#have spent the last three hours wrangling this

[rriavian]

I've finally redrafted the mess that was Courting the King, so unless something goes horrifically wrong during my reread tomorrow it's ready for one final intense edit.

Then I can post some other fics, can finish the last couple of thousand words of Deliverance, enjoy some more ask games, and hopefully not get stuck on an almost finished fic for half a year again. Honestly it's been almost done for long enough that I'd really planned to post back in March. So if I come on tumblr tomorrow and it's just incoherent screeching, erm, well—take it as a sign I'm probably writing more self indulgent cat!Dream to cheer myself up.

(Who am I kidding—I'll be writing self indulgent cat!Dream anyway)

[wintaerbaer]

things we don't say: part 6 (TEASER) (kth)

banner credit: @itaeewon

summary: Three years after graduating college, everything seems to be falling into place for you: stable job, cozy apartment, and a long-term boyfriend with a ring box hidden in his desk drawer. But when a mutual friend makes a remark that your best friend of nearly two decades is clearly in love with you, you realize that life may not be as simple as it seems.

pairing: Taehyung x Reader (with some VERY brief Seokjin x Reader and Yoongi x Reader)

rating: 18+ (MINORS DNI)

genres: best friends to lovers, idiots to lovers, slooooow burn, angst, fluff

word count: 1.2k

teaser warnings: a very sad boy, references to sexual situations, brief mentions of child abuse, vomiting, someone has a wet dream, guilt, shame, a haircut

a/n: sincerest apologies that this series has gone so long without an update. i was struggling with some aggressive writer's block these past few months, but i think we're back in business! <3

PREVIOUS // SERIES MASTERLIST

To say he falls into a state of depression may be an understatement.

He barely eats, barely sleeps, and while Taehyung has always considered you to be the center of his universe—his entire being oriented to you like a star—you’ve begun to haunt him in ways that you never have before. Reminders of you creeping into every minute of his days.

It’s passing your favorite ramen place on his way home from a photoshoot. Or finding a can of your favorite sparkling water buried in the back of his fridge. Or flipping past the cooking show you used to watch together or stumbling upon one of your sweatshirts in his closet or the fact that he still has that damn photo of you hanging up behind his desk.

You’re everywhere—your being so deeply ingrained into his life that he couldn’t erase you even if he wanted to.

And he certainly doesn’t want to erase you; he’s too selfish for that. Even now, even after he’s fucked up to catastrophic degrees by forcing his feelings on you, he still can’t bear to face you directly. Because he knows it would be the end of him for you to reject and abandon him too, even if he can’t blame you for it.

It keeps him up at night, thinking about what he could’ve done differently. How he somehow lost his handle on the control which he has always internally prided himself on (sans a drunken conversation with Namjoon last year where he spilled his guts as was met with a lack of surprise on his friend’s part). He’s always promised himself that he would never burden you, that his love for you was not your responsibility but something for him to manage on his own.

And yet, with you sitting so close on the hotel bed—looking absolutely beautiful in your simple PJs even after he spent the day with you all dressed up—his defenses had crumbled the second you pressed into his side and asked him the final question of your fateful game.

How could he not kiss you then? How could he not give you what you asked of him when he wouldn’t hesitate to lay down his very life if you required it?

But still, he spends hours each night staring at the white expanse of his ceiling wishing he had held back like he always did. Years spent training himself to resist the way his blood calls out for you reduced to naught the second he got his first taste of your lips. And now you likely hate him.

And as if it’s not enough for his brain to put him through this nightly torture, the guilt eating him alive, when he finally does manage to scrounge up a few hours of sleep, there’s the matter of the dreams.

He revisits the hotel room every night. Can taste you again, hear your moans, feel your mouth on him and your warm skin underneath his hands as his mind drags him back through every minute detail on a loop. It’s agony, having to both wrangle with the knowledge of how it felt to be with you as well as face his sins every time he closes his eyes. Realize just how badly he fucked up when he wakes to once again find the other half of his bed empty.

Because in spite of him spending years convincing himself that you were never meant to be, there’s still a small part of Taehyung’s subconscious that’s always carved out space for you in his life. It’s the part that stocks your favorite drinks in his fridge, keeps that photo of you pinned behind his computer, leaves a side of the bed open for you because he became so damn accustomed to sleeping next to you in high school.

He’d found that the bruises from his father didn’t hurt as much when you were sitting next to him making him laugh in your bedroom. That his brain would quiet enough from the terrors to allow him to sleep if you were there lying next to him. That he didn’t feel the dull pain, only the gentle touches of your fingers, as you carefully applied makeup onto the dark patches of skin before school.

It had been easy, then, to dedicate himself to providing you with the same support and care you had shown him in any way he could. To wish for your happiness above all else—his guardian angel through and through.

At least, that is, until he lost control in that hotel room.

One night, after a particularly vivid dream involving your body under his, he awakes to sheets that are soaked around his middle. He blanches at the evidence of his body’s desire for you even now, the horror at the audacity of his unconscious mind causing bile to churn and rise in his throat.

He bolts for the bathroom, barely making it there before he empties the contents of his stomach into the toilet. His body shakes as he retches above the porcelain, guilt rattling his bones until he can hardly keep himself upright.

When the waves of nausea stop, when he can finally pull himself up to lean his elbows against the sink, he stares hard at the mirror and man he sees there.

He looks haggard, dark splotches sitting under his eyes and hair hanging limp around his face and over his forehead. The pale skin of his cheeks and lips is surely due, in part, to the vomiting, but there’s no denying that he’s a shell of his former self. A ghost just going through the motions of a past life.

And it’s there, peering through the darkness at his own reflection, that Taehyung decides he hates himself.

He’s not sure if it’s the raw disgust or the unrelenting shame that has him reaching for the hair clippers, but as his sable tresses begin to fall in chunks over the bathroom counter and floor, Taehyung thinks he deserves this.

He deserves the torment of his dreams. That disturbing combination of his wildest fantasies and nightmares rolled into one.

He deserves to wake up alone. To be reminded of his transgressions at the break of each day.

And he deserves to lose you.

Hell, he never deserved to have you.

The silence that follows the buzz of the trimmer seems at odds with the roaring in his head. Still, he manages to scoop the mess of hair into the trash before dragging himself back to the tangle of his sheets.

He finds himself right back in that cursed hotel room.

When he shuffles into the living room the next morning, still fighting the lingering tastes of bile and your lips, Jungkook and Jimin are already awake at the kitchen bar drinking coffee. They freeze at the sight of him; the pastry that Jimin was halfway to putting in his mouth hits the ground with a thud as Jungkook lets out a low whistle and simply shakes his head.

“That bad, huh?”

a/n: may or may not go back and revise this again for the final draft. in the meantime, a reminder that my ask box is always open! <3

[legendofmorons]

An incomplete list of Stories The Chain Likes To Ignore Happened

(I will elaborate if asked. Or if I'm bored, tbh.)

Legend having a nightmare and getting woken up halfway by Wild to go collect goats for something the Sailor wants. This ends with 15 goats, three separate lectures, and Legend biting Twilight's left arm (on accident)

Wind is a fucking crow or magpie istg- he picks up anything shiny, this has gotten him into SEVRAL traps and dungeons they could have avoided

Time got stuck in a tree. He was NOT a happy camper. (Wild has pictures)

Hyrule walked into a fairy fountain and passed out in it. He was so tired.

They got to see a play about Legend's adventures and Legened. (It went about as good as it did in Avatar the last airbender) ---> See Here

Wild and Twilight had a goat wrangling competition. Warriors won despite not participating.

Sky and Four spent six hours discussing the master sword. They still can't figure all the secrets out.

[rfxiii]

I saw the winter prompts could you possibly do "You're the only gift I want to unwrap." For Franklin

Btw I love your work keep it up 💚

(Hii! Tysm for the request and the kind words! I hope I did your request justice! So sorry for the long wait 🙏)

All I Want For Christmas Is You

TW: smut

Word count: 2903

“Oh my god! This is hopeless!” you growl to yourself, flopping backwards onto the bed and glaring out the huge windows framing the large backyard at Franklin’s Vinewood home.

You’d spent the last three weeks agonizing over what to get him for Christmas. But unfortunately, Franklin was so damn easy to please that when you’d practically begged him to tell you what he wanted for his Christmas gift, he’d simply shrugged and said “I don’t need nothing. Seriously. Anything you get will be great.” But that wasn’t good enough for you. He was the perfect boyfriend, he was the perfect man. And there was no way you were going to get him some generic, boring present. He deserved the world.

You’d broken down last week and asked Lamar for help. But as close of friends as they were, that lanky goofball was little to no help. He’d suggested taking Frank to get a haircut, or maybe buying him some better clothes or a replacement for his “dusty, busted ass shoes.” But even that felt too basic for what he deserved. You’d even asked Michael for his opinion. But after they’d all received all of that cash from their Union Depository score, Michael had only shrugged and said “The kids got all the money in the world now. If he wanted it, wouldn’t he have it by now?”

You’re floundering for ideas now, but not deterred. There’s only one more day before Christmas, but you were not going to let this conundrum get the best of you. And with a new fire ignited inside you, you pull out your phone and call up Lamar yet again, “Lamar, listen! I’m dying here. I need help! Meet me at Rockford Plaza in twenty. Please! I still haven’t gotten Frank a gift, and I’m dying here!” you plead, pacing the bedroom in a growing panic.

“Ugh! Aight, aight! Damn, you really stressin’ about this. And we gotta go to the fancy ass mall?.. Fuck. Aight! I’ll meet yo’ ass there.” Lamar groans, and you hear shuffling in the background which thankfully signals him actually getting up to get ready to go.

“Oh my god! Thank you! Thank you, thank you! I owe you so big for this, Lamar! I’ll see you there!” you chirp, hanging up the phone and scrambling off to grab your jacket.

You’d planned on this shopping trip today, and had thankfully been able to wrangle Michael into your plan of helping get Franklin out of the house to avoid any suspicion. And now, with all your plans set carefully in place, you head off to meet Lamar for your last ditch effort in finding the perfect gift.

But unfortunately, this close to Christmas, your shopping trip proves to be anything but easy or relaxing.

You and Lamar hurry through the crowded plaza, your eyes darting from one shop to the next as you both try to contain your growing frustration. It's been almost an hour since you met at Rockford Plaza, and so far, all you've managed to find are a few mediocre presents that just don't seem quite right for Franklin. You can't help but feel like you're running out of time, and with each passing minute, the pressure to find the perfect gift for the man who wants nothing seems to intensify.

"I don't know, man," Lamar says, shaking his head as he studies a display of expensive colognes, "He's just so hard to shop for. I mean, what does he even like?"

You feel your brow twitching in irritation as you shoot him a look, “What do you mean, what does he like? You’re his best friend! How can you not-“ You stop your ranting and pull Lamar to a stop in front of a jewelry store, the glittering display of diamonds and precious gems catching your eye. "What about jewelry?" you suggest, feeling a pang of nervousness in your stomach. Jewelry like this is a big gesture, and you're not entirely sure if it's something that Franklin would even want. But as you look around, you can't help but feel drawn to the elegance and the beauty behind each piece.

Lamar shrugs, looking unsure. "I guess it won’t hurt nothin’ to look, right?" he says, following you into the store.

The saleswoman, a polished and professional woman with a knowing smile, approaches you both and inquires if she can be of assistance. You glance at Lamar, who seems to be growing more nervous by the second, and then back at the saleswoman, feeling a surge of determination. This is it. This has to be the one.

As you describe to the saleswoman the qualities that you admire about Franklin and the kind of person he is, you feel a warmth spreading through your chest. You're not just buying a present; you're expressing how you feel about him, how much he means to you. The woman shows you various pieces around the store, but when she shows you a stunning pair of black diamond earrings, you know immediately that this is it. This is the gift that gives everything you've been trying to say for the past three weeks.

You swallow hard, feeling a lump forming in your throat, and turn to Lamar, who is watching you with a mixture of anxiety at feeling out of place and hope that you’d finally found the right gift. "Lamar, I think I got it," you say, your voice trembling just a little. "What do you think?"

“Ya know what-..” Lamar mutters, gazing at the diamond studs inside the thick, glass case, “I think we got a winner.”

“Yeah?” you breathe hopefully, grinning up at him as you begin to imagine the surprise on Franklin’s face when he revived his gift.

“Yeah, homie.. Now, hurry up and let’s get the fuck outta here. I can’t put up with too much more a’ this shit.” Lamar snickers, his gaze darting around to the masses of people milling about frantically through the shops.

You grin at the saleswoman, pointing again to the earrings with a decisive nod, “These. We’ll take these, please!”

The price tag on the item nearly floors Lamar, and the expert wrapping skill of the sales associate has you gawking, as well. Finally, she places the perfectly wrapped box into an equally nice bag- decorated with shiny, black tissue paper. You give her your thanks and quickly lead Lamar back to where you’d left your vehicles.

“Aw, motherfucker!” Lamar growls, snatching the parking ticket off his vans windshield, “Double parked? Bullshit! This right here is a perfect park job!” He argues with absolutely no one.

You have the good grace not to mention his abysmal parking job. Instead, snatching the ticket from his hand and taking in the several hundred dollar fine he now owes, “Ya know what- Gimme this. I’ll pay for it as soon as the holiday is over. Like I said, I owe you so big, LD!”

“No shit? Aight, bet! Thanks a lot, homie!” Lamar chuckles in relieved disbelief. And as he watches you jog off to your car, he calls out to you with a big, cheeky grin, “An’ merry Christmas!”

“Yeah! Have a good Christmas, Lamar!” you shout back, feeling relief washing over you at finally having found the perfect gift.

You spend the rest of the day biting your tongue to keep from excitedly spilling your secret gift to Franklin. But the night is still nice together. Michael had taken him golfing, Trevor had joined them later on and gotten them kicked out, then they’d all been forced to go see one of Michael’s favorite, shitty, black and white films, before he’d come home and been happy for time to actually relax with you after trying to corral his two older friends all day. You’d had a nice dinner, spent time together watching tv, curled up together on the couch, before finally going to bed and leaving you struggling to sleep with your bubbling excitement.

The bright morning sunlight streams in through the window the next morning, casting a warm glow across the bed where you and Franklin lie. Your stomach rumbles, reminding you that it's been a while since you've eaten, and with a contented yawn, you roll over to nuzzle into his neck. He hums sleepily, one hand absently stroking your hair as he nestles deeper into the pillows. You grin, sitting up and swinging your legs over the side of the bed.

"Morning, sleepyhead," you murmur, leaning over to kiss him gently. "Think you can get up and help me make some breakfast?"

Franklin yawns, stretching his arms high above his head, before letting out a contented sigh. "I guess I could," he grins sleepily, sitting up and blinking blearily at the clock. "What are we having?"

As you watch him throw off the covers and pad over to the bathroom, you can't help but marvel at how comfortable you've become with him. It feels so natural to be here, sharing this space with him. Even as time passes, there's still an element of newness to it, a spark that keeps things exciting and alive. You know that this is where you're supposed to be, and that thought alone fills you with a warmth that spreads through your entire body.

While he's in the bathroom, you head into the kitchen and begin to rummage through the fridge. You pull out some eggs, bread, and some fruit, setting them all on the counter. The eggs sizzle in the pan as you chop up some avocado, thinking about how much he's going to love the surprise you have planned for him. You're so focused on your cooking that you don't notice him sneak up behind you until you feel his warm breath on your neck.

"Mmm, that smells amazing," he says, wrapping his arms around you from behind. You lean back into him, feeling the muscles in his chest and arms through his t-shirt.

"It's just a little something I threw together," you reply, glancing over your shoulder at him. "But I hope you like it."

He pulls you closer, nuzzling into your neck as he breathes in the scent of breakfast. "I'm sure I'll love whatever you make," he whispers, his lips brushing against your ear. "You're the best cook I know."

When the food is finally ready, you serve it up on two plates and carry them over to the living room, setting them down on the coffee table. You watch as he takes in the spread, his eyes widening in surprise.

"Wow, this is... amazing," he breathes, looking up at you. "Thank you, babe."

You grin, feeling a rush of pride and happiness. "You're welcome. I hope you like it."

He takes a bite of the egg and avocado sandwich, savoring the flavors before swallowing. "It's delicious," he says, looking up at you again. "You really outdid yourself."

You blush, feeling the warmth spread from your cheeks down to your stomach. "I'm glad you like it." You hesitate for a moment, then reach over to grab the small box that you'd hidden behind a throw pillow earlier. Handing it to him, you watch as his expression changes from surprise to delight.

"Merry Christmas." you urge, your heart racing. He takes the box carefully, his fingers tracing over the intricate pattern on the wrapping paper. With a gentle tug, he pulls it off to reveal the black diamond earrings you’d searched so hard to pick out.

“Babe,-.. Holy shit..” Franklin gasps out, his fingers almost cautiously tracing the gems of the earrings.

His reaction is muted and shocked, and you begin to fear that maybe this isn’t even remotely something that he enjoys. But before you can panic too thoroughly, he’s letting out a disbelieving gasp and shooting you the brightest smile you’d seen since you’d agreed to go out with him, “This is…amazing! Holy shit! How’d you pick these out?” he gasps, the smile on his cheeks unwavering.

“You..like’em? Really? Oh my god, I’m so glad! Lamar and I were out all day looking for something to give you, and he was no help, and I was afraid you wouldn’t like these! But I saw’em, and I thought they’d look really nice on you, and I’ve spent all month panicking over what to get you, and-“

“Babe!” Franklin chuckles, cupping your cheeks to silence your frantic rambling, “These are perfect.” he coos before leaning in closer, “But really-.. You're the only gift I want to unwrap.”

He leans in, stealing your breath away when his warm, soft lips press to yours in the softest, slow kiss that has your heart fluttering and head spinning.

“I love you.” you gasp against his lips- your fingers knotting in the front of his shirt to pull him close.

“I love you too, babe.” Franklin mutters with a grin softly twitching his lips.

As you sit there, wrapped up in each other and the glow of the Christmas tree, the room feels impossibly warm and cozy. You lean in, pressing your lips against his again, feeling the familiar heat of his mouth against yours. He pulls you closer, one hand slipping beneath your sweater to stroke your back, the other tangled in your hair.

Time seems to stand still as you lose yourself in the moment, the rest of the world fading away into the background. And in this perfect, fleeting moment, you realize that you are exactly where you're meant to be.

The kiss deepens, and your heart races as you feel his hand slip under your shirt, tracing lightly over your skin. His touch sends shivers down your spine, and you find yourself melting further into his embrace. You pull back slightly, just enough to look into his eyes, and you know that he can see the desire burning bright within them.

With a soft moan, he presses his lips to yours again, more urgently this time. You respond in kind, your hands fumbling with the buttons of his shirt as you try to get it open. He helps you, his fingers deftly working the buttons loose before throwing the shirt aside, revealing his toned chest and soft skin.

You reach up, brushing your fingers over his hair, marveling at the feel of it between your fingers. He shudders at the touch, and you can feel the hardness of his erection pressed against your thigh. You pull him closer, feeling the heat from his body sear into your own, wanting nothing more than to be as close to him as humanly possible.

"I love you," you sigh again, your voice barely more than a whisper as you gaze deeply into his eyes. And in that moment, you know without a doubt that it's true. He smiles, lips curving into a lazy grin as he responds, "I love you too."

As if the words themselves are a catalyst, your clothes seem to melt away, and you find yourself lying naked beneath him, bodies entwined. The air is heavy with the scent of the pine Christmas tree and desire, and the only noise that fills your ears is the rhythmic sound of your hearts beating in perfect unison.

With a soft groan, he presses the length of his erection against your entrance, and you feel the hot, thick head of him press into you. You gasp, arching your back as he slowly begins to push inside. He fills you slowly, inch by excruciatingly perfect inch, and when he's finally buried deep inside you, you feel complete.

His hips begin to move, and you throw your head back, moaning as he starts to thrust. The sensation of being so intimately connected to him is overwhelming, and you feel your orgasm building quickly.

"Franklin..." you breathe, your voice shaking with the effort to hold back the release. "Oh god, I'm going to..." Your words are cut off by a sharp cry as your body is wracked by an intense shock, your muscles tensing and your nails digging into his skin. He follows soon after, his thrusts growing frantic as he releases himself deep inside you.

As your breathing begins to steady, he rolls to the side, pulling you into his embrace. You feel his hot breath against your ear as he whispers, "I love you, baby. I love you so much." And in that moment, you know that this is real. This is forever.

Your heart feels lighter than air, and the warmth from his body seems to spread through your entire being. You lie there, content and at peace, feeling the rhythm of his heart against your chest. He nuzzles his face into your hair, kissing your neck and shoulders, and you feel a shiver run down your spine.

“So,-..” you sigh softly, looking up at him with the faintest hint of a teasing grin, “What’d you get me for Christmas?”

“Oh my god! You’re ridiculous. Hang on!” Franklin chuckles, pressing a kiss to your forehead and stumbling to pull up his pants before scurrying off to the bedroom.

And you can’t help but laugh as you watch the love of your life stumbling downstairs with his pants halfway off his hips.

This Christmas had been hectic, and more than agonizing in your endeavor to find the perfect gift. But seeing the smile and excitement on Franklin’s face had proved to be more perfect than any gift.

[noxturnalpascal]

Happy Ending [II]

Masterlist (with all warnings)

A/N: tía - aunt, tío - uncle, primo - cousin, dios mío - my god, chulo - pimp, bonito - pretty (masculine), mala - bad, cariño - darling, guapo - handsome, mi amor - my love

🩷 🌅 🌴

The next morning he lets himself sleep late - nearly 10am - but gives himself plenty of time to shower and wrangle his hair so he’s presentable for the 2pm beachfront service. He uses the outdoor rainfall shower, enjoying the sounds of the waves and the breeze blowing through the palm fronds. He heads into the closet, drops the towel on the bathroom floor and throws on a pair of boxer-briefs. He goes to grab the suit he hastily hung up while unpacking yesterday and a panic grips him when he realizes it’s not there. 

He turns around three full times, checking and rechecking the empty closet, and begins to immediately sweat, wondering where the fuck it could have gone to when he hears a knock at the main door. He’s wondering what to do and who to call and when he pulls the door open he’s hit with a wave of relief as he sees Kiki standing there holding his suit out in front of her.

“Oh thank god, I was just looking for-,” he pauses and points at his suit. “Wait, how did you get my suit?”

“When I came to the room for turn-down service last night I noticed this suit hanging in your closet. It was covered in wrinkles and it smelled like…” she’s tactful enough not to finish her sentence. “So I just assumed you wanted it cleaned and pressed.”

Frankie suddenly realizes he’s standing there in only his underwear so he grabs the hanger from her hands and holds it against him, offering himself a small amount of modesty.

“Thank you, Kiki,” he mumbles, shutting the door quickly.

The service is beautiful but hot, sitting on the beach in the glaring afternoon sun. He didn’t think to bring any sunglasses, the hat that rarely leaves his head usually providing enough shade. It’s all he can do to focus on the bride and groom and shit, he thinks he’s gonna get a headache from squinting so much. He’s sitting next to his mother and notices she’s sniffling the whole time, getting misty-eyed at the sight of Elio marrying his love. She’s probably thinking about how she’ll never get to see her own son’s wedding since Frankie has spent the last decade finding new and exciting ways to blow up his whole life.

As the ceremony comes to a close he tells his mamá he’ll see her at dinner, and manages to duck away and get off the beach before the couple comes down the aisle and the crowd closes in. He feels a little bad sneaking away and being antisocial but he can’t handle the onslaught of well-wishers descending on the couple. He never does well in crowds like that anymore. 

He takes a walk down the beach during cocktail hour, setting an alarm on his watch with plans to head back to the reception building just as dinner starts. He’s taken off his dress shoes and socks, letting his feet sink into the wet sand where the waves just lick at them, cooling him off. He’s also enjoying the warm, salty breeze as it soothes the beads of sweat collected on his forehead. He hears a melodic sound travel across the sand. Holy shit, that sounds like your laugh. 

He looks around, seeing some couples obviously dressed up enough to be from a wedding, maybe the one he was at, maybe the one he saw set up further down the beach near his villa. He looks at their faces as they pass by him. None of them are you. He puts his hand to his forehead, shading his eyes to look behind him, towards the building where the reception will be. 

There’s a large wooden patio off the back of the white stucco building, sliding glass doors separating the outside from the inside. Bistro lights zig back and forth above the crowd of people already gathered there, drinks and small plates in hands, and floral arrangements cover every square inch of the railing, spilling over the sides and draping themselves towards the sand. He scans the faces in the crowd but between the distance and the brightness, it’s hard to see. 

He’s pretty sure he doesn’t see you among the crowd. But he wouldn’t, would he… because this is just his mind fucking with him. You’re not here, why would you be here, on Paradise Cay?

But shit, did that sound like your laugh.

---

The fit of giggles you would become lost in when a movie night went too late. You called them your 2am crazies and you’d laugh yourself hoarse, then beg him to let you stay the night. Even though he barely got any sleep those nights, too warm with you cuddled up against him in his small bed, he never denied you.

The screaming laughter you’d let out when he would start to rock the car of the ferris wheel at the top of the rotation. You’d tell him you were going to be brave when you got on the ride, sitting a fair distance from him, yet still gripping the safety bar as tight as possible. A couple rocks was all it would take for you to give up the pretense of courage and throw your arms around his middle, just like he wanted.

Your nervous laughter as you told him about the job offer you got. You told him how some of the girls at the call center were leaving for new jobs and then, days later, you finally told him what the job was.

“They’re gonna be making movies,” you admit.

“What kind of movies?” he asks, innocently, until you pin him with a look like he should already know what kind of movies your sex phone-line coworkers would be doing. “Like porn?”

“Yeah, kinda,” you tell him.

You told him there was a new website that was paying girls $20 for pictures or $500 for videos, and for a cut there was a guy who would photograph or record you and then upload them to the site. Frankie wants to ask how you could even think about making porn. He wants to ask if you know what they do to the girls in porn videos. He’s seen enough of them to know that you deserve to be treated better than they get treated. He wants to give you all the money in his bank account so you don’t have to do this to yourself, subject your body to this. 

You’re sitting across from him awaiting his response. You see the look he doesn’t even realize he’s wearing on his face and he watches your expression fall.

“You don't like it,” you mumble, looking absolutely dejected.

“No! I just-,” he’s fucking terrified for you. How are you not terrified? “I’m just… worried. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not gonna get hurt, Pancho,” you grab his hand. Are you reassuring him right now?

You tell him that you don’t plan on making a video with another person just yet, that the $500 is for a solo video, just you and the cameraman, recording you touching yourself. You laugh again, nervous. It’s gonna be okay you keep telling him, maybe telling yourself too.

“A website?” he repeats.

“Yup,” you say, popping the p. “The world wide web.”

“I thought the web was just for downloading music and getting research materials from the library,” he half-jokes.

“It’s still gonna be all that... there’s just also gonna be naked pictures of me on it,” you laugh. Nervously.

Two weeks later on a Friday afternoon he picks you up and drives you to a small building in a not-great neighborhood on the north side of the city for your filming time. Your nervous laughter is back. You’re unusually quiet, and keep joking that you should have smoked or something to calm your nerves. He wondered before how you weren’t terrified and now he sees that you are, you’re just trying your best to appear brave. You can’t come in, you'd already told him. The photographer had explicitly explained to you that you could bring girlfriends but absolutely no boyfriends. 

“But, I’m not your boyfriend,” Frankie says as he holds your hand in the front seat, his thumb brushing over your knuckles. The truck idles in the parking lot as rain drizzles down on the windshield. 

“I’m not sure they’re gonna make the distinction when you roll up there with those big, broad shoulders and these angry brown eyes.”

“My eyes are not angry,” he says in defense.

“Then what is this?” you tease as you poke at the wrinkle set between his furrowed brow.

He waits in the parking lot for an agonizing fifty four minutes, watching the rain clouds clear and the sun come out, before you come out of the building, eyes a little glassy and trembling slightly. He jumps out of the car and helps you into the passenger seat, driving you both to a taco bell and buying you meximelts until the color returns to your face. How was it? How do you feel? Are you okay? You tell him it was awkward but everything was fine, and show him the $500 cash you made.

It takes you almost a week to admit that the cameraman gave you a pill he said would calm your nerves and it made you feel funny the rest of the day. He almost jumps out of his skin but you assure him that nothing happened and that you can take care of yourself. You also promise him you don’t plan on taking any more pills from strangers.

You get asked to do another video. You’d make $850 this time, recording a video with a guy named Rock Hardson. Frankie groans but tries not to let his jealousy come out. He’s not your boyfriend. You don’t belong to him. You weren’t a virgin when you met him and you have every right to use your body to make yourself some much-needed money.

It goes like that for a few more months, him driving you to the little building with the dirty parking lot every 3-4 weeks, waiting outside while you go in and make your money, then taking you to eat afterwards. Always asking if you’re okay, if you feel alright, if they treated you well.

Spring break comes around in early April and you have enough money to go on a trip with a couple of your high school girlfriends and their boyfriends to Miami. You shyly ask if Frankie will come with you even though he’s not your boyfriend so you don’t have to feel like a fifth wheel. He almost bites his tongue off with how quickly he says yes.

He holds your hand the whole flight, talking you out of a panic attack during takeoff, just now realizing how terrified you are of flying. He’s never seen you this scared of anything. He wants to tease you but instead he distracts you by handing you his discman and letting you listen to your Celine Dion album for the short flight, hearing you humming the ubiquitous Titanic theme song. 

The week goes by too quickly, filled with salty, sunscreen-slathered afternoons on the beach and cigarette-infused, drunken nights in the club. Your last night there you finally convince him to dance with you, both of you too wasted to keep rhythm, clumsily bumping your bodies against each other for several songs. He feels your smooth skin under his hands, your fingers twisting in his hair. How badly he wanted to kiss you, his inebriated state almost granting him the courage.

You both fall into the bed you’d been sharing all week but tonight your friend in the bed next to you is drunk enough that she’s agreed to let her boyfriend have sex with her even with everyone else in the room. You and Frankie giggle to each other and you hear laughter coming from the fold-out couch on your other side, where your other friend lies with her boyfriend. 

Then, you both hear those laughs turn to breathy moans as well. You lie face up next to each other in the bed, smack in the middle of the two fornicating couples, the tension and awkwardness growing. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been making his dick so hard it hurt. He was so scared you were going to see the tented sheets over his erection and be appalled by his behavior. He’s supposed to just be your friend. A friend doesn’t get a hard-on laying in bed next to his friend.

You grab his hand and he almost jumps out of the bed. His head is spinning, both because of the alcohol and the situation unfolding. He thinks you’re looking at him, he thinks he can see it out of the corner of his eye, but he can’t look at you. He’s afraid of what he might see on your face, just as afraid he might see your friend on the bed next to you getting railed by her boyfriend. The room is filled with the sounds of sex; low grunts and the slap of skin on skin. 

“I bet you’re used to this,” he whispers, trying to ease the tension with a joke.

You let go of his hand.

His stomach sinks. Maybe he shouldn’t have-

“I’m too fucked up for this shit,” you mutter, rolling over and going to sleep.

When you get back from Miami you tell him that you’re going to quit, your school bill is paid off and you don’t want to make any more videos, and he won’t have to drive you anymore. For a few days he’s worried that he fucked up so badly on vacation that your friendship has changed, but when you call him for laundry day on Sunday everything seems fine, your friendship seems like how it used to be. 

---

His watch beeps, letting him know he’s been reminiscing for over an hour and it’s time for him to get back for dinner. He puts his shoes back on and makes it to his table just as a glass is being clinked for the champagne toast. He looks at the table setting in front of him and sees a small bottle of sparkling water next to an empty champagne flute. His mother must have made sure that was done for him. She’s so thoughtful. He’s lucky to have her, even after all the ways he’s disappointed her, still by his side rooting for his sobriety. 

Although if he’s being honest, he could really use some champagne right about now. All this sappy love bullshit is making it feel like a fist is clenching around his heart. He’s happy for Elio, of course, but goddamnit is he fuckin’ lonely. He’s not sure if the near-constant thoughts of you are a cause of or a product of his loneliness. It doesn’t really matter either way, the end result is the same. He’s here and you’re not.

After a delicious meal, he’d gotten the crab-stuffed-fish, his mother leaves the table to dance with two of his aunts, encouraging him to find someone to dance with as she goes, pointing around the room. He doesn't even look up as he says “I can’t dance, mamá .”

He’s immediately wrapped up in thoughts of you again.

---

You came to his graduation, standing next to him while his family snapped photos of the two of you, even stealing his mortarboard and putting it on your own head for a few pictures towards the end. He’d gotten his post-graduation assignment, he was going to a base in Germany, but first he’d be headed to Texas for six months of training. He was scheduled to leave in July, just after the holiday.

You spent the nine weeks of summer you had together alternating visiting the other. You’d borrow your mom’s minivan for the weekend and cross the state line to come to him. You’d spend your days together going to the mall, grabbing sbarro for lunch in the food court, and sneaking into the cine-plex. His friends from high school would let you in through a side door and you'd go between theaters, watching movies all afternoon, then help his mamá make dinner at night. He'd give you his bed and go sleep on the futon in his abuela’s room. 

Alternately, he’d drive his worn-out Ranger to you, and you’d take him with you to watch your little brother’s baseball games, grabbing pretzels and a frozen yogurt at your mall afterwards. Your mother felt guilty making him sleep on the couch in her cramped apartment's small living room, so you easily convinced her to let him sleep on your bedroom floor.

You’d toss a pillow at him and he’d get comfortable under a blanket as your mom poked her head in to say goodnight. As soon as the lights were off and everyone was in bed you’d whisper for him to get up here, and he’d join you on your full-size mattress, holding you close. His mamá called you his girlfriend when she talked about you, but you’d still never even so much as kissed each other. You called him your best friend and that was enough for him. Getting to hold you and have you confide in him and be the person to make you smile was more than enough.

You spent your birthday in mid-June together, camping in the bed of his truck under the stars. You’d spent all day at the amusement park nearby, some of your friends joining you for the day. He’d held your hand on the roller coasters and let you feed him spoonfuls of dippin dots ice cream. He pressed his face against the top of your head as you both headed to the campsite in the evening, drained from a long day of walking, screaming, and being in the sun.

He lit a fire in the campsite’s ring and covered you in blankets where you perched on his tailgate, drinking cheap beer and ringing in your 20th year, roasting hot dogs and watching as the flames got lower and lower, until the fire was nothing more than glowing embers. You laid down under shared blankets to sleep, limbs tangled together for warmth, and scratched your fingers through his hair while you fell asleep. He knew then he was probably in love with you. But he wasn’t going to ruin your friendship by ever telling you that.

And then the day came that he was scheduled to get on a bus to leave for Texas. He kissed and hugged his mamá, shook hands with his pop, and then turned to you. You’d driven all night to be there for his 5am bus out of town, and your face was already streaked with tears. He pulled you close and you held him so tight, he doesn't know where he found the strength to let you go. Neither of you could bring yourselves to say the word goodbye and before his stinging eyes could spill tears over his waterline he pulled away. He felt you shove something in his pocket, sniffling as you wiped your face with your shirtsleeves.

He waited untill he got on the bus to slip what you’d snuck in there out of his pocket. He thought it was going to be a note but it was a CD. For my Pancho, you’d written on the disc in Sharpie. He knew he must look so dumb with the goofy grin he had plastered on his face. You’d made him a mix tape. He was so excited to listen to it that he fished his discman out of his bookbag and pressed the CD in. It spun up, read 00:00, and spun down. It wouldn’t play the music. He’d have to wait till he arrived on base and could put it into a better stereo.

Between the long drive, the haircuts, the room assignments, the introductions, one awkward phone call with you, and getting a ton of homework from his classes right away, he doesn’t get a chance to even think about the CD again until a week later. It doesn’t work again in his neighbor’s stereo, but he thinks maybe you put the music in a different format so you could fit more songs on the disc. He heads across the base to the technology lab on his next day off and his hunch is confirmed when the computer opens up the disc’s contents in a folder, revealing a video file. He double clicks the file and watches the monitor as it opens up in Windows Media Player.

A low resolution image comes across his screen and because he’s never seen it before, it takes him a moment to comprehend what he’s looking at. It’s you. You’re standing in front of the camera, a warm afternoon light spilling in from the window you must be facing, highlighting your face, shining on your dewy lips, your chin, your neck, your tits. Holy fuck you’re topless. He clicks pause and looks around, making sure no one else can see his screen, then presses play again. As the video continues the camera keeps panning out, and reveals you to be totally naked. 

Holy shit this must be one of your videos. You’d talked about them before of course, the two of you talked about everything. You’d told him things you liked, things you didn’t, even awkward things that would happen during filming. You’d never tried to show him one of your videos and he would never be bold enough to ask. He knew you’d shown a couple friends, overhearing you discussing it one time, but he didn’t want you to feel objectified, so he said nothing.

A group comes into the computer lab and sits down nearby, checking their email. He can't keep watching this in here. There’s a crowd and he’s already half-hard in his pants. As an officer he’s lucky enough to have his own small apartment on base, and he waits three more weeks, the CD burning a proverbial hole in his desk drawer, until he finally saves up enough money to go get his own computer from Circuit City. It takes all goddamn afternoon to set up the computer and install Windows and finally, just after sunset, the computer boots up and is ready to use. 

He slides the disc into his computer’s drive and watches for the first time, headphones on his ears to get the full experience. After the camera pans out to reveal your naked body you take a seat on the edge of the bed - he notices it’s your bed in your home bedroom - and the camera slowly pans back in as you lie down and slowly spread your legs. It remains a tight, but full-body still-shot for the rest of the video, recording you touching yourself to the tune of no less than three orgasms. Frankie can’t help himself and begins to touch himself too on your final peak.

Your breathy, panting moans, the way you pinch your nipples, the wet noises of your cunt, your fingers circling your clit, your cries as you fall over the crest each time; it’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen. He wants to immediately call you and talk about it but with his training schedule keeping him busy and your junior year keeping you busy, you’ve barely talked in the month he’s been gone. How can he call you now and talk about how he’s seen you naked and watched you getting yourself off? What is he supposed to say? Thank you? You guys used to talk to each other about everything, but does he tell you that he jerked off to you? Is that why you gave him this video? He doesn’t know how to proceed. Why would you give him this as he was leaving?

The two of you write some letters back and forth and you eventually connect for a phone call at Christmas break, right before he heads to his post, but you miss his long-distance call from the base in Germany on New Year’s Eve. The calls get fewer and further between but his views on that CD never falter. It’s been so long since he’s spoken to you, almost two decades now, but he watches your video all the time, counting the CD among his prized possessions. 

He’s not even ashamed to admit that he takes his cock in his hand nearly every time he watches and can time it so perfectly by now that he’s spilling his come over his hand just as you hit your third orgasm. Shit, he’s pretty sure the disc is in his laptop’s CD-drive right now. He brought his laptop, right? He feels himself start to harden in his pants. Maybe he can ditch out on this reception early and go back to his room to watch it. Even without any champagne, that would make it a good night. 

He feels a gentle tap on his shoulder.

[hussyknee]

Posted to Reddit midnight last night at 1am:

3am: Facebook post on local help page.

(amount in LKR. I am very poor and unemployed and live with my mother, who is Satan.)

OIC = Officer In Charge

Bindu = Family doggo. Usually a gentle lad who's all bark, but an entire brigade of strange burly men in gear chasing him (as he felt) all the way to his safe spot was too much.

Passa pattha = backside

Mau didn't come when I fed the kits their breakfast before I crashed, and was still nowhere to be seen when I woke up at 1pm in time for their lunch. Had to hobble around the street calling his name for ten minutes before he came barrelling from god knows where, muddy and filthy. Had to wash and scrub him thoroughly. He's always 80% nerves and hyperactivity, but he's really dialed up today so I ended up getting scratched all over.

I discovered I may have been unfair to him. He's absolutely an overdramatic ninny, but I noticed his nails were quite long. He has six scratch baskets and escapes outside more than the other two but all that's done is give him needle claws apparently. He probably couldn't get as good a purchase on the slippery roof sheets as his brother and sister. My poor baby. They're all completely fine though.

I am not. I feel like my arms and legs are about to fall off. I wish they would. My knees are throbbing like they're arthritic again.

Heading off questions:

Why didn't you call the fire brigade in the first place? Because I've been confined by disability and abused by various people my entire adult life and the only people who have ever helped me with my rescues have been kind strangers. Also the emergency helplines in this country are useless. I once called 119 because I thought I was having a heart attack and was told this was the police line and had to call the ambulance one separately. They then called two hours later asking if I still needed the police. The fire brigade was the most positive interaction I've yet had with a state service, and even they usually only respond to pet rescues when it looks like the animal's life is in danger.

How are you poor when you have a three storey house with a maid and driver? My mother has a three storey house with a maid and driver, on account of having made good money for 45 years. We're poor because she saved none of it for retirement. This is South Asia, middle class poverty is when you don't know if you can pay the electric before it's cut off but still have a maid there's always someone poorer than you who needs to eat. It's all very Little Women. The three storey house is a white elephant financial hole that isn't a South Asian thing but a "my mother is a deranged spendthrift" thing. I live in a gothic novel.

Why don't you keep your cats inside? Because we live in a house that's half verandahs and balconies in the tropics and we can't keep it shut on all sides without killing everyone inside it. And, like I said, nobody will lift a finger to help and trying to make any modifications makes my mother scream like a demon from the depths of Gehenna. Of the four other adults in this house, the only one I could get to help me with Mau was the old driver.

How did you get up to look over the wall before the driver brought the ladder up? I got on a chair and climbed onto a ledge off the side, rising on my tip toes and clinging to the wall for dear life. While trying to wrangle a broom on a line and calling and coaxing. For hours. I have balance issues and can barely change a light bulb without help. Was too exhausted to be scared around hour three.

You're being kind of mean to Mau. You'd be terrified too. Yes, but I am not a cat. A cat being scared of heights feels a bit like letting your species down on an existential level. Also I never so much as wanted to yell at the little fucker, sang him lullabies until the firemen arrived, and spent a total of eight hours on my feet until they got him down. I'm still not mad at any of them even when I rue the day some liar told me cats were easier than dogs.

Anyway, all's well in Mau-land.

For now.

[dragoon811]

I am so so tired

What is a rest? What is a good night's sleep? My oldest has a cold and is clingy. My youngest has gone from a kiddo with a good sleep routine and a nighttime cuddle to having the biggest tantrums EVER. I spent THREE hours last night getting her to bed.

I don't know how I stayed calm. I don't.

I say tantrum I mean shrieking "NO! YOU STUPID!" and kicking and hitting and running off and sobbing like she's being murdered and hiding under beds, in closets, etc. Like... please understand. She is a very sweet child. Frilly flannel nightgown with minnie mouse on it. Little wispy hair. Just a full-on nightmare.

And then I had to get the older to sleep. Because it has to be mommy. And she took another HOUR to go to sleep! T__T.

Like...I work full time. I do the grocery shopping. The meal-planning. Wrangling daycare and school. I do most of the cooking. I still have 2 loads of laundry to fold. By time I get the kids to bed? It's too late to vacuum so I pick stuff up by hand and put it in the garbage. I wish I had hardwood - at least I could mop at night. You look crazy, sweeping cheese off of carpet.

I come home and the List wasn't done. Put away laundry? I video'd everything - what it was, where it was. Closets and drawers are labeled. And there is still. laundry. not. put. away. OK. I'll just do it. Litterbox? Floor wasn't swept. Grab the broom and dustpan. Not enough litter put into the box. Do that, too.

Dishes? Hah! A paltry amount. A mountain awaiting wash. And the few that did get washed? Not properly clean.

Fill the diaper bag, make sure there's spare clothes. Wash out the lunch box. Brush hair. Eczema lotion. Style hair. Convince toddler to pick an outfit from the options presented. Meal-prep. School lunches- ensure they're allergy-friendly! School - events, check with teachers, return library books. Holidays! Gotta do valentines. Make sure snow pants are clean and dry. And coats. Don't forget to wash them once a week!

Change sheets. Clean couch cushion covers. Bath time! Let me clean your hair, clean your ears. Trim cats' claws. Play games to learn letters/words/taking turns. Color. Draw. Do Lego and playdoh to strengthen hand muscles.

Playdates/activities. Grocery shopping. Gas in the car. Bills. Clothes for children who seem determined to destroy or outgrow everything. Wear your bra til it falls apart because they're expensive.

Try to reach out to your friends at least once a week so you can TRY to maintain those relationships. It's usually a 5-minute phone call on your drive home because that is the only time you have to yourself.

Be constantly sick. Cry over the price of medicine. Cry over the cost of groceries. Try to find deals. This may mean driving all over town and four different stores.

And all of this dragging two kids and a husband you're taking care of but who would rather play video games for 10 hours and has memory problems. Wonder how much is the illness and how much is incompetence.

Get everything done. Sit...no energy for a book. No energy for a movie or show. No energy to knit or crochet. No energy to write.

Does...does it ever end?

[fruit-salad-ship]

In light of farm girls prompt, I have developed an entire cheesy room-com draft for you all to enjoy. It is cheese on ham on cheese. And it’s perfect.

We focus in on a quaint farm few hundred acres that makes ends meet, part of the community, provides a lot for the locals, run by a stoic salt of the earth woman (peach) with no real wants or needs other than a good cold beer and a sit down at the end of a hard days work. She and her Pokemon keep the place ticking over just fine alone.

She’s alerted to a taxi dropping someone off by the dirt road at the end of the drive by her trusty vulpix and lycanroc(midnight), the herders who help her keep the other mons in line.

She ignores it, probably someone got lost, and continues to ride around on her stocky rapidash corralling the Milktank into their grazing field. She notices a sound of struggling looking down at a woman in very smart clothes, carrying some heavy looking bags, the dirt road and her high heels not getting along at all. She’s from the local authorities to try to convince peach to sell the farm and move on. She refuses and rides away.

When she gets home, the woman is on her porch waiting, pushy, and slyly asking to stay. Peach’s old school ways won’t let her leave plum out in the cold, and so she offers a spare room for no more than 48 hours, so she can sort new accommodations out.

City slick plum spends most of thise first day trying to convince her to sell, listing endless reasons why leaving is a better choice. Peach is working hard for very little, the farm keeps her endlessly busy and she has no time for leisure from the looks of things. Her endless chores and jobs seem hectic and tiring. Plum gets to see the true mountain of this woman’s form, sweating out in the fields, lugging feed around, shifting hay, fixing leaks, wrangling mons. She is…watching (dis)respectfully.

Peach tells her if she stays she’s gotta put a little effort in, maybe if she spent a day doing some actual hard work, she could understand the joy of the farm. So Plum is handed a bucket of food and soon realises the torchic she’s been told to feed sense her fear. She struggles to do the job without being chased and pecked relentlessly. Peach sees this and just laughs, goes into the pen and tells plum off for spooking em, they simmer down when she shows up, sit on her arm and stay nice and calm. She’s bonded to them, collects the eggs, at least offers breakfast. If this city slick is going to do her first hard days work in her life, least she can feed her. It’s…nice. Plum rushed around her whole life, the city is snacking on the go and expensive venues full of so-so meals for extortionate prices, often alone.

Peach’s first thing is to find out what mons this city dweller has and get em roaming again, like Pokemon should be. Plum keeps them in their balls all the time, one dragonair, fussy, a lycanroc (day) who hates dirt and being sweaty, and a mismagius who’s too use to the high life. Peach sets them up with various other Pokemon of her own to see if they can perform any jobs, or even just have fun for the day.

That leaves plum, who has donned jeans and flat shoes for the first time, and despite never having ridden a Pokemon, has agreed to try, nervously. She tries her with three different Pokemon, none of which vibe with her. So instead she scoops her up onto her Rapidash to go about the daily tasks. This includes herding, which peach’s lycanroc teaches plum’s to do, and both enjoy it with practice. There’s a little fence repair, a job her mismagius is smart enough to understand, and strong enough to do a good job. The functional skills being used bring out a little pride in the bashful ghost type, who reveals in the praise. Finally the dragonair, who struggled with the last two jobs, but peach found just the right one, 3rd times the charm. Feeding the baby Pokemon. Plenty of mons need to be fed, and what better than that long body to hold a lot of bottles. The dragonair can wrap around several at once and feed the little ones with ease, their bubbly young energy matching hers perfectly.

Two days turns into a week, the duo sharing a lot of hours together, plums learning there’s more to life than the smoke and smog of the city, and her social networking. The pair even get to go to a barn dance and relax a little together, have some drinks, meet some locals who all enjoy peach’s hard work, she’s quiet and wants nothing from them but they all talk behind her back about the endless jobs she does for the town and it’s residents. They love her, and admittedly, plum is starting to see why. She’s just sitting there petting someone’s growlithe, chatting away, no real clue that everyone around her appreciates the hard work. All her countless hours and seemingly pointless jobs she’s seen her do day in day out start to make a lot of sense. The pair have a nice night and stagger home together, falling asleep on the sofa together. Plums phone buzzes in the night, wakes her, and she sees a text from someone she doesn’t want to hear from. Ignores it, turns the phone over, and goes back to sleep, cuddling up to the sleeping farmer beside her.

During this time, plum was able to see her team enjoying things she never expected, they adjusted so fast, and with each job, she also felt more accomplished. She enjoyed riding near some big Pokemon, and ok she scraped her arm fixing the fence but it was good to see the hard work make something real and tangible, and the little Pokemon were so cute, she could feed those sweeties all day! The duo once again mount up, plums been happily tucked up at the front of the saddle, between peach’s thighs, happily against that chest, watching the world go by with her quiet companionship. The pair take the long way home, which takes them up to the top of a mountain, where the sunset views are pretty incredible. Nothing like the city, not even a little. The pair bond a little, and plum asks to stay a little longer, she’s had a nice day, maybe there’s more to this ‘country life’ thing after all. Peach agrees, the pair ride home. The farmer was right, a cold beer at the end of a long day tasted better. The pair sit out on the porch with their Pokemon and watch a big storm roll in. It feels very right.

Plum realises developing the farm isn’t an option, but it has to make more revenue or more people will come to push peach off the land and turn it into condos or a mall. The next few days, plum is strategising, figuring out new revenue avenues. She turns the dining room table into a work desk, papers and ideas all over, her laptop out, on the phone to local businesses and people. Peach is too busy working all day but sees this eventually, asking why the mess? When she hears that plums trying to save the farm it kind of clicks that the city girls not all that fussed about her fancy outfits and things anymore. She’s been in jeans and a shirt for a week, the phones not been glued to her face, she’s slowed down to appreciate the view, a hot tea in the morning, the way rain hits leaves. She’s changed.

With great efforts, the town rallies, the biggest turnover is an old barn, it’s a little shoddy, hasn’t seen a lick of paint in a while, no leaks, but unused. The town pays back some of the favours peach has endlessly given them, and the barn is secretly done up. Plum tells peach to meet her there at the end of the day, so she rides over and hops off. Inside it looks like someone else’s property. The walls are cleaned up, beams wound with lights, a long table down the middle, small raised stage at the end, laid out fancy with flowers and silverware. Plum saw the money in weddings and figured a hand full of rentals per year would bring in enough cash to make sure no one comes along and bullies them off the land. It does look very rustic, beautiful and somehow clean? Peach is impressed, more so when plum says she’s already got the first booking. All peach has to do it grow some flowers and get a cart and ride Pokemon to pull it together. The farm itself is safe.

It is that night, the pair have gotten back to the house, relaxing with music that they hear a car pull up down the end of the drive. A smart suited man gets out, peach doesn’t know him, but he puts her on edge, she goes out with three Pokemon on the offence to find out who it is. He asks if she’s seen a woman called plum, to which she’s taken back. Did she say yes? She doesn’t have to say anything, plum walked past, a weak smile on her face, the man not moving to meet her, she had to go to him.

She introduces him as her…boyfriend. A hesitant sentence, looking back at him anxiously. He immediately asks what she’s wearing and why she’s not called him. Peach hears him slate the farm, which fair enough it’s not for everyone, but he shrugs and calls over to peach, saying he’d be joining his girlfriend where she’s staying, which is clearly here. As if there’s no choice.

This man is rude, and peach tolerates him only for plum, who’s gone uncharacteristically quiet since his arrival. He’s been brash and harsh, angry that she didn’t apologise before she left the city, angry that she didn’t organise a shopping delivery for him either, went as far as to ask why she’d let her hair go back to its natural, curled state. Peach all but forgot she arrived with perfectly long straight hair. Got so use to it the way it just was without the fuss.

That night it was impossible to not hear the arguments the pair had in their room, over who said what, why plum didn’t come back sooner, why she didn’t manage to get the farmer to sell. Peach lay there, trying not to listen, going as far as to put a pillow over her head, but it was futile. She got up and went downstairs, sitting out on the porch to try and get some peace, lycanroc and Val in her lap, enjoying a good scratch. A door slammed inside somewhere, and before long she had company, plum furiously pacing out into the yard, unaware that peach was right there, as she kicked a rock, picked another up, threw it as far as possible, her anger boiling over. Upon turning around she locked eyes with peach and realised she’d been observed. It became obvious that plum wanted the boyfriend gone but didn’t know how to say it, he never took ‘no’ for an answer. Use to be nice but since she came to the country, things changed, and she didn’t…want to go back.

The defining moment when they both joked about kicking him off the farm brought them closer, the truth started to unravel. Plum had perhaps grown attached to the farm, to peach, to the life here. The pair share their first kiss, sitting in the cool night air listening to kricketot chirp, and it becomes very clear that maybe this was fate that brought them together. Plum does not go back to her room, she goes back to peach’s, locks the door, and refuses to handle this mess until the suns up.

By morning the boyfriend sees them emerge from the same room, questioning the events last night, his temper flares, he starts getting irate when plum brings up ending their relationship. The first thing he does is insult peach, lashes out in anger as she sits at her table sipping a hot coffee peacefully. A little man with a loud voice, peach didn’t care, he called her a hick, a bumpkin, a slut, a redneck, degen, everything you could think. She didn’t care. So long as he left, nothing else really mattered, just continued to sip her drink. And then he made a fatal error, he turned on plum, spewing hurtful words and seething remarks. After three warnings from the farmer, to stop being a coward and direct his anger at her instead of the smaller woman, he did not listen, and on the 4th scathing insult, he felt a fist collide with his jaw so solidly it took him off his feet. Peach, more irked at the fact that she spilt her coffee, than bust open her hand with the sheer impact, dragged him out onto the porch and dumped him in the dirt. Threatened to break more than his ‘pretty little jaw’ next time she swung for him. Plums Pokemon threw his bags out onto the floor with him, and watched as the man scampered away, shaking his fist in anger, calling a cab to get out of there fast.

And so the girls stayed on the farm, with all the Pokemon happy and together. plum adjusted really well, peach even went back with her to get her things from the city,making sure her useless ex didn’t give her any trouble. They ran a successful wedding rental business, and every day found new things to love about each other. The city slick and the country bumpkin, a perfect pair.

[enigmatist17]

Part 1

-----

There's a message waiting for Angel on his answering machine when he gets home.

It's not uncommon, Angel grateful an exasperated Cordelia had helped set up said machine and spent a good three hours teaching him how to use it. While he still wasn't a fan of modern technology, it was quite nice to be able to not have to fret over every missed call, a potential client, or lost soul going unheard for a myriad of reasons.

With a click Angel starts the recording, hanging his coat up and going for the fridge.

Hey Capt. Forehead, miss me?

Spike, of course, it was Spike.

So, little ol' me goes to D.C right, huntin' down some arseholes and all, when I come across someone who's a lot of fun.

Angel paused, eyebrow raising as he lifted his mug of blood to his lips.

I ran into you! First I figured you followed to make sure I wasn't "harming innocents" when we all just know you like having complete control. Well "you" had a gun, and whoever this guy is he really knows his way around 'em, and was fighting like a human. So, I figured you were just being weird, until I realized he's got a heart, a real beatin' heart underneath that ridiculous bravado you usually charge with. I mean I've seen similar-looking descendants before, but this bloke is almost exactly like you, minus our lovely affliction. Call me when you decide to get your arse home, I can't wait to research this guy.

Angel whips out his phone before the beep on the machine, not really caring it's late for Spike.

"Really mate, you couldn't wait?" A clearly sleepy Spike groaned when he finally picked up after the second round of calls.

"When you leave a message like that? No, the hell did you think I was going to do?" Angel rolled his eyes. "How's the East Coast?"

"They have some great bars here, and the theatre scene is a nice change of pace. Not as many naughty stores though, real shame."

"Right, absolute shame." Spike snorted as he sat up, yawning when he saw it was about 11 in the morning.

"I won't torment you, I can hear that wheel spinnin' in your head, plus I want to sleep. This bloke called himself Special Agent Goody Two-Shoes Seeley Booth, of the FBI."

"Uh-huh." Angel couldn't help but grumble into his blood, able to visualize the smirk on Spike's face. "And?"

"If he didn't have a beatin' heart, I could see you being one of these agent types as a human, easily. Fightin' for the innocent." Spike crooned into the receiver, cackling when he heard Angel choke on his meal. "He also gets into trouble just like you do."

"What does that mean?" Angel took a seat on his bed.

"Already has a hit squad after him, well, him and some lady I 'aven't seen yet." Spike shifted up and out of his bed with a yawn, digging around in his mini-fridge for a late-night snack.

"Do you need help?" Angel tapped the side of his mug, and for a moment both vampires don't say anything.

"Bring Cordy with ya, she's always fun." The younger drawled, slipping back into bed with his snack. "How is she by the way?"

"Better, it's...she's good."

"Tell you what, after everything gets cleared up, we take her out on the town. No bullshit is goin' to mess with the two of us watching over her." Angel could laugh at the gentle tone Spike spoke with, but if he was honest, it was nice after the intense whirlwind that had been the last few months with Cordelia and Jasmine.

"She's going to want to shop you know."

"Of course! Well, I'm going to sleep, so sod off and let me know when you land." Spike yawned, squinting at his alarm clock by his bed. "Oh, and bring my journal will ya?"

"I can wrangle that." Spike responded by hanging up, asleep almost the moment he laid back in bed, and Angel stood by his fridge, looking down at his phone. It's been a while since he's traveled to the other side of the states, and a small break wasn't such a bad idea as he typed in Cordelia's number.

---

Agent Booth can't help but fiddle with his fingers as the sun slowly sets outside of his office, leg bouncing underneath his desk. The day had passed by as if in a dream, and not even the squints and Brennan could distract him from what had happened last night. Vampires, demons, all these nasty things that he and the others had been blindly investigating were real, and it was a lot to swallow. His eyes flick over to the small duffle bag he'd bought that morning, filled with holy water and crosses because...because...well, he wasn't sure.

Sure caused a riot at the scanner.

He finally gets up to head out for the day, bag in hand as he heads to his car, masking his nervousness with smiles at various coworkers. He had to take a breath or two to calm himself once he was in the car, but soon set his mind to finding the place Spike was staying, which was closer to his office than he was comfortable with. The hotel was just like any other Booth supposed, and after parking he tracked down the room number Spike had given him the night before, knocking after pausing for a moment.

The door was opened by someone who wasn't Spike, a man who was a touch taller than Booth looking surprised.

"Uh, sorry, I have the wrong room." Seeley winced, and the man blinked before clearing his throat.

"Ah, you must be Agent Booth right?" The Brit made Seeley pause, and the two awkwardly held gazes before the man looked over his shoulder. "Ah, he's here."

"Let him in then!" A second voice chirped, and a woman popped up behind the first man with a grin. "Hi, I'm Cordelia, and the dork in front of me is Wesley and wow you look exactly like Angel!"

"I am not a dork!" Wesley squawked, adjusting his tie. "Wesley Wyndam-Price, a pleasure to meet you."

"Nice to meet you." Booth gave an awkward wave as Wesley stood back to allow the other man inside.

"Here we go." Spike chuckled from a corner of the room, and when Booth turned to look at the vampire, he instead stared at...himself.

There were no words for how weird this was.

It was almost like he was looking in a mirror, save for the large leather jacket that Booth could never pull off...or uh, maybe? The same brown eyes he saw in the mirror every morning were watching the agent's every move, as if Booth could lash out and harm the occupants who were watching the two in varying stages of amusement to awe.

"I have to ask about the belt buckle." Angel finally says something, and four sets of eyes zoom in on Booth's waist, making the man squirm.

"It's a good buckle." Booth defended, crossing his arms. "At least I don't look like I walked out of Hot Topic."

"What's a Hot Topic?" Angel tilted his head slightly, Cordelia and Wesley biting back laughter. "And I'll have you know this is a very nice coat."

"Uh huh, if someone was going through an emo phase," Booth smirked, Angel rolling his eyes as Spike cackled. "You too blondie."

"This coat is not a phase!" Spike immediately protested, before pointing a finger at the two other humans in the room. "I can hear you laughin' over there."

Cordelia just snorts, and Wesley hides a laugh with a cough. "Ah, we were...are not." Booth couldn't help but let out a chuckle of his own, feeling a lot less tense.

"So...this is fun." Cordelia clapped her hands together. "Heard you have a hit squad out for blood, and we're all experts at fighting demons, at least it's a change of scenery!"

"You all new here?" Booth asked, Angel gathering up some chairs before taking a seat on the couch next to Spike.

"I've flown through Washington, but that's the extent." Wesley waved, adjusting his glasses.

"Nope, been to Sunnydale and L.A, this is a West Coast gal." Cordelia hummed, having curled up in her chair with a grin. "Always wanted to come though!."

"I was here in the 1910's, New York was a lot more fun." Spike drawled, flinging his legs over Angel's lap to the displeasure of the older vampire, yet Angel made no moves to shove them off.

"Angel, gonna share with the class?" Cordelia asked, and Booth didn't miss the flicker of adoration between the two.

"I uh, I don't really remember much." Angel shrugged, shoulders hunched. "I think I was in Baltimore?"

Booth has a feeling this Angel was being vague for a reason, but everyone had their demons, so who was he to judge.

"So, storytime is nice and all, but I think we need to get to the business at hand?" Booth cleared his throat, and watched as Wesley stood to grab a book from the weathered coffee table.

"Cordelia here was a darling and got us access to your files at this Jeffersonian place, and I believe I've pinpointed the exact demon who ate the people you've been investigating!" Wesley rifled through a few pages while Booth just stared, one hand on his hip and the other running through his hair.

"I'm sorry you hacked into the Jeffersonian? Federal property? For access to a case I literally brought with me?" Booth's voice is high-pitched at the thought, and Cordelia sinks in her seat when he focuses on her with a stunned look.

"This is better than my soaps." Spike snickered from his corner, Angel putting a hand over his face. "Impatient the lot of you."

"Uh, am I going to get in trouble, because I totally was doing what I was asked to by my boss." Booth just stared before muttering something under his breath, setting the bag he'd brought down and rooted around to produce a folder.

"Do that again, I will arrest you." He pointed at Cordelia with the folder before handing it over. "I just, I don't know what's going on here, but at the minimum don't do anything with federal property. Hell, museums are off-limits until I say so!"

"You can't do that, I wished to see what you have in your Natural History museum!" Wesley balked, though took a step back when Booth rounded on him with a glare.

"Hey it's the Mr. Grumpy look." Cordelia grinned, and both Booth and Angel round on her with the same annoyed look. "Twice the stare, great!"

"Help me deal with...this weird shit, and I might let you in." Booth continued with Wesley, who looked hopeful at the prospect. "Love that I have more squints to deal with, fantastic."

"Squints?" Angel voiced, Booth making a weirded-out look at hearing his voice.

"Squints, you know, the research people." Booth waved one hand, struggling to come up with the right words. "I'd say the lab people, but you all are in the field as well, so maybe not squints..."

"Huh...I like it." Angel made a hum, and Wesley slowly looked over with narrowed eyes.

"Don't you dare call me that."

"Too late squint."

"I'm going to stake you."

"Good luck."

"How about dear Wes and I go take a nap, it was a long flight." Cordelia stepped in, getting to her feet with a stretch.

"Do you need anything?" Angel asked, shoving Spike's legs off him and standing as Wesley grabbed his books and the case.

"No I'm good, you two just play nice okay?" She smiled, the dark-haired vampire returning it with his own soft smile before the two headed out for other rooms, the younger woman threatening Wesley about sleeping as the door closed behind them.

"You've got it bad." Spike snorted as he readjusted on the couch, Angel shaking his head before facing Booth with a wary look.

"Blondie there is right." Booth merely chuckled, regarding Angel once more with a shake of his head. "So...now what?"

"You give us your address, and that of uh, 'ang on." Spike dug around in his coat pockets before producing a small slip of paper. "Some Dr. Brennan so we can keep you safe from a bounty."

"A WHAT?!"

Huh, so that's what Angel's screaming sounds like.

[walkinginland]

first line tag game

Rules: Post the first lines of your last 10 fics posted to ao3. if you have less than 10 fics posted, post the first lines of all your fics 

Tagged by: @three-drink-amy, @flyinghome-againstthewind, @lord-jen-grey thank you friends!!!!!

Tagging: I have totally lost track of who has done this so apologies if this is a repeat for you :) @paperstorm, @wafflesetc, @homerforsure, @pulveremcomedesligulas and anyone else who wants to join in, consider yourself tagged :)

1. let the ransomed be free - the song of achilles

Time passes differently under the earth. It is marked by different measures, decided by different powers. Gods and suns wheeling in the sky above are not permitted here below. Kings who counted their days by dreams of their own glory, now cut short here alone, with no one to mark the loss of their pride.

2. return my fists to fingers - the last binding

Robin jerked awake, gasping for air to fill his tightened lungs – too fast, slow down you fool – as if there were far more weighing down on his chest than thin, familiar sheets.

3. Sunlight - the song of achilles

It was a rare morning that he woke before Achilles.

4. into the empty parts of me - outlander

In the house on Chestnut Street, in the dim pre-dawn hours, John Grey – still half asleep – rolled over to find someone on the other side of his bed.

5. remember me, love - outlander

That day.

That day

               they had drawn breath

                               together

               one last time before

                                               stone came to separate

               that together into

                               apart.

6. I Would Not Ask - outlander

He was dead. Or at least he should have been.

He was standing, somehow, had dirt in his eyes and blood covering more of him than not. But he was standing.

7. All the Colors in the Rainbow - outlander

Claire was standing at her dresser on a Saturday morning, putting the finishing touches on her makeup and making a last-ditch effort to wrangle her curls.

8. Find a Little Remedy - outlander

Jamie Fraser sat under a tree on a cliffside, a stone’s throw from the cave where he spent most of his days. It was near sunset, and he was thinking. Of all things he could be thinking of, he found himself to be slightly baffled that the topic on his mind this evening was singing.

9. To Heart and Home - outlander

It didn’t work. It didn’t work it didn’t work it didn’t work.

Oh thank God.

10. it just takes some time - outlander

She is five years old when she learns that life is not guaranteed. Stability is not a promised existence, and parents don't always come home. She is five years old when a car flips upside down and upturns her life.

+ one WIP because why not

Claire didn’t mean to fall in love with anyone.

cheers, friends 🥰🥰🥰

[collectorcrowcalamity]

Gray, Green, and the Inbetween pt. 2

The Railroad Man x Non-binary Witch Reader

Pt. 1

Garbage summary: Witch lives alongside the railroad, they’re a community organizer, healer, teacher etc. After unsuccessfully trying to wrangle some control over the reader’s village, TRM gets a lot a little obsessed with controlling the town and the reader. The reader likes a challenge and is more curious about TRM than is safe and sane [Basically, where’s the TRM x Reader love? I mean he squicks me out in an attractive way? he’s an embodiment of capitalism and brutally uses people for his own gain… but hear me out]

TW: Mentions of bodily harm caused by working at the railroad. There will likely be more as I come up with ideas for this story.

∾∾∾∾∾

You could feel his smile on your skin, somehow, it was hard to explain. It has always felt dirty and sickly to have been caught looking, but even more so by him. You knew he wouldn’t get close, you’d warded the place so well that even well-meaning visitors wandered around lost for a bit before finding who they were visiting and anyone who wasn’t meant to be here never seemed to notice any of it. This helped prevent people from banks coming to evict community members because the bank decided they owned this little village jammed like a doorstop into the edge of the woods.

Still, there was a feeling of unease, and the next three hours were spent reinforcing the wards. He may not have succeeded in destroying the town to make way for newer capital last time, but his presence on the hill every week now, it used to only be once a month when he could pretend he was hidden by a moonless night, made you nervous. 

You didn’t get much sleep after that.

The morning brought a light that activated a small, but treatable, headache behind your eyes and a harsh knock at the door. It was a rhythm rushed and broken, so you knew who it was before you even opened the door. 

A dark-haired boy stood on the porch, stood was a kind way to phrase it, more like pacing in place to get his energy contained. Isaiah Maddox was twelve, big for his age, and strong as an ox, but he was twitchy and needed to be outdoors. He loved running errands for you in exchange for whatever you had decided to bake that day.

“Finished with your chores already?” you feigned disbelief. Isaiah had two sets of chores, one in the morning, and a longer one after dinner meant to boil off any of that excess energy in him before supper. 

Isaiah grinned “Not unless you got any more for me!”

You thought hard about it, you didn’t really want him to go into the woods and outside your wards if you could help it, not with whatever strange meeting the Man had, you didn’t see him as the helping-people-out-of-the-goodness-of-his-heart type and whoever he helped was likely the same. The best bet was to pick things he liked to do in town, that would help him stay busy and safe, but not be too suspicious about it or he’d know the man who led his father out of his life was slinking around the town again. You didn’t know how, but that boy knew more than was good for him, and he had too much energy to keep any of it to himself

“Well, I was thinking about fixing that fence there and then heading over to my mama’s place”, you said with a smile knowing she’d be able to come up with plenty of things to keep Isaiah out of trouble and help you figure out what to do. 

It seemed to do the trick, the boy’s face somehow lit up even more. 

∾∾∾∾∾

The Man had given them business cards and you barely saw them, grey and shining, as they were tucked away into shirt pockets, hat bands, shoes, really any place they could be easily and reliably stored. Isaiah was holding one despite being far too young for the type of labor the railroad required and staring at it with a puzzled expression, he mumbled something that you couldn’t quite hear.

“What was that, Isaiah?”

“Shit business card doesn't even have a way to reach him” he grumbled.

Usually, you’d pretend to uphold his mama’s wishes for Isaiah not to swear, give him a little look he’d pretend to get sheepish at, but you figured now was the best time for a little swearing, and no one else seemed to have heard him. But he was right, it was a plain card with an “R” and railroad tracks, no name, and no company. 

“Isaiah, give me the card.” You tried your best to sound firm but calm, rather than the creeping fear you felt at losing this small boy to… who knows what. He must have figured you out because he handed it to you silently and shoved his hands in his pockets kicking at the dirt to pretend he wasn’t interested. 

The card made your fingertips tingle, it wasn’t painful like pins and needles when your foot fell asleep, but it felt dangerous, like the buzzing of wasp wings. With your heart racing, you turned back to your home.

Nearly the entire day was dedicated to you collecting and destroying the business cards, you found you could only hold a few at a time before the tingling turned into a burning, and it was a pain to cleanse the cards and burn them out back. You weren’t about to burn them and release that energy into your home. Many men refused to listen to your pleas that only bad things could come from this Man, that the railroad took life and limb indiscriminately, and that they best think about their families and the community that relied on them. Besides, the rails on the hill have been done for a year and a half now, what more could they need? Neither sympathy, logic, nor approaches to their egos worked on them, they wanted the glory and wealth the Man in the gray suit had offered them. You didn’t blame them, you knew they wanted the best for their loved ones. Money wasn't much here, most people went out into fields owned by other men to tend crops they didn’t own, and others traveled together weekly to larger towns to sell wears they had made and buy whatever the town couldn’t grow in the community garden. You did your best to make sure everyone got to eat regardless of their individual successes, and you never asked for payment when you set bones, delivered medicine, or delivered children, but the truth was, everyone was struggling. 

And so the next dawn, the men who held their business cards with iron grips walked out of town and they never came back.

∾∾∾∾∾

You snapped back into focus as you approached the small cottage, Isaiah had been talking, and you’d been responding with as much attention as you could, but your nerves had really taken over as the day progressed. Your mama, who wasn’t exactly your mama but might as well have been, had the table laid out with food much to the joy of Isaiah. 

“Hello, ma’am” Isaiah shouted a bit too loud for the house.

“Isaiah, you better be heading out to wash up before you even think about touching that food” a voice yelled from the kitchen. Isaiah froze one hand hovering over a roll before slinking off to scrub off his hourly dirt collection. 

A hand grabbed your shoulder, and your mama gestured for you to join her in the kitchen.

“I take it he’s been showing up again?”

You nodded grimly and felt your stomach flip a little. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but you hadn’t told her every single instance you’d seen the Man poking around. You pretended it was because you didn’t want her to worry or get angry and try and drive him off with one of the wooden spoons from her collection and put herself in more danger, but it also felt strangely intimate for him to be checking on the town. You didn’t like thinking about how your heart races a bit when you look out the window before going to sleep, and that he was on the outskirts long after the rails on the hills were established.

[limerent-object]

In The Fray, Pt 1

If Priya hadn't spent every day for the past quarter preparing for the Fray Theater's winter charity gala with Salem, she probably would have been more nervous about this cliffhouse weekend she had somehow convinced him to play along with. Priya's live-in partner, Paul mocked her relentlessly for packing and re-packing the same, slightly different four outfits all throughout the week. "Priya, the man has seen you naked during the uniform fittings. There are no surprises here!" Paul said as he took a bite out of a sloppily made ham sandwich, standing in the living room watching her fiddle with her duffel bag the day prior to her departure. Priya stared distantly at the crumbs from the rye bread tumbling from Paul's hand to the living room floor and grumped, though she knew he was right.

Salem and she had basically spent more time together over the past three months than your average group of theater kids at the local community college before the big year-end musical. They were on calls in the morning, and shuffling around downtown Philadelphia trying to get paperwork cleared by afternoon. These past three weeks especially had been hellish. She felt like she was planning a wedding, she was both the bride and the maid of honor simultaneously, and she wasn't even getting married or allowed to eat lobster at the reception!

Well, that last part wasn't entirely true. But still, even though Salem was pulling his weight (probably more, honestly) she felt overwhelmed. Her typical submissive exercises with Paul were barely keeping her on an even keel, despite the usual cold-bath routine's effectiveness at bringing her back to planet Earth. She was careful to keep this dynamic and her current stress levels from bleeding into her work, but despite her meticulous efforts to keep her exposed skin unblemished and unbruised, she didn't expect a few drinks to kick her scrupulous routine in the knees.

As far as Priya was aware, Salem was too slavishly busy managing city permits and AV agencies to have time for romance, let alone be concerned about her own orbit. She liked the way his dark hair crowded his jawline, and his hard brow... she was sure he wasn't lacking opportunity, after all. Yet, one night after a particularly rough day of wrangling contractors to repair the ceiling of the theater's foyer, Priya's assumptions were corrected over three and a half whiskey sours at the Ranstead Room.

"Women? Priya, women do not see me. They assume with a name like 'Salem' and casual use of the term 'polyamory' that I am some exiled escapee of the Muslim community, or something." Priya felt a small zap at the word, like the release of a static shock. Salem recognized the lack of guard on her face. She barely remembers exactly why or when, but somehow it all came out. The stress. The protocol. The constant attempt to tame the weird carnal energy on the job. The wearing of harnesses under her business suits and the shock collars cinched to thighs under her woolen skirts. Her eyes searching his face for... recognition? Familiarity?

Salem laughed casually at first. They had entered that state of inebriation where someone could admit to murder and their audience would hardly careen from the news. But as the alcohol's effects dwindled in the smaller hours of the morning, the laughs became more hesitant, the locking of eyes a little more sustained.

Many days passed after they parted ways that night where even the subject of personal life did not cross their usual conversational bound. Priya began to become anxious about her professionalism, fiddling with her glasses while they reviewed schematics over lunch. Had she made things awkward? Maybe Salem wasn't that kind of open. Did he think her a freak? Was there a way to rectify the image?

A week later, while standing in the box office many hours before the theater opened to do routine PA tests, Salem entered the booth. Priya looked up from her clipboard but before she could break the silence, he cautiously lifted his hand to her throat and pulled down the lip of her turtleneck, exposing her clavicle... and a discreet prong collar. Her eyes locked with his in a panic, and he released the fabric with such nonchalance she wasn't even sure she had been exposed at all. The corners of his mouth, however, betrayed his amusement as he handed her a cup of coffee in a paper cup and exited the booth.

When she found the little cliffhouse up the coast posted on a vacation rental website, she did not resist the impulse. She booked it for the weekend after the gala was set to take place. She told herself it was to guarantee she would actually take a vacation after this frenzy. She told Paul it was to truly unplug. But she knew... she wanted to be confined to four walls with Salem, where no one could watch them from the light booth.

[chronal-anomaly]

@avalior asked:

Embrace + reverse - might I humbly request Lena seeing Markus again post Recall to kick his bum into coming back? 👀|| Indulgences ( accepting! )

Lena was tired.

Her last meal and a shower was twenty-one hours ago, her last time in bed was longer, probably, she didn't remember. Launching the Recall had consumed her waking hours and some of her sleeping ones too, plans on bringing back whatever pieces of the team together, and blueprints on how to avoid the watchful eye of the United Nations, at least for now, had swallowed the hours away.

The past three days had been spent with Winston, wrangling bits and pieces of the old team back together. Lena had managed to get a message off to Cole - still waiting on a response - and Reinhardt had responded with his usual, intense enthusiasm. Travel had consumed her other waking hours, forced onto a commercial plane that made it impossible to sleep - they really just hired anyone to fly these days. But getting the Orcas back online was an endeavor she was putting off for another few weeks, so Swiss airlines would have to suffice for now.

So excuse her appearance as she sat against one of the benches in the refugee camp, watching a small crowd of children play idly in the dirt. Lena heard the whispers, the word "hero" like a stained phrase, tossed so casually among strangers that still she would defend with her life. One of the children eyed her, old enough to know the cartoons and the catchphrases, and the passion burned into his eyes stirred something in her. They needed Heroes.

And Lena played the part, sitting up straight and giving them the strong, two fingered salute. The comments eventually devolved into regaling the children with stories of omnic defeat, of the good guys winning and Null Sector being crushed into the dust. A twisted tale lay plain, one to rival the Grimms Brothers themselves, if only to make the kids feel better for a fleeting second. There was still hope, somewhere in the dredges of strung-out and exhausted heroes. Otherwise, why would she be there, recruiting one of the few lifesavers that still lived.

But for everyone else, time moved on. Someone called for chow, and the lines of children that had seen so much slowly filed in for their nightly rations. The camp grew quieter, people finding ways to busy themselves, while Lena remained on that bench, reserved, exhausted, ticking off the seconds that always seemed a little too fast in her head.

Finally, after the hourglass in her head flipped again, the tent slid open, revealing the ramshackle, exhausted prize she had travelled around the world for. Suddenly, the exhaustion melted from her figure, and the caged bird in her ribcage beat once again against her chest.

Energy restored and boots crunching against the dirt, Lena dashed, pushing herself into Markus' chest and knocking him back a step or two with the fury of her force. All other comments from the surrounding parties went unheeded as she pulled back, considered him, and hugged him tight once again.

The look of unfiltered emotional lit up the already drawn eyes and mused hair was enough to spark a sense of familiarity, of connection that only life at war would provide. There was another pause, Lena looking Markus up and down for any new, terrible injuries, before stumbling back onto her heels.

"Heya, love. Good to see you. You look good - well, as good as anyone working in a dusty refugee camp would." Her tone was light, words kind, for she knew the immensity of the coming request would impact their friendship for a long time to come. "Do you have a minute to talk? I brought Snackajacks."

[nocompromise-noregrets]

five good things

I'm off work for three whole weeks now (I save my leave up so that I can take a good long time off at this time of year because I know I'm going to need it), and then for my first two weeks back I'll be working at home because I have a database-wrangling task to do and I can concentrate so much more easily at home.

I have a study at long last! We finished it last weekend, and I've spent a good bit of time in it and somehow I feel a lot more motivated to do stuff when sitting at a desk (except this afternoon but never mind, we can't have everything). Photos when I've sorted out everything that's going on the walls - probably at the end of next week, as I won't have the chance before because...

...tomorrow I am heading off to Heathrow and early on Wednesday morning I have a flight to Hamburg to spend a week with my lovely friends who live deep in the Schleswig-Holstein countryside. HOORAY! It's really crept up on me, but I've just packed my case and everything fits (so far) and it only weighs about 15kg out of my baggage allowance of 23kg. A minor miracle. Keeping my fingers crossed that the baggage handlers' strike today and tomorrow doesn't have too much of a knock-on effect on my bag going with me on Wednesday, and that the Border Force strike doesn't have too much of an effect on me clearing passport control when I come back next Thursday as I forgot I was coming into terminal 5 rather than terminal 3 and only have an hour between my flight arriving and my coach leaving, OOPS.

I have rediscovered the scarves I was knitting for our local homelessness charity while I was off work sick seven years ago (sigh), and found that I still had yarn for three more scarves, so I'm in the middle of making them. It's a super simple pattern, extra chunky wool and big needles so they're knitting up nice and quickly and it's extremely therapeutic. I dropped the first batch (two carrier bags full) into the charity's community cafe/warm space in town last week, and they wouldn't let me go without taking cake with me, as 'nobody leaves here empty handed' in the founder's words. They do fantastic work all year round and quite honestly the guy who founded it deserves a knighthood. I'll be going back in the new year with more scarves. :D

I've finished all my festive fic challenges, plus another prompt-fic, and am hoping for plenty of inspiration while travelling/waiting for my flights/etc. I suspect there will be at least one lazy, quiet afternoon while staying with my friends, so am hoping to get some knitting and writing done.

Not to mention studying, as I've got a bit to catch up on and an assignment to start thinking about. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed as I'm really struggling to remember the terminology, but I had a tutorial on Saturday and the tutor explained a few things in a way that finally made them make sense - and she also said that there have been a few people feeling overwhelmed in the forums, but that it's pretty usual for this part of the course as we've had so much new information piled on us in a short time (I'm already 50% through the course, more or less O.O ) - so I went and checked out the forum threads and found lots of encouragement from the student buddies, who have studied the course before, and the teaching staff - one of the prior students said she never did memorise all the terminology and was using crib sheets right up to the final assignment. Which is reassuring - and at least I can do that with this course, since none of the assessment is in real time.

I have the Job Number Two Christmas party this evening - which is a treat for the staff of both estates, laid on by the family we work for/the estates (my other job is local authority so we don't get a paid-for do - but this one is always rather nice), and is taking place in the main location which is a real honest-to-god castle that has appeared in many film and TV productions :D :D :D Drinks in the Long Drawing Room at 7, and dinner in the Great Hall at 7.30. I feel properly fancy every time XD The missus is giving me a lift there and back too, so I can have a couple of glasses of wine, which tends to take the edge off having to talk shop all evening (I usually end up sitting with one of my volunteers, or with one member of the family or another, and I don't know anyone well enough to talk about anything else XD it's usually entertaining sitting with any of the family though).

ANYWAY. Festive greetings to all of you, a very happy Hanukkah to those of you who are celebrating, and Solstice blessings and a Merry Christmas and all good wishes to everyone else. :D

[hayashidayuki]

Cult of the Wombflayer Pt.2: Homecoming (Tentacle Preg)

The first tails of summer were beginning to rear their head. The lush greens of Caledonia were ever so slightly tinted gold, tiny pink butterflies fluttering their wings; Niall wiped the sweat off his forehead, setting the axe by his side. 

A pile of splintered firewood lay before him, the satisfactory product of a few hours of arduous work, and most likely more than enough to store for when the leaves became auburn and wilted. Cracking his shoulders, the wolfman gazed up into the cloudless sky, the gentle blue slowly giving way to a kind, warm orange. He huffed, smiling softly, hoisting a bundle of kindling on his arms.

Tiny houses of stone and wood surrounded him. Trails of beige dirt snaked their way through the greenery, disappearing into the horizon, delineating bountiful gardens and modest businesses, mirthful villeins stumbling out of the local tavern in uneven droves. A few puddles of dark water yet remained from yesterday’s rainstorm, and a wrinkled up old dog squeezed those last minutes of sunlight, perched on the windowsill like a slumbering statue. 

A year had passed since the incident of the entombed city; since a couple purloiners venturing into the remains of a sunken labyrinth had gone awry, a maelstrom of eldritch energy and monsters from beyond the void had put a quick end to their travelling days, at least for now. A year had passed since a nest of abyssal creatures, of slobbering tentacle and curious eyestalk, had made the womb of his beloved their home; as the little witch had somehow managed to wrangle the unknowable beasts into being cutesy pets and servants for her.

His bumped up, tattered armour found a comfortable resting place in the corner of their room; his broadsword and black fur cape replaced with the toolset of a househusband and a bright smile on his muzzle.

Pushing the heavy wooden door with his shoulder, he walked into Morrigan’s cozy home. “I’m done with the wood, dear!”

Standing in the middle of the cottage’s living room, shelves and cupboards lined with all manner of queer artefacts that she liked to collect, the petite sorcerer turned her head, giggling. “Yay!” She chirped, waddling clumsily over to her big teddy bear of a boyfriend, handing her wooden ladle to one of the tentacled creatures that hung out near her. Her raven black hair was tied back in a messy bun, a little lilac kerchief decorating her head.

Over the time they had spent together since their incursion into the depths, Morrigan had grown from a runty explorer to a homely housewife, adopting more and more of her mother’s costuming and behaviour. A white blouse did what it could to hug her enormous chest, bouncing and swaying from side to side with the slightest of movements; a couple of undone buttons for the sake of comfort revealed a long slit of cleavage. From below her bosom, a long plaid skirt fit snugly around her widened hips, the colossal swell of her pregnant stomach pushing it thinly front and sides, giving a reason as to the seams and stitches on the sides of the skirt.

Niall’s eyes travelled up and down his bethroted’s maternal body, particularly getting stuck on her massive gravid stomach, firm and tightly packed like a rock. The tiniest of blushes appeared on his cheeks, quickly averting his gaze.

Whereas once, her adorable tummy could once have been inhabited by drooling Shoggoths, a different kind of beast now stewed within her, kicking her sides to display its demand of whatever was sizzling in the oiled up pan before her.

Triplets. Three little children, conceived by the two of them, currently eight and a half months along. He couldn’t help but crack a nervous smile.

“Mmm-...?” He hummed, gently placing his hands on her shaking hips. “What’s that I’m smelling, dear? What’s for dinner?”

Morrigan’s eyes glittered, a hint of pride in her words as she happily rubbed her stomach. “I’m making stew! You know, how you like it!” She didn’t notice in her excitement, but her enormous gut was repeatedly bumping against Niall’s waist.

“C-Careful, careful…” He muttered, ever so worried, placing his hands on her pregnant belly, patting it gently. “That’s great, Morrigan! I can’t wait to try it.” 

“Ehe~ You went for it straight away, eh?” She smirked, looking down at her partner’s large, furry hands as they caressed her nubile growth. As oblivious as she was to anything romance or sex related, she could still somewhat tell Niall had… Something about girls with big, swollen stomachs. “They are very happy to see you too, love.” She whispered, grabbing his hands and softly drawing circles with them on the sides of her tummy.

“U-Uh, sorry, I just…” 

“Morrigan!” A third voice, a tad deeper and huskier than the other two, chimed in; a stout woman, with a thick mane of black curly hair, hastily checked the crackling fire under the pot, one hand carrying a large wicker basket chock full of dirty laundry. “I told you to be more careful with the stew!”

It was Mavis, Morrigan’s bearish mother, with a pouting expression on her face. She was a spitting image of the witch, bearing her same inklike curls, the same rosy cheeks, and the same curvaceous and buttery body. For a mother of two, she was incredibly young looking; her own bovine bosom as firm and round as her youngest daughter’s, if even slightly larger. She lifted a finger at the girl, pursing out her lips. “You know your sister doesn’t like her veal too tender…”

“O-Oh!” Morrigan stammered clumsily, turning towards her with a hand on her belly, as if trying to entice her grandmotherly kindness. “S-Sorry, mommy…”

“Sister?” Niall replied, a bit of confusion in his brow, before gazing back at an even more embarrassed Morrigan.

“Didn’t she tell you? Her sister Caitlinn is coming to visit. She’s a sorcerer in the big city.”

The big city; also known to civilised people as Dawnspire, the capital city of the region, and the residence of the king. A humongous, bustling burg, a boiling pot of cultures and knowledge always brimming with life and movement. Titanic ivory statues and towers erected into the sky; hecatoncheir monuments engraved with all sorts of images of stained glass, millenia-old universities of science and arcanism, noble houses siring the mightiest of knights and clerics.

Niall was a bit taken aback; his interest piqued. During his years as a paladin in training, he’d been told wonders about this glorious city of white and gold.

“Oh, no, she hadn’t told me.” He mumbled.

“Aye dear, this girl’s gonna forget her head one day.” She replied, chuckling, adjusting her hairdo. “Morrigan, could you please pay a bit more mind to the fire? I need to finish preparing your sister’s room…”

Her words were interrupted by the sound of carriage wheels outside. 

“Or maybe not.”

While the enceinte witch waddled up to stir the soup and temper the flames, Niall glared through the window, watching the shape of the coach delineate against the dark of the summer night. It was massive, like a gilded, headless beast harboured by titian oil lamps; the horses in front were shambling skeletons, pieces of polished bone floating together as if held by black magic, and even the driver was the remains of a man, a thick cigar caught between its teeth.

As Mavis stumbled outside, bouncing excitedly in the same way her daughter sometimes did, two more cadavers popped from behind the vehicle; one of them wore a silly fake moustache and carried an embroidered handkerchief, and one, with a bull’s skull instead of a man’s and a particularly large body, prostrated itself on the ground. A few windows of the neighbouring houses were lighting up as well, observing the opulent scene.

The ornate door cracked open, held by the skeletal butler; and a tall, svelte woman carefully elevated herself from the tapestry seats. 

She was thin and elegant, almost a head and a half taller than Mavis, with spotless pale skin and sharp, piercing crimson eyes. Her shoulder-length hair, formerly the family’s soot-like black, was greyed out by years of necromancy practice, with scarlet stripes that curled upwards, almost like daemonic horns; contrasting the gold and silver of her pendants. A rich, lushly coloured robe cascaded from her shoulders, black and white stolas falling behind her like a magnificent cloak, her arms and legs riddled with decorative bandages and fingerless gloves; her small, delicate breasts tightly hugged by a black corset.. From the moment she stood up, her chin pointing up to the sky, it was like the very air around her went cold. 

She snapped her fingers, impeccably manicured, and the skeletons reacted in unison; the driver put out its cigar on the pelvis of one of the horses, the butler held her hand gracefully, and the bull-headed one made itself small while the sorcerer used its back as a stepping stone. 

“About time.” She spoke with a razor sharp tone, even with a hint of a chuckle. “You people really ought to take better care of-”

Her snide remark didn’t have time to fully formulate, before Mavis suddenly threw her arms up in the air with a serious expression. “Haud yer wheesht and give your mom a hug.”

“M-Mom, I- uh…” Suddenly, the ostentatious princess was gone, and a timid teenager was in her place. “N-Not here…”

“Oh, so I pushed for 35 hours non stop to bring you into this world, and this is the thanks I get?” Tenaciously, the woman didn’t dare lower her arms a bit, piercing her bairn’s soul with a steel gaze. “If you don’t give your mom a hug right now I swear to Stormlord-”

They shared a shy, gentle hug, and Mavis was suddenly back to her usual sunny demeanour, clasping her hands together in delight that Caitlinn was back home. Morrigan waddled out of the house as well, clumsily undoing the knot of her apron. “H-Here, wait, I wanna say hi too!”

She placed her hand on her lower back, balancing out the weight of her enormous gut, prompting a hearty laugh out of her sister. “Gosh, sis, you look like you’re carrying a dragon in there!” As soon as the girls were together, they shared another big, warm hug, Caitlinn ever so gently patting her little sister’s head, and Morrigan looking like she’d wag her tail if she had one. Her pregnant stomach hung heavy from her torso, gurgling loudly in response to all the commotion outside. “You’re even fatter than usual.” Caitlinn remarked sharply, an acerbic grin plastered all over her face.

“Ehehe~ I’m so happy to see you again, too! Come in, come in!” Morrigan chirped cheerfully, seemingly having not processed her playful jab, dragging the taller woman from her hand to the inside of the home. “You’ve gotta meet Niall!”

…

“Mhm… A bit too tender for my taste, sis.”

A bit irked by her mother’s ‘told you’ look, Morrigan smiled softly as she finished up serving the last plate of steaming, savoury stew, waddling around the living room placing jars and chunks of bread all over the table. “Well, my bad. It’s my first time making something like this.”

“Dear, you sure you don’t want me to help…?” Niall craned his head back, looking at his heavily parturient girlfriend run back and forth, his cheeks a tad pink as he could not avoid noticing her shaking breasts and swaying behind as she opened up cabinets and produced different utensils from them. Her blouse’s right side had a little hole along the seams, a tiny window of rosy skin revealed by an overexerted piece of clothing.

She shook her head, her enormous stomach rubbing a bit against the back of his head. He could feel the taut skin, the ocean of fluid sloshing within; he grit his teeth, flustered red. “Nah, nonsense! I was just about to be done!” 

As the woman trudged along, humming to herself, finishing up her overdue tasks while her family sat at the table, a tiny squadron of Shoggoth revealed themselves from the cracks on the walls, following her along. Pink squishy tentacles grabbed pot and pan, dragging chunks of wood into the crackling cinders of the fireplace, whining and whistling as they passed towels and tablecloths from one to another. 

As she moved, Morrigan twirled her finger in the air, drawing tiny circles and shapes, seemingly controlling the creatures’ actions with her motion and her voice. At a certain point, it was the tiny cephalopods doing most of the work, with their master mostly sitting back and caressing her midsection. 

“That’s… Interesting. And what do you say these things are called again?” Caitlinn leaned over the table, taking little bites out of a piece of rye bread.

“Shoggoths! Although they don’t usually respond to that…” With the help of her partner, Morrigan slowly lowered herself onto the last empty chair, placing her hands on her stomach. The immaculate sphere of skin gurgled and sloshed as she moved, the tiniest hint of unborn movement noticeable just below her chest; unburdened by embarrassment, the girl carefully unbuttoned her blouse from the bottom, the roseate mound getting some room to breathe; and even the arcane lilac of her brand glowing out under her outie belly button. Niall looked to the other side, his ashen fur failing to conceal his burning face. 

“And you gave birth to them…? Fascinating.” Caitlinn replied, a hint of boredom in her voice. “Speaking of which…” Her grinning eyes careened down to her overladen gut, pushing against the polished wood of the table, rippling with movement as she swallowed spoonful after spoonful of her mouth-watering stew. “How’s the love life, sis?”

“It’s going well!” She replied with an ear to ear smile, her stomach resounding like a tightly-pulled drum as she patted it proudly. “How’s yours?”

Caitlinn’s sardonic smile fell down, turning to a playfully upset expression. However, Niall couldn’t help but notice a tint of judgement in her eyes, especially towards him. 

Although the joy of a reunited family was inebriating, all of them were rather exhausted; especially the newcomer after her overextended trip. The supper was rather quickly dealt with, with Morrigan and Niall staying behind to wash the dishes and put everything in its place as the other two retired to get some shut-eye.

As the mantle of dark began to draw over the village, every window slowly losing its warm glow, the streets of the village fell deathly silent, with only the whistling of the wind to accompany the lonely couple. Niall groaned, his furry hands sopping wet as he placed a washed plate in the cupboard. By his side, Morrigan let out a breath, one hand cradling her tumescent stomach and the other on her tired back.

“What’s with the… Skeleton thing?” He muttered, his lupine eyes shifting ever so slightly. He could feel the void gaze of the undead horse peering curiously at him through the window; either judging his deepest sins or trying to beg for a sugar cube. It reminded him of Caitlinn’s occasional glares, the glares of a noblewoman distrustful of a starving hound.

“Well… S-She’s a necromancer, and she’s always liked being the center of attention… Even back when we were kids.” The girl complained, her curly hair sticking to her sweat-laden forehead. Her breathing was rather heavy; carrying such an immense weight around in her tiny body was delightful and exciting, but also incredibly tiring. “G-Gosh… Y-You mind if I sit for a minute, dear…?” She complained, rubbing the maternal swell.

“O-Of course, I’ll take care of what’s left. Are you doing well…?” The wolfman, after wiping his hands dry, gently laid them upon her taxed shoulders, caressing her. 

The moment his hands began massaging her shoulders, a tiny mewl escaped from her lips; she promptly covered her mouth, blushing red. The pups inside her, almost as if amused by their mom’s reaction, began kicking up a storm, the taut shape of her parturient gut shifting and warping noticeably. “S-Sorry, I’m just… A bit, y’know…” Her voice almost a whisper, she bit her bottom lip. “A-A bit pent up…”

“P-Pent up? Like…” Blushing softly, he performed an obscene gesture with his hands, to which she nodded timidly. “I-I don’t know… W-With your mom and your sister here…”

“I-I know.” Her gaze, an unearthly lilac since the day they retrieved the Scepter, slowly trailed down to her massive gravid midriff, quaking with impatient foetal movement. “I-It’s just- your pups are… Really big, and…” She stopped for an instant to catch her breath, the imprints of tiny feet and tiny paws visible travelling lazily across her insides before quickly disappearing into the depths of her womb again. “A-And they’re always moving, and I’m always feeling them, and…” 

“W-We could maybe…” He muttered in response, his hands ever so slowly spidering their way down from her shoulders to her chest, his thumbs caressing the tender and sensitive skin. Tiny barbs of electricity ran through Morrigan’s entire body; her meaty thighs rubbed together uncomfortably. “We could maybe go to the shed… I-I’ve emptied it already…”

Her puffy nipples already visible through the white fabric of her blouse, tiny blotches of sweet milk darkening up its tone, Morrigan shivered, craning her head back. Tiny, expectant eyes were observing her from the darkness, the few Shoggoths that hadn’t disappeared into the sewers or the holes in the wood attempting to process those strange feelings she was broadcasting to them.

Uninterested as the couple swiftly abandoned their cleaning duties, disappearing out of the house’s back door, the creatures began rummaging around the house, slithering around, thin trails of silver mucus covering walls and floor tiles like a pheromonal spiderweb. 

They were trying to find a place to sleep.

…

“Ah… It’s just like I left it.” 

Caitlinn stretched out her arms, letting herself fall down on the big, empty bed. The skeletons around her kindly tended to her comfort; a couple of them held her clothes over their bodies like glorified coat hangers, and the one with a bull’s head obediently massaged her dainty feet. 

She was completely naked except for her underwear, the lithe curves of her sylphlike body barely delineated by the flickering candleflame, letting the ochre cotton of the bed engulf her completely. She had failed to inherit her mother’s plump figure, her massive breasts or her whopping hips, instead being granted a body as thin as a stick and as gracile as a swan. Not that she disliked her body, but watching how… Immense her sister had grown, it kind of made the tiny perky mounds on her chest feel a bit pathetic.

She gazed around the room, around its carefully decorated walls; the swarthy wood lined with copper and iron, the scent of carrots and onion always floating in the air, a chorus of crickets and a billowing wind replacing the ever-so-present skittering and merrymaking of the big city. Even some of her old rag dolls, including the ones Morrigan had - to put it kindly - experimented on, were lining the shelves, gifting her comforting smiles, even if a few of their arms were sewn to their adjacent kin. 

Even as she always bickered with her sister, and as much as her constant yammering and childish curiosity could get on her nerves, it filled her with pride to see her come so far. 

While Caitlinn had always been the one to concern herself with boys, an eternal kleptoparasite of her mom’s makeup kit, Morrigan had never once in her life shown interest in the opposite gender; not even in that burly wolf guy whose children now gestated inside her. And even so, it was the morbose bookworm who had found love first.

She nuzzled up to the pillow, a tiny hint of a smile in her lips. She had a thought, an indecorous thought, unthinkable by the stuck-ups that governed over her in the College of Mages. Carefully, she rummaged under the covers, waving her legs around as she slid her white lacy panties off, throwing them on the head of one of the attire-bearing revenants. I’m in a village, dammit, I can do what I want, she thought.

One of the skeletons gently pulled the fuzzy covers over her nascent frame, while another one kissed her forehead. Well, as best as a skeleton can kiss, but you get me.

However, as the candlelight was promptly snuffed out, a hundred budding eyes still glared at her through the dense penumbra. A few tentacles curled over the closets and the shelves, chitinous mouths chittering quietly. The first chills of the night were beginning to peer through the wood and the straw, and, while she was lucky enough to have cocooned herself in pleasant wool, others didn’t share her fate.

Their duties finished for the day, the skeletons lowered their heads, the reddish lights inside their skulls fading out as their master headed off to sleep. 

…

That morning, all of Caledonia woke up to a bloodcurdling shriek. 

“W-What is this?!” Caitlinn huffed, her voice exerted, protracted over the bed, as her stomach loudly churned in front of her. Her abdomen, thin and svelte barely the night before, was now swollen and rounded, stretched like an overinflated balloon, with reddish stretch marks lining her underside. Her hips had been lodged outwards horizontally, and her breasts had, somehow, gone up a cup size or two, shaking vigorously with her nervous breath.

A splatter of viscous, cold fluid covered her crotch, a glimmering trail of that very same secretion crawling down her bed and up the walls. A sickeningly sweet scent clouded her mind. “O-Okay, okay… L-Let’s- uh, relax… Um…”

Her belly suddenly lurched forwards, the glissading outlines of a dozen tentacles pushing against her taut skin. A pang of hunger struck her as the eldritch thing within her sloshed and gurgled.

As Morrigan and Niall hastily walked into the living room, still fastening up their clothes after hearing the commotion, the eldest’s door was suddenly slammed open; the new immense, red-faced visage of Caitlinn immediately visible to the half-disrobed couple. 

“M-MORRIGAN!” She barked, with the teary eyes and cracking voice of a teenager that had found a pimple on her nose. “Y-You explain what’s happening to me! I-I’m sure you’ve got something to do with it!”

Both Morrigan’s and Niall’s faces became colourless in an instant, as they beheld the tendrils of the beasties squirm and writhe within her womb like a nest of snakes. Her belly was a fraction of the size Morrigan’s had managed to be, but in her lithe and silky frame, any kind of paunch would look gargantuan. 

“E-Ehe~... Um…” The girl stammered gawkily, her finger placed over her plushy lips. “I-I guess someone forgot to check if all of the Shoggoth were put to bed…”

“D-Don’t you ‘ehe’ me, you bampot!” She yelled, a bit of her hick accent slipping through the cracks of her princess facade. “G-Get your stupid fucking monsters out of me right this instant!”

“L-Look, yelling isn’t gonna get anything done…” Morrigan lifted her hands in front of her, waddling up to her sister with an uneasy look on her face. “Y-You should calm down, they-”

Hearing its mommy’s kind and gentle voice, one of the Shoggoth spread out its tentacles, Caitlinn’s stomach tightening and contracting ever so slightly as a scouting tendril emerged from her slit, gazing around with the big golden eye on its tip. Caitlinn grimaced strongly, taking a step back in disgust.

“E-Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, eeeeewww!”

“D-Don’t you be mean to it! It’s more scared of you than you are of it!”

“I-It’s a fucking interdimensional eldritch beast, and it’s defiling my body! I can react however the hell I want!” She threw her hands to her head in despair. “M-My body! M-My prince-seducing, award-winning body! It’s ruined!”

Before the girls began throwing potshots at each other, Niall stepped in, firmly placing his hands on each of their shoulders. “L-Look, both of you relax! We can’t be shouting at each other until one of you goes red in the face!”

“SHUT UP!” Both of the siblings shrieked in unison.

The indomitable swordsman reduced to a whimpering puppy, he nodded his head, staying back with a docile look on his eyes. As both the expectant mothers glared at each other indignantly, both their stomachs vacillated and shifted, one with tiny kicks and knees, the other with knotted tongue-like limbs.

A few moments passed, of heavy breathing and pleadful stares.

“H-He’s right.” Morrigan broke the uncomfortable silence, wiping a thick strand of messy hair away from her face. Her breasts sloshed and jiggled as her breathing stabilised, her childish rivalry less important than her sisterly love. “L-Look, you go rest on the couch, okay? I’ll go get the Scepter and my book.” 

Swallowing her pride, Caitlinn replied with a tiny nod. The idea of her kinsperson performing witchery on her didn’t especially comfort her, but it was the best option she had right now.

“N-Niall, dear, could you help her get comfortable…?” She turned to her partner, pursing her lips. “A-And sorry for yelling at you.” 

The former knight nodded profusely, dusting off his dirty jacket and reaching towards the enceinte Caitlinn. “Of course, I’ll take care of it. A-And don’t worry, okay?” They shared a tiny kiss before Morrigan waddled out of the room, disappearing into their room, flooded with grimoires and tomes.

Meanwhile, Niall gently guided the sorcerer to the couch, helping her heave herself down. Caitlinn huffed, swallowing nervously, scowling at the sight of the storm of appendages that roiled about inside her abdomen. “Here… B-Be careful.”

Though a snarky retort or two peered their virulent flavour up her throat, she decided to stay silent, closing her eyes. She could feel every inch of her torso crawl with slobber and tendril, shaking vigorously as they likely thought the agitation was part of a silly game or something like that. The feeling was utterly revolting… And yet strangely captivating, sending tiny pleasurable shivers up and down her entire body, still left mostly naked for the eyes to see.

“S-Sorry…” 

Niall looked at her, as he was off in the kitchen quickly fixing a sandwich for her. “Hm? Come again?”

“I-I’m sorry. I was… Very rude to you yesterday…” She mumbled timidly, looking down at the laden trencher as he placed it on the table. Two thick slices of spongy rye bread, enveloping a thin layer of smoked lamb, with homemade butter and goat’s cheese. Her stomach gurgled, even louder than usual.

He smiled softly, wiping his hands. “No worries. I know I’m not really the… You know, ideal brother-in-law. I’m a peasant, and a beastfolk one at that. I’m not surprised you were a bit impolite.”

She stared for a few seconds at the serving, before suddenly snatching it with grubby hands, and chowing down on it like a starveling hellhound. Every bite felt immensely filling and wonderful as it went down her throat and into her overcrowded belly, flickers of sudden movement pushing against her sides with every hungry swallow. She placed her hand on the lateral of her stomach, feeling it expand and contract as the inhabitants inside celebrated the feeding. 

“H-How did you know I was hungry…?” She blurted out between bites.

Niall chuckled softly, folding his arms with a big smirk on his lupine face. “I’ve seen far too many of these incidents to count. One learns a few tricks.” From the marble counter, he picked a large jar of mushy goat’s cheese, with a small paper label on it reading ‘Morrigan’s Cravings’.

Leaning back on the couch, sinking into its round backside as best as she could, Caitlinn laughed heartily. “O-Okay, that’s a good one. I like that.”

A few moments passed. The rumbling in her stomach did not falter a moment; Niall sat by her side, his cheeks a vibrant red. 

“Y-You were a paladin, right…?” Caitlinn gazed at him, her hands instinctively on her abdomen. Although she wouldn’t admit it in a million years, she was actually beginning to enjoy the feeling of these creatures writhing around inside her body. “What Order did you belong to…?”

“I…” After a second of pondering, Niall lowered his head, twiddling his thumbs quietly. “Well… I um… I never really had the chance to join any. I tried to join the Order of the Gilded Truth, but I embarrassed myself at the trials. I tried with the Order of the Lady of Roses as well, but they would only get warriors from rich families… I tried to join the Order of the Penitent Ones… And the story goes on.”

Caitlinn gave him a modest, gentle smile, tucking a strand of scarlet hair behind her jewelled ear. “Well… I-I don’t wanna make promises, but… I’m buddy-buddies with the chapter master of the Order of the Silver Moon… Big dude, dark skin, white hair. Ansovald, he’s called. Wields a big ass axe. Not sure if you’ve heard of him.”

Niall’s wolven ears perked up upon hearing the knight’s name. Ansovald was a templar of legend, a royal champion of ironclad will and unyielding passion; the type of man-at-arms whose achievements and quests fill out entire storybooks, uncountable ballads and poems were confectioned in his honour. And Caitlinn spoke of him like he was someone to share a beer and a game of cards with.

“A-Ansovald? L-Like, THE Immortal Ansovald?”

Caitlinn nodded, giggling mirthfully. “I’ll make sure to write you a recommendation letter, or something like that.”

All of a sudden, Morrigan barged into the room again, slamming the door open. Her blouse was, somehow, tattered and ripped, having become more of a sarashi underwear than an actual shirt, and tiny splotches of milk and Shoggoth secretion dotted the white of its fabric, uncomfortably hugging her wobbling breasts. In one hand, she clasped a haphazard tome of spells, stitched together from pages and pages of dozens of grimoires, a far cry from the court sorcerers’ immaculate lorem ipsums; in the other, the rose copper Sceptre of the Wombflayer, a strange eldritch artefact recovered from the depths of an antediluvian city ruined by men trying to play gods. A wonderful combination.

“I-I’m here! S-Sorry for the wait, it was- um, trapped under a bunch of old shit.”

As if repentinely unburdened by her unmeasurable pregnancy, Caitlinn jumped up, her face red as a beet as she scolded her sister. “G-Good! Now, let’s get this over with; get these fuckin’ things out of me!”

…

The parturient woman laid over the sofa, grousing heavily; her growing chest ascending and descending with her uneven breathing. Her gravid abdomen, the size of an overinflated beach ball, contracted and shifted with snakelike movement, as the rubbery shapes of her tenants pushed up and down against her stretched skin. Her legs were spread apart, a thin string of mucus dripping off her bare pussy, feet perched on the table before her. A skeleton with a faux moustache gently massaged her horribly tense shoulders, while another with a bull’s head fanned her carefully. A third was off into the corner of the room, dressed in the embroidered shawl of a midwife, attending a fire warming up a bucket of springwater.

With Niall by her side, Morrigan kneeled in front of her sister’s pulsating mound, her own enormous belly slumping on the floor. Placing her navy blue witch hat over her head, its hem decorated with an anglerfish’s toothed jawbone, she cracked open the makeshift spellbook, its yellow and grey pages crinkling as she quickly flipped through them, scouting through all manner of assorted bewitchments in search of whatever enchantment woke up the Sceptre’s ancient powers.

Caitlinn grit her teeth, tightening her grip on Niall’s burly hand as her entire insides were reorganised at once, a vortex of hungry tentacles and thick fluid shifting her midriff up and down and all around. “C-Can you find the fucking spell already? I-I feel like I’m gonna burst open…”

“O-Okay, okay, gimme a moment…” The warlock continued to read through every page, every tatter of paper and ink stitched into a parody of a grimoire, every useless spell she had jotted down out of sheer curiosity. A warm shiver ran through her entire body, her lower stomach its epicentre, as the brand placed over her womb by the Cult began to emit a torrid glow; the kicking of her own children within her stomach began to quicken. 

Transmogrification, animating toy soldiers, making wine into water, summoning an army of earthworms, an invisibility spell with a 10’’ radius… Here! The Chant of the Wombflayer, she pointed at the words, etched in messy purple ink with an even messier handwriting.

She lifted up the sceptre; its caduceus of rose gold tentacles unwrapping off its rod like if made out of liquid, forming the uneven shape of a heart over its gilded pommel. Out of the corner of her eye, the silhouette of a void heart beginning to emerge on its pupil, gangly and cloaked shadows jittered, staring at her with eyeless glares and smirking teeth.

The sole presence of the staff invigorated the starborn, its hexen magic driving them to violently slam against the walls of their prison of flesh, trying to run towards it; Caitlinn yowled, as her entire stomach suddenly launched itself forwards, sloshing loudly. As if she weren’t strained enough already.

Her locks of inklike hair beginning to float unearthily, Morrigan breathed out, her own body quickly overstimulated by the heretical powers of the sceptre. Every inch of her softened body was shaking uncontrollably, her breasts leaking rivers of milk as her womb quivered and quaked. 

In her mind, she hoped a silent prayer; that her children would come out of this unscathed. It was when Niall’s comforting hand placed itself on her back that she mustered up the courage to speak through the maelstrom of ancient force.

“C-Caitlinn… Y-You trust me, right?” She muttered, breathlessly.

“W-What other choice do I have…?” Her sister replied with a chuckle, fingers digging into the horribly taut skin of her stomach. A few seconds of prideful silence, before sincere words were spoken through gritted teeth. “Y-You’re my little sis. Of course I do… N-Now do the fuckin’ thing.”

Morrigan nodded, her eyes trailing down to the poem written on the pages of her tome. “... T-This is gonna hurt.”

In whispers, she followed along the lines; mouthed silence for every word and every noiseless sound in a black tongue long forgotten. A hex; the darkest of all spells, meant to exert total and utter command over the relic. A claim to embody the loathed Wombflayer, and requisite its forces.

As she pulled back the staff, the floodgates opened. 

A sudden surge of arcane wind burst forth from Caitlinn’s body; scattering plates and glasses all over the room, her abdomen conquered by an ungodly lilac glow as the blackened shapes of her inhabitants became visible against her uterine walls, shaking and slithering, coiling around each other in a colonial uroboros; they were clearly becoming agitated, straining the girl’s overrun womb even more with each passing second.

“A-Ah~! A-Aah- ah- aah!” She yelled, her voice cracking and drowning amidst the noise, craning her head back; one of her skeletal servants holding her to its ribcage, wiping the plentiful sweat off her forehead. In her yowls, there was a sweltering mixture of pleasure and pain; her body was being opened up from the inside, and yet she could not help but shiver and groan in incomprehensible orgasmic joy.

“Now…” Morrigan spoke with an uneasy, yet decided tone. “Listen to your Queen, Shoggoth! Exit your host, at once, and return whence thou cams’t, for that is thy place and forever shall be!”

A mangle of tentacles suddenly tore its way out of Caitlinn’s throbbing pussy, madly flailing around, searching for the nightingale of the sceptre as the vessel broke into a shrill howl of pruriency, overwhelmed aphrodisia begging for more with her entire flesh. Slobber and black milk splattered all over Morrigan’s body, staining her face, chest and stomach, protected defiantly by her arm.

“I shall asketh thee, once and not once more! Be banished, Shoggoth! BE BANISHED!”

A blinding flash of lilac light suddenly engulfed the room; the street; the entire village. The silhouettes of the ritualmakers disappearing into the unfathomable void of the Wombflayer’s domain.

A few instants passed; surrounded by nothing but a starry abyss. 

Then, as if dragged through the very fabric of reality; everything was back to normal, save for the massive mess of chairs and paraphernalia scrambled in the tornado.

Morrigan slowly opened her eyes, clenched close to the point of discomfort. The sceptre was still in her hand, again in its dormant state; Niall’s loving arms wrapped tightly around her as if trying to shield her. 

Her free hand quickly crawled down her body, patting herself down. A stagnant breath left her lips as she found her gravid stomach sticking out of her body, as always. It didn’t feel any heavier, any more active, any different.

In front of her, her skeletal servants having joined the rest of the rubble around them, her sister lay on the sofa, in an almost catatonic state with her eyes blank and a string of drool dribbling off her lips. Her belly had returned to its former state; though with a generous bit of extra paunch and some leftover stretch marks. Splatters of black and lilac fluid covered most of her lower train.

“W-We… W-We did it…” She mumbled silently, looking down at the stave in her hand with a gaze of disbelief.

Niall clambered down to the ground, letting go and falling on his back, breathing in and out loudly. “N-No… Y-You did it, dear. You did it…”

Her maturity trumped by her childish narcissism, Morrigan placed her hands on her hips, raising her chin and humming happily. “You see that, Caitlinn? Turns out you’re not the only sorcerer in the famil-”

“My… This feels so nostalgic…” 

Recognising that voice, the couple suddenly turned back to the other side of the room; a rounded shape walking out of the small bedroom into the rubble and disaster. 

Mavis, still attired in her cozy sleeping camisole, was suddenly carrying around an immense gravid stomach, rubbing it ever so gently with the kindness of a first time mother spoiling her son before he’s even born. The outline of tentacles was clearly visible within her.

“M-Mom?!”

“Oh, hi, dear… Good morning…” She mumbled in a sleepy voice, before noticing a toppled and shattered cupboard crumble by her side. “Ay, what happened…?”

Morrigan threw her hat to the floor, her hands on her forehead with an exasperated look. However, the sensation only grew as Niall pointed towards the window.

“Um… Morrigan. I-I think you should see this…”

The little witch waddled up to the window, getting on her tippy toes to comfortably see outside. Her eyes went wide as plates as she saw the catastrophic incident. 

Women of all ages and shapes were walking out of their houses, suddenly burdened by immense enceinte midsections ridden with eldritch tentacles. Housewives with way too many kids rubbed their temples as their children ran around them in a big circle; courtesans and clerics equally bewildered at the occurrence; and even a large muscular knight had found her armour burst open from inside as her stomach suddenly grew. 

Morrigan fell against the wall on her back, sliding down to the ground with the sceptre firmly held in her hands.

“I-I uh. I think I fucked up.”

…

Steel-toed boots left a mark on the damp mud of the crossroads. The witchhunter adjusted his white hood over his helmed head, observing a flask of anomalous fluid one of the witnesses had granted his order. A strange, glimmering secretion, silvered and black, sometimes soft as water and sometimes as thick as lard. 

He was stumped. Over his many years of inquisition work, it was the first time he had stumbled upon something like this; and it didn’t have the telltale burned wood scent of the hell-touched, or the rotting stench of the corrupted.

He persevered, walking over the titanic hills of Caledonia; uneven highlands of jagged rock and luscious greenery, tinted by the first golden splatters of summer. Dense forests, laden with vibrant fruit and flower; immense lakes of crystalline waters lined with homely fishing hamlets; and an unending list of minuscule towns and villages with two-digit populations, most of them without a name, where having both a butchery and a bakery was considered a feat.

In this idyllic paradise, in this tiny little corner hiding away from the civilised world, he found no trail of this mysterious eldritch threat some witnesses had mentioned. 

Stopping by a meadow of pink and yellow flowers, he rested his tired bones on a flattened rock, dislodging his sallet and placing it beside him. Producing a little pencil from one of his many pouches, he began writing down a report.

He spent a few minutes jotting everything down; the wonderful sights he had partaken to, the lovely people he had spoken to, the beautiful and fascinating cultures he beheld and observed; of course, in the overly formal language the bureaucrats at the Inquisition adored with effusiveness. 

Then, all of a sudden, just as he was about to sign the paper; a flash of black and lilac conquered the sky for an instant. He shot up, his every muscle electric for an instant, his hand reaching for the silver sword that hung off his hilt.

A barrage of dark magic, completely out of control; his trained sight followed the shrinking vortex with uncanny speed. 

The hex disappeared into a dinky little shack, in the middle of a tiny village in the distance, bordering the horizon. The air was cold, and heavy like lead. An unnerving smile crawled up on his lips as he ripped the paper, and threw it to his side. 

Slowly, as he began picking up his bearings as to continue his trip, he extracted a bulky artefact from the holster at his belt. A large hunk of dark iron, a sophisticated invention of the royal military, with a long cannon connecting to a revolving cylinder of chambers. Upon cocking its hammer and pressing a little lever on its bottom, the artefact fired a lethal round of lead in the direction it was pointed; a surefire end for anything unfortunate enough to get in front of it.

With slow, fiendish enjoyment, he took his time to load every single chamber with a silver bullet.

Before putting on his helmet again and lowering the gridded visor, he wrote a correction on the next page of his notebook. 

I’ve found the source of the power of the Cult.

I am on my way to eradicate it.

Maybe that way you’ll listen to me.

Reinhard A. Castellanos, Inquisitor of the Church.

[college-girl199328]

Overturned acquittal could have impact on convoy protest case: expert | Ottawa Citizen

An Ottawa criminologist said the Ontario court’s order to retry a convoy protester could have implications for the ongoing trial of the protest’s two key organizers. Superior Court Justice Narissa Somji ordered a retrial last week for Allen Remley, a convoy participant who had been acquitted on a mischief charge. Remley was by Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, also presiding over the criminal trial for organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber. The court ordered a retrial after concluding Perkins-McVey didn’t adequately context of the protest.

Protesters flooded the capital in 2022 at the tail end of the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most said they were there to demonstrate against public health restrictions and vaccine mandates, though many also railed against the government.

The protesters stayed in Ottawa for three weeks, blocking downtown roads around Parliament Hill with big rigs and other vehicles, blaring horns at all hours, blasting music over loudspeakers, and setting off fireworks in the street. In Remley’s case, Perkins-McVey found the Crown had failed to adequately prove that he was engaged in mischief during the protest.

Police accused him of being involved in a “mobile gas station” — a children’s wagon filled with jerry cans. His truck was also illegally parked.

In the absence of more evidence, doubts persisted about whether he was committing a crime, or even shared the same aims or political beliefs as the protesters, she said. Somji agreed that simply being at the scene wasn’t enough to prove guilt, but found the decision didn’t take into account “the evidence as a whole, including evidence of the ongoing protest.”

In another convoy-related case last year, Crown prosecutors successfully appealed an acquittal on mischief charges involving protester David Romlewski. In that appeal, Superior Court Justice Adriana Doyle found the trial judge erred in Romlewski’s acquittal by imposing a higher burden of proof on the Crown than was necessary to reach a finding of guilt.

Justice Robert Wadden, the trial judge, had acquitted Romlewski after ruling he was not a trucker and didn’t bring a vehicle into the city, he was not a convoy organizer or in contact with organizers, and the judge said there was no documentary evidence linking Romlewski to the protest. Prosecutors successfully overturned that verdict, with Justice Doyle saying Romlewski’s presence in a designated “Red Zone” during a highly-publicized police operation went beyond “mere presence,” and was “aiding and abetting” the mischief.

The facts of the Lich and Barber case are slightly different since they spent most of their time organizing the protest, fundraising, and sharing updates on social media from a “command center” set up in a local hotel. The Crown has argued Perkins-McVey need only consider whether streets were blocked and property was interfered with, and whether Lich and Barber were party to those crimes.

While Remley’s trial lasted only three days, Lich and Barber’s case is still ongoing after months of testimony, evidence, and legal wrangling. Their trial paused last month and is expected to resume in March.

Rents for Canadian military personnel to increase | Ottawa Citizen

Rents for Canadian military personnel in accommodations used by National Defence will be going up in April. National Defence confirmed information that was leaked to this newspaper by soldiers who questioned why rents were going up for troops when the military is struggling to keep personnel in the ranks.

Under Treasury Board policy and Department of National Defence regulations, “shelter charges” for all Crown-controlled housing are reviewed and adjusted annually to reflect market changes, she added. This process is administered by the Canadian Forces Housing Agency as the managing authority for the residential housing portfolio on behalf of the department, Poulin noted.

Updated rental fees for 2024-2025 will be available online by April 1. The rates vary depending on the type of accommodation and location. Poulin said rents for National Defence housing units are established based on a market analysis of dwellings of similar age, size, type, condition, and location.

In October 2023, this newspaper reported on internal military documents that acknowledged that Canadian Forces personnel were increasingly leaving the ranks rather than moving to a new military base where they couldn’t afford housing. Canada is in the midst of a housing crisis, but some members of the military are particularly vulnerable as they are required to often move around the country for their jobs.

In some locations “average cost to purchase or rent housing now exceeds incomes of several CAF working rank levels,” a June 14, 2023 briefing by Brig.-Gen. Virginia Tattersall pointed out. Military personnel can also try to rent accommodation from the Canadian Forces Housing Agency, or CFHA, but there are shortages of those units.

The CFHA manages the largest housing portfolio in the government of Canada at 27 locations across the country. Its portfolio consists of single, semi-detached, and row houses, as well as barrier-free accessible houses and apartments, according to National Defence. However, the department has noted that thousands are on the waiting list for such units.

In addition, the Canadian Forces has identified the need for at least 5,000 more housing units to be built at its facilities around the country. In 2022, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre acknowledged that a lack of affordable housing has emerged as one of the main complaints made by military personnel to senior officers.

Military personnel are increasingly becoming frustrated with the lack of action by the Canadian Forces' senior leadership on the housing situation, according to defense sources.