not your fault, I was trying not to bother you. I thought I could make it to the tub, at least, and then figure the rest out from there. I, uh,” you scrub your hands over your face, covering your eyes with your palms, “I didn’t want to be a burden, more than I already am I mean.”

A few more tears slip past your guard, tracking lines through the dried blood on your cheeks. You swallow a sob before it can make any noise, your shoulders shaking slightly from the cold tiles underneath you. You’re utterly exhausted. You wish you could just click your heels and go home. The only problem is that something tells you that you’d only end up here again if you could do that.

“No,” Kol’s voice is low and strained, “no, darling, don’t say that. This isn’t your fault,” he wraps his arms around you, pulling you into his hot, nutmeg chest, “you’re not a burden to me. Or Elijah or Klaus. You’re a surprise and not an unwelcome one. If you need me to stay, hell, if you want me to stay I will. I’ll do whatever you tell me to do, okay?”

You peer up at him, clinging to his toned chest like you’re afraid it’ll vanish from underneath you, “please get this blood off of me, Kol. I can’t do it, I can’t even hold myself up. I need you.”

His eyes darken again, the honeyed brown turning a darker chocolate color, “you have me, darling, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” he leans down and brushes his nose against yours, “never ever.”

A tiny giggle bubbles in your chest and it feels like freedom. It feels like falling asleep on the beach and hiking through the mountains and every good thing you’ve ever experienced. Kol’s eyes light up and he bites back a grin before doing it again, pulling a flood of giggles from you. Soon you're throwing your arms around him, laughing your head off for no reason at all, him joining you in the madness. You can’t stop and you don’t want to. You need this, you need him. It frightens you how intensely you feel connected to him already but you push the fear away for the time being. 

“Okay, okay,” Kol scoops you against him and stands, “enough of that, love, time for a bath.”

That effectively puts an end to your giggling, your body igniting at the thought of taking a bath with this second coming of adonis. You swallow the lump in your throat, this time caused by the rippling of his taut muscles against you. The t-shirt you’re wearing feels see through suddenly, the thin layer between your core and his stomach doing little to quell the heat seeping from the crack between your thighs. 

You dig your fingers into his shoulders a little harder than you mean to, pulling a soft grunt from him, one that you can feel in your own chest, “bath. Okay.”

Your cheeks flame at your idiotic response. Bath. Okay. What the hell was that?

He walks to the tub and sets you gently on the floor of it, the porcelain ice against your flesh. He turns, his back facing you as he pulls his suspenders off. You admire the fluid movement of his muscles as he steps out of his stained turnout gear, leaving him in a pair of grey sweatpants. His back is toned like a greek god’s and you would like nothing more in this moment than to know what it feels like to dig your nails into it. You squeeze your thighs together, trying to air the wanton out of your system. Don’t be a hussy, y/n. He turns back to you and your face flushes when he catches your lingering stare.

He hooks his fingers in his sweatpants and your breath catches in your throat. He lifts his eyebrow, silently asking if it’s okay for him to continue. Your mouth feels dry, your head is spinning. Slowly you nod, your eyes glued to his. He smirks lighty, an action so doused in sex that almost has you pulling Elijah’s t-shirt from your body and falling at his feet. You hold your breath as he pulls the sweatpants from his body and your heart almost falls out of your chest when they reveal a pair of grey plaid boxers. What were you expecting? Your subconscious taunts you mercilessly.

He steps into the bathtub behind you, kneeling and grabbing the showerhead on the way down. The heat rolling off of him seems to have increased, wrapping around you and daring you to melt into him. You want to, so badly you do, but you remain upright, your hands on the side of the tub, leaving rusty smudges on the crisp, white edges. 

Kol leans forward, his mouth right next to your ear sending shivers straight to your core when he speaks, “darling, I’m going to need to take this off,” his fingers tease the tops of your thighs, curling around the hem of the t-shirt, “may I do that?” 

He presses his face against your neck, laying a few soft kisses to the skin under your jaw. You roll your head back onto his shoulder, savouring his affection and warmth for a moment without overthinking it. 

You nod against his skin, “yes, Kol.”

You can feel the breath he takes against your back and then, when he releases it, against your neck. He takes his time, his fingers gently skimming your sides as he gathers the fabric up and over your head. You raise your arms to make it easier for him, gasping gently as cool air rolls over your exposed breasts. He tosses Elijah’s t-shirt to the side, running his hands down your back and planting another kiss to your uncovered shoulder. 

You know you should feel ashamed for being this naked with a man you just met but you physically can’t bring yourself to feel any of it. All you know is that you’re comfortable and that his hands on your skin feel like genuine magic. 

“Okay, I’m going to turn the water on now,” he rubs his nose down the back of your neck, “let me know if it’s too hot or anything.”

Your eyes prickle at how sweet he is, how gentle he is with you. He definitely doesn’t look like the gentle type, all tall, dark, and broody, but the way he’s acting proves otherwise. You nod your head, leaning your chin on the edge of the tub. He starts the water, a plume of steam instantly clouding the bathroom. The first stream to hit you is heavenly and you can’t help but close your eyes.

“Is that okay, darling?” 

You hum quietly, “it’s perfect.”

You let the water lull you into a daze, picturing the stream turning red as the water rolls off you and down the drain. It’s mesmerizing, the warmth of the water combined with Kol’s heady scent. When he touches you, though, it’s like a crescendo of feeling. His fingers run over your back, no doubt washing away the events of this evening, but all you can think about is how perfect his hands feel against your bare skin. 

Everywhere he touches blazes to life. You feel like putty in his hands, willing to mold however he needs you to. When his fingers glide down your sides your body reacts without warning, your back arching against his chest. You can feel his chest rumble under your back more than you can hear it. His large hands span your back easily, spreading over your ribcage, his thumbs gently grazing your breasts. You suck in a harsh breath, clenching your teeth to keep his name in your mouth. It��s begging to be said though. Said, screamed, praised. Anything. Fuck it.

“Kol,” you breathe, reaching back to grasp at his forearms for stability, “more.”

The growl that rips from his chest is unexpected but it lights every fibre of your being alive. He pulls you hard against his solid chest, falling against the back of the tub and shifting you so you’re perfectly centered on his lap. A flare of pleasure flashes up your spine when you land on something hot and hard. You hiss at the thin layer of clothing between you and Kol.

His lips find your ear, taking the lobe between his teeth and sending even more heat pooling in your core, “as you wish, darling.”

Your hands fall away as his hands cover your breasts, his thumbs skillfully sliding over your hard nipples. This time you don’t whisper his name, you moan it. Loudly. Every time he rolls your nipples between his fingers, you see stars. You see the whole damn galaxy. His lips find your shoulder, biting down gently but hard enough to pull a string of incoherent praise from your lips. 

His chest rumbles with every noise you make and the ball of heat between your legs grows brighter. You rock your hips against his, trying to build some much needed friction. The noise you pull from him is the epitome of heaven and it hits you right in the chest. It compels you to keep grinding your core against him harder, taking every sound he offers up and matching it with one of your own. You squeeze your eyes shut tightly, rolling your head onto his shoulder as the anticipation sings through your body. 

Your senses are flooded, your hearing muffled by the running water and your blood pumping through your ears, which is probably why you don’t hear the door open and someone step into the bathroom. It’s only when a pair of lips attaches to the base of your neck do you peel your eyes open. You meet Klaus’ stare with a gasp, just as Kol pinches your nipples harder than all the times before. 

Your orgasm hits you like a truck, tearing through your nerves without warning and rendering you to pieces. All the while Klaus takes your arm, placing tantalizing, open mouth kisses down your skin. When you finally come down from the climax, your muscles are layered with a sweet exhaustion. Kol nuzzles against your back, wrapping his arms around your waist. 

“Fuck, darling,” he nips at your shoulder and your skin zings lightly, “you have no idea how much I needed that.”

Your eyes meet Klaus’ and your cheeks flame from the intensity of his stare, “I didn’t do anything, you did it all.”

You want to look away from Klaus, you want to feel some inkling of shame, but you can’t. All you want is to do is hook your arm around his neck and bring him closer to you. Your body craves his and it’s all you can do to not melt into his palm when he cups your cheek. 

“That’s the point, love,” Klaus runs his thumb over your skin, “he just wanted to touch you.”

Kol hums his agreement into your flesh, his lips still glued to you. 

“Do you want to touch me?” The words are out of your mouth before you can stop them, your eyes widening as soon as you register what you just said.

In less than a second, the brown eyes staring into your turn a dark coal color. The skin around Klaus’ eyes turns a deep purple. Your breath hitches at this side of him, a deep longing settling in your chest the longer you stare into his eyes. He's ethereal and entirely unhuman but you can’t even think about that. You want him so bad it stings. He has to shut his eyes for a few moments and when he opens them again his eyes are back to normal, if not a touch darker. 

When he speaks his voice is gravelly, “I need to.” 

You swallow hard, forcing the words out before you have time to lose your nerve, “come here then.”

Klaus’ eyes widen before he stands abruptly, shoving his own jogging pants down his legs before stepping into the other side of the tub. Kol lets you go as Klaus settles against the porcelain. As soon as he’s comfortable he wraps his hands around your hips, pulling you onto his lap and against his chest. Your legs end up on either side of him, much like how you were with Kol, your core pressed against the hardest part of him.

His crisp scent folds around you and sucks you deeper against him until your chest to chest, your breasts pressing into his firm chest. His arms settle around your back, his palms splayed over your spine. Your flesh buzzes from the contact, goosebumps rising when he traces lazy circles with his fingertips. You meet his eyes again and involuntarily clench your thighs around his hips. He’s looking at you like you’re the only girl he’s ever laid eyes on. Like he’s in the presence of a goddess and that he would gladly lay his life down for you. 

Your eyes draw down to the tattoo on his chest, an image of birds in flight, and you run your fingers over it gently. He sucks in a breath when you touch him, closing his eyes and leaning back against the edge of the tub. Something about his reaction spurs you on. If that’s what your fingers can do, what can your mouth do? You lean down, gently attaching your lips to his collarbone and tugging his skin into your mouth.

He jolts up when you bite down lightly, jostling you further onto his lap and sending waves of heat rolling over your body, “fuck,” his hand wraps around the back of your neck, pushing you impossibly closer to him, “love, you have no idea how good that feels.”

You pull back slightly, your mouth still against his skin as your eyes bore into his, “show me.”

His chest rumbles under your lips before he pulls your head back gently and slams his lips against your throat. He sucks your skin into his mouth and, for the second time tonight, you see stars. You wrap your arms around his shoulders, lacing your fingers through his blonde hair. You tug him closer to you, crossing your ankles behind his back. You want every inch of his skin pressed against yours. 

He bites down, his teeth scraping pleasure into every nerve, and you pull at his soft hair, praises falling mindlessly from your lips, “Klaus.”

A second pair of hands glides over your back, “darling, let me wash your hair. I can feel Elijah getting restless. Unless you want three men in this tub with you, I need to finish getting you cleaned up.”

Your heart pounds at the thought of Elijah in the bath with you, his large body pressed against yours. You can practically smell his pine scent in the air, clinging to your skin. You bite your lip. You want to moan his name and he isn’t even in the room. You shake the thought from your mind, leaning into Kol’s hands.

Klaus kisses up your neck, peppering your jaw and cheeks with pecks before pulling you to lay against his chest. You close your eyes, letting the exhaustion that’s been building flood your system. Kol soaks your hair, the warm water pouring down your shoulders as you press your face into Klaus’ neck. His hands draw lazily up and down your sides as Kol massages shampoo against your scalp. You mewl at his touch and cling to Klaus. You could stay in the moment forever, it’s absolutely blissful.

Just as Kol is rinsing the shampoo from your hair, the door to the bathroom opens revealing a shirtless Elijah. He’s clad in nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants. In his hand is a large towel. His eyes zero in on you from across the room and, though you can’t see them clearly, you can tell they’re dark. Your head goes fuzzy as your eyes draw down his sculpted chest, lingering on his rippled stomach. You meet his eyes again and give into your instincts, reaching your arms out for him.

“Eli,” you call out to him, “I need you.”

You stand on wobbly feet, bearing everything to him. You don’t care, you just want to be in his arms. You haven’t had a chance to touch him yet and your body is screaming at you to get as close to him as humanly possible. Even more than humanly possible. Elijah closes the space between the two of you in seconds, wrapping the towel around you before pulling you into his arms. Your legs wrap around his waist, your arms circling his neck. 

He leans down, rubbing his nose against yours, “I need you too, baby.” 

You slip your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, playing with the soft strands mindlessly. He leans into your touch and your heart soars. He hikes you further up your body, leaning his face against your shoulder. You run your hands over his shoulders, sighing when the tension leaves his muscles. 

“I’m going to go sleep for a few hours,” Elijah mumbles into your shoulder but his words aren’t aimed at you, “do you think the two of you will be okay until then.”

Klaus waves his hand dismissively and Kol nods, still draped lazily over the edge of the tub, “yeah, yeah, go, we’ll be fine brother.”

Wait, what? 

Did you hear that right? Brother. Your entire body sets on fire. They’re all related. Well, there’s the shame you were missing at least. You push against Elijah’s chest, forcing him to meet your eyes. When he sees your expression his brows pull together, his brown eyes filled with concern.

“Baby-” 

“You’re all brothers?” you breathe, your face burning, “brothers? What on earth is going on?”

He stares into your eyes for a moment before laughing, turning with you in his arms and starting towards the door. You lock eyes with Klaus and Kol over Elijah’s shoulder. They, too, are laughing without a care. Kol tosses you a wink just as Elijah carries you into the hallway.

You circle your arms around his shoulders again, “Lijah this is crazy. Explain. Please.”

He pulls you through another door, exposing you to a comfortable looking bed. Just looking at it sends sleep pooling in your limbs. He sets you in the middle of it before climbing on after you. He pushes you backwards and you fall into a pile of pillows, the towel long forgotten as he crawls on top of you. Your body flares with something hot as he holds himself on his forearms, his hot chest grazing yours with every breath he takes. You wrap your legs around his hips, pulling him closer to you despite your still unanswered questions.

“Lijah,” you whine as his lips find your neck, arching into his touch like two magnets connecting, “I need answers.”

Elijah’s teeth scrape at your neck, pulling soft moans from your lips. You’re so tired but the want that swirls in your core demands anything but sleep. You grip his shoulders, digging your fingers into his firm muscles. You pull his hips closer to yours, rolling against him desperately. You press your head into the pillows, exposing as much of your neck as you can to him.

He pulls away and you have to swallow your protests. When you finally open your eyes, you’re met with the same dark eyes you saw from Klaus, only now they’re accented by a pair of sharp looking fangs. You suck in a deep breath, reaching up to cup Elijah’s jaw. 

“I know, baby,” he rubs his face into your hand, “I’ll give you all the answers you need and more but first I need you. I have waited a thousand years for you and now that I have you I don’t think I’ll be able to let you go yet. Please, baby, let me have you.”

His words wrap around you, every part of your being, and sink into your core. A wave of longing hits you again, and something else that you’re not ready to explore. It makes your heart warm and your body crave every inch of his. You already knew your answer before he asked. You’ve known since you woke up to the three of them.

Maybe you even knew before that.

You pull his face to yours, capturing his lips with your own, “you already have me. I’m yours.”

[trials-of-a-spirit-worker]

Spirit Communication for Beginners

Hello there! This is your somewhat bad advisor coming back with some more advice on your spirit witchcraft journey! If you’re curious about speaking to the otherside or just in for some paranormal hoopla....well you made it here. So...Welcome and I’m sorry.

Know Your Vibrations First

You’re gonna hear this everywhere from the witch community. Meditate. So, yeah. I’m gonna nag you about this too. Meditate. Meditation really helps you get to know yourself in a sense. When you slow your breathing, relax and just let your mind go, you start to feel things that you don’t normally feel while you’re buzzing through life. For example, I can feel the sensation of my body working. I not only faintly hear my own heartbeat (I got a loud strong bitch of one)  but I feel my body working, my blood pumping within me. I’m not saying this is what you’ll feel, cause I don’t know you, but you’re going to feel something new, something different most likely. Maybe you’ll mentally picture things better, feel like you’re dropping into something entirely new. Whatever it is, get acquainted with it.

Bonus: Learn how to ground yourself. Trust me. You’re gonna need it. Spirits are exhausting.

Start Off Small

Listen bud, if you’re just starting out on this journey...and you think you can just jump right in with a oujia board on goatman's bridge or some stupid shit like that...well...I’d say you were watching way too much buzzfeed unsolved and Shane lulled you into some cocky ass confidence and he’s gonna get you fucked up.

No.  Don’t fucking do that. By all means, go to a kind of active place, a peaceful graveyard if you’re with some more experienced people. Hell, start with a dead relative! I’m sure they missed you! But don’t think you can just stroll your happy ass up to a haunted asylum and think you’ll be fine. Especially if it’s your first time. I can’t stress how serious I am about starting off small. 

Don’t Deny How You Feel

Not all Spirits are gonna be able to speak to you, or want to for that matter. Some are just fine at making you feel a certain way to communicate. Some spirits have ridiculously heavy presences. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad or harmful. They’re just extremely there. Many are just as cautious meeting new people. Try to keep calm, document any changes and do your best to keep a level head.

Don’t Be Afraid To Go Nope

Spirit work can be overwhelming at times. Hell, I’ve been dealing with this for years and it gets me still. It is okay to quickly (and politely) say goodbye and distance yourself. They can sense your discomfort too. And if they’re nice, they’ll easily let you go, or leave themselves. Sometimes, you have to go nope. I do hope you don’t end up in a more dangerous situation, but if things get bad fast, do not hesitate to say goodbye, turn tail and fuck off. Some Spirits just will not have your shit and you have to respect that. 

Protect Yourself Dammit!

It can’t hurt to have some blessing over you, an enchanted amulet on you. Ground yourself before you work with them. Protect yourself from harmful spirits.There are plenty of protection spells and things all over witchblr. Research is important. Knowledge is power. I know I go for a couple layers of protection before I deal with spirits just because of what I dealt with in the past. Protection is no joke. If you feel like it, keep a flask of holy water on you if it’ll put you at ease. You do not want to be shaky when communicating. 

Politeness is Key

Be nice to the spirits. Just...don’t be an asshole. It’s not that hard. Speak clearly, calmly and just mind your damn manners man. You wouldn’t believe how far that can get you at times.

K.I.S.S.

Don’t do anything fancy especially on your first steps. Just do the basics, you can get fancy with it once you have some experience. Give simple gifts of apples, pomegranates, alcohol if you can legally buy it. Ask easy questions and just get a feel for the spirits around you. 

Don’t Try This Alone

It’s scary doing this on your own at times. So don’t do it. Not if you can help it. Honestly, I wish I had someone to help me with my spiritual communication. Get some trusted friends. Find an experienced person or group to guide you. You don’t have to do start this alone and I would prefer you didn’t.

That’s all I have for you for now. Be careful and don’t do anything stupid~ 

[randomimaginesforrandompeople]

Scared to death | Riven imagine

Request: Can you do a Riven one where he and reader are always at each other’s throats but then she gets critically injured helping him and he confesses that his anger was driven out of uncertainty for how much he genuinely liked her and that he couldn’t handle it?

A/N: I do not own this gif, I hope you enjoy! 

Warning: there is some cursing in this one and of course Riven and his sexual advances. 

This boy was going to be the death of you. There was no one as frustrating on this planet as Riven. It was as if he was purposely trying to drive you insane. The two of you were partners, which you hated, Silva wanted the two of you to train together because you were two of the best specialists around. He wanted the two of you as a team when there was another search party for burned ones. 

You hated being paired up with him and the feeling seemed to be mutual. The two of you were training once again, you had multiple training sessions a day because of the burned ones, Silva wanted the specialists to be ready when the time came and he imagined it being sooner rather than later. 

‘’Are you fucking kidding me’’ you huffed in frustration, the two of you had only been at it for 10 minutes when Riven wanted a break. ‘’Sorry princess, not the whole world revolves around you’’ You rolled your eyes. You just wanted to get on with the training, you wouldn’t really admit it to anyone but the whole situation that was gripping Alfea kind of scared you and you wanted to be prepared, Riven was a good specialist if he was not acting like a lazy piece of shit.

You took a sip from your water bottle ‘’Come on! the faster we get started, the faster we’re done’’ Riven sighed and joined you again, you could barely keep your surprise to yourself, he actually listened to you once. 

You had him pinned to the ground, very satisfied with your win ‘’I could get used to having you on top of me’’ Riven grinned and you rolled off of him with disgust. Riven was not bad looking, okay he was hot, really hot. But he was also the very worst which is why you ignored his advances. You held out your hand to pull him up, instead he used the opportunity to yank you down and pin you to the ground. ‘’Asshole’’ you mumbled. ‘’What was that love? Happy to be a bottom for once?’’ You rolled your eyes ‘’Fuck you Riven’’ He grinned ‘’Oh how I wish you would’’ You huffed in annoyance, you couldn’t wait till training was over.

Riven didn’t want to be an asshole to you, he just had no clue how to act around you. He liked you, which was something he wasn’t used to, of course he had liked girls but those were for different reasons, you weren’t like them. Yes, you were hot and he sure as hell was attracted to you because of it, but not only because of it and that’s what freaked him out. He was genuinly into you and he had trouble processing, which is why he acted the way he did, keeping the distance was easier than allowing himself to get close to you.

Tonight was the night, the first burned ones search party you’d be on. You had been feeling nervous all day, you knew you were prepared but seeing what these creatured could do, made you feel uneasy. Especially, cause your partner was Riven. The two of you were walking through the woods, you were nervous but you could feel that you weren’t the only one, Riven had not made one single sexual or annoying remark and had only communicated with you through necessity. Somehow the fact that he was nervous made you feel a little more at ease, you didn’t think he was capable of having emotion so seeing him like this actually comforted you in a way.

Suddenly you heard a hissing noise on your right ‘’Riv, on the right’’ you whispered, If it was any other situation you would’ve felt embarrassed for calling him Riv, but you had no time to worry about that right now. Riven nodded your way, apparently he also didn’t have the time to respond to the nickname. Riven and you stood back to back ‘’Okay, just like we practiced, you do left and I do right.’’ You gulped ‘’Just like we practiced’’ Riven wanted to comfort you and calm you down but he thought it would be weird for him to do so, first of all because of the burned one being a very urgent threat at the moment and secondly, because you hated his guts.

The two of you fought the burned one as well as you could but it hurt you. Badly. ‘’Ý/N’’ Riven yelled and ran to your side, completely ignoring the burned one that was still alive behind him, luckily for the two of you, other specialists heard you and started attacking the creature. ‘’I need to take her back, can you guys handle it?’’ Sky nodded and Riven took you back to Alfea. He had never been this scared before in his life, you were laying unconscious in the infermary. 

Riven sat next to you, he wouldn’t leave your side. Professor Harvey was working on something to strengthen you. ‘’There is nothing more we can do for her now until they track down the right burned one, you should get some rest Riven’’ He shook his head, there was no way he was leaving you alone, he couldn’t, not after failing you like this already. Professor Harvey left the two of you. Riven took your hand ‘’Please wake up, I’m so sorry for anything and everything I’ve done, please just come back’’ he pleaded. Riven drifted to sleep after a few more hours of fighting it, he was exhausted after everything that had happened. 

Meanwhile the specialists had killed the burned one that hurt you, you were still asleep but were already getting better. Riven had woken up early, he could barely sleep, the events playing over and over in his head. You were regaining your abilities, however opening your eyes was still something you couldn’t do. ‘’Fuck y/n, please wake up. I care about you’’

You couldn’t have heard that right, that sounded like Riven saying he cared about you? Did you have a concussion? were you getting insane? You then realised that he was holding your hand. Holy shit, did that mean you heard it right? You suddenly were able to move a little, you could move the hand that Riven was holding nearly giving him a heart attack. ‘’Y/n? y/n are you awake?’’ You weakly squeezed his hand ‘’Holy fuck you’re responding’’ you slowly opened your eyes. 

You groaned, soreness filling your limbs. Sky and the other specialist that killed the burned one had alerted Professor Harvey upon arrival and he hurried over to you. ‘’You can stop holding my hand’’ you croaked and Riven smiled sheepishly at you while scratching the back of his neck, you would’ve laughed if you had the strength. ‘’How are you feeling y/n?’’ professor Harvey checked your vitals ‘’Like I’ve been hit by a truck times three’’ Riven chuckled, you were definitely back. ‘’You will be sore for a few days but you are stable, you will be ready to leave in a few hours’’ Riven let out a breath that he didn’t even know he was holding ‘’Thank you’’ Riven thanked professor Harvey who left again. ‘’What happened to you? I wasn’t out for that long right?’’ 

You tried sitting up and with the help of Riven you managed. ‘’I..’’ Riven sat down on the edge of the bed ‘’You scared the fuck out of me’’ he sighed and looked at you ‘’I like you okay, genuinly’’ Hearing that could’ve made you pass out again, you still felt as if you were hallucinating, Riven liked you? ‘’I have for a while’’ he added softly while looking down. You had never seen this side of him and never thought you would have ‘’I just have some trouble with the whole ‘having feelings’ thing’’ you snorted ‘’Yeah I’ve noticed’’ He let out a chuckle ‘’Sorry for being such a dick to you though’’ you ignored him ‘’You stayed with me the whole time huh?’’ He nodded, surprised that you didn’t respond to what he had said.

‘‘Didn’t know you were such a softy’‘ Riven let out a laugh ‘‘Guess there is plenty you don’t know about me’‘ you grinned ‘‘Well, I would like to get to know you’‘ 

[elentiyawhitethorn]

When Passion Rules the Game | Part One

CW: NSFW, language

AN: Prompt from this ask

Part Two//Masterlist//2751 words

There was a man watching Aelin.

Actually, there were quite a few men watching Aelin, but there was only one who caught her eye. He was tall, muscled, tattooed, silver-haired, and he looked like he wanted to eat her alive. He was the kind of guy that Aelin would end up begging for.

He knew she was eyeing him back, and he looked quite content to stay where he was, leaning against the wall near the bar. Aelin figured if she wanted him, she would have to go get him, and from the smirk on his face, he knew she was going to. Hell, there was no way she wasn’t going to.

Swaying her hips as she strutted across the crowded bar, heels clicking, she sauntered up to him. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

He smirked. “I’m new in town.”

Aelin placed a hand on her hip and said, “Well, I wouldn’t want to leave a new addition to the community feeling unwelcome.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “I would hope not. That would be awfully rude.”

Aelin laughed. “And what can I do to extend my hospitality?” She leaned closer, holding back a shiver at the man’s feral grin.

And so Aelin ended up being groped in the bathroom.

The door was locked, and Aelin couldn’t help but thank the gods for that as the man twisted a nipple through the fabric of her thin dress as she perched on the edge of the counter. She exhaled, trying not to moan, and spread her legs farther, inviting the man in. He gladly moved between her legs and kissed her dominantly. One of his hands remained on her breast, pulling it free from the dress.

He slid his tongue into Aelin’s mouth, squeezing her breast all the while, and she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a muffled groan into his mouth.

Aelin wanted more, but before she could ask for it, two fingers pushed aside her underwear and plunged in her entrance. She cried out into the man’s mouth, not expecting it, unaware his hand had been moving at all. He just kissed her harder and started pumping his fingers in her pussy, already dripping with arousal.

Aelin bucked her hips as best as she could on the counter, writhing in his grasp. He kept kissing her, taking what he wanted with his tongue, his teeth. The man finally let Aelin break the kiss and bury her head in his shoulder, overwhelmed by all the sensations.

He curled his fingers just so, and rubbed circles around her clit. A whimper left Aelin’s mouth.

“That’s it, baby. You’re doing so good for me.” His rough murmurs sent Aelin over the edge with a moan. She shook as he didn’t stop finger-fucking her.

Finally, the man let up. He pulled his fingers from Aelin’s entrance with a smirk, raising them to his lips. The satisfaction Aelin felt instantly transformed into lust once more as he inserted his fingers into his mouth and sucked her juices off of them. Holy Mala.

“What do you want me to do, sweetheart?” His voice was rough and hot as hell.

“Fuck me,” Aelin demanded breathlessly.

“What’s the magic word?” The smirk didn’t disappear from his face as he pinched her nipple.

Aelin bit her lip. “Please.”

“What was that?”

Fuck him. “Please,” Aelin begged, louder this time. “Please fuck me.”

He chuckled. Then he put his hands up the bottom of her dress, hooking his fingers around the waistband of her panties. Aelin put her palms flat on the counter to hold her weight as she helped him slide them down her legs.

She thought he would just discard them somewhere, but he said, “Open your mouth.”

Eyes widening, Aelin obeyed. He stuffed her panties in her mouth, and Aelin groaned as she tasted herself on the fabric.

Effectively gagged, Aelin watched as the man unbuckled his belt. He withdrew his length, and she groaned around her panties at the size of him.

His eyes darkened and he grabbed hold of Aelin’s thighs. Then he inserted his tip inside her entrance, and she bucked her hips, trying to get more of him inside her.

“Stop moving,” he commanded, and Aelin stilled obediently. She wanted to beg him to fill her up, but she couldn’t speak around the underwear stuffed in her mouth. It did nothing to muffle her moans, however; the man was teasing her and she was incredibly turned on. Aelin didn’t think either of them cared that they were in a public bathroom anymore.

He slid in slowly, only a couple inches. Then he pulled back out. Aelin whined pathetically, and he laughed at her. “Be patient, love.”

He repeated the teasing movements a few more times, leaving Aelin wet and wanting. Then, in one sudden and unexpected motion, he thrust inside Aelin all the way. She cried out and clenched her hands in his shirt, clutching at the material desperately.

He started moving slowly, allowing Aelin the luxury of feeling herself full before he pulled out and slammed back in. Then he really started fucking her.

Aelin held on to him tighter with every thrust. All sorts of noises from the back of her throat were falling from Aelin’s mouth, and she felt so fucking dirty thinking about how she was letting a stranger gag and fuck her.

It wasn’t long before he started panting, his thrusts becoming erratic. Aelin let go of him and moved her hand to her clit, rubbing furiously. Her other hand went to the neglected breast, pulling it free from her dress to knead it and play with her own nipple.

“Look at you, you little slut,” the man muttered, and Aelin groaned.

“You want to come, baby?” he asked.

Aelin nodded furiously.

He tightened his grip on Aelin’s thighs, sliding her right to the edge of the counter. Then he started moving once more. Every thrust was an earthquake, shaking Aelin’s world. It was all she could do to grab his shirt once more and cling to it and pray.

She knew she shouldn’t be doing this—it was only Monday, and there was work tomorrow. In fact, a new employee would be entering the office, and as a female boss, she would need to assert herself immediately, rather than wander around all day sipping multiple cups of coffee, exhausted as she surely would be after this. But Aelin couldn’t bring herself to care; not as the man fucked her harder than anyone had before, hitting that one spot in her that men seemed to have difficulty finding.

Aelin cried out around the makeshift gag and tried to spread her legs wider, craving another orgasm, desperate for the feeling of this man filling her up with his own come. He was still whispering dirty nothings to her, making it hard to remember her own name. With one final thrust, he buried himself inside of Aelin.

She came as he slid a hand over to her clit, pinching it far too hard for her to handle. Aelin felt a tear slide down her cheek as she tensed, her inner muscles clenching around his cock. The man hissed, holding her tight enough to leave a bruise as she came on his cock.

He pulled out with a wince, and Aelin was immediately stuck by how empty she felt without him inside of her.

“Such a good whore for me,” the man praised her, and Aelin whined. She could only imagine what she looked like: her scanty dress around her middle, with her breasts free and her dripping pussy on display. Her panties in her mouth. Gods, Aelin had a lunch date with her cousin tomorrow. How would she be able to look him in the eye after this? Aelin would have laughed at the thought if she could’ve.

He reached his hand up and tugged her panties free from Aelin’s mouth, drawing a gasp out of her mouth. Instead of giving them to her, he just inserted them in his pocket with a smirk.

Aelin closed her legs and slid off of the counter. Her legs were shaky enough that she would have fallen forward if the man didn’t catch her with a chuckle. “Careful, sweetheart.”

Aelin wanted to growl, but it was all she could do to stand up straight, still clutching his arm for support. She pulled the top of the dress over her breasts and did the same with the bottom, trying to find some modicum of modesty as he was fully dressed, his cock back in his pants.

Aelin glanced at the mirror, then decided she would be going straight home after this. There was no way anyone wouldn’t be able to tell what she had been up to, and she needed as much rest as she could get if she intended to be fresh for tomorrow.

She straightened her hair as best as she could, then let go of the man, flashing him a smirk. She started toward the bathroom door.

“Who said I was done with you?” a gravelly voice asked, dark with unabated desire. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied yet. Aelin froze.

“Why don’t you come back to my place, baby.” Not really a request.

Aelin wanted to, she sure as hell did, but work tomorrow. And yet… he was so hot and most certainly a good fuck. Aelin could only imagine what kind of experience being in his bed would turn into.

“Well?”

Aelin faced him once more. “Lead the way.”

—

He lived in an apartment, medium-sized and a bit bland. There were boxes on the floor and all the walls were bare; Aelin supposed he hadn’t finished unpacking yet.

He pulled Aelin roughly inside, and she started to wonder just what she had gotten into. Once the man locked the door, all the distance they had maintained on the way here vanished. One moment, the pair gazed darkly at each other, the next, they were making out furiously.

The man—damn it, Aelin needed to get his name—slid his hands down the her thighs, and Aelin took the hint, wrapping her legs around his waist as he lifted her up. He carried Aelin down the hall and into a bedroom. Then he set her gently on the bed, a vast contrast to his previous touches, before he flipped on a lamp and turned to her.

“Strip.”

Aelin shivered. Still, she couldn’t help but say, “I’ll strip if you strip,” sass evident in her tone.

He frowned. “What did I just tell you, darling?”

Aelin restrained herself from obeying him. “What did I just say to you?” She was playing a dangerous game, but she couldn’t help but want to know what getting on this man’s bad side felt like.

“You’re just begging me to punish you, aren’t you?” He crossed his arms amusedly.

“What if I am?” Aelin sprawled back on his bed, kicking her heels onto the floor.

A dangerous smirk was all Aelin got in warning before he lunged at her, flipping her onto her stomach and bringing his hand down on her ass. Aelin groaned in pleasure, the sweet pain of the motion making her wet once more.

He pulled her dress up enough to expose her ass, giving himself better access. He still had her underwear, so now her ass was bare to him.

The man brought him hand down once more, and Aelin cried out. She clenched her fingers in the sheets.

“Do you enjoy that? Do you like being spanked like the bad girl you are?”

Aelin moaned. “Please.”

“Please what?” He brought spanked her again, harder. Much harder.

“Please,” Aelin repeated, not even sure what she was begging for.

She could feel the cruel smile on his face as she slapped her again, drawing a noise from the back of her throat. “Spread your legs.”

Aelin complied, spreading them as much as she could face-down, clinging to the sheets.

She found out what he wanted to do when he slapped her now-exposed pussy. She whimpered. The sting on such a sensitive area was exquisite.

He repeated the motion, and Aelin screamed. His fingers had slapped against her clit, leaving her a shaking mess on the bed.

“Turn back over,” he instructed.

Aelin could barely move, but she didn’t dare disobey. She maneuvered around onto her back once more, rolling awkwardly.

“Now fucking strip, you little bitch.”

With shaky hands, all of the fight drained from her body—or spanked from her body more like—Aelin pulled her dress over her body. This wasn’t a sexy striptease; it was a desperate, messy need to obey.

“Good girl. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Maybe I should let you come again, since you’re being so good for me.”

Aelin nodded eagerly. “Yes, please.”

He chuckled. “Get closer to the headboard.”

Trembling with lust and absolutely remorseless about the fact that she would be napping during work tomorrow, Aelin moved farther up the bed. He didn’t join her immediately, instead opting to grab something off of his dresser. Rope. Looks like he’d had time to unpack the essentials, at least. Aelin would have snorted if she wasn’t so turned on.

The man moved around the bed and Aelin put her hands above her head. With another praise, he fastened them to the headboard. An experimental tug had Aelin groaning with the knowledge that she couldn’t get out, completely at his mercy.

Then he climbed onto the bed. He spread Aelin’s legs, holding each one down with his calloused hands. Aelin knew what was coming, but she couldn’t stop the feral groan that tore from her lips as he licked a stripe up her sex. He repeated the motion, brutally licking the length of her, getting faster as he moved over and over again.

Aelin was writhing, thrashing under his grip, struggling against the binds. But it was all to no avail; she couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything except let him devour her. He lapped up her juices, tasting every drop of her.

Broken moan after hoarse cry left Aelin’s mouth, the desperation of the sounds heightening as he inserted his tongue in Aelin’s entrance. She bucked her hips uselessly as he worked her. When the man turned his attention to her clit, Aelin knew she was done for.

He made eye contact with her as he teasingly traced a circle around the delicate bud with his tongue. Aelin whimpered, and the noise had him smirking once again. Slowly, he placed his lips over Aelin’s clit—and then he sucked. Aelin yelled as her orgasm crested, dragging her into the land of hazy pleasure.

When she returned somewhat to reality, Aelin became aware of her hands being free and someone tracing her body with their lips, leaving gentle kisses. She sighed and glanced over to see the man beside her, his arm encircling her body.

“You good, sweetheart?”

Aelin hummed. “Yeah. That was fun.” She had hardly had anything to drink at the bar, but pure pleasure and exhaustion had Aelin slurring her words.

The man grinned. “Maybe we could do that again sometime?”

Aelin was tempted, but—“Sorry. I don’t do more than one night stands. Gods forbid someone gets attached.”

This was a lie. The truth of the matter was that, being the CEO of a multi-million dollar company, Aelin didn’t want anyone who she had allowed to fuck her senseless recognizing her. It was usually easy to hide, as most of the men she went home with were either drunk or too busy staring at her boobs. Not to mention her public image was of a put-together, well-dressed, determined, strong young woman that was unlikely to be confused with the woman who wore slutty dresses and frequented bars, but she took no chances. Even though she almost couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing this man again.

He looked like he was debating whether or not to argue, but he seemed to respect her decision and kept his mouth shut.

“I need to go,” Aelin muttered, feeling drowsy.

“Stay here,” he said, holding her tighter. “You’re so warm.”

Aelin sighed and snuggled closer to him. Why had she wanted to leave again? Maybe she had something to do tomorrow? Nothing was coming to mind. It would probably be okay if Aelin fell asleep here, right?

She shifted into a more comfortable position and murmured her agreement. The she fell asleep.

———

Tag List:

@aelin-bitch-queen

@evolving-dreamer

@feysand-loml

@flora-shadowshine

@gracie-rosee

@infernoqueen19

@julemmaes

@lemonade-coolattas

@live-the-fangirl-life

@midsizewitch

@morganofthewildfire

@realbookloverproblems

@rhysandswingspan

@sexy-dumpster-fire

@sleeping-and-books

@story-scribbler

@swankii-art-teacher

@thenerdandfandoms

@yesdreamblog

[cherry-lipbalm]

double trouble. spencer reid.

4.8k words.

masterlist

where y/n pulls the short straw and has to double up with spencer.

There is a chart within the BAU: a solid, concise graph that portrays, arguably the most, vital information within the FBI. Intricately designed, Garcia and Y/N had managed to construct a comprehensible guide to who in the team was the most pleasant to share a room with. At first it was a joke, originated from a slow day of nothing but paperwork Y/N had spent in Garcia's lair. Conversations arose, and soon after so did the chart.

It's built up on categories such as conversation, tidiness, sleeping conditions and even hygiene. There are ten available points per category, and Emily loses said ten points for sleeping conditions because her snores can be heard from China. The points are the basis of the game, essential in order to rank the team individually and compile them into a list of favourability. Spencer is at the bottom of that list.

"I don't get it, I'm a delight," Spencer argued, strolling alongside Morgan up the small flight of stairs to the BAU room. Another case had forced them to prepare for the jet in 30 minutes, but Hotch and the rest of the team had very different perspectives on preparation. Especially after what he said when they entered the room.

"Okay, before we start you should know I called ahead to book a hotel and they had limited rooms. We all have one but you're going to have to double up."

Y/N had never seen an American Western movie before, but she imagined that the cliché standoff looked a lot like what happened in the BAU room subsequent to that announcement. Those that had been sitting launched to their feet, uncaring to the chairs rolling free behind them. If someone was holding something it dropped onto the table, or even the floor. Communication faltered, and all anyone dared to do was stare at each other.

When Hotch looked up from his file, he had to do a double take because of the drastic change in atmosphere. His team were all standing metres apart; Y/N had a hand over her gun.

"I think we all know what this calls for," she said.

"Get it," Morgan gestured to the back of the room. Y/N's movement caused a surge of motion as everyone sat at the table attentively. Hotch tried to turn the attention back to the screen with the crime scene photos, but even JJ was more focused on the whiteboard rolling into the room.

Y/N stood by it's side, and on her way forced Hotch into a seat. She grabbed the top corner and flipped it over to reveal the coloured array of pie charts, bullet-points and bar charts.

"I still don't see why this is necessary," Spencer whined from the back of the room.

"I don't see why you've obviously spent more time and effort on this than any of your cases," Hotch added.

"Okay, you two are just jealous because you're at the bottom of the list," Y/N snarked, then addressed the team. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today, in holy matrimony, to judge your fellow coworkers and deem who is the least likeable. Spoiler alert: it's Spencer."

At this, the aforementioned agent threw his pen directly at Y/N's head. She shrieked, then turned to him with a glare as she tried to untangle it from her hair. He laughed wholeheartedly, and the team snickered not only at Spencer's attack but the way they were so obviously and obliviously in love with each other.

"This chart makes no sense! I mean, how do I only have five points for hygiene? We all know I'm the cleanest out of everyone here."

"I agree with you Spencer," Y/N said, "your hygiene is at a ten point standard but unfortunately people don’t want to compete with said ten point standard, so that loses you five points, gorgeous.”

Spencer didn't reply (only sulked into his seat), half because he's shocked by the injustice of the chart and the other half because he's shocked Y/N just called him gorgeous.

"Alright! The hat, please," She exclaimed, enticing Spencer from his trance. Garcia presented the fedora over the table, and Y/N began talking immediately when she saw Hotch's mouth open in objection because were they really using the fedora from the unsub they caught last week?

Only four people took turns in picking names out of the hat; ever since in incident in '04 where lack of coordination made for everyone picking a name of someone who had already picked someone else. It resulted in a few brawls when Morgan wouldn't budge from his choice of Garcia even though his name had been pulled by Reid.

It never took them long to pick names out of desperation, considering the name-picking determined how the next 24 + hours were going to go. So when Y/N picked out Spencer's name, no one blamed her when she practically collapsed to the floor.

"That's karma," Spencer said upon her unraveling.

"I thought you didn't believe in karma," she sneered, stomping back onto her feet.

"In situations like these it seems to be the only viable explanation."

Y/N just rolled her eyes at him on her way out of the room, muttering under her breath that she'll be briefed when she's aboard, because she needed a moment alone for a pep-talk on how murdering your colleague apparently isn't socially acceptable.

On her way out, faintly in the background, Morgan caught sight of Emily and JJ fist-bumping victoriously, and realised that Y/N's demise more than certainly involved some foul play. Oh well, he thought, it'll make for good entertainment.

———

"Science shows us that we feel more personally connected with people who have similar postures, vocal rhythms, facial expressions and even eye blinking. If you consciously sync these factors your brain activity could follow, resulting in what many people call 'clicking' wi-"

"I cannot believe you asked me why you lost seven points for conversation and then followed with that."

"What? What's wrong with science?"

"Oh, Spence, you're so gorgeous but so oblivious," Y/N sighed, exhausted from a mixture of jet lag and Spencer's enthusiastic take on the science of conversation. They had only just stepped foot in the room, and she was already drained from the mere thought of having to bunk with him for the next however many hours.

Y/N is quick to throw her things down as soon as they enter the room. She dumps her suitcase by the door and launches a few more things on the cabinets around her, then tries to ignore Spencer's sounds of distaste as she does this. She's frankly too tired to care, and jumps onto the bed without thinking; she's so enervated she doesn't even realise there's only the one bed.

"Why do you keep calling me that?" Spencer suddenly asks despite the silence that passed and the obvious fact that Y/N is trying to get some shut eye.

All he receives is an incomprehensible mumble from under the pillows, but he takes it as a response anyway.

"Why do you keep, uh, keep calling me 'gorgeous' I mean, I'm not, uh..." he stammers, fidgeting with the room key in his hands while he stands in front of the wardrobe to make it seem like he's doing something and doesn't care as much as he does.

"I'd say it's pretty self explanatory."

He senses the fatigue in her voice, so just leaves it with a shrug of his shoulders and a content smile, then goes to organising his array of sweater vests onto the hangers. When he's done with this, he turns around to make himself a coffee; taking a different approach to the jet lag than Y/N.

At the thought of her, he looks up to see her sprawled out across the bed. She's clutching onto a pillow and seems so relaxed that Spencer has to look away for a moment because he's more than certain he shouldn't be seeing a coworker like this. Nevertheless, he smiles upon her peaceful ambience, and hopes the boiling kettle doesn't disturb her too much.

When it's done brewing, Spencer sips the coffee cautiously and strides over to a small chair in the corner of the room. Here, Y/N's slumped figure is directly in his view, so he can't help but see her so casually on the bed. Wait, the bed... oh shit.

He knows that the chances of him getting the bed are slim. For one, Y/N's pretty much already claimed that territory, and, even if she hadn't, Spencer knew she'd put up one hell of a fight for it. He only hoped there were some extra blankets and pillows that could aid in making the floor at least somewhat comfortable.

"So, uh, Rock Paper Scissors for the bed?" He asks, then slurps his coffee. His voice rouses Y/N for a moment, and he's sure she's dozed back off again until his words sink in and she turns around to him with bleary eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"One bed. Two people," he says nervously and gestures to the space between them.

And it takes Y/N a moment. She looks from Spencer to the bed, then stares at the pillows for a long while, then she looks at Spencer again, then the bed. Then, she lets out a blood-curdling cry so loud that Reid has to cover his ears.

"Why!" She screams, slamming her hands down on the mattress. Spencer can't help but laugh, snickering behind his hand which only infuriates Y/N more.

"Okay, okay!" He moves to calm her down when he can practically see the steam coming out of her ears, "rock paper scissors, come on."

"Oh, I don't want to do that, Spence," she whines.

"Why? 'Cause you know you'll lose?" With his patronisation he raises an eyebrow at her when he approaches the end of the bed, his fist already raised. His condescension makes Y/N irrefutably stubborn, and she knows he's doing it on purpose -because he always does- but she doesn't care when it means she has a chance to beat Spencer at something.

"Fine," she grumbles. She sweeps the hair from her face and sits up straight, shuffling to the end of the bed and letting her legs dangle down; they brush against Spencer's own and he clears his throat amid the contact.

The slap of her fist against her palm indicates the beginning of the game. Y/N knows that she's unlikely to win, because Spencer is bound to have calculated some sure-fire plan to succeed in every round of Rock Paper Scissors.

This is why, when Spencer pulls paper and she pulls scissors, she screams in delight.

"No," Spencer says bluntly, then demands, "best out of three."

"Oh no," she chuckles, "it's never been that way before, it isn't now, gorgeous."

Spencer throws his head back in a groan, kneeling on the floor in defeat. He stays there because he figures he ought to become acquainted with it.

———

When nighttime rolls around, Y/N is pretty excited. She's already texted the BAU group chat a record seventeen times about the matter, yet somehow the team hasn't gotten sick of it thus far, and may even be more exhilarated than she is. It's the one good thing to come out of sharing a room with Spencer: that she gets to watch him wiggle in discomfort on his makeshift bed of blankets and pillows on the floor.

Except, when it comes down to it, it isn't that fun at all.

He's wriggling, yes, but it's doesn't exactly fulfil her with any satisfaction; if anything, it's just sad. He struggles to reach any form, never mind pinnacle, of relaxation, and Y/N actually feels pretty guilty at the subordination. So when the clock hits midnight and she's still hearing Spencer grunting when he hits a certain incessant bump in the carpet, she gives in and sits up.

Upon the sudden sound of bedsheets rustling, Spencer freezes because he thinks he's going to get shouted at, but it's the opposite that scares him even more.

"Do you want to get in bed?" Her voice sounds, the hush penetrating through the air.

Immediately Spencer rises; he wants nothing more than to take her up on her offer, but he is, unfortunately, chivalrous.

"No, no, it's okay," he whispers back, already delving back under his covers.

"Spencer. Just take the bed, I can't sleep with you tossing and turning," she says, hoping the complaint will cover up her caring behaviour.

"Be careful, Y/L/N, it almost sounds like you care."

"Shut up, do you want the bed or not?"

"I do but, unlike you, I'm actually a good person and wouldn't want to see you lying on the floor-"

"Uh, I'm offering you the bed, aren't I? That's gotta earn me some brownie points," she remarked, now having turned on a lamp. "Besides, if you're that bothered about it, we'll just share."

This makes Spencer stop: his torso is turned abnormally in his angle to see Y/N behind him, the blankets feebly draping across him show the Doctor Who shirt he's wearing, and his hair is a tousled mess that Y/N just knows will take him hours to fix in the morning. Well, that was tomorrow's problem, she contemplated, right now the issue lied in who, if either of them, was going to sleep on the floor.

"Uh, share? You.. uh, you really wanna do that?"

"As long as you don't snore, or kick; whats the harm?"

Spencer avoids dumping information about the harm of them sleeping together: how this kind of physical contact releases oxytocin, a chemical compound in the brain that exhibits feelings of empathy, trust, relaxation and even reduces anxiety. He saves her this because it's just past midnight and he doubts she wants to hear about the scientific risk of them growing to like each other.

"Oh, okay," he agrees instead. He clambers up from his pile of blankets and clutches a pillow to his chest while he stumbles over. Y/N shuffles to one side and pulls the duvet back, and he's more than happy to get under warm, comfy sheets.

"Let me just make something clear," Y/N says while Spencer adjusts into the pillows. He doesn't do this for long because one is snatched from under his head. When he moves to object, he sees it being planted next to his arm, creating a definite border between them.

"Your side, my side," Y/N says sternly, "that clear?"

"Crystal."

———

It's around three am when Y/N stirs awake. At first she can't grasp what's roused her, but then she hears a noise, and assumes there's got to be some construction going on outside because what she hears is alike to the humming of machinery. When she gains a reasonable amount of consciousness, she realises the sound is a bit too close to home.

Her hand reaches out across the bed, and when she accidentally whacks Spencer on the chest, she worries she's awoken him, until the noise starts again and it's here she discovers it's coming from him.

Oh shit, she thinks, please don't tell me my co-worker is having a sex dream while I'm lying right next to him.

He isn't, but Y/N isn't sure the reality is any better.

The moaning sound he first emitted has progressed into some sort of panicked grunt, accompanied by occasional whines. Soon, his body is flinching away from an invisible force.

Y/N knows it's probably best to leave it, that if she wakes him up he might be too confused and scared, he'll be disoriented, but when he starts screaming, she doesn't have anything else to resort to.

"Spence, Spencer! Wake up, hey," she shakes him, and he's awake in seconds. Sitting up straight, Y/N sees him hitting things that aren't there; it's only when she turns the light on that he eventually calms down.

"I'm sorry," he croaks immediately. Then his head is in his hands as he leans on his knees, and Y/N is overcome with a feeling completely foreign to her in regard to Spencer: empathy.

"Don't be, it-... it's okay," her voice takes a calm turn, and she even puts a hand on his back because anything that happens after three am is as good as forgotten anyway.

"You were right, I'm sorry," Spencer mutters. "This'll lose me ten points for sleeping conditions, huh?"

His attempt at cracking a joke does make Y/N smile, but even he can tell it's one of pity.

"Don't be silly. Do you want to, uh, talk about it?"

"I just wanna sleep," he sighs, and falls back into the pillows. Y/N creases her brows in sympathy, then lies down next to him; she stares at the ceiling for a while, and the steadying of Spencer's breathing makes her think he fell asleep a while ago, so she leans to turn off the lamp before his voice breaks the silence.

"Can you keep the light on?"

His sudden ask makes Y/N jump, but she steadies under the softness of Spencer's voice. When she turns to him his eyes are barely open, but he can see the benevolent smile she's giving him; something he rarely sees from Y/N.

"Of course," she says, then lies back down into the indent she's made in the bed.

"Thanks," he replies, and Y/N notices this is the least she's ever heard Spencer talk.

"You know," she starts, "it's not silly to be afraid of the dark; it's basic human instinct. I mean, it's evolution: humans have a... a tendency to be afraid of the dark, our visual sense vanishes and we can't detect anything around us. It's primal instinct, or... something, I guess."

At the end of her ramble, she's afraid she's sent Spencer to sleep, because he's gone uncharacteristically placid, but -yet again- he surprises her.

"Now who's losing points for conversation?"

Y/N's laugh after this is so hearty and genuine that Spencer can't help but smile, grin even. His chest rumbles with a chuckle, and Y/N feels the mattress shake under their collaboration of laughter, when it dies down they're both still beaming.

"Maybe I've been hanging around you too much," she declares. It's a jab, but her cheek rests against the pillow when she turns her head to him because her smile is so wide, and Spencer reciprocates; the act is unfamiliar to the pair, but warming nonetheless.

When it goes silent, Y/N doesn't expect to sleep at all. The Pavlov affect of the light being on tricks her brain into thinking she should be wide awake (something she learnt from Spencer), so she lies there patiently; hands intertwined resting on her chest. She twiddles her thumbs, almost as if she's waiting for something to happen.

"I'm sorry you have nightmares," she mutters.

Spencer's eyes flutter open, and she goes to make another apology, this time for waking him, but he clears his throat so she lets him take the lead.

"S'Not your fault, I just, I don't know. I get these dreams, these weird dreams - ever since I was a kid. I guess they just... developed into nightmares since I joined the BAU," he mumbles. "We see some pretty bad stuff."

Y/N hums, "we do, don't we?"

Her speech doesn't warrant a response, so Spencer just smiles again and they both silently call it a night. Reid is asleep in seconds, which Y/N finds admirable, while she stays still for a while. The way the orange light is bouncing off Spencer's physique makes him look like he's centre stage of an oil painting. The detail she's gaining of his pores and his eyelashes from being so close to him is both daunting and beautiful at the same time. His resting body reminds her of the pieces on display in an art exhibit Spencer dragged her along to one day last autumn. She wonders if he took anyone else to that exhibit, and hopes he didn't.

She soundlessly admires the rise of his chest: the melody of his breathing amid the chagrin of an occasional nose whistle. His hair, once a foreseeable inconvenience, is now an abundance of, what Y/N can only describe as, natural radiance; it's all curls and frizz and length that she's begged him to never lay a hand on. She can't help but run a hand through it. When she does, it's a lot softer than she expected and makes her think, wow I've really got to find out what conditioner he is using while she's untangling any knots she comes across. It only results in more frizz but he'll gel it back with product in the morning (much to Y/N's disappointment).

The noise he exudes when Y/N scratches his scalp makes her heart melt immediately. It is the sound of innocence wrapped up in a ball of revere, the way it comes from his chest and catches in the back of his throat in a small, naive whine. Then he subconsciously curls into her hold and is practically purring when she continues to scrape her fingernails gently across his head.

The ambivalence of it all is what makes Y/N stop. Spencer Reid isn't the kind of guy she ever anticipated to have a crush on. He didn't fit into the pattern of her list of exes, not even one feature of him came close to anything of her usual type. Where she'd normally be taken to movies and dinners, Spencer ventured with her to museums, public symposiums, art exhibits. Y/N can't resist fondly reminiscing on a library trip they took last week that resulted in them checking out each of their favourite books for one another. And while, on paper, this was romantic and harmonious, they were strictly platonic. Barely that; they took the piss out of each other at every opportunity, not even always as a joke. Y/N had collapsed in sorrow when she pulled his name out of the hat.

But the smile on Spencer's face... his serene expression and soft hair makes Y/N's knees weak for a totally different reason. And she figures this feeling trumps whatever feigned resentment she has been portraying over the years.

Fine, she thought, stubborn as always when it came to Spencer, I'll tell him when he wakes up. She began to bask in the peace that came before whatever storm could potentially riot tomorrow when she told Spencer how she felt. She guessed she had at least a few hours to relish in their friendship and the love they had built.

She guessed wrong.

Spencer's eyes were fluttering open before Y/N had even began conjuring up what she was going to say. Unfortunately, when she made a plan she stuck to it; she was beginning to see why her stubbornness could be such an unattractive quality.

Spencer squinted harshly with the light, and the first thing he managed to see clearly was the discreet panic in Y/N's eyes. He took a quick survey of the room to eliminate what visible factors that could reason her alarm; when he ruled out any unsub with a gun to her head, he relaxed.

Rubbing his eyes, he looked to the window, and it didn't seem to be daylight yet.

"Haven't you been to sleep?" He asked, more than prepared to educate her in the necessities of getting a good night's rest.

"Not yet. You've only been out a few minutes," she said softly, retracting her hand from his locks. Here, Spencer realised he didn't like the feeling of Y/N's absence.

"Oh," he hummed, "I was dreaming. I think Darth Vader was there..."

Y/N chuckled lightheartedly, "of course he was."

Spencer seemed willing to remain awake, but time was limited and Y/N wasn't sure when he'd be dozing off again. So, she made her move.

"Listen, I wasn't going to say anything until morning but, you're awake so I may as well tell you now..."

He's visibly intrigued; with a quirked eyebrow and digging the knuckle-joint of his finger in a rubbing motion in the corner of his eye to try and gain some sense of vivacity. Still, all he can respond with is a drone.

"And I don't want this to, I don't know, freak you out? Or to make anything awkward, so if it does, we can just... pretend this never happened, okay? I mean it."

This manages to obtain Y/N the attention she needs, because, without delay, Spencer has both eyes open and his eyebrows are knitted together in mostly concern. Now, with his eager expression, Y/N wishes he had stayed nonchalant.

"What's wrong?"

"I just... I guess. I mean, I like you? I think? I know, really. I just - you're not like any other guy, and I like that, that's a good thing! I mean, what other guy knows how to build a rocket and make a coin appear behind your ear?"

Spencer chuckles, and his eyes are wide and bright like he's been suddenly granted passage to a whole new world. Mouth agape with wonder, he's like a child being told he can finally play on the big-kid swings: buzzing with excitement and anticipation, just like said rockets he launches and gets in trouble with Hotch for.

"You mean like this?" He asks and leans forward to brandish a dime from behind Y/N's earlobe.

"Okay, like, who does that!" She screeches way too loudly for three am. When she clasps a hand over her mouth Spencer chortles and slowly removes her grasp. He's timid, so initially only presses a chaste kiss to her knuckles, then feels the ambience in the room shift; suddenly everything has devolved from blushing antics and stumbles of words to serenity in a matter of seconds.  

Spencer's pecks adhere to Y/N's hands, lingering on the skin of her knuckles and occasionally peppering to her palms. It isn't until a few kisses later that he brings himself to move closer, and even here his courage only brings him to her cheek.

When the corner of his lips press lustfully upon her face, Y/N doesn't hesitate in turning her head ever so slightly. His lips part, and he breaks away to glance at her and make sure this isn't all one big misunderstanding. But her gaze is matched to his mouth, and soon her lips. In a fumble to close the (already compact) space between them, the kiss they share is warm and breathy, it's passionate and lewd, especially with the arrangement in which Spencer places his hands: cupping one side of her face and the placing the other at her neck so he can rest his fingertips in the hold atop Y/N's spine.

Wherever his fingers touch leaves a trail of goosebumps which Y/N hopes never diminish; she wants every piece of evidence she can muster of Spencer's caresses, however this changes when Spencer's lips begin on the formidable task of her neck.

"Stop," she pants, and the hands that had inevitably reached his hair again are now pushing slightly on his shoulders. Her request makes Spencer drop his hands immediately.

"I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?"

"No, you didn't. It was nice. I just, I don't want everyone to see," she gestured to the red patch that had already formed above her clavicle where Spencer had only been nibbling a moment prior.

"Right, yeah," he breathed. A giddy smile forced its way onto his face when he looked at the way Y/N's lips had reddened and become swollen, especially her bottom (now essentially permanent) pout originated from the persistence of Spencer's tendency to drag his teeth along her lip and enclose it in a bite.

"You know, I predicted this would happen. Scientifically, people are a lot more likely to be attracted to one another after sleeping together. Subconsciously, we feel more capable in our ability to trust that person because we've been so vulnerable and open in a compromising position. The oxytocin we get from sharing physical contact like that is the same we produce in an orgasm."

"Oh," Y/N squeaked, while Spencer lay there with a proud smile on his face, not really registering the effect he'd had on her by using the word 'orgasm'.

"Oxytocin is heavily released during kissing too, so... I guess we're pretty bonded."

Y/N chuckled, smiling at his blushed cheeks. "I guess we are."

"It's, uh, it's actually also called the 'cuddle hormone' because it's primarily recognised as being released during hugging.”

"And that's your way of asking me if I want to cuddle?"

Spencer's smile was unmissable: shifting nervously between tight-lipped and beaming wide, his eyes were the only part of his countenance that stilled; locked on Y/N.

"Yes, I, uh, I believe it is."

She tried to suppress her grin, but it was no use.

"Big spoon or little spoon?" She asked.

"Oh, little spoon... obviously."

fin.

[egg-on-the-run]

I got my first proper request and I literally accidentally deleted it. Am I stupid? Yes. Did I immediately panic? Yes. Do I remember what was on it?........ mostly.

Haha anon I hope you see this I'm so sorry but ily.

The turtles s/o who's usually very calm but just bursts into anger.

Notes: swearing :) I think it's funny

Leonardo:

He's used to a very calm s/o, you like to meditate together, he's always been good with helping you with breathing exercises.

You both like to keep arguments to a minimum, and even when fights do take place there isn't a lot of yelling

But when your mother came to visit :) that was just :) a lot of pressure :)

And she stayed in your apartment :) for a week :) everything was fine :)

Leonardo hadn't seen you for an entire week, not an overly long time, but certainly not pleasant. And he knew that you got stressed when you couldn't see him often. So as soon as you texted saying you had dropped your mother off at the airport, he immediately came round.

You were already screaming the moment you walked in the door.

"Oh she has some nerve! Some nerve! Speaking to me like that!"

"I'm guessing you're car ride went smoothly."

"She's been bugging me all week! When are you getting married? When are you have kids? I want some grand babies before I die! Ugh! She's obsessed with maintaining this perfect image all because her friend's kids are married and making babies like rabbits!"

He stayed quiet, not exactly sure how to comfort you. It wasn't like he could provide you with these things, and by the sounds of it, your mother would never approve of your huge turtle boyfriend.

"She just can't get that I'm happy! I have my own life and it's perfect the way I want it to be! I have a perfect boyfriend! You're a fucking delight! She–she's just so obsessed with her image that she'd never get that!"

"You... You think so?"

"I know so! She's too stubborn and she'll never get how fucking great you are and it just— UGH! It fries my brain."

"Even though I... I can't give you all those things... I can't legally marry you, we can't have kids."

"Even if you could give me a mansion and a diamond ring, or if all you could give me was a-a fucking walnut! I love you Leonardo, not that prim and proper white satin wedding she's made a thousand Pinterest boards for. I love you, I just wish she would get it."

Leonardo leaned down and kissed your cheek

"I love you too."

He believed in dealing with anger appropriately, but seeing you defend him with such passion made him feel so much more secure.

Raphael:

He's seen you angry before, he encouraged it. He's all about helping you with your confidence, teaching you to not be afraid to take up space and stand up for yourself.

But holy cow. You were mad that night.

He'd warned you not to take the trash out at night, wait to the morning — or better yet, he'll take it out for you when he came to visit after patrol.

But you are Raphael's girl. You are stubborn.

So you take the trash out, and some absolute creep decides that "flirting" in a dark alleyway in the key to a girl's heart.

Raphael swooped in, told the man to scram. But bold and drunk, the man spits back with a "Oh yeah? And would she want anything to do with a freak like you? What are you gonna do? Hit me? Aw, big angry turtle, you're gonna scare your girlfriend away."

It was two of his biggest insecurities. His appearance and his rage, especially in regards to scaring you away. It was a low blow, Raphael should have known to just walk away.

But he clammed up, he'd never admit when his anxiety got the best of him and you don't blame him.

"Oh go fuck yourself. If a vile man like you doesn't scare me, why the hell do you think a good man like him would?"

"A good man? He's not a fucking man! He's some freaky turtle thing, a pretty little thing like you deserves a real man."

"And are you a real man?"

"More real than your little pet."

The next thing you knew, the man was on the ground. You assumed Raphael knocked him out, but Raph's standing behind you and you're the one with your hand in a fist.

"Oh my god. Oh–Oh Raphie I knocked him out! O-Oh my god!"

"Holy shit Y/N! You probably broke his nose!" Raphael is grinning, shaking your shoulders.

"I didn't mean to hurt him."

"He deserves a broken nose at the least for messing with you! He was an asshole and he needed someone like you to set him straight!"

"I, um, well, I suppose he did! Saying such horrible things about you, I-I guess he did need someone to put him in his place."

Raphael ruffled your hair, "Thank you, my knight in shining armour."

"That make you my Prince?"

"Your Prince who was right about not taking the trash out at night."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

He appreciated you standing up for him more than you could imagine. And he found it mighty hot how hard you hit that guy. Seriously! He must be a good self defence teacher.

Donatello:

Donatello loves you so much, loves holding you and hugging you whenever he can. He adores it when you sit on his lap while he works.

But do you like to cuddle when you sleep? Tough luck. Getting him to bed is like trying to lick your own elbow: near impossible.

Regardless, you try. Because every once in a while Donatello is too tired to fight and he will go to bed.

Tonight is not one of those nights.

"Baby, please, just come to bed. Everyone's already asleep."

"I'll be there in a minute, just go on without me."

You sigh, not really seeing the point in fighting. Instead you return to his bed, trying to keep yourself awake playing games on your phone. When half an hour passes, you go back and try again.

"Donnie come on, aren't you tired? I just want to cuddle."

"I just need to put some stuff on a hard drive, April's writing a new article, she needs it for tomorrow."

You sigh once more, "Promise you'll come to bed right after?"

"I promise."

Donatello's bed is comfortable, but it's more comfortable with him in. You force yourself to stay awake; despite your exhaustion you're determined to cuddle tonight. It's all you want.

But it did not take an hour to put some documents onto a hard drive. And he's being awfully loud for just typing away on a computer.

"Are you fucking joking right now?!"

He jumps, almost dropping the box of beakers in his arms, "Hey love... Can't sleep?"

"You're rearranging your lab?! Why are you—since when do you rearrange things, huh? What the hell?!"

"I just y'know, thought things needed a change..?"

"Oh, and now is the time to change things, really? Of all the times to move your fucking beakers you decide to do it in the middle of the night after I specifically asked you to come to bed? Seriously?"

He gives a nervous grin, the kind that usually made you smile in return. But it was late — rather it was early at this point — and you were cranky.

"You can sleep without me, you're a big girl." He teased.

"I want to sleep with my boyfriend! I want to cuddle! Is that so much to ask for?!"

Donatello blinked, "You're right, I'm sorry, but I swear, I promise, I'll be ten minutes, honest."

"You can finish this tomorrow. If you're not in bed in the next ten seconds, I am going to scream and wake everyone else up."

"Don't be ridiculous—"

"Ten."

Donatello jumped, quickly moving to shove supplies in cupboards a little recklessly. You continued to count down from ten, storming off back to his bed for hopefully the finally time this night.

By the time you got to the very firm "Three... Two... One..." Donatello was racing to bed, dived in beside you, crashing and knocking your heads together.

He'd never tell you, for fear you'd let it get to your head, but he kind of liked it when you got bossy.

Michelangelo:

Anger and Michelangelo just don't mix. They just don't. He's the king of communication, he's tries his hardest to avoid fights at any and all costs. You've always appreciated his determination to talk things out with you.

But with his brothers? He shuts down, he goes quiet and just accepts whatever blame they put on him: he knows they don't mean it, they only say mean things when they're angry.

But it hurts, hearing his big brothers tell him he's stupid, that he's childish, that he's lackadaisical.

"What kind of word even is that?! I swear Donnie must read a thesaurus as a bedtime story.."

So he's allowed to complain, and you let him ramble when he comes to visit. He sits on your bed and the words just tumble out of his mouth, lets you move around the room tidying up while he rants.

"I just—Raph keeps calling me stupid. And I just—I-I just—You know, sometimes I believe it."

You freeze, sweater only half folded and turn to him, "But you're not stupid. Just because you're not some brainiac like Donatello doesn't make you stupid. If that was the case, then I'm stupid, Raph's stupid, April, Leo, Splinter is stupid. Do you think we're all stupid?"

"Well—no, but—"

"But what?"

"But I... I am a little stupid."

"No you're not! Mikey, how many times has you out of the box thinking saved the day? Y-You were the one who suggested playing friggen buck-buck to take down Shredder! Y-Your skateboarding—hoverboarding skills saved the world. You think your brothers could do that?"

Mikey scrunched his nose up, "That's not smart though. They're right. My-my focus is all over the place, I-I could never come up with a plan like Leo, I could never have half the brains Donnie has, and Raph just—he gets things that I don't and I-I am stupid!"

"I need to have a word with your brothers—"

"And that's another thing! Everyone still treats me like I'm some kid! I don't need you to have a word with them! You're not my mom."

"Then you have a word with them! But sitting here and complaining about things that just aren't true isn't going to change anything!"

He's taken aback. Much like himself, you hardly ever yell, never ever raise your voice at him.

"I am not going to stand here and let them insult you day in and day out! Either you do something about it, or I will!"

He blinks at you, you're aggressively folding the sweater in your arms and grumbling about how you could definitely take Raphael in a fist fight if need be. You mumble something about how nobody gets to speak to your boyfriend like that, and it finally clicks with Mikey.

"Alright. I'm going to talk to them," He's mostly talking to himself, "I'm going to show them that I'm not some stupid, ditzy, lackadaisical kid anymore. I'm your boyfriend, and nobody gets to speak with me that way!"

You beam at him, anger disappearing within the second with his newfound confidence, "Hell yeah! Nobody insults my boyfriend!"

"Your boyfriend!"

"My boyfriend!"

"Your boyfriend!"

His brothers' version of a wake up call is to point out his weaknesses, tell him what needs to be corrected. But you much prefer to build him up, point out his strengths.

But jeez, he does not like your angry face.

[waynedunlaptheorgandonor]

k i woke up to thirteen unread messages, so let’s just do a fucking blanket text post covering everything so that i can go curl up by the fire with my aus and pussy eating fics in peace, yeah?

spoilers under the cut

hi, yes, hello, i’m still chill and hype

“but diz,” you say into my ask box. “how can you still be hype when kang has clearly demolished everything we’ve worked so hard for?”

because she hasn’t.

“but aren’t you tired of kang doing all this crazy, inconsistent writing? aren’t you sick of her doing everything for the shock value and not being true to the characters?”

sigh.

y’all.

don’t come for my girl like that.

call me delusional if you want, but to me all of this fits perfectly within the same narrative, which has been leading to canon from the day she took the helm. 

i have already done a thousand and one breakdowns as to why carol getting with zeke was caryl-positive, so i’m not gonna go there again, but the leah thing is too.

“but diz--”

shh, i’m still talking. 

picture this: you are a lonely, lonely man who has gone through hell and back, and it took you years to open up to your found family, only for your best friend to explode and the love of your life to go marry a guy who probably worked at medieval times to pay for college, and now you’re all alone in the woods trying to figure out wtf to do with yourself. 

you tell yourself you can keep visiting your niece and her mom now and then, but that kind of sucks bc of the aforementioned best friend exploding, and also you and your niece’s mom had to murder a bunch of small children and that tends to be kind of traumatizing to remember, so it’s not the ideal situation

but at least you still have your girl, even if she is in an indefinite LARP game for the rest of her life. 

but!

then she says, “actually, i can’t come visit you much anymore, what with the whole community, and husband, and child thing,” 

and then you are actually Alone.

and it’s for the first time, because every time before that you at least had your brother, who might have been a piece of shit, but at least he was there. 

so you meet some chick on the road. you’re sad, no longer feel like you have a family (after it took you so long to get one that you actually loved), and you’re more alone than you have ever been, and you meet this chick who is a loner like you, and you’re wary at first. the two of you don’t trust each other, bc you don’t trust easy. but over time you start to build that trust, and she offers you companionship that you are so desperately in need of, and maybe you wouldn’t usually be into it, but given the Literally Everything Else going on, it’s like, why the fuck not? you have N O T H I N G left.

so she gives you an ultimatum--her or what little is left of your family. well, your family is scattered to the wind and being around them only hurts you more, and this person is offering you a chance for something new (and when things get rly bad, hasn’t your go-to move always been to run anyway?) so you say okay. you say you’ll go.

except nvm, she ditched you, lol, you’re all alone again! sucks to suck.

skip ahead, you’re back with your family, and your og girl has dumped the LARPer, and maybe things can be good again, except there’s a bunch of people going full hannibal lecter wearing other people’s faces on their own and murdering everyone, and your og girl is actually insane rn due to years’ worth of unresolved trauma, and you’re suddenly a dad, and you’re being asked to make nice with the guy who literally tortured you, and honestly? it’d be hard enough as is to trust again, but this whole situation is NOT HELPING. 

so by the time the war ends you are tired, and you are hurt, and you are wary, because you keep losing things that matter. and you got back the one person in the world who mattered the most, except she did some super questionable shit, and you’re having a hard time reconciling it, and finally you just Lose It, bc goddamnit, you’ve earned it, mkay? you are entitled to a little blow up. if she gets to literally blow shit up then the least you can do is yell a little, like damn.

but. 

she’s the one person in the world who matters most. a rebound fling over the course of a few months =/= ten years of being soulmates. you’ll forgive her, she’ll forgive you, and the two of you will ride off into the sunset together, almost as if you were suddenly in your own spin-off show. 

what a concept?

/fin/

“alright, but diz--”

OH MY GOD HOW DO YOU STILL HAVE OBJECTIONS?

listen. here is what daryl/leah teaches us:

-daryl is willing and capable of having intimate relationships

-that being said, daryl being in a relationship has been a Big Thing for everyone, regardless of who they ship him with, since s1, so if it was supposed to be The Most Important Relationship Ever to him, the juicy parts would not happen off screen. there’s a reason the sex is only implied. they’re not showing it until it’s the Real Thing

-we now know daryl has had sex in the past ten years, so maybe he’ll actually last more than six seconds when he bones down with carol! very good!

-this also teaches us that hoo buddy, y’all have some mixed morals when it comes to these characters. the “daryl would only be in a relationship if he rly loved them, so how could he possibly love carol still?” thing is like. dude. carol is MARRIED during this, and he doesn’t get to see her much anymore. is he supposed to just walk around jacking it while crying for the rest of his life? the man tried to move on, and the tragic thing is that he got screwed over. i do not think this is out of character at all. i think daryl fell in love with carol, she got married, he was lonely, tried to move on and convince himself he could be happy with this other chick (who might be rly cool, who knows??), and then he got his heart broken again, before it ever really healed to being with. the boy is a giant bleeding heart who is getting stomped on constantly, and y’all better stop yelling at him for trying to feel better or i’ll come for you. this is like carol having rebound sex with zeke. if you want your characters to be realistic then you have to let them do human things, holy shit

this is getting excessive, let’s tie it up.

the main takeaways here are:

-no it’s not out of character

-yes it fits the narrative, kang isn’t just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, it all has a purpose, which is why i’m totes fine with it

-leah might not actually die, which thank god, i thought it was douchey of them to kill off another woman for Man Pain. i’m glad i’ve been wrong about her and connie both

-oh yeah, connie...i have no new feelings on connie

-daryl now has sexual stamina, so we can all update our headcanons now

-“i can’t believe they end the episode on such a sore note! their friendship is almost destroyed, how will it ever recover??” ...how are you surprised? that was...that was literally the description of the episode, my dude. that one didn’t exactly come out of left-field. it’ll be okay, they’re gonna make up. hopefully through a bunch of hyperbolically tragic misadventures. it’ll be a good time, calm down

-there is a FUCKING SPIN-OFF coming, how can you think they won’t reconcile?

-actually it’d be super funny if they were just giving each other the silent treatment throughout the entire thing lmfao

-“have you seen that new caryl show?” “yeah, it’s fucking weird. there’s no dialogue??”

-anyway

-does it help if i said i secretly thought they might fuck the whole time, specifically for the reasons stated above, and i’ve been kinda into it since the promo but didn’t say so bc i didn’t want to get hanged? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

-idk y’all, that’s all i got. drink up ig?

i just found out that i’m literally anemic, and y’all are still more exhausting than anything else. it’s okay to just like. enjoy things. i promise.

now if you’ll excuse me, i have aus to dive head-first into. i’m not gonna say a whole bunch else about shit unless it gets rly necessary. i think i will make this blog relentlessly positive out of spite, and will just post fics and shippy gifs. i have a photoshop free trial (thatigottomakeaberniememe), mb i’ll make sappy caryl gifs as practice and bombard you all with them. feel free to come by for cheering up, but i’m not gonna repeat myself six thousand times, either

stay hype, STAN KANG, and get daryl to call carol sweetheart 2k21,

-diz

[grimmradiance]

Close to Me: How the Hollow Knight's Fighting Style Reflects Their Trauma (and the Radiance's as well)

So I've been trying to actually beat the Radiance, which means I've been fighting the Hollow Knight. A lot, as a matter of fact, since I'm beans at this game sometimes. I've also been thinking about @lost-kinn's meta about how fighting styles are how Vessels, especially the Little Knight, communicate.

In trying to apply this to the Hollow Knight, I've been coming to some very interesting conclusions, especially taken in context of...Everything Else in the lore, and Everything Else implicated in this by the psychology of it.

There's a lot to cover here, and it tracks through a LOT of different places, including trauma psychology, the relationship between chronic stress and lifespan health, and shape symbolism. Two warnings first:

One: this essay is gonna get heavy. It includes fine-grained discussion of the Hollow Knight's trauma, including discussions of the real-life machanics of psychological abuse, as well as the Extremely Concerning Implications of them harming themself during their boss fight. please read with caution and when you're in a safe emotional place to do so.

Two: This post is not a place for justifying the Pale King. If you read this essay in its entirety and still want to do that, please make your own post; my relationship to the Hollow Knight themself is deeply rooted in my own experiences, so in the context of this discussion I can't promise I won't take it personally.

With that out of the way, let's talk trauma and fighting styles:

We know that the Hollow Knight is trained to be a paragon of fighting skill, through the Pure Vessel fight, and this gives us a fantastic way to compare what they were like before they were made Government Assigned Radiance Jail, and after. Or, in other words, we're given the perfect opportunity to see what the Radiance is doing (i.e. context effects), and what Hollow is (i.e. what we can conclude is reliably consistent as a part of them). Listed here, for reference:

Hollow's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Radiant Shade Soul, which launches a volley of Infection blobs in arcs

A Radiant Desolate Dive, which produces pillars of entwined Void and Light at random intervals

The Infection bursting out of them in random arcs, covering a significant amount of the aerial space of the arena

The Radiance ragdolling their body around trying to hit the Knight

Contact damage from them stabbing themself and falling over atop you

The Pure Vessel's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Pure Shade Soul, which launches a volley of nails in straight lines

A Pure Desolate Dive, which produces nails at specific intervals

A Pure Focus, which causes circular explosions across most of the aerial space in the arena

Lashing out with a Void Arm (word choice intentional)

I've highlighted attacks from each battle that are different, since those are our points of interest here. In addition, both the Pure Vessel and Hollow are exceedingly fond of teleport-spamming in a way that is usually reserved for a specific group of bosses.

Another very important distinction between these two fights: the Pure Vessel doesn't scream. Well, they certainly try to, but no sound comes out. No voice to cry suffering, after all. All of these points have a lot to go into, so let's address them one at a time.

All That Remains: Theoretical Background On The Significance Of Constants

Making comparisons across time is important specifically because humans (and human-like bugs) change. Most personality traits aren't set in stone--they exist as an interaction of someone's internal tendencies, their experiences, and their environment. Speaking of those last two points, not all experiences and environments are created equally. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs for short) are known to have lifelong implications for a child's health, both physically and mentally. These are events that are so stressful or stressful for so long that they exceed a child's ability to cope and become toxic stress (yes, that's the term in the literature, because it actively damages your organs). They compound, as well--the stress of one ACE makes it harder for a child to cope with another, especially if they overlap.

Some examples of ACEs? Being exposed to physical danger or the threat of physical danger, deprivation of normal social relationships with peers of a similar age, being forcibly seperated from family members, witnessing a loved one being hurt or killed, chronic illness in oneself or a family member, neglect of a child's emotional needs....

Poor fucking Holly. It's a miracle they didn't disintegrate under the pressure. The only other option is that they bent and adapted under that much stress--in other words, most of their personality has been forcibly reshaped by what they've gone through. Anyone who has up-close experience with parentification or complex child abuse already knows: this was by design. I'm not saying the intent was to traumatize the Pure Vessel past several points of no return, but the intent definitely was to reshape their personality for the purpose of being The Vessel. We only see them (the Pure Vessel) in battle after this process is mostly or entirely complete, but we do see them a few times beforehand. I'd like to draw attention to the Path of Pain cutscene right now.

I've seen people talking about the look the Vessel and the King share as a sign that TPK really does love his child. That might be true, but it's definitely not relevant when it comes to how abuse works. This is, in fact, exactly how the cycle of abuse uses affection as a tool. Long periods of abuse or neglect, smoothed over by small periods of affection that placate the survivor? That's textbook love bombing, the kind that forms stubborn trauma bonds and facilitates unhealthy dependency. Forgive me for not giving the Higher Being of knowledge and prescience the benefit of the doubt on that one. (/s)

Team Cherry knows about the importance of parallels and dissonance. There's a reason the music in the second phase of the Hollow Knight fight plays in the Path of Pain. There's a reason it cuts out the moment the battle with the Kingsmoulds is over, instead of at the room transition. There's a reason it doesn't cut out in the Black Egg. Actually, there's two potential reasons, which could also coexist: either little Hollow trusts the Pale King to keep them safe, even after the borderline torture that they were just subjected to, or big Hollow is so hypervigilant that they're in full functioning-through-trauma mode even while they're at death's door.

If you don't see how much the Pale King scarred his child at this point, I'm not sure we were playing the same game.

Walking the Straight Line: How the Pale King's Teachings Show In the Pure Vessel

The Pale King loves order and control. Everything about the White Palace and every decision we see him make implies this. Everything is spotless white walls and well-maintained gardens; the only signs of disorder are hidden away, either in his workshop or in The Pit™. This also reflects in the Pure Vessel's title--pure as in holy, but also pure as in without flaw. Considering the Nailsmith's emotional state after completing the Pure Nail, TPK's fate with his Perfect Controlled Kingdom, and the Godmaster ending as a whole, attaining perfection is not a good thing in any sense.

We know the Hollow Knight isn't perfect--that's the whole catalyst for the plot. But considering their upbringing and their fighting style as the Pure Vessel, their imperfections absolutely kill them emotionally. I'll spare the lecture on how perfectionism affects neurodivergent kids even more severely than neurotypical kids, if only to keep this post to a reasonable length (look up "twice-exceptional children" if you'd like to know the theory I'm glossing over in more depth). But, in essence, the deck is doubly stacked against them--they have a higher goal to reach, and far more obsctacles in their path, including their own emotional scars.

I've already discussed how Hollow isn't meant for this kind of stress in a physical sense in other posts. They're not prepared for it emotionally, either--the Pale King wants perfection, and they can't even stand up straight (every spoonie in the audience already knows how exhausting people's obsession with Standing Up Straight is). There's another page on their stack of emotional baggage, even BEFORE you consider that the Pure Vessel knows their perfection is what bought them a ticket out of the Abyss.

Bringing Teleportation To A Sword Fight: Where The Pure Vessel Reveals Their Fears

How else are they going to cope with that need for perfection, that need to prove themselves worthy of the reason their life was spared, by being flawless in any way they can? Being a mechanical, flawless fighter puts so much pressure on them, both literally (repetitive strain injuries fucking HURT) and figuratively--if you're predictable, the only sure way to win is to mop the floor with your opponents before they figure you out. Hell, that's the way most people play their first run of Hollow Knight, by throwing themselves at the bosses over and over until they figure out the patterns. That strategy is inherently going to fail against an opponent that's, say, an immortal higher being.

There's no way that the Vessel didn't figure this out, and yet none of their TPV specific attacks are positioned randomly--the nails are always evenly spaced, and the Focus explosions are always in a specific height region of the screen. That's clinging to survival strategies even when they become maladaptive in its purest form.

Another dip into psychological theory: let's talk about disorganized attachment. Attachment styles describe how someone's relationships to their main caregiver(s) influence their understanding on relationships in general. Disorganized attachment is a result of an upbringing of inherently unstable parent-child relationships, where there's no way of a child predicting whether an adult is going to be delighted to see them, ambivalent, upset, or otherwise. If my parent woke up some days saying "all right my child, time for the Infinite Buzzsaws Obstacle Course," I'd be the same way. In adulthood this manifests as an inability to form a stable sense of self-concept as well as concepts of others. Mission accomplished, TPK, there's no will to break if you broke it yourself.

This is where the fighting styles as communication comes in--Hollow needs to keep Ghost at a distance to fight, but also wants to be closer to their sibling (the only being who has a chance of understanding what they've been through), BUT also has a trauma-rooted fear of attaching to people, as their experiences with attachment are inherently unpredictable and dangerous. Hence, both the teleportation that doesn't seem to match their fighting style any more reliably than "aim at the thing attacking you" and the second attack unique to the Pure Vessel--they're quite literally lashing out in pain to push people away. There's a reason that attack is so reminiscent of the Thorns of Agony.

Of note is that Holly does seem to teleport like the bugs of the Soul Sanctum do (favoring the edges of a screen, rather than going wherever like Dream Warriors do), which makes sense--they're the most obvious answer to the question "how did they learn how to teleport, anyways?" However, Sanctum bugs have abilities designed to capitalize on this, like homing spells and slashes from above. I can only assume this means that someone saw Holly's proficiency with the nail and assumed it translated to other forms of combat, and didn't feel the need to give them at least a bit of a primer on how to make the best use of it. There's another tally for the Hollow Knight as an autism metaphor.

Trauma Bonds: How the Radiance Speaks Through Hollow

Now, we're back to the Black Egg, and two people stuck in the same sinking ship. The thing that makes this hurt so badly is that Holly and the Radiance are at complete cross purposes here, and yet they both want the same thing:

They both want out, no matter the cost. For the Radiance, this means forsaking the pacifistic nature of the moths and nuking Ghost personally.

For Hollow, this means forsaking the way they were raised and everything that was bludgeoned into their personality: the only way out is to fail, give up control, and trust that Ghost will do what needs to be done.

Imagine how much pain they're in to actually go for it. Going against a literal lifetime of conditioning is something that takes the average person years to even consider, let alone go through with. It's a form of learned helplessness--if you try to break free and fall, again and again, it actively discourages further attempts. Breaking through learned helplessness is an interesting process, because it generally involves re-establishing a sense of control by recalling previous events where the person was able to change their situation.

Which, as far as we know of, are nothing but traumatic memories for Hollow. It's very unlikely that they'd break through it on their own, but we know they have by the time we see the second phase of their fight. This is them at their most desperate: the same music as the Path of Pain, the way they let, or can't stop, the Radiance throw their body around, the way they actively try to let the Radiance out by stabbing themself.

You'd think that giving up and learned helplessness are inherently compatible, but when giving up both goes against your core personality, and involves your active participation, they're in direct opposition. So either Holly was able to process all their trauma by themself (which I doubt, judging by how much effort the player has to go through to even see Ghost's and Hollow's traumatic memories), or someone gave them a nudge or three in that direction.

Considering that there's been someone living in Holly's head who has a vested interest in them Not Doing Their Duty, I think we know who. And the thing is, I think we watch Hollow have this breakthrough during their battle. Imagine for the first time in decades, at least, you can move. You're in pain from being in the same position, probably hallucinating from sensory deprivation, with an infection sucking at what strength your body has left. And there's this little creature who looks ready to fight you, who seems to have let you go for that exact purpose.

And you look down, and both you and the Radiance recognize them from a place rooted deeper than consciousness, in the murky depths of trauma. You see the other Vessel who just as easily could have been you, and who looks so much stronger for not being you, for being an imperfect, willful creature. And the Radiance sees history threatening to repeat itself, another one of the Wyrm's cursed children seeking to lock her away once more.

What else do you do when you're triggered? You scream, and you go on instinct, and you retreat into your head. Those first blows, with the epic music? That's the Vessel the Pale King forged, the fighting machine that will endure unimaginable stress because it knows no other way. What snaps you back out of dissociation? Usually, either the passage of the triggering stimulus, or an even more relevant stimulus (severe pain from getting beaten up by a nail, for example).

The tragedy is this: we know this isn't a triumph. I think most of us went into that fight the first time, knowing we'd be putting the Hollow Knight out of their misery. The music turns tragic, Hollow screams, and then we see the Radiance and Hollow themself break through: the Radiance trying to fight Ghost directly with the resources she has, and Hollow trying to help her along.

For what it's worth, Hollow even had the right idea, when it came to letting themself rest while helping Ghost stop the madness their father started--they were just digging for the Radiance in the wrong place. The dynamic between the Radiance and the Hollow Knight is something I could write on for pages and pages, but this has gone on for long enough. Tune in next time, where I'll presumably talk about this same topic but in reverse with regards to the Radiance.