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blowjob-horseguy · 4 months

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Steve opened his eyes and above him was a pale man with long curly hair. It fell like buoyant curtains of ringlets from either side of his head, obscuring their surroundings. The man frowned down at him with a fierceness that made Steve think for a second they had met in a tavern one night and Steve had done something to slight him.

Steve opened his mouth to speak and felt a sharp edge be pushed harder onto his throat. Steve's vocal cords froze. Whatever he did, it was really bad. Steve runs through a quick memory catalogue of all the men he's slighted recently and how, so he could know what to start apologizing profusely for.

Did he sleep with his woman? Did he sleep with his man? Did he win too much money from him? Did he lose too much money to him? None of those seemed right.

He considered briefly that he perhaps slept with the man himself but quickly dismissed the idea. If he had bedded anyone with hair like that and this passionate a disposition, he would not need to search for the memory.

He looked closer at his features. Hair so long it could easily be a maidens, and so dark it was almost blue. Thick, furrowed brows and lips thin and white, pressed tight together, sandwiched by dimpled cheeks. His skin was pale enough to look sickly and almost green in hue. Steve definitely would have remembered this face had he seen it before.

"You are awake" said the man.

His voice dragged like wood over coarse sand: like he wasn't used to speaking outloud. Steve got a glimpse of his teeth, Sharp and thin, unlike any other human teeth he had ever seen.

A chill ran down Steve's spine as he realized why.

This is no man; this is a Merrow!

Steve's mother had told him tales of these creatures.

When Steve answered the call to the sea, his mother warned him; beware of the sea maidens they may seem beautiful on the shore, but when they lure you to their home you see their true colors. Green skin and scaley behinds. Teeth sharp enough to tear through flesh, and claws the same.

The men are said to be even uglier, with the faces of hogs and catfish, and they drag sailors down to their dens to enslave them for eternity.

Steve has always been cautious about these monsters; avoiding the bright red cap that was the telltale sign of a merrow. The others on the ship have always ridiculed him for it, and now here he is in one of theirs's clutches.

and it's not... unattractive. Strangely.

"Speak" The merrow demanded

"Please let me go" Steve spoke, his voice breaking embarrassingly.

"Go where" the merrows eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Back to my ship."

"You will attack me."

"No, I won't I promise. I'm a peaceful man, very peaceful. Couldn't hurt a fly, me. Wouldn't even know where to start."

The jagged thing at Steve's neck pressed into his skin a little harder, Steve tried to lift his chin as far as it could go to get away, but he felt a small sting as the device broke his skin.

"All men lie."

"I'm not lying, I would never lie" Steve lied.

While far from the swashbuckling type, he has never shied away from a fight, especially when it comes to protecting his fellow crewmates. He's only been on the ship a few years, but he has improved his fighting form considerably from the naive nobleman's son he once was.

While he's not going to say it out loud, he probably would attack the thing, if given the opportunity.

The merrow didn't respond, just bored dark pools of black into Steve's soul. Steve silently pleaded back with his own eyes, just wanting to get out of this situation alive.

"Release me, I beg of you. I will cause you no trouble."

"I do not believe you, you will leave this place and call fleets of your men here to hunt me down." The merrow said panic evident in his voice now.

Steve's own panic subsided for a moment and he realized this creature did not seek to kill him for pleasure, but to avoid being killed itself.

Steve took a chance and lifted his hand to touch the pale arm that held the merrow aloft above him in a gesture he hoped conveyed comfort. He did so slowly, as not to startle, and gently so the merrow knew he had no intention to harm. The merrow eyed him wildly and with fear, but it allowed itself to be touched.

It's skin was cool to the touch and droplets fell from its skin as Steve wrapped his hand around its wiry forearm.

Steve tried to reach for his signature charm, the one his father swears he learned from him.

"I promise, I mean you no harm. I have no fleets of men. Half my fellows are so foolish they could not hunt down their own behinds" Steve said.

The merrow stared at him, eyes shifting about, looking him up and down for any hint of deception.

"I will not hurt or attack you, please just remove this device from my neck."

The Merrow seemed to steal it's resolve for a moment. then slowly the pressure was removed from Steve's neck. and the merrow slunk into water.

Steve sat up on the rocky shore. Without the creature's hair blocking out their surroundings, Steve saw he was in some sort of watery cave. Dark grey walls surrounded him as far as he could see, and a vast black lake stretched out in front of him. If only Steve could remember how he got here.

He looked back at the creature and saw the object that had been held to his neck was a jagged, broken shell that hadn't yet been worn smooth by the ocean. The merrow still held it nervously as it bobbed in the water at Steve's feet.

Even with half of it's body submerged, the merrow was nearly eye level with Steve. So either the water is shallow here, or the creature is of substantial size.

"Does this mean I'm free to leave?" Steve asked.

The merrow shook it's head. Black curls shaking out droplets of water with the motion.

"I cannot be sure that you won't return with weapons or more men" it said, "I searched your person while you were asleep, I took the dagger that hung around your middle, and the one on your leg."

How long had Steve been unconscious?

"Did you steal me away from my ship?" he had to ask.

The merrow looked offended at the suggestion.

"Steal you away? You intruded onto my home!" it said as it started rising out of the water. A jet black tail emerging slightly from the grey ocean.

Steve shrunk down and put his hands up in surrender.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know. I have no memory of arriving here."

The merrow was taken aback at that and shrunk down into the water again.

"You don't remember?" it asked

Steve shook his head.

"You washed up onto my shore. No man has ever seen my shore before. Your treasures wash up here when your ships crash in the sea outside, but no man has ever washed up with them before." it said, clearly at unease with the idea.

Steves heart fell. Does this mean his ship crashed? Is he the lone survivor? he doesn't think he can take the thought of being left without the friends he's made on that vessel.

"Did- did anything else wash up with me?" Steve asked.

The merrow shook its head.

"There hasn't been a wreck near here in months."

Steve felt his spirit lift. That could mean his crew mates are alive and well!

But then how did he end up here? Steve tries to remember. His head aches something fierce.

"Why does your face look like that?" The merrow asked.

Rude.

"My head hurts"

The creature cocked its head to one side.

"You creatures are strange and delicate. Have you hurt yourself?"

"Hurt myself? I only just woke up! It's more likely you hurt me, than I hurt myself!"

Steve clutched his head in one hand and gestured at the creature with the other. He feels rather helpless in this situation.

"I did not hurt you! I removed you from the water. You creatures are not supposed to be in there!" The thing pointed towards Steve with its shell, as if illustrating what 'creatures' it was talking about.

"Well then, however I got to be there is how I hurt my head" Steve explained, aggravated by this easily excitable monster he's found himself with.

The creature frowned at him for a moment and then faster than anything it dove under the water. It's tail following behind it in a lithe arc like a sea serpent.

Perhaps it is a sea serpent. A strange shrill sea serpent with very soft skin.

Almost as fast as it left, the thing burst back out of the water.

Steve flinched away from the splash.

"Hold out your hand" the merrow demanded.

Steve held both his hands closer to his body.

"Why?"

The merrow lunged forward and grabbed one of Steve's hands.

Steve yelled, startled, his feet scrambled at the stones beneath him trying to get away from the shockingly strong and clamy hand that held his arm tight, but his leather soles slipped on the wet rock and Steve stayed put.

And then something slimy and oddly coarse fell into his palm.

The merrow shoved Steve's own hand towards his face.

It was seaweed.

"Wh-"

"Eat it."

Steve's eyes shot up to meet the merrow's.

"Raw?!"

"It helps me when my head hurts. It will help you."

Steve grimaced at the yellowish-brown pile in his hand.

"Is it medicinal in some way?"

"It is food."

"Ah."

The merrow starred at him expectingly.

Steve starred right back.

"I'm not going to eat this."

"Then your head will continue to ache."

"I don't think the lack of edible gunk is the cause of my headache, I believe it to be the same thing that's causing my amnesia" Steve said shaking the offending object out of his hand, "I must have hit my head when I was washing up on your shore."

"Like I said; you are strange delicate creatures," the merrow reached out his unoccupied hand towards Steve, "come into the water."

Steve leaned as far away as he could manage.

"So you can drown me?"

The Merrow rolled his eyes. It looked remarkably human in that instance.

"So I can heal you"

He doesn't know if it's delirium or blood loss, but Steve grabbed the pale hand in front of him and slid gently into the water.

The creature wrapped one arm around his waist and pulled him closer to it. Steve felt the scales of it's tale press against his thighs through his trousers as he was held aloft in the freezing water. His feet dangled and he couldn't feel a bottom to the lake, nor to the creatures tail.

The merrow threw the shell that was in it's other hand away somewhere and grabbed a handful of the black water. It brought it's hands up, dripping the water onto Steves head. The cold shock seemed to ease his pain. Steve closed his eyes at the relief.

He felt an even pressure on the top of his head. A tingling sensation washed over him, trickling from the point of pressure down his neck and over his shoulders. It sent Steve's body shivering.

He opened his eyes and was met by two dark eyes staring back at him. The merrow was less than an inch from his face. one of it's hands was firmly planted between his shoulder blades, and the other was atop his head emitting the magical sensation.

"You had a bump on your head."

"Had?"

"I rid you of it."

Steve felt the hand trail down from the top of his head through his hair- still wet from whatever circumstances lead him here- and down his shoulder.

He does not understand why a monster would heal him of a headache, but as he is held steady in its strong arms and feels it's breath against his lips he doesn't think it wise to ask too many questions.

"Thank you." He said.

The merrow let go of him, and Steve pulled himself back up onto the shore.

He heard a wet thunk beside him and turned to see the merrow had joined him on the rock. Its body was facing Steve and it's tail was splayed out in front of it bent at the midpoint as if the thing had knees.

It's tail alone was twice the length of Steve's entire body and it tapered along its length until exploding out into 2 wide tail fins that had the jagged edges of burned parchment.

Suddenly the creature unbent it's tail, laying it across Steve's body and curling the end slightly around his waist. it was surprisingly heavy and the large scales had the texture of smooth river stones against his abdomen.

Steve looked bewildered at the creatures face, who had the same fierce and angry look as when Steve first woke up.

"So you will not run away." it explained.

"how many times do I have to tell you, I will bring no harm to you, even if I escape."

"I cannot take that chance."

"How long will you keep me here then?"

The tail wrapped halfway around Steve's waist constricted slightly, almost causing him lose his balance. The creature beside him leaned in menacingly.

"You will stay here until I can be sure you can be trusted." it said.

"And when will that be, hmm? What could possibly convince you?" Steve asked.

The creature looked down at itself for a moment, seemingly thinking of a solution.

"I- I don't know. I will. I will know it when I know it."

"Oh! You will know it when you know it. Thats fantastic." Steve spat.

"Well you have done nothing to prove your trustworthiness to me thus far" The creature spat back.

"Exactly! I have done nothing! I have not attacked you, I have not tried to escape, I have made no attempts on your life. I have been a model captive! Whereas you, foul creature that you are, have threatened my life, stolen my belongings, and tried to feed me muck from the bottom of the ocean!" Steve had snapped, pushed to far by this infernal creature and it's damp dank lair "And now I find you have no plan for my release. You know, my mother used to tell me tales about you creatures, but she neglected to mention just how stupid you are!"

The creature just looked at him, dumbstruck by his outburst.

It uncurled it's tale from around Steve's waist and moved it back into the water. It slid it's body so it was sitting beside Steve, instead of facing him.

"What is your name?" the merrow asked.

"What?" Steve replied

"What is your name?"

"Is this some kind of trick?"

"No. You say you have been a model captive; I wish to be a model captor. What is your name?" it looked at him with pleading eyes.

Steve sighed and ran a hand over his face. What has his life come to?

"Steve, my name is Steve." He said.

"And you do not eat seaweed, Steve."

"I-" Steve groaned, "I eat seaweed, of course I do, I live on a ship. I just don't eat it raw and fresh from the bottom of a pit is all."

"So how do you eat it." The creature asked.

"You let it dry and cure, you boil it over a flame. Do you know what flame is?" Steve asked.

The creature rolled its eyes again.

"Yes, I know what flame is. If I build you one will you eat?"

Steve was taken aback. The monster is worried about him eating?

"I- yes, I suppose" Steve stammered, "do you also have a pot to boil water in?"

"A bucket washed up last month, will that do?"

"Why yes that will do greatly" Steve said.

The creature quickly disappeared into the water.

Steve sat back on his hands; confused and... oddly touched by the gesture.

Despite the creature's constant suspicion, Steve hadn't even considered just swimming out of here. Mainly due to the fact that he has no idea where he is, if there is land near here, where his ship is, or even how to find the opening to this cave in such dark conditions.

He is tired and befuddled, his wet clothing is sticking to his skin uncomfortably, he is chilled by the air and sore from the hard rock, and now that he thinks about it, he is near starving. So, he truly does appreciate the Merrow's offer to build him a fire.

The merrow reappeared holding a rusty bucket aloft the water's surface. It handed the bucket to Steve, who found dry wood, flint, and a knife at the bottom of it.

Steve smiled.

"Where did you find all this stuff?" he asked

"Treasures wash up here after shipwrecks, I told you that before," The merrow said pulling itself back onto the rock, "now would you like to build the fire yourself, or shall I?"

.....

Steve started the fire, closer to the cave wall than to the edge of the water, and set the bucket, now full of water, carefully in the middle of the flames. It will take awhile before the water boils, but that just gives Steve time to lay his clothes out to dry.

He rid himself of his trousers first, the wet denim was the greatest offender to his skin, and his white linen shirt came after it. He laid them both flat in front of the fire.

He looked around, the creature was still gathering food. He's grateful, he feels oddly modest about being in the nude in front of the merrow.

Steve was crouched down warming his hands in front of the flames when he heard a telltale splash from behind him. He covered himself with his hands and whipped around to see the merrow had returned with 2 handfuls of seaweed and a small fish caught in its mouth.

It looked Steve up and down from its place in the water and then released the fish from its jaws onto the rock.

"Your clothes are gone," it pointed out.

Steve gestured with his chin to where they lay in front of the fire.

"I'm drying them."

"Ah," it said lifting itself by the elbows up onto the shore, "come take this stuff from me, I can't get over to you, it's difficult to move across land in this form."

Steve walked over to the merrow and grabbed the fish and seaweed from it.

"You say in this form; do you have another?" he asked

The merrow eyed him oddly.

"I thought your mother told you of us?" it asked.

"Well, yes, but she also told me the men of your species have the faces of hogs. As you clearly do not look like a hog, I figured she may have gotten some things wrong."

The edges of the merrows mouth twitched upward. It- it's smiling!

"I have a legged form as well. I could get my cap and join you for dinner?" It said.

So, she was right about the caps too. At least Steve hasn't been paranoid about nothing.

"Thats not necessary." Steve said, though he must admit he was curious.

Steve walked back to the fire and dumped the fish and seaweed into the water that had started to form small bubbles. They still had a while to go.

Steve turned back to the merrow, who was sitting on the rock, splayed out, scales and all, like some kind of ancient stone carving. It looked up at Steve, waiting for him to say something. Steve felt the need to cover himself again, the gaze of this creature is just so insistent, but he thought the act would just draw more attention to the area. Instead, he decided to ask something that had been nagging at him.

"Do you have a name?"

The merrow was taken aback for a moment before it answered.

"I was called Edward once."

"Once?"

"I was banished by my people to this cave, I haven't been called anything since then." it said, eyes going sad for a moment before snapping out of it.

"Edward the Banished" Steve mumbled.

"I suppose," Edward said squirming uncomfortably.

Steve hadn't expected him to hear that.

"I left my home to follow a friend onto a pirate ship that I quickly found was made up of novices who had never seen the inside of a ship before."

Edward raised his eyebrows at that.

"I see. 'can't hunt down their own behinds' indeed."

Steve breathed out a small laugh.

"I wasn't lying."

"Hmm..." the creature's mouth flattened into a thin line once more.

It doesn't believe him, not entirely.

No matter! Steve is just glad that it calmed down enough to allow him food and freedom of movement.

When the food was finished cooking Steve brought the bucket over to where Edward was sitting, or laying... where Edward was beached.

It frowned at him.

"You are sharing with me?"

"You caught it for me," Steve said taking a bit of meat from the fish.

It was saltier than he prefers it, but at least it was food. Which reminds him.

"Did I still have my water when I arrived here?" he asks.

"The bladder you had around your belt?"

Steve nodded.

"Yes, I took it along with your knives, I thought it had potential as a weapon," The merrow said, gnawing on seaweed.

"How long was I unconscious?"

The merrow frowned at his food.

"I'm not sure. The sun was just starting to set when I found you by the mouth of the cave, and it was fully dark when you awoke."

That means it could be as little as 5- 10 minutes.

"Do you need me to bring you your water?" Edward asked still gnawing.

"I would like that yes, but where is it that you go to fetch these things."

Edward looked him in the eye, squinting to see any hint of devious intentions on his face. Steve is getting tired of the scrutiny.

"I'm not going to tell you where your knives are, but I will bring you your water." the creature said slithering away into the depths once again.

Steve sat there, bare as the day he was born, and wondered what it would take to get this thing to trust him enough to let him go.

When the merrow came back with his bladder of water Steve tried not to drink it all in one gulp. It was so refreshing, and he was so thirsty, but he doesn't know how long he will have to be here, so he needs to ration.

"I have decided how you will earn my trust." Edward said out of the blue.

Steve nearly spilt his drink in his excitement. He put his water down and wiped his chin.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You will tell me more about your ship, and I will go out in search of it to see if the stories you tell are true." it said tapping its tale against the stone it sat on in no particular rhythm. it looked nervous about this plan.

"You'll find my ship?" Steve asked, amazed at his own luck.

"You will come with me so I know where you are, and I'm not giving you back your weapons, and I will keep tight hold of you, and if I find your ship and it is not the novices you said it was, I will leave you stranded on a sand bar," it said sternly.

"Okay! what do you want to know first?" Steve asked leaning forward, excited to get the process started.

"Tomorrow, you will tell me about your ship tomorrow. Now it is time to sleep" it said and then swam away.

It is a strange and confusing creature.

Still, Steve curled up on his clothes in front of the fire and eagerly laid down his head to rest. He at last sees hope of escape, and he can't wait until tomorrow.

#steddie #merman!eddie #pirate!steve #mermay 2024 #steddie fic #i know im playing fast and loose with the mythology #but in my defense the mythology is pretty sparse #I started writing this in april and it was supposed to be mabey a couple hundred words #now it's over 3000 #steve harrington #eddie munson #really getting this in at the nick of time #tsoec

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moondirti · 29 days

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imagine being the poor soul assigned to work a serial murder investigation under detective john mactavish.

you're good at your job. analytical, committed, discrete. possessing an eye for detail that turns the most convoluted problems simple, and a mental stamina to sustain you through the more gruesome aspects of your work. but with the explosive nature of this case, in particular — the crimes perfectly suited to garner media attention, victims offed too fast and sporadically for authorities to keep up, stirring an uproar by people who feel as though you are not doing enough — your captain sees it best to place someone… better liked, at the forefront. an agent able to empathise, communicate, reassure, and flash a comforting smile for the public.

charm, you think, makes for a lot of things. the rogue scot proves to you that it does not help make a good sleuth.

his investigation strategies are inelegant. the only thing he manages to do effectively upon processing every emergency call is waste department resources. by the time you arrive on scene — because being supplanted as head has its unfortunate effect on when you get notified — technicians are overwhelmed collecting trace materials he's deemed vital (though they're clearly not); pathologists have been given information conflicting with the results of their examinations, skewing results; and there's absolutely no sign of the profiler working on branching the series of murders to one suspect.

it's like that, day in and day out. the patterns you were slowly starting to uncover come apart quick. mactavish overwrites your list of suspects, trashes 'trivial' witness statements, takes informants off payroll to reallocate discretionary funds towards surveillance tools no one is trained to handle, and is an overall nuisance when you take up your complains with him. you know this case like the back of your hand, have worked on it for months now. if he could just heed your advice and think about what he's doing before he does it, then your combined efforts could crack things open sooner rather than later.

charming. reckless. he also seems especially gifted at steamrolling your complaints—

take it up wi' the boss, lamb. there's a reason ah got pit in charge—ye need tae stop worryin' yer wee heid aboot these things. jist look at ma track record. speaks for itself, i think. say, how aboot ah treat ye tae dinner an' a private massage this week'nd, help ye unwind? ye're a bonnie thing under that issued jacket o' yours. gotta learn tae take it off, sometimes.

it's your antisocial nature that shuts you up. or that's what you like to believe, anyway — the closest thing you can attribute an overactive stomach to. in your own time, you test the integrity of his word and pull some strings to access his history. a near perfect case clearance rate, go figure, accompanied by glowing recommendations from every captain he's ever served. described as clever, crafty, tenacious.

words and numbers don't exactly do much to ease your conscious. you need evidence, a lead, a testimony, an arrest, to believe all the praise — especially with a growing list of families whose grief doesn't get easier.

still, you're quiet. more pliant, afterwards.

johnny takes a liking to your attitude shift.

if not a shaky starting trust, it just means that you don't complain when he bullies you into his car to kickstart a canvass. or as he reaches over to fasten your seatbelt for you, or when he pinches your cheek with some cheery encouragement on the tip of his tongue. you're obviously tired, still suspicious, but you let him do what he wants with little to say about it; driving from street to street, knocking on doors and asking random citizens if they've seen or heard anything suspicious.

and really, it's the final test when, by dusk, he gets nothing more than a you still haven't found my stolen car.

he waits to see if you have something witty to say about what a waste of time it all was. a comment to really grind at his gears, muttered under your breath like all the other foul doubts you think he hasn't heard.

(driving to the last house on his list, the sky deepening from pink to purple to black. everyone at the office should have retired by now, and will have expected you to have done so yourself. it's really a wonder he managed to get you out here. you must have put sense on the back burner to miss the purpose this excursion lacks. the fact that neighbourhood canvasses are only done after a fresh crime scene. never like this, mid-week, for no reason at all.)

only you stay silent.

he's glad you can learn to listen.

home is a comfort after such a long, tricky day.

johnny lets you knock on the door this time, standing two steps behind so he can properly absorb his handiwork. when simon answers, nursing a cigarette with a mean, cruel twist of his lips, he feels his heart strain a little between his ribs.

"good work, mutt." a large fist hooks under the collar of your jacket. before you know it, you're being slammed into the doorframe, knocked unconscious, and hauled into the foyer. "this one's pretty. might jus' keep 'er."

"aye, sir. easy tae break too, ah reckon."

#unedited #johnny can play the fool like no one else #johnny 'soap' mactavish x reader #soap x reader #johnny mactavish x reader #soap x reader x ghost #ghoap x reader #simon riley x reader x johnny mactavish

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gravid-transluna · 1 month

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In the Name of Science

words: 7627

content: birth denial, clothing birth, mutual birth, fpreg

Co-written with the wonderful and endlessly imaginative @shhhsecretsideblog

First entry into the Spell-verse, a series of stories revolving around a town blanketed by a rapid pregnancy and birth spell.

The news already had coined a name for it. Go figure, Char thought, shaking her head at the display of pure pseudoscience on the screen before her.

“Yes, that’s right,” a reporter spoke. “Emergency services have taken a census and The Spell seems to have affected every person able to bear children in the town.”

“The Spell,” Char scoffed, shaking her head. “Call it a virus, a fluke of biology, whatever. Just don’t chalk it up to magic.”

Because if it was magic, that would mean her science would be ineffectual on the obvious life growing inside her belly, now looking full-term with a baby that she hadn’t been pregnant with this morning. It rippled, hanging low between the scientist’s thighs. She placed a palm on her stretched tummy. The evidence, she thought, speaks for itself.

“Shouting at the tele again Char?” Laura said as she waddled into their lab. Her long white coat hung open at her sides, her own newly formed bump making the coat too small to fit round her frame.

“Got you a coffee.” She passed the hot drink to her boss and went over to sit on the stool by her own workstation. It took a bit of navigating, still not used to this extra weight she now carried, but eventually she plumped herself on the high metal chair.

“I mean, they aren’t wrong calling it ‘The Spell.’ What’s happening here is unheard of. All these pregnancies are popping up very much like magic.” Laura rubbed the circumference of her large belly that now sat heavily atop her thighs. She could feel the baby moving inside, it was so strange. Pregnancy and birth was never something she thought she’d experience. She understood it, she knew all about the process, but it was something else entirely actually experiencing it. And going through it all within the space of a day was a bit of a rollercoaster.

They’d done scans and knew they were carrying human babies, it wasn’t anything supernatural or alien, but it was just the speed, it was unprecedented. The baby in her womb shifted and kicked her in the ribs “Oof!” She huffed. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.” Laura commented to her boss.

Char nodded, smothering the instinct to cup her own belly as devoted her attention back to her work.

“Hopefully, you won’t have to. We’ll find a way to reverse the process without delivery and things will—“ she paused, startled by a twinge in her stomach muscles and the subsequent squirming of the baby inside her. She cleared her throat. “Things will return to normal and we can take the time to research this phenomenon thoroughly.”

Secretly, Char’s urgency stemmed from another reason—already she’d struggled to adapt to the feeling of her body so unrecognizably changed, the idea of a passenger inside her, her body growing and stretching to accommodate it without any of her say in it. Even the tiniest signs of motherhood she steadfastly resisted, trying not to waddle or hold her heavy mound, wearing her usual lab wear instead of anything more comfortable. Yet—

She knew this was nothing compared to birth. She also knew that they were on a strict time limit. Shaking her head, she dispelled these thoughts. ‘We don’t have to worry about that. All we have to worry about is finding a cure,’ she thought.

“You really think we can find a cure before these babies are born?” Laura asked hesitantly. She knew how her boss was handling this sudden change in their bodies, and it wasn’t very well. Not that she’d admit it. She disappeared quickly into the work when it first started happening to people and completely ignored the signs this morning that it was happening to them both as well.

“I’ve heard that some people are already starting to give birth… we might not have the time. Not before these ones are born anyway.” Laura patted her bump affectionately. She wasn’t fighting this as much as her boss. Yes it was a shock, but Laura was leaning into the experience, it was fascinating.

She noticed her belly start to twinge, felt similar to period pains. Laura shifted in her chair, trying to ease the uncomfortable feeling, her legs widening on the stool to fit her rounded stomach in between. “Have you had any twinges or cramps or anything?” Laura asked.

Char glanced at Laura, absorbing the gravity of her condition, the way her midsection protruded from her open lab coat and her discomfort that so mirrored Char’s own. “Nope,” she lied easily, convincing herself that it was the weight she was now carrying, that the pressure in her hips and the aching of her back was all because of the new load in her belly.

“Well, I’m not exactly hasty to get these babies out the old-fashioned way,” Char said.

A part of her shared sentiments with Laura, though. Call it a scientific curiosity, but the process of birth was quite a marvel. Another cramp seized her belly and she stiffened slightly, bearing it without note. Her own belly hung low, having dropped without her realizing, but Laura’s taut, overhanging swell was immediately apparent to her.

How about you?” She asked while peering into a microscope.

“I’m not sure… I’m feeling something… oof—” Laura took a sharp breath as the ache peaked before easing off again. “It’s probably just my body adjusting to the quick pregnancy. I’m not in a hurry to give birth myself.”

She didn’t want to say it but the rate at which their stomachs had swelled, Laura didn’t think they would have long before the pangs of labor hit. It was difficult to ascertain how “far along” they were, given the speed in the growth, but judging by the bumps alone Laura guessed her and Char were developing at the same rate.

“We better work fast then, before either of us goes into labor.” Or both of us, Laura thought to herself.

Char pressed her lips together at the reminder, and without knowing she palmed the underside of her swollen stomach, attempting to soothe the tightened muscles.

“Yes, right. Could you come over here and we can analyze these lab reports together. Bring the files from the corner bench, please.”

Her back ached, yet she was too restless to sit and besides, she always worked while standing. She’d be damned if she let this baby inside of her intrude on her routine.

“Sure thing.” Laura said to Char’s instruction. Holding her taut stomach, Laura slipped off the stool onto her feet and waddled over to the corner bench to pick up the files.

Standing seemed to have jolted her baby, feeling the weight sink lower into her hips as it kicked. A sudden sharp tightening slashed across her belly causing her to gasp and grab on to the table. “Mnngh!” She groaned as the muscles pulled and squeezed, its intensity surprising.

“Char… hooo… I think I might be having a con-contraction…” Laura panted through the pain, hips instinctively swaying beneath the white lab coat.

Char snapped her head up from the microscope to see Laura doubled over, clutching the table. With her back flat, her weighty belly seemed to strain toward the ground, dragged downward by gravity. Char watched as Laura swayed her hips in an almost hypnotic pattern, as though instinct had taken over. Her panting, even, seemed instinctual, the sounds of an imminent mother.

“Laura? Hey—“ Char struggled to walk without a waddle, across the room to Laura. She was stopped by a squeezing in her tummy that took her breath away, the entire surface hardening painfully. She dismissed it before it even ended. ‘Braxton Hicks,’ she thought. ‘No big deal. I have time…. Laura, I’m not so sure.’

She placed a palm on Laura’s lower back and she breathed and swayed. “You’re okay,” she said, her usual brisk tone softening. “Just breathe.”

“Hoooo-hoooo…..” Laura forced herself to take measured breaths, in and out, breathing through the sudden pain. Her head dipped and her eyes scrunched, the weight and pressure suddenly peaking before gradually fading away. Slowly the assistant straightened back up and faced her friend (?) and boss.

“Jeeze, that was… intense.” She breathed, rubbing the underside of her belly. “I wasn’t expecting that to come on so fast. Guess I’m in labor. I’ll start running a log of all my symptoms so we can add to our research.” She picked up the earlier requested files and handed them to her boss, noticing a slight glistening of sweat on Char’s forehead. “You still doing okay?”

Char nodded, appearing uncharacteristically distracted. She made an effort to straighten her back, feeling the clamping around her womb subside for now.

“Fine,” she said. Then, appreciative of Laura’s dedication to their studies, “Good work, Laura. If it gets to be too much for you, let me know. Until then, we’ll work around the clock and develop a cure before you progress too far.”

And, before I do as well, Char added to herself.

Noting Laura’s significantly widened stance and the way she stroked and circled her dropped belly, Char felt a twinge of apprehensiveness.

As they worked, fighting the clock, Char listened to Laura’s pained breaths become sharper. Eventually she began to vocalize, softly at first, closing her eyes and rocking her body back and forth, making slight grunts and moaning under her breath.

Char wasn’t in a much better state. Her contractions had grown into strong, regular surges and every time her belly seized up she could only focus on it and the baby inside it preparing to be born. Born, she thought. Not if I can help it. Her familiarity with the process and inevitability of birth did nothing to halt this line of thinking. Yet with each contraction she felt like nothing else existed but her swollen, contracting belly. She released a breath after a particularly brutal one. There was so much pressure. She felt it deep in her hips, wanting so badly to open herself up all the way.

Laura let out a pained groan herself, and Char glanced up.

“H-how are you, mm, holding up?” She asked the other laboring woman.

“As w-well as can be expected… hoooo…” Laura held her heavy belly with one hand, the other leant on her workstation as she swayed through the pain. “They are really picking up now Char, oof, the pressure is a lot.”

The lab assistant had abandoned her chair a while ago, finding the most comfortable position was to stand at her desk as it allowed her to follow her body’s rhythm and its instinct to move. Plus the baby was sinking way too low to be sitting down on that ridiculous high stool. She had spent entire days on that chair working before The Spell, but that idea seemed downright ludicrous to Laura now.

Their research seemed to be slow moving, and it wasn’t entirely down to the fact she was in labor, the science just wasn’t providing them with answers, still proving to be a mystery. She’d been keeping track of her contractions, which were getting dangerously closer together and time was running out.

Whilst the waves of pain coursing through her body every five minutes were consuming, Laura wasn’t oblivious to the fact her boss was also struggling. Perhaps it was because of her own labor she could recognise the signs; the way Char kept moving around the lab and never stayed still, her heavy breathing and occasional moan, and the way her hips would shift and bounce when she thought Laura wasn’t looking. Yup, her boss was almost certainly in labor too. But Laura knew better than to ask her outright.

“Are you feeling okay Char? You’ve been on your feet for quite a w-while now..”

Char tried to imagine sitting and found she couldn’t, with the baby dropped so low, the head pressing heavily on her cervix. She knew from the strain in Laura’s voice and her repeated movements around the room that she was feeling the same pressure and slowly increasing urgency. She wanted to moan, openly sway and rotate her hips against the excruciating pressure, to release instinctual grunts with her contractions like Laura. But, not yet. She couldn’t be in active labor.

“Just frustrated,” Char growled. “We’ve barely made progress and this current batch of tests has yielded no results whatsoever…. mmgh!” She winced, closing her mouth so as not to cry out as a contraction clamped her midsection.

“Also,” she added. “I might—urgh, be experiencing some Braxton Hicks.”

“Oh… braxton hicks… okay.” Laura acknowledged calmly, knowing full well there was nothing false about the pains plaguing Char. “Just try and b-breathe through them. They’ll soon pass. You can move around you know, follow your body’s instincts if you need to, I’m sure it would help with the, errr—false labor pains.”

They continued working in relative silence, except from the unusual noises Laura found herself making through the pains. She thought she heard her boss whimper, and asked “Is there anything I can do to h-help?”

Not that she was capable of doing much, the pains were so strong now she could barely do anything other than catch her breath between waves. Laura stayed close to her work bench, not daring to move too far for fear she’d crumble to the floor. Her bump hung heavy and low off her hips, her baby was pressing hard against her cervix clearly marking its exit. A particularly forceful contract had Laura folded over against the bench, forearms on the white surface, hips jutting back, and her head buried in the crook of her elbow. Her groans had turned more primal, the pressure building to the point she almost mooed like a cow. Something was slipping down, she could feel it. With a grunt Laura felt something give and the immediate dampness that followed trailing down her leg.

“Ummm… Char? Hoooo… I think my water broke.” Laura whimpered into her arm, not daring to move.

Char turned when she heard Laura’s animalistic groans and grunts, undeniably the noises of a woman deep in labor. She saw Laura standing wide-legged, a wet patch forming on her lab trousers and puddling the floor beneath her. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion, and Char knew she was feeling the same pressure against her widening cervix as herself, increasingly overcome with the sensation of the head moving into position, the instinctive need to open herself up for the baby getting ready to come out of her.

“Laura—! Hooo um, okay,” Char faltered, taking large waddling steps to Laura and cursing the weight in her pelvis and the unwieldiness of her belly. .Normally in control of the situation, she felt lost at the sight of Laura’s waters puddled on the floor. This was an uncontrollable variable. No matter how much they wanted to keep their babies in, once their bodies decided it was time there was little they could do. But Char wasn’t ready to give in yet.

“I’ll, mmgh, find you some towels,” she promised Laura.

In the hallway she suffered another contraction, and found herself vocalizing freely without Laura around, lowing insistently and arching her back. Without knowing, her knees bent slightly, beginning to sink into a squat. She realized what she was doing and tried to hold herself upright against the hallway wall, but by then the contraction was upon her and she felt a sudden burst of fluid from between her legs.

“Oh…. shit,” she murmured, panting hard.

When she returned with the towels, she met Laura’s gaze and knew that they were both feeling the urgency of birth. They were almost out of time.

The contraction had waned when Char left the room and Laura slowly righted herself and breathed quietly, taking stock of the situation, letting her body adjust and working with the new sensations. The baby was definitely on its way, there was no doubt about that. The breaking of her waters had helped ease the excruciating pressure which had been building, but Laura became more keenly aware of the shape of the baby in her womb without its cushioning.

Taking deep and steady breaths, Laura tried to calm her mind and body. It was during this almost meditative state that she heard the unmissable sound of a woman in deep labor from the corridor. She knew exactly who it was.

Char was a very methodical woman, set in her ways, but she was strong and determined which was a necessity in this field of work. Laura respected her immensely. But it was no surprise to the assistant that her boss was fighting this and seemingly was fighting it to the very end. At some point Char would admit she was in labor, she would have to if she was going to birth her baby. Laura just hoped she would be able to help Char through it when the time comes, and not be consumed by her own birth.

When Char came back she was flushed and sweaty, but gritted a smile as she passed Laura a towel. Laura noticed her boss kept one for herself… strange.

Laura threw the towel on the floor and used her foot to wipe the liquid that was now puddled at her feet. Her trousers were wet but she didn’t want to take them off, she might have known Char for years but wasn’t quite ready to be walking around half naked in front of her boss.

“This baby is definitely coming, I can feel its head right down in my pelvis.” Laura announced, cupping the underside of her large swell almost trying to hold it up. “How are you holding up Char through your… practice contractions?”

Even without her announcing it, Char could tell how close Laura was to birthing her baby, her stance and dropped belly unmistakable as signs of her imminent birth. Laura, she knew, was dependable, and though Char would rarely admit it, she relied on Laura and her stability and her easier personality tended to balance Char’s own stubbornness. Her patience was beginning to wear Char down, and she almost admitted then. The head was huge against her dilated cervix, and she could feel it oriented, ready to descend. Everything was moving painfully downwards. She could no longer even pinch her knees together, so wide was her gait. It felt as if the baby would drop out of her if she spread too wide.

“I-I think I’m, I’m in—“ Char was cut off by another contraction, doubling over with an urgent grunt, so unlike her normally composed and cool attitude. “Ohhhh,” she moaned, closing her eyes. She gritted her teeth, eyes squeezed shut as the contraction began to peak and she clutched blindly at her rigid, taut belly.

“Oh Char…” Laura said, waddling over to her boss, keeping one hand on a bench for support. “I think you’re in labor, hun.”

Char was completely doubled over, clutching her large and heavy belly, and grunting wildly. There was no way she could keep denying her situation now surely. Laura put a hand on Char’s back and rubbed up and down her spine in support. “It’s okay, just breathe through the contraction. Slowly, don’t panic, in and o-outttt…”

Laura was cut off by a contraction of her own, and without her waters it was aggressive and forceful. She immediately spun around, grabbing the nearest bench, and groaned deeply as she fell into a slight squat. The baby was slamming against her cervix, squeezing its way into her birth canal, and Laura had no choice but to push with the force of the contraction.

She tried not to panic, to stay calm, but the head filling her canal was almost making her nauseous. She wanted to tell Char but couldn’t speak, not that her boss could do anything as she was dealing with a contraction of her own right now. The only option left was to ride the wave, and follow her instincts.

Over the din of her own uncontrollable noises Char could hear Laura’s straining groans as she bore down fiercely, primal with the urgency of a birthing mother. Char tried to change her posture but the feeling of the baby descending, pressing down forcefully against her cervix was too much for her to bear standing, and she clasped her hands on her thighs as she squatted, desperate for relief. The contraction peaked, and though she tried to control her breathing, sucking in air at first, by the ends of her breaths she found herself grunting slightly. She gave a gasp, realizing that she was pushing. No! No, no! She thought desperately. You’re a scientist. This is your lab, and you have control. Try as she might, it was impossible to assert control over her laboring body. Her baby was coming, and she was pushing. Still, she tried to resist the urge to push, panting and blowing as the pressure grew and her back flared with pain.

Laura’s contraction seemed to subside a little before Char’s, and Char saw her belly visibly heave as her uterine muscles relaxed. She let out a grunt as the contraction released her. They made eye contact as Char’s contraction began to fade as well. Char shifted her gaze.

“We…. w-we,” she panted, trying to regain her breath. “We have to find this cure. Right now.”

“Char…. Even if we do find a c-cure… what do you t-think is going to happen?” Laura said sternly as she heaved herself back to standing. “These babies,” she patted her bump and also Char’s for effect, “are coming and no cure is going to make them disappear.”

Laura had seen the way Char literally squatted to the ground and pushed, and her clothes were also damp on her bottom half. “I’m saying this as both your friend and colleague, you are in labor just as much as I, and we should prepare for their arrival.”

Laura waddled awkwardly, bowlegged, back to her desk and grabbed a drink of water. Still panting after the latest contraction, she picked up a pen and carried on making notes. “I’ll help you as much as I can, noting everything down about this rapid pregnancy, tracking my symptoms and experience, but we’re going to be giving birth soon. Both of us.”

Char glared weakly as Laura patted her belly. She’d known Laura to be one of her only lab partners to actually stand up to her or challenge her, but even then she was firmly gentle. This was no different except of course so steeped in labor herself Laura had a bit more edge to her, biting just a little. She knew how Laura was feeling. Their babies were so low, pushing heavily into their canals and forcing their bodies to deliver, and she wanted nothing more to stop what she was doing right now, squat down, and let it come. Magic or science, Char and Laura were experiencing their most natural, primal instincts.

But—she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. No, this was HER body. An intruding passenger wouldn’t change that, even as it inched its way through her birth canal and demanded she work hard and concentrate on nothing but pushing it out. Char made a laborious effort to straighten somewhat, though her stance wasn’t much narrower than Laura’s own bowlegged waddle.

“Not, urgh, yet,” Char said. “I’m not having this baby. Mmm…. hoo, I’m grateful to you, Laura, for holding it together for this long. But you n-need to deliver. Please, don’t burden yourself. I’ll finish this cure on my—hmnh, hm. My own.”

She painstakingly toddled to her research table, lifting the hefty weight of her belly as though it would keep the baby from dropping any further.

“Okay, do whatever you wanna do Char.” Laura resigned herself to losing this argument. Her boss was determined but this was next level, bordering on complete denial. Well if Char was feeling even half the sensations Laura was, she’d succumb to this birth soon enough.

Laura needed to prepare for the imminent birth, her recent pushing was a sure sign the baby was close. Slowly, and whilst always holding on to something, the assistant rummaged through the drawers and cupboards in the lab. “Do we have anything we could use for clamps to cut the cord?” She asked aloud, not really expecting an answer from her disgruntled colleague. “Ah, this could work.”

She collected the equipment she’d need to clamp and cut the chord on her desk, and moved the towel on the floor with her feet again mopping up the new liquid that she’d trailed across the floor, not realizing she was still leaking. “I’m gonna go get some more towels.” Laura again spoke aloud but knew her boss had disappeared into her own world.

Laura barely made it to the doorway when another contraction struck, and damn they were close together. Her fingers gripped the wooden frame as her body sank downwards again, the pressure building and building between her legs. “Mnnnghhhhhhhh!!!” Laura grunted, muscles contracting and squeezing the large head further through the birth canal, to the point she could feel herself start to open slightly. “Nghhhhhhh the head…. I can feel it…” Laura mewled as she squatted.

Char listened to Laura’s preparations in the background, doing her best to tune out both Laura’s words and the feeling of a massive head lodged in her birth canal, stretching her from within. Her legs trembled, nearly buckled even without a contraction. She resented herself for pushing but knew from her last contraction that she wouldn’t be able to help from bearing down again. The urge to push, the pressure, it was blurring her vision, and her head pounded dizzyingly. A mantra repeated in her head: ‘Hold it in. Just hold it in a little longer.’ Her stomach felt like a hard stone weighing on her middle even without a contraction. She tried to focus, pulling herself into a chemical analysis of her own birthing fluids she’d swabbed from the towel.

Suddenly, she heard Laura’s loud grunting and her attention was drawn to the doorway to see her assistant bent and squatted, pushing hard into her trousers. She felt a tug of concern.

“Laura? Hun, you okay—?”

The head, she thought. Oh god, she’s still wearing her work trousers.

Before she could even take a single step towards Laura, she felt another contraction grip her. “Oooof,” she grunted deeply. Her knees began to give out and she was forced into a squat even as she tried to remain standing. Gripping the table for dear life, she groaned and growled. Don’t push, she thought. Don’t—

“Ohhhh.” The head shifted down. Her powerful internal muscles shoved it through. “OH—I’m—I-I’m pushinggggg, mmmmgh!”

Laura was consumed by the sensations thrumming through her entire body, it was as if something primal was happening to her - new and unfamiliar, completely out of her control, and yet her body seemed to know what to do. Her knees widened and she sunk deeper into the squat, opening her hips as much as she could. Leaning into the contraction, using it, Laura pushed the heavy weight down. It felt… productive. She knew it was what she should be doing.

The location wasn’t ideal, and she hoped she still had time to collect more towels and set up a more comfortable birthing area. But whilst the contraction raged, Laura submitted to it, letting it work her baby down, slipping further and further towards its exit.

Somewhere in the distance she heard her name being called. After a long push Laura gulped a breath and turned her head to see Char squatting at her desk and crying out that she was pushing. She would laugh if her body hadn’t forced her into another push.

They needed to get set up and quick, Char looked like she was suffering just as much as Laura was. When the contraction waned just a bit, Laura stopped pushing and somehow managed to haul her body back to standing. Char looked okay, well as she could given the situation, riding out a contraction and holding on to the sturdy frame of her workbench.

“I’m getting more towels, hang on Char!” Laura shouted, hoping her boss would hear over the groans Char was making.

Waddling ever so slowly, the head sitting right behind her lips, Laura went off to the cupboard to find more towels. They’d soon need them.

Another contraction struck mere minutes after the last while Laura was in the cupboard but she was not as successful this time in staying on her feet. The force of the contracting muscles and slashing pain splitting her open brought her to her knees. She clung on to the shelf in front of her, her heavy belly squished between widened thighs, and she pushed hard wailing with the effort. The head was peaking through, pushing apart her folds in her underwear. But her body was driving this journey, Laura was just the passenger. After a solid minute the contraction let up and when she released the push with a gasp, the baby slipped back into the birth canal. With a trembling hand she felt the fabric between her legs, she was definitely bulging, but the head wasn’t crowning just yet. She breathed deeply, gathering her strength before getting back on her feet. She needed to get back with the extra towels, not just so she could birth her baby there but so she could help Char. She’d need a friend and the support right now, and so could Laura.

As Laura submitted, pushing freely and loudly as though nothing else mattered in the world except getting her baby out and getting it out now, Char resisted her baby’s inevitable birth. Panicked, she gulped in a breath, trying to ease up on her furious pushing as she felt the head filling her opening thoroughly. It was beginning to bulge her, though her lips remained shut. The pressure and incredible sensation of the head sitting low at her opening, almost ready to exit, was almost too much to bear. She mooed deeply, from the back of her throat. Her belly tightened even harder than before, squeezing her like a vice and she couldn’t help but push again. The baby strained against her opening, and she could feel her most delicate area distending obscenely.

“Oh god!” She cried, throwing her head back as her thighs spread and she pushed again and again uncontrollably. The urge was undeniable. She was subject to her body and right now, it was telling her to birth her baby. Here, now, into her trousers. She felt helpless. Out of control.

“It’s coming,” she moaned. “Ohhh, it’s coming!” She knew this deeply, intuitively, with an age-old maternal instinct. She was ready to birth her baby. But she felt alone and vulnerable.

“Laura,” she gasped, couldn’t say much more than that. “Laura, oh god, it’s coming and I’m pushing! I need to hold it in! Just a little longer!”

She could hear Char’s wailing from the corridor, becoming fast apparent the lead technician was losing her fight against the inevitable. With one arm carrying a load of towels, the other hand pressed against the wall as she waddled heavily back to the office. On walking into the room she saw her friend and colleague in a deep squat, white-knuckling the work bench, chin to chest and pushing. Loudly.

“Oh Char, it’s okay hun.” Laura shut the door behind her and dropped the towels beside her friend. “You have to breathe as well as push darling.” She said as she staggered to her own workbench and grabbed the medical supplies she’d collected. With the baby playing peek-a-boo into her underwear, Laura knew their time was almost up.

Cumbersomely, Laura got down to her knees beside her boss, putting the clamps and scissors on the pile of towels. “Shhhhh it’s okay Char, don’t fight it. Use that contraction and push with the pain.” Laura rubbed a hand up and down Char’s back, trying her best to support and encourage through this.

Unfortunately with their labors progressing in tandem, Laura’s role as carer was snatched away when the next contraction tore its way across her midsection. Instinctively, without intending to, her body was pushing with the pain and she could feel the baby start to leak through again and stretch apart her lips. She went to all fours and rocked, sinking backwards towards her heels whenever she had to bear down.

“Mnnnnghhhhhhh! Come on baby….” She groaned before gasping another breath and pushing hard again. She didn’t care that she was still in her work clothes, or that she was on the floor of a laboratory that was covered with two lots of amniotic fluid, she was simply following her instincts and soon the baby stopped slipping back in and stayed, keeping her lips in a perfect oval shape.

“Ohhhh god… I think it’s starting to c-crownnnn….” The assistant managed to huff when the contraction eventually dulled.

Char’s belly refused to fully relax at this point, now constantly flexing with forceful surging contractions, but there were brief moments of respite where she could pause in her pushing and some awareness returned to her. Laura, she realized, was beginning to tent her pants with pushing, on all fours with her back arched and her hips shoved forward, trying to make as much room for the large crowning head as possible. She was pushing the head into her clothes, Char realized, bulging them ridiculously, and between her spread thighs more fluids dripped and leaked. At the same time she processed this she realized that her own clothes had never been discarded, but she made no effort to remove them in her precious few moments before her body would force her baby further out of her. Instead she clung onto the naive hope that she’d miraculously stumble upon a cure while crowning into her pants, feeling the head beginning to press up against her underwear and part her lips slightly. Laura, she could tell, had offered less resistance to her body and had made more progress in her pushing, the head sitting permanently, she calculated from the bulge in Laura’s pants, at around a half-crown or more.

“Hey,” she croaked hoarsely, barely able to manage anything but grunts with her clenching belly. “You—you need to get your pants down, hun. Head’s coming out.”

Painstakingly, she began to squat down, moaning as the head was pressed back slightly into her sensitive lips by the tension of her underwear. It felt so low, so full, she needed to open up, she needed to push, relieve the immense pressure, yet her friend, yes friend, not just assistant, needed her. As she squatted low, she hooked her fingers around Laura’s waistline.

“I need, urgh, I need you to get your legs together. Mmmm, we gotta get your pants off, ‘kay?”

She was surprised to see Char moving in her peripheral vision, but Laura could pay no mind, for this baby wanted out and it wanted out now.

“Grhhhhh!!! It’s coming out… mnghh!” Laura cried into the next push, bearing down and feeling the head stretch her wider and wider. Her hips were so full, her pelvis felt like it could snap, the pressure of this baby’s head - this large and heavy mass - *needed* to come out.

Char’s attempt to remove her trousers was fruitless, though the black fabric was stretchy and comfortable with the expanding of her stomach, it was not elasticated enough to be pulled over the wide angle of her legs. The baby sat so low, right at her entrance, stretching her entrance wide with the emerging crown. There was no way in hell she would be able to put her legs closer together.

Instead, she widened them further. “Hmngh! Can’t… baby… coming…I have to pushhhh-mnghhhh!” Laura’s face sunk towards the floor, dropping to her elbows and opening up her hips to the skies. It was coming out, she could feel it sliding slowly out of her into her stretchy clothing. All she could do was push…. Pant and push again.

Char watched in utter fascination as Laura pushed with total abandonment, entirely consumed with the baby coming out of her, every last thought focused on the overwhelming, intense, undeniable urge to push. The bulge in Laura’s pants grew, stretched her thinly and Char could scarcely believe that such a huge head could come from her, pass through such a narrow opening with so much force. She removed her fingers from Laura’s waistline, realizing the impossibility of such a task at this stage in Laura’s labor. She was pushing it out into her pants, and there was nothing Char could do about that except cup the growing bulge as it emerged from Laura’s opening into the straining fabric.

It was terrifying, watching Laura push without regard for anything else. As she felt a powerful contraction wrack her own reddened, exhausted belly, she knew there was no stopping this. She was giving birth and was about to push a baby out into her pants exactly as Laura was doing now. She growled fiercely, deep in her squat—the perfect position. Her knees jackknifed and she opened her hips as wide as they could go. Against her opening the fabric of her underwear arched with the coming head as she bore down immensely. Her face turned bright red with her hardest push yet.

“Oh GODDDD!” She bellowed. “It’s COMING, I’m pushing it OOUUUTTTT!”

Her lips parted, wider and wider, trembling and convulsing around the head as it burned and stretched her. She jerked, trying to escape the ring of fire and yet she couldn’t stop pushing for a minute. She was in the final stages now, and the only way the burn would stop was when she had pushed her baby into the world. Instinct took over completely. This was what her body needed her to do. This was what SHE needed to do.

Even though they were consumed with their own births, Laura found comfort that at least they were together through this. Each laboring woman was not alone.

But the strength required to birth these babies, who didn’t even exist 24 hours ago, would be down to the mother. Gasping for air Laura pushed again with everything she had, through the pressure and pain and the burning ring of fire that had her mouth open in a silent scream. The baby’s head had to be almost out by now, surely!?

Despite being beside each other Char’s bellowing voice seemed so far away to Laura. Nothing else registered beside the baby being born into her pants. She growled with another push and suddenly yelped when the head slipped fully out.

“Oh my god oh my god…” Laura muttered over and over and pushed herself back up on her knees. She scrambled at the waistband of her elasticated trousers and pulled them down to her knees along with her underwear. Her baby, she had to get to her baby, the maternal instinct cried in her head. With a trembling hand she felt the newly born baby’s head that was now wedged between her thighs. “Hi…. baby… oh my gosh you’ve got hair!” Laura was in shock, but also in awe of what her body had just done.

It was only after the head was born that Laura properly heard the cries of her friend. “Char…” she muttered and saw the other woman squatting and huffing, red-faced, chin to chest, with an obscene bulge protruding from her clothes between her wide legs.

“Oh my god Char! Your baby is coming out!”

Had Char any piece of mind she might have answered with her customary sarcasm: oh really? I wouldn’t have guessed. Instead, the only sound that emerged from her mouth was a long lowing wail that only deepened and became more guttural as the head filled her bottom so thoroughly, and it felt as though her pelvis was creaking open to allow the massive head through. She opened slowly, barely pausing to take a breath as she bore down without repose. Dimly, she was aware of Laura’s own baby dangling between her thighs, having pushed the huge head out, and with renewed efforts Char grunted the head further and further out. Her lips tautened and thinned, red with the stretch. The head reached a full crown and for a moment Char pushed and it didn’t move, solid mass wedged tightly in her opening. She gasped, scared for a moment that it was too big, that there was no way she could push something of this size out of her body.

Then she heard Laura cooing to the head between her legs, and something stirred within her. She realized that the dread she’d been facing was being replaced with something like motherhood, her body responding naturally, automatically, to Laura’s awe and wonder. Char realized that she wanted to meet this thing she had carried inside her for a mere twenty-four hours.

“C’mon BABYYYYY!” She shouted, bearing down furiously. Her lips slipped around the head, and then—with a splash of fluids and a grunt of relief, Char freed the head into her pants.

Laura watched in fascination as Char grunted the head further and further into her clothing, it was huge. Char had been fighting this throughout the entire pregnancy and in that moment Laura understood why some women balked so much away from birth. It was hard work. But then she saw a change in her friend, the way her eyebrows furrowed with determination, the slight readjustment of her hips as she took a breath; she was no longer fighting against her body and was readying herself to meet her child.

“You can do it Char, push!” Laura called as Char bore down. She wished she could move to support her friend physically but she was still mid-way through her own rapid birth to risk moving.

Tears begun to well in her eyes at the thought of their babies, the exhaustion of labor and the stress of the last 24 hours hammering her emotions.

By the time Char had birthed the head of her baby into her pants Laura was already feeling the pangs of the next contraction and the baby’s head turned slightly in the palm of her hand. “Oohhhhh… mhhh okay okay… you ready little one?” She panted, pulling in air through her nose, widening her legs apart to steady her balance and preparing herself to push again. Both hands were between her legs when the contraction really got going and all too soon she was pushing once more and felt the shoulders stretch apart her already sore lips.

With trembling fingers, Char reached down between her legs, feeling the hard slick roundness of the head she’d just pushed out between her legs. She gasped. The aftershocks of her contraction clutched at her belly.

“Oh… oh, my—that’s a baby. I just gave birth.”

The evidence was conclusive. But she could scarcely believe that she’d pushed an entire baby through her birth canal and out into her pants. The experience she’d just been through, the effort, the haze of contractions and the hard pushes as she focused on nothing but expelling her baby, and the intense sensations throughout her body. It was all unbelievable. Inching down the waistband of her trousers, Char struggled them to her shins and sank to her knees. She panted in disbelief, feeling instinctually that this was *right,* that this was what she was meant to be doing. Her identity had irreconcilably changed to that of a mother and as she caressed the head between her legs, she felt a rush of contentment. Char was a scientist, an expert in her field, but now it all paled in comparison.

She glanced up at Laura, seeing her shock and awe mirrored in her eyes as she lifted her baby from between her legs and rested it against her chest. Laura smiled exhaustedly at her.

Char began to pant as another contraction took hold.

“Ooh—“ she exclaimed. “You’re ready…. c’mon, you’re ready to be—UGH! BORN!”

Her baby slipped between her lips with a spray of fluids and immediately she sank to the floor, sighing in immense relief.

Laura fell silent with her final pushes, holding her breath as she bore down, the head filling her palm as the shoulders squeezed their way through. She gasped another breath and pushed with everything she had, this was it, she could feel it. Come on baby…

Once the shoulders were freed Laura wasn’t expecting the speed of which the baby slipped out and the hush of fluid that came with it. Catching the slippery newborn Laura gasped, relieved and shocked, and immediately brought the babe to her chest.

“Hey…. Oh my- hey baby.” She cooed, eyes welling with tears as she looked upon this little miracle that had grown in the last 24 hours. When the baby started to cry she instinctively rocked and hushed the infant “it’s okay… you’re okay.” She said, wiping the blood and fluid off the newborn's face.

Laura had barely caught her breath back when Char started pulling down her trousers and panted heavily, a baby’s head hanging between her open legs. A second later Char was mirroring Laura’s actions and pulling her own baby to her chest and sobbing with relief.

“You did it.” Laura said softly to her friend. “We did it. I can’t believe they’re real, we just had babies.”

The Spell might currently be a scientific mystery, but as the two women sat exhausted on the floor cradling their newborns, the research could wait. For now, the scientists were in awe of the new lives they’d just birthed.

#fpreg #clothing birth #birth denial #labor kink #birth kink #pregnant kink #inconvenient birth #birth fic #birth rp #rp with my forever writer on this site my one and only

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vienssunshine · 11 months

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The dialogues you write for maki are so goddamn heavenly, please, what is it like when her girl squirts on her glasses (bonus if in the next morning, everyone in the dormitory heard them)? 😣🙏

Just Can't Focus

pairing: Maki Zenin x fem!reader nsfw: semi-public sex, cunnilingus, squirting word count: 1.8k author’s note: thank you so much for the request! you're so sweet!! i had a lot of fun adapting your request into a fic, hope you enjoy! also, maki looked so good in the latest episode. i need her... description: something about watching you train gets maki so riled up.

The day has been long.

Nothing slows down time quite like having to hold a plank, and Gojo, who’s in charge of training you and your peers today, has been making the hours crawl by with countless strength training exercises. Your core is aching and your legs feel like they’re about to give out, which is why it feels a blessing when your teacher gets a phone call that pulls him away into a meeting with the higher-ups.

“Pair up and find a place around campus to practice sparring while I’m gone,” Gojo instructs, “We’ll meet back up in 30. Don’t forget to have fun!” He waves as he heads towards the school, leaving you and the other exhausted students alone in the field.

Nobara turns her head to you, about to speak, when an arm interlocks with yours. You look to your side to see that Maki has claimed you as her partner.

“Maki!” Nobara huffs, “I wanted to spar with her.”

Maki shrugs. “Be quicker then.”

Nobara’s face darkens with a scowl and you hurry to resolve the conflict. “I’ll spar with you next time,” you tell Nobara, “Promise.”

“You better.” She crosses her arms and walks towards the other sorcerers, annoyed she’ll have to partner up with either idiot #1 or idiot #2 (Yuuji or Megumi).

“Let’s go find a spot,” Maki says, though she begins pulling you off towards a forest nearby, seemingly already having a place in mind.

Soon you’re past the tree line, and before you can get a word out about the sparring drill, your back is pressed up against a tree and Maki’s lips are on yours.

It catches you by surprise—Maki tends to be unpredictable, a reason why it’s hard for you to beat her in a match—but it’s instinctive how you fall into the rhythm of her lips, melting into her touch as you kiss her back. Her leg nestles between yours and her strong hands land on your sides, brushing along the curve of your waist as she leans into you.

“Need you…now,” she mumbles in between kisses, the rasp of her voice confessing desperation. Even though you and Maki have been a thing for a while now, she knows how to mask her true feelings, so until she had you pinned against a tree, you didn’t have a clue that such a need was building up in her all afternoon.

“Yeah?” you say, resting your arms atop her built shoulders, pulling her closer. “Can’t wait until after training?”

Maki tugs off her uniform jacket, leaving her in the white long sleeve she wears under her uniform, and lays it on the grass by your feet. “No, so come sit down.”

Her mouth is inseparable from yours as she helps lower your body down onto her jacket, and the moment you’re sitting down, she’s kneeled between your thighs, reaching up past your skirt to dip her fingers into the waistband of your black tights.

“Lift up your hips for me, pretty,” she murmurs against your lips. You listen, and she pulls your tights off, and then your underwear. It’s a little strange, how you’re half-naked in one of the school’s forests, but you have a hard time caring when Maki hooks her arms underneath your thighs and brings her mouth to your cunt.

“Already so wet for me,” she laughs, pressing a kiss to your pelvis, “Have you been thinking about me too?”

“Maybe,” you say, though the evidence speaks for itself. How could you not? For the entirety of the strength training session, all you could notice was Maki. With the way her defined muscles flexed as she worked through Gojo’s ceaseless exercises, it was impossible not to. You had to look over and take in how the effort contorted her elegant features, had to hear how it sharpened her breath. And every single time you glanced over to her, without fail, she was already looking at you.

“You were just as distracted,” you say, trying to keep still despite the sensation of her hot breath fanning against your cunt. “You really should be paying attention during training.”

She smirks. “I think it’ll be easier to focus after I have you cum on my tongue.”

Her warm mouth connects with your folds, forcing a choked gasp from your throat. You rock your hips back and away, caught off guard at how quickly sharp pleasure cuts through your insides, but Maki’s strong arms keep you locked in place. Her eyes flutter shut at the contact and she deeply inhales, finally gratified after wanting to be with you like this all afternoon.

Your head lolls to the side when she begins to move, licking long stripes up from your hole to your clit with a flat tongue. Pulling up the fabric of your skirt gives you an unobstructed view and you watch, eyes lidded, as she pushes her mouth further into your cunt, just unable to get enough. Then she pushes her palms gently against your thighs, opening yourself up further to her. You allow it, legs falling open, and lean back against the tree behind you.

“There we go,” she says, “Relax for me, okay?”

You realize why when a finger circles the outside of your hole. Maki’s tongue continues to bathe your clit with wet swipes of her tongue, only increasing the amount of slick coating your opening. She uses this lubrication to shallowly slip the tip of her finger in and out of you, stimulating the tight ring of muscle circling your entrance. Then, she lengthens her movements, pushing in deeper with every thrust of her fingers. Your breath comes out shaky. “Fuck…Maki…”

She begins to move her finger inside of you, pushing it up against your walls in a way that has heat rushing to your lower stomach. Your eyes flutter shut and each pump of her finger pushes a soft moan from your lips.

“If you wanted to make it up to me for being such a distraction all afternoon, those pretty noises of yours are doing the job,” Maki says.

She adds another finger, which only makes you call out her name once more in that breathy voice of yours she adores. The pressure is immense, especially with her fingers being so strong and precise.

“It’s…so much-” you say, pressing your eyebrows together. You don’t think you’ve had Maki eat you out and finger you at the same time before; the sensation is overwhelming. Every harsh thrust of her fingers is complemented by a sweet lick on your clit, a two-front war that makes you feel like you’re losing your mind. Any attempt at escaping the pleasure is nonexistent with Maki’s hold on you, and soon your stomach is twisting, like a violent undercurrent is ripping through your lower half. It’s new, and more intense than you’ve experienced before.

“Maki I…I feel weird…” you say, squirming.

“You’re doing great, pretty girl,” Maki responds before diving her tongue into your folds once more.

“I’m serious…Maki…I don’t know…” Your fingers tighten in the grass around you.

“Does it feel good?” Maki asks.

“Feels…s’good,” you respond.

“Then relax, enjoy it.”

You want to listen to her, you really do, but there’s a hesitant voice in your head, one telling you that if you give in to the pleasure, you’ll be giving in completely. You’re just so full; there’s so much pent-up energy in your body that’s begging to be released. But the more she touches you, the more encouragement and praise leaving her mouth, the less power you have over the force building up inside your core.

“I feel like I’m gonna…”

She curls her fingers inside you, pressing against your sweet spot with a force that has your body shaking and seconds away from release.

“Fuck—Maki—m’gonna—“

You’re unprepared when your orgasm hits you, and because it hits you hard, you’re helpless when fluid rushes out of you at the intense sensation. You throw your head back, pleasure rolling through your lower half and being expelled from your body. Unaffected, Maki continues to finger fuck you, only prolonging the ruthless orgasm she’s sending through your body.

“Attagirl,” Maki says, grinning.

You’re swearing, or moaning, maybe a mixture of both, as the climax pummels your poor body, and you hold onto Maki’s arms for dear life, fingers digging into the fabric of her white long sleeve.

When her movements slow, coaxing you back into reality, the haze washes off and you realize that you’ve squirted for the first time–all over Maki’s face.

You sit up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—fuck, your glasses.”

She cuts you off. “It’s hot, pretty. Don’t apologize for something you don’t have to, mkay?” She takes her glasses from her face and rubs the liquid coating them off on her jacket beneath you.

“I’ve just…that’s never happened before,” you say, still reeling from the sensation.

“Makin’ me feel special,” she says, pressing a kiss to your forehead. Then, she stands, offering you her hand. “Are you okay to walk? Everyone should be regrouping by now. I think if we stay any longer, I’ll want to try to make that happen again.”

“Uh…yeah, let’s go,” you say, grabbing onto it and letting her help you up. You’re still grappling with what just happened; you didn’t even know that could happen.

Dazed, you find your underwear on the sleeve of Maki’s jacket, uncrumple it, and pull it back up on you.

“Thanks for that,” Maki says, threading her hand into yours for the rest of the walk out of the forest.

You and Maki are the last to join the group. Aside from Gojo, who’s meeting must’ve run long. Guess training ends early today.

As you walk up to the rest of the sorcerers, Yuuji tilts his head and then points at Maki, “Did you lose your jacket?”

Your eyes widen as you realize that Maki isn’t wearing it, she’s still in her button-up. Though, it’s not like she could put it back on, your fluids had soaked the material. “I took it off when we were sparring. Guess I forgot it,” she responds.

“Is that why you took off your tights too?” Panda asks, pointing to your bare legs. Heat rushes to your face.

Maki scowls. “Last chance to mind your own or I’ll be your sparring partner next time.”

“Alright! Okay!” The rest of them hurry off but fail to do a good job pretending they aren’t whispering about the two of you.

“I’ll go grab our clothes and put them in the wash, so you go take a break okay?” She grins. “I hope I didn’t work you too hard.”

“How considerate,” you tease, “But I would prefer it if you came back to my room after doing the laundry. Maybe then you’ll be able to tire me out.”

“Alright, I’ll see you soon.”

#maki zenin x reader #zenin maki #maki x you #maki x reader #maki zenin #maki zenin smut #jjk smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk maki

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fimbry · 2 years

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Lykoi the werewolf cat breed

So I’m not going to be arguing because I’ve seen enough from enough owners over the years to have reached this conclusion, and I’m not in well enough health to come back to this. But I’m seeing the lykoi breed get more attention around tumblr lately, and I’ve gotta speak up because the breed has a dirty little secret.

I joined the Lykoi Lovers group years ago because I loved this breed, they’re super cute! I love werewolves! However, over the years, as more people got these cats, and their cats aged up (3-5+yo is when skin issues become REALLY evident) the group turned into a horror show.

This mutation really reminds me of lemon frost in leopard geckos. In the geckos, it was the desirable appearance which CAUSED the cancerous tumors. It wasn’t something that could be bred out. Similarly, it is the werewolf appearance which causes the skin issues, cysts, pimples, bleeding in the cats. You can breed away from it... and end up with a normal looking cat with fewer skin issues. You cannot seem to keep the werewolf look AND have good skin.

More below, and it IS graphic so be warned. Pus, blood, sad cats under the cut.

Let’s start with "what to know before getting a Lykoi”

Okay, inevitably bumpy? What’s that mean exactly?

“The gene that is specific to Lykoi that creates the semi hairless and roaning look is thought to be responsible for less hair follicles and possibly smaller pores. This in turn could be responsible for the cyst/pimple issue. So, it's not going to be in Sphinx or any other breed, it's specific to Lykoi. Responsible breeders are currently working on breaking away from some of the older lines with bad skin and breed Lykoi that have no or less bumps. However what happens when you breed for more coat and better skin is that it seems to lessen the look of the Lykoi. Many of the heavier coated Lykoi without skin issues lack a mask or have a very slight one.“

^^^This is pretty damning as far as the future of the breed goes. Well bred ones will not look like werewolf cats.

Okay, but that’s just a couple cats, and just one cyst. That’s not so bad---

“They definitely bother me more than her.” You sure about that?? Look at her...

Okay but that’s just a FEW cats, how bad could it b--

Again, this issue typically appears after the cat is 3-5 years old, so people buy their little werewolf cats unwise to the fact it’ll live with painful skin problems for the majority of its life.

It is the very mutation which reduces follicle count and pore size which causes the werewolf appearance and the blackheads and cysts, so I think “breeding it out” is nothing but a pipe dream. The mutation itself is what causes the problems, as mentioned earlier just like lemon frost leopard geckos.

Anyway, this has been a PSA.

#animal ethics #lykoi #cat #psa #animal cruelty #torture breeding #so many harmful mutations where people think you can keep the appearance but not the negative parts... it often does not pan out #and given the evidence i don't think it will here #for decades people tried breeding the neuro out of spider ball pythons etc #instead we just ended up with a million neuro-affected spider ball pythons good job everyone

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temporarily-your-saint · 3 months

Text

Dull Blades

benjicot blackwood & targaryen oc

UPDATED! First chunk of this just? Disappeared??? So, edited it to include the missing first part!

warnings: angst?? no warnings, really? fluff & drabble for now & soft ben ~

I got this idea for a drabble from S2 of GOT when Catelyn Stark finds her son in disarray after hearing of his father. After watching the last couple episodes of HOTD (and reading Fire and Blood recently), it’s hard not to think about all of the heartbreak between the two sides. This little drabble follows an OC I’m creating, Rhaenala, having a moment to really feel and let out her frustration and sadness. She wanders off to the woods on her own once settling into the Riverlands only to then be discovered by a certain Blackwood. Also, I know, I know, okay! I know our boy didn’t turn out to be our boy, BUT LET ME COPE, OKAY. : ‘ )

Also, part 1??? Thinking about making a second part to this…

—

Swing after swing the blade got duller and even more damaged. The log had had it. She couldn’t help it though. Everything was falling apart as she knew it. Her house, her family, everything. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.

Her breath heaved as she swung her sword. In the distance, she could hear footsteps brushing along the grass and leather moving against each other as a voice called out.

She wiped her eyes, removing all evidence of frustrated tears.

“Hey!” She heard the voice as it got closer. It was a husky voice, perhaps a young lad.

“Hey! Princess!” Lilac eyes snapped up to meet the unknown voice. Her chest rose up and down quickly as she leaned over to rest. Who was this? This lanky, dark-haired man? Rhaelana was stunned by his boldness yet captivated.

Piercing familiar eyes met hers. “We need that sword, Princess. We need every sword necessary to end every life that defends the usurper. And…” he trailed off, his eyes scanning the blade in her hands. “You’re letting that one go to waste,” he finished his sentence softly as he slowly approached closer.

Blackwood. Benjicot Blackwood.

She remembered now. Head of House Blackwood. How could she be so dense?

The princess was sent by her mother to aid their allies with the battle against the Lannister army. Benjicot had sent ravens to the queen not long before asking for aid, so Rhaelana was drafted with Valax, her grown dragon with black onyx scales. The two were a formidable pair and more than capable of assisting their Riverland allies.

Her mouth parted with a bewildered cackle, laughing uncontrollably out loud. She couldn’t help it. This truly was a sightly scene for the young lord to find his princess, wasn’t it?

She sheathed the sword as she stood upright. “My apologies, my lord. I shall be more mindful,” her voice quivered on the last word, almost making her lose her composure. He could see that, of course. It wasn’t difficult to see that she was hurting, being torn apart in every direction. Most of all, she was grieving. Grieving for those that were already lost. Grieving for those that would welcome death soon enough. And what better way to let go than by hitting something? Oh, Benjicot knew that feeling all too well.

“Princess?” He continued to walk towards her, stepping slowly only inches apart now as they stood in front of each other.

“I should be going now. There’s people expecting me and—“ But as she began to step past him, an arm reached out, hand wrapping itself around her wrist.

“I wept,” he began to speak, answering the puzzled look on the princess’s face. “The first time I lay eyes on all the bodies. It was my first time on a battlefield and afterward I felt nothing but sorrow.” His words hung heavy in the air. “War is war, princess. And with family? I dare not imagine. But you have us. You have me,” he spoke softly while searching her eyes.

The young lord realized he still held her wrist and released her, snapping the princess harshly back into reality as he let her go.

“Benjicot Blackwood,” she spoke his name sternly. The young man straightened up, gaze never faltering hers.

“Thank you. I hope to see you at the meeting,” a hopeful gleam shined in her eyes as she spoke. Her body then glided past him, her shoulder brushing his arm as she passed.

The current state of her family was doomed. But her mother’s rightful place on the throne didn’t have to be. No, she was going to fight. She was going to fight with any and every weapon possible, dull or not.

A smile danced at the corner of the young lord’s lips as she passed by. His head bowed for a moment as he responded, “Of course, princess.”

Her figure walked away from him, towards the direction of camp. If there was one thing for certain, Ben knew they’d succeed with the princess at their aid. He recognized the look in her eyes all too well. The princess was proving to be all the more captivating than he could have hoped.

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nothorses · 7 months

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I think one of the ways that tranandrophobia seems to distinguish itself from the other forms of oppression it is connected to is in the way it attempts to convince you it is indistinguishable and that transmascs are always just collateral damage to everyone else's "real" problems.

One example is the very blatent tirf claim that transphobia on its own isn't real, that it is all misdirected transmisogyny, and that transmascs only experience oppression due to our association with transfemmes.

But there is also the insistence that anti abortion laws and similar things are targeted at cis women and therefore are "women's issues" - transmascs shouldn't complain about being excluded because it "isn't about us". Same with homophobia and butchphobia. Even the terf talking point that they are just protecting "little cis girls" from making irreversible mistakes pretends that actual the transmascs being harmed is just an accident and not the goal.

Trying to talk about transandrophobia is a constant stream of "It's just transphobia. It's just misogyny. No, you can't call your experiences misogyny because that isn't about you. You can't call yourself a lesbian or a butch or compare your oppression to lesbophobia. It isn't about you. Yes, terfs hurt you, but you aren't their main target. This isn't about you. Yes, you need abortions and experience medical misogyny, but you can't talk about it because this isn't about you. You were sexually assaulted because of misdirecred misogyny. Don't make it about you. You've never contributed to the history of gay men, or lesbians, or the trans community. It isn't about you. Those cross dressers weren't trans. Stop trying to make women's history about you. You can't reclaim cunt or faggot or dyke because those words aren't about you. I don't care how many times you've been called a tranny. That word isn't about you. Why must you make everything about you?"

Because sure, transmascs exist, and we might be impacted by everyone else's oppression, but it is always thought of as a theoretical consequence of what is really going on, if it is thought of at all. Transmascs are not considered to be oppressed in our own right.

This idea gives the lawmakers plausible deniability, allies an excuse to ignore us, and feeds into transmasc erasure. If we are never the actual target to begin with, then clearly, we can't be uniquely targeted. The law makers don't need to be held accountable for their transandrophobia because it isn't like they are trying to hurt transmascs, right? We need to let the real victims speak, the ones being targeted on purpose.

Nobody ever sees the way it all piles up, and even if they do, they think "well it's just an accident, right? If we fix the main problem, then this fringe issue will go away on its own" without ever considering that transandrophobia isn't as rare, fringe, or accidental as society wants it to appear and that actual effort needs to be put into dismantling it.

It isn't that they actually believe that transandrophobia isn't real. It's that they just don't believe it is about transmascs. Because even if we are the common denominator, we are still just collateral damage and could not possibly have anything of value to say. Because as collateral damage, our issues are never our own and thus never need to be discussed on our own terms.

100%. And I think this is exactly what this sort of cycle of erasure depends on.

We are erased, our problems are erased, and our oppression is erased, which means it's easy for people to ignore us, our problems, and our oppression. There's so little evidence, so few people talking about it, and they never really see or hear anyone name us in this violence, so surely, it isn't about us at all! It must be about the people they know about already, the problems they know about, and the ones who are always readily named in these conversations.

If we're speaking up, there's no reason to believe us; if anything, we come under scrutiny for trying to talk about these issues nobody else can see. We must be crazy, hysterical, whiny and overdramatic, or perhaps malicious. We're stealing attention, stealing space, and stealing help. We might be victims, but we are incidental and unworthy victims.

And ignoring us, our problems, and our oppression means we continue to be erased. Which makes it easier to ignore us, and erase us, and easier to perpetuate violence against us. And so on.

It's understandable, in a way, for people to ignore us; most people don't know about any of this in the first place, and when they do, they're not inclined to take any of it seriously. Even if they do see convincing evidence that our problems are real and worth talking about, it's easy for that to be a one-off that they eventually forget about. Everyone else is talking about everything else, so we sort of fade away.

It's not their fault; they're not trying to ignore us. They just haven't learned to recognize violence against us, and they just don't seek us out, and can they really be blamed for that? Can they really be blamed for the violence that continues because they and others don't see or try to stop it? We're so hard to find in the first place. You know, because we've been so thoroughly erased.

There are a lot of people who've been fighting this for a long time, and even more we don't-- and probably won't-- ever know about, who've been fighting for even longer. I think it's getting better; the organized backlash against us is, imo, a sign that our reach is getting stronger and wider. But it's a hard cycle to break.

#transandrophobia #anti transmasculinity

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fataldrum · 29 days

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Dorian Gray is queer art, period.

Apparently Netflix has decided to make an adaption of The Picture of Dorian Gray with Dorian and Basil as siblings. Unless they're planning to go the gothic horror incest route, they've completely missed the point of the relationship between these characters.

If you haven't read the book, Basil is a painter who becomes infatuated with a beautiful young man, pouring his feelings into a painting. Dorian becomes jealous of the painting's beauty, realizing that he will never be as young and unspoiled as the version of himself on the canvas. He finds himself wishing that the painting could age instead of him. His wish is granted, allowing him to stay young and beautiful until the end, with his moral and spiritual decline reflected only in the painting.

I cannot overstate how queer this book is. Dorian is so beautiful that their first meeting inspires a wave of existential terror in Basil. Dorian changes Basil's entire understanding of art and beauty. This book is so queer it was used as evidence at Wilde's sodomy trial.

The existence of the portrait itself is tantamount to a confession of queer desire. Basil tells his friend, Lord Henry, that he can't exhibit the painting because "I have put too much of myself into it.”

Lord Henry (who will later lead Dorian into a life of vice) laughs, but Basil explains:

“[E]very portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. [...] It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”

This is how he describes meeting Dorian:

When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. [...] I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then—but I don’t know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.”

Notice that turn of phrase--it was not conscience but cowardice that made him attempt to flee. Why would conscience factor into his decision? Because he felt shame at his reaction to Dorian's perfect, beautiful face.

Lord Henry is shocked to discover Basil cares for something besides his art.

“He is all my art to me now,” said the painter gravely. “I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world’s history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.

Basil goes on to confess, "I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there."

Lord Henry still doesn't understand why there is too much of Basil in the painting, so Basil explains:

“Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself!”

Lord Henry asks how Dorian feels about Basil, and his response is absolutely tragic.

The painter considered for a few moments. “He likes me,” he answered after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”

Any adaptation that ignores the way Dorian's existence and beauty utterly destroyed Basil is doomed to be shallow and insipid. This is not just a book about a magic painting. It's a monument to queer longing.

#dorian gray #read this book it's so fucking gay

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headspace-hotel · 1 year

Text

against the logic of the lawn

Imagine a box.

This box is sealed with tape or adhesive, which shows you that it has never been opened or re-used. It is in pristine condition. Apart from that, the box could hold anything. It could contain a Star Wars Funko Pop, a printer, a shirt ordered from some sketchy online vendor, a knockoff store-brand cereal, six individually wrapped protein bars.

As a Consumer ("the" Consumer) this is your fundamental right: To purchase a box that is, presumably, identical to every other box like it.

When you Buy Product, it arrives in a box, entire of itself and without context. It has not changed since its creation. If and when Product does change—whether it is broken, spoiled, used up, or eaten—you can Buy Product that is identical in every meaningful way to the original.

It's okay if this doesn't make sense yet. (You can stop imagining the box now.)

Imagine instead a suburban housing development, somewhere in the USA.

Imagine row on row of pristine, newly built houses, each constructed with small, meaningless variations in their aesthetic, all with beige or white vinyl siding and perhaps some decorative brick, all situated on identical rectangles of land covered with freshly unrolled sod. This is the Product that every consumer aspires to Buy.

I am not exactly—qualified, or entitled, to speak on the politics of land ownership in this country. My ancestors benefited directly from the genocide of Native Americans, which allowed Europeans to steal the land they lived on, which is where a lot of wealth comes from in the end, even today. However, I have eyes in my head to see that the act of colonizing a continent, and an economic system that formed as a supporting infrastructure to colonization, have embedded something almost irreparably dysfunctional into the dominant American culture's relationship to land.

This dysfunctional Thing, this Sickness, leads us to consider land to be a Product, and to consider a human upon the land to be a Consumer.

From this point of view, land is either locked into this relationship of control and "use" to varying extents, or it is free of human influence. People trying to reason about how to preserve Earth's biosphere, working within this framework without realizing, decide that we must "set aside" large areas of land for "nature."

This is a naive and, I would reckon, probably itself colonialist way of seeing things. It appears to be well-validated by evidence. Where human population is largest, there is less biodiversity.

But I find the broad conclusions to be strikingly unscientific. The plan of "setting aside part of Earth for nature" displays little curiosity about the mechanisms by which human presence impacts biodiversity. Otherwise intelligent people, perhaps caught up in the "bargaining" phase of climate grief, seem taken in by the idea that the human species gives off a magical anti-biodiversity force field, as if feeling guiltier will fix the problems.

(Never mind that lands managed by indigenous folk actually have MORE biodiversity...almost like our species' relationship to the planet isn't inherently exploitative, but rather, the capitalist and colonialist powers destroying everything.......)

Let's go back to the image of the new housing development. This image could be just about anywhere in the USA, because the American suburban home is made for universal interchangeability, where each little house and yard is static and replaceable with any other.

Others have written about the generic-ification of the interiors of homes, how houses are decorated with the most soul-killing, colorless furnishings to make them into Products more effectively. (I think @mcmansionhell wrote about it.)

This, likewise, is the Earth turned into a Product—razed down into something with no pre-existing context, history, or responsibility. Identical parcels of land, identical houses, where once there was a unique and diverse distribution of life. The American lawn, the American garden, the industry that promotes these aesthetics, is the environmental version of that ghastly, ugly "minimalism" infecting the interiors of homes.

The extremely neat, sparse, manicured look that is so totally inescapable in American yards originated from the estates of European aristocracy, which displayed the owner's wealth by flaunting an abundance of land that was both heavily managed and useless. People defend the lawn on the basis that grass tolerates being walked upon and is good for children to play, but to say this is *the* purpose of a lawn is bullshit—children are far more interested in trees, creeks, sticks, weeds, flowers, and mud than Grass Surface, many people with lawns do not have children, and most people spend more time mowing their lawn than they do doing literally anything else outside. How often do you see Americans outside in their yards doing anything except mowing?

What is there to do, anyway? Why would you want to go outside with nothing but the sun beating down on you and the noise of your neighbors' lawn mowers? American culture tries to make mowing "manly" and emphasizes that it is somehow fulfilling in of itself. Mowing the lawn is something Men enjoy doing—almost a sort of leisure activity.

I don't have something against wanting a usable outdoor area that is good for outdoor activities, I do, however, have something against the idea that a lawn is good for outdoor activities. Parents have been bitching for decades about how impossible it is to drag kids outdoors, and there have been a million PSAs about how children need to be outside playing instead of spending their lives on video games. Meanwhile, at the place I work, every kid is ECSTATIC and vibrating with enthusiasm to be in the woods surrounded by trees, sticks, leaves, and mud.

The literal, straightforward historical answer to the lawn is that the American lawn exists to get Americans to spend money on chemicals. The modern lawn ideal was invented to sell a surplus of fertilizer created after WW2 chemical plants that had been used to make explosives were repurposed to produce fertilizer. Now you know! The more analytical, sociological answer is that the purpose of the lawn is to distance you from the lower class. A less strictly maintained space lowers property values, it looks shabby and unkempt, it reflects badly on the neighborhood, it makes you look like a "redneck." And so on. The largest, most lavish McMansions in my area all have the emptiest, most desolate yards, and the lush gardens all belong to tiny, run-down houses.

But the answer that really cuts to the core of it, I think, is that lawns are a technology for making land into a Product for consumers. (This coexists with the above answers.) Turfgrass is a perfectly generic blank slate onto which anything can be projected. It is emptiness. It is stasis.

I worry about the flattening of our imaginations. Illustrations in books generally cover the ground outdoors in a uniform layer of green, sometimes with strokes suggesting individual blades of grass if they want to get fancy. Video games do this. Animated shows and movies do this.

Short, carpet-like turfgrass as the Universal Outdoor Surface is so ubiquitous and intuitive that any alternative is bizarre, socially unacceptable, and for many, completely unimaginable. When I am a passenger in a car, what horrifies me the most to see out the window is not only the turfgrass lawns of individuals, but rather, the turfgrass Surface that the entire inhabited landscape has been rendered into—vacant stretches of land surrounding businesses and churches, separating parking lots, bordering Wal-Marts, apartment complexes, and roadsides.

These spaces are not used, they are almost never walked upon. They do nothing. They are maintained, ceaselessly, by gas-powered machines that are far, far more carbon-emitting than cars per hour of use, emitting in one hour the same amount of pollution as a 500-mile drive. It is an endless effort to keep the land in the same state, never mind that it's a shitty, useless state.

Nature is dynamic. Biodiversity is dynamic. From a business point of view, the lawn care industry has found a brilliant scheme to milk limitless money from people, since trying to put a stop to the dynamism and constant change of nature is a Sisyphean situation, and nature responds with increasingly aggressive and rapid change as disturbance gets more intense.

On r/lawncare, a man posted despairingly that he had spent over $1500 tearing out every inch of sod in his yard, only for the exact same weeds to return. That subreddit strikes horror in my heart that I cannot describe, and the more I learn about ecology, the more terrible it gets. It was common practice for people in r/lawncare to advise others to soak their entire yard in Roundup to kill all plant life and start over from a "blank slate."

Before giving up, I tried to explain over and over that it was 100% impossible to get a "blank slate." Weeds typically spread by wind and their seeds can persist for DECADES in the soil seed bank, waiting for a disastrous event to trigger them to sprout. They will always come back. It's their job.

It was impossible for those guys to understand that they were inherently not just constructing a lawn from scratch, and were contending with another power or entity (Nature) with its own interests.

The logic of the lawn also extends into our gardens. We are encouraged to see the dynamism of nature as something that acts against our interests (and thus requires Buy Product) so much, that we think any unexpected change in our yard is bad. People are sometimes baffled when I see a random plant popping up among my flowers as potentially a good thing.

"That's a weed!" Maybe! Nonetheless, it has a purpose. I don't know who this stranger is, so I would be a fool to kill it!

A good caretaker knows that the place they care for will change on its own, and that this is GOOD and brings blessings or at least messages. I didn't have to buy goldenrod plants—they came by themselves! Several of our trees arrived on their own. The logic that sees all "weeds" as an enemy to be destroyed without even identifying ignores the wisdom of nature's processes.

The other day at work, the ecologist took me to see pink lady's slipper orchids. The forest there was razed and logged about a hundred years ago, and it got into my head to ask how the orchids returned. He only shrugged. "Who knows?"

Garden centers put plants out for sale when they are blooming. People buy trees from Fast Growing Trees dot com. The quick, final results that are standard with Buy Product, which are so completely opposite the constant slow chaos of nature, have become so standard in the gardening world that the hideous black mulch sold at garden centers is severed from the very purpose of mulch, and instead serves to visually emphasize small, lonely plants against its dark background. (For the record, once your plants mature, you should not be able to SEE the mulch.)

Landscapers regularly place shrubs, bushes, trees and flowers in places where they have no room to reach maturity. It's standard—landscapers seem to plan with the expectation that everything will be ripped out within 5-10 years. The average person has no clue how big trees and bushes get because their entire surroundings, which are made of living things (which do in fact feel and communicate) are treated as disposable.

Because in ten years, this building won't be an orthodontists' office, in ten years, this old lady will be dead, in ten years, the kids will have grown, and capitalism is incapable of preparing for a future, only for the next buyer.

The logic of the lawn is that gardens and ecosystems that take time to build are not to be valued, because a lush, biodiverse garden is not easily sold, easily bought, easily maintained, easily owned, or easily treated with indifference. An ecosystem requires wisdom from the caretaker. That runs contrary to the Consumer identity.

And it's this disposable-ness, this indifference, that I am ultimately so strongly against, not grass, or low turf that you can step on.

What if we saw buying land as implying a responsibility to be its caretaker? To respect the inhabitants, whether or not we are personally pleased by them or think they look pretty? What creature could deserve to be killed just because it didn't make a person happy?

But the Consumer identity gives you something else...a sense of entitlement. "This is MY yard, and that possum doesn't get to live there." "This is MY yard, and I don't want bugs in it." "This is MY yard, and I can kill the spiders if I want to."

Meanwhile there is no responsibility to build the soil up for the next gardener. No responsibility to plant oaks that will grow mighty and life-giving. No responsibility to plant fruit-producing trees, brambles, and bushes. None of these things, any of which could have fulfilled a responsibility to the future. Rather, just to do whatever you damn well please, and leave those that come after with depleted, compacted soil and the aftermath of years of constant damage. It took my Meadow ten years to recover from being the garden patch of the guy that lived here before us. Who knows what he did to it.

The loss of topsoil in all our farmland is a bigger example, and explains how this is directly connected to colonialism. The Dust Bowl, the unsustainable farming practices that followed, the disappearance of the lush fertile prairie topsoil because of greed and colonizer mindset, and simple refusal to learn from what could be observed in nature. The colonizing peoples envisioned the continent as an "Empty" place, a Blank Slate that could be used and exploited however.

THAT is what's killing the planet, this idea that the planet is to be used and abused and bought and sold, that the power given by wealth gives you entitlement to do whatever you want. That "Land" is just another Product, and our strategies for taking care of Earth should be whatever causes the most Buy Product.

It's like I always write..."You are not a consumer! You are a caretaker!"

#plants #native plants #no lawns #kill your lawn #anti lawn #consumerism #capitalism #colonialism #genocide tw

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atypicalamortentia · 1 year

Text

Riddle's Diary || Tom Riddle

Synopsis - A few days into your last year at Hogwarts, you wake up to find an unusual diary nestled between your class books. After uncovering its secret, the diary very quickly becomes the only thing you can think about.

Warnings - SFW.

Notes - All characters a 18+

Word Count - 4k.

[Caffeinate Me]

You weren’t exactly sure where the diary came from. You had woken up one morning to find it neatly nestled between your class books on your bedside table. You had asked around Hogwarts to see if anybody had put it there, alas nobody had owned up to placing it in your belongings.

The diary itself was plain black and made of leather. The unrecognised name of ‘Tom Marvolo Riddle’ was written in gold on the bottom of the very back of the diary. As you studied the diary, your first instinct was to flick through the pages but when you did, you saw they were all empty. It was as if the diary was brand new. Unused. You shrugged and placed the diary neatly back where it had been and went about your day as usual, forgetting all about it until you returned back to your dorm room that evening.

When everybody had gone to bed and you were sure everybody was asleep, you grabbed the diary and made your way down to the common room where you sat at a desk facing a window, looking out at the clear night sky. You admired the diary for the second time today and sighed. “Where did you come from?” You muttered to the diary. You opened it to the middle page and inspected the lining of the book. You were looking for any evidence that there had been pages ripped out, but the lining of the diary remained intact suggesting that there hadn’t been. Just as you were about to close the book and head back to bed, words appeared on the page in front of you:

Hello.

You shook your head and squeezed your eyes shut tightly before reopening them and looking at the page the words had appeared on. There was nothing there. “I must be going mad,” you whispered to yourself. You were about to close the diary once more before words appeared on the page again:

No, you’re not going mad.

Then, as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared without a trace. You picked up the diary and looked closely at the page.

My name’s Tom Marvolo Riddle. What’s yours?

You gasped loudly. What sort of magic was this? You watched as the words disappeared from the page before you looked at the ink pot that sat neatly on the corner of the desk you were sitting at. “Am I really going to do this?” You asked yourself before picking up the feathered quill pen and writing your name on the page of the diary. You waited for a few seconds, not sure what you were expecting to happen but just like the words you had seen, your name simply disappeared from the page. In its place was a response:

That’s a pretty name for a pretty girl.

The words were gone and the page was yet again blank. Did a diary really just call you pretty? You shook your head once again and allowed the quill in your hand to glide across the page as you wrote your reply:

What is this book?

You waited a few seconds before a response came.

My diary.

“But why would somebody enchant a diary?” You asked aloud to yourself.

So I can live forever.

“Oh,” you frowned at the words on the page. Whatever it was, whoever it was, they could hear you speak? This was magic you had never encountered before, nor even knew was possible. You didn’t respond to the diary and instead looked out of the window as your mind whirled with possibilities. You still didn’t even know where this diary had come from and now you were up in the middle of the night talking to it? When you finally looked down at the page, you saw another sentence:

It’s late. You should go to bed beautiful.

You closed the diary without writing a goodbye. You were shaken and confused. “It is late,” you mumbled to yourself looking at the grandfather clock situated in the corner of the common room. This all had to be one weird dream. You would wake up in the morning to no diary that could hear you or write to you and you’d tell your best friends about it and you’d laugh about the weird dream. Yeah. That would happen. You grabbed the diary and stood up, making your way back to the girls dorm and climbing back into bed. You placed the diary back where it was when you found it and fell into a deep sleep.

You were the last to wake in the morning and the first thing you did was look for the diary. There it was, right where you left it. So it wasn’t a weird dream? You opened the diary and waited for words to appear, but none did. “Maybe I was just so sleep deprived I imagined the whole thing,” you whispered to yourself. You waited for a few more moments and still no words appeared. “What am I thinking?” You groaned and threw the diary onto the bed before getting ready for the day to come.

Your first class of the day was potions. It was probably your favourite class, but as you sat and listened to Professor Snape drawl on about various different potions you just couldn’t concentrate. No matter how hard you tried. Your mind kept lingering back to the diary and the night before. After potions class you had a free period. You tended to sit in the library and study, but yet again you couldn’t concentrate. You found yourself sneaking back to the common room and acquiring the diary, placing it in your bag before going to your second, and final, class of the day. You found yourself peering at the dairy in your bag throughout the lesson through the corner of your eyes, not paying attention to the Professor that was trying to teach you Defence Against The Dark Arts. The lesson was soon over and you evaded your friends to head back to the common room in an attempt to communicate with the diary once more. You sat at your bed, pen in hand, and began to scrawl onto the page in front of you.

Was I dreaming last night?

You waited a second and before you knew it, the words you wrote had disappeared leaving a response in its wake.

No.

Your eyes widened and your heart began to thump desperately in your chest. You shook your head and watched as the words left the page until it was blank once more. You were about to write back about how insane this was but the diary beat you to it.

You think this is crazy, don’t you?

You nodded and cried out, “yes!”

It’s not. It’s magic.

“Well duh,” you groaned loudly.

“Y/N, are you okay?” Your friend's voice came from the other side of the girls' dorm. You panicked and snapped the diary shut before throwing it under your pillow just in time for your friend to walk in.

“I’m fine,” you said, blinking rapidly at her.

“I heard you say ‘yes’ extremely loudly,” she looked around the room realising nobody else was in there but you. “Who were you talking to?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

You frowned and shrugged, making up a quick lie. “Just thought of the answer to some homework I have. Been thinking about it for days and it finally came to me.”

“That’s… good…” Your friend said slowly before backing out of the room leaving you alone yet again. When you were sure she was gone, you grabbed the diary back from under your pillow and opened it.

Ashamed of me?

The diary wrote. You raised an eyebrow and wrote back instantly.

You’re a diary.

That’s not a no.

You scoffed. You weren’t ashamed per say, just confused. It was a damn talking diary! You needed to find out more about the diary before you let people see you with the damn thing. You sat crossed-legged on the bed, pen in hand, and continued to talk to the diary.

So. Tell me about yourself.

The diary responded instantaneously with a counter question:

Why don’t you tell me about yourself, pretty girl?

You rolled your eyes. Out of all the magical things you thought would make a blush rise to your cheeks, a diary certainly wasn’t one of them.

Stop calling me “pretty girl”.

Why should I?

You bit your bottom lip as you wrote back furiously.

You don’t know what I look like.

Are you sure about that?

You paused and looked around the room. Surely your friends weren’t pulling a prank on you with this diary were they? When you didn’t answer, the diary continued to write to you.

Why don’t I show you who I am?

Your heart continued to beat rapidly in your chest and before you knew it, you were being sucked into the diary. You looked around the room and recognised it as your dorm room. The diary was nowhere to be found and so, not sure what had happened you smoothed down your uniform and began to walk out of the room. Things looked exactly the same and you made your way out of the common room to the grand staircase. There, you saw a man with curly hair and the most piercing brown eyes standing at the bottom of the staircase. He looked on as someone was taken away, covered by a sheet - someone had died? You didn’t recognise the man and his robes were slightly different to yours and it was then that you realised you were in a different time era. The cogs were turning in your head when suddenly you were interrupted by a voice you were familiar with. “Tom?” You looked to see Professor Dumbledore standing in front of the man, shielding his view as the body was wheeled away.

“Tom?” You asked loudly, but nobody turned to look at you. “Tom Marvolo Riddle?”

“What’s happened Professor?” Tom asked Professor Dumbledore who looked on sadly, placing his hand on the man’s shoulders.

As the pair talked, you walked next to Dumbledore and waved a hand in front of his face. When he didn’t acknowledge you, you began to realise what was happening. These were memories. Tom’s memories to be exact. The two began to fade away and suddenly you were left alone in the corridor before you were sucked back out of the diary and onto your bed. You blinked a few times and looked at the diary that lay on your bed. “What the hell was that?” You asked yourself, opening the diary to the first page.

That was a memory of mine, my dear. You see, I used to be a student at Hogwarts.

You raised an eyebrow before picking the pen back up and scribbling back.

Used to be?

Yes, used to be. A long time ago.

“That explains why I didn’t recognise you,” you said, knowing that the diary would respond to your mumbling.

Exactly. Who could forget a handsome face like mine?

The diary replied. You yet again rolled your eyes and scoffed. The diary wasn’t wrong though, he was extremely handsome.

What are you thinking about?

The diary asked. This made you think about what you were thinking about and instantly you shook your head as if trying to shake the thoughts from your brain.

Nothing.

Came your response. You continued to shake your head, not allowing the thoughts to re-enter your mind of Tom Riddle. You bid your goodbyes before closing the diary and placing it back under your pillow - not allowing the diary time to say goodbye.

An hour had passed since you last spoke to the diary and you were already itching to talk to it again… To talk to him again. Despite having your friends around you, sometimes you felt like an outcast. Somebody who didn’t belong. This diary was making you think… Was making you feel. “This is ridiculous,” you whispered to yourself as you walked down the hall to the Great Hall. You opened the large doors to the Great Hall and were met with crowds of people gathering around their house tables, eating away at the large feast that was spread out across the long tables.

“Y/N!” Your friend called, standing up and waving her arms to catch your attention. “Over here!” You smiled weakly at her and walked over to your house table, settling down next to your friend. “Where have you been? We haven’t seen you all day!”

“I erm…” You whispered, looking down at your skirt. “I’ve not been feeling well. I’ve been in the girls dorm for most of the afternoon, just resting.”

“Are you feeling better?” Another one of your friends asked you, to which you just nodded a response. “Good.”

You began to eat the food on your plate silently as you continued to think back to Tom Riddle's memory. There was no denying that if that man was Tom Riddle, he was extremely handsome. Charmingly handsome. His brown eyes were inviting as he looked past Dumbledore at the gurney the covered body was laying on. They twinkled as if they were harbouring a deep secret, one you were sure you could get out of the diary if you asked.

“Y/N?” Your friend shouted, grabbing your shoulder and shaking you, grabbing your attention from your thoughts. “I said have you done the potions homework?”

You looked at your friend with a mouthful of food and shook your head. Gulping the food down, you began to speak. “When is it due? I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“Like what Y/N?” Your friend hissed silently. “This is our last year for goodness sake! Get your head in the game or you’ll fail your exams!”

You straightened your body and nodded. “You’re right.”

“I know,” she smiled, brushing off her shoulder playfully. You turned back to your food and continued eating in silence as your friends around you chattered and laughed. Before you knew it, you were making your way back to the common room quickly, alone yet again. You walked up the moving staircases, being careful not to get trapped on the revolving stairs as you hurriedly made your way back to your dorm. You got into the girls dorm and slammed the door shut behind you. When you realised you were alone you walked over to your bed and picked up your pillow revealing the leather diary you had been thinking about non-stop for the last twenty-four hours. You could tell in your gut that this diary was going to become a problem for you. You picked it up and sat down on your bed opening the book.

Did you miss me?

Your eyes widened at the words on the page.

No.

You lied.

Liar.

No.

This continued for several minutes before you gave in.

I suppose I missed the company you seem to bring me.

You wrote. Your heart was yet again thumping in your chest as you scribbled the words on the empty, yellow parchment.

How cute.

Cute? You wouldn't exactly call it ‘cute’. It was more sad than anything. Talking to a diary, memories of somebody from the past as opposed to your kind, caring and loving friends. You gripped the diary tightly between your fingers, folding the book ever-so-slightly. Your leg was bouncing off the floor as you thought about what to say to Tom next. Alas you didn’t have to think before more words were scrawled on the page.

How was your day?

“My day?” You mumbled to yourself, grasping the pen tightly in your hand as you began to write back.

My day was okay. I haven’t been able to concentrate on my studies today.

And why is that?

“This damned diary,” you said loudly. You placed the diary, open, next to you gently on the bed and stood up. With your head in your hands, you grasped your hair and pulled ever-so-slightly whilst groaning in frustration.

What is it about my diary that is so distracting to you, my dear?

You looked down at the diary on your bed and sighed. You picked it up again and replied.

It’s like having a constant friend in my bag.

You didn’t have to wait long for Tom’s reply.

A friend?

“Yes, a friend,” you whispered in a hushed voice.

But, that’s a good thing isn’t it? To have a friend with you at all times, no matter where you are. No matter what you do.

You thought for a moment. You supposed it was a good thing, but again you knew this diary was going to become a problem for you if you kept it.

I have to give your diary away.

You wrote on the empty page after much deliberation.

NO!

Tom replied. There was an urgency in his writing. The capitalisation of the letters sent your heart into a frenzy. This diary, this Tom Riddle, had been in your life for roughly twenty-four hours now and you were already starting to feel attached.

Why do you have to give my diary away, pretty girl?

You bit your bottom lip as you ran the pads of your fingers across the parchment. The words dissolve off the page in the blink of an eye. The thought of that handsome boy in the memory calling you a pretty girl brought a blush to your face. You shook your head. You couldn’t be thinking like that. You didn’t know a thing about this Tom Riddle, about this diary.

We should meet.

The words flashed on the page.

“Meet? How could we possibly meet?” You asked the diary, confusion laced your voice.

Magic.

Came the reply. In an instant you were sucked into the diary yet again. You stood up off the bed and brushed yourself off, taking in the room around you: you were in another memory. There was movement in the corner of the room and your eyes shot to the darkness of the room's corner. A figure loomed in the shadows and your heart began to thump, your ears began to ring and your legs began to shake. Were you trembling out of fear? Out of anticipation? You weren’t quite sure.

“I’ve been very anxious to meet you,” a voice came from the shadows. Stepping into the light, the curly haired male from the first memory stood in front of you.

“T-Tom?” You asked, ears still ringing.

The man took a few steps towards you, a twisted smile graced his lips as he spoke confidently in response. “Yes. It’s me.”

“H-How is this even possible?” You asked. You were breathless as Tom continued to stalk towards you.

“It’s simple magic really,” Tom replied. He was now standing mere feet away from you and you could truly admire his features in the girls dorm light. “Have you been as anxious to meet me as I have to meet you?”

You shook your head as your throat ran dry. You gulped down a lump and spoke, trying your best to sound unaffected by him. “You’re just a memory.”

“I may be just a memory, but that doesn’t mean I’m not real,” he whispered, bringing his face closer to yours. He looked deeply into your eyes before his gaze dropped down to your lips and back up to your eyes again. “It doesn’t mean that what I don’t feel is real…”

“What do you mean?” You asked softly.

Tom brought a hand up to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear. His face was so close to yours that you could feel his breath on the side of your face. It was warm, intoxicating almost. You felt your heart flutter as his hand dropped from your hair and to your hand that rested next to you. He held it up to his heart which you could feel beating in tandem with your own. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I feel Y/N.”

You shook your head a ‘no’ as he spoke to you, lips gracing your ear seductively. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He pulled away from your face and stood up straight. Brown eyes twinkling in the dim light of the room, staring into your soul. “Liar,” he whispered, a chuckle escaping his lips.

“Tom…” You whispered breathlessly. You sucked in a breath and moved closer to him, touching his shoulders gently with shaky hands. “I can touch you?”

“Of course you can,” Tom smirked. “And I can touch you.” He responded with a hand ghosting your hip, pulling your body closer to his. Your heart was skipping beats at his touch and you looked up at him. “I can even kiss you, if you want me too.” Tom’s hands cupped your face as he brought it closer to his own, gaze flickering down to your lips seductively.

“Why would you kiss me?” You whispered to him, eyes burning into his own. You desperately wanted to look away out of embarrassment, but you kept strong.

“Because I’m in love with you,” he said so nonchalantly.

Your eyes widened and you stepped back at his words, visibly recoiling. “Excuse me?” You asked, raising your eyebrow.

“You heard me,” Tom replied as he dropped his hands from your cheeks and gripped onto your hip, earning a squeak from you. “I’m glad you found my diary.”

“I didn’t find it,” you whispered. “It was placed in my belongings and was there when I woke up the other morning.”

Tom hummed and with his free hand, stroked his chin. “Fate has brought us together then, my love. Together, we can do it.”

You pulled away from Tom’s grasp and looked at him with confusion on your face. “Do… What?”

“Open the Chamber Of Secrets, of course,” Tom replied. The Chamber Of Secrets? What on earth was the Chamber Of Secrets? Your face must have asked the question before you could vocalise it, and Tom chuckled. “You don’t know about the Chamber Of Secrets?” You shook your head. “What are they teaching you at this forsaken school,” Tom said whilst rolling his eyes.

“Magic,” you answered softly.

Tom continued to roll his eyes at your answer but he leaned in closer to you once more, his breath fanning across your face causing your entire body to shiver in anticipation. “Will you help me?” He asked. Without even thinking, you found yourself nodding a simple ‘yes’. Tom pulled away from your ear and smirked down at you. “Good. Good. We shall waste no time and get to work immediately.”

“Okay…” You nodded slowly. You looked into Tom’s eyes and felt your palms get sweaty almost instantly at the way he was looking at you. There was a hint of need there, possession maybe. Whatever it was, you couldn’t quite place it.

“About that kiss,” Tom whispered huskily, stepping one step closer to you so that he was now invading your personal space. “Would you like it?”

Before you even thought about it, your head was nodding a ‘yes’. Tom was grinning at you, licking his lips before he placed them on yours softly. You whimpered the second his lips touched yours but melted into the kiss almost immediately. You felt Tom’s hands rest on your hips, gripping tightly and pulling you flush against his chest protectively. Tom wasted no time in deepening the kiss, pushing you backwards until your back hit a wall behind you. You were suddenly trapped and wouldn’t be able to get away from him if you wanted to. Your cheeks were on fire as you felt Tom bite down on your bottom lip between his teeth before he pulled away and looked at you.

“How was that?” He asked breathlessly. His arms had fallen from your hips and were now resting on either side of your head as he leaned above you against the wall.

“Best fake kiss I’ve ever had,” you whispered, voice low and nervous.

“I think it’s time I return you to your time,” Tom said, a hint of sadness in his voice. “I just wish I could keep you here with me… Forever.”

You blushed furiously at his words and before you knew it, you were being transported out of the diary and you were sitting back on your bed in the girls dorm. The diary was once again open and a few words were sprawled on the page for you to see:

Come visit me again soon sweetheart.

#tom riddle #tom riddle x reader #tom marvolo riddle #tom marvolo riddle x reader #lord voldemort #lord voldemort x reader #voldemort #voldemort x reader #harry potter #harry potter imagines #harry potter x reader #harry potter imagine #tom riddle imagine #tom riddle imagines #tom riddle x you #tom riddle x y/n #tom riddle fluff

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foggyfrogss · 6 months

Text

「 OXIDIZE 」 ˎˊ

tf! Sukuna x f! Reader | Warnings: MDNI, sexual content

Discord 21+

Summary: You and Sukuna indulge in each other for the night.

He was not a gentleman, but you could say he was a gentle man.

With the way his large hands softly move over your body, it resonates throughout you intensely. As if he’d left bruises. His touch lights your skin ablaze, leaving you hot. Yet, he touches you like a freshly bloomed wildflower, gently picking it to avoid bruising.

Perhaps he understands just how big the difference is in your sizes; a fear of hurting you. No matter how many times you explain to him he can’t hurt you, the same tenderness remains.

Pink hair tickles at your exposed skin, dancing softly as he kisses the valley between your breasts. His nose drags into your skin while his silkened lips demonstrate his hunger. You can feel the way his heavy breaths puff into your skin, it’s warm and feeds the eager butterflies inside of you.

They swarm excitedly around your core.

Four arms seem a bit excessive, but the thought slips when you feel them hold you as they do. The top pair hold your wrists in place beside your head while the bottom find places on your body that crave attention. In the curve or your waist one hand rests as the other holds himself up. Again, he doesn’t want to put too much pressure into your wrists; scared of hurting you.

From above, you see the concentrated look of his face, twisted into his famous resting scowl. His eyes are closed, but they open to gaze up at you. He probably sensed your attention.

Red; it’s deep and rousing. They’re discernibly hungry.

Hungry for you.

All four gaze up, his left side hooded by the blanket of pink, full eyelashes. Eyelashes you grew to be jealous of. A faint, but evident crimson blush decorates his cheeks. Not because he is embarrassed, but because he is on fire. Inflamed, he is pressing into your core. His hardened cock is making itself known. You return his amorous gestures as you buck up into him.

Yet, as he presses into you, he’s moved his head up further. Hot kisses trail from your chest to your collar bone, spreading slowly to the curve of your neck. You’re tilting your head to the side, giving him more access; more control.

His sharp teeth lightly graze across your skin. Though it’s already littered with love marks, he plants more, claiming his territory.

Tongue following, it runs a stripe up to the start of your jawline below your ear. His breathing is still heavy next to your ear. It’s hot. A heavy grunt, from deep within his chest, could be heard as you continue to press up into him. Any distance between the two of you needed to be closed.

He’s kissing down your jawline, worshipping your skin like it was the finest meal brought to him. Ironically enough, his favorite meal was women.

He just would rather devour you in this way. It allowed him to have you as many times as he pleased.

“You are the most intoxicating and dangerous woman I have ever met,” he tells you. His lips press a light kiss to the corner of your mouth, causing your lips to burn with anticipation.

Ryomen Sukuna had called you dangerous. You wondered how to take that… Though stunned, you realize just how shocking it was for this man to even admit that… It was a compliment, a kind you were sure he’d never admit. He was a proud man, sure of himself and his abilities.

“I think of ripping your flesh from your body constantly, just to see how you taste…” He’s looking down at you with his heavy eyes. Your chest raises as you take in a deep breath, breathless from his words. “I bet you’re sweet, like a forbidden fruit.”

“Yet, the very fact that I couldn’t have you again after that irks me,” he’s muttering out huskily. “I would go mad.”

For someone who touches you so gently, he speaks with strong vehement. His brutish, aggressive vocabulary and behavior completely unparalleled to the actions in which he presents to you.

The man is a killer, eating humans for pure enjoyment and pleasure. A selfish man who is exceptionally sadistic. Cold-hearted but not for you. His heart warms you in ways no other being could. Nothing could compare.

You allow him to devour you in the way he does now, even knowing he’d never let you go.

A prisoner to Ryomen Sukuna.

From below, you admire the darkness of his tattoos that embellish his striking face. His fair skin glows from the lanterns in the room, but the pink of his cheeks remains prominent. Your eyes flicker around, following the lines on his jaw to his chin then back to his eyes.

Pink eyebrows furrow together while he studies you from above. It was as if he casted a curtain of pure lust by the way he gazed down.

His jaw clenches.

“I am yours,” you finally say in your hushed voice. The words pass easily through your lips, only because you were certain you meant it.

Eager to say it.

He seems to enjoy your words. Lips raise into a proud smirk as a deep, but quiet chuckle erupts from him. His blush seems to have grown darker, which causes your lips to turn up a bit. It thrills you to see such a beast crested in a rosy hue that you’d caused.

It makes you proud.

“I am yours,” you repeat again, reaching a hand towards his face. His skin is on fire, lighting your fingertips ablaze as you’re caressing his cheek. It’s soft, forming into the palm of your hand as you cup his face. Your fingertips just barely reach the edge of his hairline past his ear.

“So have me.”

Your words push him over the edge, causing a low growl to erupt from his throat. He’s moving his hips up a bit, positioning himself to fit you.

With an airy gasp, you’re feeling the bottom side of his shaft slide up against your clit, gathering your wetness. His size could be felt even from the minuscule movements. Though you’ve had him many times before, it always felt new. The pure excitement and intimidation never left.

You watch as he leans his hips back, only to bring them forward, placing his tip against your needy entrance. You’re taking in a shaking breath, eager to feel him… He’s sliding in without issue, thanks to your wetness.

Instantly you are taking hold of his arms, releasing his face. Your fingers latching into his tattoos biceps that cage you in.

His cock stretches you, pushing deep into you and kissing your cervix with his large tip. “God,” you whimper out, clenching your teeth as he slides his hips further into you, bottoming out completely. Even now, you’re amazed you’re able to take all of him.

Sukuna’s body is fully pressed into you, stomach against yours. His elbows dig into the fabric of the futon as he supports himself. His other pair of arms do the same, unable to do anything else as he presses into you. It’s just enough, you realize. He would not crush you.

When he begins to slowly drag out a bit, you feel a puff of warm air spread over your face. You realize how close his face is to yours, feeling the softness of his lips just barely touching your cheek.

“You are so tight,” he’s murmuring into your cheek as he presses a kiss. He’s bucking into you once more, grunting into your skin.

Your clit is suddenly stimulated, feeling a warmness as if he’d placed a hand down there… You’re moaning, biting your lip.

It’s his second cock, probably the one closer to his stomach. The top one. It’s sliding against your swollen cunt as he drags himself in and out of you.

His top right hand moves to cup your face, angling your head to your left so he can access your neck. Lips finding your sensitive skin, you’re panting as he quickens his pace, pressing his body into you a bit harder. You realize he’s attempting to stimulate his other cock this way.

It lights you on fire, feeling him use you this way.

You’re moving your left hand between the gap between his two arms, placing a hand on his back. He nips at the skin of your neck, grunting in rhythm with his thrusts. You take your other hand and find the hair on the back of his head, holding onto it.

With a light tug, he’s growling again, directly into your ear now.

His thrusts are a good pace, not slow but not fast, they’re just right. It’s hitting the sweet spot within you each time. His top cock helping you reach your climax with each slide.

You can feel every inch of him pump in and out of you.

Yet, you feel a devious idea come to mind, which makes you remove your hand from his back.

Between your bodies your hand moves, traveling low enough to find what you are looking for. His tip thrusts up, peeking between your stomachs and you wrap your eager hand around it, finding his shaft further down. It makes him halt his movements. Curiously, he’s looking at you now. “Keep going,” you plead, sighing. “I am close.”

He continues with no issue, thrusting into the cage of your fingers. The added tightness is good, you note. Only due to the fact that you could feel the way his hands tighten in the fabric of the futon below you. You were scared he may rip it.

In one thrust, you’re crying out, feeling the sudden harshness of it. It wasn’t painful, but you weren’t prepared for it. “Ryo…” you’re mumbling out in a whimper, dragging your nails through his hair as he fucks into you. His cock inside of you throbs, just like the one in your hand. You could only imagine how good it felt for him in this moment.

Your hand is placed just above your clit, so his dick is still sliding against your folds. Each thrust brings you closer. Vision growing hazy and bright as it builds up in your core.

At this point you’re closing your eyes, whimpering uncontrollably. “I-I’m…” you’re stuttering, clenching your hand tighter around his cock as you feel the orgasm begin to blossom. “You’re so good,” you hear him praise you.

A silent gasp comes from your lips as you throw your head back. Body exploding from the intensity of your orgasm. It has your clenching your cunt around his cock, which makes him hiss in return.

As the waves of pleasure cascade around you, he’s still relentlessly thrusting into you. In your ears you can feel and hear your heartbeat; it’s erratic. You keep hold of him in your hand, wanting to help as much as you can.

Soon enough, you feel him press his lips to yours, taking in your parted lips. His tongue finds yours instantly. Thrusts become uneven, bucking into you in a broken pattern. You know he’s close, which makes you moan.

He groan into your mouth and you feel an added wet heat between your bodies. Inside, you feel him release, filling you completely. Sukuna always came a lot… So you’d have to bathe again you were sure.

“Shit,” you hear him curse after he pulls his lips from yours. You’re looking up at him in a dazed trance, completely exhausted. Though the two of you had done much more in a session, this time wore you out anyways.

He’s slowly pulling out of you, leaning back and sitting on his knees. You’re sighing as you take in the sight before you, watching him do the same to you.

“What a lovely sight,” you hear Sukuna chuckle out.

You’re covered in his cum. It’s pooled up on your stomach and running down the sides of your body. You were sure it was running out of your cunt as well.

“I can bathe again,” you tell him, knowing he won’t sleep soiled. Yet, he’s reaching a hand between your legs, sticking two digits into your pussy. “Ah!” You jolt, feeling the overstimulation from it. His two large fingers pump in and out of you a couple times before pulling back out.

“I had to make sure it all stayed in there,” he says, leaning back down to hover over you. Sukuna presses a soft kiss to your lips before bringing his fingers to them. “Clean them,” he orders. Your stomach does a flip, but you follow his orders, feeling his fingers slide between your swollen lips.

You taste yourself and him, mixed together into one salty and sweet taste. It just about riles you back up.

One of your hands holds his wrist as you lick his fingers clean, pulling them out once you’re done.

“I’ll wash you,” Sukuna is finally saying, crawling off of you to stand. As he stands you take in all that he is, four arms and everything. A beast.

You ignore the fact that he’s about to walk around his shrine fully nude, but you realize he doesn’t care. It’s his shrine. It’s also yours, you note, as he picking you up from the futon. His bottom pair of arms holds you bridal style against him, top pair hiding your nude body the best they can.

“Toys last longer if you take care of them,” is all Sukuna mumbles to you while he exits the room towards the bathing area.

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saetoru · 2 years

Text

[ LOGIC ] ALHAITHAM.

“haitham,” your voice sings, “are you jealous?” you elbow alhaitham’s side, poking his cheek and quirking your brows as an amused grin tugs at your lips. he only grunts, flipping a page of his book without sparing you a glance and pretending that he doesn’t hear you. “i know you heard me,” you pester, “you are jealous, huh?”

“i have nothing to be jealous of,” he says matter of factly, and though you can’t bring yourself to believe him, you have to admire his persistence even if a little.

alhaitham is not jealous—it’s what he tells himself, at least.

jealousy is an irrational concept, especially when two people have mutually agreed they’re exclusive—which you both have done so already. it’s an ugly emotion, it’s unbecoming of the loyalty you’ve pledged and the trust that exists between you both.

therefore, alhaitham is not jealous.

he simply thinks that logically speaking, the general mahamatra has no business standing that close to you when it’s a well known fact you’re in a relationship. based on his observations (which are seldom wrong) making you laugh so easily should be near impossible—cyno’s jokes are about as dry as the desert sand itself. alhaitham thinks it must be a pity laugh. it has to be a pity laugh—cyno is not funny, not in the slightest. and the way your eyes twinkle as you talk to him is not fondness, it’s kindness—because you’re a genuine person, that’s all.

he watches you both talk for one second, then two, and then he realizes he’s frowning. why is he frowning? there’s nothing to be jealous of when cyno is involved, the rational part of alhaitham’s mind knows this.

alhaitham is taller, a lot more muscular, he’s the (acting) grand sage—and though he hates the position, it’s evidently popular amongst the ladies. he’s smarter, and though neither him nor cyno are very social, he likes to think he’s better at analyzing people’s emotional responses and understanding human behavior. and besides that, alhaitham knows your favorite coffee order and where your favorite spot for lunch is. he knows the crinkle of your nose means you have more to say but you’re biting your tongue. he knows you laugh behind your hand because sometimes you get shy about your smile.

he knows more about you than cyno could ever imagine exists. logically speaking, alhaitham understands you far better than cyno, and he should be the optimal choice. there’s not anything to worry about, nothing that should concern him in regards to his (very stable) relationship with you. but then he remembers the way you laughed at something cyno said, the way the general mahamtra looked at you in surprise before letting his gaze soften with a tiny smile.

he grits his jaw and closes his book.

“cyno doesn’t know you as well as i do,” he starts, making you blink before you nod slowly.

“yes, that’s true,” you ponder, “i suppose he doesn’t. you’ve known me for quite some time now—”

“cyno wouldn’t have as much time for you with all his duties. i, on the other hand, leave work as soon as the clock hits five pm.”

“that’s true, you do have a tendency to leave even if they need you to stay—”

“cyno’s position as general mahamatra makes him the target of a lot of angry and dangerous people, which could prove unsafe for you too,” alhaitham continues, cutting you off.

you frown, crinkling your brows in confusion, and you have to wonder—where is he going with all of this?

“well, yeah, sure. but just so you know, i’m not weak. i can take care of myself—”

“i never said you weren’t capable,” he says instantly, “but the optimal choice for who to date would be me—which you made the right choice, of course. congratulations.”

you snort, giving him a side eye that makes him raise a brow.

“you’re hopeless, haitham,” you giggle.

“and why is that? i’ve supplied more than enough evidence why—”

and then you cut him off with a kiss. it’s a gentle kiss, a slow one where you cup his cheeks, rub the soft skin in delicate circles with your thumb, cradle the back of his head and hold him close as you linger and let him steal a taste of you while you steal one of him too.

alhaitham pulls away in a daze, the book in his hand falling to his lap without the page marked before he can even realize it, long forgotten as you press your forehead to his.

“only you would give me evidence why i should choose you,” you say, clearly amused.

“technically, it’s not evidence why you should choose me if you already did,” he retorts.

and he’s right—you have already chosen him, and you can’t say you regret it. sure, alhaitham is hard to read and nearly impossible to predict. just when you think you have him figured out, he surprises you in more ways than one. he’s too smart for his own good, and his impressive (and sometimes irritating) ability to come up with a rebuttal to everything has moments that make you want to peel your own skin off. he’s blunt and sometimes dry and it drives you up a wall that he answers you with that know-it-all attitude of his.

he never lets a single emotion sway his decisions, and you often whine over every minor inconvenience. he reads books in his free time while you look for something to watch on tv. he rarely wants to leave the house, yet you always have somewhere you want to explore or a new place you want to try. logically speaking, it shouldn’t work, but it does—and cyno will not disrupt the routine that is you, the routine that has so naturally knit itself into his life, for even one moment.

especially not with those bland jokes of his that don’t even have a proper punchline.

“just because you have an answer for everything doesn’t mean you need to give it,” you huff, “and i’m right this time. you are jealous.”

“like i said,” he shrugs, “i’m not jealous.”

“oh yeah? so if the general mahamatra requested my help for another investigation, then you wouldn’t—”

“the general mahamatra has made it this far without your help,” alhaitham says dryly, and if you look close enough, you might just make out the beginnings of a pout at the edges of his lips.

you laugh, scratching gently at his scalp as your fingers thread into his hair. “why else are you better for me?” you hum, cupping his cheek and kissing the corner of his mouth.

now that—that’s a question alhaitham will always have endless answers too. he relaxes, closes his eyes and lets you kiss along his jaw slowly as his hands find purchase of your waist.

“we’d be here all day,” he mumbles, “it’s a lengthy answer.”

“i got time,” you wriggle your brows. he chuckles—and when you laugh too, the sound of your voice in perfect harmony with the sound of his, he thinks he’s found yet another reason why.

“cyno doesn’t know you sing in the shower when you think you’re home alone,” he smirks, rubbing your hips up and down as you gape at him.

“what do you mean—”

“and he doesn’t know your favorite orders or the way you like your coffee. overall, the best option for you is me,” he nods, fighting back a chuckle when you roll your eyes.

“you sure put a lot of thought into this,” you mutter.

“of course,” he shrugs, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. and perhaps it is—there’s a sense of rationality he loses when you’re around. instead, a sense of rawness, a sense of something dangerously close to hope. “i spend a lot of time thinking about you,” he adds softly.

your face softens, and your eyes twinkle in a way that they certainly did not when cyno was around—and he suspects it’s from a lot more than just a bit of kindness.

“you sure you’re not jealous?”

“no,” he grins, “i’m very sure i’m right.”

“for once,” you kiss the corner of his mouth, watching it twitch as he stares at your lips and fights the urge to chase after them, “i’ll have to admit you’re right.”

#teepods.writings #drabbles.#alhaitham x reader #alhaitham x you #alhaitham fluff #genshin x reader #genshin x you #genshin fluff #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin impact fluff

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metalhoops · 2 years

Text

‘Of course, I remember you.’

As far as first words go, Eddie’s were a hell of a head-scratcher.

To catch up the uninitiated, everyone in the world has a soulmate. It’s been debated and speculated if a person can have more than one, but the mechanics behind soulmates was a pseudo-science at best and downright magic at worst. The first words a person’s soulmate spoke to them were inscribed somewhere on that person’s body, typically in their soulmate’s handwriting.

Doesn’t handwriting change over time? The uninitiated might ask, to which Eddie would repeat, it’s pseudo-science or magic. Either that or something like quantum mechanics, where people are pretty sure, one day we’ll understand how it works, but right now there are a lot of theories and only a little bit of evidence, most of which contradicts itself.

Most of the time, the words are boring and wholly unhelpful. He could count on two hands the number of people that simply had some variation of ‘hello’, tattooed somewhere on their body. From Eddie’s point of view, he got lucky.

He had a sentence of scratchy scrawl written on his inner arm stating, ‘of course, I remember you’. And really, what the hell was Eddie meant to make of that?

Typically, your tattoo lets you know you’d found your soulmate upon first meeting, but his words implied he’d meet his soulmate before they first speak and that it would be memorable. Wasn’t that goddamn frustrating?

His soulmate’s first words were right up there with ‘hello’ in Eddie’s list of ‘top five worse soulmate marks,’ because how the hell were those poor bastards meant to know if they’d just met the love of their life or if it was just their weird neighbour Tom? With his number one spot reserved for Gareth’s truly horrific, ‘I’d thought you’d be taller’. His soulmate was original. He’d give him that.

There was no surefire way to know your soulmate’s gender, same as there was no surefire way for a mother to ‘just know’ a baby’s gender before it was born. Yet if Eddie was being sacrilegious, as he so often was, he’d say he ‘just knew’ his soulmate was a guy.

There was nothing in the handwriting that gave it away. Nothing particularly ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ about the lettering. But ever since Eddie was a kid whenever he thought about his soulmate, he’d always think of them as ‘him’.

He would like this or that. He wouldn’t be an asshole, like the meathead jocks at Hawkins. He would be different. He’d be kind, caring, and of course, a total badass. Eddie just had to wait to meet him.

Steve’s soulmate mark drove him crazy.

‘You might not remember me’.

What the hell was Steve meant to do with that? Soulmate tattoos were meant to let you know when you’d met your soulmate, not that you’d already met them. In the days before Steve received the shake-up of his life in the form of Nancy Wheeler and the Upside Down, he had a reputation for sleeping around. He knew back then he’d been a little hopeless, but surely he’d said more than a couple of words to a girl before he slept with them.

It horrified Steve that he could meet his soulmate, in some respect, know them, and yet had never talked to them. Could he really be that much of a jerk?

He’d never thought Nancy was his soulmate. He knew their words didn’t match up. That didn’t mean he loved her any less. Statistically, the odds of meeting your soulmate were somewhere between getting crushed by a vending machine and winning the lottery. Steve’s parents weren’t soulmates and boy did that show, but a guy could dream. Call him a hopeless romantic, but Steve was holding out hope for them.

He’d almost thought his soulmate was Robin. It fit, right? They went to the same school, but they’d never really talked. He’d been so busy with his first day at a real job, he’d missed Robin’s first words to him. It wasn’t until later he’d started to expect it might be her. That was, until the pair were huddled beside each other on the floor of a bathroom stall. Robin was a lesbian and her first words, although interesting, definitely proved they weren’t soulmates.

When Steve was a kid, he’d spend hours daydreaming about what his soulmate would be like. She’d be outspoken. She’d be bold. She’d be able to make him laugh. When he’d gotten older, something changed. He didn’t know how to put it into words, at least not ones he was ready to say out loud. ‘She’ didn’t fit his soulmate quite right. So after high school, he started wondering what ‘they’ would be like. ‘They’ felt not quite right, but closer.

Their handwriting was distinct. It was all sharp-edges and odd-angles. It looked like it was trying to replicate something Steve couldn’t quite place until he walked into the record store at Starcourt and caught a glimpse of an Iron Maiden album cover. That gave Steve his first real clue as to what his soulmate might be like.

It would be another year before the same handwriting would stop him in his tracks. Dustin had marched into the Family Video store as they were shutting up shop, brandishing a notepad and talking about needing a ride to go play his fantasy game. Steve was always going to drive Dustin, but he’d been dragging his feet, to show the kid he wouldn’t always drop everything to take him places. A familiar sharp edged, odd angled handwriting stopped Steve cold.

“What are those?” Steve asked, trying to fain disinterest as his heart pounded in his ears.

“They’re notes from the last session. You know, so we can keep track of what’s happened so far in the campaign. Who’s doing what quests, how many hit points everyone’s got. Mike is currently—.” Steve couldn’t give a crap about Mike.

“Who’s writing is it?” Steve tried not to sound as desperate as he felt.

Robin must have known something was up because she moved to Steve’s side. With one glance at the notepad, she understood why Steve was acting so strangely. She’d seen his tattoo, she knew it was his soulmate’s handwriting.

“Our D.M.’s” Dustin replied. He might as well have been speaking in freaking code.

“Alright, I’ll drive you,” Steve gave in, hoping he could catch a glance of his soulmate. Maybe his tattoo was wrong, maybe he’d know his soulmate when he saw them.

They pulled up outside of the high school. He saw a group of people loitering outside the auditorium. Dustin had brought a lot of loose sheets of paper, so it only made sense Steve helped him carry his notebooks in. Most of the people there were familiar faces, the kids he’d babysat with a few exceptions.

“Well, if it isn’t our favourite bard. I’m glad you decided to grace us with your presence,” an oh-too-familiar voice crooned. A boy broke away from the crowd to meet Dustin.

He was Steve’s age. They’d gone to school together. The dude used to do all these weird soap-box sessions on their lunch table. They had gym together, and history. Steve didn’t think the two had ever actually spoken.

“I would’ve been here quicker if I hadn’t had to play twenty questions with Steve. Steve, you know Eddie, our D.M.? Weren’t you two in the same year?”

Eddie was practically shooting daggers at Dustin’s side profile, shaking his head discreetly as though hoping Steve didn’t remember who he was. He supposed Eddie always had a reputation.

“You might not remember me,” Eddie spoke before Steve could answer.

Holy shit.

“Of course, I remember you,” Steve argued and watched as Eddie’s eyes swelled to the size of dinner plates.

Both boys stood, slack-jawed and stiff-shouldered, peering at one another. Steve’s brain short-circuited, because holy shit, Eddie Munson was his soulmate. Holy shit he’d found them, him.

Steve dropped Dustin’s notes and swarmed forward without thinking, throwing his arms around Eddie. Much to his surprise, instead of freaking out, like any normal person, Eddie was waiting to catch him, leaving both of them to tumble ass backwards onto the parking lot asphalt.

They held each other in a bone-crushing hug. Steve buried his face in Eddie’s neck, surprised at how naturally the action came. He’d never hugged a man like this, hell he’d hugged no one like this. He was clinging so desperately to the man that he’d never thought he’d really find. Eddie pulled back slightly, trying to get a better look at Steve’s face. The guy’s eyes were alight with wonder and mischief.

“That was quite an entrance, Harrington. All for little old me?”

“I’ve been looking for you forever,” Steve admitted.

“Well, clearly you’ve been doing a shit job of it,” Eddie argued which earned a snort from Steve. His soulmate would be able to make him laugh.

“You’re not disappointed, you know? That your soulmate is the town Freak?”

Steve had given up on caring about labels, on caring about what other people thought. Since high school, he had changed. He was different. He didn’t want to be just another, shallow, meathead jock. He wanted to be different.

“No. Absolutely not. Why would I care?”

Dustin shattered the moment, clearing his throat and proclaiming,

“Alright, anyone care to tell me what the hell just happened?”

#steddie #steddie ficlet #fictlet #drabble #steddie drabble #obligatory soulmate au #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things au #stranger things 4 #steveddie #I love reading soulmate aus #but I've never written one #so first time for everything #metalhoops writes

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