#and the weight of that is inescapable but it means there are some people who want to see it done

[netherfeildren]

Someone's Wife in the Boat of Someone's Husband .2

Series Masterlist : Moodboard

(Joel Miller x F!Reader)

Rating: Explicit 18+

A/N: Art is Body, the Texture, Seung Ah Paik, (2008-2009)

Word Count: 4.8K

Read on AO3

.2

I mean maybe I was holding all of the aces, but what was the game?

Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

Gerri’s sister, Andrea, makes a wonderful dinner that night, linguine with mussels in a white wine sauce, a tossed salad, and several bottles of a lovely and crisp Pinot Grigio. By all accounts, it should have been a perfect evening. Friends and family in a beautiful setting. The day had been warm and lazy and seemingly perfect on the surface, but the underlying vein of tension was inescapable and un-ignorable. A huge drama had unfolded when you’d come back inside the house from the dock earlier. Eva was up in arms that Joel hadn’t brought you in immediately after the sting, said that he had no business tending to you when you were hurt and there was a doctor present. She’d even gone as far as to suggest that perhaps, if you felt too unwell, you should head back to the city, for a fucking wasp sting. Gerri had stepped in at that, said that it had been her sister who’d rented the house, and thus, was the only one who had the right to suggest when anyone should or should not leave. A screaming match had ensued. No one had really stopped to listen when you’d said that you really were fine. 

The seven of you now sit quiet and awkward at the dinner table out on the deck facing the dark and serene lake. A gorgeous setting with a terribly dark cloud hanging over all of your heads. The conversation is stilted and forced and there is a palpably bitter ball of tension being tossed back and forth between Joel and Eva. Sharply spit whispers and murmurs under their breaths as they sit across from you. She keeps rolling her eyes and clicking her tongue at him every time he tries to join the conversation Gerri’s been fighting tooth and nail to keep going. 

Ger’s best friend, who was supposed to have joined the weekend so that you’d not be the seventh wheel, had canceled last minute, and so you now sit at the the far end of the table across from the happy couple, trying your best to drown your awkwardness and the memory of Joel’s mouth on your skin in as much wine as you can guzzle as quickly as you possibly can. Light-weight or not, these are dire circumstances, it calls for desperate measures. 

The tension between Gerri and Eva wasn’t much better, and by extension between her sister. The three of them reminded you of the angry wasp from earlier, waiting to see who’d strike first. Everything about this was filling you with a type of anxious fizz that has the nape of your neck breaking out into a cold sweat and the backs of your knees itching. You want to run to your room, get all your shit, and run away from this place and these people as quickly as you can.

And then fucking Joel. Part of you wants to kick him on the shin under the table as hard as you can. What was his problem, helping you like that, touching you like that, calling you sweetheart, putting his goddamn mouth on you? Fanning the flames of this terrible, horrible, life ruining crush you’re developing on him? Perhaps this is the wine talking, but it feels like he’s slowly consuming your mind like wildfire. The feel of his hot, wet mouth, the slide of his tongue over the sensitive center of your palm, it’s all you can think about. You can’t stop picturing what it might feel like between your legs, over the tips of your breasts. He’d said he’d be gentle, but you have the uncontainable thought that that’s the last thing you want him to be with you.

You really hate yourself. This has to be classified as some flavor of masochism or something, you sitting across from him and his wife as they have a covert fight, all while you’re imagining what it’d be like for him to lick your pussy. 

Yes, definitely a masochist. 

He hasn’t uttered a single word in the past half hour or so, but you’ve been watching him out of the corner of your eye. You’re trying to be discreet, but you’re pretty sure you’re failing, and you can feel the bright, hot flush of the wine broadcasting itself on the surface of your cheeks like a blaring sign. He looks so good. His hair is wet from the shower, slicked back, and he has a slightly red flush from the sun today across his cheeks and the bridge of his strong nose. And he’s so broad, the sleeves of his button down straining with the thickness of his biceps. Your mouth feels parched, like there’s fire crawling up your throat, writhing within the confines of your arteries, licking up the notches of your vertebrae. 

You should go home. You should get away from these people. This was a mistake. And yet you do not. You remain, for some inexplicable reason. Masochist, masochist, masochist. A girl who likes things that aren’t good for her, that will only hurt her. 

You can’t help but think there’s something strange in the way that the two of them circle each other, in the way they exist around each other. Like two opposing magnets – connected by something, some sort of sameness, but constantly repelling each other, at the same time. You can’t say, quite precisely, what it is, perhaps, the undercurrent of hostility they move around each other with, as if at any moment someone’ll swipe out with sharpened claws, go for the jugular, but also, almost slowly, lagging, as if they are very tired of fighting such an interminable fight. You recognize something in them, and it isn’t until this moment, with you sitting across from them on the universally familiar battleground that is a family dinner table, that you’re able to realize what it is – a marriage filled with nothing but unhappiness and resentment. 

They remind you, very much, of your own parents. 

With age, you now thought that whenever people spoke of love, they were rarely ever speaking of real love. Most of the time it was a shroud for power or fixation or loss. Life has taught you this, your parents have taught you this. In many ways, you are now teaching yourself this. After all, all of these things most usually serve as the true center of what a romantic relationship posed as. Maybe. Or maybe you’re wrong. Too jaded – too gnarled. But when you look at these two people sitting before you, when all you can see in them is the bitter, ghostly reflection of your own parents, all it does is reinforce that idea. 

Joel’s eyes are a little blank, as if his mind is very far away from here, as Eva goes on about her new project at work, but you watch that little, fluttering muscle in his jaw from earlier make its frustrated return. If he grinds his teeth any harder you’re worried he’ll crack them. Gerri and Tommy have been having some sort of silent conversation for the past few minutes, she kind of looks like she’s beating him up with her eyes, screaming at him to do something to make this dinner even the slightest bit more bearable. His jokes are terrible and keep falling flat which you find quite funny, even though no one else seems to. Andrea’s girlfriend got up to go to get another bottle of wine like twenty minutes ago and never came back. 

Joel has his left hand resting on the table beside his plate, the other hidden below the edge. His fingers are long and thick, the nails trimmed neatly. He keeps stretching his hand open, and rotating his wrist to the side, back and forth, as if he’s stretching the muscles in his forearm out. His ring finger and thumb come together intermittently to meet and he rubs them together slowly, slowly. You sit across from him, chin cupped in your palm and watch the slow caress of those two fingers, eyes slightly glazed. Your legs beneath the table are crossed at the knee, thighs pressed together as tightly as you can. 

Eva’s been going on for the past half hour about someone on her team who, she claims, is the best insurance agent she’s ever met in her entire career. Impressive. You think you must scoff or make some sort of unconscious sound, lost in your daze staring at his hand, because she turns to you suddenly, abandoning her tirade to bestow her critical eye on you. Your knee jerks beneath the table, bumping against the underside and rattling the dinnerware on the surface. You feel the wine flush deepen at her inspection. You hadn’t really contributed much to the conversation throughout the evening, feeling too out of place and anxious to think of something interesting to say, too distracted by the sight of him.

“You know,” she starts – her voice has a deceptively guileless lilt to it that you think people must find incredibly charming when the look in her eyes isn’t calling for blood. “You’re a little quiet. Don’t have much to contribute, do you?” she purrs. 

You clear your throat once, twice, you hear Joel spit her name under his breath, and Gerri says something from the end of the table, but a white, rushing noise is filling your ears suddenly. She sounds very familiar. You clear your throat again, “I was just really enjoying hearing all about what it’s like to sell insurance,” you tell her. “I didn’t want to interrupt.” You hear Gerri snort loudly from the other end of the table. Sometimes you could have a backbone, if you tried very, very hard. 

She hums, arches a thin eyebrow at you. “Gerri says you’re single. That you’ve been unattached for quite some time.” You hear Gerri try to interject again, but Eva cuts her off, continues her set down. “Maybe that’s why you still haven’t found someone yet. No man wants a mouse, you know.” She clicks her tongue and it makes you flinch. You can’t look away from her, it’s like you’re sitting across from a ghost. Even the cadence of her voice reminds you of your mother. When you grow up with an angry parent in your house, there will always be an angry parent in your house, and you are acutely reminded of that in this moment.“Some people might think you’re boring if you’re not careful. Don’t you agree, Joel?” She turns to him, wide grin stretched across her face, and you feel your eyes burn, backbone obliterated, back at your parent’s dinner table. 

“No, I don’t agree,” he says coldly. “That’s enough, Eva.” She ignores him. 

She cocks her head at you, “Could be somethin’ to work on,” she says sweetly. 

“Joel, think it’s time for you two to say good night, don’t you?” Tommy says from the end of the table. 

You try to say that it’s alright, but you think you might’ve accidentally swallowed your tongue in your plight to find your voice. Joel stands suddenly, his chair jostling violently with the abruptness of his movements and clasps her around the elbow, pulling her up with him. “Yeah, we’ll say good night now, everyone.” She goes along with him, laughing loudly. 

“Goodnight,” she sing-songs, as he drags her down the hallway. 

That little girl you’d used to be, the one who always needed to make herself lovable, amenable, good, surges up sharp and vicious inside of you at her words, at the uncomfortable look of embarrassment in Joel’s eyes. He couldn’t even look at you, his eyes trained uncomfortably on his plate. All the care and generosity in his gaze from the afternoon cast away in the face of his wife cutting you down and your inability to defend yourself, your pathetic meekness. 

You turn to look out at the dark water, close your eyes and take deep breaths to ease the tightness in your throat. Gerri says your name softly. You swallow once, twice, clear your throat, swallowing the humiliation. You force a smile onto your face and turn back to her, roll your eyes, “It’s okay.” You try to huff a laugh. 

“It wasn’t – I’m sorry about that,” Tommy says. He looks just as embarrassed as Joel. You want to leave so, so badly. Perhaps this need to always run is just another inheritance from your mother. Just one more terrible burden, in a long line of disappointing inherited traits, that she’s left you with. 

“Tommy, really—”

“No,” he says sharply, letting his fork clatter onto his plate. Gerri says his name softly, you see her put her hand over his clenched fist on the table. “They’re unhappy. She’s unhappy — so she tries to cast the net of her misery around the rest of us – trap us in it with her. Make us all as uncomfortable and as miserable as she is.”

“I know — I can see that. That’s why I’m saying, it’s okay. I understand.”

But you don’t think he hears you, he goes on, “And she’s got my brother trapped there with her.” He looks at Gerri now and you can see all the worry and anguish he carries for Joel in his gaze, a little helpless. “I don’t – I don’t really know how to help him anymore.”

“Baby, it isn’t on you,” Gerri tells him gently. “All you can do is be there for him.”

Tommy turns back to look at you, and for a moment, the helplessness seems to have turned to contemplation, for some reason, as he tells you, “I just want him to be happy.”

-

Joel lays in bed hours later, arm propped under his head, unable to sleep. Eva’s in the room next door with Sarah. They’d slept in separate rooms since the start of their marriage. Neither of them had ever considered the alternative, and he’s especially grateful for that right now. He has the window cracked open, and the cool breeze is soothing on his overly hot skin. His cock is hard and throbbing under his boxers, and he wants nothing more than to call your face to his mind and fuck his palm right now, but he knows he shouldn’t. That if he does it once, he’ll never be able to stop again, will use your face to fuel his fantasies forever afterwards. He can’t stoop that low. He’s not that desperate. Not yet, at least.

And he’s angry right now too. So fucking frustrated at his wife and her attitude and the things she’d said to you at dinner. And most of all, frustrated at himself. Frustrated at the fact that he hadn’t said something more to defend you, that he hadn’t prevented that terrible look of shock and hurt from crossing your face. He should’ve stepped in sooner, said something more, stood up for you. He could tell that it was difficult for you. But he’d been a little taken aback at Eva’s words, at the venom in her tone. He knows she doesn’t have any sort of real problem with you, specifically. He can see through the shroud of bitterness to the heart of the issue at hand which is nothing more than what it always is, that she’s reaching the end of her line – been too stagnant for too long, stuck around with him and Sarah for too long. She’s unhappy and she wants to leave and she’s lashing out because of it. 

He knows she just needs time to come to that on her own, to gather the resolve to abandon her daughter and finally leave the way she wants to. He also knows that this will be the last time. That after this, after she leaves this time, she’ll be done with them for good, but also, that he can’t let her continue this. He needs to set a boundary for himself, but more importantly, for Sarah. She cannot watch her mother come in and out of her life, whenever she pleases, forever. There needs to be some sort of structure to their life, to their relationship, it’s his responsibility to make sure she has that. 

So, for now, until Eva comes to this decision on her own, he’ll put up with her venom and her attitude and her lashing out at him, but at him, not at you or anyone else. You don’t deserve for the misery of his life to spill over onto you. You don’t deserve that, you’re too good for that. Too good for him. 

He’s also really fucking frustrated that his cock is hard right now. That he’s such an idiot that the confirmation that you’re single had filled him with an inappropriate amount of relief and satisfaction, that if he isn’t careful and conscious of his thoughts and his body and his proximity to you at all times, he’s almost always verging on being halfway to hard in your presence. Like some horny, desperate, perverted old man. But he can’t help himself. You’re just too pretty. And now that he knows how soft you are, that he’s held your small hand in his, that he’s gotten close enough to be able to smell that subtly sweet scent that envelops you at all times, well, he’s practically a lost cause. Putting his mouth on you today, tasting the salt of your skin, fucking Christ, he shouldn’t have done that. He can never do it again, should never get that close again. It would be, he thinks, extremely easy to lose control of himself with you.

But he also thinks, despite this very aware notion he has that he should keep his distance, that he wants to find any excuse, any at all, to be close, to get closer to you. Maybe he should go apologize. Maybe he should go and say something about tonight, tell you how sorry he is for his wife’s words, for his lack of thought to speak up for you in the moment, to ask you how your hand is, if you’re in pain, if you need anything. Yes, he thinks, he most definitely should do that. It would be the right thing, the polite thing. It’s almost necessary, he finds. 

-

This was a mistake. He knows he shouldn’t be here, he knows this is a bad idea. Dangerous in a way crafted specifically by himself to hone in on his own weaknesses, strike where he’s most vulnerable. Fucking self sabotage and self flaggelation, all at the same time. He lifts his fist to knock quietly anyways. Fuck what he should do, what about what he wants?

You take a long moment to answer, he can hear your shuffling and movement through the door. You were probably in bed, maybe you were asleep already, maybe he’ll get to see that soft, intimate look of sleep in your eyes. Maybe he’ll be so lucky. 

-

“Joel – is everything okay?” Your voice is cracked and gravelly, and you try to inconspicuously wipe away the stickiness of your slick on your hand on the back of your sleep shorts, wind the long sleeves of your soft sweater over your fingers to hide the evidence of the fact that you’d just had three of your fingers stuffed to the knuckle inside your wet cunt, trying to make yourself come at the thought of him. What the hell is he doing here right now?

You plan to never see him again after this weekend, you’ve decided. You’ll tell Gerri you can’t be friends anymore, if need be, as much as it’ll devastate you. This is too risky, you feel at risk in his presence. There is something, some terrible sense of dread you’re filled with, a fight or flight instinct, the sense of prey right before it’s taken out by a larger, stronger predator, but some sort of instinct is telling you something very bad will happen to you if you stay anywhere near this man. That he’ll make you feel things you’ve never before felt in your entire life. 

“How’s the hand?” 

You almost choke. “Wh– what?”

“The sting?”

“Oh–” you’re trying to control your breathing, the stuttering of your heart from the interrupted orgasm, paired with his presence here right now has you close to hyperventilating, “Oh, it’s fine – thank you.” Your cunt is tight and throbbing painfully.

“Doesn’t hurt anymore?”

“No,” you lie.

He shakes his head a little, gives you the gentle curve of his crooked smile, “Don’t gotta lie, sweetheart.” Your heart drops at how easily he sees through you, has your throat tightening into a knot. The reprimand at the pet name catches in your throat. After the humiliation at dinner, the tears you’d shed in the shower, the feeling of being too emotional, overly sensitive, of not being able to just brush off someone’s offhandedly cruel words, your inability, even after all these years, to develop thicker skin – it’s hard to cast away the slight comfort. Even if you know it’s wrong. 

“Your wife?” You need to remind the both of you about her, in this moment. It feels very precarious, set on the edge of a cliff, for some reason. Perhaps because of how soft his old t-shirt looks, his low, gravely voice and messy curls, the late hour – the fact that all you’re wearing is an oversized sweater and sleep shorts and that your cunt is wet and swollen. 

“Asleep with Sarah.”

“Oh, she’s–” you cut yourself off abruptly, none of your business. 

“We don’t uh –” he stutters, a blush creeping into his cheeks, “We don’t st– stay together.” He blinks rapidly, looking down at his feet. The fringe of his lashes is long and thick. 

“Oh… okay–” you can’t think what it is you’re supposed to say to that, but you’re filled with a terrible sense of premonitory dread. He’s trying to establish something now, between the two of you, you think, explain something to you about the dynamic unfolding here and the one between himself and his wife. 

“I wanted to apologize – again.” He looks back up at you now. “I’m sorry for dinner. We were incredibly rude to you.”

“You weren’t rude. You didn’t say anything.”

“Exactly. I should have said something more. I’m sorry for that.”

“That’s not what I meant. You– you don’t need to defend me from your wife. That – that isn’t–” That isn’t right, you want to say, but the words fail you.

“Maybe so – but I should’a done it anyway. She was out of line, and I’m apologizing for it now.”

“Okay–” He looks away then, peers down the dark, quiet hall. Fuck, he mutters under his breath. This feels wrong. You wonder if your mother ever felt this anxious heaviness inside of her right before she did something she knew she wasn’t supposed to. 

“We– we don’t have a conventional marriage,” he says then, spills the words in a rushed tumble. His embarrassed blush flares brighter, and you squeeze your eyes shut, hold on to the door’s edge for support, like he knows, perhaps, that he shouldn’t be going here with you but feels the need to tell you this anyways. 

You blink rapidly, the dread in your gut churns violently. You shouldn’t be hearing this right now. The two of you shouldn’t be standing here at the door of your bedroom in your pajamas having this late night, hushed conversation. You tighten your grip on the door. 

“I – I don’t follow.”

“It’s, well – I don’t –” a frustrated huff, “We’re not really… together.”

You scrunch your nose at him, “It’s – it’s open?”

He frowns, shakes his head confusedly, “What?”

“You have an open marriage – an agreement to see other people?”

He passes a palm over his mouth. “Oh – I – I guess, yes. That’s – well, she does. But it wasn’t an agreement or anything.”

This is what Gerri had alluded to, you realize. “She cheats on you?” Too harsh, but you need to be clear now, on what it is he’s trying to make you understand. Although you’re not sure why, why you feel you need this clarity. You’re treading extremely dangerous water here, surrounded by the violent sharks of your history. 

“Well, I wouldn��t call it that either. I don’t–” he laughs bitterly, “I don’t feel cheated. That’s not what it is. We don’t have a close marriage or… I guess a real one, I don’t– I don’t know what to call it – an intimate one, I suppose. We aren’t really together, in a true sense.”

“Why– why not?” Looking at him, you can’t imagine how anyone could ever not want to be close to a man like this. 

He leans against the door frame, crosses his arms across his chest so his biceps bulge, and it brings him in slightly closer to you. Your mouth feels so dry, parched. “Different reasons, incompatibility. We never – we were never in love or anything. We got married for Sarah. It was complicated, I guess.” He frowns, “And then we just did it, and now this is how we are.” He shrugs. 

“Okay…” you say slowly. You lean against the door now too, rest your head against the smooth grain, prop one foot on top of the other. If you shift your knee forward just a few inches you’d bump his leg. You want to ask him why he’s telling you this, to put him on the spot in a sense, but you know why. You know why he’s saying these things to you. There is, against all odds, against all rationality, logic, morals, fear, there is something here, between the two of you. You’re afraid, you carry your baggage on your shoulders like the weight of a mountain, like the weight of a lifetime of fear and abandonment and painful longing, but you aren’t stupid or blind. You know there’s something unspoken blooming here between the two of you, intentional or not.

“Okay,” he says back to you, equally slowly. His eyes shift between yours, the look in them, so soft and warm. Kind eyes, he has kind eyes. Honest eyes, despite what’s happening here now. Despite the fact that even though you know it should feel dishonest, it doesn’t, not really. “Just wanted to tell you that.”

“I understand,” you tell him, because you do. You do understand. 

“And to apologize.”

“You already did that.”

The gentle curve of his smile, “Again, then.”

You can’t help but smile back, “Apology accepted.”

“And to check on that hand.”

You hold up your open palm for his inspection. “I think I’ll live.” And then he brings his own hand up, without your expecting it, and catches the thin of your wrist on either side by two thick fingers, gently brushes his thumb against the prominence of the bone at your joint. He nods his head tightly, jaw clenched once again, and then lets you go. 

“You have to,” and you think he means it in jest, but he says it so seriously, the look in his eyes so direct, but also…sad, slightly sad or desperate or something you can’t fully identify, that causes the joke to fall flat, has the muscles in your throat tightening painfully. 

“I’ll try.” You can’t tell what it is you’re promising to try to do. To live? To stay away from him? To let him come closer? Does it even matter? Is the act of trying wholly futile already? In some insane way, it feels like it is. As if what’s going to happen is already set in stone and nothing either of you do or don’t do will be able to change the course. 

The thought terrifies you.

He’s quiet for another beat, the two of you just looking at each other. You wish you could press your front to his, feel his breath push into your belly with each one of his inhales, fit your nose to the space behind in his ear, where the scent of him is strongest, and breathe him in, memorize him. You think you’d like to know everything about him. What his favorite meal is, what books he likes to read, what his parents are like, what music he listens to, what his favorite thing to do with Sarah is. 

None of that information is yours to have though, so all you’ll take from him now is his unnecessary apology.

“Goodnight, Joel.”

He nods once, pauses, twice, swallows. He doesn’t want to go. He’s telling you this with his silence and his lingering, but then he lets his eyes flutter shut and nods once more, slowly this time, and you watch another swallow pass through the strong column of his throat. 

“Goodnight, sweetheart.” You don’t correct him this time either.

Chapter .3

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

[bokettochild]

Demon In A Bottle

Took me bloody well forever, but I'm off work now, so here we go!

Febuwhump: Day 1 - Helplessness

Word Count: 5,395

Summary: In the wake of a battle with a demon, one that's abilities allow it to dredge up old miseries, Sky must hunt down their straying captain to try and stop him drowning said old miseries in whiskey.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Alcoholism and Substance Abuse

notes: quite frankly, the theme of this fic is in no ways lighthearted, but while the title jumped out at me from the story, I find it also makes me laugh. I can’t help thinking of the tweetle-beetle-bottle-puddle-paddle-battle-muddle from Fox in Socks and I don’t know if I hate myself for it or am just glad I can giggle about something related to this story! 

  If there’s one thing heroes are supposed to be able to do, it’s save people. By definition, a hero is someone who helps others, but in meeting the rest of their chain of heroes, Sky has since learned that the title of hero means something else too. 

  The Hero is a man or child clad in green who appears when Hyrule is in danger to fight away monsters and evil and restore peace to the kingdom. The fashion in which they do so differs of course, as he’s slowly learning, but the fact remains that a hero still has a duty to his people and his country, and while it’s not always something thrust upon them, each one of his brothers bears that burden. Some of them let it drag them down, the weight of the world on their shoulders an inescapable duty, others shoulder it as a life purpose, a defining role, something that they’ve built their whole being around, and others, like Wind, regard it as a natural course of action. 

  It’s strange, learning that the title is so commonly used, that so many men and boys have borne it since it was given to him what feels like ages ago. In a way, it’s nice knowing that there are others, that there are people like him who understand things, yet in the same breath, they’re all so different, and with such varying experiences that really, in the long run, they’re as different as night and day sometimes. 

  As if to prove it, Legend’s blatant lack of trust in knights clashes with the fact that so many of them bear the honor of knighthood with pride. Warriors is a polished, well-spoken soldier, trained in the ways of combat, and Twilight is a ranch hand hailing from the country village of Ordon, brash in many ways that clash with the captain. Time is quiet, distant at times, and Wind is warm, welcoming and an ever-present ray of sunshine at their sides. Where Hyrule is unpolished and unassuming, the majority of their group stand out in a crowd. Wild can cook. Truly, there is such variety among their number that it’s a wonder they can all be classified by the same singular word: a hero. 

  But just because the title is there, doesn’t always mean it always feels like it fits. 

  Sure, Legend’s whole being is built around his life as a hero. They're not sure how long he’s been doing it, but they don’t call the young man “veteran” for nothing. It’s clear he owns his title without shame, living out each day in the effort of following the destiny given to him. Sure, Wild has taken to heart the burden bestowed on him, striving to be the best he can be and own the title. Sure, Wind accepts it like it’s just another truth about himself, just the same as his golden hair and ocean blue eyes. Yes, the old man seems to characterize what any child might think of when asked to describe a hero. But Sky is not Legend or Wind or Wild or Time or any of the other heroes. They are of the same spirit, and some of them apparently share blood (why had Twilight and Time told no one?) but they are each their own separate selves, each with his own life and person, and unlike them, Sky feels the weight of their shared title acutely. 

  It was his duty to save Zelda. The weight of the future was on his shoulders. His duty was protecting the people of Hylia and restoring peace and safety to the surface. His whole world expanded in one day from a smattering of islands high above the clouds to a whole huge land full of people and animals and duty. 

  Duty. What a heavy word. 

  It follows him. Even with the sword now silent, Fi having gone to rest with the assurance that he has accomplished what he must and no longer requires her aid and guidance (even though he does, he still does, please, Fi, some advice would be great from time to time) his mission isn’t over. No, because now that he’s defeated the god of evil, now that Zelda is safe, now that Impa is dead, he is the one Hylian out of all of them who knows enough about the surface to guide the other in surviving there. Yet, in the same breath, he’s still the youngster who barely graduated Academy, never mind being properly knighted. He’s still young enough that the elders sometimes doubt him, but experienced enough that they know not to treat him like a child. He’s ‘too young’ to understand the Knights of Skyloft, but has seen more of the world than they ever have. 

  It’s strange, being caught in such an imbalance. People expect so much and yet so little of him. They want him to know what’s happening but doubt that he does. They ask for advice but question anything he gives them.  

  It’s exhausting. He knows Zelda used to tease him before, but the nickname “sleepy-head” never felt so accurate. 

  At least with the chain though, he doesn’t need to worry about it. Call him selfish, but there’s a certain kind of relief that comes from allowing someone else to take the lead, knowing that everyone else understands the world around him better and knows what to do. He doesn’t need to babysit them around new species or warn them about dangerous conditions or fauna. He doesn’t need to even be on guard, instead free to drift along at the center of the group, knowing that Twilight’s sharp ears and Legend’s acute sense of danger will provide ample warning if anything does come upon them. 

  He’s free to sleep for the first time in what feels like forever, without someone busting through his tent in a panic because they heard keese for the first time or realized that rain existed. In fact, he’s allowed to even sleep in sometimes, no plans or defenses or responsibilities waiting for him when he wakes up, just simple easy to follow orders of get up, get ready, walk, fight, and make camp. 

  Call him crazy, this adventure has been almost a vacation if it wasn’t for the fact that Twilight almost died on them a month ago! Or then again, there’s been a lot that happened since then, but even with that in mind, at least he’s not the sole one responsible for the safety, care and guidance of his fellow heroes. More often than not, actually, they’re the ones looking out for him. Honestly, he doesn’t know how he’ll thank Legend for teaching him about the poisons on the surface, or Wild for letting him peek at the champion’s slate to read what he can about monster types, weaknesses and whatnot. The other heroes have this and that to add, of course, but those two have been the most helpful, seeking him out in order to show him things first hand when they can, so that while Wild and Hyrule often go to muck about, he and Legend find their free time typically spent with the veteran teaching him everything he knows about the surface world, survival, and even matters beyond that; matters beyond being a hero and more about just being. It's nice learning things for the sake of learning, not for the sake of staying alive, and Legend talks with a similar cadence and manner to Fi when he’s caught up in expounding on this point or that, uninterrupted because Sky very much appreciates both the effort and the guidance. 

  For all Legend has to share with him though, the vet isn’t exactly someone he can turn to when it comes to problems with people. Honestly, sometimes it feels like he returns the kindness shown to him by the younger hero by covering Legend’s ass when it comes to social interactions, at least among their group. The vet’s left a terrible first impression on most of them, and since it seems everyone else is equally bad as he is when it comes to communication, there’s still many in their group under the impression that their vet is a total asshole. 

  So yeah, Legend is not the best person to ask for help when it comes to people issues. Time either. Time and he aren’t close by any exaggeration of the word, and while the older man is willing to offer advice here and there, Sky’s not certain he feels comfortable seeking it out. Typically speaking, he’s found that Warriors is the best person to ask about these sorts of things, being as he is a man and not a child and possesses the social skill necessary to address this sort of thing, only.... 

  Only, it’s terribly hard to ask someone for advice on how to handle their own stupidity. 

  He is not blind. Okay, well, maybe, and to some things, but missing Time and Twilight’s relationship is likely more a matter of him not being close enough to either to really put much stock in their interactions. Their leader’s fondness for one of their number wasn’t too shocking considering how attached he himself has become to all of them in such a short time. He'd just assumed that Time moved slower and had begun to warm up to them one at a time, starting with the rancher and moving on to the sailor. He'd thought they’d all follow in time, not that Time just ultimately had favorites. 

  Despite missing that though, he’s not entirely incompetent. He sees his brothers, and much as they might have all assumed he was simply the tired, quiet one, just because he doesn’t speak up doesn’t mean he’s not paying attention. No, he sees what happens in camp. He sees Legend’s tentative bids for connection, Wild’s withdrawn attitude that hides behind the smile and the laughter. He sees Wind’s worry and Time’s stress. He knows Twilight is wrung out and confused after his secret was exposed and the rest of them have had to accept the fact that their silent, furry companion was, in fact, one of their brothers.  

  He knows that there’s a breach of trust there, or at least a perceived one. Those who didn’t regard the beast as a threat have often sought the company of their wolf companion in order to express troubles or thoughts that they didn’t wish to share with anyone else, including the rancher himself. Not knowing, they’d told him things, thinking he was just an animal and incapable of sharing them, told him things they didn’t want Twilight to know, things they thought or felt. Now, knowing that Twilight is privy to so many of their secrets, it’s perhaps natural that their barriers have been thrown up, their brothers guarded and wary of what he’ll do with the forbidden knowledge he possesses. 

   He knows it hurts the man, but he understands. He’d never shared his own feelings with their wolf companion, but if Crimson were to one day take hylian form, he’s sure he’d be at least the slightest bit worried about it, maybe even betrayed. Not knowing a dear companion could speak if they so wanted, could be like yourself, would be hurtful. To know they didn’t trust you when you poured out your heart to them... 

  Yes, he understands. 

  Unfortunately, that also means that Twilight is, very much, also not in the category of people who he can come to about things that are worrying him. Sadly, it seems none of them are. He’d never dream of asking the younger ones; Wind is a child and should not be burdened with such things, Hyrule is still struggling to make his own connections, Wild may or may not understand and most definitely has enough on his plate already, Legend is Legend, and he’s never been very close with Four. 

  Which leaves Warriors, who is, again, the course of his frustration. 

  Because, unfortunately, despite being a hero, and despite killing an actual god, Sky finds himself helpless to face a mere vice, a common demon that seems to have taken hold of one of his brothers. 

  It started simple. A night after a tough battle, one where he couldn’t sleep and had wandered downstairs from the inn-room he’d shared with a few of the others, a room where Wind was being kept awake for the sake of his earlier concussion from a battle. Stress was high across the whole group, and he’d needed the space so it was natural that he’d wandered downstairs, hoping to sneak outside and catch some fresh air like he used to on Skyloft. 

  Like on Skyloft, the awful visions that woke him up that night were also cause for his slipping from bed. 

  His intention had been to step out, to catch the breeze on his face and maybe watch the stars for a bit. Legend often says that the stars hold comfort and assurance, and while he doesn’t know nearly as much about them, or the stories and figures the vet can pick out from the heavens, he does know that cloudless nights remind him of home, and bright lights twinkling above had quickly become the only familiar thing between every place he’s gone. 

   Maybe that’s why Legend likes them so much; they’re an unchanging constant no matter where you go. 

  At any rate, he’d needed the space. He hadn’t expected to find any of the others up as well though, much less the captain. In the end, he never made it outside, instead sitting up and talking with the other. 

  He’d thought little of the nearly empty bottle of whiskey at the man’s side, too busy with his own thoughts and worries. 

  He’d thought nothing of it either when, after a terrible battle that nearly saw the loss of the traveler and ended with a passed-out Legend and a very bloody Four, he’d found the captain up stewing quietly over ill thought-out plans and reckless behaviors. The off-handed “I need a drink” had been something to just smile and shake his head at. 

  But then he’d begun to catch on. Rough battles, difficult nights, sleeplessness from worry, from pain and in his own case; from visions. It had resulted in many a night spent up in each other’s company. More worrying still was the constant presence of a little silver flask, held tight in fainty trembling hands as dulled blue eyes would linger over their younger ones. 

  He’d thought it strange, but it was Wind’s worried “has the captain been drinking again?” that really caught him by the ears and shook him. He’d thought it a passive thing, hadn’t paid it much attention because there was no true way to know what was in that little flask (Legend has one too, but it’s got some kind of sweet, spicey juice in it). The sailor asking about it though had changed that. It had revealed that, no, it wasn’t simply a passing thing and was very much a longstanding issue. It was not at all what he was hoping to find out. More so, the youngest can’t even say anything about it, because the captain knowing that his former charge is aware of the vice apparently would have some very, very bad results. 

  So, Wind can’t say anything without potentially making it worse. None of the others know or have seen it enough to realize the weight of the issue, and he’s left the only one who not only knows and witnesses it but has nothing he can do about it. 

  Long nights, dark eyes and pain, so, so much pain in the captain’s face and voice have left him stumbling. The quiet admission of how their elegant captain’s own stepfather was a miserable drunk isn’t any help either, although that conversation had rather quickly turned from him trying to bring up the issue and into the both of them commiserating on the lack of decent father figures in the world. 

  From there. It just... keeps happening. 

  He’s watching, trying to say something and so, so easily letting pretty words and prettier eyes distract him into talking about something else. Quite frankly, it would be terrifying if it wasn’t so impressive how the captain manages to dodge his every quiet attempt by redirecting him onto something else, turning the matter around or simply accepting his concern with a smile and an easy, gentle, so very believable dismissal. Yet, he sees the results. He sees the stress and the tension. He sees the misery that before had hidden so prettily behind a polished mask, but which now spills from time to time into a slippery mess before him, catching him in its mire and leaving him floundering, breathless, and scared. 

  He’s the hero, the one meant to save those around him from trouble, but he’s failing a battle with a bottle that’s he’s not even touching. 

  Watching the result of that failure, the downward spiral, it hurts. It hurts more than blades or arrows or even poison. In a way, it is a sort of poison; a slow working thing that, while he never touched it, has infected not only his own life but those around them. 

 As chaos sows itself across the kingdom, poison spreads within their own number. The attention of their brothers, and indeed, most of his own, is fixed on the protection of their home, on defeating the newly risen foe, on ending things so that their lives can return in some small manner to a semblance of normalcy. And somehow, he lets his worries fall to the background, let’s his mind turn to the struggles spawning up around him with the others, with himself, with things that are ever so much more prominent than a little silver flask. Even the yelling match that sprung up between the vet and druken captain hadn’t refocused him, his attention more fixed on other things in the aftermath; Legend’s behavior, his own aggression when shouting at the captain to just cease and desist with beating the dead horse before he’d marched off after the vet.  

  Fighting and travel have kept him busy since, but failure is as sure a trigger as anything, or so he’s learned. Even now, he watches as the others retreat to lick their wounds, to hide away in their inn rooms, silent and mournful, blood still staining their clothes. He’s sore himself, tired, weary, too worn from the events of things over the last couple of months to actually want more than to lay down himself and sleep, but he doesn’t. 

  No, because when the rest of them go to hide at the inn, the captain goes off alone, a cold, dangerous, dark look in that drawn and tired face, and worry gnawing at the skyloftian’s own heart will not allow for him to even entertain thoughts of sleep, not when he’s learned to know what that look means. He lingers only as long as he must to ensure all the rest are settled, safe and stable, before darting back out onto the streets. 

  Watching is hard. Seeking is harder. 

There’s an awful sort of feeling that comes over him at the realization that the nearest bar is mostly the new location of his straying brother but finding it in the dark is nearly as difficult as dragging himself towards it, knowing full well what he’ll find inside. He does though, he does because he has to and because it’s the right thing to do. He does it because it’s what a hero would do.  

Heroes save people when they’re drawn into danger, and the devil in the bottle is slowly urging his beloved brother and friend in. A steady hiss or whisper or however it’s call manifests for the captain, and one that, if he doesn’t make it in time, he won’t be able to stop from taking hold. 

He can whisper a begrudging thanks to the heavens that Warriors is a gentle drunk most of the time. 

- 

The bar-room's floor is shockingly clean when he enters, considering it’s a farming town they’ve stopped to stay in at Time’s suggestion. Faint, dusty footprints from one or two people scuff in and out, but he can see where thick ash and dirt have clumped and marched across the floor, and following the trail is the easiest thing he’s done today after fighting a far larger, far more terrifying demon. 

In his mind, Sky steels himself; if he can fight Demise and come out alive, he can face up to the captain about this most worrisome coping technique. The key is simply not to let Warriors distract him with something else, so at the first mention of anything that’s not the man’s own issues, he needs to start to redirect. 

Hylia above, why couldn’t those cursed goddesses have granted him even just the smallest piece of Wisdom? Charging in is the easiest part, getting through the battle with a silver-tongued soldier is the thing it seems he can’t do properly. 

Glass taps on polished wood, a heavy and familiar sigh following. Trailing his eyes towards the back corner of the room, he can easily make out the bloody and worn form of his brother, slumped against a small table and already with a hand ploughing through his ash dusted hair. Warriors looks like hell. Dark bruises beneath darker eyes, face drawn and still stained with the remains of their defeat. The usually proud appearance has been crippled, uniform torn and filthy, and blood still spattered over armor, leather, and skin. The man doesn’t so much as spare him a glace as Sky settles across from him at the table, keeping the barrier between them for both their sakes. 

“Hey.” 

A long, drawn-out sigh sounds off the wood of the worn bar table. 

Sky waits. Pressing any of his brothers is counterproductive. Sitting quietly, taking in the situation, is the best approach, letting them determine whether or not they’re ready to speak yet. He won’t push either, he just sits and rests his arms on the table, glancing the empty glass and the blessed lack of a matching bottle.  

“What d’you want, Sky?” Still not even a flick of dull eyes up towards him. “Shouldn’t you be with the rest?” 

He shrugs, stiff, as though he’s not being eaten up a bit with guilt at leaving them. The other adults can keep an eye on things though, and Wind was already doing a marvelous job of talking them out of their heads. It’s up to him to handle the captain though, as the sailor may or not have even been allowed inside the bar. The kid shouldn’t be here anyway, for the captain’s sake and his own.  

“I didn’t feel right about letting you go off alone.” 

“The kids need you right now.” 

“They need you too,” he challenges, leaning a bit closer and trying to catch the turned away eyes of the other. “And I think you’d do yourself some good to be around them.” 

A twitch of the fine-featured face before him is his only answer as sooty fingers toy with the empty glass between them. It’s lifted briefly, before the other man seems to check himself and realize it’s empty. 

 Sky needs to prevent it getting refilled. Hopefully, he can drag the captain’s ass out of here and back to their brothers before then. The key is just getting through to him, and though it feels like ages since he’d looked at the other man and found only unreadable smiles and perfection, there’s still a barrier that stops him really understanding what the captain might be thinking. Goddesses above, how is it that even Legend is easier to read than this man? 

“Wars, you’re worrying me.” He tries. Slowly, softly enough that no other patrons in the place will hear him, but it seems the captain doesn’t hear it either. 

No, the man just taps his glass against the table-top, distracted, and sigh so heavy he seems to shudder. “Go back, chosen.” 

“No, captain.” 

In battle, maybe blue eyes hold the flames of the goddesses themselves, but in the dim light of the bar, there’s only a dullness and flickering darkness that makes him want to shift and draw away. He doesn’t though, doesn’t dare. Instead, he sits under that stare for the brief second it's spared, and then the soldier is shutting his eyes with yet another heavy sigh. “Rest, you need it.” 

“I can’t.” You’re here, he wants to add. You’re out here and you’re worrying me, and I can’t sleep easy until I know we’re all safe. 

Fine features twitch, shifting into a frown that would be very terrifying indeed if Sky hadn’t gotten used to all the harsh looks of his team over the last while. Time’s dark looks and Warriors’ disapproval aren’t nearly as weighty all things considered, and he carefully doesn’t respond when the other looks up at him again, brows drawn low and tightly together, jaw twitching slightly. “Sky-” 

“Link,” he returns, sharp to match the look he shoots at the other. Their given name slips strangely off his tongue and earns a twitch of the brows in answer. “No. I’m not letting you sit alone a stew.” 

“Even if I want to?” The glass taps loudly against the table, a sharp contrast to their low voices. “Does that matter at all?” 

Okay, that’s just a bomb-burr waiting for him to walk too close. “Link, please,” and the use of their shared name seems to have fingers closing tighter over the mouth of the whiskey glass, “we both know what will happen if I leave.”  

His words are proved by the lack of verbal answer, instead the tapping of the glass back onto the table as dark eyes meet his. They’re blank again, impossible to read past that closed off, stern expression. It's not one he’s used to facing much these days, but he’s seen it turned on the younger ones plenty of times. 

“I leave,” he presses, “and you’ll drink.” 

There’s the faintest tightening again around the glass still clutched in sooty hands. “It could be worse.” 

“You’re right,” he agrees, nodding slowly, “it could. I could keep ignoring it and you’ll keep getting worse.” He steels his own jaw, folding his hands if only for something to do with them before he meets the stare now fixed, heavy and harsh, on his face. “When we all met, you hardly touched the stuff save maybe after a bad battle, and I mean a really bad one.” The same as Time here and there. The same as any man likely might. A really bad day is fair enough excuse for one drink, but Warriors used to stop at one, and now he doesn’t. “Now it seems every time our backs are turned...” he motions to the glass, watches as blue eyes dart down to follow his gaze. 

The captain’s hands aren’t shaking like they normally do. They’re perfectly still as he clutches hold of the empty cup.  

He doesn’t like it. The tremor is normal, it is a sure sign of ease. He knows the after effects of their last battle, the magic in it, the illusions cast around them of the worst they’ve seen, worst they’d imagined, used as a distraction shook all of them, but seeing the man still so tightly wound, still so caught up in his head that his body is still responding as though he’s in immediate danger, it doesn’t sit well with him. 

“Come back to the inn,” he begs. “We all-” 

The sudden shriek of the chair as the soldier stands might be what cuts him off, the cold look in closed off eyes definitely is though. “I don’t know what that demon showed you, chosen, but know this: you can fight gods and you can win, but some of us have fought men and believe it or not, there’s something quite different and more terrible about that.” It’s the clipped soldier’s voice that speaks to him, resounding enough in the bar that everyone else present has fallen silent and tense, looking up from their own conversations to stare. “So go back to the inn, get over what you saw, and let me do the same here so we can face the demon again in the morning.” 

“Wars-” 

The other turns, heading back to the bar and no doubt with full intent to refill the glass he holds. 

Sky darts after him. “Please, Link! This isn’t good for you!” 

“Well, it isn’t exactly hurting you now, is it?” Is the sharp answer as barkeep approaches the two of them, wary. 

 For a moment, Sky debates between telling the barkeep to not serve his brother and telling the captain to just walk away. Caught betwixt, he misses the opportunity for both, too distracted, too unfocused, to slow, and when his brother motions for the bottle in the hands of the barkeep, it’s only then that he gets his wits about him enough to catch hold of the thing himself. 

The barkeep darts away, no doubt eager to avoid the mess as snapping eyes fix on storm cloud blue as Sky’s voice rumbles low like thunder between them. “You doing this hurts everyone that loves you. We can’t stand to just sit back and watch anymore.” 

“Well no one asked you to watch,” the captain bites, “or care.” 

“But we do,” he answers back, trying desperately to catch those eyes again, “we chose to be your brothers, and thus we chose to stad beside you.” 

“Then don’t blame me when your choices get you hurt.” The hand he’s set on the bottle is knocked away as, once more, Warriors turns his back on him and heads back to his table.  

He’s not sure if he should chase or walk away or give up. He’s left standing for a moment before darting after, again, unable to stop the other as a finger of amber is poured and knocked back without so much as a flinch. Well, not a flinch from Warriors, he finds himself recoiling just the slightest bit as he watches. 

 He tries again, this time not daring to push further by touching the forbidden poison, but instead trying to break through and get the other to just look at him. “Link, please, you’re killing yourself like this.” 

Dark eyes are empty, lifeless, as they turn upwards to look at him, like visions of the sealing grounds were once, thousands of years ago; barren and ruined by battle and death. “Good.” 

And then it’s gone, another glass knocked back and Sky left standing, only able to watch. 

What else is there to be said? What argument is left to beg, to plead, to convince? He’s the hero, he’s good with his hands, his blade, his strength. He sees foes and he crushes them. He sees allies and he aids them. But when an ally embraces the foe, what then? What’s left for him to do? What course of action is there left save to beg? And when even that fails there is nothing. 

Nothing but watching, unable to go back without fulfilling his mission and unwilling to let his brother be left alone in the weakened state the quickly emptying bottle will leave him in. All he can do is watch as golden poison flows, as sooty, bloodied, burned hands lift and toss back, as glass clacks against the tabletop again only to be refilled once more. There's nothing else he can do or say. There may be other arguments, but they’re lost to him, buried instead under that horrible stare and the cracked and shattered soul that had glinted through on that single, devastating ‘good’. 

It’s not the first defeat he’s faced today, but between the two, this is the one that leaves him truly helpless in it’s wake. 

[blankdblank]

Go Bleat Yourself

Usurper, thief, traitor. A few of the endless insults Thorin could cast your way. Before he could snap out of his sickness you had stepped forward to name yourself King Under the Mountain with his Arkenstone aloft. Naming him as your heir only to further the shove of the insult of a blade into his rib cage and give it a firm twist.

True he became just what he feared and succumbed to the sickness but sight of you atop his throne once was a loving imagining as his future intended and now he would have to kneel, not in matrimony to his Queen, but in fealty and obedience as second to this usurping King.

Fair and firm you had ruled for five months now pressing firmer than any imagined you’d dare to bend the Dwarf clans to submission and solid deals of trade and equality, what he hoped to have had your aid in acquiring at his side as partners, now he sealed the deals and finalized the contracts alongside Balin as you held the weight.

True he should have been proud the one he loved had done so much for his people and could be so formidable a contender in battle of words and twist of legal strongholds to bind such clans to these clever inescapable terms that should have him pouring endless affections and praise for his one true love. But he knew he’d failed you.

At the core of it all it was not the theft but the need you must have felt to have taken the reigns where he had failed and fallen. So now he would be obedient and toil to regain his strength in your eyes to be deserving to be chosen as your Prince Consort should you so wish one day to propose marriage to him. And to both hinder and not harm those chances for three months now he had barely spoken a word outside of the tasks assigned to him with you.

He would prove himself, no matter how long it took. Five months now everyone had learned of his slip but to his confidence already the people had seen his stride to become worthy again in their eyes that now shared the lingering hope one day he might be proposed to and they could have that aspired dual wedding and coronation for their prized leaders.

It had been written long before his birth, this numerical Kingship in which his reign would have fallen was marked to have been cut blisteringly short to just a gasp within the coronation. He was not fated to have had long to reign, but what time he could have had he hoped to have shared every moment he could with you. To have built a lifetime out of mere moments he was destined before some unknown sentence to befall him and pass his throne to you and hopefully to any heirs you might have been gifted. And now he stood open mouthed just as the swarms of Dwarves here to hear the proclamation scheduled for all the citizens now for a week, to ensure all could be here. Abdication, by means of infirmity hindering the ability to rule. He had fallen and failed you and now that fate had been dealt upon his love and to his dying day he would wear the same crown of his love cut down in his place. Perhaps as it has been joked in ages past Durins were long destined to fall and rise only to be brought down again and again. Every day he would bear this crown without you would be a kind of death all it’s own.

Radagast had stepped forward and done the duty of passing the crown over the Thorin for the stunned Dwarf Lords who bowed once you had pressed the Arkenstone into the new King’s palm and simply left him to speak to his people for the first time.

“You are ill?” The frail splintered plea for the truth escaped Thorin’s lips as he cast the unwanted crown onto your bed now littered with clothes organized to be placed within the open trunk at the clawed foot of the bed frame.

Mention of a time in the Elven Forest was given and true to your word you seemed to be ready to flee and spend what time you had left upon this earth far from Thorin and his halls. To be buried far beneath the rites and tomb of a King as you had justly earned even in such a short rule whenever the time came. Somewhere he might be forbidden to know location of to not welcome his token of honor to his greatest love in the deepest show of distrust stretching beyond the grave as well.

“That is what I have said to your people, yes.” You replied without looking up at him only urging his body to react before he could stop himself and turn you himself with hold of your arms. Gentle hold, but a hold none the less. Across your lips the most perplexing smirk when, for the first time in months his eyes were locked upon yours to face you dead on.

“What ails you? Surely there must be some course of treatment we might find for you here. The Elves are not the only ones to know old healing magic. Merely flaunt theirs about to strangers. What are your symptoms? You have seemed a little tired, yes, but there is nothing beyond my notice you could have concealing so easily.” His eyes flooded with tears and concern for answers or some way for this to not be true that he had brought this too upon you to the hasten of his words. The dragon was a harm you had knowingly chosen while this curse predestined to him was another matter all together.

“You know, there’s a culture where I come from where young girls have their stars read and those who are foretold to have husbands cut down young are married to goats.” Tears spilled down his cheeks in the confused furrow of his brows to the perplexing notion. “The goats live their lives and all die before the girls are of age to marry, now seemingly safe of their earlier fates to be widowed young.”

“What?” His voice escaped in a crackle of what it had aimed to be when what you had said fell utterly short of anything understandable to what illness you were concealing from the man you’d once spent nights whispering dreams of a future tucked securely in his arms in words of such an unshakable hope one day the both of you would achieve it. Like you had carved it into stone and no creature, even Eru, could dare to change that path you laid.

You simply bleated and stepped out of his hold to walk around him to fetch his crown you brought back to him. Every step urged his body to turn and follow where you were aimed until you raised the crown you put back atop his head. “It would seem my rule ended painfully close to my coronation, and now you are King.”

Sharp and swift his lungs filled with air as the explanation dawned upon him as you added, “Prince Legolas was kind enough to share your fate escorting us to the dungeons while you argued with his father. But I do feel after a few months away I might just make a miraculous recovery. I do expect you to write me.” Now your hands had lowered to frame the face unable to hide his tearful but adoring gaze with his hair and bead decorated braids. Down to the fur lining of his outer jacket to the pool of all his love and gratitude he bore for you into those heart stopping blue eyes your hands eased to straighten the lay of that as well.

Casually you spoke with a playful grin easing across your lips, “Frerin is planning a wedding alongside that coronation of yours, now you will have to woo me, oh grumpiest King Under the Mountain.” Widely a smile cracked across his face in the fact you did not seem fazed by his behavior of late beyond some irritation, “Three months of stubbornness, I expect a fabulous proposal as well. Just with you there it would be marvelous so not much required for to reach the task.”

“You wish to marry me?” He asked almost in a bashful tone at the lingering disbelief to the notion.

“Well I certainly wasn’t going to propose to you behaving like that,” you teased back poking him in his middle as you had done hundreds of time on the journey to this very same mountain.

A poke that seemed to hit an unseen button and have him step forward to crash his lips into yours, arms following after to bring you flush against his chest. A welcome place you burrowed for a breath stealing few minutes of you in his enamored embrace he would never break until the fingers curled to clench onto his shirts and into his beard would release to let him loose again when he’d begun to show he was ready to make all that frustration up to you. His future Queen, the former King Under the Mountain, to rule at his side until Mahal called you both back to the stone.

.

@devilishminx328 @theincaprincess @lilith15000 @jesevans and adding @deepestfirefun

[starsnores]

i am having thoughts and i will try to type them out half coherently. i really associate gamzee with cosmic horror, though i know that's more like. rose's thing, at least aesthetically. And it's more that he touches on the themes subtextually rather then explicitly but. Rage in that classpect quiz is described as primarily being occupied with the truth and i think that's mostly flattering framing for people taking the quiz but also there is horror in the Knowing. It drives people mad, makes them weird and off putting. In some media characters turn to drug use to deal with the effects of knowing. There is also only one "Truth." There is no Schrodinger's cat, it's either alive or it's dead. in every timeline gamzee is a tool, weapon, puppet in the creation of lord english, who it's implied influenced the clown cult, all purples are clowns, gamzee is indoctrinated into the cult etc. in a loop and it has to be that way because He's already here. It is inescapable, undying, it twists his perception of his friends and the meaning of their lives. It collapses the story to a single point, the truth that it will all end. And the fact that it's not nessicarlly explicitly commented on makes it even more of a cosmic horror to me too? A pulling away of the curtain, a horror in the knowing. A tragedy underneath the thin veneer of an unfunny cruel joke that goes on too long. Point and laugh as he's beaten, the clown can't die until he fulfills his purpose but it's ok he deserves it. Due to the cyclical nature of his fate he always carries the weight of all his sins. And even far beyond the end, where they beat that dead horse into the ground.

it sort of also ties into the vague idea i have of him and vriska. they are very similar, i think, in purpose and as people. But of opposing forces.

anyway if you've seen lasagna cat it's kinda like that.

[ynmnrmt]

You & Me & Rhea Makes Three: Chapter 4

rhea ripley x m!reader x m!reader's girlfriend

word count: 6,348

warnings: explicit sexual content, rough sex, themes of domination/submission, dubiously consensual nonmonogamy, domestic violence, foot stuff, armpit stuff

a/n: Unlike the jokey viewer discretion warning over the last chapter, if you are disturbed or upset by any of the subjects mentioned in the warnings - and here I'm mainly thinking about the DV, not the paraphilias - then please, seriously consider whether you really want to click that 'read more' or not.

(The story so far: chapter one, chapter two, chapter three)

You are in the fully equipped home gym which was installed at great expense in a formerly unused annex of the apartment, lifting hard. It has been a journey, but you finally think you’re doing it right, these days you do not view the motions as something detached and external to you, but instead have your mind go out to the muscles, there and conscious as the weights go up, and still there as they go down too.

You check yourself out in the full-length ballet mirrors in what might be described as gender euphoria, and smile slightly. There is some muscle to your body, and noticeable, too, noticeable for other people and not just from the inside. Certainly you could do more, obviously you could, but still you think this is progress you can be proud of. And you do want to look good for Jennifer, not to mention keep fit enough for her.

A grunt from next to you makes you turn your head. Somehow you’d missed this while gazing into the mirrors, but now Rhea’s in the room. She does curls, and each of her huge biceps manages to hoist about the same weight you’ve just been benching. The veins bulge in her arms, she puffs out the effort as the weights go up again, and you gradually realise the inescapable fact that you’re staring.

With another grunt she lets the weights fall, not to the floor, just hanging in her hands. She glances at you and says “You can go another set.”

It’s not an order, not even a suggestion, just a statement of fact, because yes, you could definitely do another, and of course you want to look good for Jennifer, that is the goal here after all. So immediately you’re back on the bench and your arms tremble as you thrust the bar upward. It quickly returns to the state of mind when you bargain with yourself, this is enough, you can stop after this one, but then with a glance at Rhea you’re suddenly inspired to keep going to the end.

You emit a few undignified grunts of your own when you finally bring the bar back into rest, and then sit up slumped on the bench. Rhea turns her head to you, each curl an effort but still she manages them comfortably, and between breaths she says, slightly musically, “You can do another one.”

“No I can’t,” you gasp, and she chuckles. The sweat lashes off you as if you’re in a thick winter coat. You can practically feel it as a miasma that extends two inches from your actual body. Meanwhile the slight sheen on her neck and shoulders simply looks appetising. And much as you’d like to get in another set, with the vague idea it’d impress her even as she makes the same thing look easy, you could feel your arms ready to give way with that last press, that was definitely your limit.

“I just find it’s nice to have someone encouraging you, and spurring you on,” Rhea smiles. Maybe it’s this that inspires you to shift over to one of the machines, you can at least not have to be one of those people who skips leg day. And now Rhea does squats, which turn her already spectacular ass into a vision from God, even with your blood rushing to your legs you’re getting a hard-on. She glances at you, as you watch her, and chides “Not now!”

“I couldn’t help it,” you protest. “Also, I don’t know what you mean.” She laughs away, still going, you don’t have the breath to join in. A string in your thigh has started to feel like piano wire. Meanwhile Rhea glows in front of you, she moves as if it’s nothing, and there in the mirror she shoots you the same little smile of encouragement, you half expected a superior smirk, she’s earned it after all, but no, she’s silently willing you to keep going.

When you finally crawl off the machine, that wired-up leg halfway buckles underneath you. You weren’t going to fall over, probably not anyway, but you’ll never find out – Rhea has moved fast to support you, one hand up behind your shoulders and her other in the small of your back, like she’s dipped you in the ballroom. Your erection had basically subsided, you’d dared to dream you could stop thinking about it, now it’s twitched curiously to life again and the swell in your shorts is dangerously close to brushing up against her.

“That,” she says, in close like she’s sharing a secret, “is how you know you’ve earned a break.”

“And, and I started before you, anyway,” you breathe, the words go straight into her mouth. Then she lets you hang a bit looser.

“You’re not about to get all competitive, are you?”

“I’m trying to push myself,” you gabble, suddenly the sweat on your brow has nothing to do with the workout and she doesn’t look convinced, “I don’t know about competitive – you’re stronger than me, that’s obvious.”

Rhea relaxes, and now sets you on your feet. “Sometimes men feel a bit, like, it’s upset the natural order, and-”

“Oh, come on,” you scoff.

“I know! I know, I know. I’d wanted to think better of you, I promise.” She’s let you go now, but when you brushed against her chest you felt her nipples point at you through the thin material of her tank top.

“It’s not that I’m worried about feeling emasculated,” you say, where’s this come from, you’re letting it out as if you can say absolutely anything, “just that it would, well, make me less attractive. I don’t know.”

“Some people like that stuff,” she says with a dismissive shrug that makes you feel better even though you’re clearly one of them. “And, besides, I’m sure you’re very strong.”

“Ah, stop,” you say, and wave her away. Before you can bring your arm back she’s caught it and squeezes your bicep.

“See, you’re putting in the work,” she tells you, almost dreamily now as you dangle in her grasp.

“You don’t need to – I appreciate this, really, but let’s be realistic, you would destroy me.” And at that, she cackles in a way that could have been pointed, but when she’s finished rolling her head around she looks at you with nothing but fondness. “Which I do not have a problem with, I mean, that really doesn’t bother me at all.” As you say it, your eyes rove up along the scenic vista of her arm, then back up onto her eyes, into her eyes, while her cheeks flush further than they already were.

“You,” she says, to break the spell, “are distracting me.” With one last, lingering, beautiful grin, she turns away and picks up where she left off. But the feeling’s mutual, because the way her clothes cling to her body, and the darker patches outline the sculpted shape of what’s underneath, distracts you so badly you walk into the doorframe.

*

You hit the shower – not with a closed fist, just a tap of your palm, in the vain hope it will knock some cog or valve back into place. It doesn’t, though, the head offers one spatter of rusty water then sits there, taunting you with every drip. You figure you can at least splash down the main danger zones, so you go over to the sink, but when you turn the tap that’s dry as well.

Locked in now, not physically in the bathroom but with this one last hurdle to vault before you can have a shower, you start to follow the pipes around as best you can, and have to open a few cupboards to do it. Yes, the shower and the sink do seem to be coming off the same branch line, so you fiddle with that, and then from behind you there’s the fresh burst of a running shower. But you’ve hardly even gotten your sodden shirt off before the head gives up again.

At the moment it dawns on you to try the sink in the kitchen, Rhea walks in with a towel over her shoulder, glowing and gorgeous, and says “Fuck! Have you not finished yet?”

“Haven’t started yet,” you say, and turn the dial on the shower to demonstrate. It would be awful, wouldn’t it, if it chose now to start flowing like Niagara Falls, but no, it offers up another cough of water and then nothing.

“Aw, man…” Rhea reaches out to jiggle the dial as well, and it’s surely not because she’s put more power behind it, but it does now produce a thin, unhealthy, trickling stream. “I’d – God, it sounds silly – gotten all geared up for a shower, now I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“I could,” you suggest, “fill jugs of water in the kitchen and pour them over you?”

“Forward,” she smiles, in a way that makes it clear she’s as eager about the prospect as you are. But then, moments later, you discover the kitchen sink’s given up the ghost as well.

“For Christ’s sake,” you mutter, as you give the tap another shake, “of all the days for this to-” And then the power goes out as well. The faint breeze of the air-con vanishes completely. Rhea slumps forward and laughs, because what else can you do, but then she starts to fan herself, and her look of amusement fades into a little frown of genuine concern.

“It’s alright,” you say, half-exhausted, the air in the room hotter and stickier already, “we can crack a window.”

“Yeah,” she muses, distracted, still trying to waft the temperature lower. Even when you’ve opened every window available, and you’ve both flopped down on the couch in what little air flow there is, her long, leonine face still looks more downcast than you’ve ever seen her before.

“It’s okay,” you reassure her, and touch her arm – not the one that’s fanning her, whose movements grow yet more frantic as the pink glow spreads further across her cheeks. “Probably the whole city’s like this, stewing.”

“I’m just sorry you have to see me like this,” she says, a shaft of light illuminating where the translucent material of her tank top adheres perfectly to her flawlessly wrought stomach.

“Don’t be,” you say, and mean it. “Anyway, I’ve seen you after working out before.”

“It’s just, it’s different now. If I’m going to make this work, with you and Jen, and I want to, I really want to, then I want to look sexy for you. In the makeup, with the costume on, that’s fine, of course it is, I knew you’d be into me then, but now I’m all sweaty, and,” she lifts her arm and sniffs, “oh my God, I reek, too.”

“Rhea, you’re gorgeous,” you insist, you take your hand in both of yours as if to declare how serious you are.

“You’re just being nice,” she flutters, but at least your touch, that point of contact, has stopped her sudden spiral of despair. Then she pulls her hand from yours, folds her arm behind her head and goes “Seriously, smell me”, with a nod towards her armpit.

You don’t even need to lean in. She’s right, the thick scent of her exertion is very prominent, and when her heavy, sexy aura fills your nostrils, it’s the 1960s and this is your first puff on a joint, first civil rights rally, and first ride in a supersonic aircraft, she transports you in a moment to a place you hadn’t known existed but already feels like home.

You look up at her, feeling your face slacken into an expression of dazed hunger she really doesn’t know what to think about. Now you do lean in, and reach out too, past the iron ridge of her pectoral to that softer glade where the muscles of her arm all meet and end, she giggles when you touch her damp skin and the thought of having made her feel good in any way is one more pulse-jumping thrill in this long and unending series.

“I told you, I reek,” she says, this time not quite able to keep the smile out of her voice. You take a deep whiff and fill your lungs, the word ‘pheromones’ flashes in your mind before the edge in the air arouses you far past the level of conscious thought. Your eyes meet hers again, she’s all fascinated confusion, the same way as you really, and you leap in and kiss her there on her underarm, not a light kiss either, you suck greedily on her darker, textured skin while your mind whirls at this new vista you have discovered quite by chance.

Rhea squeals with laughter. Did you know she was ticklish, had you even considered such a thing? Her arm flails and the weight of her tricep brains you, which might have been nasty if you were using any cognitive functions other than lust and kissing. Even as she thrashes about with all her might, never does she threaten to pull free of your mouth, and one shining golden thought bounces through the echoing space inside your head, she likes this too.

Eventually you must come up for air. She looks at you in a way that seems just as intimate all on its own. “I don’t think it quite replaces a shower,” she says softly, and runs the tips of her fingers behind your ear, along your jaw.

“No,” you agree, “I suppose I won’t need to do your other side, then.”

Rhea’s grin spreads until you think you see all of her teeth. She leans in, ever so slightly, then raises her other arm and with a thump lets it rest along the back of the couch. It’s probably only the lack of blood in your brain that makes it seem a heat haze rises around her shoulder. “I’m just going to sit like this,” she whispers, “and we can see what happens next.”

You chuckle, and you lean in too. The brief chill when you think she might not kiss you back, not after where your mouth has been, melts on the warmth of her tongue – and Christ, when she takes hold of you, your lungs skip a breath and you have to shift sharply to avoid pulling something.

Outside the safety of Rhea’s grasp, somewhere far far away and probably quite meaningless, you hear the door open. Then there’s a gasp, a gasp you know, and you jump like you’ve been found in a bank vault.

“Rhea?” demands Jennifer, framed in the doorway, awkwardly carrying two big bags of shopping.

“Yeah?” says Rhea, quite casual, as if this could be a question about anything.

“Are you wearing my tank top?”

“Yeah,” in the same easy tone as before. This does explain why it’s that tight on her, she bulges out from inside it, the damp material taut across her chest.

Jennifer’s about to say something. Then the bags in both her arms split, almost simultaneously, and she shouts “Fuck!” as the groceries spill all over the floor.

“Oh no!” cries Rhea, and she leaps up, you follow clumsily in her wake, immediately she moves to gather up the fallen perishables. But Jennifer steps forward, into her path.

“Can I not,” says Jennifer her jaw tight, “come into my own fucking house without finding you fucking my boyfriend?” And in one thoughtless motion, her arms empty now, not much power behind them beyond simple rage, she gives Rhea a shove.

Now you have a real chill. Rhea is frozen, stock-still. Jennifer clearly already regrets it, and the colour trickles out of her face, as if she now remembers that Rhea is twice her size. “That was not okay, Jen,” you say, you step forward, ready to throw yourself between them if you need to. Then Rhea staggers back, her eyes turned glassy, she drops back onto the couch and hides her face in her hands and weeps.

Immediately Jennifer looks wretched – she flings herself to the floor in front of Rhea and reaches for her, but in one jarring movement Rhea throws up a hand. Not a blow, just to keep her away, quietly Rhea says “Please don’t. Not,” she chokes on her tears, “not now.”

“I’m so sorry,” pleads Jennifer. “I should never have done that.”

“No, I – I’m sorry,” sniffles Rhea. “You’re right, it’s a fucked-up thing to walk in on.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Jennifer insists, clutching Rhea’s hand. “I just get so jealous, because you’re pretty and sexy, and those aren’t the same thing but you’re still both, and it’s too hot today, and,” now she’s on the verge of tears too.

“If you’re jealous,” you say, crouching next to your girlfriend, no clue what kind of depths this might open up “then I don’t know if this whole, this dynamic, is really healthy.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she says while she looks at the floor. It’s not as bad as you expected, just a little disappointing that you won’t get to – well, that doesn’t matter. “I’m sosorry, Rhea. I never meant to hurt you.”

“You,” Rhea’s eyes are still red-rimmed, but now she manages a little chuckle, “you didn’t really hurt me.”

“And I wasn’t jealous like that, either, I was jealous because, because you’re everything I want to be.” The sentiment seems eerily familiar. “I was the one who wanted us to be a thing in the first place, and – please don’t let me have ruined it, please let me make it up to you.” By now she’s favouring Rhea’s hand with tiny, penitent kisses. Rhea looks a bit alarmed at how quickly this has turned around, or maybe that’s simply how you feel.

“Clean up the groceries,” she finds herself saying, “and I’ll think about it.” Jennifer springs to her feet in delight and gets busy. You’re about to help her, but Rhea has a finger hooked around your collar, there’s no realistic way to resist that, so you end up back on the couch with her. “And you’d better not stay on your high horse about me wearing your clothes,” she calls over, as Jennifer scoops up some battered fruit and shoots you both a fragile, tentative smile. “Remember, I know what you were doing with mine.”

“How’d you know about that?” you ask Rhea, trying to keep it good-humoured, and she just laughs. Then you add, “Are you okay? I figured you weren’t physically hurt, but, still.”

“It just caught me by surprise,” she says, and you can see that beneath the veneer she’s still shaken. “Like, I didn’t expect that, at all. You – you wouldn’t do anything like that, would you?”

“Of course not.”

“Promise?” A winsome little smile, that seems too small from anyone her size. You give her a hug, you want only to reassure her and make this better. But when you break apart, she’s giving Jennifer a wicked glance, and you see, and she sees that you see. “I think she’s learned her lesson,” says Rhea, her eyes still puffy and pink. “How about you?”

“I-” Your voice catches in your throat. “It’s not up to me.”

The groceries on the counter, Jennifer now approaches nervously. “I don’t mind you wearing my clothes,” she says, softly, not willing to get too close as if she doesn’t trust herself, “not really.”

Rhea arches an eyebrow. “You don’t mind that,” she says, and slips a beefy arm around your shoulders. “Do you mind me kissing with your boyfriend?” Before you can react or protest she bangs her mouth against yours. Now you definitely can’t say anything about it, there’s not even that much tongue, but she has your lips completely occupied.

When Rhea finally releases you, and moves her head away, Jennifer’s unbroken gaze is there to meet you. Her expression is one of longing, you hope and pray not longing for revenge. Then she looks to Rhea and shakes her head.

“See, I don’t believe you,” says Rhea, not accusatory, if anything slightly sad. “I really think on some level this still bothers you.”

“I think I still feel a lot of shame around sex,” Jennifer blurts out.

Rhea nods sagely. You’re just appalled, not with Jennifer but for her, and stutter out “I had no idea you felt this way.”

“It’s not your fault, it’s...being caught on the horns of being pushed into it but also being shamed for even thinking about it,” she explains. Maybe you did have some idea she felt this way, the residual background radiation, you’re slightly disappointed with yourself when you think how the other half live. “And then there’s the whole business of what to wear, and – oh God, this is no excuse, I’m sorry, Rhea, really.”

Rhea extends a hand, the one that isn’t resting by your neck. Jennifer kneels again to take it, and smothers herself against it, and mouths slightly at Rhea’s fingers. “You only hurt my feelings,” Rhea reassures her. “I’m glad we can talk through this stuff.”

“You don’t need to feel any shame about this situation,” you add, and she grabs for your hand too. “Not with me. With us.” That hasty correction came out sounding oddly poignant.

“I still want to do something, to show I’m sorry - what if I kissed her feet?” Jennifer asks you. “It’s an internationally recognised gesture of supplication.”

And you look to Rhea, who just looks startled. “Interesting suggestion,” she says eventually. “I mean – you don’t have to, we were just,” she laughs a little, “we weren’t actually having sex when you came in, we’d just finished working out.”

“Oh yeah, also the water’s cut out,” you add.

“So we haven’t showered, but – should we tell her what we were doing?”

“Oh jeeze,” mumbles Jennifer, her eyes flashing from Rhea, to you, down to your mouth, as if she already knows.

“Come here,” Rhea offers, and Jennifer crawls up between you, along the length of your bodies, lower and closer than she needs to be or is really practical. Even after having struggled home with the groceries she seems fresh and unblemished, at least by comparison, as if the crawl up onto the couch will taint her as well. Then Rhea turns her head and whispers softly in Jennifer’s ear. Now it’s Jennifer’s turn to look startled, in fact her face twists through all kinds of conflicted feelings. Rhea lifts her head, and concludes “What do you think?”

“W-would that really make you feel better?”

“Yeah, it would.”

With surprising force Jennifer leaps forward, face-first under Rhea’s arm, the side you hadn’t gotten to yet. From the centre of this frenzy you hear loud sounds of kisses and smacks and slurps.

“Well! That solves that, then,” Rhea notes idly, as she turns back to you with a cheesy grin. When she shows her teeth like this, you don’t feel especially intimidated. She pulls you in close, this time there is some tongue, since you’ve been walked in on once already again you wonder how some stranger would take this, an established couple all over their pretty young roommate.

*

Initially this had seemed like a diversion waiting for the basic amenities to work again, but the lights don’t pop back on, before you know it the shadows are longer and it’s darker in the room. Jennifer wriggles up, she tries for a kiss too, but Rhea pushes her playfully away.

“You’re showing you’re sorry, remember,” Rhea chides her, and she nods in acceptance, she seems to bear it with the same playful spirit. Then she slips back down your bodies, and goes after Rhea’s feet. She peels one sock off, and takes entirely too long about it, it’s a sock, not a pair of handcuffs, but someone none of you seem to mind this absurd display of her clumsily rolling the fabric past Rhea’s ankle and then over her heel. Even though you’ve long since cooled down, at least from the workout, her skin is still flushed pink, it glows in the lower light.

Rhea’s sock is still halfway on her foot when Jennifer leans in to kiss her, aimed roughly for the centre of her sole. Then it becomes a lick, Jennifer’s tongue following the sock the rest of the way. It occurs to you the taste is probably like that of Rhea’s armpit, plus general foot aura, topped off with stray fibres from the sock.

“I think you’re enjoying this,” gloats Rhea. Jennifer mumbles something in reply rendered incomprehensible by now having three toes in her mouth.

“If this really is you wanting to explore, in, in ways,” you say, “then honestly I’m relieved. I know this is stupid but I was really worried there was some kind of unhealthy dynamic going on here."

Rhea’s toes pop from Jennifer’s mouth, and she tells you “Of course not, I’d have said.”

“Like, if you felt you were somehow obliged, or forced to do any of this-” Rhea thrusts her foot forward, and Jennifer parts her lips to accept it. “Yeah, alright, I get it.”

“She is such a sweetie-pie,” Rhea tells you, hanging on you with both arms now, her mouth perilously close to yours, when she speaks it grazes your cheek.

“I know it’s still ridiculously early,” you say, the hard-on in your pants really starting to make itself known, “but since everything’s off, why don’t we get an early night?” When she hears that, Jennifer trills with delight around the foot in her mouth.

“I thought you’d never ask,” intones Rhea. You rise from the couch and hold a hand out to help Jennifer up – but as she climbs awkwardly to her feet, suddenly Rhea has physically interpolated herself between the two of you, and she says “Well, hold on a second, if you were enjoying getting your tongue all over me, I don’t think we can really call that an apology, can we?”

You’re about to say something, to object, when in delicate tones Jennifer suggests “I could kiss your ass, too?” and then you can only think Christ, leave some for me.

“I don’t think so. I think your punishment is that you’re not allowed to sleep in your bed any more.”

“Oh!” Jennifer trembles as she tries to hold Rhea’s gaze.

“You have to go and sleep in my bed. And you just get to listen. That way you’ll know how it felt for me, all those sleepless nights I had to hear you two banging.”

Jennifer actually wrings her hands. She told you, if she was bothered by any of this, that she would say so. “I hadn’t even thought about that. You’re right. I deserve this. I’m trying to learn my lesson, I promise. I want to be better for both of you.” Then she bats her eyes at you, it’s a clumsy gesture but the meaning and sincerity are unimpeachable, and she adds “Will you at least tuck me in?”

“I love you,” you tell her, as you lay the duvet over her, despite how thick it is you can make out the shape of her body beneath it, yes, you really do still love her, “you know that, right?” You kiss her on the forehead, then she gives a sharp intake of breath as Rhea draws the covers tight across her.

“Do the other side,” Rhea tells you. You obey without thinking, and wrap the bedclothes around under the mattress, now you can definitely see the shape of Jennifer’s body with the fabric tight over her, now she really is tucked in.

“I hope Rhea makes you feel good,” Jennifer gently invokes, just a talking head on the pillow. “I hope you make her come, a lot.” By now you have no doubt at all she is enjoying this, but still it makes your heart ache a little. Then Rhea lends over and gives her a smack on the forehead too. Jennifer beams snugly up at you as Rhea links her arm with yours, and while she uses no force you can still feel her sheer raw strength when she leads you from the room.

Instinctively you move for the bathroom, only to remember that with the water still off you can’t brush your teeth. But when you say this Rhea just replies “Oh well” with a smutty smirk, and yes, suddenly it hardly seems like a concern.

In the bedroom, she strips off Jennifer’s tank top and then the rest of her clothes in neat and practised fashion, like she’s gone skinny-dipping, but it’s the bed, your and Jennifer’s bed that she dives into. Is it absurd to think of it as halfway to the marital bed, that this is some additional layer of betrayal on top of the already-complex levels of it you’ve racked up together? Rhea lies on her side in a pose more like a lingerie model, and pats the mattress, inviting you in. You fumble with your own clothes, and she stalks you with her eyes the whole time.

When you get under the covers, now it feels like a betrayal, Rhea lying there where Jennifer should be, smiling at you the way she would. “It was so sexy when you went right in on my pits,” she confesses. “I thought you’d be disgusted.”

“Come on.”

“At work, after – well, that is what it is, but I wouldn’t go out in public like that.” In the semi-darkness of your bedroom, the sheen of sweat that’s still on her skin glows with unlikely-seeming inner light, the kind of thing that could so easily be mistaken for angelic.

“Rhea-”

“If you smelt me fresh off a match, you’d probably never want to touch me again.”

“Rhea, you don’t need to give it the self-pity, everything about you is sexy.” For a moment you feel her hot breath in your mouth, then her lips are on yours. She didn’t seem to shift in the bed but suddenly you’re pressing against her belly.

“Do you think we could do something special, tonight?” she asks you, and glances away shyly halfway through.

“What did you have in mind?”

“Could we, um,” she swirls her finger cutely on the pillow, “could we have rough sex? Like, really rough, and loud, so Jen can hear it? I don’t want her to feel left out.”

Your mind spins, half of it trying to negotiate what ‘feel left out’ could possibly mean here, the other frazzled by the idea that some of the things you’ve done together didn’t count as rough sex. But she is here in your bed and so close, so you say “Yeah, sure we could.”

“Cool,” she glows – then rolls up on top of you and grabs you by the elbows. Immobilised completely, your cock ready to burst out of your underwear, you reflect she really knows what she’s doing.

For some reason you had been teeing yourself up to get on top, and to be the rough one. In a moment of the insecurity borne of being genuinely desired you ask, because it’s the kind of thing that you cannot shift from the back of your mind, “Would you like me better if I was stronger than you?”

“See, you assume that because I’m a woman, I naturally want to be in second place,” she says, with an air that demonstrates she’s thought about this stuff too. “Try to conceive of the fact that I might have exactly the same impulses as you do, and on some level want to be top dog.”

“Yes. That’s fair enough. Sorry.”

Rhea immediately turns playful again. “I forgive you,” she flirts, and squeezes your biceps. “And I understand that on some level, there’s more of an impetus for you to – well, never mind that. We don’t need to worry about that stuff.” She rolls her hips over you, and glides her pussy back and forth, over the flimsy cloth that’s all that keeps your erection out of her.

“Rhea,” you try to keep the painfully aroused whimper out of your voice, “if you keep hold of me like this, I can’t pull down my underwear.”

Rhea does not reply. She simply brings your arms up against the headboard, so gentle with that immense strength, then manacles your wrists together with one hand – and reaches the other down to your waist. You shiver when she takes hold of your cock, and then you gasp when she slips it into her.

“Oh, fuck!” she booms, and shakes dust from the ceiling. It’s exaggerated, you should know what noises she makes when she likes it by now, but your dick doesn’t know and finds itself buoyed by the sound. “Fuck, yes! Ngh! Fuck me harder!” But of course she’s the one who fucks you, propped up where she grasps your wrists while her hips slam down against yours.

Does the sound travel in here? Did Rhea really spend nights alone, listening to you, dreaming of this? Too hard to imagine now as she looms over you in motion, in her element, that one sculpted arm stretching over you like the vault of heaven, and there where it meets her torso the place Jennifer had kissed her what seems like only moments ago, you fancy you can still see the wet mark Jennifer’s lips left on her skin.

When you wriggle your hips, only to reposition yourself, she bursts out with “Yes, yes! Give it to me!” At this point you think the neighbours must be able to hear it too. So with nothing left to lose you now thrust up into her like you mean it, and prompt a “Yes, there, right there! Fuck!”

“Fuck,” you agree with what little breath you can exhale. She’s so wet, but so tight, if it was your throat she had a grip on you’d be going blue. And looking up at the undignified expression of pleasure on her face, her mouth hanging open, hair out of place over her eyes, you’d probably enjoy it, too.

When there’s a crack somewhere below you, you figure it must be a rib – but there is no pain, not beyond the heated pressure that surrounds you the way nature makes diamonds. It’s only when one corner of the whole bed drops that you realise it’s giving way beneath this onslaught.

“Fuck, ye-he-hes,” Rhea croons, spanning three different octaves. “Fuck, you’re so big, it hurts, but I want you to keep going, don’t stop, don’t fucking stop.” No thought in your head that you would not obey. The wood splinters under you while you use any and all leverage you have to push back, every lunge of her body is like a punch in the face only you crave more each time. “Fucking-” She punctuates this with one of her fiercest kisses, even without any teeth it feels like it’s left a mark. “Come on, come on baby, I’m nearly there.”

“Mnuh,” is the best you can respond. Your mind is beyond any romantic witticism or sweet nothing now. You may even be beyond a mind, beyond a body, you float free-form in the shattered void of the bedroom, and all there is in existence is Rhea, every fibre of her body illuminated with that dark sheen, every motion irresistible.

Your orgasm streams out, and you barely notice – until the clutches of her vagina go past blissful to unbearable, all your nerve endings protest at the continued stimulation. You thrash about in an instinctual hindbrain attempt to get away and she laughs, her beautiful carefree laugh, which turns into a scream as she seizes up around you. Her movements get shorter, tiny little jerks, until with one final cry she freezes completely – then topples off you and crashes down onto the ruins of the bed.

When the blood rushing round your skull calms down enough for you to hear again, to perceive any of the world around you, Rhea is curled up around you, and she gently asks “Was it good for you, too?”

“Yes,” you whisper, spent in a way that makes you really understand the word. Even though you were hardly moving compared to her, there is no energy left in your body, and you are all ready to sink into sleep when you hear a tiny little knock on the door.

Jennifer peeps in, for a moment she just takes in the scene, the broken bed, the swirling mess of the blankets, then she asks “Can I come snuggle up with you guys?”

“Of course you can,” you say, before Rhea can start with any more business about punishment – but Rhea whisks the blankets aside, to let Jennifer get in on your other side. She settles in contentedly, Rhea sweeps the blankets back around you, and all the dark warmth suddenly seems perfect.

“That sounded so hot,” Jennifer secret-whispers to you, but there’s no way Rhea won’t hear it as well. She caresses your face and adds “I got turned on listening, and, um, I ended up, um,” as her fingers brush your lips you can tell that yes, she certainly did.

“In my bed?” Rhea responds in sleepy mock-outrage, that’s turned into a low chuckle before she’s even finished saying it.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it too,” you say, and immediately worry you’ve said too much.

“Of course, her punishment was to sleep in my bed,” muses Rhea. “And now she’s disobeyed.” You can feel her hand grip Jennifer’s arm. “So we’re going to have to punish you again tomorrow night, and maybe the night after that too, and maybe even all the nights after that.”

By now Jennifer’s kissing at your neck, at your jaw, and she lifts one corner of her mouth to dopily mumble out “Every night”. On your other side Rhea kisses you too, and before you know it this becomes you all kissing each other, and then you sink beyond the wall of sleep.

[multitrackdrifting]

I went to my younger cousin's wedding, and I didn't cry or anything but I was happy to see her living such a full and healthy life in the present. I saw all my cousins, plenty of my extended family and while I don't get on perfect with everyone my cousins and I are tight-knit. We don't catch up often but we've always gotten on well.

I think that this life has plenty of servings of bullshit on a plate but honestly, the moments you get to enjoy surrounded by people you care about make everything okay for a day.

I am not an extraverted person, though people think I am because I am exceptional at cosplaying a normal and outgoing guy. I try hard to dress well and groom my appearance and all that shit. Though, one dinner a month or one party is enough for me to feel burned out for quite a while. But as much as I feel tired and all that after the fact, I'm glad I saw all my cousins and even old friends I hadn't spoken to in ages. A lot of them are married or have kids and it's pretty funny to think how far we've come in life.

To people who don't know me that well, I was pretty depressed well into my early adulthood, I didn't think I'd live longer than 18, nor make 21, yet I'm so far removed from that inescapable dread, the spirals and all the other shit that I barely remember what it is like to feel that difficult feeling, like there's a crushing weight on my body, and it's genuinely hard to do anything.

I don't want to live some fairy tale of a life, I just want to live. I'm not struggling, I'm not even close to rock bottom. When I think about the potential life I could've had, I used to feel regret, shit, I felt bitter as hell about it for the longest time. The person I could've been, if not for x y or z - but while I recognize not all pain and experience is meaningful, they still constitute the sum of who I am today. Even if it was just filler and bullshit, the way things went, and the way I choose to walk forward, they make me who I am now. I took a detour, so what?

I have good friends, I look forward to waking up early each day and working on the things I care about. I have hobbies in writing & editing, I got a close circle of friends I hang out with from time to time in real life and I got plenty of good friends online. I don't know for sure what the future holds, and I guess it's scary to think about my life without being online as much (because timezones means that I will never be available to anyone in an American time zone) but I'm also recognizing that the period of my life where I was available all the time to do things was also the same period of time where it had no direction or stability - that I'm just used to it, it's not that I need it, necessarily.

In the future which I'm brushing with, I have to face the reality that I can't be there for people across the ocean and I don't say sentimental things because I am not a sentimental person but that doesn't mean I don't think these things. I'm not built for outward affection for people, it's a lot easier to do with things I like, than people I care about - it's not a lack of emotional intelligence or ability to express that, I'm just not like that because I just don't like doing that.

I was born across the ocean from a lot of people I love and I have no plan to move across it. The hardest thing for me isn't reconciling time lost, the life I could've had or the potential that was left unspent. I'm no longer an idealistic fourteen year old who made a blog because a girl simply asked him to (yes, that's why I've had one since 2010, well, I deleted for like 5 years, but I remade in '22).

I see the future ahead is unwritten, and to write what I want to, I have to sacrifice the comfort I derive from simply being there to do things with people. Part-time work is one thing, it gives you plenty of free time, but a lot of financial anxieties and most people wouldn't choose to just feel terrified about money all the time. I certainly have been there many times.

It scares me, it does. It's so fucking stupid. Of course, I am not the availability I have to other people, and I've always had something I was doing. With college, or work, but I've never had a career - one that was really going somewhere.

Even now, there's still time to breathe before I'm anchored to it. But it's what I want, yet I'm terrified of it. Of seeing my dream materialize, while the world I know actually changes even if it's for the better.

The world I understood, the one I lived, while biding my time until this point, it will fade to the back of my mind even if my feelings about these people don't.

I'll be honest no part of me really loves what I do for work, but it's stable and it's relatively harmless work. I'll never feel the same passion for my job that I do for my crafts and spending time with people I care about. But if one part of me has to suffer for the other to thrive, I'm ready to face that... kinda.

I'm still scared of the future, perhaps I'll be scared even when I'm old. It's my birthday soon, and I still love being alive. I still love the challenge of living and making the most of my new paths.

I've talked to all my close friends about it, but I don't think they understand it really. I commute to the city for work, so I'm out of the house by 7, and I'm home around 7 or 8. I'm just not available that much, and I only have about an hour of free time every day (since I have worked the exact schedule for a year before).

For most people, especially in NA timezones, they understand a couple hours difference being a thing, but for me, I do not have the option to be available or around to do anything and it's so trivial to care about but I do.

But as I agonize over that reality, I too realize that I build up leave - you know? I'll have money to travel. A lot. I'll just build up my leave, go on holidays and do rich people shit (I won't actually be rich, I'm just saying, I'll have more money than I'm making right now).

Maybe I can't cross the ocean and make it home, but I can still cross it. And though I cannot be the guy who rounds out the ranked grind, or the friend who can call with them all the time, I can still be their friend.

I've already worked like this for a year, and I'll be honest it genuinely, well and truly was lonely. In response, I started working more graveyard shift work, and that was not great but for different reasons. But if I really focus on what it can help me do, maybe I can find some middle ground where I know work will never make me feel happy, but I can still find a way to smile each day.

The future scares me, and it also feels kind of exciting.

It's funny. I feel like I've been in a haze for the longest time despite feeling relatively good. Perhaps I was trying not to think about the uncomfortable reality of living a normie life that is a lot more lonely.

I'm not going to agonize on the reality that I have to work to live, working is not that hard to me since the stuff I do I'm pretty good at it. It's the act of work itself being a relatively lonely experience.

Working part-time is okay, but full-time genuinely is gruelling in how lonely it feels. I'm an introverted guy and it makes even me feel lonely.

If I had to have only one wish, it would be to make enough doing anything else that I wouldn't have to worry anymore.

Any job I can just quit on a whim, but a career? No, that's not the kind of thing you just drop randomly. And my ADHD ass is terrified of that concept.

It's such a trivial thing to get worried about, but I'm not afraid to say that it bothers me. Every FT job I've ever had I've hated it. I'm not bad at this career path I chose, but hell, just... maybe this is the endgame of everything.

But maybe it isn't.

Maybe I work this job, I get certified, I quit my firm - I do something else.

Maybe I work harder creatively, and I get lucky.

And I do something else.

The future is still not set in stone,

so I guess I'll have to take it as it comes

before I can do something that actually makes me happy

and in the mean time I should just find peace in knowing that what I do helps me live a stable life

even if it kind of sucks to feel alone

But just think, that I'm here to have any fear to face is something remarkable in and of itself. I wasn't supposed to make it through the dark, and I did anyway.

I take pride in living, even if nobody can see its value, I'm glad I'm alive. I'd rather have boring problems than struggle to face forward, or look people in the eyes the way I did when I didn't think I deserved any joy or happiness at all. I'm glad I am alive.

[rainbowvamp]

an unsent letter: June 8th, 1989 

written on the back of a series of bar napkins, just after midnight.

---

My eyes grow heavy beneath the weight of time spent waiting. I am sitting in the White Horse and you are somewhere, certainly, but I don’t know where.

It’s hard to think this isn’t a slight. You’ve never been late before, and what an unfortunate day to be late. I haven’t written you a letter in ages, now, but I think this one bears writing. 

I’m sorry if what I said was insolent. Or disrespectful to your station, or divinity, or whatever you are or have. I don’t know what you are, or have, because you’ve never told me. Never even said so much as your name to me. 

I have been accepting of a lot of things over the years. Not from you, but from everyone, everything. I have accepted change for the better and for the worse. I have accepted near death experiences and inescapable hunger. I have accepted plague and death and ruin and torture. I have accepted them all and held firm to just two things.

One, so long as I wish it, I shall never die.

Two, every hundred years, I get to see you. 

Perhaps I spoke out of turn. Perhaps I was a terrible little braggart. Perhaps I am an intolerable fool, but don’t you want to ask your question? Don’t you want to hear about the century as I’ve lived it? 

Maybe I was just deluding myself. You never needed me. Not really. You knew far more than I could conceive of you knowing. You knew everything about Lou and you’d never met her. Maybe you knew everything about me, and sitting and talking was a little pittance you threw me for kicks. Maybe you never needed to hear my stories, and it just amused you. Were you laughing at me, that whole time? Did our conversations, sparse as they were, mean nothing to you?

I suppose that’s alright. What could I have expected from a creature capable of granting immortality at the drop of a hat? Why would our conversations mean anything to you? Why would you care? I must have imagined the connection between us, the heat in your eyes, the twitch of your lips into a smile that might have been amused, but felt like something else, in that moment where we stood together in the white horse tavern, Johanna Constantine and her goons rightly dealt with. 

Maybe it was trick my mortal brain (immortal though it may be), invented to comfort myself. What would you need with friendship? Immortal and probably powerful to an extent I can’t understand.

Of course, there’s also the fact that even the gods had friends, family, people they turned to. Are you a God? Some ancient being so far beyond your time of birth that you see no point to interacting with the world any longer except to poke at it? 

Who are you? Why did you choose me? Why did you run away like I had burned you when I only wished to call you friend? I only wished to be beside you, once every hundred years, a companion to you as you were to me. 

Were. I suppose I may never see you again. 

Bollocks to that. I’ll wait. 

---

Hob Gadling throws his napkin letter in the bin on his way out of the pub shortly after 1am on June 8th.

---

AO3

[soleilnomoon]

can i have sorbet and licorice with poppy seeds with side menu #1 zoro?

hiii, thanks for being patient 😊💙 i love writing angsty zoro <3

1.1k words, gn reader (no pronouns), sfw, slightly suggestive, 18+ mdni, a lil bit of angst, hurt/comfort; zoro means well, he does, but he's also bad at dealing w. irrational people.

a light dusting of snow settles on the expansive deck of the sunny, an accompanying gust of wind — bitter, sharp, inescapable — making it nearly impossible to stand outside for longer than ten minutes. chopper is in his element, smiling as he collects snowflakes on his extended tongue; luffy follows suit, encourages usopp and brook to play along with them — with brook lamenting that not having a tongue makes it difficult to feel the same sensation that they do — before complaining about the cold weather. 

you watch from the second floor, breath coasting against the glass of the window in the library, laughing softly. the others seek refuge inside the warmth of the various rooms around the ship, with the exception of one, who sees the cold as an opportunity to train intensively. 

zoro makes his way onto the upper deck, sequestering a small area for himself so he can work out. it pains you to look at him — he’s left his shirt on a nearby lawn chair and, for some reason, is also barefoot. you’ve tried countless times to understand his line of thinking, have even offered him various solutions that don’t require him to be half-naked all the time — not because you dislike seeing him like that, but because it’s hard to focus on the things he says — but it’s all the same. he’s stubborn, refuses assistance, and thinks your cause for concern is entirely misplaced.

with a sigh — one full of melancholy and anxiety — you tread outside, tugging a scarf around your neck closely as you try to stay as warm as possible. growing up on a warm island means you’re not equipped to deal with weather like this; no matter how many winter islands you pass, you’ll never get used to the cold. zoro’s in the middle of lifting weights, barely registering the low temperature as his body’s natural warmth keeps him steady; you sometimes wished you could be like him — unattached, steadfast, vicious — and sometimes you feared the intensity that surrounded him. 

you’ve never been the type to shy away from voicing your opinions, but for some reason, after watching the way the muscles on his back flex, those words fizzle and cease to exist. 

not that anyone asked his opinion, but it is really fucking cold outside.

still, no amount of extreme weather could make him oblivious to your presence. he’s quite apt at differentiating the sounds of his crew mates footsteps. even in the snow, your steps are light and hesitant — as if you don’t know if you should stay or go. he doesn’t acknowledge your presence for a moment, but since you keep moving around, he can’t focus on his work out.

“what is it?” 

he inhales deeply through his nostrils, places the large dumbbells on the floor and stretches his arms a bit. his voice scratches against your skin, his irritation palpable as your words continue to evade you. when you still don’t say anything, he finally turns to face you, lone eye searching your face for something — you don’t know what. it makes you nervous, the way his eye sweeps over you several times before he settles on your face. 

“i’m waiting,” he says a little impatiently, the air nipping at his skin, flushing his cheeks and nose. 

you know if you don’t answer him then it’ll be that much worse, but you can’t say anything — if you do, you know you’ll just mess things up further. but with the way he’s looking at you, you know that if you don’t say anything soon, you’ll never get that opportunity again. “i…” your throat dries as you try to imagine the apology sliding off of your tongue and infiltrating the air between you; in a perfect world, you’d both laugh your foolishness off, but this world is far from perfect, and zoro isn’t inclined to find things like that funny.

his brow quirks upward, but when you don’t make any move to continue, he starts to walk past you. his silence slaps you repeatedly, making you numb to the cold, and when the sounds of his heavy footsteps start to get further and further away, you panic. “wait,” you call out, pivoting around so you can look at him properly. “don’t leave.” it’s pathetic, really, the way the tears well up in your eyes, the way you try to blink them away — fruitless endeavors as they spill down your cheeks regardless. 

hesitation stills his movements, which allows you to catch up with the stubborn swordsman without issue. you bite down on your lip so hard you’re sure you’ll draw blood, legs carrying you towards him quickly. he never turns around, but it doesn’t matter; you wrap your arms around him, warmth radiating off of his body the moment you make contact. you press your cheek against his back, closing your eyes and willing your mind to settle for five seconds so you can tell him what  you need to say.

“i’m sorry,” you say quietly, voice coming out in shallow puffs, his own breathing a little uneven at your proximity. “i should’ve listened to you.”

the excuse is one you say often, which is partially why he’s agitated. while he knows you’re not totally incapable of defending yourself in battle, he’s always, always told you to not wander off on your own, especially with enemies who are particularly tricky to deal with. you’re prone to falling and somehow attract danger without trying. this time, you nearly got yourself killed — which would’ve also resulted in a few of your other crew mates being critically injured too.

you’re well aware of your mistake; you miscalculated, tried to overcompensate for your shortcomings, and put your crew mates at risk. he has every reason to be upset, you know that, but it still doesn’t hurt any less. it’s not that he means to intentionally not talk to you, but there’s no other way he can deal with it, particularly because you’re hard-headed and sometimes don’t see reason. you do now, though. that was a little too close for comfort, and the guilt has settled on your chest heavily, making it difficult to breathe most days.

the argument had escalated between you, resulting in you saying things you didn’t mean, and him walking away without resolving the issue with you. he knows he should pry you off of him, should shake you and hope that sense finds you quickly; but he doesn’t. instead he sighs and simply says, “okay.” it comes out quietly, but you hear it. and when you do eventually let him go, he pulls you towards him so that he can properly hug you. it’s not that he wants to stay upset with you, but the fear of losing you — of losing anyone that’s close to him, really — grows stronger with time. he knows you didn’t intend for anything bad to happen, but he hopes that maybe now you’ll think a little carefully before you make rash decisions; and while you’re not 100% certain you won’t be hit with another impulsive whim of yours, you do know that you’ll think a little more before doing something like that again.

[rollercoasterwords]

While yes, it can be annoying to hear about the seemingly odd things someone does while on a diet (the whole metab boosting super lemon water and protein hunger crushing combo stuff), I dont think its as big of a deal as you are making it out to be. And most importantly; dieting is not an eating disorder.

Just the same as it is your body and you can do whatever you want with it, someone else may go on a diet because its their body and they want to. Of course, that doesnt mean they can push that on you, but you cant push your anti-diet stuff on them either. It goes both ways.

And before you say it, fat people are not oppressed. You may be unfairly treated, and people may be harsh on you, but you are not oppressed. You can change your weight. Just the same as a person can gain weight, they can also lose it. And yes, it will be harder for some than for others, but it is still very much possible.

ok....i'm assuming that u sent this in response to this post which i made literally two months ago? which first of all! fuck u for coming into my ask box to talk about diets and spout fatphobic rhetoric when that post is literally me venting about how i DON'T want to hear about diets. thanks!

i debated about whether or not to even respond to this bc i'm sure ur a troll and i doubt u even follow me or you'd know that this blog is literally centered around marauders fanfiction and i don't normally discuss diet culture but. whatever i have time tonight. so:

i never said dieting is an eating disorder. i said that dieting is disordered eating.

now, i say that as a person who struggled with an eating disorder throughout most of my adolescence. fortunately, i'm at a point in life where i can say that i've fully recovered, and that i've been fully recovered for years. but it's because of my personal experience that i know not every diet reaches the point of an eating disorder. but honestly? many of them do, because dieting is inherently disordered eating.

if you are restricting food in any way, that is disordered eating, full stop. that is you interrupting your body's intuitive eating, its natural order, ergo -- disordered. this is something that i first learned from the therapists and dieticians and psychiatrists that i had to work with while i was in treatment for an eating disorder. and i resisted it at first too, because it's so normalized to restrict food or to label certain foods "good" and "bad"--i thought the same thing as you, anon. i thought "surely it's ok for me to just use these restrictive behaviors, as long as i don't take things too far. a diet isn't an eating disorder!" but the experts around me all said no! no, because once you are ignoring your body and regimenting your food and beginning to control what you can and can't eat, you are changing your natural behavior. you are engaging in disordered eating. and that is not a good thing for anybody, and it can lead to eating disorders very, very easily.

to your second point: the post that you're referring to was me, on my own tumblr blog, venting about how i don't want to hear about other people's diets. i wasn't "pushing" my "anti-diet" stuff onto anyone. this is literally my own blog. obviously people can do what they want with their bodies; i didn't even say in that post "you need to stop dieting!!" all i said was that i don't want to hear about it and if you're going to engage in unhealthy behavior and act like it's normal, i don't want to bear witness and be expected to congratulate you for it.

that being said -- there are two big, big differences between people pushing diet rhetoric and people pushing anti-diet rhetoric, which are that:

diet rhetoric is already normalized in our culture. it's so normalized that it's inescapable. anti-diet rhetoric is pushing back against that normalization; it is a minority of voices in society. because of that, you can go about your daily life hearing absolutely no anti-diet rhetoric, but it is almost impossible to escape diet rhetoric itself.

diet rhetoric is promoting harmful behaviors, because it is promoting disordered eating. anti-diet rhetoric is not promoting harmful behaviors, it's pushing back against them. so, honestly, i think i have way more of a right to "push" my anti-diet stuff onto other people if i want to, because we are all already having diet propaganda pushed onto us by the multi-billion diet industry that is trying to sell us products and make us hate our bodies every day. this is not a situation of "it goes both ways," this is a predatory industry taking advantage of all of us.

and finally, you end your message with a dose of fatphobia! great. and look, in the interest of full transparency--you're right. i am not oppressed. that's because i've never been fat. i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i personally have experienced fatphobia, because i haven't. i've never been discriminated against during job hiring because of my size. i've never been discriminated against by healthcare providers or denied treatment because of my size. i've never been bullied because of my size. and those are just a few examples of the systemic oppression that fat people face!

this article links a lot of great sources, including some which i've included above, and breaks down exactly why what you're saying is wrong; i'm going to quote a bit directly:

"Even a quick glance at the weight research shows that, despite decades of trying, there is no evidence that efforts to prevent or reverse “obesity” are successful. In fact, there’s much evidence to suggest that the prescription for weight loss is more likely to result in physical harm and weight gain."

so that last bit of what you said, about changing your weight? yeah, if you bothered to look at what our most recent science shows, that isn't true. the idea that it's possible for everyone to change their weight is a myth rooted in fatphobia that leads overwhelmingly to more harm than good. for many people, losing weight isn't just hard--it's impossible to do without taking drastic measures that literally harm your body.

here is another resource to start informing yourself on weight stigma, and here is an excellent article about the history of the diet industry and why it's so fucked up. i also highly, highly recommend the podcast "maintenance phase" for learning more about fat activism and debunking culturally ingrained myths about fatness and weight.

in conclusion, anon: you're wrong. you are misinformed, and all it would take is a single google search to realize that if you truly wanted to learn. and see, normally i'd just feel sorry for people like you, because i've been where you are, and i know exactly what is going on in your head. you've been sold a bundle of myths and lies cobbled together by a diet industry that wants you to feel like shit about your body so that you'll keep buying their products, making you more and more miserable and promising that if you just suffer enough you'll eventually be rewarded with happiness. but you won't. you'll be stuck in a toxic cycle forever, and you'll harm your body because of it, and you'll convince yourself that it's healthy because it's so much easier to tell yourself that losing five pounds is the key to happiness than it is to actually work through your internalized fatphobia and address the root of your self-loathing.

so normally, i'd just pity you. but you saw a random post floating around the internet of a person saying that they don't like hearing about other people's diets, and you chose to come into my ask box under the safety of an anonymous icon and regurgitate the lies you've swallowed into my face. and this is the shit that, had i received it when i wasn't as healthy as i am now, when i was still struggling to work through all the lies i'd been fed by diet culture, would have triggered me so, so badly. so FUCK YOU! i set a very clear boundary on my own personal, stupid little fandom blog, and you came here two months later specifically to violate it. if you want to be stuck in the miserable, toxic cycle of self-hatred that is diet culture, shut the fuck up about it and go be miserable by yourself! i am so fucking sick of being forced to bear witness to the self-destruction of people like you.

[bardicbeetle]

(content warnings for mention of death, gun violence, transphobia, and suicide)

This is something I wrote for my own personal socials + also to email to some relatives who do not use them. It's for tomorrow, so mind the dating.

I.

If you are part of the queer community, if you feel like reading then take a breathe, take care of your heart. I am writing this not to be unkind to my own blood, but to remind them where we stand. Apart or otherwise.

Today is March 31st.

Transgender day of Visibility.

My name is Larkspur.

My pronouns are they/them/theirs.

I am transgender and nonbinary.

Happy is not a word I would use to describe transgender day of visibility. It’s not one I would have used even before now, but this year has an especially sharp edge to that. We are not visible by choice, it is so often not being open as an act of self expression, or as pride. It is a scrutiny inescapable. We are told to either stay down and shut up, or die—we are vilified for simply existing. We have escalated now to hearing cries for our extermination, to being branded as child abusers, pedophiles, and now *terrorists*. To people being allowed and even encouraged to call CPS on the parents of transgender children citing transition itself as abuse, and states threatening to forcibly remove cisgender children from their families if they have transgender parents or siblings, even if they cross state lines to do so.

I cannot pretend to be hopeful.

My heart is heavy with the ongoing attempted genocide of my community. With the 41% jokes. With the people saying “It’s not *that* bad”. Wake the fuck up. It is that bad. As of today, nearly 500 bills have been introduced in 2023 alone that aim to legislate trans people out of public existence. I say public existence because regardless of what is done to hold us to the ground, we are NOT going away. The shooting in Nashville has spawned an outcry amongst Republican officials and news sources NOT over this country’s long and bright red history of gun violence, but a whipped up violent hysteria that claims transgender people are coming to kill your children and destroy your religion. I would love to say that is a surprising outcome to this newest tragedy, but that would be a lie in the extreme.

The things we do to make our bodies feel more our own are policed at every turn. When you are young you are “too young to think about that”, when you are an adult then “why bother starting now”. For the small percentage of us who seek medical transition, the procedures we seek are often trivialized and barred from us, but easy to access for cisgender people (Hormone Therapy, Breast augmentation, hairline reconstruction, etc). We are told that puberty blockers are poisoning children who “don’t know any better” when they have been prescribed to cisgender children since the 1980s. We are vilified for surgeries that are both cost prohibitive and never granted to anyone under the age of 16.

I want to make one thing very clear, if nothing else. This is MY community. I am transgender. I am no different from the rest. I am not an outlier. I am not special. The false beliefs weaponized against my community are weaponized against me. If you believe transgender people are inherently wrong, you believe I am inherently wrong. If you believe we are sick, you believe I am sick. If you believe we are against God, you believe I am against God. If you believe we are violent, you believe I am violent. If you believe we are a danger to children, you believe I am a danger to children. If you believe our existence is a threat to you, then you believe I am a threat to you. If you think because you know me that means I am different, that your beliefs and prejudices will not fall on me? You could not be more wrong. I will carry the weight like everyone in my community, I will hold each one in my chest like a stone.

I say none of this to be a thorn. I say it because I am hurting, and afraid, and *angry* and so SO tired.

I am tired of being brave. I am tired of being special. I am tired of the burden of being some people’s only mark on the board for knowing a queer person well enough to consider them “good”. I am tired of watching the people I love carry disgust and disdain in their hearts for people like me, who aren’t me. I am tired of watching the country I am supposed to call home close walls around me until the place I was born is one of the only states left that counts me as a human being and not a disease to be eradicated. I am tired of the world putting a target on the backs of my siblings just for being themselves. I am tired and heartbroken from adding more names to the list of those who have died for being themselves, either because someone decided they deserved it, or because it was their only perceived escape. I am so tired of losing people to the tide of hatred and vitriol that is spewed like a burst pipe from the heart of the world.

That is not all to say I am hopeless. I have faith in my community to fight for change even if I do not have faith in those who control how fast and how far that change goes. We are tired, but we are not backing down. We have been here the whole time, and we will continue to be here until time runs humanity into the ground. Gender diverse individuals can be traced back as far as 4500 BCE. We are not going to lie down and die over this. We are not going to stand by and be erased.

Today is transgender day of visibility.

For better or for worse, I am making sure that you see ALL of me.

[llycaons]

ep49 (1/3): a shocking numbers of fans watched this scene where jgy cried a lot and fully swallowed his excuses. guys. guys.

oh wwx is annoyed as hell that jgy is dodging responsibility for everything he's done when he, wwx, never once denied his actions and bore the full weight of them and then some

more evidence for my 'jgy actively encourages lxc's crush even though he has no intention of ever reciprocating because it grants him power over him' hc!!!!!

oh jeex lxc looks like shit. I mean I guess he's had a rough couple of days. look at those eyes bags

lxc: I'm not your sworn brother anymore. jgy (realizing he's losing his grip on lxc): NOOOOO 😭😭😭😭😭

okay to be fair I'm sure there is some genuine grief for losing the friendship and camaraderie of the one person who has always vouched for him, saved his life, supported him, etc. lxc was a wonderful friend and a powerful, steadfast ally. wasted on jgy!

you can practically see the forehead vein popping here. I don't think an lxc who fully understands jgy would ever love him. if xiyao is happening in some fic, either jgy is lying or someone's being mischaracterized. not that social factors didn't play a role in the things jgy did, but if you ignore his sadistic and vengeful nature, his willingness to murder innocent people, his unrepentant manipulation and deceptive nature, you're losing a lot of his character. for him to be someone who doesn't hurt others, he'd have to be someone guaranteed safety and respect and a position from birth. but that's so antithetical to his role in canon it wouldn't be the same person anyway

huh. why hasn't jgy tried to harras lwj more? I guess he got what he wanted and beyond lwj sealing himself, there's not much a reaction jgy can provoke

WELL. pretty clear choices here. jgy you could have packed up and fled the country before trying to kill a bunch of people and kidnapping children

lxc: why were you so cruel and murderous??? dude?? jgy: I HAD NO CHOICE BRO 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 you believe me right??? would it help if I did this 😭😭😭😭

compared to wwx's impassioned, rational, fair defenses of himself and the people he was trying to protect, this is so pathetic. wwx never denied what he did, never dodged responsibility. when he said he had no other choices, it was in defense of innocent people at risk of political persecution and mass murder, not in defense of killing people to maintain his own position, he apologized for the death of jxz and suffered his own death in retribution for even the best things he did

YOU COULD HAVE LEFT!!!! or idk, face up to the consequences of your actions

I am so so sorry to bring the marvel 'cinematic' universe into our beautiful liveblog today but this shot just screamed "Tony, you CHOSE to do that' to me

of course he ~nobly~ doesn't deny it ONCE IT'S ALREADY COME TO LIGHT. but he denied up until the breaking point because he's a slippery eel and it's impossible to get him to face any consequences for his actions!!! if I was lxc I would be exasperated to death too

NEAT FRAMING

ohhh this flashback is so skin-crawling. I really love how deathly pale the robes and jgy's face are. the red of the wedding robes and the decorations are so ominous and omnipresent, like something horrifying about to happen, like something inescapable. the music really adds to the eeriness of the scene

it always hurt so bad that qs was so excited for her wedding night. she was happy! she liked jgy a lot and always respected him and his mother! she was a good and kind and innocent person and she had no IDEA god I feel sick I hate him so much

jgy really never spared a single thought to qs's well-being. it was all about him, and his horror, and his choices, and his position, and the injustices enacted on him. self-centered to the very end. of course he didn't think he had a choice. he would never choose against his own self-interest no matter how many people he hurt. god, qin su should have lived. her suicide was such bullshit

oh my god SUCH bullshit. 'uwu but I worked so hard!' okay yeah I get it's a precarious political situation and the issue isn't even your fault but DUDE. you're placing your own power and ambition higher in importance than this woman's entire life. and you MUST have known you would have murdered any child you two had.

pretty sucky situation all around. shocking idea though. YOU COULD HAVE TOLD QIN SU

jgy truly goes through life as if it was a me-or-them battle for survival in every single situation. in his mind, whoever bore the burden here would be the one destroyed, and he never would choose his own destruction. and it does make sense based on his environment and upbringing. god, he's such a good villain. none of this at all excuses his actions ofc, but it's an extremely compelling and powerful motivator for a villain hell-bent on surviving, viewing every situation as battle to the death, and fully buying into being viewed as the victim of every scenario

another contrast to wwx! wwx hates being seen as someone who was hurt. he dislikes being viewed as weak or vulnerable in any way by his enemies (and often his allies), and the way he wins battle and arguments is though either his power or his own honesty. for someone who omits key information and lowkey manipulates many of his loved ones, his straightforward arguments are more often than not the complete truth

in case we needed a reminder of his active sadism at work. who gaf about his dad but those poor women were treated as murder weapons and then mass murdered themselves

oh I do not like this slap scene, and I'm glad lxc is horrified by it as well. the exposure of jgy's crimes has never retroactively justified the classism and oppression he fought against, nor does it grant permission to his social superiors to treat him like they're inherently better than him, such as with this slap

[sing-me-under]

I think the thing that bothers me most about how criticism perceives the fandom is that a lot of them treat c!Tommy as like a y/n of an abuse victim rather than his own character. Like, yes it’s valid that you are upset by his decision and that you would rather he have done something else but like… that’s not what what c!Tommy was. c!Tommy’s choice was his closure as best suited to him because trauma isn’t universal and people aren’t a monolith.

This is a mild follow-up to a post I made earlier about c!Tommy’s story being a coming of age and overcoming a child’s black and white world view. It’s buried in the many many other posts I’ve made, but the key point I’m elaborating on here is that c!Tommy’s entire character arc was completed when he chose to understand Dream as a person.

Tommy has always been extremely self-aware, defending himself rather than accepting pain. Tommy was aware he didn’t deserve the blame placed upon him, and he was aware that he didn’t deserve to be hurt. He knew that the justification others claimed was flimsy at best, especially when he was treated worse for things others did too. He was fully aware of this and fought back.

However, just because he knew he didn’t deserve it didn’t mean he understood it. If the things he did “deserved” to “punish” him worse than others, then surely there was a reason for why it had to be him. Without any other possible explanations, Tommy determined that the reason behind his suffering was because Dream was obsessed with his very existence. It wasn’t his fault. It was because Dream was evil.

To c!Tommy, c!Dream had always been a force of absolute evil, an inescapable monster who hurt needlessly. To anyone, being hurt for things beyond your understanding is inevitably scary. The belief that no matter what he did, Dream would hurt Tommy because it was Tommy, nothing more, nothing less. Tommy only ever wanted to feel safe and happy, and he would do fucking anything to escape the inevitable pain. The prison wasn’t the safety barrier he could rely on anymore, and death especially wasn’t an option for escape as long as Dream (and Punz) still had the knowledge of the revive book. The fear that at any moment for any reason, The Unfathomable Evil would hurt him only worsened Tommy’s mental state and paranoia until he was barely husk of a person.

The abstract is scary. c!Dream perfectly embodies the existential fear of the unknown. This was how everyone perceived Dream, not just Tommy.

Tommy, endlessly afraid but so compassionate and kind, chose to free the server of the Pure Evil at the cost of himself. Even though he knew he didn’t deserve it, he still believed his very existence was the crime itself.

When Tommy chose to understand Dream at the very end, it wasn’t understanding out of the sake of compassion. It was his compassion that allowed him to understand for the sake of his freedom. He finally understood why Dream had chosen him to hurt, to abuse, to torture. c!Dream is a terrible person, but he was a terrible person with the very human understanding for why he chose Tommy. Tommy was just the wrong person at the wrong time.

In my previous posts, I emphasize that Sapnap was the one to aid Tommy in killing Dream that very first time all those years ago. No one was happy under Dream’s iron grip, but it just so happened that Tommy was the first one to win against Dream. It didn’t have to be Tommy. It could have been anyone else, but it just happened to be Tommy who received Dream’s ire first.

And that was freeing. It was clarity, a weight lifted off of Tommy’s shoulders. He knew he didn’t deserve it, but now he understood that he wasn’t being hurt simply because he existed. This was no longer some abstract unknown that would hurt him just for the sake of his very existence. It was a real, tangible reason with a real human motive. It was a problem Tommy finally had control over had he just understood sooner.

That’s not to say Dream wouldn’t have still been an manipulative piece of shit, but at the very least Tommy wouldn’t be paranoid and confused and scared out of his mind, obsessed that Dream was obsessed with him. But they could have come to an understanding sooner, before Dream truly became the Evil Villaiin everyone made him out to be, before everyone turned against him, before there was no turning back.

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 4.12.8 “Several Interrogation Points Concerning One Le Cabuc, Who Perhaps Was Not Le Cabuc”

The first death on the barricade was a civilian who didn’t open the door. The second was the man who shot him.

It’s in conversation with a theme we’ve had a long time, that whether to open one’s doors is one of the most important decision someone can make in this book. It recalls Valjean being cast out from all the houses in Digne until he came to the bishop’s door. It also recalls the giant false door on the convent and Gillenormand’s tradition of only opening his door after 5pm to keep out the rabble.

“Between four walls” is the darkest phrase in this book’s imagery, and Hugo uses it for everything from inescapable war to the grave itself. But the way out from between four walls is--an open door.

Enjolras here is taking a strong stance that a door can’t be forced. The person on the other side of the door must be allowed to choose freely, even if it means death to the people locked out.

The first and second deaths on the barricade weren’t combat deaths but murder--they were war crimes. Enjolras isn’t wrong for taking the weight of having committed summary execution really fucking seriously; it’s a horrific precedent, and a horrific thing to do. He had good reasons--allowing Le Cabuc to live, even if he was tied up like Javert for later trial, would have sent a message to the insurgents AND the surrounding inhabitants that murdering civilians is part of how this barricade operates.

The fact that they didn’t murder Javert last chapter demonstrates that this isn’t how they operate in general.

But either way, the barricade is stained now. In a realistic novel the ending of the barricade might still be uncertain, but in this heavily symbolic one, we already know. And Enjolras is plugged into the symbolism enough that he already knows. Combeferre speaks for the others when he says they will all bear the burden of the guilt--and its expiation--together. It was a war crime, and Enjolras pulled the trigger, but they stand with him.

And, fun fact, I suspect Javert is heavily, heavily at fault for ALL of this.

Let us add that, if we are to believe a police tradition, strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claque­sous.

Oh, interesting! I wonder who could have told them?? If only there were a police informant on the barricade capable of recognizing Claquesous who lived to later give a report to the police!!!

Hmmmmmm.

Because, seriously, in what other possible way could the police have gotten good intel on that?

No wonder Javert seemed so oddly willing to be honest and forthright last chapter. What a sanctimonious, self-righteous motherfucker.

It’s not like he didn’t know what Claquesous was, and it’s not like he couldn’t have guessed what Claquesous was there to do. Today he chose loyalty to police secrets over preventing a very preventable civilian casualty. I don’t know if it’s another step down the ladder of corruption for him or if it’s just another Tuesday in terms of his allowing police corruption. But it does kind of feel like he feels this one.

In other words, Javert’s “honesty” in giving himself up earlier was very likely in the full knowledge that atrocities were probably about to be committed. He would have some distaste for that! And some distaste for working on the same side.

So, it seems like he did the thing that made him feel morally “clean” and like he was better than Claquesous--but which, of course, led directly to the murder of a civilian. He mistakes not acting like Claquesous as a moral act on his part, when the actual moral question has

always

been about what he allows Claquesous and his other coworkers to get away with.

No wonder he feels conflicted about having to “wash his claws” after all this is over. He should.

[dvrast]

a thing about jesper is that he is constantly afraid. angry and frightened— that's what the fjerdan had called him. what had matthias and inej seen in jesper that he didn't understand ? / [ stop treating your pain like it's something you imagined. if you see the wound is real, then you can heal it. ] / you taught me to lie. [ to keep you safe. ] i had a gift. you should have let me use it. [ it's not a gift. it's a curse. it would have killed you the same way it killed your mother. ] i'm dying anyway, da. i'm just doing it slow. it's a genetic disease, father to son. inheritance. power, from his mother. fear, from his father.

it was one thing to be born zowa in his father's house, a weight impossible to tip - toe around with the old farm floorboards creaking under every step, something reaching deep down in his chest to hold his breath from a young age. it was that easy, as breathing, as long as it kept the fear off his father's face ; even easier, whispering truths like pearly whites tucked inside unassuming seashells with his mother. she was brave, braver than the both of them, and she made it easy, until she couldn't. after her death, colm's fear deepened, widened, and it swallowed jesper whole.

the world was always too small for jesper, too big, for grisha of any kind, an open range with traps and snares littered every few feet like landmines. you're born as prey animals native to every continent, or trained into predators in ravka. there isn't a single hill or meadow that's safe, not really. this is a part of why he leaves for ketterdam in the first place, no matter how afraid he is to leave his da, alone in a haunted house. but he can't stay there, not when it feels like the same thing that killed his ma is lurking under the floor, hiding in the rafters, breathing down his neck. but it wasn't the house. it was a part of him, some heavy, extra organ, and he takes it with him wherever he goes. it begins to feel like some kind of birth defect, something somewhere just a millimeter out of line, killing him slowly with every too - fast beat of his rabbit heart. sleeping, waking, this inescapable, primal paranoia. it'll kill him, just for being born.

jesper has what we would call generalized anxiety disorder on top of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and it's at its worst once he realizes this feeling isn't something he can leave back home in his father's house. one could go mad with it, not a single place in which you can feel yourself, safe, whole, and he feels a little mad, at first, digesting this revelation ; this is his life, a blessed death. this is what it means to be zowa, his mother's son, his father's prodigal, home or far from it, everywhere, anywhere in the world. he can't ever catch his breath in ketterdam, since before even that, light and heavy all at once, a freedom you can only feel from falling. he feels like a dead man walking the streets, less to lose than even that, and it's easy, easy as breathing, to lay down what little money fit in his pockets with or without the promise of it earning any of it back. ketterdam is alive, though, and he learns quickly how fear is in the very air, but with it, an immunity in its people. something fearless in the water. it was almost inevitable, then, that the most fearless creature in the barrel is who jesper finds himself drawn to even more than the promise of a light burning brightest before it goes out, like a moth to flame. kaz brekker makes him feel like he could be brave for the first time since his mother. like he could survive.

fear is a lot easier to face if you don't ever look away in the first place. if you never come down from the high, there's never any crash - landing, and life with the dregs is a rollercoaster of ups and downs to simulate a freefall that's in his actions instead of his bones. joining the dregs, joining kaz, it gives a name to the grip in his chest— a false one, but a name all the same. he can't be afraid of living if he's dodging death left and right. this fear he has is for a bullet in his head, a knife in his back, dime lions or black tips or stadwatch or debt collectors instead of slavers or drüskelle or ravka or poisoned little girls in need of saving or his father's scared, scared eyes— ketterdam is where taking a deep breath could get you killed anyway, and it's the first place he feels he can live in. the first place he feels he could survive, because living in ketterdam demands it.

[stoppit-keepout]

Miss out on energy (s & d tier fic)

[maybe i’ll clean it up and put it on ao3 at some point but for now, here’s all it is! Here’s the link to the NEW AND IMPROVED version on AO3! title from WTF Is Sleep by the Worriers, direct follow-up to episode 132, AKA “Alex doesn’t sleep for 3 months and Morgan tables the turns”

canon levels of shippiness, that is to say, Alex thinks Thoughts and nothing happens lol]

Ninety consecutive days awake was a lot like 2 months awake, or like 1830 hours, or eight weeks, or at least it was something sort of like those things. The whole endeavor may have made Alex's perception of time rather squidgy.

At first they'd had a week (estimated) of being tired, then some interval feeling like they were made of felted wool, and now it was like they were encased in glass, observing in fits and starts the people around them moving so, so fast.

Well, the person around them. Morgan.

Morgan, who had a stubborn hand fisted in Alex's shirt and was dragging them down the hall.

Manhandling them, to use their own words, words that were still connecting in Alex's muddy synapses. Manhandle you off of this couch and into your bed.

Alex felt their mouth moving, giving Morgan some sass, but their brain was still stuck on what came next.

Pin you to the bed until you fall asleep.

And suddenly, that's what was happening. Alex was face-down on the bare sheets. Morgan had their wrists in a secure grip that would nevertheless be easy to brute force out of if they didn't mind breaking the wrists of anyone involved.

Breaking a wrist had a unique feel. Snappy. You had to at least get the radius and the ulna, which already gave a great two-part harmony, but if you placed it just right you could try for all eight carpal bones to get a truly satisfying crunch. It didn't even take that much strength if you knew your angles as well as Alex did.

"Now you sleep," Morgan said as if there were no other way this could go.

Their weight settled firmly on Alex as they switched to a full-body pin from the strategic one they'd used to throw Alex onto the bed.

Alex hadn't broken anybody's wrists.

"Stop thinking," Morgan said.

Alex wasn't aware they'd started. They were, however, a contrarian, so they tried to marshal whatever thoughts Morgan had detected into order. That would show them.

The first, most logical option would be to snap and do... something. They could refresh themself like they had been intermittently, or teleport away, or kiss Morg--.

Nope, they couldn't do that.

"I could kill you with a thought," Alex said into their pillow.

"But then Barnaby would never let you touch Kotetsu for sure." Behind Morgan's ribcage, Morgan's heart sped up as they chuckled.

Alex could feel it against their shoulder blades.

"You have a point," Alex said, and craned their head around so they could see Morgan's mop of hair. They turned their face back to the pillow. "You're lucky I'm a dog person."

Option two, become a dog. The two of them have shared a bed before with Alex as an animal, this could just be another installment of that.

The glass Alex was trapped inside shivered as they considered rearranging their body.

Morgan would cuddle a dog, instead of pinning it.

Their breath tickled the naked skin of Alex's neck, which stayed perfectly human.

"Can you breathe with your face in the pillow like that?" Morgan asked.

Or they could kiss Morgan.

"You remember how I'm the most powerful person who's ever existed, right?" Alex said. They could twist around and Morgan would be in their arms and--, "I don't need to breathe."

"See, the fact that you had enough air to say that out loud means you can in fact breathe," Morgan said. "Meaning you could have just fucking said 'yes.'"

They shifted on top of Alex, and Alex closed their eyes for a molasses-sticky second. They could feel every freezing hot atom: Morgan was lying on their front now, body soft and inescapable above with their chin resting on their crossed forearms, evenly balanced across Alex's shoulders.

In the darkness beneath their eyelids, Alex felt like they were everywhere. It was like making themself incorporeal to phase through a wall, except instead of feeling nothing, they felt Morgan. Warmth and pressure and bony knees.

"Do you know the Tam Lin story?" somebody asked.

"What?" someone else replied.

"What?"

She had to hold onto him, Alex thought in answer to that earlier question. Tam Lin turned to beasts and monsters and at last to flame, and she had to pin him to the bed and make him sleep.

No.

Alex pried their eyes open and turned again.

This time, they could see their own reflection in Morgan's irises, gold tumbling down from brown. Their spine strained and their cheek felt liquid against the pillow.

"Is that what this is?" Morgan asked from just five thousand hair's breadths away, and Alex didn't kiss them. "Do you want me to tell you a bedtime story?"

"No," Alex said. They tried to shake their head; the rustle of hair against their ears, the thud of ear against bedding, swallowed them momentarily.

"Good, 'cause I'm not doing it," Morgan pronounced.

"I know."

Alex sloshed around inside Alex's skin, inside the glass that held Alex. Did Tam Lin become a bucket of water too, or was that some other story?

Morgan cursed and moved to pin their legs more thoroughly. They asked, "Why are you making this so fucking hard?"

"I'm a villain," Alex tried to explain scornfully, but their stupid sloshing body hijacked the words with a yawn.

"You're exhausted is what you are. Just fucking sleep." Morgan affected a sing-song, mimicking tone and said, "'Eight hours a night, Morgan, energy drinks are poison, Morgan.'"

Alex protested wordlessly and glared over their shoulder into Morgan's smothering eyes.

"Your problem," Morgan continued contemplatively. "Is that you can dish it out but you can't fucking take it, can you."

Even hidden behind Alex's half-lowered lids, the room suddenly seemed brighter, slower, sharper.

"I can take anything you want," Alex's voice said.

"Oh holy shit, have your eyes always been able to do that?" Morgan's mouth moved further away as they raised themself up on their elbows for a better look. "You're like a cat."

"I'm a glass of fire," Alex said.

Their mind's hands were still running over and over Morgan's low voice talking about them fucking taking it.

It was a dangerous thing to be dwelling in, but 'dangerous' was kind of Alex's thing.

"Like, I know I said you had to sleep, and you do, but now I've gotta know," Morgan said. White teeth flickered sharp. "Do you purr, too?"

The distant, dizzy remnants of Alex's dignity dragged at least three answers to that back into the dirt.

"… No?" Alex said once it became clear there would be nothing else they could muster.

"I don’t believe you for a second." Morgan grinned. It was a miracle they were maintaining eye contact with them. "I am absolutely going to use this against you, you know that."

Alex could not remember if they could purr. Probably they could, though, they could do anything, take anything, conquer anything.

They turned back down into to pillow and disappeared into black with a feeling like falling.

Waiting in the void was Morgan's voice, each perturbation of air resonating perfectly, meaning nothing.

"Do lizards do that too, the pupil thing? No, no, I'll check it when you're actually asleep, don't think I'm letting you up so easy."

Sounds as standing waves in the air, in Morgan's chest, in Alex's bones.

"But you might actually be out now."

Warmth changed from a dense crushing to something lighter, wrapping every edge and threatening to carry them away.

"There you go. Was that so hard?"

Nothing was.

[inthenightgarden31]

Young Love

Sometimes I really envy those who get to experience the emotion of love at such a young innocent age. An age where nothing really matters except your results on the most recent test. An age when the world is still unknown and yet to be discovered. An age of innocence and purity. I like to think that young love is one of the best emotions to experience. Growing up together, spending a lot of free time together and having fun with no weight on your shoulders. Even at a the small age 16 I find myself resenting those able to feels the blissful ignorance. I still have time to be able to give and receive love later but why do I deeply long to feel it as much as I do? Maybe because I’m scared I’ll never be able to love as much as I can now? Or that social media increases my want to feel such a strong and over-whelming emotion? An emotion able to break barriers and disrupt existence. An emotion with no restriction. Love must be a strong emotion to feel no matter what age you are but to me young love allows people to devote themselves entirely to their lover: allows people to forget the hardships of life that one can experience in adolescence, letting people have brief escape from the horror of reality. Maybe that’s why I long for love so much at my lowly age. A distraction from my fears of the future. I believe love must be the greatest and earth moving emotion that a human can ever get the pleasure to experience, according to the books I’ve read and the songs I’ve listened to. An emotion that allows us to embrace the unknown future with a brave smile laced upon our lips. An emotion that unknowingly places rose tinted glasses on a person making them see the world through a new lens.

Ironically I have a love hate relationship with the emotion of love. The want of this engulfing emotion to take control of my life being the love and the distain of not being able to encounter the emotion being the hatred. However I also hold some hatred towards me not being able to pursue this emotion with more enthusiasm. My lack of capability to talk about my emotions holds me back from uncovering new emotions. Holds me back from being able to express my feelings to those who I feel a certain fondness towards and seeing my possible short lived future with them.

For those out there like me suffering from loneliness I highly suggest the song EVERYTHING by The Black Skirts as being able to capture the consuming emotion of love. Not young love just love. And for the people reading this in relationships who desperately want to know what everlasting solitude feels like I suggest the song Nobody by Mitski which encapsulates the forlorn that being without a significant other in a place containing overflowing couples that never fail to remind me of the desolate state of emotion I’m unable to escape from. Flooding my head at times of the day when it’s unnecessary, making it hopeless to try pushing the inescapable wave of thought out.

This being said I do think there is a beauty in being alone and the peace of mind it brings about in you however how much alone time is too much? Enough that you get used to your own company and speak to yourself just a slight bit too often? Enough that after a long social interaction it takes you a 3 hour nap to recover from it? Even though being alone often when your young means that it’s easier for you to adjust when you move out it also means that you’re depriving yourself of what it means to be an adolescent teen like such emotions as love.

Young love is a rare emotion that some come across and unfortunately I’m not one of the lucky ones. Although its sometimes nice to picture what it’ll feel to love at my age, in the end it leaves you melancholy thinking about what you’re missing out on. However on the other hand being at such a young age allows yourself time to love in the future.