#definitely drawing urchin again as well

[cornkernelcorp]

urchin goes to the otters to get some eats. how do they handle this big scary behemoth

Oh boy- well, it's definitely a shock to Pupsy to see another cookie so big. No worries, though, she'll be quick to serve that behemoth regardless ^^

Like, hey, having a hard time picking something from the menu? well, she can tell you their special for the week.

A customer that's a big eater gets them pumped!! In fact, I'm sure the first time he came around Otto gave him an extra lil treat afterwards. Y'know, to eat on the road.

All in all, a customer that they'll definitely remember the name of. Rolling up their sleeves and hyping it up HAHA

[bodhranwriting]

Finn and the Arsonist by Bodh M.

In three years of running the only cat sanctuary in Middle Besser, I’ve heard a lot of their odd tales about how they ended up here.

Getting into fights is a common one. Getting trapped in wells happens more often that you’d think. Inattentive families, owners needing the space… the list goes on. I try not to judge people’s situations too harshly. After all, my main witness is going to be a little biased and cat-senses don’t always translate well to human, as you’d expect. But there are definitely pickups I’ve done that have made my blood boil, if you don’t mind me saying.

But I’ve never had one before that made me scared and certainly never had one involving one of my closest friends.

It was a stinking hot day in the middle of summer when a small child barged open the door to the Respite with a terrified cat yowling at a pitch to match the temple bells.

I had been dozing at the counter, sweat sticking my sandy curls to my forehead and a new bandage wrapped around my arm – one kitten had not wanted to take her medicine – so I damn well fell out of my chair as a screaming feline was dumped a fingerbreadth from my face.

“I found them in Gert’s Alley,” the girl said helpfully, in lieu of greeting. She was probably nine or ten; a scruffy little thing in a faded blue dress with adorable tight black coils and a missing tooth so her next words came out as a lisp, “He theemed thercared. Look at all the blood!”

Dragging myself up from floor and trying to wipe the sleep from my eyes, I blearily focused on my newest patient. She (and definitely she, I noted as she wriggled out of the blanket) was a gorgeous black Kysi with golden eyes and the huge ears typical to her breed. As she backed up, hissing, I reached out a hand and concentrated, drawing up warm reserves of the little magic I had from my chest and into my throat.

Translation spells, in my experience anyway, always had a taste. I’d never been particularly good at them: it was almost easier to just do the hard work and learn the language. But translating my tongue to that of cats was like clicking your fingers might be to someone else. Easy. Not requiring much thought at all.

Cat tastes like buttermilk. I don’t know why, but there seems to be a connection to what I taste and what I’m trying to speak. Bee tastes, almost boringly, of honey. Spider has a dusty texture. Rat, for some odd reason, is hazelnut. I haven’t worked out that one and neither had the teachers out in the Hartland’s. I think one of my classmates who fell into the academic trap – track, sorry – is compiling research on it.

(I answered her very impersonal letter a few months ago and never heard back. Hope I helped. She did bully me into passing my star-reading exam, after all.)

I took a breath, the flavour rising into my nose, and attempted first contact. “Easy there… I’m not gonna hurt you… what’s your name…?”

The cat hissed again, but only for show because she answered quickly, “Smells-like-this. But upright call me Smoke.”

“I’m Finn,” I said, almost more for the benefit of the still-watching urchin. I projected an imitation of my scent into her mind: a kind of mix of cat fur, woodsmoke, and lye soap, and asked, “May I touch you? I need to find where you’re bleeding.”

Smoke hesitated and then lay down. “Yes.”

Carefully, I reached forwards, letting her sniff my hand. “Could you get me a bucket from the pump?” I asked the girl.

She nodded with great dignity and vanished outside. I turned my attention back to Smoke. It was funny: she was far better fed than a stray ought to be –

“Know your smell, upright.”

I jumped. Swallowing hard, I managed to keep the connection strong enough to ask, “You… do?”

Smoke curled up under my hand. “It was on take-off furs. And blood not mine.”

Ice settled in my stomach, cold fingers squeezing my guts paper-thin. “Whose is it…?”

Her tail thrashed, ears flattening against her head. “My upright.” The flash of fangs made me jerk my hand away. I was panting and I didn’t know why.

“What happened?”

Smoke sat up again, fixing shining golden eyes on me. She raised her head like a queen, crossing one paw in front of the other.

“Uprights invade territory. Smash door. I fight. Upright feeder does too. I run when they lay red flower.”

“Red flow…” Suddenly, the buttermilk soured to smoke and ash as my mind made the necessary translation. Terror thumped through my chest. “They burnt the house?”

I grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck as she bolted from my shout. She tried to claw at me, but I didn’t even feel it. “What does your upright look like, Smoke?”

“Put down!”

“Please, tell me. What do they look like?”

“Upright! Smell like this! Not white-yellow fur like you. White-orange fur! Cloud eye! Make pretty noise a lot!” She meowed as I dropped her, landing perfectly on the table as I fell into my chair.

“Gert’s Alley… that’s where you were found?”

Smoke leapt to the ground and gave me the feline equivalent of a shrug.

I was up and running down the street before I even realised I’d processed the information.

[hekateinhell]

First of all thank you so much for the ficlet you've written to my prompt . I love it so much. Nad it was.such a nice surprise, I literally finished the biggest exams of my life, I got home bone dead tired and saw that you answered my ask. You made me smile so much so thank you.

Lestat is so nervous about this and he's adorable. You really captured his tvl youth, the reckless courage and his insecurities at the same time, the awe that he's wanted by someone.

"Hadn’t given it much thought when he’d spotted pretty Eleni wearing this exact necklace in the tavern the previous night and asked her if there was any form of payment besides the monetary that she would accept in exchange. All Lestat had known then was that he wanted it."

==>> I can't believe Lestat saw a pretty necklace, thought about how pretty it would look on Armand, and promptly went off to eat another woman's pussy to get it 🤦 hopefully armand will never find out the origin of the necklace 👀 otherwise more claiming bites will appear on Lestat's body.

I like the part where Lestat was playing with the rosary in bed. Lestat is the type of guy to get thrilled by breaking rules and taboos. On the other hand, I couldn't get the image out of my head of Lestat counting pearls and going "He loves me, he loves me not" about a mermaid he can't communicate with 😂

The image of Armand laying between Lestat's legs (at dick height no less) will haunt me for eternity 🥵

I LOVE LESTAT'S POSSESSIVENESS with Mermand, like the weird doesn't even phase him anymore he just wants to belong to Mermand and to be loved by him. They're so precious to me, and their attempts to communicate with each other are adorable.

“There,” he whispered with absolute conviction, “Mine, now you’re mine too. All mine.” 

==>> They're married now 🥹🥹❤️

"But he swore the expression on its face softened as its tail fluttered below the surface, and it came to rest a cold cheek against the warmth of his inner thigh. Its nose pressing into the delicate crease where his leg met his groin as it gave a small shuddering breath against the coarse blond hairs."

==>> Mermand is such a cat, he reminds me of my own can rubbing off me when i come back from work. He's adorable.

But THAT'S WHERE HE PUTS HIS FACE AND HIS NOSE. GOD! Armand really is an oversexed street urchin panting for that blond menance in every universe. He wouldn't be himself otherwise.

The slightest upturn at the corner of its full mouth hinting at a smile as a clawed hand came to wrap around his cock, stroking it to full hardness almost immediately. 

==>> LMAO 🤣 ARMAND! You insatiable slut. For ONCE Lestat didn't have sex on his mind and Armand just jumped straight to it. Well it's the fault of the language barrier 🤷

Priapus, I spy a Priapus 🐠

Lestat calling Armand lovely is perfect 🥹

"For the first time, the creature didn’t seem particularly invested in ensuring Lestat’s spend entered its body through one manner or another. 

Puzzling, disappointing even. "

==>> It's gonna be less disappointing when you'll have dozens of mer babies swimming aroud your feet and you'll realize you've possibly got another batch on the way!! Vasectomy my dear Lestat is the way!

"a deep, rabid bite to the flesh of his inner thigh where the creature had been nuzzling so tenderly not a moment ago.

==>> Yandere Armand strikes again. At this rate Human Lestat will have bite scars all over his body. And these are real bites not 2 tiny holes left by a vampire

"Bends his head to kiss the creature's temple as the lavender blush on its face beginning to fade. Lestat’s own wild blond curls falling like a curtain over them, concealing them from the world, the pearl necklace around his neck draping down over the creature's skin. "

==>> ❤️❤️❤️ They're both wearing the necklaces, they're so tender with each other. They're perfect. Honestly I'l kill for someone to draw this EXACT paragraph, cause the visuals are stunning.

You should definitely post this ficlet on ao3!

aww omg thank you so much for this ao3 style comment! I am so happy I could brighten your day after a rough exam!!! 🥹💖 I'm in grad school atm so I know how it goes. I loved this prompt as soon as I saw it, it was so tender and I'm soft these days 🤧

You really captured his tvl youth, the reckless courage and his insecurities at the same time, the awe that he's wanted by someone.

oh man... I literally had TVL open in the other tab the entire time I was writing the og fic because I really wanted to evoke that characterization of Baby Lestat before he gets so hurt and jaded by the world, it means a lot that you noticed this!

can't believe Lestat saw a pretty necklace, thought about how pretty it would look on Armand, and promptly went off to eat another woman's pussy to get it

no lmao I think you can believe it, this is Lestat we're talking about! 🥹 I couldn't pass up the opportunity to let Lestat be a lil' slutty for a good cause, his canon sluttiness is something I love about him (and anything to give Armand more of an excuse to chomp down on him some more rip)

I like the part where Lestat was playing with the rosary in bed. Lestat is the type of guy to get thrilled by breaking rules and taboos. On the other hand, I couldn't get the image out of my head of Lestat counting pearls and going "He loves me, he loves me not" about a mermaid he can't communicate with

if there's an opportunity for religious imagery and a sense of blasphemy I'm going to take it 😂 and omg STOP LMAO THAT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE (he doesn't know the words but he does love you Lestat, I promise 🤧)

The image of Armand laying between Lestat's legs (at dick height no less) will haunt me for eternity

same same, it was the very first image in my head when I thought about your prompt, who's surprised?

I LOVE LESTAT'S POSSESSIVENESS with Mermand, like the weird doesn't even phase him anymore he just wants to belong to Mermand and to be loved by him.

SOBBING yes you get it!! he just wants that intimacy and connection so desperately, he wants to throw himself into this creature literally and figuratively. And possessive!Lestat is one of my faves in canon ("My Louis", "My Armand"? PLEASE 🥵)

They're married now 🥹🥹❤️

100% 😌💖

Lestat don't go putting your head under anymore skirts okay

Armand really is an oversexed street urchin panting for that blond menance in every universe. He wouldn't be himself otherwise.

HE'S SO DOWN BAD FOR LESTAT IN EVERY REALITY LMAO IT'S THE FUCKING EMBARRASSMENT OF MY FANDOM LIFE (also I love it and I'm as obsessed with them as Armand is with Lestat)

he just craves Lestat's pheromones and body heat, he wants to curl up inside him 🥹

For ONCE Lestat didn't have sex on his mind and Armand just jumped straight to it.

sex IS their primary form of communication at this point, Armand's connecting with him the only way he knows how to right now 🤧 like "oh, a present? here, this is how I say thank you!"

It's gonna be less disappointing when you'll have dozens of mer babies swimming aroud your feet and you'll realize you've possibly got another batch on the way!!

asjekdkdj Lestat better find a way to get that fishing boat/start living his best pirate life to feed all those tiny mouths with their little fangs!

Yandere Armand strikes again. At this rate Human Lestat will have bite scars all over his body. And these are real bites not 2 tiny holes left by a vampire

HE WILL.

I really wanted to convey the difference between a Mermand!bite and our traditional vampire bites, so my brain just went "wildcat bite." He's vicious, he's a predator, he can break bones with his jaws if he wanted! @birdblacksocialclub did such a fucking amazing job of capturing the exact quality of the bites as I imagined them in my head, I was beside myself!! 😭🥵🖤

They're both wearing the necklaces, they're so tender with each other. They're perfect. Honestly I'l kill for someone to draw this EXACT paragraph, cause the visuals are stunning.

that was my last minute addition when I was thinking "okay, now how do I push this over the top with sweetness" because it was important to me to convey that something's progressed here — they can be comfy and content together — so I'm so glad it had the intended effect! They deserve it and we deserve to see it, and it made my heart so happy to write it 🥹

I have one more mermaid prompt to fill and then I think I'll combine this one and that one and x-post them to ao3 for easier access and bookmarking purposes! Thank you again for the feedback, it's always so lovely to know what I'm doing right! ❤️

[zeebreezin]

Introduction —

Hi hi hello, I’m Astra (He/They) and welcome to my Fallen London Sideblog! I’m very new to the game, having picked up FL maybe a month ago as of posting, and not playing very frequently until recently, though I have played a good bit of Sunless Seas. My lore knowledge is pretty bad, I won’t lie, but I am 100% here to learn.

This blog is largely going to be about my OCs, as well as probably a bit of liveblogging about my personal playthrough of FL - the character I’m currently running as a PC is on the Nemesis! Ambition so I’ll probably have some thoughts about that once I’m a bit further along. I’m always open to talk about OCs and for interactions so just let me know!!

As a note, I’m way more comfortable painting backgrounds and stylized figures than I am drawing character portraits! Portraiture is a very new venture for me!

Currently, all of my FL characters reside in the same apartment, spitting the rent - with Shaw & B living there full time, and Verily largely using the space as a place to crash on land. The two main NPCs, Acumen and Beverley, exist throughout the world! I’m also developing Shaw’s Ex as another PC.

Characters (WIP!):

The Marked Examinant, August Shaw.

He/They, Somewhere in his Early 40s

An investigator by trade, Shaw is a prickly character who has a mildly extreme obsession with the various languages of the Neath, a fascination that’s gotten them into a good deal of trouble… and left them with a few strange quirks. Unscrupulous at the best of times, he is damn good at his job, when he’s not chasing a bit of escapism by any means necessary. While they’re seemingly a complete hardass, Shaw does have a soft side for a few things: Namely, his assistant, and the urchins of the city.

Watchful / Shadowy-Dangerous, Subtle / Ruthless / Hedonistic, Ambition: Nemesis!

My current PC!

The Reckless Playwright / ???, B.

Any/All, Early 20s (?)

B is an aspiring playwright and actor with their head in the non-existent clouds and a spring in their step. She always seems to be getting into a little bit of trouble, before charming his way out of it with a smile and a wide eyed look. Everything about their past is a bit of a mystery, though it can’t be denied that they have a good heart While searching for cheap lodgings in London, B ended up with the (mis)fortune of becoming Shaw’s housemate and eventual investigative assistant. The two have a strange friendship, but one that’s changed them both for the better.

B is absolutely, definitely not wanted by the Royal Navy.

Persuasive / Shadowy, Magnanimous / Daring / Subtle

If I play B as a PC, their Ambition would be Heart’s Desire.

The Everdrowned Oblation, Cpt. Verily

She/It, Mid 30s (Maybe?)

Once, a nameless captain offered up her body to her starving crew - her poor planning and lack of discipline leading them all to the brink of oblivion. After a prayer to the gods of the Zee, they took her up on her offer. However, that Captain didn’t quite die. She rose again, and again, and again. Each time with a different past, with different friends in port, with a different story that wasn’t quite her own. A dozen or more ships have taken her down, and each time, she’s risen anew. It knew that it was some boon from the gods - or perhaps, a curse. Either way, the zee will not let Captain Verily go, even after she’s been stripped of everything. One night after a long, long day upon uncertain land, Verily approached the office of a known investigator, a madness in her eyes. It only had one request for August Shaw - “Tell me who I am.”

Dangerous / Watchful, Daring / Steadfast / Forceful

Verily is my PC in Sunless Seas. All of them. Every time it dies, she comes back as the next. I am very bad at Sunless Seas. Verily Drowned Captains Counter: 16

Other Tags (WIP)

#low level liveblog is where I talk about stuff in game as it comes up for me, I’m still very early in (Pre-POSI).

While I probably won’t be posting or reblogging much outright NSFW, stuff leaning in that direction/kink implications will be tagged as #suggestive

The two major story antagonists for these three, The Ravenous Acumen and The Phosphorescent Engineer are tagged as #the ravenous acumen and #officer beverley respectively! One day I’ll sit down and update things I promise

Character relationships are tagged as follows:

#detective duo for Shaw & B

#best and brightest for B & Officer Beverley

#worst laid plans for Shaw & Acumen

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (78) || atz

You haven’t left the infirmary for a whole day.

“Ahhhh!” You shriek into your pillow for the fiftieth-something time that day, burying your face in the soft down, fingers winding into the sheets. “Ahhh!”

There’s an amused chuckle from somewhere in the room, and soft footsteps draw closer. The mattress of your bed sinks lightly from the added weight before a hand comes to rest on your head, gentle and comforting.

“What’s going on with you?” San’s light voice is full of amusement, and you peek out from under the covers to see your master sitting cross legged on your bed, teasing smile on his face. “You’ve been holed up in here for a whole day now. Don’t you think that you should go explore the town a bit before the Treasure leaves Tortuga? Did something go wrong when you tried to give Hongjoong the jacket?”

Instantly, your mouth twists into a pout and you bury your face into the pillow once more with a tiny, muffled scream. Your cheeks burn, and the image of Hongjoong looking at you with such tenderness in his eyes resurfaces at your master’s mention only serves to addle your mind further.

“Please shut up for a second, master.” You groan into the pillow, refusing to look up. San snickers, but then in the next second he gasps. “Wait, didn’t you mean to give him that handmade jacket? Did he reject it? I’ll beat up the ungrateful little bastard, why he-”

“No, no, master!” You catch his arm before he can march out of the infirmary. “He didn’t reject it, I did give it to him and he accepted it. It’s just that...” you hesitate for a moment, the words rolling about in your mouth. “It’s just that, well, captain... he...”

San stares back at you, unblinking. “He...?”

You bury your face in your hands. For some reason, the tips of your ears feel like they’re on fire. You try to speak, and the words come out a mangled mess - almost as bad as Mingi’s attempts at cooking.

“Words.” San encourages. “You know, with consonants and vowels. Using the mouth might be helpful.”

You make an unintelligible noise and launch your pillow in his direction. There’s a satisfying “oompf”, but the downside is that you’ve lost your only shield between the two of you.

San grins. “So?”

“Well,” you pause, trying to find words more eloquent within your choices and resulting with none. “He... confessed.”

Good job, Chin Hae! Your inner self cheers, full of pride. That’s was a full sentence!

Your master stills for a moment, pulling the pillow off his head. The previously amused expression he was wearing on his face morphs into one of concern as he looks at you. “Oh. Oh.”

You’re stunned for a moment, staring at your master. “I would have expected you to be a little more surprised. Do you mean you actually knew about this?”

​San’s expression softens, eyes pained, before his fingers come up to poke you in the nose. “You’d be surprised how dense you can be sometimes, Chin Hae. That’s not good for you, you know.”

Your lips purse as you pick at the ends of the threads of your blanket. “What am I supposed to do, master? Wooyoung too, both of them... I rejected them both, but still... it hurts...”

There’s a soft exhale that leaves your master, that lingers in the air, still in the silence before he speaks. “Only you can decide that for yourself, Chin Hae.” When you look up at him, he puts his hand on your head with a painfully gentle smile. “I promised to do my best to help you find a cure, but I won’t give either of us false hope - there is every possibility you might die. Since this concerns you and the two of them, you have to make the choice yourself.”

You have to make the choice yourself.

You sigh and rub at your temples, trying to resolve the onset of a headache you can already feel coming. All this thinking hurts your head. “You know, I wish you weren’t right all the time, master.”

“We all want the impossible sometimes.” San shrugs easily, his usual smirk tinged with a hint of cheekiness. You turn a glare at him, but there’s no heat to it at all - how could you? Instead, San yanks you out of the bed and you follow, a tad unwillingly.

“What are you doing?”

“Let’s go get some herbs from town,” San suggests, pulling you along with him. “A good walk about time will clear your mind, and the Treasure will be leaving Tortuga soon.”

You sigh, reluctant, but follow.

What could possibly go wrong?

>>>

The trip to town starts off fine enough.

Wooyoung whines about not being to go with the two of you - you remind him about his ban from the town due to his little hostage attempt (‘it was only one teeny tiny hostage attempt,” he protests) and the two of you set off hand in hand, chattering brightly about what you’ll find in the marketplace.

And well, apparently the Fates had been listening, because they were determined to proved you wrong.

It’s barely ten minutes into the market that you’re completely lost.

You have no idea how you ended up in this situation - quite alone, separated from San in the middle of a bustling crowd in the marketplace. The sea of people surge around you like the push and pull of an unyielding tide, and the last thing you remember is San’s hand separating from yours after a man bumped into the two of you.

You’re not too worried, you’ve come here quite a few times, enough to be rather familiar with the place. As long as you find your way to the central town square, you’ll definitely be able to navigate your way through the back alleys back to the harbour with the town square as a reference point.

That is, until you hear something.

“The Treasure is leaving the harbour soon. We should move as soon as possible.” A low mutter reaches your ears as you step into a dark alley, and the second you hear those words, you flatten yourself against the wall in shock. That definitely doesn’t sound like any of crew, you know most of their voices well enough.

“But the Pirate King is the captain of that ship.” A nervous tremble in the voice of the man’s conversation partner. He sounds reluctant, and for a moment pride wells up in your chest at the reputation your captain holds. “We can’t just attack them! We’ll die!”

What?

They’re going to do what now?

“Listen, you coward,” the man practically growls, his voice a low rumble. You shiver lightly at that, and peek around the corner. To your horror, you see a hulking, burly man with rippling muscles, tan skin decorated with swirling black lines that spiral down his chest and across his forearms. He could easily crush you under his foot. “The big bosses in the inn right now are discussing plans, big ones. The second the Treasure leaves the harbour of Tortuga, ten different ships are going to hit it all at once with everything they’ve got. There’s no way they’ll escape.”

You clap a hand over your mouth and crouch behind the brick wall again. Heart racing in your chest and cold sweat sliding down your temples, you think carefully over what you’ve heard. All thoughts of escaping immediately flee your mind. Ten ships intending to attack the Treasure?

“Pirates don’t band together, the loot split amongst them won’t be big enough.” The other man mutters, although he seems slightly more reassured. “You’re intending on fighting one of the most terrifying ships to ever sail the waters of the Caribbean!”

“Are you an idiot, or do you just not know how much the Royal Navy is offering for this capture?” The man’s voice is near maniacal with the delirium of his excitement. “They’re offering enough wealth worth an entire Spanish treasure galleon as well as pardons signed by the Queen herself. We’ll be free men, all of us. All we need to do is take down one ship.”

“What? Sounds like a load of rotten shellfish to me.” The other man snorts derisively, and your knees tremble at their words. Such a reward would surely make the Treasure the target of most ships, if not all, in the waters. “What exactly does the Royal Navy want with the Treasure? They’ve been causing less trouble than they used to ages ago.”

You know what they want.

“Some woman with a wooden hand on board, called Chin Hae or something along those lines. There are drawings of her image circulating, so we know what she looks like.” The man says roughly, and your legs nearly give out beneath you. You’ve got to run, run, but your legs won’t move. Sucking in deep breaths, you urge strength into your legs as you clamber onto your knees.

Run, run, run!

“Hmm, I heard something over there.” You immediately clamp your mouth shut, nails digging so hard into your palm you feel blood slide down your skin. Don’t make a sound, you chant in your mind, don’t even think about breathing. “Huh. Musta’ just been a bird or a rat. These alleyways are filthy.”

“Hmph. Go check anyway, it might be a street urchin or something. If anyone finds out that we were talkin’ about the plans, we’re good as dead in a ditch.” The gruffer man mutters, and you hear grumbling and footsteps drawing closer to where you’re crouched.

Your heart practically stops beating in your chest. Your hand slides into your healer’s satchel, trembling. What do you do?

“See? Absolutely nothin’, it must have been just a-”

The man rounds the corner, and in that single, desperate second, you strike.

Pulling the largest round bottomed flash that you’d just bought from the apothecary with San earlier, you smash it over the man’s head with everything you’ve got.

The man lets out a tiny scream and shattered glass flies everywhere, your eyes lock. He stumbles back, bleeding from the forehead where you’d struck him, and grabs for you again.

“That’s the girl! The woman with the wooden hand! Get her, you fool!”

At the sound of his partner’s bellow, you gasp as you see him draw his sword. The size of it along could cleave you in half across the middle. When you whirl around to flee, the scrawnier man grabs you by the back of your tunic, terrifyingly strong. “I’m not letting you go!” He swears, and you react instantly, just as Jongho had taught you all those months ago.

You shove the remains of the broken glass bottle straight into one of his eyes with all your might, and the man screams in agony, curling up on the filthy ground as crimson blood gushes down his face. The same hot, sticky blood runs over your hand and between your fingers.

You don’t have time to worry about him. You run.

“Stop right there!” You hear him pounding on a wooden door behind you as you stumble, cursing your legs. Move! “Oi, we found the girl! Get your asses out here and get her!”

You dash down the alleyways. People, people, get to where there are lots of people! Your lungs burn, and you hear angry shouting of ‘where did she go’ at your back, the voices drawing closer every second. You’re not as used to the maze of alleyways as these people are, what do you do? What if you take a wrong turn and just end up running deeper into it?

You pause for a moment at a cross section, glancing about desperately as you heave for breath. Left, or right or-

Your eyes lock on something, up!

“Sorry, coming through,” you apologise as you shove past a townsmen as you race up the stairs to the rooftops. The man shrieks at your invasion of his house, but you barely hear him. Yes! Up here, you can see the way to the harbour without the walls of the alleys in the way!

Luckily for you, the houses here are clustered and cramped together, and you leap across the roofs with relative ease - nothing compared to toeing the wildly swinging masts in the middle of a storm.

The harbour!

Your knees nearly buckle as you land hard, but you don’t have the luxury to stop and think about the pain. Picking yourself up, you run with all your might, leaping across a gap between two alleys and hear some more shouting. “She’s up there! Get onto the roofs before she gets out of the alleys!”

There’s a whistle of something sharp slicing through the air, and instantly you throw up your hands to protect your face and your neck (‘better your hands that your life,’ Jongho had told you once grimly).

There’s a heavy thunk and you stumble back at the sheer force of the blade, eyes screwed shut as you wait for the agonizing pain to come. But it doesn’t.

To your surprise, when you pull your hands away from your face, you look down to see a blade embedded in your prosthetic hand, the wood nearly split in half. You make a little amused noise, unable to keep the laugh in, half crazed with adrenaline. That hand has really bad luck when it comes to knives, wooden or not, you think.

There’s the rattle of loose stones behind you, and you whirl around to see one of your pursuers already clambering onto the roof and your heart drops into your belly. Yanking the knife from your wooden hand, you send it sailing at the man and it misses his head. Instead, it strikes his hand and the man screams in pain to clutch at it, before realising he’s still climbing and falls to the cobbles below, taking his friends down with him.

“Don’t let her get away! She’s the key to us getting rich! She’s our treasure!” One of the men from below roar, and you balk at the words, disgust pooling in the pit of your stomach. Courage surges up in you out of nowhere. “The only one who gets to call me that is Captain, you bastards!”

You don’t have the patience to see if they’ve heard. You dive for the exit out of the alleyways and scramble along the shops at the docks, ducking and weaving around startled shopkeepers as you yank your hood over your head.

Can’t let them recognise you, you think frantically as you continue sprinting down the docks, chest heaving. Behind, you hear your pursuers roughly shoving the townspeople aside in their rush to get to you before you reach the Treasure. “Oi, stop right there! Stop running!”

“Do they seriously think I’ll listen to that?” You mutter under your breath, but for all your bravado, the voices are getting closer, and you’re almost dizzy with exhaustion. You look about frantically for somewhere to hide, but before you can, a hand wraps around your wrist and pulls you into a narrow alleyway behind a makeshift tent selling an assortment of mirrors, shrouded in darkness.

Thrashing, you struggle to get out of the man’s grip but it’s as firm as iron, and strangely gentle. Gentle as it may be though, you’re ready to bite your way out if need be until a mild, lilting voice touches your ears. “Hey, hey, you’re alright now. Those men are gone.”

You still, trembling. The man’s voice is soothing, but there’s something that grips your chest about it; it sounds familiar, but not quite. Unable to resist the urge, you look up to look at your saviour’s face.

A slender, handsome face, sharp nose and delicate features. But your eyes lock onto his eyes, mismatched ones, one a familiar, kind green and the other a dark, murky colour, the shade of dirty, brackish water.

Your heart drops into your chest, and instantly, every survival instinct in you screams at you to run, so loudly that your head nearly splits.

He looks like... he looks like...

He looks like your captain.

Recognition flickers across his face, and the kindness in his eyes disappear almost in the a blink. Instead, that kindness is replaced by something that looks like depraved hunger, and you feel like a prey being stared down by a predator.

Your survival instinct screams at you.

Run!

“I found you.” The man whispers, one hand coming up to touch your cheek and you recoil, heart beating unnaturally loudly in your chest. Your head feels like its about to split in half, strange, disembodied voices ringing in your skull, each louder than the other. “My treasure.”

“S-stay away from me.” You warn, one hand gripping your head as if you could physically prevent your mind from shattering. “Don’t move another inch!”

The man doesn’t seem able to hear you, taking a step closer. Power spills from him, so dark and thick it makes you gag, flinching backwards. Your back hits the wall. “I finally found you. With your power, I finally can-”

“I don’t have any power!” You shriek, trying to stay on your feet but the pain that wrecks your head threatens to bring you to your knees. There’s something growing there, too large for you to push back, as if you’re trying to hold back a storm wave with your bare hands. “I’m a normal human, just like everyone else! I just want to live a normal life!”

You are still part of the Treasure, part of my crew, one of my family. Even if you are a woman, a clay one, instead of a man of flesh, neither of those things change for me.

“Normal? No, you’re not.” The man takes another step closer, and the pain resounds throughout your entire body, so badly till your fingers are trembling. “Human? Something like you could never be. No matter how much you try, you can’t escape what you are.”

He regards you with a smile that seems almost surgical, and your heart plummets.

“You’re not even really alive.”

There’s the sound in the back of your head that sounds like tearing cloth, and your mind rents in half.

The last thing you see is a pair of vividly blue eyes in the gloom, rippling in almost liquid surface of a mirror, startlingly lifelike.

It takes a second for you to realise those are looking right back at you.

Thunder and lightning surges, wild tempests riding like wild horses bringing about the end of the word, and everything dissolves into chaos.The man from earlier seems to have vanished, of course he would, who would remain in this storm? The person in the mirror looks at you in the eye as the hurricane rages all about you. You stare, unable to move.

Who are you?

The howling of the wind and the icy blades of freezing rain don’t affect you in the least, but your limbs are leaden. The reflection in the mirror opens its mouth to speak.

They will come bearing a gift. Kill the man, and return. There is no running from me. Free us both, ****.

The one-eyed green boy smiles at you, and holds out his pinky finger.

I am you.

The storm screams overhead. Kill him, kill him, kill him, it chants.

You are me.

You crumple to your knees, and everything goes black.

Kill him.

[thiswasinevitableid]

For mermay I would love to see some Danbrey for 24 (lighthouse)!

Here you go! I went with SFW for this one

“You excited honeysuckle?” Her father sets her sleeping bag out on the floor.

“Yes” Dani manges her bravest smile. She’s never slept anywhere but their little house on the cliffs, and the lighthouse, with its echoing stairs and lack of true darkness, is the opposite of that.

“It’ll be fun. Like a camp out. I can even make s’mores over the stove.”

“Okay.” She sets her backpack on the floor, then follows him to the kitchen. At nine, she can already tell when her parents are doing their best, can spot the way her father carries himself when he’s tired but trying not to show it.

He makes them dinner, canned chili with goldfish crackers, and gives her a little tour. When it’s time for bed, he tucks her in, handing her the Totoro plush she sleeps with.

“When is mom coming back?”

Her father sighs, “Two weeks, assuming your grandma gets better at the speed they’re expecting. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll recover even faster than that.”

Dani nods. Her teacher expressed surprise that Dani was staying here and not taking the trip with her mom. The given reason was the gated community didn’t allow children to stay that long. But Dani knows the truth; her grandparents don’t like her dad. And because Dani is the result of her mom loving and staying with her dad, they don’t like her, either.

He kisses her forehead, makes her promise for the bajillionth time that she won’t go in the water, and tells her goodnight.

-----------------------------------------

She’s looking for seashells when it happens. Living by the sea means she knows not to turn her back on it. Too bad the wave hits her from the side, carried up and over the nearby rock and knocking her into the surf. She scrambles up, spluttering, touches her neck, and feels like she’s going to throw up. Her bracelet, the one mom gave her for luck, is gone.

“Oh no, oh no, where are you, oh no”

“Um, are you looking for this?” A girl watches her from the surf, bracelet dangling from her hand.

“Ohmygosh” She snatches the jewelry away, holding it to her chest, “thank you. It’s from my mom and, uh, and I try to be careful but it’s hard sometimes.”

“I get that.” The girl holds up a necklace, “this is from my mom. It’s like one she wears; she says I can have the real one when I’m older. Can I come on the beach?”

Dani nods, then gasps as the girl joins her. She’s seen mermaids in books or that pirate movie her mom watches sometimes. But they’re always grown ups with long hair, pale skin, and green tails. This mermaid is the same age as Dani, her dark skin dotted with freckles and her black held in place with pieces of coral. Her tail is shimmering red and black, the prettiest thing Dani’s ever seen.

“You’re a mermaid.” Dani says, because she can’t think of what else to say.

“Yeah. And you’re a human. Why are you here? It’s usually just that guy.”

“That’s my dad. I’m staying with him.”

“Do you wanna hang out?”

“Yes! Wait, how’s that going to work? I’m not allowed to swim around the lighthouse.”

“I’m allowed to be on the beach, so we’re good.”

“Okay” Dani grins, excited, before her dad’s voice carries down the beach, calling her to come in, “shoot, I have to go.”

“Okay, byyyyyeee!” The mermaid waves as Dani hurries up the sand, and is gone when she turns around for a final look.

------------------------------------------

“Got any tens?”

“Go fish.”

Aubrey draws another card, “I still think it’s weird that you don’t really fish during this game.”

“You’re just grumpy you’re losing.” Dani teases. Aubrey sticks her tongue out. Dani responds in kind.

“When your dad finally lets you swim, we’re gonna play it my way and I’ll kick your tail. Legs?”

“Butt.”

Aubrey snickers, wiggles closer on the warm sand. They’ve found a patch of beach that isn’t immediately visible from land or sea, meaning Aubrey isn’t in danger of being seen and Dani isn’t breaking her promise to her dad to stay out of the water.

“If you come to the beach near my house, I can swim there. But I’m still not allowed to swim alone. I could drown.”

The mermaid purses her lips, “I wouldn’t let you drown.

“I don’t think my mom would believe me if I said I had a mermaid helping me.”

“Man, why can’t humans just have tails? Or, like, fins.”

“I think then we’d just be mermaids. Don’t worry; I’ll get to swim on my own when I’m older and we can play in the water then.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“FINALLY!” Aubrey raises her arms triumphantly as Dani wades into the surf. It took four years and passing a survival swimming course for her parents to be okay with her swimming alone. The smile on Aubrey’s face makes the weeks pretending to swim in a riptide worth it.

“Do you wanna race? Ooh, or I could show you the ray nest, or we could go look for otters-”

“Let’s start with a race. I’ve been waiting years to kick your tail.”

The mermaid’s smile takes on a competitive edge, “last one to that rock is a rotten urchin!”

With that, she splashes Dani with her tail and zooms through the water. Dani dives forward after her, but even with her newfound swimming skills she makes it to the rock a good ten seconds after her friend.

“Best two out of three?” She says the moment she comes up for air.

“You’re on.”

Best two out of three becomes best out of ten, and on number ten Dani plays dirty, throwing her arms around Aubrey’s waist when she manages to catch her. Her friend shrieks with laughter, spinning and chasing Dani towards shore. The human slips and Aubrey tackles her, sand clinging to both of them as they roll onto their sides, cackling into the salt air.

They stay on the sand until it gets dark, counting stars and holding hands until Dani has to go home.

-------------------------------------------------

Dani’s trying not to panic; it’s not the first time Aubrey’s missed meeting her. Sometimes the mermaid gets called away for lessons or has last minute things to take care of, and they haven’t figured out a way to get messages between underwater and above it (they tried a supposedly waterproof cellphone but it only lasted an hour). But it’s been three days without a single sign of her friend.

As she’s contemplating getting the boat her dad uses for fishing on his days off and going further out to look for her, Aubrey surfaces. Even before they reach each other, it’s obvious Aubrey’s been crying.

Dani kneels in the soaked sand, opening her arms, and Aubrey burrows into them, salt water of two kinds dripping onto Dani’s jacket.

“Aubrey?”

Her friend hides her face against her neck, “Mom’s gone. There, there was an accident and she, she didn’t-” it cuts off in a sob.

Dani holds her tighter, strokes her hair, murmurs, “I’m so sorry” as Aubrey shakes in her arms. The wind whips around them, stinging her cheeks, chilling her fingers. She doesn’t care. Aubrey needs her.

---------------------------------------------------------

“Ta-dah!” Aubrey produces a massive clam with a flourish, narrowly avoiding sending water onto the slices of cake Dani smuggled down to the beach.

“Aw, thanks Aubrey, you didn’t have to--holy crap!” She gawps as Aubrey opens the clam, revealing a pearl necklace.

“Like it? It took me, like, a year to get them all. Had to fight a few otters for some of the oysters.”

“Uh-”

“Kidding!” Aubrey flops her head into Dani’s lap, “I’d never bug the otters; Dr. Harris Bonkers would never forgive me for bothering his friends.”

Dani clasps the necklace in place, rests a hand on Aubrey’s tail. She traces figure eights on it, smiling when her friend sighs and nuzzles her stomach.

“You’re the best, Aubrey.”

“Thanks. I, um, I just wanted you to have something to remember me by.”

Her heart turns to an iceberg, “You’re leaving?”

“What? No!” Aubrey sits up, bringing them face to face, “you’re eighteen now. That’s when humans leave home.”

Dani giggles, “Not automatically. I haven’t made up my mind if I want to leave Kepler or not. I might just stay in town; I like it here, and Mama offered me a job manning the community gardens.”

Aubrey’s tail flutters, “Um, I have another point in the stay category.”

“Yeah? Oh” Dani sighs as Aubrey cups her cheek and guides her into a kiss. When Dani deepens it, Aubrey trills, shifting so she’s in Dani’s lap and draping her arms over her shoulders.

“Well?” Aubrey whispers, brushing their noses together.

“Definitely a convincing point, cutie pie.”

Aubrey trills again, knocking her backwards and kissing her senseless in the sand.

-----------------------------------------------

Much of Kepler is surprised when, upon his retirement, the lighthouse keeper announces his daughter will be taking his place. After all, why would a charming young woman want such a job?

The charming young woman isn't particularly interested in their speculation. If she took the job in order to be closer to her wife well, that's her business, now isn't it?

[dottiechan]

Tempest (Pt. 1)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5  

Read on AO3

Pairing: Ava Du Mortain x f!Detective

Wordcount: 1950

Warnings: gay pining, denial of romatic feelings none

Summary: Ava waits for the private detective to arrive while pondering their relationship. (1890s AU)

A/N: I am plagued by the late Victorian AU and Miss Du Mortain, so this happened. I wrote the detective as a female private detective, but other than that I have not specified any details about her. It also passes as a reader insert fic! (You can check out the full art here.)

Ava watches the grey sky as it persistently batters the window with rain, the small streaks on the glass pane casting lines on her handsome face that could be mistaken for tears by someone who doesn’t know her. Anyone who does know her knows that she’d sooner shed her blood than her tears. That is just the way she is. The way she likes to be thought of. The only way she is truly safe.

The heavens have let loose, and god is baring his teeth. And Ava just stands there, hands shoved in the pockets of her trousers, gazing out into the busy street as still and cold as the marble statues dotting the hallway. But only on the outside. Because inside of her, there is a storm to match the tempest that assails the city.

She is agitated the moment an image of her slips into her mind, and she begins chewing on the inside of her cheek when she realises that every minute the private detective isn’t in her sight, she is losing her mind. The nervous gesture is soon quelled by hundreds of years of self-discipline, and is replaced by her signature frown, lips pressed into a thin line, the muscles running along her jawbone tensing under her opaque skin. She is... mortal, she wants to think. Fragile. Unimportant. A job.

But she is also everything.

Which is why she must sever her ties to the woman before the job is over, otherwise the eternity to come will turn into hell on earth without her. Ava deserves hell, she knows that. Not that she believes in the devil, but the sharpness of his pitchfork and the heat of hellfire are sensations not unfamiliar to her. Eternal damnation is just guilt and anger and fear hiding in Satan’s clothing. But she can’t even begin to assign words to the kind of torture a world without her would mean. Ava’s ever so logical mind paralyses in terror at the thought of existing in a time when she isn’t.

She inhales sharply - even brushing the surface of the topic causes so much pain to course through her whole being that she needs to focus on something else - anything else - to continue functioning. So she listens to Nate’s soothing voice as he discusses myths with the professor down the hall. She registers the footsteps of people mulling about the museum on the floor below, the idle chatter of ladies clad in expensive dresses, the booming voices of three men arguing over the origin of a painting in the first hall. She turns her piercing attention on the street now, listening to the sounds of horses and vendors and street urchins, feeling thankful to the steady rain for considerably dulling the sharp tang of the muddy streets in her nostrils. She pulls out her pocket watch then, the ticking matching her now once more steady heartbeat.

The detective isn’t late yet, though she has a feeling that she will be, with the rain clogging the streets with carriages and hansoms as it usually does, especially at such a lively hour in the late morning. Ava wonders what she will wear, how her hair will be styled. She wants the rain to kiss her face, she wants the wind to rake its fingers through her tightly pinned up hair and loosen some strands from their captivity. She wants the warmth of the museum building to engulf her once she steps inside, bringing a rush of blood to her cold cheeks. She wants all this and more, for her own body must stay still for everyone’s sake, thus leaving her to live through the rain, and the wind, and the warmth of the radiators, her own fingers and lips and skin left yearning for a sensation she must deny herself.

Her daydreaming is cut short when two men pass her by, throwing her wide-eyed stares as they clutch their books to their chests and mutter quiet greetings to her. Students of the professor, no doubt, and shocked to their very core by the sight of a woman in trousers easily towering above them. It fills Ava with a savage sort of satisfaction before her insecurities - awakened by the private detective’s appearance in her life - creep up on her. It has never been particularly acceptable for a woman to wear men’s clothing throughout history, and 1896 is no exception. Then again, Ava has never been particularly bothered by this expectation, so it has all been well. Until now, when she begins to wonder if the detective likes this. She has commended her on her bravery before, and agreed with her choice of clothing because of its practicality, but that is hardly an admission of approval or attraction. And besides, she seems to favour dresses herself, even if she is nowhere nearly as extravagant or tightly laced as the dames of the decade. Admittedly, the detective’s pulse always picks up when they speak, especially alone, and her pupils are blown when she catches her staring but...

“I’ve got what we came for... and more,” Nate speaks with quiet excitement as he stalks up to her by the window, and Ava forces herself to look at her friend, hands balling into fists in her pockets. She had been so absorbed in thoughts of the private detective that she almost didn’t notice Nate at all until he reached her.

Pathetic. She needs to focus.

There’s a supernatural on the loose, murdering in the streets of London, and she is thinking about whether or not a mortal woman likes her choice of clothing. She takes the folder Nate hands her, and pries it open to reveal several new pages filled with his neat handwriting. At least their initial hunch has been correct - they’re definitely something corporeal that can pass off as a human, and now thanks to Nate’s research, they’re all but confirmed to have come from Scandinavia originally. And yet it doesn’t help her ease her mind that she knows what they could possibly be - after all, they’re out for the detective by the Agency’s estimate.

“Could it be a dark elf?” she mutters, blonde brows furrowed as she skims through the pages.

“Dökkálfar. My thought exactly,” her friend nods, pleased that Ava has come to the same conclusion.

“Haven’t seen one of those in... well, in a very long time.”

Nate’s shoulders sag a little as his initial enthusiasm ebbs. “I suppose we are about to face one again.”

She wants to reprimand Nate for forgetting the real objective of their mission - it’s protection, after all, not hunting down a rogue. But she thinks of the detective again, a woman so unique and individualistic in a world that tries so hard to oppress her along with her ambitions, and she knows she won’t be able to rest until the threat to her life is no more. It’s her duty, she reasons meekly against the swell of affection filling her chest and pushing against her skin, threatening to crack the solid marble of her stoic facade. But she knows a lie when she hears one. She suddenly thinks of last year, Paris, the Louvre. Nike of Samothrace. The statue of the Winged Victory. Headless, and yet still the symbol of triumph. She has lost her common sense ever since she started working with the detective, but she knows she must win as well, because if she fails... Well, she dare not even think about the consequences it would have on her.

And above all, she must remain as cold to the touch as that carefully carved block of marble.

“I wish we could tell her,” her friend presses on gently, concern and guilt marring the edges of the soft curve of his long lips.

“It’s better this way. Safer,” she croaks, hating the way her voice softens and breaks mid-sentence.

“Safer for whom, I wonder?” Nate sighs, taking the folder Ava hands him and closes it with delicate fingers before leaning against the wall next to her. She hasn’t even realised she sought to support of the wooden panelled hallway until Nate mimicked her movement absent-mindedly.

“What do you mean?”

“Safer for her...” he sighs before glancing at Ava with sad eyes, “or safer for us?”

She averts her eyes, her long ignored self-loathing clawing its way up from the deepest pits of her mind before she clenches her jaw. “For all parties involved.”

But mostly for me, she admits to herself inwardly. The lie obscures her true nature, and she revels in it for once. She doesn’t know what she’d do if the detective flinched away from her in fear instead of being drawn to her like a moth to a flame in the middle of a heavy summer night. For the past 800 years, she thought of herself as nothing but an agent, an element operating in the shadows, making the world a less dangerous place. She hunted her emotions and burned them at the stake, but this witch hunt can only go on for so long without consequences. She always thought of herself as a vampire first and foremost, her base nature being a bloodthirsty monster, but she was human before that. And she’s never felt more human than now. Probably not even when she actually was one.

And that is a terrifying thought to live with, especially when its source is so easily pinpointed. Her. It’s all on her.

“So we lie once more?” Nate sighs, breaking the silence and drawing her attention outwards once more.

“Yes,” she states firmly, the word feeling strangely sour in her mouth. “We tell her this was a dead end. She doesn’t need to know anything else. The Agency, on the other hand, needs to be brought up to speed. Will you do it?”

“I’ll brief them,” Nate nods, pushing himself away from the wall before straightening down his coat. “I suppose that leaves you with watching her?”

“Yes,” Ava speaks through gritted teeth, ignoring the heat crawling up her neck at the thought of being alone with the woman. Her reaction to the detective is unbearable, and yet she brings it upon herself like a masochist inviting the pain. She doesn’t understand why she does it, and yet she has no will to stop.

A nod, retreating footsteps, and Nate is no longer to be seen or heard, not even by her eyes and ears. She slips out her watch from her pocket once more and flips the silver lid open - she is late. Her heartbeat turns into a wild galloping crescendo when she hears a familiar voice on the street though, her heart’s rhythm no longer matching the steady ticking of the pocket watch as it did before.

Ava stares as she exits the hansom with a graceful ease that should be categorised as a criminal offence, wet pieces of stray hairs sticking to her delightful face as she rushes across the street with a purpose that almost leaves her breathless.

She wants to catch the killer, she tells herself. That’s all she wants and nothing more.

Yet as she moves swiftly towards the staircase, unable to wait for her in one place, and wanting, no, needing to see her as soon as possible, deep down Ava hopes the detective is just as eager to be with her as she is.

And then at the very last moment, right before they’re about to come face to face, she schools her features into a blank expression, a great lie of a tabula rasa, her face hardening like sculpted marble - commanding, ancient, beautiful, but so, so cold.

[namfine]

Hi, can I request a nsfw titanic scenario with taehyung? Kinda like the scene in the movie where Jack and Rose first sleep together. Thank yooou

Hello! Gah, I absolutely loved this ask. I took some liberties with the original plot of the movie and switched some stuff around- hope that’s okay and I hope you enjoy. Who knows this may inspire a longer fic in the future? 

-Admin Zesty 

Taehyung traced the line of your shoulder with his fingers. His form was tense and his fingers barely skimmed your skin as his eyes devoured you. It tickled a little, and you let out a breathy exhale, fascinated with the darkening in his gaze.

“What are you doing?” you whispered, careful to keep your voice low. You were in your cabin, your mother and fiance were out, but you were cautious ever the same. The walls had ears on this ship and the cabin maids loved to gossip.

Taehyung had snuck up here to fulfill your artistic request of a portrait of your likeness and  before you knew it here you were, completely nude before him. Exposed to his piercing dark eyes, as he drew your form in his notebook.

You had watched as his eyes took in every detail of your soft skin, your subtle curves. Watched as his pupils darkened when he drew your breasts and filled in the hair between your legs.

You hadn’t meant for this to happen, both the drawing and the feelings but it didn’t matter in the end. None of this mattered except your love for this man, in this moment.

Evidently, he also felt the same because he had abandoned his craft after struggling dutifully through and now knelt before where you lie on the chaise, his brow furrowed, as he traced the contour of your waist to your hip bone.

“You’re beautiful, y’know that?” He murmured his hand slipping down your thigh, careful to stay modestly away from where they met. You shivered at the feeling.

“So I’ve been told,” you quipped and Taehyung met your eyes, a sly smile on his lips. You sat up, straddling his midsection and gripping his suspenders,pulling him forward onto the chaise. He caught himself on his hands, braced on either side of your hips and leaned forward brushing his lips against your own. Taehyung eliminated any self conscious worries you had with a flick of his eyes and a brush of his lips and soon you were melting under his grasp as he deepened the kiss, wetness building between your legs.

It’s funny how things change. How you could go from meekly fulfilling your mother’s wishes of marrying that reproachful man and being shipped across the world on a meager cruise liner to locking lips with a street urchin known as the Prince of the Third Class but you wouldn’t have it any other way. You had known, from the second you saw him on that deck that he was destined for you as much as you were for him. He had eagerly shown you his life by exploring the underground of the ship and late night dances  even though your life had rejected him. He had earned  your loyalty and your loyalty knew no bounds.

Taehyung’s kisses were desperate now. He was pressed against you, his clothed cock pressed against your slick core and you could feel how ready he worked up he was for you, long past using his arms to hold himself up as he wrapped himself in your embrace.

“Tae. . . Tae-” you panted, breaking the kiss to cup his face and stare deeply into his eyes. “I want you, Tae. All of you.”

He looked at you, his eyes wide with shock, his hair mussed. “What? Here?”

You nodded.

“But, your mother? Cal?”

“They won’t be back for hours yet, they’ve gone to watch the opera.” And frankly, you didn’t care. You had lost your virginity years back and regretted not saving it for someone special. Your first time had been unremarkable and if you were going to be forced to spend the rest of your life with Cal, the least you could do was experience love and passion for once in your life. “Please, Tae, it might be our only chance.” You had three days left until you made port in New York City.

He looked at you, face flushed, lashes long before nodding slowly. “I want to. . . it’s just. . .” He paused, looking away from you and biting his bottom lip. You resisted the urge to pull it into your mouth instead. “I’ve never. . . uh. . . I’ve never . . . had sex.” He said the last word so quietly that you weren’t sure you’d heard him right.

“Really?” you asked, brushing his hair from his face and cupping his cheeks to force him to look at you. He exuded such an air of confidence and sexual energy you had assumed. . .

He nodded, clearly embarrassed.

“Oh, god, Taehyung that doesn’t matter at all,” you smiled pulling him closer. “I’ll show you what to do, really, don’t worry. We don’t have to, though, if you don’t-”

He shook his head vigorously, “Oh no, don’t get me wrong. I want to. Very badly.”

Judging by the pressure you felt in his pants against your center, you figured that was a very true statement indeed.

You pulled him in for another kiss. “Okay, let me teach you how to do it then, pretty boy.” You tugged on his shirt, helping him pull it over his head before snaking the belt off his pants. As he stood to remove them you smiled and beckoned him closer, laying back on the lounge. Taehyung straddled you, his legs on either side of your hips before he leaned down to attach himself to your neck, nipping softly at the skin while he used a hand to grope your breast, rolling the nipple roughly against his calloused fingers. You mewled at the sensation.

“What are you nervous about,” you gasped. “You seem to know exactly what you’re doing.”

You felt him smile against your neck before his mouth slid down to nip and suck marks into your collarbone. You would have to remember to wear a scarf tomorrow lest Cal found out you were unfaithful. “I said I was a virgin,” he whispered before taking the nipple of another breast into his warm mouth. “Not a saint.”

You chuckled at that as you writhed under his touch. He lifted one of his legs and placed it between your thighs and your legs instinctively closed around it, holding him there. Taehyung let out a guttural groan as his thigh felt how wet and ready you were for him and you could see his cock stiffen beneath his underwear.

You grabbed one of his hands pulling it down to your cunt and Taehyung’s eyes widened. “What?” you whispered, pressing his fingers against your clit. “She doesn’t bite. Just, I need you to touch me here first, before we go any further.”

“Why?” Taehyung asked as he moved his fingers in a circular motion. You moaned and he let out a boxy grin, feeling rather proud of himself.

“It helps get me ready,” you panted, trying to keep the neediness out of your voice as Taehyung increased the pressure in his fingers ever so slightly. “Otherwise, it could hurt me when you go in.”

“It hurts?” he asked.

“Only the girls,” you replied. “And only if they aren’t fully worked up.”

Taehyung increased his tempo, as if trying to guarantee you would be really worked up.

He was succeeding.

You groaned again as you felt the familiar coil in your lower belly, a sure sign of impending orgarm and you squeezed your legs tighter against his thigh, his hand moving at a rapid pace. Taehyung took his other hand and inserted one finger, then two, into your sloppy cunt and you arched your back.

“Quick learner,” you panted. “Oh God, Tae, please don’t stop, I’m close, I’m so close.”

“You look so fuckin’ hot right now,” he answered, gently curling his fingers inside of you and sliding them in and out. The pressure was growing to be unbearable and you rolled your hips into his hand, searching to increase the friction. Taehyung increased the pace of the fingers sliding in and out of you and pressed a tad bit harder on your clit and it was enough to throw you over the edge.

Your body convulsed with the orgasm and Taehyung managed to pull out his fingers but continued working your clit until you were finished. Spent, your body relaxed and you looked up to find a very proud Taehyung grinning down on you.

“Did I do well?” he asked, knowing perfectly well that he did.

You nodded before sitting up and gripping his hips, pulling his underwear down to let his cock spring free. It was fully hard, probably from all the noise you were making, and already dripping with precum. You leaned forward to press a gentle kiss to the tip but Taehyung gripped your hair, stopping you before you could do more.

“Maybe we should do that part later, I’m afraid I won’t last long if you play around,” he confessed and you grinned up at him. Time for the main attraction, then.

You pulled him down over you as you leaned back onto the lounge. Taehyung used one hand to hold himself up above you and the other to line himself up at your entrance. You could feel him as he pushed himself against your entrance, a series of breathy moans escaping his lips as he felt you wrap around him for the first time.

“Am I hurting you?” He asked, as he continued to push in.

“No,” you whispered, fascinated with the look of pure bliss overcoming his face as he experienced the feeling for the first time.

“Good,” he responded. “Because I think this is the most amazing thing I have ever felt in my whole life.”

You grinned as you felt him bottom out and for a minute, he just stayed there, letting the feeling of your tight core wrapped around him overwhelm his senses.

“Taehyung,” you whispered. “If you think that’s amazing, wait until you move.”

He looked down at you as you felt him pull out slightly and push back in. His gaze changed and you were pretty sure his eyes were going to roll back in his head as he continued the motion, each time becoming more bold by the movements.

“God, I don’t think I’m going to last long,” he moaned, his hips slowly increasing the pace as he rolled into you. You clenched your walls around him and he growled, his eyes squeezing shut. “Definitely not if you do that.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist, giving him deeper access as he struggled to maintain the tempo. Ultimately his body betrayed him and he began to pound into you, his balls colliding against your ass to produce a guttural slapping sound that you hoped the maids couldn’t hear. But honestly, who gave a fuck? A large shake reverberated in the ship but neither of you paid it any mind as Taehyung slammed into you.

Taehyung began to murmur all sorts of dirty, beautiful things about how he wished he could disappear forever inside you and how you were the most wonderful creature he’d ever seen as he grew closer and closer to his climax. You urged him on with little gasps and breathy moans until he thrust himself harshly into you for the last time, holding himself as deeply into you as he could,  groaning loudly as he spilled himself inside of you. His body slumped down onto your own and he turned, pressing his forehead against your own, his eyes slowly opening to connect with yours.

You stayed like that for a moment, both of you reveling in the contact of one another’s bodies and the strong connection you had formed before he slowly pulled out of you with a sickening pop.

“I’m so sorry, I uh-” Taehyung stammered.

“It’s fine,” you smiled at him, leaning forward to kiss his temple. “I have things that will ensure nothing comes from this.”

He nodded and captured your lips on his own.

An alarm blared across the ship causing you both to jump. The loud speaker in your room activated and three harsh beeps signaled before a man’s voice came on:

“Greetings, passengers. I regret to inform you that as of now 11:45pm, the RMS Titanic has been irreparably damaged and we will all need to abandon ship. This is not a drill. Please report to your designated lifeboat stations. I repeat, the ship has been irreparably damaged, please report to your designated lifeboat stations. This is not a drill.”

[dangan-happy]

hi uhhm

[[ENOSHIMA I'M BALD]]

heya this is 2 any1 but honestly if kyoko's involved that'd be pretty damn poggers yeah

my name's Jay (he/him)

cw for death and s/h

idek where to start but someone I love said I need to talk abt my feelings more instead of repressing so uh here i am

i uh. lost someone close to me. like, really really close 2 me, he died.. and life's gone back to shit without him. i can barely live a normal life because me and him had so much shit we used to do together, like every morning I'd go 2 his house and he'd kiss me & we'd eat breakfast together. every week her take me to the park and we'd sit on the swings & just fuckin talk. he always comforted me when I needed it and he never even questioned me that 1 time I started crying out of nowhere (i was under hella pressure that day and was just too stressed) & he hasn't called me weak like other ppl, he hasn't made fun of me

but without him

uh

this'll sound pathetic

but im scared. im so scared without him

i don't wanna live in a world he's not in but im part of a system

and i self harmed for the first time and my dumbass didn't do it in the inner world so they found bruises on the body and i

i just want comfort that I'm not weak and that I'll be ok

if that's alright

- jay.

I’m so glad that you opened up about this and decided to talk about your feelings instead of repressing them, Jay. The person who told you that really is right about that; repressing would only prove to be worse and even more painful. I thank that person for encouraging you to open up, and let me just say that I’m proud of you for opening up. That takes a lot of courage and strength, after all.

To start off with, I truly am sorry for your loss; I can’t begin to imagine how you first felt and how you currently feel now. Losing someone close to you like that makes your feelings completely understandable and valid. However, I must cut through your words about how your situation will ‘sound pathetic’, because it doesn’t sound pathetic at all! You’re simply being honest about how you personally feel, and actually opening up about that to someone is not pathetic whatsoever. If anything, it’s the opposite of pathetic; it goes to show just how strong you truly are, Jay. As such, let me further reassure you by saying that you’re not weak at all, and that you’ll be okay. I have hope in you, and I have hope that you’ll be able to get through this and that you’ll be okay all throughout this grieving of yours! Of course, as repetitive as this may be at this point, it will be tough, and you’ll experience many more moments where you might just... want to give up. But I must stress that as hard and tempting as it may be, you shouldn’t give into this despair you feel! I’ll cut through your despair and do what I can to give you the hope that I feel!

As for your recent self-harm, you’re not dumb at all. Self-harm is normally done with little to no stable thought other than that overflowing, overwhelming, despairful thought of, “I have to get rid of this terrible, suffocating pain now.” I get it, Jay; I really do. And I can understand why you may not want to be in this world anymore, now that this person who was very close to you is no longer physically there. But honestly, as weird as this may sound, I’m glad that you’re a part of a system. Granted, I can tell that’s possibly the only thing that’s currently holding you back, but even so, ending your life... it truly isn’t the answer, as obvious and clear as that may sound. This person may not physically be here anymore, but he’ll always be here in spirit; emotionally; within your memories. And sure, I may not have some crystal ball like that sea urchin guy, or unrealistic ‘physic powers’ like that bootleg Hatsune Miku, but what I do have is lots of hope. And I have true hope that this person you once were close to wouldn’t want that; he wouldn’t want you to end your life or to even self-harm. Instead, he would want you to keep his memory alive; to cope properly and in a healthy manner; to take your time with grieving but to also not stay in the past forever. So please, while it’s easier said than done, remain hopeful and keep living, but not solely for his sake; remain hopeful and keep living for your sake as well.

Before I conclude my side of the case, I want to suggest some alternatives to self-harm. One common one is using a rubber band, putting it on your wrist, and snapping it on your wrist until that urge goes away. Squeezing ice cubes or taking a cold or even hot shower might help as well. Another sort of common alternative is to draw on yourself with a sharpie. Specifically, use a red sharpie to draw pretend wounds on where you might want to self-harm, and if you want, wrap the area you draw on with bandages. I could... go on and on, but I’ll wrap this up with one more alternative: Find a fine ballpoint pen to use and make lines on where you might want to self-harm. While it’s unlikely to actually cut through skin, don’t keep drawing over a line over and over, or else you’ll potentially cut yourself! Of course, not all of this may work for you, so just give these alternatives a try and see what works best with you. Just remember these important pointers: You opening up about your feelings isn’t pathetic, you’re not weak, you’ll be okay, and I have hope in you. Keep that in mind, okay? Take care now, Jay.

-

I personally requested Hajime answer before I do, now I will proceed with my part.

It’s not pathetic to be afraid of being without someone, I have never gone through something like that. Sure, I lost someone close to me…but I never knew him, so I can’t fully relate to you. However, opening up about this is very brave of you, you aren’t holding back any feelings. That is definitely a step forward instead of suffering in silence, if you will.

Relapsing is always rough, don’t beat yourself up too much about it, alright? Using tactics such as snapping a rubber band against your wrist can help you snap out of it before it happens again. Your loss is not something that you’ll heal from immediately, it will take time. And even then, some scars never fully heal. I don’t just mean scars as in psychically, I mean mentally and emotionally. The loss of a person is an example of those kind of scars, don’t think you’re pathetic at all. You’re quite the opposite Jay. None of this makes you weak, you’re still trudging on and trying to stay strong.

Hajime essentially took the lead here because I had asked him too, so I will do my part in reassuring you that you’ll be okay. I have the upmost faith in you. Life is a big rollercoaster of ups and downs, you won’t be happy all the time. But the same can be said for sadness, you will not be sad forever. It takes learning from experiences that we have throughout our lives that we take and grow from. Whether they be bad or good experiences, we learn something from them. We’re human, we make mistakes. And you relapsing isn’t a sign of weakness. You’re recovering in a way, and I’ll remind you that you are worth more than you think! That’s the truth, I assure you of that.

[mollymauk-teafleak]

sweetheart, you look a little tired

Huge thanks to @minky-for-short and @spiky-lesbian for being such lovely betas!

---

Peter Nureyev is in disguise once again, this time at a high end brothel. he has a clear goal, a clear head and voices haunting him from his past.

Until he meets his first client, Juno Steel.

---

Please reblog and let me know what you think in the tags or leave a comment on this fic over at Ao3!

---

Disguises were Peter Nureyev’s specialty. He didn’t like to think what a psychologist would say if they got their hands on that.

But he was something of a genius at them and, like all things he was unbelievably good at, he enjoyed doing it. He’d forged new faces out of wildly expensive materials only found on one planet in the entire known galaxy, he’d made them out of cheap stage paints and shoplifted supermarket make up. He’d spent close to a year making some of his most used, most dependable costumes and some he’d made in the handful of seconds he’d had between a door starting to open and the security guard behind it seeing him somewhere he definitely wasn’t supposed to be.

Nureyev had been counts and cardsharps, he’d been street urchins and fantastically rich multibillionaires, he’d been priests and strippers, he’d been ghosts and shadows and monsters right out of folklore, he’d been someone so painfully normal that you wouldn’t look once, let alone twice. He’d been everything under the sun, apart from himself.

And now he had a rather unusual challenge. Now he had to make a disguise out of absolutely nothing.

The five minute call was coming down the corridor, hollered by an assistant with a clipboard who looked like they’d completely transcended the concept of ‘stressed’ and was now utterly untouchable. As they walked by, they remembered Nureyev was new here and said it again, for his benefit, reminding him that ‘five minutes till showtime’ meant he needed to be dressed and in the bar area by the time the brothel opened.

Nureyev nodded, wearing the face of an anxious young man who was realising he’d maybe bitten off more than he could chew with this job.

It must have worked because the assistant’s expression of self preserving numbness shifted into something like sympathy, “It’s a weeknight, man, no one’s gonna be picking a new face.  Just sit there, look pretty and keep your eyes open.”

The moment of unexpected kindness, from someone who clearly didn’t need to give any amount of their time to comfort someone like him but had anyway, in their own rough manner, Nureyev could remember a time when that would have thrown him. When it would have filled him with guilt at what he was here to do, regret that he’d lied with every breath since he’d arrived, wonder what might happen if he didn't have to have that disconnect between himself and everyone he met.

Nureyev could remember. And he could recognise how far he’d come since then.

The five minute call continued, bellowed further down the hall, bringing a flurry of activity in its wake. Nureyev could hear silk whispering over skin and heels clicking on the floor outside the doorway, giggles traded between his coworkers for the evening who knew each other better, light arguments break out over who’s turn it was to wear a certain sapphire necklace as if such extravagance could be traded and bantered over so playfully. But of course it could, even the tiny dressing room Nureyev had been given as the newest member of the brothel had a chest overflowing with jewels and a closet bursting with silks, any one of which would have kept him fed, clothed and safe for a year when he was a child.

The luxury of this place was staggering in a hundred little ways like that. It was a fine establishment, loudly and proudly touted as the best in Hyperion City. Nureyev had to knit together a sparkling resume at four other, lesser brothels to be even given an interview for the recently opened position. His charm had carried him the rest of the way, as if often did. First rule of thieving, always make sure your greatest asset is something that can’t be taken away from you.

There was a huge bar area downstairs with a stage and, upstairs, fifty rooms, some elaborately and cringe-inducingly themed to your more standard fetishes. Others were simply beautiful spaces for the workers to take their clients, filled with flowers genetically modified to never wilt or curl or lose their scent, soft furnishings with gold accents and dramatic hangings, beaded curtains and diffusers and immense marble bathtubs. And of course beds of every sort, small and soft and intimate or expansive and lush and built for as many partners as you were willing to pay for.

And these clients were willing to pay. Being the best and most lavish brothel, it drew the best and most lavish customers. When a high ranking politician or stream star or oligarch wanted to indulge in some fun away from polite society, though the line was getting increasingly blurred, they came here. They came to The Fly-By Night.

And it stood to reason that the best customers would draw the best thieves.

Nureyev wasn’t here to rob anyone, not outright. If that was his only goal, he would just fill the pockets of the see through robe he wore over shorts that were barely there, he’d stuff them with the jewels and expensive aphrodisiacs left around this place like decorative potpourri and leave by the nearest window. No, he was here for something else. He was here for information. First rule of thieving, the most valuable items are never what is in plain sight.

So Nureyev had no intention at all of going down to the bar area to lounge and look pretty and flirt with the bar patrons who either hadn’t made an appointment or couldn’t afford one but could afford the ridiculous drinks prices. He’d nodded earnestly all through the floor manager’s careful instructions on what to do and how to present himself, letting his facial muscles do the work while knowing all the while that he would be here for a handful of hours, no more. The hard part had been getting through the door, earning the freedom to move through the building that only an employee would be afforded. Sure, posing as a client would have been simpler in execution but Nureyev had never been afraid of over preparing.

First rule of thieving, take the safest route, never just the easiest.

Nureyev set his jaw and finished smudging gold eyeshadow over one eyelid. He wondered when he would stop hearing that voice in his head. He always told himself one more job, one more planet, and the distance would be great enough that it would fade into nothing. Something less than a memory even. He’d forget the face that had ever been attached to that voice, he’d stop feeling the ghostly stickiness on his palms that came with those whispers.

Next time, perhaps.

He left Peter Nureyev in the dressing room and emerged as Freyr Zirconia, a ridiculous name to walk down the street with but perfect to wear as a sex worker in glossy, completely transparent samite. He made his smile a little false around the edges, clearly hiding nervousness, someone who knew their trade but hadn’t quite settled into their environment yet. He chose accessories that were far from the finest on offer, making him look low in the pecking order, hesitant to appear flashy or perhaps he just didn’t know where the good stuff was kept and was too shy to ask. Rather galling to Nureyev, who knew he’d look exquisite in the thick rope of black pearls he’d passed over.

Maybe he would find himself back in the dressing room before his exit, snagging them as a present for himself. Maybe. If he did well.

There was already a pleasant buzz of conversation and soft music audible from halfway down the stairs, all emanating from the bar area. It hadn’t been hard to feign Freyr’s impressed expression when he’d been given his tour of the brothel after his successful interview. The bar was done in a classic style you didn’t see often in the bigger planets further out in the solar system. It was all leather and oak panelling, faux of course because the trees necessary had gone extinct a century ago but the imitation was flawless. The lights were low and richly golden, encased in red coloured glass in some areas so certain booths and alcoves would be awash in a red you could practically taste, giving the impression that whoever sat inside it was in their own little world. And to help them get there, behind the bar was what looked like every alcoholic drink in the known galaxy, wildly expensive wines from Earth, flavoured vodkas from Saturn, heady rums from Jupiter, even liqueurs brewed only on the furthest outer rim planets.

Freyr almost wished he could be part of it. It would be nice to be bought extravagant drinks, to have people fawn over him, to have rich men smile at him and feel like they owned him for an hour. There were things a man who was not Freyr had been neglecting recently, pleasures beyond those that could be found in a brilliantly planned and flawlessly executed job. Simpler pleasures of lips and hands and sweat that wasn’t yours drying on your skin.

But Freyr could wish all he liked. A man who wasn’t Freyr had an elusive mark to locate the personal phone number of.

He’d memorised the floor plan at his interview and confirmed it for himself with some illegally acquired schematics. First rule of thieving, always double check. The administration office was in the basement so the acrid numbers and figures didn’t shatter the fantasy, meaning the easiest way to get to it was to cut across just one corner of the bar. He couldn’t exactly go around the outside of the building, dressed as he was. It was raining, after all.

It wouldn’t take a minute, just a handful of steps. And it wasn’t like he was noticeable, Freyr was just one of several nymph-like visions in samite and jewels and barely there underwear. The Fly By Nights became like celebrities of Hyperion’s underworld, their faces and names well known and often requested, their specific skills practically famous. The older hands had cultivated reputations that filled their schedules for months, sometimes half a year in advance. Someone new and unestablished like Freyr was unlikely to be chosen in the twenty paces it would take to get him to his goal. He almost felt lazy with how easy this would be.

Just in case anyone was watching, he took a moment before he walked into the bar, making sure his robe was lying just right across his chest, patting the seemingly effortless swoop of his dark hair, rubbing in the glitter on his chest to smooth it out better. Freyr would be nervous, eager to make a good impression, hungry to prove himself, a heady mix of emotions that the other man could understand on some level and didn’t need to work too hard to paint over his delicate, expertly made up features. A deep breath. Straighten the spine. Go to work.

Almost immediately Freyr was enveloped in the smells of dozens of different but somehow complimentary perfumes, the rhythmic clink of glasses and pouring drinks, light music played on simple instruments, a rich glow of light and luxury. Even the sharp sweat tang of the hungry clients coming in through the doors couldn’t ruin it. He put a sway in his hips, dropped the lids of his eyes just a little, leaned into it all. Twenty paces, that was all, so why not enjoy them?

There were conversations happening all around him, it was a bundle of coloured threads in a hopeless knot. But the man who wasn’t Freyr simply couldn’t help himself sometimes and began to listen to the snippets he walked through, just out of interest. First rule of thieving, after all, always keep your ears open, you never know when you might hear something that saves you later. It was mostly innocuous parlour talk, too early in the evening after all for tongues to be truly loosened. The workers pressed drinks on their clients, laughed and cooed at their bad attempts at flirting, old friends greeted each other, some light gossip was traded that Freyr already knew and didn’t concern him anyway. Nothing to snag his interest as another part of his mind counted down the steps left.

Until he skirted closer to the bar itself.

There was no reason why the voice should have stood out to him the way it did. It wasn’t even saying anything of interest, just one of many unfamiliar voices that didn’t relate to Freyr’s goal whatsoever, talking of nothing. But this one grabbed him, yanking him off his train of thought, spilling his focus on the floor like so many marbles.

“Yeah, I meant what I said,” the voice was harsh, snappish but it was like a thin crust over something deeper, “The full bottle, I have the creds and I’m damn well thirsty enough.”

It wasn’t hard to find the owner of the voice, there was only one person it could be. He looked as rough and worn down as his voice had sounded, clearly sober but not intending to stay that way with how determinedly he was gripping the edge of the counter, slumped into an aged trench coat shiny with wear and the rain from outside. It was in his hair too, droplets that now looked like diamonds under the bar lights. His jaw was strong and covered in the stubble of someone a good week into a string of bad decisions, his eyes hooded and bloodshot to match. His hands were covered in scars that could only come from the kickback of a blaster. Soldier? Too young. Bodyguard? Too wayn. Cop? Perhaps but whatever he was, he was clearly an ex.

First rule of thieving, observe. Always observe. Unless it’s a pretty boy, in which case, tear your eyes away Pete and focus, god damn it.

Freyr swallowed hard and stopped, sixteen paces in, trying to sink deeper into being someone who didn’t know that voice. That voice, light and joking and jolly but now he could name the undercurrent that he’d always sensed but never pinned down until after. Until after…

He took a breath. Clearly he was not in the right frame of mind. Clearly if he went into that administration office now he would make a foolish mistake. First rule of thieving, timing is everything, yes? So deviate, improvise, circle back around with your head on straight.

And until then, play the game.

“That looks like a two man job,” he reached out and snagged the rather large bottle of high end whiskey the bartender had reluctantly set in front of the tired eyed ex-probably cop.

Freyr could see the decision whether or not to throw a punch cross the guy’s scarred face. Fortunately he came down on the side of non hostile resignation.

“Lady,'' he corrected, not arguing when Freyr reached over the bar and collected two crystal tumblrs, puring each half full with amber liquid that smelled of woodsmoke and expense, “Sorry, you’re gorgeous and all but you’re out of my price range. I’m just here to drink.”

“And drinking is all I spoke of, madam,” Freyr smiled sweetly, holding up his glass expectantly, “But I thank you for the compliment.”

After a pause, his stranger knocked his glass against his own and drank just a swallow. Freyr copied.

“You don’t have to pay to ask my name.”

That got a rough smile, not quite a true one but close, “Then what’s your name, handsome?”

“Freyr. Yours, handsome?”

Now a laugh, amber warm as the liquor they were drinking, “Juno Steel.”

“Pretty name for a pretty face,” that made him laugh again but there were patches of colour on his dark cheeks that didn’t have anything to do with the fine, mellow burn of the whiskey, “Can I ask, Juno Steel, why a lady with no money for a sex worker is sat in a brothel?”

Juno didn’t seem to know how to answer that, doing an awkward kind of one shouldered shrug, “It’s raining outside. The door was open. There’s alcohol.”

A simple formula for someone who didn’t have anywhere else to go. Freyr was good at his job, he knew how to read people and shift his gaze to bring into focus the words behind what they actually said. And Juno Steel wasn’t a hard lady to read. Grief and loneliness etched themselves on a person’s face in a way few other things did, leaving traces that were clear as words on a screen, especially if you were already familiar with them. Especially if you knew them from the mirror.

First rule of thieving, get back on the job, you useless, twitterpated young fool. First rule of thieving, you know better than this.

Behind Freyr’s face, the man who wasn’t Freyr set his jaw. He was sick of that voice. He was sick of still following it’s commands, sitting up to the snap of it’s fingers like a well trained dog. Hadn’t he proven that he didn’t need it? First rule of thieving, he’d do what he damn well pleased.

And right now, what he wanted to do was Juno Steel. He looked like he could use it.

Freyr leaned forward, knowing the light would be making his dark eyes glitter, “And there’s me.”

Juno smiled wryly, not moving back to reopen the distance between them, “Yeah. That part was a nice surprise.”

“Listen, Juno. I don’t need to know why you're here or why you have that brokenhearted look in your eyes you’re doing a rather poor job of concealing. I’d just like to try and do something about it. How does that sound?”

Juno caught his lower lip in his teeth, want flashing in his eyes like a distress signal on a ship lost in deepest space, “I...I don’t…”

“I know,” Freyr leant in a little more, until he couldn’t tell whose breath the smell of whiskey was coming from, “But, I’ll be honest, this is my first day. I have no appointments. So why don’t we call this...a practise run? Ex gratia on both our parts.”

Juno’s eyebrow lifted, “Can you do that?”

“Of course.” What did it matter when Freyr wouldn’t exist in a day’s time?

There was still some hesitation, something still lingering in his expression. Freyr wondered what had happened to this lady the last time someone had reached out to him, promising something for nothing. And then he remembered he didn’t care.

“Why me?” Juno eventually asked, his brow creasing with uncertainty.

Freyr smiled softly, showing where he’d smudged a little lipstick on his front tooth, almost as if it had been deliberately placed there to show his nervousness on his first day.

“Why not you, Juno Steel?”

It was quiet upstairs, too early in the evening for any appointments to have moved past the initial flirting in the bar stage. Freyr had the night’s schedule memorised, he knew which rooms would be free and would stay free for however long this wonderfully bad decision would take, he knew where he was going as he pulled Juno along.

There was a giddy lightness in his chest, a pounding exhilaration going through his veins. Freyr had a lifespan of three days, he’d never had the chance to be a reckless teenager, going against the path that had been laid out for him. The man he wasn’t had never experienced it either, for different reasons. But this is exactly how they’d both imagined it, how it had always looked in the streams and in stories. This was exactly what the fantasy had promised.

Both of them were giggling like they couldn’t help it, throwing wild grins back and forth, drunk on each other and a handful of swallows from the whiskey bottle now swinging in Juno’s lazy grip. By the time they reached one of the more modest rooms where they were minimally likely to be disturbed, Freyr was wearing Juno’s overcoat, Juno had marks of Freyr’s lipstick across his cheek and was gripping his narrow hips, whispering filth into his ear to make him fumble with the keys.

Freyr retaliated by turning and bending to kiss him full on the lips, the first time they’d done that since leaving the warmth of the bar for this new, uncharted dimness. Juno was shorter than he’d expected, he had to guide his jaw up a little after a moment to press their mouths together more fully. But it was a sweet kiss, all the same. Juno seemed to think so too, from how he shakily exhaled into Freyr’s mouth in a way that sounded almost relieved.

Once inside, Freyr didn’t need to do much to undress himself, letting the coat still heavy with rain and warm from Juno’s skin fall to the floor. His partner proved a little more hesitant, hands shaking as they went to the hem of his turtleneck. If Freyr had thought the tremors were anything but the aftershocks of something in the past, he would have called time then and there. But as it was, he took Juno’s large, scarred hands under his own and guided them, supporting them as the layer of damp wool and black trousers came away, showing dark hair, dark skin, more scars.

Freyr was new to The Fly By Night but he’d been in this trade a while. He knew how to make the right noises and pull the right faces, he knew how to give the clients what they paid for, no matter what was under their clothes. If there had been anything about Juno that disappointed, it wouldn’t have shown on his face.

But there was nothing to be done about the awe that softened his features when he saw all of Juno, wearing only the soft light from the window. There was no way to mask the quiet inhalation, the way his pupils flooded open, the way his hips tilted unconsciously forward. Showing too much was as dangerous as showing not enough and, in that moment, all of Freyr’s professionalism went out of the window.

But Juno didn’t seem to know any better, only blushing and giving a destroying self conscious smile. Perhaps it wasn’t just Freyr who was new to this.

“Can we just…” Juno gestured to the bed, a luxurious affair with black sheets that looked soft as butter and ready to sink into completely.

Freyr smiled indulgently and nodded, “Go make yourself comfortable, handsome.”

He told himself he didn’t care why Juno would find it so difficult to hear the words about to fall from his tongue. First rule of whatever the hell this is, we don’t care, we don’t think, we just act.

It did him good to see Juno sprawl out across the bed, to see his muscles unwind and his expression loosen at the softness, to see him let go of the weight of himself.

“What can I do for you?” his voice was honey, eyes hungrily roving over all of it, the limbs with their wiry strength, the old scars, the comforting softness of his gut, the lines of thick, dense body hair he wanted to follow and see where they led.

Juno’s gaze was suddenly quietly desperate, “Fuck me. Fuck me until I forget everything outisde this room.”

First rule of fucking Juno Steel, don’t ask.

Freyr nodded, scrambling to equip himself appropriately, suddenly feeling a mad fear that it would all be different if he looked away for too long. Each of the rooms had the basics of what two individuals, or even more than two, might need. Other things could be requested in advance, some other things that Freyr had to admit he was curious about were too large or elaborate to be moved from behind the stage. Perhaps now he’d still be around to catch one of the nightly shows and see for himself.

His hands were practised at straps, buckles and knots, it was nothing more than a few moments before he wore a rather beautiful black leather harness with gold metal accents, a middle of the road sized cock comfortably pressed against his own. Freyr wouldn’t like to assume, after all.

He turned to see Juno had watched the whole thing, now practically salivating, on his back with a hand between his legs, stroking himself into hardness.

“A little rude to start without me,” Freyr grinned teasingly, putting a hand on his hip.

“Then get over here,” Juno’s voice was already thin and gasping.

Freyr did just as he was told, snagging a bottle of lube as he passed, tumbling gladly into the bed. Juno rose to catch him, kissing him eagerly, now unhurried and lazy seeing as they’d reached their destination. If he wondered why Freyr’s hands could still deftly open the bottle and soak their fingers, all while the rest of him was devotedly kissing him, licking into his mouth, sucking marks on his neck while he gasped for breath, then Juno didn’t voice it.

There was some force in his hands as he yanked Juno’s legs apart, like a pouncing cat with prey suddenly deciding to stop playing and make an end of it. Juno let out a ragged gasp, clearly into it. His eyes fixed on Freyr’s as he sank two long, clever fingers into him, the first breach of his body. Neither could make a sound.

They’d neglected to turn any lights on as they’d staggered in so the colours of the room shifted and melted through half a hundred shades as, outside and unnoticed by either of them, the late evening melted into dusk, into night. As he opened him up and carved a space for himself inside the other body, Freyr saw Juno Steel as a gold bathed god, as a drowned sailor glimpsed through the surface of an indigo lake, as a constellation mapped out in dark stars. And always as a person, just another person he was sharing a bed with, who was starting to gasp and moan and whimper, eyes never leaving his face.

“Ready for me?” Freyr whispered, realising he’d been doing nothing but fingering him lazily for a good long while.

Juno nodded, voice raspy, “God, yeah.”

The sheets whispered underneath them as Freyr drew back from between his legs, now settling his hands on either side of Juno’s face. They didn’t stay there for long, as soon as Freyr started to move into him, slowly at first, Juno bit his lip and tipped his head back in such an expression of pained bliss that there was nothing for Freyr to do but hold his face gently. As he began to speed up, moving deeper and with more momentum, Juno took Freyr’s thumb in his mouth and sucked and in that moment, Freyr could have died happy.

It didn’t take long, they were both already halfway there. But it could have taken a year and it would have felt too soon, before the gasps and cries that were now indistinguishable grew to a peak, before there was a strangled cry, the thump of a headboard against the wall, a rise in their bodies into a perfect arch and it was done.

When Nureyev came, he gasped out Juno Steel.

There was something delicate about the seconds after, something shy and awkward as Freyr pulled out, as Juno winced at the stickiness on his stomach, as the bedsprings creaked, as they mumbled vague apologies while Freyr settled on his back so they now lay side by side, both staring up at the ceiling.

Juno was the first to clear his throat, clearly not a fan of awkward silences, “So...thank you. I mean, that was...I needed that.”

“I could tell,” Freyr’s voice was weak as he caught his breath. He hadn’t realised just how long it had been since the man he wasn’t had done that. His heart was hammering in his chest like a caged hummingbird.

Juno turned, sitting up on one elbow. In the dark, his expression was unreadable.

“Um...if I came back another night, could I...could I ask for you? I’d pay, I know this time was, y’know, a gimme.”

Freyr froze. Another night, he wouldn’t exist. Another night, he would be off somewhere with a new face and a new name, he’d be someone who had never heard of Juno Steel. Another night, Mars would be a collection of trivia the man he wasn’t had collected and collated and filed away for any future jobs.

First rule of thieving, stick to the plan. First rule of thieving, make no promises. First rule of thieving, no distractions.

First rule of thieving, just keep going, keep running, keep working and then...and then…

Nureyev turned to Juno and smiled, reaching out and stroking his cheek softly, “For you, Juno Steel? I’ll stick around.”

[pollylynn]

Just About, Chapters 1–5 (Loosely linked Caskett Rabbles, Set in Season 1)

A/N: I started this “series” (if one can call it that) a while ago—very short things set in Season 1. It had been sitting at four chapters for a while. I wrote the fifth tonight. I’m just going to post them all here, with separators, because they’re so short. 

Title: Just About, Chapter 1: Everything and Nothing WC: 300

 A/N: I don’t know. I need a palate cleanser after finishing Season 8, and I was “inspired” by an Elvis Costello song. So 300 words here, and plans for a few more of these, most likely all set in season 1.

She smells like heaven. Well. Not really. She doesn't even wear perfume. She smells like drugstore shampoo and coffee. But it's heaven to him. Legitimately the stuff of dreams. Or it would be, if he slept. But he can't sleep, because she smells like heaven.  

Because her cheek blushed when he kissed it, and the warmth still lingers on his lips. The silk-smooth feel of her skin stays with him, and he absolutely cannot sleep.    

It's ridiculous, really. He asked, near enough.

Why? So I can be another one of your conquests?

Or I could be one of yours.

He put it out there, and she turned him down. Shot him down, if he's honest with himself, and that's that as far as the possibility of any after-hours "research" between the two of them goes. That's that.

But she smells like heaven, and he can't decide if she's adorable or dead sexy or both at once. He can't decide if it's her legs he's into or her eyes or the fact that she's a complete bad ass. Or maybe it's how smart she is. Book and street and everything in between, and then there’s the mouth on her. She’s funny. Cutting, but not quite mean. Not quite, and she’s not the least bit impressed by him.

Not the least bit, and can’t be that, can it?

It might be that, because he hasn’t worked like this for anything in ages. For anyone. He hasn’t had to. Hasn’t wanted to, and what the hell is it about her?  

Maybe it's everything. She catches him, flat-footed and tongue-tied all the time, and maybe it’s every damned thing about her.  

Maybe whatever it is, he needs to get over it.

He asked. She shot him down. And that's that.

********************************************

Title: Just About, Chapter 2—Seemingly WC: 400

A/N: More palate cleansing.

He was supposed to be bored by now. Long before now. She'd have bet on it. She has bet on it, in a manner of speaking. She's been confident. She's brushed off innuendo and anted up to Lanie and Espo and Montgomery. Anted up to everyone brave or dumb enough to give her so much as a sidelong glance about it. About him and their "arrangement."

A week, tops . . .

A couple . . .

A few . . .

But they've barreled past a couple, and if she's honest, a few is already disappearing in the rear-view mirror, and he doesn't seem bored.

He seems a lot of things: Callous, immature, smug, vain, obtuse, reckless, and oh-so-very annoying. He seems hell bent on really playing out whatever this is. Ego, maybe?

But that doesn't fit. Not exactly.

She thinks back to the street. To what she'd meant to be her parting shot and the moment right before.

Or I could be one of yours . . .

She thinks of what he seemed then. Boyish, delighted, smitten. Shy, or something very near to it.

She thinks of all the other things he's seemed since. The not-so-terrible things she isn't always big enough to admit: Curious, astute, invested, feeling.

It's the last one that gets her. It interests her, or it would if she'd let it.

Because for all his antics, she's seen him somber, too. Gut-punched when he does the math on how many I'm so sorry for your loss calls she must've made over the years. Coldly furious at a foul-mouthed prep school punk, who's used to getting away with everything, and that doesn't seem new at all. It doesn't seem recent, and she wonders about it.

She'd wonder if she'd let herself, but she won't. She bites her tongue to keep from asking and tries remember what she knows about Richard Castle, best-selling novelist. What's known about him out in the wide world, because that's where he exists. On billboards and book jackets and slick studio sets. At rooftop book parties and on the mayor's speed dial.

That's where he exists, and she'd do well to remember that, whatever he seems, now and again. Whatever it is he's determined to play out.

It's ego, she decides, and it doesn't pay to wonder. He'll be bored soon enough.

A month, tops . . .

A couple . . .

A few . . .

(But he doesn't seem bored.)

*********************************************

Title:  Just About, Chapter 3—Just a Little WC: 500 A/N: A continuation of this Drabble series, because, for the moment, they keep coming. 

Sometimes he thinks she likes him just a little.

Most of the time he's absolutely sure she doesn’t. She yells a lot, and she’s prone to violence. Not the fun kind, either. She pokes. Hard. And she has this thing about twisting his ear like he's some Dickensian street urchin. At any given moment, he’s pretty sure she doesn’t like him one bit.

But every once in a while, he catches her staring straight ahead with the corners of her mouth turned down hard. Every once in a while, he spies a wicked glint in her eye, and he's pretty sure she trying not to smile. He racks his brain every time. He drives himself up the wall, trying to remember what he just said or did. What he didn’t do that she thought he’d been thinking about doing . . .  

It’s stupid. Insane, really, because what does it matter whether she likes him or not? He’s in. One strategic phone call and absolutely everything he’d wanted has fallen into place. Absolutely everything.

He’s writing like a fiend. He’s up nights willing his fingers to keep up with his brain. He’s scrawling down details every waking moment on every scrap of paper that comes to hand. His mind hums along, four levels deep, while they work. While they bicker and joke and turn each other inside out to get the job done. His and hers.

It’s everything he’d wanted all those miserable months with his marriage unraveling and the words gone. Every last thing, so what does it matter? Smile or no smile. Whether she likes him a little or a lot or not a bit. What does it matter?

There’s the obvious answer. The obvious conclusion that everyone's jumped to. His mother. The whole damned precinct. Alexis. That bothers him more than he'd like.  

You always say you have to love your characters . . .

The glint of cynicism bothers him. The flash of fresh scars from all the upheaval with Gina. The divorce. Before and after. Everything up until these last few weeks, and it bothers him that even his kid thinks it's obvious that Kate Beckett is the shiny new thing. That "research" is code for business as usual.

It bothers him, because it's ridiculous. And because it's kind of a fair cop. It has been, historically, but he’s done with that. Mixing business with pleasure. A lousy metaphor for him and Gina, anyway, which is why he's done with anything that even looks like a relationship.

You always say you have to love your characters . . .

It's ridiculous. He doesn’t have to. And he definitely doesn’t . . .

And so what if he did? So what if he mentally goes to tape and draws up freaking battle plans to see if he can leave her fighting off a smile?

So what if he loves Nikki Heat? Kate Beckett is  definitely not Nikki Heat, and she doesn't even like him.

Except every once in a while, it seems like she does. Just a little.

A/N: 500 words this time. The first and second were 300 and 400, respectively. I'm not going to lock into that pattern, I don't think, but each came out close, and so I decided to challenge myself to shape them into an even hundred.

******************************************

Title: Just About, Chapter 4—Kind of WC: 600

A/N: Another 600 Words

He’s kind of a dork.

She’s trying to process that. Still trying to process it. She’s been sitting with it a while, and a lot has happened. Nothing at all and a lot.

She’d told him. About her mom. About her dad. About her, more or less. Maybe a little less, but more than most people know. Quite a bit more than anyone but Lanie, maybe. More altogether than Ryan or Espo or even the Captain, though they know her in bits and pieces. They know her from guarded revelations over the occasional beer. From gossip that never quite gets stale. Never quite.

But she’d told him. Castle, who is a thorn in her side. Who is the nosiest, interfering-est, most emotionally tone deaf person she’s ever met when he’s caught up in one of his parlor trick cold readings. Castle, who loves to run roughshod over everyone and everything, especially her.

Castle, who’s kind of a dork.

She’d told him.

She can’t figure it out. He’d been happy enough with his own story.

I noticed your watch. It’s your dad’s, right?

He’d been more than happy enough, and she’d like to think it was about knocking him down a peg. She’d like to think telling him was about wiping some self-satisfied look off his face, but there wasn’t any. Not by then. Not after White Plains and an eerily calm conversation about fathers and daughters and getting away with murder, and even that’s not it. Sudden, absolute confidence that he could’ve kept the secret. That he would have if she’d asked him to.

And even that’s not why she’d told him. Not entirely.

Because she’d started telling him well before that. She’d started the minute she let her feet carry her to his doorstep for some unfathomable reason. She’d started telling him before he even opened the door. She’d started telling him as she lingered in his hallway, stalling long enough that she was suffocating in her winter coat. Feeling wordlessly stupid for being there and finally screwing up the courage to knock.

She’d started telling him the minute the door opened on that bizarre scene. Violent green mud masks and his hair standing straight up. She’d gone there for words—for an ending to Melanie Cavanaugh’s story—and wound up in the moment that hasn’t quite ended yet, even though she’s been home a while. She’d wound up pouring her heart out and leaving him there at her desk like the fixture he’s become.

It isn’t because of who he is, though she sees now that’s what had brought her there. She sees now that she’d gone to see her favorite author. The man whose words have given her the only kind of closure she’s known for a decade, but that’s not who she’d found when the door swung open.

That’s not who’d perched tentatively on the desk next to her, self-consciously trying to smooth down his hair. Really, really wanting to switch off the storyboard with its skeletal outline. Really, really wanting to explain that he’s not usually home of an evening playing laser tag with his kid. Really, really wanting to point out that his mother lives with him, he doesn’t live with her. Really, really wanting to slip back into the skin of who he pretends to be a lot of the time, but not letting himself.

She’d knocked on the door of her favorite author and found him instead. She’d told him her life story. The bits it’s been boiled down to. She’d told him. Because he’s kind of a dork.

A/N: This one is set just after A Chill Goes Through Her Veins (1 x 05). The others are more loosely woven throughout S1, but this episode has always felt like an important turning point to me. 

*********************************************************

Title: Just About, Chapter 5—Turns Out WC: 700

A/N: Finally, the new stuff. 

It's good to have her here again. 

Again

He's a little too giddy about that particular pair of syllables. Giddy enough that he's definitely compensating—scrambling on the inside, overdoing it on the outside. He’s pitched his voice somewhere in the vicinity of just-north-of-Barry-White pitch, and he’s flicking a heavy-lidded gaze across the desk at her as he lets the words roll around in his mouth. 

Bare 

Glistening

Breasts

Oh, he’s definitely compensating. Then and now–on the page and in real time—but he doesn’t really see many alternatives. 

She's here. Again. And that's good, even if she doesn't look one bit like she agrees. Even if the look she's shooting back at him makes his bedroom voice crack—even if he did sort of trick her into it this time—it’s still definitely good, because there's a this time, and that implies that there was a last time, and there was no trickery there. 

And there's the giddy again, when he thinks about her backlit in the hallway, head cocked and brow furrowed at the strange picture they must have made: He and Alexis and his mother, in for the night and up to their typical shenanigans, and then, suddenly, her at the door. And as stunned as he was to see her—as back-of-the-mind perplexed as he was, because how does she even know where he lives?—he still remembers thinking, Finally. 

Finally. That was unquestionably the word looming largest in his mind when Kate Beckett showed up on his doorstep. 

It’s troubling. It’s as troubling as the giddy feeling that comes with Again, because it's not as though he'd been waiting for her. He hadn’t been, hasn’t been, isn’t waiting for anyone. He’s so very not waiting for anyone that he’d wrecked the bedroom with his ex-wife just that morning. 

And that helpful point of information his brain offers up, just as she is on the absolute verge of leaving, is the opposite of helpful. That point of information is something that he discovers in the moment he actually hates the hell out of, and he doesn’t have time to sift through the why. He’s taken the Bare. Glistening. Breasts. gag to the absolute edge of too far and she’s leaving. 

And he doesn’t want her to leave. 

And he doesn’t want Meredith to come back. 

And those two facts are unquestionably intertwined in ways that he suspects are quite complicated. 

Because it’s not merely that he does not want Meredith back in New York—although he certainly  does not want Meredith back in New York. It’s not that his crush on, attraction to, infatuation with Kate Beckett was any kind of proof against taking the path of least resistance when Meredith dropped her bags, her fur, and her dress in short order. 

But having Kate Beckett here in his home—again—makes it blindingly clear that she is the kind of woman he wants in his home. And Meredith is most definitely not. He wants her intelligence and her empathy and her work ethic. He wants her curious mind and the challenge she presents to him in every possible way. He wants a good woman in his own life, and as if these sudden revelations weren’t complicated enough, in his daughter’s life, too. 

It’s another shocking turn of events—and another thing it turns out he was somehow expecting. She brings up Alexis—Kate does—and he’s simultaneously furious and abashed, because Alexis doesn’t, by and large, miss her mother. And no one thinks it would be a good idea to have her back in town. Absolutely no one thinks that, and he’s ashamed.  

So he hits out. He goes on the defensive. And she hits out in kind. She goes for the jugular. They yell back and forth about deep-fried Twinkie sex, about how shallow he is. She looks gratified that he’s living down to her expectations at last, and he aims to please. 

He wishes he could stop himself. He wishes he could stop the conversation cold and just tell her how glad he is. He’s simply glad that she is here. Again. A/N: Here, too, for some reason the episode itself—Always Buy Retail (1 x 06)—got chatty

[cometomecosette]

“Look Down” and “The Robbery,” London, 2000.  Jason McCann as Enjolras, Nilkas Andersson as Marius, Barry James as Thénardier, Mandy Holliday as Mme. Thénardier, Joanna Ampil as Éponine, Simon Bowman as Jean Valjean, Zoë Curlett as Cosette, Paul F. Monoghan as Javert, unknown Gavroche.

Since the upper part of the stage is blocked from view, we can’t see Enjolras or Marius during their lines from the bridge in “Look Down.” Still, as a whole, the scene comes across just fine.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen another “Look Down” where the beggars and paupers treated each other so brutally. Not only do the old beggar woman and young prostitute have their fight, but a gang of urchins harass the old woman and try to steal her belongings the whole while, and then the pimp slaps the prostitute to the ground even though she didn’t start the conflict. And then we have Gavroche getting into a little fight with a beggar in the crowd during Marius and Enjolras’s lines, as well as two men shoving each other at the very beginning of the scene. It’s a disturbing showcase of how poverty can make people act like animals.

Gavroche is very good, both in voice and in attitude.

I remember that the fan reviews of this cast (which I read when I was barely older than Gavroche) often used to make fun of Jason McCann’s vibrato. It is heavy and a little throaty, but not really as bad as I was led to believe. He still has a good, solid voice for the role of Enjolras.

This staging adds a unique detail to the Éponine/Montparnasse interaction by having him give her a rose, only for her to toss it back after she elbows him in the ribs. Then we have him grabbing her again and trying to kiss her neck at the beginning of “The Robbery.” Minor details, but they could definitely spark some Montponine shipping! It’s also interesting on the final “Look Down” chorus, Thénardier yanks Éponine into his lap, to her evident discomfort – I’ve never seen that done before. I wonder, is he just playing the role of caring father to earn sympathy from the people they’re “begging” to, or does this blocking hint at father/daughter incest? The latter would make Thénardier an even darker figure than he is in the novel, let alone in most musical productions!

Joanna’s Éponine makes a good first impression, privately straightening her hair and clothes when she sees Marius, but promptly hiding her girlish insecurity and playing the brash, teasing street rat in front of him. Niklas’s Marius comes off well too, friendly and (when trying to interfere with the robbery) a bit hot-blooded, yet still dignified. Kudus to the way he stands fixated on Cosette after bumping into her, never taking his eyes off her even as she walks away, and then of course protecting her from Montparnasse while the rest of the gang attacks Valjean. (I love that moment in the Nunn/Caird staging!)

Not even Cosette is fully spared from this performance’s rough edge – I’ve never seen a performance onstage where Marius accidentally knocked her flat onto the ground!

Speaking of Zoë’s Cosette, she recognizes Mme. Thénardier! She draws back and hides behind Valjean before Thénardier says “Wait a bit...”! It’s nice to see a performance that doesn’t totally disconnect grown-up Cosette from her childhood. On a shallower note, I love her beautiful long curls too. London Cosette wigs in the early 2000s were so much prettier than US Cosette wigs at the time.

Barry’s Thénardier is excellent, as always, with the perfect balance between humor and slime. I like that he doesn’t cringe nervously away from Javert after “It was me what told you so,” the way most Thénardiers do, but goes on standing and subtly trying to bait Javert into making a deal with him, until his wife finally decides they should leave. Their repeated sycophantic bows and curtsies to Javert as they go are funny too.

Paul’s Javert is nicely sharp and stern, as in the other scenes of his I’ve shared. Very different from his TAC performance as the Bishop.

Overall, this is a scene well done!

[sourcherrymagiks]

Carry on Countdown 2019

Day 18 - Crack!

Lamplight

Ao3

Simon

He’s trying to avoid talking to me. That’s how it happens. There was kissing. Amazing kissing. Merlin and Morgana, he’s beautiful and when he kisses me back.....

But anyway. He’s also a stuck up twat who can avoid the shit out of anything. We were back in the room after the kissing (Great Snakes,that kiss though) and he was taking forever to hang his blazer up so he didn’t have to look at me or talk to me. What was I going to do but come up behind him and kiss his neck? I ask you, what else could I have done?

Which is how we came to stumble and fall into the wardrobe. And then straight out of the back. Into a drift of snow.

“Erm Baz, this is going to sound pretty stupid but I think we just fell into...”

“Narnia”

“Yes”

Baz

I know that this is somehow his fault. Why does he always have to involve me in his ridiculous heroics. Although, to be fair, this is well outside of his usual remit.

“Snow, might I suggest we go back? From memory Narnia has its own set of chosen ones. Lots of them. They can probably get by without you”

“I’m not sure that’s how this works, the path has gone”

I look around and he’s totally right. It’s just us, in the snow, under a lamppost.

I can’t keep the petulant tone out of my voice as I say “But you are our chosen one, you belong to the world of Mages”

He laughs and kisses me. “Didn’t know you cared you big softy” I briefly toy with the idea of snapping at him but instead I pull him back into another kiss.

When I pull away to catch my breath and try to get a hold over my treacherous body, Simon gets up. I grumble a bit under my breath but then I decide to co operate a bit. Grudgingly. It seems very unfair that we are here and not snogging in our room. Even though I was the one avoiding the snogging (Why?, I’m such an idiot)

Snow’s sketching in the snow with a stick. It looks like nonsense until I’m standing right next to him. Then it hits me at once, he’s drawn a map of Narnia. From memory.

I must be staring at him because he starts laughing.

“I know you think I’m a thick urchin who’s only ever read cereal packets but I’ve loved Narnia my whole life”

“Me too, that part is not quite right” I alter the shape of the western forest slightly so it ends further from the frozen lake. “I would definitely remember if you were the hero in it. I suppose you do have a bit of Peter about you”

“Fuck off Caspian” he throws a snowball at me. I throw one back. Then I kiss him again because this is all unbelievable.

He’s sketching plot points out now, trying to work out the timeline.

“Right you gorgeous villain, we need to get to the camp here in time for the battle. There’s enough footprints and sled tracks here to show they’ve all been through fairly recently. I don’t think we can help at any point up until the end, do you agree?”

“I do, excuse me while I try to absorb the shock of you being a reader.” He lightly punches me on the arm, he’s blushing. “Is your magic working?”

We both laugh

“As well as it ever does, yours?”

I take out my wand and cast ‘lights out’ at the lamp post. It blinks off.

“Cool. Let’s get moving. Keep your wand out. I don’t want to draw my sword until I need it and I, Erm, can I hold your hand please”

“Come here” I grab his hand and before I can stop myself I’ve kissed his knuckles.

“I like this, you,like this” he bumps my shoulder with his.

Simon

I’m really excited. I dunno if it’s the Baz thing or the Narnia thing but I’m so amped up I’m practically skipping.

“So, Caspian then?” Baz asks with his eyebrow up.

“It’s possible that I might have been not entirely straight for a while”

“You think?”

“There’s no need for that tone you wanker”

Then I’ve got him up against a tree. This want is everything. I need to touch him, kiss him, press myself against him.

He doesn’t just let me, he right there with me, pulling my hair, licking my neck, moaning into my mouth.

He pulls away gasping “Right Snow, let’s get back to the mission and stop debauching the pristine Narnian forests”

“But I like it, I like you” I’m whining a bit.

“You aren’t completely intolerable either Snow”

We seem to have been walking forever. I slept about ten minutes last night. I would kill for some Turkish delight.

“In the books it doesn’t seem this far”

I moan to Baz

“Heaven forbid that the made up world is larger than the children’s book made it appear”

“I get your point, even though you’re a twat, but its hardly made up is it?”

He shrugs. I’m rubbing off on him. That makes me smile. I nearly don’t hear the crack of the twig, I’ve disarmed the guard before I’ve had chance to worry about my sword or magic. They aren’t the best written soldiers.

“Take us to either Peter or Aslan please” I ask the battered looking Narnian as politely as I can be arsed to. I’m not great at manners when I’m hungry and tired.

Baz

Peter is beautiful, not a patch on Snow obviously, but still. The two of them together are blinding. Simon offers our assistance and Peter accepts a little unwillingly. I’m not sure he would at all if not for the wonderful Lucy. She never sees herself as the protagonist so she doesn’t have the same struggle as Peter. To be fair I wouldn’t want to share my story with Simon bloody Snow if I already had three siblings and a lion muscling in on the action. Poor fuck.

The two of them spend the afternoon practicing, Snow is better trained and in great shape but Peter is faster and lighter in his feet. It’s glorious.

When Simon fights Edmund it’s a different thing. No longer a master class in heroic swordplay fought by two golden leaders. Now it’s like a cunning bar fight. Simon has to stop himself from head butting Edmond. When he throws an elbow at Edmond’s face,then stops before it connects, Edmond is not so polite and punches Simon in his exposed ribs. It’s very feral.

When they’re done he comes over and presses his sweaty lips to mine. I don’t know how I avoid making a scene.

Obviously it’s still a bit of a scene. Uncomfortable coughs and averted eyes abound. Then simultaneously everyone decides to ignore it and peace is restored.

I leave to speak with Lucy. She’s got magic and I want to see if I can help her use it. It doesn’t work like ours though. She can’t harness it. I advise her to go to Watford as soon as she can when she returns home. She probably won’t.

She gives Simon a small banner embroidered with a dragon holding a blazing sun. He tucks it into his pocket because the courageous fuck won’t wear armour. He kisses her head. I’m completely flabbergasted when she gives me one emblazoned with a flaming moon. I must be allergic to it because my eyes are watering.

After dinner we talk tactics. Simon keeps quiet about upcoming plot points and focuses on the battle. Simon and Peter lean over the map, blond hair and copper curls tumbling together as the argue over every inch. From his plan I deduce that Snow’s aim is to kill the witch while keeping all the kids well out of the way. This goes down like a sack of shit with Peter. It’s his story and he is the king. Gorgeous (and capable) as Simon is he can’t lead this army. They aren’t loyal to him. Also he won’t play by their outdated battle rules, fight in a line and die, because he knows better. They finally agree on enough compromises to keep everyone happy and save lives. A lot of lives.

In spite of the protests I hold my ground. I will stay by his side regardless of what he thinks he’s going to order me to do.

It’s fun. Really. I mean there is an impending battle but, Crowley, I’ve read that battle so many times. It’s going to be brilliant. I catch Simon’s eye and I know he feels it too.

Simon

I can’t fucking sleep. This is going to be epic. I’m traipsing around the camp looking for anything to take my mind off the combination of wanting to get into this battle and wanting to do unspeakable things to Baz.

It’s not the time though, right?

We still haven’t talked. It’s possible we’ve managed to bring a fictional world to life to avoid talking. But I’m going to tell him after the battle. Hopefully it will be dead romantic.

Baz

The battle starts off early and badly, not quite as badly as I remember because Simon is genius at this and Peter listened to about a quarter of his suggestions. Plus there are two of them.

The absolute confidence of them helps keep up the morale that’s been damaged by Aslan fucking off.

Simon hadn’t mentioned that he was the bearer of a flaming sword or that he had a particularly impressive brand of violent, pulsing magic so when he calls his sword, the fear it causes slams the first wave right back.

I cast quickly and use so much magic that I’m nearly spent in moments but I have taken down most of the ogres and a couple of hags. Peter, Edmond and Simon smash through line after line of the White Witch’s army. Simon is actually grinning, the prat.

I wait for Simon’s signal to disarm the White Witch. Then he’s on her in a moment with Edmond and Peter. She never stands a chance.

By the time Aslan arrives back with the girls there’s only cleaning up and healing to do. He growls at Simon and Simon shrugs at him. He turns his back clearly as pissed off as a magical lion gets.

“This was not your battle Mage”

“Explain how it just was then wise one?”

Simon is brillant at one liners, when he’s not fighting me. I guess it’s in the job description. Aslan grunts and continues back to his tent. What a prick. I guess he’s not willing to let the homoerotic subtext turn into the story.

It’s very clear we’ve outstayed our welcome.

Simon

That was mega. But now it’s time to go. I don’t want to fuck with these guys and I also don’t want Aslan to eat me.

It’s a pretty shitty deal those kids have got anyway. Kings and queens in one land but not able to stay. We hug them goodbye. At least I live where I live. Except for right now obviously.

I grab Baz and we set off back to the lamppost.

“That was amazing, you were amazing” I say to him

He looks at me like he thinks I might he taking the piss.

“You did an ok job yourself Snow. You’re not as pretty as Peter though”

I’m glad he catches me when I jump on him. “Take that back Pitch”

“It’s an objective fact Snow, he is more dashing, I just prefer you”

“You do?”

“Yes you attention seeking numpty, I have appalling taste so I prefer you to most people”

“Good. Because, well, I’m, I think I might be, falling, you know, for you” Merlin. I doubt he’s even going to understand that.

Then he kisses me and I know he does.

Baz

I’ve been kissing Snow for hours. We don’t know how time works here relative to Watford so we should get back. But it’s complicated there and easy here under a lamppost in a forest full of spring.

It’s also not our story.

Simon still has his own story to finish.

“Ready Sweetheart?”

“Not really love”

“Shall we do it anyway?”

“After you”

[moth-fuzz]

20 Questions for 2020

I got tagged by @bumblequinn and tumblr hasn’t been my #main #platform for a while so I miss these things and I never pass up the opportunity to read about people and share about myself x3

1. Do you make your bed?

no lol

in all honesty, sometimes. it makes me feel better when I do. But I like to just jump out of bed and get working when I can

2. Favorite number?

love 6... love 16 as well. 6 is a nice number. divisible by 2 AND 3. Honorary odd number. 16 is a nice 2^2^2 or 4^2 or 2^4.. nice round number.

3. What’s your job?

I’m not working currently but I’m due to start working at a software consulting company a month from now... I don’t wanna be rude but I’m looking for other opportunities in the meantime x3

4. If you could, would you go back to school?

definitely not for computer science. They don’t teach you anything a programming job expects of you. IF I went back to school it would be for philosophy. Philosophy’s the only thing that makes me feel like I’m doing something real (ironic when you consider philosophy’s public image). I took a few philosophy classes, 2 entry level and 1 upper level. They were the most impactful and the most far reaching classes who had a real and legitimate connection with me as a person I ever took. I’d pay just to have those experiences again. Everyone deserves those kinds of experiences.

5. Can you parallel park?

Kinda? I mean I did it when I took my first driving test, but I haven’t tried in a few years and I don’t have a license so I don’t really have the opportunity to tell.

6. A job you had which would surprise people?

I’m sure they’d be surprised that in my 4.5 years of college I never pursued work til my last semester hahaha

7. Do you think aliens are real?

I’m sure by all statistical likelihood they’d have to be... but the universe is a huge place. And human’s lives are short, compared to our modes of travel. We haven’t seen any simply because we can’t, in our lifetimes, drive out far enough to see them. And they probably haven’t visited us because... I mean we’re a tiny dot in the middle of a trillion stars. It’s like finding a single grain of sand on the beach. It’s just hard. I gotta give em a break for that...

8. Can you drive a manual car?

no...

9. Tattoos?

okay this one’s a toughie for me! I want, at some point in my life, to be covered in tatoos. I think it’s just a beautiful look. But also! I can’t think of anything meaningful enough to me to put on my skin. Let alone a dozen or a hundred of meaningful images to put all over my body. So I’m stuck on that...

10. Favorite color?

I love purple. I love honest, muted, natural colors. My favorite pallet is purples and grays. Maybe black too. I love cloudy skies, smoky rooms, and furniture faded with use. I like pastels that just seem to add to the scene, to paint the scene with a subtle hue, soft colors that diffuse outward and bring a certain quality to the entire area instead of bold colors that just draw the eye to the single colored object... je ne sais quoi.

11. What’s your guilty pleasure?

I love comfort food. I feel like a child whenever I eat anything that isn’t like ... complex. Granted I love complex foods too (indian cuisine particularly is my favorite) but there’s a special place in my heart (and my stomach!) for like. Candy and mcdonald’s and sodas and stuff.

12. Things people do that drive you crazy?

blatant contrarianism. People who just pick the worst hills to die on, all the time, forever. Their entire public image is hatefulness. It’s so so tiring I don’t know how they do it. Are you happy? Do you enjoy this?

Another thing I can‘t stand is people who think they’ve got everything figured out. Not so much people who claim to know things, but people who claim to have some mental framework that covers ... everything. And often they’re wrong!! But, of course, according to their own mental framework, they’re right and everyone else just hasn’t figured it out yet. Insufferable.

13. First thing you remember you wanted to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a theoretical physicist pretty much up until I got to middle school and discovered programming. I like math and science, I still do. Computer science at its highest level is basically just applied math with a bit of imagination. Theoretical physics is... kinda the same thing too. Except instead of computers you have stars and atoms. Just subject material. Same mental space. Same abstraction of nature that becomes a sort of nature in itself.

14. Favorite childhood sport?

Okay I loved the variation of soccer I used to play in elementary school where the athletic kids would play actual soccer and me and the other unathletic kids would just slowly walk around the field and give a kick here and a kick there...

15. Do you talk to yourself?

Yes! All the time. Mostly when other people aren’t around. It helps me realize and catalogue my thoughts because otherwise my brain moves too fast to keep up :3

16. What movie do you adore?

I think my favorite movie ever was kimi no na wa or Your Name. It had AMAZING pacing, AMAZING visuals, AMAZING characters and the plot was just so incredibly written and everything was so well tied together and everything came at just the right time and the conclusion was so so so fucking satisfying I dsajkfghdf UGH

and the SOUNDTRACK!!! FUCK!!!!

17. Do you like doing puzzles?

Big ADHD feel. I love puzzles. I love puzzle based games. I love the elation of figuring something out. I love puzzles so much, in fact, that I kinda think of everything I do as a puzzle in some way... Programming is definitely a puzzle. Finding all the pieces that fit together - except, you get to design the pieces!! But now >:3 the burden is on you to make it elegant and adaptable. Anyone can hack something together but the REAL puzzle is designing a system that both solves a problem and does it in a way that’s efficient and Also elegant and easy to use. Puzzles within puzzles.... ohhhhhhhfh I love thissssss

18. Tea or coffee?

100% coffee. I drink tea but I’m not a ‘tea person’. I love coffee so much. Black coffee. Lattes. Starbucks sweet coffee concoctions. Espresso. Coffee from all around the world. God Do I Love Coffee.

My favorite coffees tend to be from asia, currently I’m really liking sumatra mandheling. I love coffees that taste like dirt. Rich, earthy, complex. Real dark and real bold. Usually those are from asia. I’m okay with african coffees but they tend to be really deep and fruity, sometimes even chocolatey, which, is real hit or miss for me. If you’re from america usually you’ll have south american coffees which tend to be light, woody, nutty sometimes. They’re usually too light for my taste but sometimes they really really hit. Gross generalizations aside, I love trying out every coffee and there’s more exceptions that blow my mind than anything else. I don’t think I’ve ever had a coffee I actually didn’t like, just many I like better. In any case I just love coffee!!!

19. Phobias?

Ocean. Don’t like big bodies of water that I can’t see down. Also there’s weird stuff in there. I don’t know how people just hang out at the beach with crabs and urchins and crawdads and jellyfish and sharks and riptides I’m just scared out of my mind!!! This is their land!! Not mine!!

20. Favorite kind of music?

Alternative rock of all sorts. Shoegaze, grunge, post-rock, math rock, electronic rock, emo... I also love hardcore and post-hardcore as well. A lot of metal does it for me but also a lot doesn’t so it comes and goes. I love music with a strong groove and complex textures. Me big ADHD so I like to tap along in weird and complex ways so it really helps if the meter is weird and complex already x3

Big runner up is hip hop and pre-2000s edm. Big groove, heavy on the swing, lots of samples, really rich. Future funk also falls under this category even though it’s modern.

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

The Inevitable Part Where It Asks You To Tag 5 People

Feel free to pass up on this but here we go!

@mothman @bobbybobertson @exowave1 @reydiantskyes @sylvium-z and p much everyone else who follows me! I’d love to hear more from everyone else :3

[putschki1969]

2019/07/13 Blog post by Wakana 『都内の癒されスポットに行ったおはなし。』

『A story about me going to a healing place in the middle of Tokyo』

I rarely do so but I had lunch at a café. I had some time to spare before a work meeting so I thought I would spend that time in a fashionable café [Ron Herman Café]. Every time I had passed that shop in the past, I always thought to myself that I would like to eat lunch there one day. I ordered a huge Mexican cob salad with vegetables and chicken which came on top of a big tortilla. While I was enjoying my meal and silently mumbling to myself, “ohh, so yummy!”, I suddenly noticed a young boy who was around 4 years old, he was standing outside and had his arms stretched out towards the window in front of me, he was resting his cheek on his arms and giggled while watching me. “Ehh?!” A surprised sound espcaped me and I started laughing. All by myself. It must have seemed strange to the other people in the café, I am sure they were wondering what I was laughing about since I was all alone.  I waved at him (it took a lot courage) but he just continued watching me, I didn’t really know what to do so I just kept eating. *laughs* It is very embarrassing to have a stranger watch you at a close distance while you are eating. I had no idea it could be that embarrassing〜 These are the hardships of having lunch at a fashionable café all by yourself, it’s tough. Hello, this is Wakana (0￣▽￣0)／ He walked off somewhere, that boy who watched me eat while giggling...I wonder who he was... By the way, a video was uploaded the day before yesterday, it shows footage of me visiting "SHARE GREEN MINAMI AOYAMA". They had so many plants lined up there, all just waiting for me, it was a lot of fun〜 I had such a great time looking at all the succulents. There were also some cute plants with pretty leaves and flowers. No matter where you looked, everything was in full bloom, it was a such a healing experience. I took a little break in the on-site-café. I had a katsu-sandwhich and some fries. For my drink I chose something that’s called a cherry coffee soda...? A rare combination of iced coffee and ginger ale. It was delicious ♪ I wanna come here again. Hopefully at a time where they are not cultivating the lawn!

These days I am looking for a very particular long and big cactus. For the longest time I couldn’t remember its name, after being clueless for such a long time I finally decided to do some research, it seems like I am looking for a Columnar Cactus. It stands straight just like a pillar...You often see them in pictures that have a sort of Mexican interior vibe. I often see this kind of cactus at a shop I go to, everytime I walk past it I wanna buy it but unfortunately I have never taken a picture of it.  That’s why I tried drawing a picture for you *laughs*...I guess it doesn’t really look like a cactus, does it? More like a sea urchin? Since my drawing doesn’t do it justice I tried looking for pictures online, here I found some copyright free pictures. THIS, THIS!!! I want it so bad!! Aren’t they beautiful〜 However, these babies love the sun a lot so it’s very important to find a good place for them. There is only one place with a lot of sunshine and that’s my veranda... but I can’t leave it outside during the winter time because it’s too cold...they also do not really like the rain...they will eventually die when there is too much rain. Conclusion: I have absolutely no place where to put it. It is a really sad conclusion .... but I will continue to search for a way to provide the perfect place for it. I really want to have one of these babies in my home *laughs* Since we are already knee-deep in our cactus worshipping, let’s end this talk with the cactus that’s already living with me. This little guy here has very thin spines...in fact, he is the most dangerous among all my children. When I first brought him into my home I had trouble carrying him so I decided to turn him over with my hands. That was a terrible idea and hellish experience. I ended up with spines all over my hands and arms, I needed to pull them out one by one with a pair of tweezers. Ever since then I have a lot of respect for him and watch myself around him (I definitely won’t be touching you anymore!). I hope someday I can get more cactus friends for him〜 Well then, until next time〜⭐︎(*'▽’*)/ *** Wakana ***

2019/07/13 Instagram post by Wakana

「SHARE GREEN MINAMI AOYAMA」に行って来ました。 詳しくはブログで。 動画もあります。

I went to 「SHARE GREEN MINAMI AOYAMA」. Please read all the details in my blog post. There is also a short video. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz2UWTcBoVt/

[bhaalble]

Alistair: A Defense, a Critique

I PROMISED AN ESSAY

I DELIVER AN ESSAY.

So here we go. What’s up Ferelden, its him, ya boi

So, let’s start off by clearly delineating some things that Alistair is, and more importantly, what he is not.

I think there’s a tendency with Alistair critical posts to treat the worst possible version of Alistair as the “real him”, which is more than a little unfair. Unhardened, kinda bitchy Alistair is a part of him, yes, but its a part of him that only arises when your Warden is continually a dick to him, and I think it’s fair to say that none of us are the best versions of ourselves when we’re constantly being treated like shit or ignored. Furthermore, this isn’t really something we do when we talk about the other characters. Zevran straight up tries to murder you if you don’t have his approval ratings high enough and somehow most people don’t see Zevran as inherently a backstabbing little shit.

So, let’s run down the list of common accusations and overturn them

Alistair is not stupid. He’s just…not. Morrigan jokes, yes, but Morrigan tends to see everyone as an idiot for not sharing her worldview, including your Warden. The one who jokes about Alistair being stupid more often than anyone is Alistair, but as we see time and time again, he’s rarely the most trustworthy source for his real complications.

Alistair may not be a scholar and can make some pretty boneheaded statements, yes, but he’s hardly alone in that department for the DA:O crew. His retorts show some real wit behind them at points. He can demonstrate great social awareness (e.g. catching on to the fact that the Grand Cleric sending him, an ex-templar, to interact with the Circle Mages was definitely an intentional slight). Furthermore, I’d like to point out that he managed to catch on to the Chantry’s bullshit all on his own, before he racked up dozens of counts of mage abuse (*cough* CULLEN *cough*). He still shows some effects of the templar’s training, (especially in his treatment of Jowan and Morrigan) but I’d argue that this is hardly a surprise. He’s been subjected to it 24/7 since he was a child. But he’s aware, and based on the other templars we meet throughout the game that on its own shows some serious introspection and critical thinking.

Alistair is not selfish. While he has his moments, I don’t think that’s really who he is, deep down. Take, for instance, his forgiveness of Arl Eamon. He hasn’t seen Eamon for years. The expected arc would be that he waits for Eamon to wake up, gets an apology, and then forgives him. But based on how he talks about him when you enter Redcliffe, its clear that he’s already forgiven Eamon, and is honestly more than a little ashamed of his behavior. Frankly, this is more selfless than even I would be: imagine being twelve, having lived your life as a street urchin because your adoptive father simply won’t treat you any different than he treats his paid employees, only to be sent away from the only home you’ve ever known because your presence embarrasses his wife. Frankly, I think Alistair would be justified in resenting Eamon for it, but it’s clear that he doesn’t. He calls him a good man from beginning to end.

Furthermore, I think what the Guardian says to Alistair is telling. He doesn’t just feel sad that Duncan is gone. He feels guilty. He, deep down, genuinely believes it should have been him. He wishes he could throw himself on the sword to save his mentor. Then there’s the ritual to consider. It takes some convincing (because of course it does) but with little fuss, Alistair will sleep with a woman he genuinely dislikes (which hoo boy does this make a consent conversation more than a little shaky) to conceive a child that he will never get to see. He, a bastard child cast away from his father, is essentially doing the same thing. All to ensure that he won’t risk his friends dying. Even an unhardened King Alistair casting off a non-human non-noble Warden, while it of course hurts, to me shows a sense of latent responsibility. He genuinely loves and cares about your HoF, but he has the sense that this matters more. That even though he never wanted this burden, he has to carry it as best he can.

What Alistair is is immature.

I want to draw a fine distinction here because I think we tend to use immature interchangeably with “selfish” and “stupid”, so it can sound like I’m contradicting myself. So, to explain myself: I use “immature” in the sense of a symptom, rather than a personality.

For an example of “immature as a personality”, look no further than Tony Stark in like, the first half hour of Iron Man (arguably Tony in the rest of the movies too but ashfagdkh follow me here)

Early Tony Stark is very much someone who is irrepressibly immature. He is capable of being an adult, but he chooses not to be, valuing his own desires above pretty much everyone else’s. He acts out simply because he knows no one will stop him, chases the shiniest, biggest toys he can get, and throws a fit when he doesn’t get his way. He treats other people’s time and needs with a flippant attitude, generally behaving like they are literally side characters who only matter so long as they help him get what he wants.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a reason Tony is the way he is (his relationship with his father being a big contributor), but what is important is that Tony is fully capable of being otherwise, knows it, and chooses not to. He revels in his shamelessness, believing that his immaturity is a sign of his intelligence. Everyone else acts like an adult because they have to, but Tony acts like a child because he is smart enough and rich enough to get away with it. Call it a sort of Capitalist Peter Pan syndrome.

By contrast, Alistair strikes me as immature as a symptom. First off, his age is important to factor in here. Alistair is 20 (my age, which is trippy as fuck). He is barely done being a teenager by the time you meet him.

There are further factors that have stunted Alistair’s emotional maturity, even for the average 20-year-old. He jokes about having been raised by Mabari, but its very clear there weren’t a lot of adult influences in his life at a young age. He mentions Isolde ensured that the castle wasn’t home to him long before he was sent to the Chantry. Imagine being under ten and feeling like you were unwanted by a person who has the power to make your life miserable in every imaginable way.

Then, once he was moved to the Chantry….well, if the Circle is any indication, the Chantry doesn’t exactly know how to accommodate children. Alistair made life a merry hell for the priests but it’s clear he wasn’t treated very well by them. Then straight into templar training. All of this while barely interacting with the outside world and shunned by his peers for his status as a bastard. Kids need to engage with other people in order to grow up effectively. With that in mind, it’s frankly stunning that Alistair has as much care for other people as he does.

The observation of Alistair’s immaturity is exactly groundbreaking either. Think about his dream in the Fade. We see Alistair at his most honest and vulnerable, fully convinced of the illusion. And it seems his greatest dream is to have the family he never got as a child, via his sister. Alistair behaves childlike to the point of parody in this dream. He pleads like a child and tries to entice the Warden to stay by begging his mom sister to make a special meal, his favorite. Hell, the whole “hardening” subplot is basically about the Warden forcing Alistair to let go of the childhood he never got to have and moving forward into adulthood.

His immaturity doesn’t just express itself in the obvious childlike behavior, however. Even though we tend to forget that Alistair is a junior member of the Wardens and is barely more experienced than the HoF in terms of actually fighting darkspawn, I think we can all agree that tossing the decisions on someone who’s barely past their Joining probably isn’t great behavior. Pretty much every comment he makes, about mages, blood magic, elves, even women, also read as the words of a man who simply does not have the world experience yet to really know how to engage with people who aren’t like him. It doesn’t mean these comments don’t….yanno, suck, but there is rarely any real malice behind them. Despite the hardships in Alistair’s life (of which there have been many, I grant), he has still been on the receiving end of certain privileges by virtue of being a man and being human non-mage, and it is clear he is still unlearning the prejudice inherent in that. His youth doesn’t excuse how hurtful or ignorant his comments can be, but its the unfortunate truth that, especially for those of us who grow up relatively privileged, being mindful of the Other is a learning process.

However, the main reason I view this immaturity as a symptom more than a personality is that I think Alistair has a genuine desire to grow past this. He acknowledges that he complains a lot, with an additional note that “and you haven’t been having an easy time of it either”. If you push back on his comments (or at least when the game gives you the chance to), he’ll usually apologize for it. And as I said, the hardening storyline to me indicates that Alistair is more than ready to grow up. He’s just still learning how to do it.

None of this, by the way, means that you have to love Alistair. Its more than easy to be annoyed by him, especially for a non-human and/or non-noble character. In the interest of full disclosure, it took me romancing Alistair to move past simply tolerating him. But I think its time for all of us to stop pretending Alistair is something he isn’t. He isn’t really a side character as much as he is a deuteragonist. More than any other companion (except, arguably, Morrigan), Alistair has a character arc that acts in response to your own characters. He grows and changes over the course of the narrative in a way that parallels how the story treats him, and if you create an Alistair that behaves like an asshole, well, you might want to take a look at how you’ve been treating him

to