#clerk of oblivion

[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Track of the day // Fortunato Durutti Marinetti - Clerk Of Oblivion

[yandere-daydreams]

On my knees begging for A sexdollau! Capitano, daydreams please it’d be so cool and hot of you to do that <3

tw - unhealthy relationships, size-kinks, possessive behavior, mentions of murder/violence, and slight manipulation.

i think he'd be a lot like the other Harbingers - with a little inspiration from models like Itto and Morax, for just a little monster-fucker flare. he's a luxury droid, of course, running his users a small fortune in monthly repair costs and clothes tailored to fit his generous proportions, but you're willing to make sacrifices for the things you love, and the dozens of hours of overtime and straight month of ramen are worth it when he arrives on your doorstep, when you realize that he has to duck to make it through your doorstep, that the rumors about stretch-induced hospitalizations and beds broken through apartment walls might not have been entirely founded in fiction. not that you're complaining. if you didn't want a monster of a robot whose dick could leave you comatose, you wouldn't have spent your life savings on one.

and he is a monster, in more ways than one. you've lost track of how many hours you've spent straddling his mast-like face while his long, tapered, pitch-black tongue fucks you into overstimulated oblivion, but he never really drops the act, never really gives you the impression that you're living with something that isn't a dark, foreboding creature from the depths of a world you don't know. he rarely speaks, but when he does, it's in clipped phrases, words growled and grumbled from behind nonexistent lips. you're sure he'd give you space if you ever asked him to, but he likes to be near you, to pull you into his lap or prop you up on his shoulder whenever you take him out to run errands and he decides you've already walked far enough, for today. he's not supposed to be a security unit, not like Xiao or Ganyu, but you think he's protective of you, that he thinks of you as some little, delicate baby bird or lost kitten that he has to keep as close as possible, lest you wander away from him and get yourself killed. which, considering the fact that the top of your head barely reaches his shoulders, doesn't not make sense. his precaution is probably the only thing standing between you and half a dozen broken ribs.

and, if you're being honest, you can't really bring yourself to mind. you never thought you lived in an especially unsafe neighborhood, but it feels like the entire world is becoming a more dangerous place, that everyone - from the nice clerk you helped your checkout last time you bought groceries to the neighbor who always made sure to smile whenever you passed by - is on the verge of turning up as a some dismembered, disemboweled body. you never thought of yourself as the kind of person to take the android who spends every night bouncing you on a ridged cock as long and twice as thick as your forearm everywhere you go, but it's so nice to have him nearby, and it's so reassuring just to be able to feel his silent presence behind you, even if you know he'd never actually hurt a fly. he's always been so gentle with you, after all. he's always treated you like something delicate, something in need of his quiet guardianship.

you're absolutely sure - whether or not you ask him to, he'd do anything just to keep you safe.

[thatsthewrongwallcraig]

Training Wheels

Summary: It’s all or nothing on this Sunday night…

Pairing: virgin!Gabriel x nurse!fem!Reader

Word Count: - 3.6k

Content Warnings: Psych Ward Smut 18+!, Unprotected P In V, Cock-Warming, Gabe Eventually Losing His V-Card, Hints Of Body Worship, Nipple Sucking, Reader Is Having A Lil’ Breakdown, Angsty On Reader’s Part, Crying, Hurt/Comfort But The Other Way Around This Time, So Much Unintentional Manipulation, Gabe’s Delusions Gaining A Lot Of Momentum, Oh The Co-Dependency, Awkward Idiots In Love

A/N: *inaudible screeching* The grand final 🖤

Find The Other Parts Here!

Tagging the horny horde:

@crypticsewerslut @quicksilversg1rl @cc-luvr @icarus-star @milaeth @roryculkinsgf @spookyorchid @arch1viste @whoareyoi @angelsanarchy @blueberrypancakesworld @rocketqueen-world @lifelessvessel @doddernix @svgarcaine @amayalul @basementgrl222 @kristennero-wallacewellsver @iiheartsai @fan-goddess @shady-the-simp

I love everything you do

When you call me fucking dumb for the stupid shit I do

Wanna ride my bike with you

Fully undressed, no training wheels left for you

And I'll pull them off for you

- Training Wheels By Melanie Martinez

Sunday evening, the clock gradually ticked towards 10:30 P.M.

Tick tack. Tick tack. Tick tack. The clock hand moved a tiny bit further with every second that passed by with the dull, metallic sound echoing in your ears whilst your teeth nibbled around the aluminum edge of your halfway-empty Red Bull can. Everything was as usual yet nothing felt like it did before this weekend. Something had changed, shifted deep within you and it felt as if all that was oozing out onto the cold, loveless and gray linoleum floors of Ward 4 now. Borderline paranoid, you felt caught by everybody who had looked at you today. The clerk, the lovely, elderly lady in front of you in line at the supermarket and especially your colleagues from the day shift you took over from…it was in their eyes, a tell-tale flicker of judgment and disgust towards you. The only reaction you deserved for your actions and that you were well aware of. However, you couldn’t stop, couldn’t save either of you especially not sweet Gabriel from the thrashing hunger festering in your insides.

It corrupted your senses from the inside out, taking over in moments when you should’ve applied better judgment to stop this thing from getting out of control. Instead, you had watched it derailing further and further with every longingly stolen kiss, every brush over your fingers against his skin and every needy, little moan of his you had soaked up oh so willingly, allowing it to fill your very own emptiness and to patch up all the putrescent holes in your heart little by little.

The metallic clanking of your bottom teeth against the silver and blue aluminum can nearly entranced you as it mixed in with the clacking of the clock behind you. Gnawing away onto your bottom lip, the insides of your cheeks or your cuticles soon hadn’t been enough stimulation anymore, not enough dull repetition for your racing mind to zone out to it and now that little, chewed-up can was your lifeline. Maybe you should just quit your job already, hand in your two-weeks-notice and fuck right off. Gabriel would be in shambles, yes, and so would you, but you’d get over it in time…no? Wouldn’t you? Eventually, Gabe would be back on track too, maybe he’d forget you and everything that happened here over the years, maybe it all would fade into blissful oblivion in a med-induced haze that would keep him calm and sedated enough to be happy again.

No, stop, what the fuck? What were you thinking? There was no way you could just weasel your own ass out of this before it all blew up in your face. This situation here was your fuck-up and yours all alone, poor Gabe had nothing to do with you being too damn dense and full of yourself to do your job, your catastrophic shortcomings. With your back slightly swinging back and forth in your chair, you bit down harder on the can, teeth digging dents into the metal whilst a deep sight rolled over your tongue.

“Such a pretentious little fuck…” You groaned to yourself and very much at yourself somewhere between laughing and crying out about the sheer absurdity of it all.

Right underneath the thin cotton fabric of your mint-green scrubs, you felt the material of carefully picked lingerie smooth against your skin.

Black lace sewn in between satin straps and little bows to form an intricate design, the good shit that you only dug from your closet for the worthy occasions. Thinking about it, the last time you had worn that black lace set in particular was months ago on one of the few nights you’d allowed yourself to get carried away at the bar. A few gin tonic’s down the line, a shallow conversation with the dude right there with you at the counter and the very next thing you knew was a very sloppy and below-average fuck in a creaky toilet stall.

From toilet stalls to psych ward dorms… wow, really fucking your way upwards, huh? Your bottom lip quivered against the cold metal as you noticed yourself blinking for the first time in minutes, eyes burning in dehydration as you straightened your back and kept your eyes shut for a moment, allowing a layer of moisture to soothe the burning sensation. With your senses turned inward, it seemed like glaring right at the scene of the crime. You felt the war raging inside of your chest, the need to get your shit together fighting the urge to just swipe Gabriel off his shaky feet and have him your way, professional scrubs rubbing against seductive lace at any given moment tonight.

“Fuck this shit.” Letting your shoulders slump down, you reluctantly opened your eyes back to the cold, white light of Ward 4.

It was now or never. By tomorrow you had a few days off to recover before you’d start your next cycle of night shifts next Friday and, perhaps, by then all the tension would be gone, swallowed up by the unwelcoming smell of disinfectant and bleach cleaners emitting from sterile walls. The possibility of Gabe cracking under the nosey questioning of his therapists wasn’t too far off as well and you felt your stomach coiling up at the thought of it going south like this. You had to make a decision sooner than later, that much you knew, and you tried to get yourself to move by emptying out the can of sugary-sweet energy drink. The bubbly liquid gushed down your throat leaving an aftertaste that indicated dental damage and heart failure but that didn’t faze you just in the slightest, already way too uptight with the thought of what you were about to do.

“It’ll be fine…”, You muttered to yourself, fingers rubbing over your slightly sore eyes, “He wants it…fuck, craves it and you want it, too. Consensual, right? Nobody has to know…”

Haphazardly pep-talking yourself through it was a weak attempt but better than just freezing into your chair, allowing hesitation and anxiety to gradually knock the air from your lungs with every passing minute.

“Everything will be fine…”, You breathed out aloud but continued the rest of the sentence in your thoughts, “Everything will be fine as soon as you feel his lips on yours, washing all that scum out of your brain…it’ll all just go away…Gabe will make it go away…”

Repeating that to yourself over and over again in your mind, you pulled yourself out of the bureau chair, your legs nearly faltering upon the first hasty steps down the hallway.

“Gabe?”, You softly made yourself known by a few knocks against his door, “Can I come in?”

“Sure!” Gabriel quipped right back from the other side, the jolly smile on his lips already audible to you.

“Hey…” You reciprocated his smile with a rather cranky one of yours after you stepped into his room, the light on his nightstand somberly illuminating the walls in a warm shine.

“Are you…okay?”, He asked softly, putting the book down from his hands whilst scooting closer to the edge of his mattress, “Your face, it’s a bit pale, if I may say so.”

“I’m…I-...uh..”; You desperately tried to get something coherent out of your mouth but your voice was breaking and trailing off with every shaky attempt, “I- I..fuck. My head, so full of thoughts.”

The last mumbled words trickled from your lips and with them, everything felt like falling out of control simultaneously, a sniffled sob breaking free from your lungs whilst white-hot tears started rolling down your cheeks.

“Oh, no….no,no,no… what’s going on?” Gabriel stammered in an overwhelmed hectic, practically jumping from the bed and rushing towards your trembling form to cradle you in a warm and impossibly close embrace.

“It’s not your fault…none of this is, fuck…”, It just cascaded out of your mouth without any aim to your words, “I fucked up, Gabe. We shouldn’t..none of this should’ve happened…”

Your breathless cries got muffled by the soft fabric of his shirt that covered his torso, long sleeves pulled up to his knuckles for maximum comfort.

“Why would you say something like that?”, Gabe inquired, the former ease and happiness drawn from his tone, “You said…you said that you love me. W- what’s wrong about that now?”

“Nothing, Gabriel…nothing is wrong about that, I promise you, I promise. It’s just…I fucked things up for both of us, angel face, I really did.” Trying to catch your breath, you pushed your head into his embrace, helplessly nuzzling your face into the curve of his shoulder, lips brushing over his skin right atop the collar while you breathed him in.

“No…no, no, no…you didn’t mess up anything. Didn’t mess me up, only made me better…is me loving you not making anything better?” You knew that he only intended to help but right now his words cut even deeper into you.

“Gabe…Gabriel…please, it has nothing to do with that. It’s the fact that we’re trapped in here until someone finds out and then we’re fucked. Fucked, Gabe, fucked!” Your fingers clawed at his sides while you whimpered into the crook of his neck.

“Nobody will find out, I promise. I-...I’ll get better and then I’m going to get out of here and…and then we can go wherever we want, yeah?” Gabriel was fighting with his own tears at this point, his voice brittle and trembling.

Unironically and in a rather cruel way this posed very much as the only option in which things could perhaps, somehow work out…if Gabriel, in fact, got better, better in taking his meds, better in not lashing out like a little boy, and much much much better at lying to his therapists.

“You gonna get better, yeah?” Gabe nodded into the embrace, carefully guiding you away from the door behind you to gingerly sit you down on the bed next to him, the mattress still warm from his body resting there prior to all this.

“Hey, look at me.”, He requested in a soft tone and you did, eyes meeting his shyly, “I’m going to get better, pinky promise. Then, I’ll get out of here…we’ll work it out but don’t underestimate me.”

A mischievous glint flickered through his eyes as a smile tugged at his lips for them to slightly curl upwards.

“I’d never…” You sniffled, wiping the last vagrant tears from your face, breathing heavily.

“Good. Then I need you to trust me to handle some things. Do you trust me?” His gaze was soft yet stern with anticipation toward your answer.

“Yeah, I-...I trust you.” You nodded, validating your words.

“Okay, good. Then we’ll work it out somehow.” Gabe inhaled deeply before mentally washing all the anxiety out of his body by exhaling again, a learned therapy skill… and a good one at that.

Just like two nights ago, Gabriel raised his hand up to his lips, mimicking the movements of a key turning in a lock before tossing it to the side.

“Nobody will hear a single thing about this, I promise. Nobody but you.” Gabe smiled before leaning in, planting a tender kiss to your lips as his hands searched for yours.

With the welcoming feeling of his plush lips against yours, you practically melted into his caress, your fingers being guided by Gaberiel’s to the seam of his sweater, invited to slip them right underneath the cozy fabric and that you did. Your fingers searched hungrily for the warmth of his body, the sensation of his incredibly soft skin under your fingertips getting soaked up by you immediately.

“It’s going to be okay…I just know it. Come here, been waiting and thinking about you all day long.” Gabe hummed against your mouth, eliciting a soft smile to form around yours.

“It’s gotten kinda hard to think about anything else lately…” You confessed, the palms of your hands cupping his sides whilst slowly wandering upwards.

“I could say that I’m sorry about that but that would be me lying to you.”, He laughed out softly, the tip of his nose stroking upwards over the bridge of yours until his lips gingerly pressed down on your forehead, peppering a playful wash of smooches to it, “And I don’t do that, no no.”

Just the way you had told yourself, being around him, finally close to him like that again, flushed all the bad feelings and thoughts out of your system, your chest filling with a comfortable warmth instead and you took every single shred of comfort you possibly could from him.

“I missed you, Gabe. Everything out there suddenly feels weird…meaningless if I’m not in here with you, you know?” You didn’t expect him to understand and in some way, you felt sorry for him to mention the world outside the facility.

“Even in here, it’s pretty dull without you now. Don’t get me started on how boring the day shift staff is…and the food? Ugh…” His comment made the both of you chuckle for a moment.

“Maybe I can sneak in a proper chocolate milkshake for you next week, Gabe.” At that he pulled his head away from you, searching for your gaze with glacier-blue eyes sparkling in nothing but pure joy.

“You’d do that for me?” You nodded vigorously.

“Of course, I would. Can’t let you hang in here without a little treat, no?”, You smiled back, the anxiety-fueled thoughts from not so long ago rapidly crumbling into oblivion, leaving your entire body feeling elevated with a slowly forming desire for more of him, “Speaking of it, I might be bringing a little treat with me for you already…”

Gabriel's eyes grew even wider in almost boyish excitement.

“Uh, show me, pretty please?” He quipped, his smile turning into a slightly agape grin that showed off his pearly whites.

“How about you feel it first?”, You couldn’t help yourself but to bite down on your bottom lip a little, “How about you sneak that pretty hand of your right underneath my shirt and let your fingers wander up a bit, hm?”

“Oh…okay…” A tell-tale surge of red crept up into Gabe’s cheeks as he reached out to slip his hand to where you guided it, the tender tips of his fingers caressing over your stomach up to the curve of your breasts, reaching the lacey-soft fabric causing him to suck the air in harshly.

“That…uh, that feels pretty.” He stammered a little clumsily.

“It feels pretty?” You snickered, watching the color in his face change into an even deeper tint of red.

“Yeah, uhm, or not?” His fingers explored the piece of cloth further, grazing over the plenty of satin strings cupping the rounds of your cleavage and stroking over the plenty of small bowtie details.

“Well, if it already feels pretty to you, I bet it’ll look pretty as well.” You noticed it getting harder to hold yourself back from not simply jumping him, but you kept it together, drawing your hands from his back to pull the top of your scrubs off your torso.

“It sure does look pretty, too!” Gabriel stammered coyly, looking right at your breasts, mesmerized by the sight in front of him.

With a sly grin tugging at your lips, you tossed the top to the ground before leaning in and whispering: “The panties are just as nice, I can assure you!”

“You…you put all that on f-for me?” You nodded your head after the question had left his lips.

“Sure did…I- I uhm…”, You started stumbling over your own words a little as well, “I wanted to make it a little special for you, you know.”

“To make what special?” Gabriel blurted right out and with that, you felt the heat climbing into your cheeks too.

Oh, good lord, you swallowed awkwardly whilst looking at him, the words in your throat clumping into an embarrassed, dry lump.

“I…”, You haphazardly cleared your throat, “I…I’d like to be with you tonight, Gabe. I mean, i-if that’s what you want as well, of course.”

For an excruciatingly long moment, Gabriel simply stared at you rather dumbfounded, lips halfway agape and eyebrows softly knit together.

“Do you-?” You cut him off right there and then.

“Yes!” It shot out of your mouth, your free hand grabbing for the collar of his sweater to pull him towards you.

In an uncoordinated mess out of busily fumbling limbs, Gabe tilted into your front, heavy breaths filling the room whilst the two of you shimmied out of the remaining clothes until he halted, resting between your legs, his skin glowing in a warm hue with the soft light emitting from the lamp on his nightstand. You watched his former confidence crumble away, eyes trained on your lingerie and cheeks colored in a deep red as Gabriel discovered the little special that your slip held.

“Oh, that’s…inviting…” He murmured, his face leaning in to shamelessly latch right onto one of your lace-covered nipples.

Exhaling a pleasure-filled moan, you allowed your head to loll into the flat, hospital-like pillow, a warm rush washing through your entire body as you felt his mouth closing down around your perked-up nub, the warm and wet tip of his tongue lapping at it.

“Thought you might like that.” You pushed out from between slightly trembling lips, your eyes helplessly fluttering shut whilst you felt him pushing his lap closer to your exposed cunt in that slightly slutty, crotch-free string of yours.

This time, unlike last night, you endorsed the thought of wrapping your legs around his waist to pull him into you, however, before you guided Gabriel to push into you, you let your hands roam along his neck to his head, fingers grazing through glossy hazel-brown hair and carefully asking: “You okay with this?”

“Uh-huh…”, Gabe whined back, the tip of his pulsing cock prodding right between your thoroughly soaked folds and against your entrance, “Wanna feel you so bad, please!”

His pleading tone vibrated against your breast, pushing your senses right over the edge to pull him into you.

“Oh…oh, fuck, oh fuck, damn…shit…”, The words fell from lips in an aimless avalanche, “God, fuck, you’re so warm, shit…f-feels so fucking good…”

You bit down on your bottom lip feeling him thrusting into you, stretching you out just right with his hard-on, a ripple of brain-deafening bliss jolting through you.

“There, there…” Your hands shot down to his hips to hold him in place for a moment, calming him down as you felt him twitching inside you already.

“Fuck, sorry, feels so so so good…” Gabriel mewled with his temple pressed against your collarbone.

“It’s okay, angel face, don’t you worry. Feels good for me too.” You assured him, still holding him in place, cock-warming him for a little while, allowing him to get used to the feeling of being nestled into you down to his shaft.

“Hmhmm…wanna make you happy and satisfied, too.” Gabe whimpered, trying to move in your grasp but to no avail.

“Oh, don’t you worry about any of that, angel face. Just enjoy yourself, hm?” You lovingly cooed into his hairline, reluctantly loosening your grip for him to roll his hips into you at his own pace again.

“Mhmmm…. ‘m trying to, god, fuck….you feel so fucking good!” His warm breath breezed over your lace-covered tits.

“Such a good boy for me.” You huffed out, calves still tightly wrapped around his hips.

“Your good boy!” Gabriel groaned right back, thrusting into you again.

“Hmhm, you’re my good boy, Gabriel.” You encouraged him to let himself go wild with your body for his own pleasure and that he did.

“L-love you so much, shit…mmmhmmm…” You didn’t miss his cock pulsing and twitching against your walls, thick, pent-up ropes of his cum filling your insides as Gabriel’s body turned rigid above yours during one, final stroke, “Oh, fuck, so warm and tight...”

Breathing in deeply, he very much collapsed onto you, hiding his flushed face in the crook of your neck.

“I love you too, Gabe.” You planted a deep kiss on his slightly sweaty forehead, the salty taste of it slowly seeping into your mouth.

“We’re gonna get out of here somehow, no?” Gabriel murmured into your skin, nuzzling his lips right onto your pulse point.

For a moment as the painful reality of things hit you again, you swallowed hard, moving your body to cradle his.

“Yeah, we gonna make it out of here somehow…”

[old-antecedent]

Do Not Mantle A Daedric Prince

You claim to wish to be a Prince. You know not what you ask. Let me inform you on the matter. Some, in their study of the Heroes of Tamriel, come upon a strange episode in the tale of the Hero of Kvatch. Others, in dealings with Sheogorath, hear odd claims of presence or agency during the Oblivion Crisis. This shall not be a lesson on that period. Instead, young aspirant, let it be a warning against trying to take the place of a Prince.

Souls are primarily to blame for your folly. Doubtless, you know the difference between the black and white Souls that litter your Arena. You have potentially even seen items enchanted with Daedric Souls. This is not quite accurate. Daedra have a Vestige which returns to the Void upon their death, should they not be made into an enchantment by some foolish wizard. This Vestige then travels back to its home plane before reconstituting itself. If you have ever encountered the same daedroth after killing it previously, you now know how.

A daedra can at most create a Vestige, even if their target would normally have an aedric Soul. Most see devoting oneself to a Prince as unwise for this reason. Your Soul will be forfeit upon your death, and even if they wished to keep you around, all a Prince could offer is a Vestige. This is a miserable existence for something that once had a Soul. A Vestige simply cannot do the same things a Soul can. The most common reaction is an endless cycle of painfully falling to pieces and reconstituting, usually over a period of months.

For my part, those who swear themselves to me are usually thrown into the Brain Hallway. Some are powerful enough to form themselves into crawling shibboleths.

Taking this into account, Mantling a Prince is an interesting sort of torture for the mortals who achieve it. Slowly or all at once your Soul morphs into a Vestige, and then becomes an indistinguishable component of the Prince. Your self eroding away, becoming something you do not recognize, until "you" are totally gone. Sometimes, however, a mortal is of enough note that their Vestige alters the Prince in subtle ways.

This returns us to the Hero of Kvatch and Sheogorath. Now, Sheo has been mantled far more than any other prince. The Greymarch always saw him pick some hapless mortal champion to become him while he went off to be Jyggalag for his one time that era. Until the final Greymarch, the mortal would always lose and the "real" Sheo would re-manifest, usually choosing to burst from inside the unfortunate sod in a sort of comedy routine. The mortal would be completely absorbed into Sheo's Vestige, maybe with a few traits picked up that made the Mad God seem a touch more neurotic for a few weeks. Haskill, Sheo's main chamberlain, was a particularly skilled mortal clerk before being eaten. This made him stick in Sheo's craw, as he was far too orderly, and he was quickly coughed up. Seeing this as an opportunity, Sheo put Haskill in charge of the "boring" aspects of running the Shivering Isles.

For the final Greymarch, however, the Mad God happened to pick a Hero. Not one half as strong as Ysgramor, mind, but one of great significance nonetheless. This Hero was enough to repel the Greymarch, breaking Jyggalag's curse. We held a "sorry we turned you into the opposite of your domain for millennia" party afterward, and Jyg was pretty cool about the whole thing.

More importantly, this meant there was no directly returning Sheogorath to pop out of the Hero of Kvatch. You may think this is your "in". Simply find a prince in need of a grand transition, step in and offer yourself up, and that's your ticket. Not so fast. Even if you were a Hero, you should check what Sheo's like nowadays. His sense of fashion has changed slightly (whose hasn't?) but he's just the same as always. Do you think it happenstance that the Hero of Kvatch fell into the exact same behaviors and patternlessness of the old Sheogorath? Sure, he references events from the Oblivion Crisis on occasion, but that's all that remains of that particular Hero now. In a few more centuries they will either be entirely gone or have been coughed back up into a unique Vestige like Haskill.

And you can't make yourself into a new Prince either, there's no space in Godhead for that. At best you'll become a kind of weird non-Prince non-God creature, like the Ideal Masters. I suppose if you're fine with that you can pursue it, but know that almost no one will respect you.

[whump-me]

Conquest, Chapter 3: The Courtyard

Chapter 3 of Conquest, a novel-length fantasy whump story about a timid royal clerk captured by the disgraced prince who needs their help to rule their newly conquered country. This series is best read in order. Masterpost here.

Contains: fantasy setting, nonbinary whumpee, male whumper, fearful whumpee, unintentional misgendering, aftermath of torture/murder, war crimes, hunted for sport

---

Miranelis

The palace had no dungeon, much to Miranelis’s captors’ frustration. Miranelis had always thought it a clever bit of design on the part of the queen’s ancestors. Why would anyone want to put their dangerous criminals and their rulers in the same building? But it meant the Wolves were at a loss as to where to put them.

In the end, the Wolves locked them in a horse stall, after they put the poor panicked horses out of their misery. It seemed to amuse them to see Miranelis lying in the dung-soaked straw where they had tossed them. The guards outside kept making jokes about animals. Miranelis understood the words, but not the meaning—learning a language from books could only go so far. But they understood enough to get the idea. The Wolves were comparing Miranelis to the horses who had remained trapped in here for the entire brief battle, panicked out of their minds. And it was not a favorable comparison.

They didn’t know long they had been in the stinking stable. They watched the sun rise and set through the cracks in the wood. During the day, they could see enough to know exactly how filthy they had gotten. At night, it was mercifully dark, but they couldn’t see where the dung was—the horses’ and their own—when they searched for a place in the straw to lie down and claim a few merciful hours of oblivion.

The Wolves had chained the stall door shut from the outside. Miranelis could have climbed over it if they had tried. They didn’t try. They knew what was waiting for them outside. Staying in the stall was by far the better option.

Every couple of days, someone tossed in a few scraps of food—mostly hard strips of cured meat that hurt their teeth to chew and left a stinging feeling on their tongue. A few times, it was a handful of undercooked beans from the palace pantries, still hard enough to crunch between their teeth. Once, it was a scoop of mushy rice, dropped directly onto the filthy straw. That was still better than the days their captors left them to starve.

And still, they knew their situation was better than they had any right to hope for. They knew it would only get worse from here, once their captors opened the door.

After enough sunrises and sunsets had passed that they had long since lost track of time, their good fortune came to an end. They cringed back against the far wall when they heard the chain rattle. The door swung open, revealing a pair of Wolves with unfriendly, yellow-toothed grins.

These were different Wolves than the ones who used to peek over the stall door periodically for the first few days to have a laugh. They wore the same terrifying hoods pulled down low over their heads—made from the head of a skinned wolf, with the ears sitting high up on their head and the upper jaw resting just above their eyes. But one of these Wolves had a scar that ran diagonally from one eye all the way to the opposite jaw. The other was built like a bull, practically as wide as the stall door. His hands looked meaty enough to crush Miranelis’s skull.

They laughed and spit short, harsh words in their language. Miranelis didn’t recognize the words; they guessed they were insults too crude to be printed in the books they had learned the language from. When they were done amusing themselves at the sight of Miranelis, they prodded Miranelis forward with the points of their thick, ugly iron swords. Miranelis stumbled forward on shaking legs as the blades tore small holes in their filthy shawl and the tunic below. The blades cut all the way down to their undertunic to pierce their bare skin. The blades jabbed at Miranelis faster and faster until Miranelis sped into a jog. They crossed the pasture, its grass grown tall with no animals to chew it short, and approached the palace steps.

When Miranelis had first come to the palace, the gleaming orange shimmerstone steps, which had seemed then to rise as high as the sun, had been the grandest sight they had ever seen. In mere months, the steps had become commonplace. They weren’t as high as the sun, not even close. There were a scant dozen of them, and they served as little more than an obstacle on their way in and out of the building that had become their school, their workplace, and their home all at once.

Now the steps no longer looked familiar. Bloodstains turned the bright stone dark. The wolf’s-head flag of Kyollen Naskor rose where the Danelor gilded sun should have been.

The Wolves didn’t allow Miranelis time to pause. Miranelis jogged up the steps at swordpoint, gulping in air as their lungs ached with the effort. This was more exertion than they had gotten in weeks.

The doors to the palace gaped wide, like a mouth hanging slack. The smell of blood and rot wafted out. Miranelis gagged.

Snickering at Miranelis’s reaction, the Wolves slowed as they walked through the palace halls, allowing Miranelis the chance to see what had become of their home. The grand tapestries, some of which had lasted ten generations, lay in ruins on the floor, matted with old blood. Weapons lay discarded here and there on the broken tile floors. They weren’t the ugly swords of the Wolves, but the slimmer blades Miranelis was used to seeing when the Queen’s Guard sparred in the courtyard on summer afternoons. Occasionally, they passed chunks of refuse that looked organic, buzzing with flies and rank with rot. Miranelis tried not to look.

They stopped at the doors to the courtyard. The Wolf with the scarred face threw open the slim doors that led outside, while the bull kept his sword pressed firmly into the small of Miranelis’s back. As the door swung open, the sword jabbed harder, but Miranelis didn’t move. As soon as they got a look at the horror in front of them, they forgot how to move their legs. If the Wolves had threatened to run them through unless they took a single step forward then and there, Miranelis didn’t think they would have been able to do it.

The courtyard had been large and airy, with stone paths crisscrossing the green space, and fruit trees planted here and there in case anyone wanted a bite with their lunch. The fruit was there for the taking for anyone in the palace, from the child prince to the youngest servant. It had been a popular location for lunch, especially in the days between the chill of winter and the worst heat of summer. Miranelis had spent many a noon hour on one of those stone benches, eating a light bowl of greens and watching the guards practice their bladework with one another.

The day the Wolves had come, the trees had just been starting to bud. Now they were in full flower, their thick, fragrant blossoms ready to turn into ripe fruits later in the summer. This year, there would be no one to eat them.

The smell of the flowers did nothing to cover up the stench of rot. It only added a discordantly sweet note, like a bottle of perfume dumped on a pile of shit. And no matter how much Miranelis tried to fix their gaze on the beautiful blossoms, the rest of the scene pulled their eyes down again and again.

The invaders had cleaned up the bodies inside the palace—most likely because the stink would have become unbearable otherwise. They hadn’t done the same here in the courtyard. And the more Miranelis looked—even though they were trying their hardest not to look—the more they suspected, with a hard knot growing in the pit of their curdled stomach, that it wasn’t just because the smell could dissipate more easily here in the open air. Inside, the defenders had died in the chaos of battle. Miranelis hadn’t seen it, but they had heard it, and the sounds had been enough to paint a nauseatingly clear picture. Here in the courtyard, however, the deaths looked deliberate.

Along one wall, headless bodies overlapped one another in a row, like the enemy warriors had lined them up and sliced off their heads in one extended strike. That was the easiest of the scenes to stomach. Blades pinned bodies through the trunks of the trees—a couple through the heart or the neck, but most through the hands, the belly… anywhere that would have let them suffer for hours before finally succumbing to death. Not too far from Miranelis’s feet, two soldiers lay locked in a steel embrace that could only have made sense if the Wolves had forced them to fight one another. And on the stone bench where Miranelis used to sit with Havedrial to eat, a body lay splayed, cut open from neck to groin, organs piled like curiosities on the ground. As Miranelis watched, a crow flew down and pecked experimentally at the meat, then—perhaps finding not fresh enough for its liking—flew off in disgust.

Some of the bodies belonged to the few soldiers who had remained stationed at the palace. Danelor didn’t have a large army to begin with, and they had lent most of their soldiers to their allies who were in more danger from Kyollen Naskor—or so they had thought. Still more wore the uniforms of the Queen’s Guard, who never left the palace grounds except when the queen did, but whose role was more ornamental than anything else. They learned breathtakingly quick sequences of strikes that drew a crowd at the summer demonstrations, but from what Miranelis understood, not many of their techniques could be translated to battle.

But some of the bodies belonged to maids and cooks. Miranelis thought they caught a glimpse of the distinctive blond-and-silver hair of the Hestos ambassador. One of the bodies pinned to a tree with a sword through the gut wore the shawl of a clerk. Their head was tilted forward, so Miranelis couldn’t see their face. But only Gaerhamin’s hair had been that long. The last time they had seen each other, Miranelis had been racing after Havedrial. Gaerhamin had called after them. They had said—

Miranelis doubled over, hands braced on their knees. Hot vomit spilled up out of their throat and onto the bloodstained grass. They hadn’t eaten anything in days, so nothing came up but acid. But even after there was nothing left to come out, Miranelis retched, and retched, and retched.

“Move,” the Wolf behind them barked—Miranelis understood that word. When Miranelis didn’t, the Wolf kicked them roughly in the back, sending them sprawling. Their own hot vomit soaked into the front of their tunic. Not that it could make it any filthier that already was.

“This is where the others took the ones they wanted to have fun with,” the Wolf with the diagonal scar said. His nasty grin made the scar twist and gape. “The selfish daffodils only left one toy for us, though. That’s you. We’ll have to make you last.”

That word couldn’t possibly have been daffodils, Miranelis thought through their haze of horror and fear. Bastards, probably, or something like. If they got out of this alive, their mind went on, as a hysterical giggle rose up in their throat, they would have to personally update the language textbooks.

A thick, hairy hand closed around Miranelis’s wrist and pulled them to their feet. The slimy warmth of someone else’s skin against theirs—a stranger’s skin—was repellent, sending shivers of revulsion up their arm all the way to the shoulder. The touch was so unnerving that they barely noticed the upward motion until the Wolf nearly wrenched their arm out of its socket. Their feet scrambled for purchase on the grass. They found their footing, and the Wolf mercifully let go.

The two Wolves stood together and looked at Miranelis, at their clothing streaked with blood and dung and vomit, at the fear that was no doubt written plainly across their face. Miranelis reached for control—they were not a child. But they might as well have been one, cowering before these two hulking creatures. The Wolves wrinkled their noses and made a show of waving away the stink—as if Miranelis were the worst-smelling thing in this charnel pit of a courtyard.

“You like to run from a fight,” said the one built like a bull, “so let’s see how fast you can be.” He nodded to his companion, who pulled a heavy-looking bow off his back and notched an arrow. The arrow was an ugly thing, with jagged notches all down the metal point. It was an arrow meant to rip and tear on its way in, and again on the way out.

“Better start running,” the bull said with a low laugh. “My ugly friend here isn’t the best shot, but even he could hit you from here.”

“And if you don’t get moving,” the scarred one picked up where the other had left off, “I’ll shoot you in the kneecaps and make you wriggle for us. We want some fun, and shooting a target that won’t move is no fun at all.”

Miranelis wished they could tell themselves they had mistranslated something. They knew they hadn’t. The scarred man pointed the arrow at their face, then lowered it to aim at their knee.

Miranelis didn’t remember how to twitch their smallest finger, let alone run. They felt rooted to the ground as surely as any tree. But their body must have remembered things their mind had forgotten, because as the scarred Wolf’s hand moved to release the arrow, Miranelis found themselves running. Their legs were as wobbly as a newborn foal. After weeks of huddling in the horse stall, every step they took felt like falling forward. They knew with a sickening certainty that eventually they would lose their momentum and fall flat on their face. Again.

If an arrow didn’t catch them in the back first.

But whatever instinct inside that was propelling them didn’t care. Nor did he care that they were proving themselves to be a coward yet again, and giving their enemy exactly what they wanted. All they cared about was earning one more harsh and ragged breath, one more lungful of air that stank of rotten flesh.

“That’s more like it!” one of the Wolves crowed from behind them. An arrow whizzed past to bury itself in the earth, a hand’s breadth away from Miranelis’s foot.

The problem with running for one’s life in the palace courtyard, of course, was that there was nowhere to go. The palace walls enclosed the courtyard on all sides. This had always seemed like a vast space to Miranelis. But now, with the Wolves chuckles behind them and another arrow whizzing past their ear, it seemed smaller than their cozy bedroom in the workers’ wing of the palace. The far wall loomed closer and closer. But Miranelis didn’t dare stop, or even slow down. If they stopped, they would fall. If they stopped, they would die.

They slammed into the doors on the far side. They knew the doors would be locked—their enemy wouldn’t have given them so easy a way out. They tried anyway, shaking the handles, rattling the doors on their hinges. The lock didn’t budge.

A third arrow flew past to shatter the window to Miranelis’s right. For one desperate moment, Miranelis imagined climbing through. But the window, like all the palace windows, was covered in an intricate metal lacework. Miranelis knew they would never budge it in time.

They gave the door one last frantic kick.

“Better think of something else soon,” a voice behind them taunted. “Or I’ll shoot out one knee and watch you try to run on the other. You haven’t given us nearly enough fun yet.”

Their gaze darted left to right, left to right. There was nowhere to go. The slim trees that dotted the courtyard were too spaced out from one another to offer a place to hide. Even if Miranelis found the strength to climb one of them—which would mean clambering over the half-rotted bodies pinned to the trunk—it would only be a matter of filling the foliage with arrows until one hit its mark. And then it would be a long fall down to the grass—but not quite long enough to kill them. Otherwise, they might have considered it.

Havedrial had had the right idea. If only Miranelis hadn’t been such a coward.

A fourth arrow zoomed by. This time, it came close enough to brush Miranelis’s knee. When Miranelis looked down, they had a tear in their trousers where none had been before. A thin line of blood oozed up.

“That was to wake you up,” the voice called. “I won’t miss next time.”

Miranelis took off to the left. They knew they had nowhere to go. They knew they were only prolonging their own suffering. But they no longer had control of their own legs, any more than they had control of the panic zinging along their nerves or the hammering of their heart against their rib cage.

Then their toes slammed into something soft and yielding. They lost their balance and pitched forward onto the overgrown grass. They looked over their shoulder to see what had tripped them, and immediately regretted it.

It was a body. The face was half rotted away, but there was still enough flesh on the bones for Miranelis to recognize the round-faced cook. She used to bake the clerks an extra plate of tarts on the nights they spent working late.

Beyond the corpse, two pairs of fur-lined boots strolled leisurely through the grass. Miranelis didn’t look up any higher. They didn’t want to see their enemies’ faces twisted in cruel delight as they prepared to give Miranelis a slow and miserable death.

They should have taken Havedrial’s offer when they had the chance.

But even though it was too late for that, it wasn’t too late to summon a little of Havedrial’s dignity. Havedrial had died unafraid—or if they had been afraid, they hadn’t shown it. Miranelis couldn’t stop the frantic pounding of their heart or calm their racing thoughts. But they didn’t have to die like this, flat on their stomach in grass coated with dried blood, quivering like a rabbit in a hawk’s shadow.

On trembling legs, they pushed themselves up. They forced a deep breath into their lungs. They didn’t look up from the grass—if they did, if they saw the Wolves’ faces, they would come undone all over again. But they did smooth the fear off their face. They would die, but they would not die like a terrified child.

They would die like Havedrial.

Refusing to look up at the Wolves, though, didn’t block out their voices. Miranelis heard every cruel twist of laughter in agonizing clarity, and understood every word they said as they debated how to make Miranelis’s death last as long as possible. Miranelis wished they hadn’t been quite so diligent in their language studies.

Then, with the suddenness of a shadow passing across the sun, the Wolves went silent. The ruthlessly advancing groups stopped moving.

At last, Miranelis dared to look up. The wolves weren’t looking at them—not anymore. They were looking past them, across the courtyard to the door they had all come out of.

The one thing Miranelis wanted to see less than a Wolf was the thing that could scare a Wolf into silence. But they looked over their shoulder. Right away, they wished they hadn’t.

The Wolf in the doorway made the bull look like a calf. His thick black curls hung loose around his shoulders. He wore a metal breastplate where the others had none, with a medallion in the center in the shape of the stylized wolf’s head of their flag. He didn’t wear the hood all the others wore. Instead, a stylized iron wolf’s head sat where the hood would have, with a set of oversized fangs that hugged the curves of his forehead perfectly. Where the others’ fur cloaks were varying shades of gray, his was deep black with a single white stripe.

The newcomer’s dark eyes passed over the two Wolves dismissively before landing on Miranelis. They held Miranelis’s gaze, and Miranelis’s breath stopped as those two deep black pits threatened to suck them under. The newcomer’s lips thinned into a line. His brows drew down.

“This,” he muttered, “this pathetic creature is the only resource my father’s army left me?”

Miranelis’s bones turned to water at the sound of that voice, but they thought of Havedrial, and they stayed standing.

The newcomer raised his voice. “You’re done playing,” he said to his Wolves. “Clean this prisoner up and bring him to me.” He wrinkled his nose. “After he’s had a bath.”

“He’s the only prisoner they left us,” the scarred Wolf protested. “You can’t expect us to give up all our fun.”

The bull had other concerns. “This animal is the worst kind of coward. You should not allow him to pollute the air in your presence.”

For some reason, those words made the newcomer’s face twist in a terrifying half-smile. “My reputation isn’t much better than his, as I’m sure you know,” he said, “and that hasn’t stopped my Wolves from rolling over like newborn puppies for me. Although I don’t see you fawning like my new friend Gyoras, so maybe it would be worth my while to demonstrate my authority. Just so everyone knows where they stand.”

The two Wolves fell to their knees. A queasy shudder ran through Miranelis. If this man scared these two that badly, the last thing Miranelis wanted was for him to pay them any close attention.

The newcomer let out a harsh, wordless noise of irritation. “I don’t need you on your knees. I need you to obey my orders.” He gave Miranelis another skeptical once-over. “Don’t worry,” he said, “if he turns out not to be useful—which is a definite possibility—you can still have your fun.”

---

Tagged: @suspicious-whumping-egg @halloiambored @whump-in-the-closet @whump-cravings @gala1981 @sunshiline-writes @annablogsposts @whither-wander-whump

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[a-christmas-carol-from-hr]

The Marrying Kind

tw: period typical sexism

a/n: “writing the actual story” i sleep

“writing weird aus” real shit???

the shitty straights...but they’re victorian. im obsessed with my version of these guys so uh. content.

It was rare that Jorkins would invite his staff into his office for anything but work. Jacob Marley could only recall one other time in the period he had worked for him, and it was to make inquiries about a dockworker’s pretty sister. Marley, who had no pretty sister to his name, therefore could conceive of no reason as to why he was asked to come into Jorkins’ office one late November evening.

Jorkins sat behind his desk, as plump as a partridge and as smug as a lord. He gestured to the seat in front of him. A glass of port was already waiting.

“Mr. Marley! Please, sit.”

Marley did so, already calculating what this could possibly mean. If he was to be let go from the firm, surely Jorkins would not bother with the port. But why be so welcoming to a mere clerk? Was he being bribed? Had he seen something he shouldn’t? Jorkins’s embezzling was no worse than usual. What ever could be the issue?

“Thank you, sir.” Marley took the glass and sipped at it politely. Too rich for his blood. When he drank, it was cheaply. Easier to get to oblivion that way.

Jorkins made small talk on the business for a number of minutes, chatting on topics of the business and mutual contacts. Marley replied in the most proper of ways, always deferential, always polite.

It wasn’t until Jorkins had gotten warmed up from the port that he finally cut to the heart of the matter.

“Jacob, my boy, have you ever thought of marrying?”

Of all the things he expected his employer to say, he certainly hadn’t expected that.

“What?” Marley said.

Jorkins leaned back in his chair. “I have the fragment of an idea for you, my boy. A lucrative idea. There’s a girl who needs marrying, and a fortune to be gained. I simply need a free hand, and unfortunately my dear wife is disinclined to drop dead just for my sake.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know Old Fezziwig, don’t you?”

Of course he did. Everyone did. He was the jolliest of bankers this side of the Thames. Everyone liked him, which was no small feat in the world of London finance. “Yes, sir.”

“The Old Man’s clever. I cannot say the same about his boy. Bellamy. You know him?” Yes, Marley knew of him as well. A handsome, strapping lad. He lived in his wealth like a contented lapdog, having never known the pain of hunger or want. He often stood at the exchange, laughing over a jest with his other rich friends. More than one of his lot had eyed Marley’s thin frame with a smirk.

“In passing.”

“He was engaged to be married. But he’s gone and broken it off with the girl.” Jorkins pulled out a ledger from under the desk. He flipped it to an open page. “Look here.”

It was a ledger from Fezziwig’s. Marley didn’t want to know how Jorkins had gotten this. He lowered his glasses from his forehead to take a look.

“If you’ll look, my boy, you’ll see Master Fezziwig has been employees as a bookkeeper for his father. No doubt to prime him for the business.”

Marley glanced over the page. And he couldn’t help but wince.

“Pardon me speaking so candidly sir. But this is awful.”

“Hah! It’s no insult to me! The boy can’t figure! He’s made as many errors here as he’s gotten things right! And this is the nicest of pages. But look here.” Jorkins flipped ahead. “There’s a new hand starting here.”

There was indeed. Bellamy was still signing to verify the work, but the actual mathematics were being done in a new hand. The handwriting was solid, with little flourishes or fuss. The mathematics were impeccable.

“A new clerk?” Marley asked.

“No, my boy,” Jorkins explained. “It was his fiancé. She was keeping the books for him.”

Marley’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Don’t look so shocked! A woman’s brain can be just as useful as a man’s. I don’t judge on sex of money can be made from it. And money can be made from her brain. She’s a regular Ada Lovelace. I met her in passing at Fezziwig’s and she’s by far the smartest person in that firm.”

“I am sure, sir.”

“The damn fool of a boy has broken off the engagement. Something happened between the pair. Whatever it was, it was enough to leave rumors. I suspect that she’s rather in a difficult situation regarding her prospects. Currently she is living off an entailment from a dead sister, but her situation is growing dire. I made an overture to her of my thoughts, and I suspect she’d be willing. Especially since it’d give her something like employment. Lord, if she isn’t ambitious! A regular Lady MacBeth.”

“And this woman, your Lady MacBeth, you want me to marry her?”

“I’ll level with you, my boy. She’s no beauty. She’s sharp and as hard as a flint, and she hasn’t a dowry to her name. But the girl is a genius, my boy. And I want that genius. I can’t employ a girl as a clerk, but I can make use of the wife of my clerk. Besides! She is your age. I wonder if you can’t make use of her in your own way!” He chortled. Marley smiled thinly.

“Of course I’d double your pay for support of your wife, of course. A man cannot keep such a creature on a clerk’s salary alone. So what do you think, hm? Shall I ring the wedding bells?”

Marley slid his glasses up his forehead. He thought for a moment.

“I want partnership in the firm.”

Jorkins laughed. “Clever boy! A partner for a partner. Very well.”

=

And then he was engaged. Jorkins returned the next day saying the girl had agreed, and that they’d be wed as soon as the month of waiting was up.

It didn’t change much. He went to work, he went home, he found some way to amuse himself, and he went back to work. The addition of a betrothed really didn’t alter much in his day to day life. Especially because he’d not even seen the woman he was to have for better or worse. Jorkins had described her as a shrew, but Jorkins’s taste in women tended to the buxom and brainless. Marley wasn’t sure he was a reliable narrator.

He didn’t see this Ellen Scrooge until a week before he was to marry her. He’d been engaged at his desk, trying to figure out a way to manage the gaping hole in the coffers his employer had left, when the door opened. A rustle of skirts passed by his desk.

“I want to see Mr. Jorkins.” A low voice said.

“Occupied.” Marley said, thinking of the dockworker’s sister who had just gone in. “You’d best return in an…” he thought about her again. “Hour.” He estimated.

“I will not.” The voice said firmly. “Kindly give him this. I won’t be kept.”

Marley sighed and looked up.

Standing before him was a stern looking woman of about 27. Her face was young, but her hair was already tarnished a rich silver. The pallor of her hair was only set off by the dark of her dress. She was in mourning clothes, outdated mourning clothes at that. Her mouth twisted into a frown as she glared at him.

For a moment he could not breathe. And it had nothing to do with his lungs.

He took the document without speaking. She nodded sharply and then left. The scent of ink and chrysanthemum lingered behind her.

Marley blinked once. And then again. He looked down at the letter. There, in the same handwriting as had been in the ledger, was the address of one ‘E. Scrooge’.

His evening rambles took him not to Convent Garden for once. He found himself in the nicer end of the financial district, being glared at by rich toffs who had never worked a day in their life. Jorkins’s increase in pay had gone into effect the day he’d agreed to the match. Most of it had been spent on payment towards a new set of rooms, as his previous domain was hardly a place of respectability. But enough remained of the newly minted junior partner’s pay for amusement. He’d spent much of it on wine and women, but tonight he simply didn’t feel interested.

He found himself looking into a jeweler’s store with an idle eye. Perhaps he’d merely stopped to catch his breath. The jeweler looked at him questioningly, a smile on his face.

“Can I help you sir?”

It was a waste of money. He knew that. But he supposed he really shouldn’t show up to his own wedding without a ring.

“How much for that one?”

He had it sent to the address that narrow hand had scrawled on the envelope. Let her do as she will with it, he soothed himself. It really is the most practical of solutions.

=

When the day he was to be made a married man dawned, Marley noted with some surprise that it was Christmas Eve. When he mentioned it to Jorkins, the financier replied only with a laugh. It had been cheaper that day, he explained. Nobody wanted it.

A normal day of work was only shortened by an hour so that Marley could go home to his new lodgings and refresh himself. His best suit of clothes would suffice enough for this affair, even if the browns and reds of his clothes hardly seemed the most cheerful. It was going on six when he departed for Jorkins’s house. The minister would meet them there. No need for the cost of a church wedding.

He was greeted with an enthusiastic (and somewhat drunk) Jorkins at the door. “I’m glad you did not elope to the colonies!” He said with a laugh. “Come. Come. Earn your promotion.”

The blushing bride to be was hardly blushing. She stood by the window, back to the door as she looked out on the streets. It appeared that she too was reusing an existing dress, a practicality Marley appreciated. Her dress was a dark purple, barely a shade away from being black. Was that a bad omen? Marley had no idea.

She turned her silver head when Jorkins called her name. “Well, let’s not beat around the bush! There will be plenty of time for that later!” He said with a smile.

The bride kept her composure even as a flush settled in her cheeks. She didn’t like Jorkins, Marley realized with an amused smirk that he quickly hid. She was clever.

The minister was altogether too sincere for such an occasion. He waxed philosophical about the nature of the holiday and the loving vows they were about to take, evidently unaware of the nature of the deal both bride and groom were making. Their silence shook his nerves after ten minutes of sermon, and he quickly moved onto the vows.

“I will.” Said Marley.

“I will.” Said Ellen.

And that was that.

Jorkins put on a bit of a supper for the occasion. His wife, a winsome woman entirely undeserving of such a philanderer of a husband, attempted to engage the new bride in conversation. But talking to Ellen of wifely affairs was like trying to talk to stone. She gave one word replies, looking down at her hands as she spoke. Only when Jorkins engaged her in talks of business did she show some semblance of life. She was indeed as clever as he’d been told.

The end of the dinner came, and the two departed in a cab to Marley’s lodgings. What few possessions Ellen had had been sent over the night before. For all intents and purposes, they were one. At least in the eyes of the law. There was the matter of…consummation.

Jorkins had leered at him as he left, his smile becoming ever more wicked by the moment. “Do enjoy yourself, my boy. Make sure the quill gets plenty of ink.”

Ellen’s hands only grew more interlocked as they arrived. Mrs. Dilber, the new housekeeper, had prepared both bedrooms to taste. Ellen departed to her room without a word, closing the door heavily behind her.

Exactly what was supposed to happen next was no mystery to Marley. He’d done it just the night before, in the arms of Convent Garden’s finest harlot one could get for five pounds. A marriage required certain sacrifices, after all. It wasn’t legitimate until made so.

He took the ribbon from his hair as he undressed, all the while thinking of something Jorkins had said. Something happened between the pair. Whatever it was, it was enough to leave rumors. I suspect that she’s rather in a difficult situation regarding her prospects.

He thought of the clench of her hands. He thought of the way she had eyed him, like she was waiting for something.

…Legalities be damned. He’d not bother her if she didn’t bother him.

Jacob Marley spent his wedding night reading over the ledgers he’d have to fix on Boxing Day. Whatever it was his new wife was doing, he had no idea. But when he encountered her in the morning, there was something akin to relief in her face.

“You’ve made a mistake in that ledger.” She said, pointing to it with a slender finger. A ring adorned her hand. “I’ll show you.”

“By all means.” He said.

And so it began.

[xcryinginguccix]

Damn, i haven't been posting here for a while...

*blows off dusts* Anyway, disco Elysium sucked me into oblivion and I have been playing it, like a shit tone.

Anyways, here's a Slow Damage fun fact. Or more like "English is my third language and I'm stupid" fun fact, related to Slow Damage.

You guys know Ikuina, right? And you know how in the start of the game he is referred to as Clerk?

My dumbass thought that "Clerk" was his name. His fucking name. All the way until Taku's route. Another fun fact! I did Rei's route first.

I sometimes wonder how did i manage to live 20 years on this planet without meeting Saint Peter. If God is real, she is laughing her ass of rn.

[thyholymistress]

i feel the unstoppable need to overshare on the internet because the emotions i felt where so strong that i need to just throw them into the oblivion: a couple of days ago i was in a shop with my best friends and one of the clerks (who also happened to be very attractive but probably was around 5 years older than me) had the cutest mushroom earrings. i was really tempted to ask him where he had brought them but my introversion and negative past experiences with men made it impossible for me to interact with any man who looks like 2 or more years older than me without feeling shame or disgust towards myself. so my friends and i just went around other places and after an hour or so i built up the courage to go back to the shop and ask him about the earrings. but guess what? his shift had ended and he had gone home. i am never going into that shop again i swear to god.

[kyle2314]

2022 End of the Year List

This was one of the strangest years for music and media for me. A lot of really pleasant, completely unexpected surprises and a number of unmet expectations. I’m pretty pleased with how this list came out this year, I just would have never guessed it would look like it does. Keeps me on my toes and I suppose that’s what keeps things fresh and exciting.

Albums: 1. Angel Olsen - Big Time (Jagjaguwar) 2. Counterparts - A Eulogy For Those Still Here (Pure Noise) 3. Soul Blind - Feel It All Around (Other People) 4. Tegan & Sara - Crybaby (Mom + Pop) 5. Looming - Anybody’s Baby (No Sleep) 6. No Devotion - No Oblivion (Velocity/Equal Vision) 7. Nikki Lane - Denim & Diamonds (New West) 8. Parker Gispert - Golden Years (Normaltown) 9. Elizabeth Moen - Wherever You Aren’t (self released) 10. Holy Fawn - Dimensional Bleed (Wax Bodega)

EPs: 1. Hazel English - Summer Nights (self released) 2. Tigers Jaw - Old Clothes (Hopeless) 3. Speedway - Paradise (Revelation) 4. Morgan Wade - Acoustic Sessions (Ladylike/Arista) 5. END/Cult Leader - Gather & Mourn split (Closed Casket Activities/Deathwish)

Shows: 1. CHVRCHES - Bourbon Theatre, Lincoln, NE - 6/15/22 2. Code Orange - Wells Fargo Arena, Des Moines, IA - 3/28/22 3. Japanese Breakfast - 80/35, Des Moines, IA - 7/8/22 4. Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, MUNA - Hinterland, St. Charles, IA - 8/7/22 5. Stars Hollow - xBk, Des Moines, IA - 3/17/22

Films: 1. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 2. X 3. The Batman 4. Clerks 3 5. Pearl Honorable Mention: Barbarian

TV: 1. Peacemaker (HBO) 2. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (Disney+) 3. The Bear (FX/Hulu) 4. The White Lotus - Season 2 (HBO) 5. Reservation Dogs - Season 2 (FX/Hulu) Honorable Mention: The Offer (Paramount+)

Check out a playlist of my favorite songs from the year on Spotify and YouTube!

[coconuttyglittersmurf]

The Smurfs: A New Touch Of Blue synopsis thread Part 9

Smurf me your cuddly toy! AKA The Cuddly Toy

After misplacing his favorite pillow, Lazy Smurf loses his legendary sleep and borrows Baby Smurf's comforter to try it out. But as he miraculously sleeps again, a lizard steals it and Baby Smurf, inconsolable, cries non-stop. Consumed by remorse, Lazy Smurf therefore goes in search of the "cuddly toy", without suspecting that it has landed in Gargamel's hovel, determined to make it his new favorite toy…

When Lazy loses his pillow, only Baby’s cuddly toy will let him get back to sleep.

The Smurfer Machine In Time AKA Smurfs That Time Forgot 2.0 AKA Smurf to the Future!

When Blossom accidentally knocks Smurfette into a barrel of manure, embarrassed to death, she asks Handy Smurf for help. The latter invents a machine to travel in time in order to repair his blunder. But a new accident catapults Blossom and Handy Smurf back to prehistoric times, where a monkey steals their time clock….

Blossom and Handy Smurf are captured by prehistoric Smurfs who plan to sacrifice our inventor to a ferocious beast, while Blossom becomes their darling. The temporal cuckoo has become a subject of idolatry for the prehistoric Smurfs and, after many adventures, our two heroes finally manage to return to the present. Handy Smurf decides to destroy his machine, which is too dangerous. Blossom must then face the wrath of Smurfette...

When Handy invents a time machine for Blossom, the duo accidentally goes back to prehistoric times, where Blossom and Handy are taken prisoner by Prehistoric Smurfs who plan on sacrificing Handy to a ferocious beast.

The Cheating Smurf AKA Waffles and Punishment

When Stormy Lily gets Greedy Smurf in trouble during a contest for the biggest waffle eater, Greedy Smurf cheats and wins, cheered by the whole village! Very quickly overwhelmed by remorse, he concocts a potion of oblivion of his own, which brings out two doubles, one benevolent (Angel Smurf), inviting him to denounce himself, and the other very bad (Devil Smurf), congratulating him for his cheating. Greedy Smurf will have a lot to do with his two selves on his back, which, coupled with his fans, will push him to his limits…

When Stormy Lily gets close to beating him in a waffle-eating contest, Greedy takes the competition too far.

Never Wake a Sleeping Sorcerer!

When Gargamel arrives at the Smurfs' village in the middle of the night, arms outstretched, eyes open, but visibly asleep, Papa Smurf realizes that the wizard is sleepwalking, and therefore harmless! Reassured, our little smurfs take the opportunity to "have fun" with their sworn enemy. Back home, when he wakes up, Gargamel understands that he has gone to the Smurfs, and orders Azraël to accompany him during his next crisis, so that he wakes him up once there. This time, our smurfs will have to do everything to prevent Azrael from waking up his master…

When Gargamel sleepwalks into the Smurfs’ Village, the Smurfs make the most of the situation.

The Decoince-Smurf AKA Relaxosmurf

Fascinated by the talkative and expensive Blossom, Timid Smurf dreams of becoming her friend. Problem: he doesn't dare speak to her. Desperate, he begs Papa Smurf for help. This one administers a dose of his "unstuck-Smurf" potion, and here he is transformed into a Confident Smurf! But his insurance doesn't have the desired effect on Blossom, who only dreams of one thing: getting rid of that pot of glue!

When Timid is too shy to approach Blossom, Papa Smurf gives him a potion to boost his confidence.

A unique sarsaparilla AKA Smurfs Might Fly

On the occasion of the sarsaparilla festival, the clerks of Chef Smurf, Brainy Smurf and Dimwitty Dopey, are picking in the forest, when Greedy Smurf can not help stuffing himself… without seeing that Gargamel bewitched the grove. As they taste the dishes, Greedy Smurf soars into the sky, soon followed by his three amazed comrades. Gargamel intercepts them, ready to cook them wizard-style! Greedy Smurf will have to play tricks (and all his greed) to get them out of there…

The Smurfs prepare their sarsaparilla banquet, unaware that Gargamel has enchanted the thicket.

Like a Smurf in dough! AKA Wild Gets Tamed

Because he pilfered their cupcakes, Begonia, Lilly and Blossom decide to teach Wild Smurf a lesson, by making him a gigantic cake, so that he catches indigestion. Total success, the Wild Smurf is bloated, so much so that he falls from his tree, but, oh horror, in the arms of Mummy who was just looking for a new pet! Touched by the ferocity of the Wild Smurf, she decides to adopt him. Ashamed, the three girls have to get him out of there…

Begonia, Lily, and Blossom teach Wild a lesson after he steals their cupcakes.

AKA The Yummies Pie

Chef is worried when the main ingredient for his famous Equinox pie, the Yummyus, is late blooming.

The Clumsy Smurf makes his circus AKA I'm Off to the Circus!

When Clumsy Smurf convinces himself that he must become an acrobat at all costs to better manage his clumsiness, the Smurfs create a fake circus company to make his dream come true. But when Gargamel meets them by chance, they must prove that they are not Smurfs and put on a show like a real circus troupe. Will they be up to it?

When Clumsy decides to be an acrobat, the Smurfs pretend to be a traveling circus to help him realize his dream.

You don't Smurf with Love! AKA Dreamy: Master of Love

Persuaded to be an expert in Love, Dreamy Smurf uses all the great clichés of romance novels to unite two Smurfs whose couple is more than unlikely -- Papa Smurf and SmurfWillow. Although his attempts are unsuccessful, he refuses to give up. And when Dreamy Smurf tries to reunite Papa Smurf and Willow by creating a false danger, he involuntarily throws them into the snake's mouth…

Dreamy uses all of romance's greatest cliches to bring together two very unlikely Smurfs: Papa Smurf and Willow.

Bonus art by @butterfrogmantis 😉

[wiltedrosewritings]

NEVERLAND IN AUGUST

I often tell myself I will no longer partake in writing tae fics bc they always turn out excessively angsty and melodramatic, and yet, I find myself here, time and time again.

short version: kth and poor decisions. salty air. beach shore. never meant to be. exchanges that slipped away into moments in time. a secret well kept, and then fallen into oblivion. seashells. skinny dipping. august, except it's not. you, except you are not mine. us, except there is no such thing. you were never mine to keep, or to lose. 

tae's got a neverland complex. doesn't wanna grow up, bc it means leaving behind his freedom, but worst of all, you. or something like that.

proceed, if you are interested in the long version.

wc: 3.7 k

tracklist: 'August' by Taylor Swift

tense and POV: 2nd person and past

You are so easy to fall back into, as though we are molded to fit one another, a lock to its key, and it shouldn't be this easy to self-destruct.

Taehyung slipped away into the night when the crowd had settled and turned its eyes blind; when the topics of conversation had shuffled from his career and marital prospects to rather pettier, popular culture developments.

He averted curious gazes amidst the crowded streets as he meandered aimlessly. Like a compass with a damaged needle, he spun indefinitely, pressed tight between bodies. No sense of direction.

With a flighty gaze, he scoured the surrounding, illuminated buildings for an anchor, a sort of lighthouse, some sort of sign to pierce his attention, slap him hard across the cheek as the ground would if he would only stop falling. If the ground were to catch him and hold him, rather than cave beneath his feet.

Gloomy, dim eyes searched past the silhouettes of the skyscrapers, past the nomadic clouds, which veiled the moon's luminous halo, attempting to make out faint stars freckling the sky.

Not just any stars.

Polaris - a stable point, axis, around which the rest of the world's body falls and rises.

The star he'd chased with his siblings through the playgrounds long ago.

The clouds were too vast and dense, as were the crowds pressing in around him. Suddenly, he felt painfully sympathetic of Polaris's condition; the world seemed to start spinning around him, too; the ground at his feet warping with each unsteady step.

He didn't want to be central, polar. He wanted to be a fuzzy margin, ambiguous, never quite a start, never quite an end. The horizon.

He wanted to be too many things in life, and nothing at all, at once. It was dizzying, to say the least, to be tugged in every direction. To have so many quarreling voices beckoning your attention.

Sometimes he wished he could split himself into a million little versions. Split the burden between them.

He just wanted it to stop. The spinning. The encompassing chatter. The omnipresent stares. All of it.

He dipped into a gas station with a neon sign for a header and pulled the cheapest bottle of red wine from its rack. Rolled it over the counter towards the register clerk along with his upturned ID, only his thumbpad mostly covered his picture and name.

It was a quick swivel, quick enough for the clerk to nod in recognition he was of age; not long enough for them to register the reputation behind the name, the face;

not long enough for a light to flicker in their distant gaze and their mouths to fall slack in awe.

With a lazy grip on the bottle's neck, he swayed and weaved through the saturated streets, often slamming shoulders, until he sank into a dim alley, save for an overhead flickering neon sign, similar to that of the gas station, only just one flicker short of giving out.

He padded his way out to a quieter, sleeping street, and found himself a vacant bench to collapse onto.

It was finally dark, and quiet, and the margins of the world had seemed to settle about him.

There, he conjured up an affair with the shadows until he grew to question whether he'd become one. Whether the star-freckled clouds had encompassed and carried him away, to some distant Neverland. A place that could offer him an eternity to figure out the calls and wants of his heart.

His parents had omitted a truth from him. They'd omitted many through his development, opting for sugar-coating existence, but of all the ones, this one was unforgivable. 

They had never mentioned how it is like the air in your lungs dissipates with each passing year. A blind habit forms: you start holding your breath just to get through a couple of gruesome hours, a shift, the day.

You wait for the afternoon to catch it again, but then the afternoons start growing burdensome in a way uniquely their own. It grows, the weight on your chest, drowns you and kills you slowly. 

In his brief recollection tonight, he supposes they'd been unconvincing in their pretensions. They'd never blatantly admitted this truth but had often insinuated it.  

He should have looked closer, not forsaken the fine details.

He would have noticed the drawn bags lining their eyes, the burst capillaries on the ivory margins.

He would have felt the exasperated sigh leaving their lips while bracing their weight against the counter, just trying to stand another day. 

He could feel that helpless sigh, now. Infact, it had grown to become his. 

A sigh which seeped into the quiet night. 

Quiet, safe for the whir of cars on the highway, a couple of miles back; safe for the chirp of crickets nestled amidst bushes, shrubs.

Quiet, safe for the sudden exclaim of a nearby branch, snapped under unannounced weight. 

Taehyung stiffened and used the bottle that had been resting on his thigh as leverage, in case he'd need to spring upward and dash -though, it would likely be less of a dash, more of a stumble and awkward trot away given his inebriation.

"Boo!" 

He didn't startle, much too inhibited to have reacted within the acceptable timeframe.

Or simply, too unbothered.

Instead, he turned his head with a lazy, drunken gaze and there you were -- his Neverland on Earth, stardust lining your eyes, a shard of magic and dream and impossible possibilities amidst a limiting world.

The stars surely envied you. 

You kicked the air, standing, waiting awkwardly, as if for an invitation from him to sit. You weren't sure if he'd appreciate you intruding on his hideout, even if it was a vacant restaurant patio, with rusted chairs and overgrown ivy.

"They are losing their minds looking for you, you know?" 

"They are?" A smug smile tugged on the corner of his glistening lips. "Let them." He proceeded to lick the gloss away, tasting the bitterness of residual liquor with subtle tones of sweet vanilla and tart cherry. "Are you gonna tattle on me?"

He swung down the leg he'd had outstretched on the bench, opening a space for you. Welcomed your presence. 

Your original reluctance dissipated, formerly pinched shoulders relaxing. 

"I already did," you flaunted, lied, made your way across the patio, crunching over shattered stone. 

As you lowered yourself onto the seat, he gestured the opaque bottle at you, whirling the contents around. 

"If I'm going down..." he started, holding back a hiccup behind puckered lips. For an instant, his face twisted, as if bile had crept up the column of his throat.

He swallowed hard, and quarreled with the nausea wringing his stomach. "I might as well not remember any of it."

You'd feel nauseated, too, leading his life.

Sure, it was glimmery and luxurious, alluring and comfortable by every physical means, with everything imaginable so carefully crafted and tailored. The perfect life.

It was all pretend, shallow. A gilded cage is only ever still a cage, a prison, confinement.

It wasn't him - not the him that you knew. He was a free bird, meant to take flight.

The him that you knew would be up for spontaneous drives to the shore. He'd get lost out of an insistence to avoid using navigation systems. He'd blast every genre of music through the speakers, and somehow recall every lyric, even the ones that were in a foreign tongue. 

The him you knew, would leave his shoes at every corner, flinging them off with irritability, complaining about how sore they made him, managing to turn it into a debacle on how suffocating it is to be trapped.

He'd walk on coarse gravel, all through the city. Come home with the filthiest soles, nothing short of charcoal. He'd defy every norm with the lightest of smiles, come spewing to you about the sights he saw on his adventures, the people he'd met, how he'd played soccer with a couple of kids from the neighborhood, how their mother had served him some jiggae and how it reminded him so much of home.

Then he'd guffaw, shake his head and tell you that it was weird how he could recognize the familiarity of home when he'd never really met it. 

But you were, of course, biased in your belief that the only version of him that existed was the one he showed you. You didn't really - or simply didn't want to - accept that this version could be the manifestation of a persona, a theatrical mask meant to distract something deeper, more fragile, genuine, and lost.

Your accepting company allowed him to be a different version of himself, but it wasn't entirely the truest one.

"Get up." You slapped his thigh and turned the bottle he'd handed over, letting its maroon content pour onto the cement, stain it beyond repair. "I want you to remember tonight." 

He groaned, collapsing his head onto his hands and ruffling his hair into a nest. "I had been enjoying that!" 

"That..." You shifted your gaze to the ground and then back up at him, brows pinched in question. You couldn't possibly be referring to the same thing. "No one could possibly enjoy that. Abominable." You shuddered.

"It was cheap," he justified. 

"You act as if you have no money."

"I don't! It's their money." He thrust both arms into the open air, gesturing to his puppet masters, to the strings sewn into his elbows and wrists.

At all times, he was being watched fall apart at the seams, and was scrutinized. The same life which had been breathed into his infantile lungs, never felt his. Instead, it reminded him of a plotted strategy on a chess board game drawn out for added torture. It wasn't a single, one-time commitment; it was a lifetime of sustaining choices that would remove him further from himself.

"Enough self-pity for one night. Come on." You rose, knees creaking a little. "Let's go." 

"Where to?" He beckoned, still planted on the bench. 

"Somewhere. Anywhere. Nowhere." The offer hung in the air, open to endless possibilities. Potential twinkled in your starry eyes; a million wishes and dreams birthed in a second. 

You smiled, and stardust gathered on your tear line, rained down and dusted his sullen limbs until he was floating, made weightless, trailing after you.

"Neverland."

"What?"

"Let's go to Neverland."

You snickered and it was as if bells chimed, rang, jingled.

"What are you - Have you gone mad?"  Taehyung hissed, dancing his weary gaze across his immediate surroundings. He'd rapidly grown weary, careful of an audience bearing witness to the spectacle you were putting on, in your lacy underwear. Locks of hair danced around your figure in response to a cool oceanic breeze gathering to greet you.

"I am pretty sure this is illegal. Illegal, T."

T, as in Tinker Bell, his personal version of a rose-tinged fairy, with a volatile temper, particularly when things don't follow your script.

Incredulously, Taehyung continued to mumble beneath his breath. The cyclical breath of the sea drowned his protests.

Your bra collapsed onto a mound of sand, forcing his lips mute. Like a fish hauled out of the water, his lips smacked open, shut, then open again, failing to close around the ghost of words he'd thought to say but suddenly drew blank on.

Cheeks burning flushed in that so fae way, you dipped your chin behind the curtain of your hair. 

You shut your eyes for what you were about to do. Mustered the courage to follow through, to not feel vulnerable under his gaze. 

Taehyung's unwavering gaze followed your hands down, before trailing up so fast he saw stars spinning around his field of vision. He felt he'd been thrown into Van Gogh's Starry Night.

Slowly, apprehensively, he let his eyes cascade over your silhouette, which grew smaller in the distance as you raced to the sea, desperate to hide in its embrace. 

Growing envious of it, Taehyung ripped his top off his torso, and stumbled the length of the shore, quarreling with his trousers. 

In his boxers, he stopped close enough for the edge of the tide to graze the tip of his toes. Retracted at the sudden bite of cold. "You are mad, woman." It's no longer a question.

"Look who's talking?" You twirled around, the water caressing your sides, sculpting you with as much love and delicate intent as a historic artist did his marble block. "Isn't this illegal?" 

And something in you fizzled, like the air bubbles frothing against your lips on the crystalline surface. It filled you with confusing pleasure to leave a mark on him. To corrupt him.

You hoped your touch on him - your influence - was permanent enough to outlive all that would proceed. Permanent and deep like etchings on tree barks, or indentations on freshly cemented sidewalks.

The panic in his gaze had long dissipated. It blended into a palette of emotions. All unnamable, indistinguishable, but utterly mesmerizing, nonetheless, much like the colorful horizon behind you. 

Delight. Amusement. Fascination. A twinge of flippant anger. 

You drive me mad, woman.

Orange sherbet. Strawberry pink. Lavender lilacs. 

Mad enough to rouge his own cheeks.

You'd like to stare long enough to acquaint yourself with each and every one of them. To name them all, and find where one starts, and the other ones trails off. 

But the thought of staring, steadily into his gaze makes you restless, short of breath. As if there isn't enough air in the entire atmosphere to satiate your lungs.

You can't name the way he looks at you; it's foreign, but not frightening in its oddity. Still, you can recognize its danger, in that it's not a known way to look at friends.

You reclined your head onto the surface of the water, much as you would against your pillow after a long day. "Oh, it's heavenly, Tae." With your arms outstretched like the limbs of starfishes on the ocean floor, you floated. The salty medium carried the voice of the sea directly into your ears. The sound of your breathing and the beating of your heart amplified.

A bizarre reminder that you were indeed alive.

Splashing and thrashing echoed across the sea, and you instinctively curled in on yourself to find Taehyung visibly grimacing at the cold state of the water.

"Why did I ever think following you was a good idea?"

You beamed, droplets of the salty sea clinging to your lashes, where they refracted the setting sun, and it's like stardust in broad daylight all over again.

"You have to do it all at once. Don't think. Just do," you encouraged, watching as the delicate, thinly defined muscles of his torso flexed and twitched over the surface of the water. 

His gaze was devoid, save for deeply creased brows caught in contemplation. A war with the limits of sensation. He held his arms linked over his chest to preserve heat, or perhaps hide his vulnerability.

Water pooled in the cup of your hand, which you splashed in his direction, aimed right at his handsome frown.

Victory ignited like an ember amidst your eyes. 

He grew to shudder a few arms' length from you. Broad and strong shoulders quivered helplessly.  

"You!" Then, those burnt-honey eyes pierced yours. Glaring. Fixed. 

The cupid-bow lining his upper lip momentously twitched as he repeated himself "You-" His words stumbled over unstable, shallow breaths.

You withdrew into the water's embrace and watched attentively, as the waterline climbed up his finely detailed torso. Outstretched arms grew nearer. Burnt-honey eyes widened in a vengeful craze. Ivory teeth became bared underneath strawberry-red lips. 

A frightened giggle of yours bubbled the water's surface rimming your chin. 

Finally, with an inhale of courage, Taehyung lunged forward, took the blow of the cold front on, and wrapped you in his arms. His weight sunk you beneath the surface. You were a pair of tangled anchors.

Not having stored a breath in your lungs, you squirmed and kicked in his old. His groans were muted by the harrowing echoes of the abyss beneath the sea. 

Strong arms tightened around you and hauled you out. You broke the surface with a desperate gasp, choking for breath between giggles. 

Laughter echoed in his chest, and reverberated through you. It reminded you of the waves and siren songs you grew up believing resided within conch shells as a pig-tailed kid. 

Since having shed your milk teeth and tolerated the gnaw of growing pains that accompanied such loss, you'd given up on childish fables of that kind.

On trips to the shore, there weren't hidden siren songs in the colorful conch shells you held up to your ear. There was only your younger sister cackling beside you, calling you a fool - but only after having tried it for herself first. 

But much as you had convinced yourself siren songs didn't exist inside the shells, you'd also convinced yourself you'd never hear that laugh again. Somber. Baritone. A tad boyish, in the way it would crack unpredictably. So wholly yours. It was a tune you'd looped in your memory from the very first instance you'd heard it.

In that split-second, with his hands fanned over your hip bones, and half-moon eyes tenderly fixed on yours, the fables did not seem so farfetched. New possibilities were solidifying at the tip of your fingers. Your fingers grazed the apples of his cheek. 

The possibilities were whispers in the crest of your ear. 

You'd only needed to get far enough from the bustling commotion of the city to hear them, to realize they'd always been there. 

An abstract somethingness would always exist between you two, just barely palpable.

The champagne had a mildly scorched aroma undermining its light fizz. You grimaced as it burned its way down your throat.

On any given night, you would much prefer a cup of tea to pair with the sacred act of slipping into bed; green, chamomile, on occasion, even aromatic Tulsi. 

But tonight, you weren't trying to sleep, to ease a mild case of insomnia. Sleep would rob you of time both of you knew you didn't have.

After a couple of swigs from the dark bottle, your skin began to buzz. A denseness subtly amounted over you, as though honey were dripped over your body, every move lubricated, viscous.

Your legs were warm, draped over his in a languid, but intimate manner - almost grounding in nature, as if you were his anchor. You tethered him to the present pleasures, kept his mind off the anxious tomorrows. 

His lips were sweet on yours and at times a hint bitter, like something you shouldn't have taken pleasure in tasting. A poison, that grows tolerable the more you ingest, but not any less deadly.

The tolerance being an illusion, an influence of the poison over you, foreshadowing its impending triumph, as you relinquish your willpower. 

That's it. You were dwindling under its influence. Your mind grew heavy, like your limbs, with intoxication. 

It was no longer bitter.

Rather, it became cloying, and you were innately and undeniably insatiable. 

Taehyung hoisted your hips to reposition them over his, desiring your proximity. Possibly as equally intoxicated. The question hung over your heads in the shape of a watchful moon.

Who was the poison? 

The hold on you was rough, but harmless. It was the gentlest rough-grip you have ever been subjected to. You allowed it. 

"I shouldn't do this." Your shallow breath ghosted his swollen lips in torment. 

He nuzzled the distance in desperation, and you obliged, tasting him apprehensively.

Just one peck. 

Then, another. 

And, what if, perhaps you held his lips in place with adoration and reverence. Held them in a warm hug, as if to shield them from the cool breeze blowing in from the sea. 

Would that have been such a crime?

The set of trespassers that tore through your blouse certainly were (criminal). They robbed you of any and every modicum of self-restraint.

You were no longer holding his lips. You had long since graduated to a sculptor, molding them to your will with each measured graze. Simultaneously, you started to circle your hips over his, back and forth, round around. 

"We should stop." Taehyung breathed raggedly into your neck. "Tell me to stop," and it came across as half-plea, half-demand.

You defied him, pulled him close, your breasts flushed against his sturdy chest.

You were definitely the poison.

You were a corrupt, filthy little thing. Loved it when he called you out on it. 

Tonight, he held you like you were something, someone sacred, like you were ceramic at risk of shattering in his hands.

You wrestled his gentle touch, wanting him to defile as he'd done enough times before for it to not be mistaken with error, overwhelming tempation.

You were temptation embodied, but he never once feigned sanctity.

Equally so, if not more, you deeply desired to defile him, to permeate every inch of him until the crime became undeniable. 

Fast, is how it unfolded.

But is there any better way to go?

Live fast, die young, right? Shine so bright you burn out. A phenomenal supernova. Watchers gathered to experience a historic event. 

There certainly wasn't an absolute right or wrong way to go.  But, if there had been, Taehyung was certain that way was fast. To burn like the dozens of stars in the sky, framing the quaint balcony. One moment there, the next gone. 

He knew that his departure approached just as quickly as dawn brightened the horizon. He knew you weren't oblivious to this fact.

Something in him winced at the thought of putting you through it again.

"Tell me to stop."

"Don't stop."

"Tell me to go," he almost begged, groaning as you kissed down the column of his neck. 

"Stay."

He wished he could. 

A ringtone blared across the room, funneling out through the creak between the balcony door and the frame. It said what neither could bring themselves to utter.

Taehyung marched out of the room, half-dressed, delirious but with a direction in mind.

And just like that, the bitter taste returned to overpower your senses.

The whispers in your ears, grew deceiving.

Deceitful little lies. Impossible possibilities.

The possibilities that had grazed your fingertips crumbled into mounds of sand. 

Sand, after all, is only ever withered shells.

[sage-nebula]

for the sonic asks: 4, 5, 23?

Sorry this has taken so long to get to! I had to setup my new computer and that was a bit more involved than I thought it would be. Also, I took a nap after work (but before setting up my computer) which was six hours long, so . . . that also put a delay in me answering the asks in my askbox, lol.

4.) Favorite male character(s)?

Tails, my baby Tails. 💜 I've talked recently about all the reasons why I love him, so I won't go into that again, but I'll just say that he's my favorite boy. I guess I'm a lot like Sonic in that regard, because Tails is Sonic's favorite, too!

That said, I do like Sonic himself a lot too, of course. He was my hero as a child and, like I said in another ask, I still think he's right about a lot of things today. I'll always hold special fondness for the blue blur himself.

5.) Favorite female character(s)?

Whisper, my girl Whisper. 💜 Again, this is another I've given reasons for liking recently so I won't get into it all again, but I just love her so much. I am hoping that she manages to catch a fucking break in 2023 because good god she has been through enough. That said, her gf Tangle is a close second because Tangle is just so fun and also great. I really just love them both.

(And if you're looking for games-specific answers: Rouge would be my favorite lady from the games, but I'm also very interested in Blaze. I need to watch playthroughs of her games since I never got to play them, but I really like what I know of her from the IDW comics.)

23.) Got any fan characters?

Kiiiind of?

The way I am with OCs in fandoms is, I make them as I need them for stories. If I'm writing a fic and there isn't a canon character for a role (usually minor) that I need, I'll create a character on the spot to fill that role. I typically don't think of them much beyond that; I give them a name and a base personality and just write them in. For Sonic, you can see this in practice in chapter two of Beyond Oblivion, where I named / created some Windmill Village citizens to give Sonic someone aside from the mayor to bounce off of: Oz the confrontational osprey, Poppy the nervous mouse, and Penny the put-upon store clerk. These characters will likely never show up again (at least I have no plans to revisit Windmill Village at the moment), but they served the purpose I needed them to serve and so they did their job.

With that said though, there is a character that I've already mentioned in chapter 3 of Beyond Oblivion that isn't strictly necessary, and one that I am lowkey thinking could end up having a counterpart in the normal verse, and that's an A.I. that Miles / Tails created / creates to be his personal assistant. In Beyond Oblivion this A.I. is named S.I.M. (which is an acronym for Simulated Intelligence Mainframe), but I think if Tails created this same A.I. on his own in the normal verse, he'd give them a proper name, Simon. (So it still has that simulated intelligence mainframe root, but it's an actual name, because Tails would have no reservations about seeing this A.I. as a person even though they're a program, whereas Miles is very adamant about consciously thinking of S.I.M. as just a program so that he doesn't get emotionally attached. He does anyway but that's beside the point. Also, it opens the possibility for "Simon says" jokes, which is always a plus.)

I don't want to say too much about S.I.M. / Simon here because I'm hoping to show that more in Beyond Oblivion, but I can say that Tails would develop Simon later in life than Miles developed S.I.M. because Miles needed S.I.M. much earlier (and tbh for different reasons) than Tails would need / want Simon. S.I.M. is only ever just a voice, but Simon's displayed form would be a mouse—because, you know, computers have mice, and that's Simon's type of humor. S.I.M.'s pronouns are exclusively they/them, while Simon is more a he/they type. Their personalities are the same in both universes, and while I'm keeping quiet on what that personality is right now, I will say both are very fond of their creator.

But yeah, that's the only OC I have at the moment, and honestly they still formed from a story need (in this case, thinking about Miles in Beyond Oblivion). That's just the way my brain works, I suppose!

[bllsbailey]

Some Basic Law Stuff for Conservatives Watching This Legal Chaos

For those of you who don’t live in the legal world every day like I do, being a simple Los Angeles trial lawyer, a lot of the legal stuff you see going on surrounding Trump and Trump-affiliated people might seem like chaos. Well, it is chaos. It’s complete chaos. There is almost no resemblance between what is happening with Trump and the law as normally practiced among normal people in normal times. Remember, there’s a Trump Exception to all the rules and all the norms that rejects any kind of precedent and procedure, as well as simple fairness, in its pursuit of the Bad Orange Man and his allies. When you understand that, you will understand why I shake my head when people ask me my legal opinion about what’s going on. My legal opinion about what’s going on is it has nothing to do with the law at all. 

Understand that what we’re seeing now are attempts to frame Donald Trump and people affiliated with him to abuse and misuse the legal system to gain a political advantage. This is nothing new. It is something scumbags have been doing for thousands of years. Remember, Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his legion because if he had left his troops behind, they were going to prosecute him into oblivion. Lawfare is nothing new – its modern practitioners just better hope they don’t end up provoking warfare, too.

But legal concepts do come up, and there is a lot of confusion out there about how the legal system works. I could write a book on it – and might – but here, I want to share a few general legal concepts with you so that some of the stuff going on becomes a little clearer. The law can be opaque, so it is often hard to understand what’s going on because the liars and scammers occasionally run head-on into people practicing law as it is normally practiced. We saw that with the idiotic idea that some clerk in Maine or the Colorado Supreme Court could decide who can be on the presidential ballot. You saw a bunch of people with fancy degrees and prestigious sinecures explaining to you how this was a brilliant legal maneuver and how this One Neat Trick under the 14th Amendment was going to keep Trump off the ballot, and BOOM! The Supreme Court, nine-zip, punted that idiocy through the goalpost of humiliation.

The law still sort of works. It doesn’t always work, but it should always work because, properly applied, the law is the thing that puts the Constitution into action. If you haven’t seen it, go watch “A Man For All Seasons” about Sir Thomas More and his struggle to uphold the law in Henry VIII’s England. More gives a famous speech where someone tells him that to get to the Devil, he would ignore all the laws, and Thomas More tells him that that’s crazy, that when he cuts down all the laws and the Devil turns around on him, where will he hide then? It’s a great question, and one our ruling class should ask itself – because the Devil will demand his due.

Recommended

But it’s hard to see what’s going on here in 2024 without a program, so let me explain a few things about how the law generally works as practiced in America when Donald Trump or one of his allies isn’t involved. Now, I want to be clear about a couple of things. First, I’m not your lawyer. This is not legal advice. Don’t take it as such. I am probably not licensed in your venue, and I’m not advising you on what to do or how to do it. I’m simply explaining some basic concepts. If you have a question about the law in your jurisdiction, go find a licensed lawyer and consult him, her, or whatever other gender they identify as. What you’re getting for me here are general concepts. Nothing more.

Let me reiterate. I’m not your lawyer.

First, legal professionals talk procedure while amateurs talk facts. When somebody comes to me with a case, they want to tell me all the facts about who said what and who did what and what happened and how, and I don’t care about any of that. Well, not yet. The first thing I want to do is understand the procedural status. Procedure is essential. Where is the case being brought? We call that venue. I want to know if it’s Washington, DC, where everybody is a Democrat, or Texas, where everybody’s a patriot, except in Austin. I want to know the court. State? Federal? Who are the judges – that shouldn’t matter, but the first thing every lawyer checks is what judge the case has been assigned to. In normal cases, it is often significant. In political ones, it is often dispositive.

And I want to know about when the stuff happened. There’s a thing called the statute of limitations, and that is a hard deadline to file a lawsuit or lose your potential rights. Now, there’s a reason for a statute of limitations. Memories fade, evidence disappears, and it’s almost impossible to defend yourself against something that happened 30 years ago. You see that in the E. Jean Carroll case, where she can’t even tell you when this alleged sexual assault happened nearly three decades ago. How the hell are you supposed to defend against that? In order to get Trump, the New York legislature lifted the statute of limitations to allow her to sue. The Trump Exception strikes again! And, of course, venue matters too in that case – in New York, everybody’s a damn communist. If you had a feeling that this was scummy, you were absolutely right. This is a travesty.

We’ve seen a lot of procedural machinations in the criminal cases. We haven’t even gotten to proving anything. All this stuff about dates and hearings and motions and disqualifications is procedural. The actual fact stuff isn’t even in the picture yet. Why don’t the facts matter yet? Because you can’t have legal proceedings unless you have a rigorous set of rules for how you govern them. That includes ways to challenge faulty cases – those are what the motions to dismiss are. How you do it is as important as what you do.

Here’s how you initiate a case. Someone files a case. In civil cases, it doesn’t even have to be a good case. A wise old lawyer told me all you need to file a case is a typewriter and a filing fee, which tells you how long I’ve been practicing. But that’s true. When you see a lawsuit filed, all it means is someone’s made claims. They have not proven anything. They have just made accusations, and those are worth the paper they printed on, and sometimes not even that. In criminal cases, the standard is supposed to be a little higher because you must at least get it past a grand jury, but of course, you know the cliché – a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. And if you did that, Chris Christie would probably defend the sandwich pro bono.

All this procedural jousting we are seeing is important because Trump is fighting several different battles. First of all, Trump id fighting the election battle. Trump doesn’t want to have these trials before the election because they are all in blue cities, and even though they have zero legal merit, he is likely to be convicted. The convictions will probably get thrown out on appeal – an appeal is what happens after a trial court decision – but that’s not going to matter for the 2024 election, where Trump will be a “convicted felon.” So, Trump wants to delay these trials until after the election. And if he’s reelected, which is looking pretty good for him right now, he can direct his Justice Department to drop the federal cases. Which he should absolutely do, and it will make the liberals wail and gnash their teeth and be generally hilarious.

But the procedural fighting is also setting up the parameters of the trial. In the procedural phase, you try to pick apart the complaint by getting some or all of it dismissed. You’re also trying to gather evidence—in civil cases, that’s called discovery, and in criminal cases, there are different proceedings. You're generally getting ready for the trial.

What’s the trial? I mean you’ve all seen them on TV, and I’ve got to tell you, they’re about 1/1000th as interesting. “You can’t handle the truth!” moments are very rare. More common are hours of drab people looking at documents and saying, “Yes, I wrote that. Yes, it says what it says.” Now, understand that the judge doesn’t generally decide who wins a trial. They can, as in the ridiculous New York AG’s baloney civil suit against Trump, but usually you have a jury. Judges generally rule on matters of law, that is, what the law is and how it applies to a certain set of facts. The jury generally decides what facts have been proven. That’s also important on appeal. Appeals usually do not challenge the findings of fact. That is, if a jury says you ran a red light, a court of appeal will probably not disturb that finding of fact. What an appeal addresses are usually questions of law. That is, did the judge apply the right legal standard? 

Using the right legal standard is very important. In the Florida case, we’ve been hearing about jury instructions. Bizarrely, the leftist Twitter lawyers are in a frenzy because the judge is asking the government and the defense to both submit jury instructions on the Presidential Records Act and some other issues. You might be shocked to hear that this happens all the time. Juries have to be instructed on what the law is so they can make their factual findings. There are a lot of standard jury instructions out there that are usually used. Judges don’t reinvent the negligence or breach of contract instructions for every new civil case. But there aren’t a lot of cases going to juries on the Presidential Records Act, and the jury has to be instructed somehow. The way judges do it when there is no standard jury instruction is the court orders the parties to propose their own instructions and then uses them as the basis to craft instructions. That’s perfectly normal, despite the howling from the half-wit lawyers. I’ve warned you already in previous columns that you should never trust a social media or TV lawyer, other than me or someone I approve!

The results of trials are another issue. We’ve seen the results in the recent civil cases with these massive monetary awards against Donald Trump. This is all crazy stuff. Those numbers are insane. It’s not even close to being normal. Yeah, there are some wild jury verdicts out there, but nothing like this. These jury verdicts are obviously part of the special Trump Exception. Man, the leftists aren’t going to like it when the Trump Exception becomes the rule, and it gets applied to them in red venues. In any case, expect the appellate courts to deal with that nonsense decisively.

In criminal cases, you have sentencing. In the federal courts, there are sentencing guidelines, and it’s a whole different procedure to come up with an appropriate sentence. Right now, we’re seeing some J6 defendants actually being threatened with increased sentences because they successfully challenged their previous sentences on appeal as not being in accordance with the law. You are not supposed to be punished for successfully pointing out errors. Again, the Trump Exception is in effect. It’s really disgraceful.

Now, most cases don’t go to trial. Going to trial is unbelievably exceptional. About 97% of cases settle. We saw the recent settlement in the Matt Schlapp case, where someone accused him of harassment. Disclosure: Matt is a friend, and I have given him legal advice in the past, but I am not counsel of record on this case, and I’m only talking about what I know from open sources. Apparently, there was a settlement. People who hate Matt because he’s a conservative who likes Trump take this as some sort of admission of guilt. It’s not. Every settlement agreement I have ever written or reviewed says something to the effect of “This is a settlement of a disputed claim and not an admission of liability.” The press reports say his insurance company is paying the accuser. Insurance companies are key in civil cases. There’s usually one lurking in the background, and they have a right to settle a case against you whether you want them to or not in almost all situations. In other words, you can tell your insurance company you don’t want to settle, but the insurance company can do it anyway. After all, it is paying a ton of money for your defense (your insurance policy typically pays for your lawyer as well as any judgment against you).

In this case, the accuser issued a statement essentially retracting the entire accusation, stating that his claims were “the result of a complete misunderstanding, and I regret that the lawsuit caused pain to the Schlapp family.” So, basically, Matt Schlapp didn’t pay this guy anything from his own pocket and received what looks to me like an apology and a total vindication, something Schlapp would not have gotten even if he had won a jury trial in a blue venue. I call that a total victory, just like Ron DeSantis won over the Mouse and Trump won over the insurrectionist ballot idiocy. Never, ever, trust the regime media to tell you the truth about a conservative’s legal victory.

When you’re looking at news reports of legal matters involving Trump or Trump-friendly people, understand that you are probably not going to get an accurate story. To do that, you have to come here. You have to come to me.

Court adjourned.

Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord! And get his new novel about terrorism in America, The Attack!

[astateofjess]

The Sweetest Oblivion

This is the first mafia romance book I've read (I think) and omfgggg Nico has sparked something inside me that I did not know existed.

It started with the fist-wrapping of a ponytail (umm, hellllllo!!! reading that right after watching that jjk episode with Nanami?!?!). Another highlight was Nico burning the gas station up after the clerk groped Elena. Like damn, it took "who did this to you" to a whole new level.

I honestly needed something to get me out of a major reading slump and the sexual tension in this book really did it. That'll do it!!!!

[noloveforned]

we've been dealing with smoke from wildfires here in central virginia for the past few days but i'll be trekking through the haze later tonight for my radio show on wlur from 8pm until midnight. join us live or catch up with last week's show on mixcloud at a more suitable time!

no love for ned on wlur – november 10th, 2023 from 8-10pm

artist // track // album // label teenage fanclub // mad dog 20/20 // dgc rarities volume one compilation // dgc everyone asked about you // it's days like this that make me wish the summer would last forever // paper airplanes, paper hearts // numero group hotline tnt // i thought you'd change // cartwheel // third man terry malts // seen everything // lost at the party // slumberland the belair lip bombs // say my name // lush life // cousin will the creases // point // tremolow // liberation jungle breed // unfamiliar streets // wynona, paloma, papilloma // blossom rot alien nosejob // stories of love // the derivative sounds of... or... a dog always returns to its vomit // goner equal parts // same old games // equal parts ep // tiny town cut piece // don't become the enemy // cut piece 7" ep // dirt cult sunwatchers // foams // music is victory over time // trouble in mind waylon jennings // she comes running // singer of sad songs // rca victor carmen perry // mexican wine // that's how the world began ep // (self-released) the woods // never before // so long before now // dot matrix miss grit // off you // fader and friends volume one compilation // fader maria elena silva // ruido blanco // dulce // astral spirits / big ego oiro pena // puna // puna // we are busy bodies david wertman // sharatarr // kara suite // finders keepers lonnie liston smith with adrian younge and ali shaheed muhammad featuring loren oden // cosmic changes // jid017 // jazz is dead yaya bey // crying through my teeth // ten fold // big dada mavi // 3 left feet // laughing so hard, it hurts // de rap winkel dinner party featuring nineth wonder and phoelix // can't go // enigmatic society // empire maxx traxx // tell me // maxx traxx // numero group fortunato durutti marinetti // clerk of oblivion // eight waves in search of an ocean // soft abuse sweeney // straight boy crushes // disappointment archives, 1986-2016 // observable universe the palisades // alternatively wednesday // a month too soon 12" // easter rachel love // april love // the cat collects seasons compilation // the cat collects the proper ornaments // two weeks // split 7" w/ beat mark // croque macadam the ian fays // viola // viola // we were never being boring model shop // swimming backwards // check the forecast 7" ep // meritorio

[sonicziggy]

"Clerk of Oblivion" by Fortunato Durutti Marinetti https://ift.tt/PaKCumc