#i thiiink it's been enough time for most of these to get to where they were going

[wereshrew-admirer]

a little zine about reunions and a letter returned to sender

(mailed out physical copies of these and enjoyed having the excuse to use a wax seal - wouldn't mind doing more! so if you want one you can either fill out this form or print one yourself!)

[marley-manson]

The first time I watched The Grim Reaper, what struck me about it most was BJ's blase attitude about Hawkeye's impending court martial - sipping a martini and telling him that Bloodworth has an open and shut case, and getting more upset about his gifted jacket than Hawkeye potentially going to jail. It was intriguing enough that it was the final push I needed to start shipping them lol, so this is my personal Beejhawk episode.

Upon rewatch it was a little less notable lol, probably because I'd built it up in my head a little bit. BJ still has his moment of dismissiveness that upsets Hawkeye, but it felt more like a continuation of his earlier chiding of Hawkeye's anger after the first scene with Bloodworth ("you came off a little strong in there" "would've been worse if I'd had my knitting needles on me.") More like they were aiming to contrast BJ's cool-headedness with Hawkeye's hot-headedness, rather than actually intending for BJ to seem shockingly unconcerned.

That said, whatever the intent, BJ still does come across as shockingly unconcerned for someone whose friend is being threatened with jail time, and I'm still intrigued by it. Like, it's a huge contrast to earlier seasons where Trapper would be perjuring himself or helping pull off a scheme that gets Bloodworth demoted or court martialed or something. Obviously it's a tonal contrast because the show is no longer a heightened satire where the characters can get away with stuff like that, but yk, from a pure character headcanony standpoint it still interests me as a shift, especially for Hawkeye.

His only ally in this episode is Potter, who patronizes him, tells him he deserves it, and then erroneously takes credit for Bloodworth dropping the charges lol. I could see Hawkeye starting to really feel more alone at this point, maybe getting clingier in some ways to make up for the emotional distance between him and his friends, and maybe responding to their detachment with his own. It's this kinda thing that I point to to justify why Hawkeye doesn't tell anyone except Charles about his dad in Sons and Bowlers, eg, or why he goes to Mulcahy instead of opening up to BJ in Letters.

Like obviously this is headcanons running wild here, but there is a reason this episode is the first one that made me really want to see Hawkeye and BJ fuck miserably lol. I don't thiiink it's the first episode that highlights the disparity between BJ and Hawkeye's attitudes and BJ's aloof, detached approach to a lot of Hawkeye's problems, but it's definitely the first one that does it with fairly high stakes. And I love it as a messed up dynamic.

[olivine-rain]

Gotta spew a ton of Kirby (specifically Planet Robobot-related) thoughts I have building up in my head, sorry, can't let there be a clog. This shit got long, so it's under a cut.

I've kind of accepted my fate of probably being judged for drawing morally questionable old men as being "cutesy" years ago thanks to me liking Hyness. (Granted, I'm probably flattering myself thinking people even notice me enough to judge me for it.) And now I realize that I'm running the same risk again with Haltmann and I'm just like man... Haltmann?

Yes both characters did horrible, terrible things, but I personally think Hyness has far less of an excuse for what happened than Haltmann did. He at least mostly recognized the Mages that he raised, even if he didn't remember Zan's name. I tend to think Susie was probably working for HWC for a couple years before the events of Robobot which probably means that man had his own daughter (who applied under HER OWN NAME) kicking around and his mind was so fucked up he didn't recognize her. You know, the whole reason he rebuilt Star Dream in the first place. What we see of Haltmann in Robobot probably isn't the culmination of his loss of self, he's BEEN gone for a while now, and is just getting worse.

I have to admit part of my feelings towards Haltmann is probably wrapped up around the fact that I find identity death to be one of the most horrifying things ever. I will never listen to Everywhere at the End of Time. The end of Flowers for Algernon totally wrecked me. God help me if I ever come down with a form of dementia. I can't say what I'd probably do on the Internet.

I'm sure if someone wanted to be a massive annoying pedant they'll point out out that yeah, technically you may not want to call what he went through an identity death. Yes, he remembers his name and who he is, of course. It's plastered all over. The thing is, as a meat vessel for a megalomaniacal clockwork star, he wouldn't be very useful if he didn't know how to sign checks, sign contracts, and otherwise use the money and reputation he built up over the years to facilitate Star Dream's plans.

What he remembered and didn't remember was probably very deliberate on Star Dream's part. All of the memories of his family, friends, loved ones, his childhood, the things that made him happy? Yeah, that's stupid organic bullshit, it could write over that. His money sense, his ruthlessness and cunning as a businessman, his greed, his ambition-- yeah, that's the good shit, use that and amplify that. Supplant his more 'human' (for lack of a better term) desires like finding daughter with the eradication of imperfect lifeforms.

Now, was he even any good before he started messing around with Star Dream? I don't know, that's the realm of fan speculation, obviously. I mean, yeah, it probably wouldn't be 'realistic' for the CEO of a massive corporation to be a good person, but Kirby is a series where a greedy gluttonous king who starts out as a villain ends up, over the course of the series, proving himself to be able to hero in his own right and was willing to put himself in danger in the place of one of his common subjects. No real monarch is doing that. It's Kirby, let me enjoy some fantasy. (Also, it just makes everything more tragic. If the fact that I like Hyness tells you anything, it should be that I LIKE TRAGEDY.)

I thiiink I got it all out of my system now.

[tonyglowheart]

same anon about the chinese terms; i keep thinking clan = extended family. wwx is adopted right? cause i keep thinking that by how fandom does it and the clan term says that's right to my brain

Nooooo think of this more like a feudal system (I don't know historical fuedal systems well enough dont quote me) or like... idk, Game of Thrones, everyone knows game of thrones now right? I don’t know Game of Thrones either, just imagine a... game of thrones-esque setting

So you have the Clan, right, and the main family of the clan? the uhh what are they, the starks, the lannisters, the whoever else. You have the main family at the center of that. But then you also have all sorts of servants and soldiers and retainers and whatever. In a feudal system you have knights and stuff. They all technically “belong with” the clan/are under the banner of the main family, but are not literally members of the family, are not adopted into the main family tree, etc. A royal companion of a royal heir in real life history, for example, could even be raised alongside the heir, attend the same classes, participate in the same activities, and they could be close as brothers. But the royal companion does not become the literal adopted sibling of the royal heir. It’s like how you might be friends with your boss, and they might consider you like family, but while the boss-employee relationship exists they’re still your boss, and there’s still that power dynamic & positional difference there.

“Traditionally,” or like, in what can be considered established xianxia/wuxia canon, you have cultivation sects that are more like apprenticeship or... guilds I guess? I only know vaguely about historical guilds, so I’m more borrowing their idea than quoting them exactly. You have masters and you have apprentices, and journeymen, etc, and apprentices can hone their still and “go up in rank” so to speak, work their way up to being a full master in the guild. It’s an organizational grouping that creates close bonds but is not necessarily a family in the nuclear family sense or like the family tree or clan sense. But MDZS cultivation families are structured much more like nobility/gentry, even if they came from humble origins, where you have the whole... core family + also the accompanying people who are under the family’s banner and thus “part of the Clan” as far as considering the clan as like, a political organization also goes. But not literal adoption into the family. 

Within wuxia/xianxia, sect-mates are actually considered more marriagable prospects than outsiders, and a lot of the romances in the dramas might be about a shixiong and a shimei or whatever. (If you think about them as a professional collective that does have close personal bonds, like a guild might, then it makes sense; you spend a lot of time around these people so you know them well already, plus if your sect has proprietary techniques you would keep that inside the sect. it’d be like if you had a childhood sweetheart, like in PotC with Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan). 

“Wei Wuxian is adopted” is the absolute Anglophone myth of the century and the bane of my existence lmao, because he’s NOT. People use it to discourse about all sorts of things and justify all sort of other things, but his standing in relation to the Jiang family is much more nuanced and complicated than “he’s adopted.” He’s a cultivator, so he’s not just a normal servant, and he’s also the head disciple, plus he can be considered, at the very least, a sort of “royal companion” to Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli even, so he does have an advanced place compared to your average Yunmeng Jiang disciple. But, like how in PotC Will was raised alongside Elizabeth, that doesn’t make them automatically adopted. Even Jiang Yanli declaring Wei Wuxian her did doesn’t mean that he is, or that he is to her, per se. Before anyone throws rocks at me - I’m not saying she doesn’t consider him like a brother, or that they’re not close. But that assertion had a very specific purpose. As mentioned, your sect-mates are actually considered to be very marriagable prospects, and Madam Jin was suggesting it would be improper for Jiang Yanli to be alone with Wei Wuxian, who is considered a potential prospect for her. Jiang Yanli’s assertion that Wei Wuxian is her didi stops the reasoning behind the suggestions of impropriety in its tracks. But that doesn’t mean she considers him literally adopted into her whole family tree, it’s not getting into that territory, it’s an interpersonal declaration between her and WWX. It also doesn’t then automatically mean that JC should see WWX as a brother in a literal adopted sense either, which I’ve seen some people argue lmao.

Plus, if Wei Wuxian were adopted, his name most likely should have changed and he should have the Jiang name; if MXTX had decided that WWX were actually adopted but kept his own name, then MXTX should have made a note about it, like she did with Madam Yu. It’s the kind of thing that’s like, you would expect it to be remarked on at least, like it should be lampshaded if nothing else.

So, yes a clan kind of would be an extended family usually, but I thiiink even in historical terms, the like retainers or generational servants would be considered as “belonging to” the Clan, since a Clan is also kind of a political organization as well socially speaking, especially if we’re talking about nobility or landed gentry, but not literally part of the family tree - main or otherwise.

Add to that, that in MDZS, MXTX plays around with clan & the idea of a cultivation collective/organization, so a clan functions both as a clan (family), clan (political), and clan (cultivation organization organized around the schools of cultivation established the founding families).

Maybe a good example? Think of Gusu Lan. They make very clear the distinction of “inner disciple” and “outer disciple.” They all belong to Gusu Lan, but “inner disciples” - i.e. members of the family tree who can trace their ancestry to Lan An, are differentiated from outer disciples, who are part of the clan, but that doesn’t make them adopted into the family tree. Lan Sizhui, who IS adopted into the family line/tree/lineage, has both the Lan name and the cloud-scroll forehead ribbon.

Wei Wuxian being adopted actually would have made things even more complicated for YMJ imo lmao, and I think YMJ/JC would have had to do more extreme stuff to buy back into being deemed “proper” or pious by society or by like, Confucian(?) standards after WWX went rogue, and also he’d have more social obligation to eradicate WWX and his work in order to like regain honor for the family & sect. If he’d been adopted, then YMJ would have been much more closely tied to WWX, and like WWX “defecting” already is still seen as partly YMJ’s responsibility/fault, either for like... idk not bringing him up right, or for cultivating a snake in their midst, and so it’d be their responsibility to “clean up their mess” so to speak. If WWX had been adopted, he might well have carried YMJ down with him too when he chose to defect, much like how the main branch of Qishan Wen carried the whole extended clan down with them. 

[ticklygiggles]

Obey Me! N$FW Headcanons!

Written with @otomiya-tickles

Oh goodness, sweet Ginny and I are way too invested on these boys! We've been talking about the Obey Me boys' virginity and masturbating likings, and we decided to post these bunch of naughty hc’s. We hope you enjoy them~

Diavolo

We think this sweet looking guy has fucked at least once (don’t let him fool you, he’s fucked more than that)

We also think it can be because he was feeling horny and wanted to satisfy his needs or because he wanted something in return

When it comes to masturbating - he’s a shameless one

He’d go to the bathroom before a meeting or in the middle of the day to jerk off!

Goes back fresh as a lettuce, uf

One of Diavolo's fantasies is having someone looking at him while he masturbates!

He also has very sensitive nipples, you can’t change our minds

We think that when it comes to sex, Diavolo wouldn’t enjoy it as much if he’s not doing it with someone he loves

He’d just do it for some regular sexual thrill, but nothing too exciting

All for the dick, lololololol

Lucifer

Oh goodness, we think he wouldn’t be that interested about sex, but he’s up to do it if he feels the need!

We dare to say that he’d try to please Diavolo if he’s asked to, just like in our tickle hc’s!

L: “Fine. *sigh* if you must… Can I refuse?” D: “Noooo!!!” L: “Alright,, but make it quick” D: “I will, I will!!!”

Something like that, lolololololol

But sometimes when he sees how happy the other person gets he might smile a little (which is just too charming), or when he makes the other person feel real good

He will have a satisfied smirk

We think he’d be the pickiest little shit out there when it comes to choose a sex partner

He just won’t have sex with anyone! It doesn’t matter if they’re the most beautiful being alive, if there’s something he doesn’t like, then he won’t have sex with them!

Unlike Simeon, he’s not that flirty and doesn’t tease much, but of course he’d be so hard to get!

Both in ship and non-ship case, we think he’ll help Diavolo fulfill his sexual needs, but other than that he seems a very hard one to lay a hand on!

We thiiink Diavolo would make him watch while he masturbates, huhu

And Diavolo would be like “Touch my nipples?” and of course, Lucifer can’t deny him

We also think that since the MC manages to win him over, he just has the sexual hots for them!

We think Lucifer wouldn’t be horny for celestial beings since he wants nothing to do with heavenly things!

He knows and acknowledges angels are attractive but somehow horny is just not in his book

Unless with the one he really likes then he can be a beast xD

Omg, Lucifer banned the word Sex in the House of Lamentation, hahaha!

He really doesn’t like his brothers talking about sex. He’s just not interested in their sexual lives!

The horny bunch got their own chat room to talk about their nasty sex xD

Be it Mammon or Asmo talking about it (they both do it a lot) or they making remarks about Levi jerking off to things (Levi is flustered)

Those kinds of talks are not appreciated by almighty Lucifer

Asmodeus

Of course you won’t expect the Avatar of Lust to be a virgin, right? Because he is not!

He’d have sex with anyone attractive and that wants to have sex with him!

He’s also on the top of the masturbation list

Kinky bastard

Oh goodness, we think Asmo and Mammon have horny competitions like “how many times can you cum in one night?” or “how many times can you make your partner cum in one night?”

Actually these competitions were one of the reason talking about sex is banned in the House of Lamentation

Lucifer was like “Enough, you nasty pigs!” With that offended expression (you should know which one): wide eyes, a little gasp, a hand against his chest, yes. He’s pissed

Beelzebub

We think Beel is too busy with his food to notice that he has sexual needs

… Unless he’s making out with his S/O, then he realizes how needy he is!

He also likes to use his mouth! Be it nibbling, sucking, biting, licking, just everything!

He will eat the other person and make teasy remarks that they taste good!

He’s not necessarily kinky, but anything that includes food is a bonus for him!

Like whipped cream on his partner’s body or flavour oils!

We think Beel would come up to his s/o with his happy smile holding up a new flavour oil like “I got this. Let’s use it tonight!”

We also think he’d be so good at kissing (and blowjobs) because he uses his tongue a lot!

He’s an expert with his mouth. Just him kissing and sucking a neck can make a person weak already!

Barbatos

He’s also fucked before, so no Royal Virgins

We think he’s so into blowjobs and handjobs (mostly receiving)

He hardly ever jerked himself off, he will let others do it, omg!

He’s also so kinky: humiliating his partner, spanking, bondage, he’s up to everything

He's pretty resilient tho, like he can do a lot without getting hard yet hahaha!

Simeon

We have no shame. Where’s the fun if our hot angel is not in these hc’s?

We think Simeon is the candy everyone would want but can’t get!

Honestly, this man doesn’t need to be naked to turn people on!

He’s sexy and hot and hard to get, so he might please others sometimes

He doesn’t get touched or fucked easily because he’s definitely “keeping himself” for the person he loves!

He’ll give someone a handjob, but then the other person wants to do something back to him and he’s like “Naaaah” *graciously leaves*

We think he wouldn’t use his mouth on someone else, though, so he’d be like “Hmm? I can give you a hand job”, while he does a very dirty move with his hand, ay

He’s also extremely skilled at it! Like??? How?!

He’s also a tease!

He’d say things like “oh goodness, you’re so wet. Does it feel that good~?”

And it’s so frustrating because he doesn’t get hard! Only for the person he loves, fufu

Leviathan

It’s a dirty Otaku, no kidding LOL

We think he fantasizes, watches (you know what) and jerks off a lot

However, when it comes down to it he's shy and awkward

Definitely knows how to touch himself, but having someone touching him and/or touching someone???

Levi. exe has stopped working

He’s super subby and likes being told what to do, but he’s also cute and clumsy!

We think Levi is into many nasty things lolololol

As a dirty otaku he's seen a lot of things including the kinky shit: bondage SM/ tentacle sex (lolllll) so not really vanilla x'D he's just shy to ask or suggest anything

But he does get super hard whenever someone is dominant over him

He's definitely curious about all things he's seen, but he's way way too shy!

We think he probably just sends screenshots of the things he'd like to do and his partner is like "you want that? We can do it~"

We also think that he's jerked off so much and he knows how to please himself so well that it's a bit hard for him to come!

Like he needs a lot of pleasure and build up and other turn ons (like the kinky shit), and lots of verbal teasing to get him over the edge

Levi just needs a lot of stimulation, even though he is a virgin!

We also think he apologizes so much during sex! He’d be apologizing through all his moans and cries sdnjdsg

Like he will apologize if he doesnt come and then when he does come all over the other person he will apologize too haha

He's kinda into edging/denial? Like it takes a lot of time to make him cum, so it'd frustrate him so much if they stop when he's finally so close!

And he loves it when the other punishes him, like he doesn't necessarily act like a brat or something to be punished but he gets it on him anyway and when he does,it’s such a turn on for him haha!

He'd probably like to be spanked, but nothing too intense because he's baby

Levi usually talks SO much, so we think his dom can often tease him with that! Like “where are your big talks now~?”

To which Levi makes very courageous remarks like "don't touch me, normie" between moans and broken voice and his partner just "*spank* how did you call me?”

We think the whole concept of sex just changes him into this cute shy boy who's only had much experience with porn and fantasies

So he goes from the HOOOOOH loud Levi to just cute mewls, moans and apologies hahaha

We also think that he’d get ticklish when touched for the first tiiime, he’s so nervous and jumpy! Imagine him letting out this moany surprised giggles asjnd

He's also so ripped! He'd get flustered if you comment about his muscles!

His partner could be like "look how good your body is even if you're just an otaku staying inside all day long" and Levi is like "so meeaaan!!" All teary but his cock’s jumping skdjnff

While we do think Levi takes long to cum, he DOEs get hard pretty fast hahahaha

like maybe even when he's not fully undressed yet the bulge will already be visible!

We love cute kinky submissive dirty otaku boy >:)

Solomon

He’s kinky, HAHA

A top tease! Like 24/7 smug and teasy and he will make the receiver beg and ask for it and play dumb like "What do you want? You'll have to be specific."

He’s also very hard to please!

Like even to get him hard it’s hard xD he's enjoying his time with his s/o, but he's skdkf not hard!!

He can endure a lot without getting horny but he just loves to watch a person get weak under his touch

We think even when he's on the receiving end, he gets all teasy and constantly challenges the other, like “is that all you got? 8-) You gotta try harder~”

We also think he can control himself a lot! Like he can hold his orgasms for quite a long time and be like "I’m not even close~"

He rarely jerks off because he's not that entertained by it, he just needs someone to tease and make crazy haha

We love the idea of almighty Solomon getting overpowered by an even higher top!

We don't think he will ever 'break completely' and beg or do anything uncool but he'll definitely have less of an attitude once taken good care of

He’d be like "o-okay that's... That's enough" and his partner all like "huh? We're just starting, Solomon, so keep yourself together" while he blushes a lot!

He sounds so hot when he moans and gasps! His voice is a hidden treasure!

And once he finally DOES reach his orgasm his entire body gets sooo sensitive!

He'd be a whiny mess if his partner brushes their fingertips or nails against his skin!

He'd squirm so much and maybe let out a whiny giggle????

Belphegor

Belphie can be both genuine and teasy at the same time like "Does it feel good?"

He often needs confirmation and he often says things like "I'm inexperienced" or "I'm not sure how to do this" but he tries his best anyway

And besides saying things like "I'm inexperienced, I'm not sure what to dooo" he might say things like "Beel probably knows what to do." and he adorably tends to mention beel and the receiver will have to be like x3 omg no belphie you're doing fine

He'd be a little lazy to please his partner xD like he tries his best, but after he's like "I'm tired" and he wants to be taken care of!

He tends to get overwhelmed pretty fast by pleasure so he might ask the other to stop even when his body doesn't want it to stop but he's just like PSPHHgailugigh

He probably comes too fast the first times he has sex with his partner! He maybe just cums when they play with his nipples because he’s that sensitive!

He is so sensitive and his moans are so cute and whiny

We think he might be sore the next day xD he will complain a lot about being sore and tired haha

His body also gets tired fast during any intercourse, even though he does feel good and enjoys it, he will whine and whimper about it haha

He’d like to find little hickeys on his neck, chest or thighs the next day too!

He’s also very sensitive to neck kisses, probably enough to already stimulate him sexually since he’s so sensitive!

His little moans would be the cutest! And if he gets to make the other party feel good, he will show his precious smile!

Satan

We think Satan wouldn't be too interested in sex, (he spends his time trying to be better than Lucifer skdndnd)

BUT we also think that he reads erotic books every once in a while and like those book don't necessarily turn him on per say, but make him feel blushy and a bit giddy about having someone to enjoy sexy times with!

He'd be quite knowledgeable and a bit shy like “I read that this feels good, may I?” He is not like super horny but he likes to experiment a bit and is just so sweet 😍👏🏻

He's got skills to make his partner feel good, but he'd be so, so blushy and would feel flustered if his partner compliments him about how good he is!

ALSO! Someone should not mention Lucifer in any competitive matter because that might activate his hidden beast

When he's receiving, he tries to hold himself back so much! Like his moans and any noises!

He just wants to hide how sensitive he really is!

His s/o would be a little pouty like "are you not liking it?" and he just adorably nods but he keeps controlling himself as much as possible hehe

And sometimes a cute little moan escapes and he blushes so much omg

Also he has super sensitive nipples, if he gets touched there he'd be arching his back so much and would cover his mouth with one of his hands to hold back his sounds and would grip the sheets with his free hand!! He'd be all beggy like "please don't touch me there~" while his hips circle and thrust because it feels so good!

We think bondage will work really good on him since he tends to squirm a lot and cover up. He’s so helpless if he can’t!

He'd be pulling at his restrains and biting his lip so hard and begging for his s/o to let him go (even though he can escape on his own), and they're just teasing him

He’d also get extra sensitive if he’s being edged, like everytime they deny him his release, he'd just feel more and more sensitive and eventually won't be able to stop his sounds!

Satan begs a lot and he whines adorably but he’ll never say a safe word or give up

Satan being like this makes us want to wreck him!

We think he'd get a bit turned on if his s/o brush their fingers against his sides and he’d be so shy if he lets out a little giggle here and there!

"don't- don't tihihickle me right nohohow!" And his cock is shaking dkdnf

He’s also the type to get ticklish and super sensitive everywhere especially after an orgasm

And his giggles and moans are so cuuute and he sounds tired and whiny and he shakes his head adorably omg

His cheeks super red babyyyyyy

Mammon (tumblr didn't let me upload a pic, wtf?)

He’s a beast! Will have no mercy, so brace yourself!

To be fair, he’s really good in sex, so he loves praises! Compliments stimulate him. He needs to hear how good he is!

What can you expect from the Avatar of Greed, right?

He’s the typical guy to run after his dick, lololol! He’s all about money and sex!

We think he gets horny and hard in the most uncomfortable moments. He gets so many boners a day wtf

Even his brothers just stare awkwardly at his crotch… “wait… are you hard? o_O”

We also think he loves receiving blowjobs and he loooves to hold his partner by their hair!

He’s a passionate mouth fucker

He probably feels a bit vulnerable when people touch him elsewhere like, he just wants the attention for his dick!

And he might be sensitive somewhere else but he doens't quite like to be touched unless it's his love haha

He's really picky! Like if he's with someone else, then it's just dick attention, but if it's the person he loves, then they'd let him touch him everywhere!

He's a bit less casual about it than Diavolo, but he does jerk off from time to time and people will be able to tell from the look on his face haha

And he doesn't like to be confronted and teased with it, while Diavolo won’t give a shit

However, Asmo would tease him so much just because he knows Mammon hates that!

He’d be like "woah! Did you have a good one, Mammon~?" or “what did you think of mammoonnn?<3”

Also Asmo and maybe even the others might make some remarks like "Ugh, Mammon would jerk off to this"

Probably besides Asmo he might have some arguments with Levi from time to time, like Mammon's a nasty perv normie and Levi the dirty otaku

Levi would probably agree whenever someone's like “ugh Mammon would jerk off to this” or any other remark like “oh, he probably just gonna suck on his own dick!

And mammon will fire back at Levi for being a dirty otaku

We also think that Mammon has walked into Levi's room when he was watching anime porn hahaha

Mammon thinks his own porn is superior and Levi is like "that normie stuff is gross, this is way better" so Mammon ends up watching hentai with Levi xD

Also if people ever need condoms he probably has a good stash. He's really picky, so of course he'd have his stash of condoms! We're not risking anything here hahaha

It’s hard to Dom him, like he’s not super Dom, but he likes to be the possessive one!

He also might have a lot of kink stuff stored but in the end he just doesn't end up using it?

He would like to be kinky but in the end he just has normal sex

He’s also easy to distract! Like he's super horny and has the handcuffs or something else kinky ready, but the other person just can give him a blow job and let him fuck them and then it's done and he's like ohh oh well

He'd also be a bit turned off easily, like, he's still hard and all, but at then he ends up having sex just because, but he's bored, but if he's turned ON he can stay turned on for quite a while haha hes a beast!

Like fuck after fuck even after he comes! He likes it raw and he loves to hear his partner whining so much about how they just came too

He also likes to hear his partner saying just how tired they are and he'd give them this wide, lethal smirk and be like "we're just starting, so put yourself together"

And he's sweating a bit and his cheeks are a bit flushed and his skin just glooowwsss because he's feeling so good!

We also think Mammon is not too loud when having sex, he’s just not a moaner, but he will grunt and huff and occasionally you'll hear this kind of growl that just proves how good it makes him feel

[drmmyrs]

The Way I Loved You (Poppy x MC)

Soo bear with me since I think this might be a long series. This part is mostly just establishing the story so there is little to no fluff yet.

But stiiill, let me know what you guys think and I’d really appreciate feedback/constructive criticism. Hope you enjoy and if not, thanks for reading anyways :)) 

tag list: @whackawriting @samanthadalton @crazzyplays @uselesslesbianfr (ithis is my taglist I thiiink, but if you wanna be added or removed just let me know)  

Pairing: Poppy x MC (Bea)

Word Count: 1650

Warning: Little swearing (at least for this part)

A/N: This is from the part before Poppy and MC were paired for a project

Bea had been at Belvoire for two months now, but she still wasn't used to waking up on a queen-sized canopy bed fitted with luxe sateen sheets in a bedroom which probably cost more than her family's house back at Farmsville. She glanced at the clock–11:30 am. She still had some time to spare before her first class. How people managed to wake up early on this luxurious bed made of clouds, she didn't know.

After a few more minutes of daydreaming, Bea begrudgingly pulled herself out of bed. She was preparing her outfit when the smell of heaven wafted through the bedroom door–bacon and pancakes. Like some kind of puppet on strings, Bea let herself be led by the delicious aroma to the kitchen where Zoey was expertly pouring pancake batter on a pan.

"I didn't know I was roommates with a master chef," Bea jested.

Zoey turned around at Bea's voice, and as she saw her, a smirk crawled up her lips.

"Well, don't you look sexy." Zoey eyed Bea up and down with an amused look on her face.

Bea glanced down at her outfit and saw that she was still in her pajamas. "Whatever Zo, not everyone can rock designer outfits even in bed."

"Hey, I'm not complaining. Besides, Spongebob PJs do have a certain charm."

Bea rolled her eyes while smiling. "So, what are we having for breakfast?"

"I'm pretty sure it's lunch. And aren't you supposed to be in class, like, right about now?"

"Nah, my Tuesday classes aren't until one o'clock."

Zoey stared at Bea. "Babe, it's Wednesday."

Bea's eyes widened at Zoey's words. "No, no, no, Professor Roberta is gonna kill me."

Bea rushed to her room and hastily changed her clothes faster than she thought was possible. She contemplated going to class au naturel, but ultimately decided against it. Bea was not ugly by any means without makeup, but in a sea of extremely contoured cheeks and false eyelashes, having no makeup was basically social suicide, especially since Poppy was in that class. Ugh, great. Of course, I'm late to the only class I have with Poppy.

When Bea thought she was presentable enough, she sprinted out the door but not before grabbing a handful of pancakes and shoving it to her mouth, looking like a chipmunk in the process. The T is gonna have a field day if someone saw me like this. Bea slowed her sprint to a stride as she swallowed the last of the pancakes.

Bea arrived in class forty-five minutes late.

"Look who finally decided to join us," Professor Roberta said in disdain.

"Sorry Professor, won't happen again."

"I'm sure it won't. And since you decided to join us so late, you're gonna have to work with Ms. Min-Sinclair over here for your community service project."

Oh hell no.

Sure enough, Poppy was sitting alone, glaring at her, and Bea could almost swear she could see smoke coming out of her nose.

Bea hesitantly sat down beside Poppy.

"Look Poppy, let's be civil about this and finish this project fast so we–"

"We're not going to do anything, Farmsville. I will ace this project and you will stay out of my damn way."

"Like hell I'm gonna let you take all the credit."

"Is there a problem here?" The professor glowered at Poppy and Bea.

"None professor, we were just calmly discussing the details of the project," Poppy responded with a fake smile.

Bea rolled her eyes. Kiss ass.

Once the professor was out of earshot, Poppy sharply turned to Bea. "Be ready on Friday, we're going to a foster home in Middletown."

"Middletown? But that's like an hour away!"

"I don't see you coming up with better ideas," Poppy hissed.

"I–I–"

"I thought so. Do not be late, Farmsville. I don't want you taking more of my time than you already do," Poppy said with a glare before she grabbed her Chanel purse and strode away.

***

Back at her dorm, Bea was resting her head on her hands on the dining table when Zoey arrived.

Upon seeing Bea, Zoey immediately took a seat beside her and placed her hand comfortingly on her shoulder. "Aww, babe. Was Professor Roberta that mad?"

Bea turned to face Zoey. "No, but it was much, much worse."

Zoey raised her eyebrow.

"I was paired with Satan for our project."

"Poppy?"

Bea nodded. "She even wanted to do the project in Middletown. Middletown. That's like an hour away! I mean surely there has to be another community that needs servicing that doesn't require an hour drive with Poppy."

Zoey pretended to think thoughtfully. "Hmm, maybe she finally found a way to get rid of you permanently?"

"I'm serious, Zo." Bea glared at Zoey.

Zoey laughed. "Okay, okay, sorry. But do bring holy water just in case."

Bea groaned and stood up from the chair before ambling to her bedroom. "I'm going to bed."

Before Bea was able to shut the door, Zoey called out after her. "You'll survive, babe! Give her hell for me."

***

Just a few minutes after Bea got back from her classes, she heard the sound of consecutive horns outside which she immediately knew were from Poppy. No one else is obnoxious enough to disturb an entire dormitory. With a sigh, Bea grabbed her things and trudged outside.

When Bea got outside, Poppy's Range Rover was parked at the curb. Bea walked to the passenger's side and opened the door.

"Be a dear will you and don't touch anything, I don't want your filthy hands staining my car."

Bea rolled her eyes. Hello to you, too.

The first few minutes of the drive were silent except for the light rain that started drizzling on the windshield, that is, until Bea asked Poppy, "why are we going all the way to Middletown anyway? There's probably some–"

"Remember that time when I asked for your opinion?"

Bea just glared at Poppy.

"Me neither. So, shut up, Hughes."

"How about you take a day off from being a bitch, Poppy. Seeing that you've had your whole life being just that," Bea rebuked.

The entire car ride was spent with both girls hurling insults at each other that it was honestly surprising that Poppy didn't kick Bea out of the car in the middle of the road.

After one looong hour, they finally arrived.

"Don't get in my way, Farmsville," Poppy warned as she approached the house and rang the doorbell. After a few moments, a middle-aged woman opened the door.

"Poppy! What a pleasant surprise. Come on in." The woman gestured them inside.

Hang on, how does she know Poppy?

The woman led Bea and Poppy to a couch and asked them if they wanted something to drink, to which both of them politely declined.

"So, Brenda. How is the family?" Poppy was wearing a smile that might actually be... genuine?

Bea stared at Poppy in shock. Not only were they on a first-name basis, but Poppy was actually nice to someone that doesn't involve sucking up.

"They're doing great! Thomas actually just got promoted recently so we're gonna take the kids somewhere nice sometime next week."

"That's amazing, send Thomas my regards."

Okay, what the hell is happening?

After a few more polite conversations, Brenda turned to Bea. "You haven't introduced me to your friend yet." Brenda extended her hand to Bea. "I'm Brenda."

Bea wore her biggest smile as she shook Brenda's hand. "Bea. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Poppy cleared her throat. "Actually, we came here for a community service project, and we were hoping that we could throw the kids a small party and maybe at the same time we can do a photography shoot that can be shared to prospective families. Do you think we can do that?"

"Oh, certainly! I'm sure the kids would love that."

"That's great to hear. Where are they anyway?"

"They're actually out there playing with the toys you sent them. Come on, I'll lead you to them." Brenda stood up and walked towards the back door.

Poppy started to follow her but turned around when she noticed Bea was still sitting down.

"If you're just gonna sit there like a half-wit, do us a favor Farmsville, and do it far away from here."

Still in disbelief, Bea stood up and followed Poppy and Brenda to the yard where Poppy was greeted enthusiastically by five kids. She watched as Poppy played with them with such kindness and compassion that she couldn't help but smile as most of her anger towards the blonde was replaced with warmth and some other indescribable feelings. After a few more games where Bea was basically manhandled by Poppy to join, all of them went back inside exhausted. As it was already getting late, Bea and Poppy said their farewells to Brenda and the kids with a promise of returning on Sunday for the party and went back on the road.

Bea had so many questions she wanted to ask Poppy but the look on Poppy's face implied that she probably won't be answering any of those. A few minutes later, there was suddenly a huge downpour of rain that Poppy had to park the car. Bea then received a text from Zoey, and as she read it, a look of dread flashed across her face.

Poppy frowned upon seeing the look on Bea's face. "What is it now?"

"There's a typhoon. We're stuck here."

***

Bea and Poppy managed to find a decent hotel nearby where they decided to stay until the typhoon passed.

"Two rooms, please. And make them as far away as possible," Poppy said to the receptionist while handing him her credit card, giving Bea a glare at the last sentence.

And here I thought we're finally making progress.

"I'm sorry Ms. Min-Sinclair, we only have one more room available for tonight."

[lopez-richter-fangirl]

Final shows 😭

It’s always still bizarre seeing them in person but when Brian said hi as he was going in right after I watched him do the tcb stream that was a mindfuck moment 😂

Clark also said hi in the lobby he was so nice (it feels so stupid to say that because duh but they’re just all so nice 😭😭)

OKAY SO then Denise and Bob were talking to Amy at the merch stand right next to me and I’m not saying Denise was DELIBERATELY matching with her daughter but she was wearing a leopard print shirt knowing full well what Lauren’s costume was 🙃

And it got worse, they were sitting two tables in front of me and then Shashona and Alyssa were sitting at the table right in front and then Nick lang came (🥺) and then June and Amy sat with them too so you can imagine it makes it a lot harder to focus on the show 😂 It was so cute watching them take pics and videos (Denise particularly of her kids ofc 😭 And by that I mean not only Lauren and Joey during priceless but also Lauren on her own 🥺🥺). But Shashona did try to take a picture of Dylan with her flash on lmaoo. And her and Alyssa were both VIBING the whole time it was great

Lauren just was not doing well with wigs lmao, this time her party girl wig almost fell off and god her face was ADORABLE I love her

Then in priceless after Brian mentioned it I couldn’t not notice the thing he had going on with Joey I love those dumbasses. But I really had had enough of the hand on her stomach by that point. I think the high note got the loudest cheer yet though and god it’s just the most incredible thing. Also what was cute was when Dylan and James came through the back Dylan put his hands on Shashona’s shoulders 🥺 What was not cute and was actually awful was that the song made Bob and Denise cry but I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine

So then very last show I got front row 😭 And as I was remembering what parts happened where on the stage I was like oh FUCK I’m gonna be literally *inches* from Lauren so I was almost hyperventilating already lmao

Okay little fun thing every night in AJ’s preshow they’ve had Britney sing christmas or 80s songs replacing the lyrics with a christmas carol word or phrase and having people guess but the very last one last night was GOING BACK TO HOGWARTS and it took me a sec to recognise it and I was NOT the only one so that was very funny we’re bad starkid fans lmao

But yeah the Brian Lauren hug spin happened right in front of me I 😭😭 And you know your girl got video if it’s not on the digi tix and I’ve already watched it an embarrassing amount of times (I really didn’t get much else because I just wanted to enjoy the show but that was a NECESSITY)

And Brian H and Lo have the christmas present interlude (which is fucking hilarious btw but no spoilers even on this spoiler post lol) but that was when she was literally SO close to me in her sparkly party girl outfit and I dieddd, and getting to watch her dance that close too when she always looks like she’s having the time of her life?? 😭

Christmas electricity was really cute though, Lo was grinning directly at Clark and Brian and Joey did a little hand slap (which I think someone mentioned before?) and then Brian and Lo shared a little smile I love them

And priceless god I can’t even begin to describe how fucking in love they looked 😭 It was the closest I’d been since the first night and then I was just trying not to completely lose it but their faces 😭 And the whole number is just the fucking most perfect thing I’ve ever seen and watching them perform live together for the first time since they got engaged really was a dream 😭😭😭 But whatever the fuck they did this time on “this soil is rich” I did not need to see they left it in no doubt what they were going for with that stomach holding. I thiiink he might have forgotten to say honey this time though if so I guess 1/5 isn’t bad 🙄

They were being dumbasses again at curtain call but then 😭 Whoever mentioned us getting tin can fam excluding Corey CURSED me because they called him up on stage and Lo got SO fucking excited literally *jumping* and grabbing at him and hugging him I 😭 And he touched her shoulder as she left stage and then BRIAN stroked her back so all in all best and worst final thing to go out on 😭😭😭

Anyway the sadness hasn’t fully hit me yet and I think it probably will reliving it with the digital ticket next weekend but then I get to experience it with y’all and I can’t wait 🥺

[honeypirate]

Chocolate Jinx

Tendou x f!reader

So I know time skip he’s a chocolatier in paris. But in this fic he’s in Sendai. It’s how I wrote it before I even remembered he’s in Paris and I don’t feel like changing the whole story now.

Your breaths came out in puffs, each inhale and exhale lasting four of your steps as you ran down the sidewalk, counting as you ran so you could focus on your stamina, inhale one two exhale one two. Towards the chocolate shop that you had an appointment at, an appointment that you are currently late for. "shit shit shit" ran through your head like a prayer that would somehow make you run faster. You knew that you would be late, your mom had asked you to help her with her grocery shopping since your father wouldn't be able to do it for her today, you couldn't say no, you couldn't tell her about this appointment because it was a secret, a surprise for her that will be special goddam it!

You open the door and step into the air conditioned shop, the scent of chocolate hitting your nose making you smile "y/n?" a voice asks, when you finally make eye contact with the man behind the counter you smile "Tendou?" you ask with a breathless chuckle "I’m so sorry I’m late I know it‘s not very professional and I can explain" he chuckles and cocks his head "but? you're not late? Our lesson isn’t for another twenty minutes” "what?!" you exclaim and then laugh, still breathless, as you place your hands on your knees and bending over a little to catch your breath. "This whole time I thought Iwas ten minutes late. I have it written down that it’s 3 but now that you said that I remember" he laughs and walks around the counter holding out a bottle of water "no worries, we can start early if you would like, water?" you nod and take the bottle from him "thank you! I’m glad I’m not late but don't let me bother you if you have other things to do before our lesson." you take a drink and your throat thanks you for the relief.

Tendou turns the shop sign to closed, then locks the door. "it's no issue. when you’ve caught your breath from your run" he chuckles "we can start. Come with me and I will show you where to put your things and give you an apron. did you bring a hat?" you nod and pull one out of your back pocket as you walk behind him, following him into the kitchen. its an old black Yankies baseball cap, you hold the bottle under your arm as you pull your (h/c) back into a low pony before putting the hat on.

"You can put your jacket and things in the office here, there’s a bathroom in the back to the right, aaand.." he reaches up on a shelf and gets down a white apron "here is this, i'll wait for you in the kitchen whenever you're ready" you take off your hoodie, leaving you in a black blouse with flowy long sleeves that you roll up along with your black skinny jeans with the ankles tightly rolled and a pair of checkered vans, you leave your things on the seat of the chair in the office before making your way out to the kitchen again.

You put the apron around your neck with a smile, tying it around your back as you stood next to him at a counter top. In front of you were a few ingredients, cocoa, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, sugar, as well as a few others and multiple tools. “Ready?” He asks with a smile and you nod “ready!”

“So since you booked the premium one on one lesson, instead of just teaching you to be a chocolatier and just making things out of chocolate, I will also show you how to make the chocolate, so mixing the ingredients, heating, and tempering. I’ve laid out all of the ingredients so we’re ready to go. We will both be doing the same things together so you can see what it’s supposed to look like.” You nod and bounce a little excitedly in your toes “let’s do this!” He gets you set up in your station across from his and goes through the tools with you and after that he talks about how you get from cocoa nuts to chocolate.

He starts his speech that you can tell he’s said hundreds of times “Chocolate is a product that requires complex procedures to produce. The process involves harvesting coca, refining coca to cocoa beans, and shipping the cocoa beans to the manufacturing factory for cleaning, coaching and grinding.” You’re watching him as he speaks, how he moves his hands while he talks, you’re trying to pay attention to the history of your favorite candy that fascinated you as well as admire the handsome man in front of you. His long fingers and expressive eyes, the way he obviously loved his job, he was beautiful. You realize you weren’t paying attention and zone back into his speech and hope he didn’t notice you zone out.

“needs to be harvested manually in the forest. The seed pods of coca are first be collected; they will be selected and placed in piles. These cocoa beans will then be ready to be shipped to the manufacturer for mass production.” You raise your hand a little and he chuckles before nodding at you “Why picked by hand?” he smiles brightly at you, like you’re the first to actually care about the history and ask questions, “good question! The answer is that machines could damage the tree or the clusters of flowers and pods that grow from the trunk, so workers must harvest the pods by hand, using short, hooked blades mounted on long poles to reach the highest fruit.” You smile “what comes next?” He looks so much more passionate about this now that you asked a question, now that you’ve truly shown your interest, before he was going through the motions of the many classes he has taught before to the same people who don’t ask anything just zone out until the cooking starts.

“Well after the cocoa pods are collected into baskets, they are taken to a processing house. Here they are split open and the cocoa beans are removed. Pods can contain upwards of 50 cocoa beans each!” He’s gets more animated as he goes along, you found him to be the most adorable man you’ve ever met. “then the beans undergo the fermentation processes. They are either placed in large, shallow, heated trays or covered with large banana leaves. If the climate is right, they may be simply heated by the sun. Workers come along periodically and stir them up so that all of the beans come out equally fermented.” “How long does that usually take?” You notice him get ever more excited with another question asked “usually 5-8 days” his smile is so gorgeous it makes your stomach flip.

"Chocolate factories take these cocoa beans and use machinery to break down the cocoa beans into cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, and cocoa powder. All which we will be using today.” You match his energy now, excited to be able to learn this today. “Amazing!” Your smile mirroring his. He tells you how much of the ingredients to add to the bowl to double boil and you’re whisking it together as it melts, talking with him was easy as you followed his directions. “So why have you wanted to learn about chocolate?” His eyes are on his bowl as he asks and you flick your eyes up to his face, studying his handsome features as you whisk in the same pace as he is, you’re admiring his fingers as he holds his whisk, his other hand resting the counter, when you look back to his eyes you find him looking at you with a smirk, you blush a little embarrassed as you respond “My grandpa used to be a chocolatier but since he’s in America and unable to make it now, I can’t have him teach me. My mom's birthday is coming up and I thought it would be a nice gift, to give her some handmade chocolate” he smiles wide “that’s so nice of you! I’m sure your mom will really love that” he says “Now we should be ready to temper it so grab your pot and follow me over to the marble counter”

“So to temper, you need to cool it by spreading it out and then folding it into itself to build the right kind of proteins, after it gets thicker we will warm it back up and it should be ready to mold” you nod and reach up to turn your hat backwards so you can see better before taking a spatula from him. “Follow my lead” he begins to pour two thirds of his chocolate out on one side of the marble countertop which was about six feet in length giving you both enough space to work side by side. You pour yours like he does and begin to work it back and forth, copying him. “That’s good!” He points out and you blush “thank you!” You chuckle “I have an amazing teacher” you wink at him, the blush rising to his cheeks makes your heart race so you turn your attention back to spreading the chocolate.

You finish tempering the chocolate and adding it back to the pot, using the still hot water underneath with the third of still warm chocolate to raise the temperature to the right consistency. “I thiiink” you stretch out the word, a little embarrassed to admit what you’re about to admit, “Tendou I think I screwed something up” your eyebrows are furrowed looking into your mixture that has now began to look grainy. He comes closer and looks over your shoulder “hmmm” he says and you look up into his eyes, your expression a little anxious “it’s seized a bit, but don’t worry we can probably fix it and if we can’t we can start over!” He smiles and you and you feel some tension drain from you, for some reason you felt like this would be easy and now that you’re having a hard time, you felt tense. if you ruin this you will just buy some chocolate from here but it wouldn't be the same.

He grabs some of the cocoa butter from the other counter and brings it over to you, "lets add a little more cocoa butter and mix it together, it should come back-" you stir and it incorporates but it doesn't get better "ahh I guess not." he laughs "must have been too hot still and too much steam, no worries, let's start over!" his cheery attitude made you smile. It’s like he doesn’t really mind that you just wasted these ingredients. That he’s just happy to be teaching you and helping you. "If I fail again, I don't want to waste anymore of your ingredients, okay?" he quirks his eyebrows as he throws away your ruined chcolate " I think I should be the one to decide what to do with the ingredients y/n" he cocks his head and smiles brightly "we will make it until it's perfect! for your dear mom!" your heart beats quickly in your chest, this sweet man, you felt butterflies flood your stomach "thank you Tendou" you smile with your eyes closed and he about dies with how cute you are.

After four more tries you sigh and throw your arms in the air "Tendou I think I'm a chocoalte makers jinx! You are a superb teacher and you make amazing choclate, even with your help at the end it still siezes" your voice is frustrated and overwhelmed as you place your hands on your hips and stare at the, once again, siezed chcocolate. "lets go through it one more time, I'm sure you can get it this time!" he says with the same amount of energy he had in the beginning. you look at him with wide eyes for a second before they soften and you smile at him "you are the sweetest guy, do you know that? okay. one more time, but if I dont get it then I’m paying you for all these ingredients" he laughs, his cheeks blushing, as he cleans out your bowl for the fifth time "ya know what they say y/n! a sixth time is a charm!" you chuckle and shake your head before finding yourself back next to him by the stove.

"you have the ingredients and steps memorized now huh?" he laughs as you add the right ingredients to the bowl of the double boiler."I will most likely always remember these ingredients and this experience" you laugh with him and slowly whisk the mixture together as it melts. "wait" he says just now noticing how youre whisking "try it like this" he walks around you and places his hand on yours, holding the whisk and your hand, slowing down your stirring so it was more gentle and smooth, your heart racing as you feel his strong hand on the back of yours "o-okay. thanks Tendou'' your voice is quiet since he's so close. "yes, this is perfect now, lets temper it" his voice was soft and right by your ear, your cheeks get warm and your voice stutters again when you respond "o-okay"

He lets go of your hand and you go over to the marble slab again, pouring out two thirds again, and using a spatula to smooth it out, again. "is.. is this right? I'm doing this right?" you’re secretly hoping he grabs your hand again to help you but you don't think he'll take the bait, how wrong you were. When his hand covers yours once more you gasp softly and smile as he guides your hand back and forth through the chocolate "like this, it’s close. usually people use a thermometer but since I've done this so long it's by feel for me" you're looking at him from the side of your eye with a smile on your lips, his eyes are hooded as he smiles wistfully at the chocolate, his cheeks are dusted pink and his hand on yours is slightly clammy like he's nervous.

To be honest he was nervous, here’s this beautiful woman who he's been teaching for the last two almost three hours now, who's flirting with him and who is kind and funny, and who is so incredibly bad at making chocolate. If this fails he’ll never let you pay for ingredients. He will just offer you another class and hope you accept. "it’s perfect, now" he lets go of your hand and studies your sweet face as you scrape the tempered chocolate into your bowl, you hope your face wasn't as red as it felt.

You go to stir it all together slowly before pausing and looking up at him with a shy smile, "maybe.. you could.. help me with this too?" his eyes widen and his cheeks flush "of course" he moves to stand behind you, looking down at the bowl over your shoulder, his left hand over yours holding the whisk and his right arm around you, his hand holding the bowl halfway over yours, he whisks slow and smooth, his breath hitting above your ear, your voice quiet with his proximity "have you always been good at this?" his chuckles quietly "no I actually struggled a lot in culinary school. I fell in love with chocolate though so I never gave up." your cheeks are so warm you're sure you looked like a tomato "I like that determination, plus you ended up with the most popular and delicious chocolate shop so you're definitely in the right line of work." he blushes with your praise "thank you." he goes quiet as the chocolate finally looks correct "look!" you exclaim "look Tendou! it's perfect! it's shiny and amazing! I did it! I’m a chocolatier!" you’re bouncing on your toes and in his arms as you dance in excitement "time for the molds!" he exclaims and lets you go, moving away so you could go pour your batch into the already set up molds, the only empty ones on the row, the ones he used for his batches already set up.

You pour the chocolate slowly into the heart shaped molds that already have macadamia nuts in each one, after they are full you scrape the top like he showed you when he made his last four batches and put the excess back in the bowl. "these should be set in about an hour if we put them in the fridge but that will be pretty late, you could come back tomorrow to pick them up if you would rather that" he says and takes your bowl, putting the excess in a random mold and then putting the bow and utensils in the sink.

You pull your phone from your back pocket and gasp at the missed texts “oh no. yeah that would be better. I'm supposed to walk home with my brother from his volleyball practise but I lost track of time here with you. shit. i'm sorry i really wanted to stay and help clean up and talk but i have to go" you frown until you meet his eye, they're looking at you inquisitively with a huge smile, "volleyball? what school does he go to?" he asks not even caring about cleaning up alone "oh! he goes to Shiritorizowa. he’s a second year middle blocker! hes quite good although I’m not very knowledgeable about it" you chuckle and then full laugh when he gets extremely excited "that was my school and my position! whats his number?" you raise your eyebrows and get as excited as him, steping towards each other at the same time "hes number 5" "NO WAY!" he shouts and laughs "that was my number! what a small world!" you gaze into his eyes and smile softly "this is so cool. you have no idea how much i want to continue this conversaton but i really have to go" you frown and look back to your phone "how long will you be here tonight?" you look back up into his eyes and he’s cocked his head "probably a while, have to make tomorrow's candies. why?" you grin "can I come back? I’ll walk my brother home and then would you mind if I came back? I could help you and I could get my chocolates for my mom" he grins "that would be great. I would love that" he says, your butterflies return to your stomach "perfect!" you take off your apron and hand it to him "i really had an amazing time here. you’re a great teacher even if i was a jinx five times. i'll see you in like forty minutes max!" you exclaim before running out of the kitchen, unlocking the front door, and running down towards the school, your phone already ringing calling your brother. Tendou walked up front and locked the door again, chuckling softly and thinking about how cute you are. he cant wait to see you again when you return.

when you and your brother get home you stop at the door "do you mind if i bring a friend to your next game?" he shrugs "yeah sure I don't care. wait. do you mean a friend or a boyfriend?” you laugh at his accusatory look "it's a boy but he's not my boyfriend. He used to play the same position and team when he was in high school. I thought it would be nice" your brother lights up "yeah that's so cool! bring him so I can ask him tips! are you coming in?" he has the door open halfway and you shake your head "i have to go finish mom's birthday project" he nods "okay i'll cover for you" you thank him and make your way back to the handsome redhead.

You take off your hat and run your fingers through your hair, shoving the hat in your back pocket again before you knock softly.

A soft knock to the door catches his attention and his heart races "finally" he says softly before walking out to the front, surely enough there you stand, with a smile on your lips and your arms around your body hugging yourself in the cold he smiles bigger when you wave at him, you were sooo cute. he unlocked the door and let you in, locking it again behind you "welcome back y/n" "glad to be back" he chuckles as he gazes down at you, your cheeks flushed and nose red from the cold. "i forgot my hoodie" you shiver and he reaches out, placing his hands on your arms and rubbing them up and down to create friction "do you want some hot chocolate?" you nod excitedly and he chuckles again, your cuteness will be the death of him, "come, sit, i'll make us some" he leads you to a table by the counter and begins to prepare two cups of cocoa.

Now that you have more time since you’re not focused on seizing chocolate, you study his face as he works. he had sharp features that made him so beautiful, beautiful red eyes, he had his hat off now, his red hair disheveled and all over the place but you loved it, you wanted to play with it. His uniform jacket was off, leaving him in a black t-shirt, he had long arms that were lithe and strong. "Do you want to come to my brother's volleyball game with me?" your eyes widen, a little shocked that it just came flying out, you didn’t mean to ask him now. He chuckles at your expression, he's been able to read you so well, you keep everything on the surface and he really likes that. "like a date?" he asks as he returns his attention to pouring the hot chocolate mixture in the cups. you laugh "I don't know if it qualifies as a date, just meaning like, it's not very romantic. maybe we can have a real date after that" you say and his smile widens "you have no idea how much I’d love that" he makes his way over to sit by you, placing a saucer with a cup of hot chocalte and a biscotti in front of you "i'm glad! I was really hoping you would say yes" you chuckle and then hum in delight as you bring the cup to your lips, the smell enveloping you even more than it does just being inside the shop.

You take a sip and find the chocolate to be perfectly sweetened with a touch of cinnamon and chilli, it was perfect, not too hot not too cold. "this is so amazing Tendou. thank you so much" you take another sip, feeling it warm you from the inside out, he smiles warmly "you're welcome. i'm glad you like it!” He wiggles his eyebrows at you “so about this date you're taking me on'' he takes a sip of his own while maintaining eye contact over the rim of the glass "when is it happening?" he smiles as he watches your cheeks blush "oh! his game is in a week. the preliminaries for nationals" the look of excitment in his eyes makes you laugh, makes your heart race and your stomach feel the familiar butterflies that seem to be constantly around when you’re with him. "the prelims! I am so there!" his excitement causes his leg to bump into yours, causing you to spill some of your hot chcolate "oh my god I’m so sorry! I get a little excited and don’t realize sometimes. i've been told its annoying" you shake your head and reach out, grabbing his hand from the air "no. it's not annoying. I like it. you're like a breath of fresh air to me" you smile warmly looking into his eyes. his heartbeat is rapid and his breath hitches. "you’re so sweet, do you know that?" his voice is a whisper and you blush, recognizing your words you used earlier. "I do know that. Doesn't it make sense then that someone as sweet as me would date a chocolatier?" you cock your head as you tease him, smiling warmly watching his cheeks flush, your hand is still in his and he brings it gently to the table, brushing his thumb over your knuckles, your breath hitches and you feel your cheeks flush “saturday, their game is at 1 but i'll be there from the beginning in the morning. do you wanna meet me there for just his game or..?" he finishes off his drink "I’ll be there in the morning! if you dont mind! We can spend the whole day together and after that we can get dinner together at this new italian place downtown. I think you’ll love it.” He stands and takes your empty cup from you "that sounds amazing, Tendou. I know my brother will want to ask you questions and ask for tips so it's perfect. Plus pasta is my favorite” you chuckle and stand from the table to follow him over to the sink “what can I help you with tonight?" he smiles at you and shakes his head "I actually finished everything quickly, considering I did make five batches of chocolate earlier” he chuckles ”other than these dishes I am done for the night. maybe I could walk you home?" he’s turned to put the cups and saucers away, his back is to you when he asks and you're grateful he cant see the crazed happy smile on your lips "yes please!" you get a little embarrassed with your excitment and feel your cheeks flush even more "let me just go grab your hoodie and chocolate from the back and we can head out" he says and dissapears in the back again.

You pull out your phone and send a quick text to your best friends that consisted of many exclamations. When he returned you beamed up at him "ready?" he asks "ready" you put on the hoodie he hands you and exit the shop with him, he locks the door and then turns to you "uhh where do you live?" he chuckles and scratches the back of his neck "I live in the new apartments that are down near the school" he laughs "no way. That's where I live too! this is so.. cool" his voice is soft, completely blown away by how perfect everything has been. how completely meant to be it seems. a feeling he would have many times as he gets to know you, many times as your relationship grows. a feeling that warms his bones and makes him realize what he's been missing for so long. He'd give your brother all the tips he has and train with him whenever he needed. he’d make you chocolate surprises every day, ultimately finding your all time favorite, white chocolate raspberry bonbons. he’d make them for you for every special occasion and make your mom anything she ever wants. It’s like in this moment he could see every possibility with you, he couldn’t wait to get to know every part of you.

But for tonight, he’ll wait for the right moment to hold your hand on this walk, he’ll ask you questions about your family and your job, he’ll get your number and kiss your cheek at your door, and he’ll think about you every second until he gets to see you again.

[songfell-ut]

Chapter 11 is a doozy

This one ends with what I thiiink may be the first scene I envisioned. Probably need an “angst” tag on there, but I still dun really know how the tags work. Are they a good thing to cram in, @lostmypotatoes? 

Link is here. I’m going to bed

The child lay face down in the flower bed, too stunned to cry. When she lifted her head, the world spun in circles; when she tried to get up, her leg hurt so much that she gasped. She sniffled, hiccuped, and waited for someone to come help her. But no one came. It was too much: she finally gave a long wail, working herself up to sob so hard that tears and snot started dripping all over the golden petals.

Something was coming down the stone passage. She stopped and huddled into the flowers, but they weren't tall enough to hide in, and a patch of sunlight shining from above lit her up clearly.

He walked out of the darkness with a sword in each hand. His eyes glittered; when they met hers, she froze, too scared to breathe.

The...man? It must have been a monster, because it looked like a person, if a person could also be a goat: white fur, horns, and golden eyes, with a muzzle and a pointy black stripe on each cheek. But it walked on two feet and wore a long black robe with a symbol on it...like a person.

To her surprise, the monster didn't eat her, or breathe fire, or chop her up. He watched her for a moment. With a flick of each wrist, the swords vanished. "Hello there," he said in a soft, deep voice, squatting down a few feet away. "Where did you come from? Are you hurt?"

She couldn't answer. To her even bigger surprise, the monster sat down with his legs crossed and took hold of his floppy white ears, one in each hand. He flopped them over his eyes and looked around, as if surprised. "Oh, no! I thought there was a human in here! Who turned out the lights?"

Now she was puzzled, and slightly insulted. What was he doing? She wasn't a baby!

But as the goat-man kept it up, calling, "Hellooo, huuuuman?" and turning this way and that, her fear ebbed away until she started giggling. He scooched closer and peeked out from under his ear. "Aaah, no, it's the human," he said in very fake terror. "You've caught me. Please, human, if you let me go, I'll take you somewhere safe. I'll even heal you—have you ever been healed before?"

The human shook her head, leaning over to wipe her face on some of the bigger flowers. He let go of his ears, moved closer, and extended his white paw—a hand with five fingers, but sharp nails and fur, still a paw. "It's easy. All you have to do is touch the green light. See?" His palm glowed, and the child poked at it, fascinated.

After a few seconds, her leg didn't hurt anymore. She sat up, and she wasn't dizzy. The goat-man smiled at her, only the very tips of his fangs showing. "All better?"

Monsters were supposed to be bad, but he had the kindest eyes she'd ever seen. He held his paw – hand – out again, and she took it, delighted at how soft his fur was. "It's very nice to meet you," he said. "My name is Asriel. What's yours?"

She had to think for a second. "My name is—"

 ~

 Sans jerked awake. Someone was banging on the door. He tried to stand up, but the floor wouldn't stay still: it dumped him right off his feet. "Fu' you, too," he told it. Dammit, his head hurt.

The banging didn't stop. With a more concerted effort, his body got off the floor and carried itself all the way to the front door. He wrenched at the knob and shoved it open.

Dr. Serif moved back exactly in time to avoid a broken nose. "Good morning," he said coolly, and pushed past Sans. "Close the door. Do not break it."

The boss monster tried, he really did, but the knob kept jumping out of the way. With a quietly profane expression, the doctor used a series of hands to shut the door, pull Sans into position, and grab the back of his head. "Holy fucknuts, that's better," the giant skeleton mumbled a moment later. "Thank—ow!"

"You and your foul mouth are welcome." Gaster surveyed the front room. "This is a lovely house. I hope you've treated it well." He sniffed the air several times. "Whatever did you do? What have you had to drink?"

"Water! Mostly. A little cider, no liquor in it." Now that Sans was sober, he was chagrined to follow Gaster to the kitchen and see a huge heap of brownish apple cores on the table. "They were sellin' a bunch on my way back here last night," he mumbled. "I was hungry."

Gaster pointed at the cores, and the wastebin. Sans obediently lifted the pile and dumped it into the bin with a touch of magic. Gaster then pointed at the compost heap outside, and Sans heaved a huge sigh as he picked up the bin to take it outside.

The older skeleton gave him an odd look as he came back in. "Do you mean you were on your way back here last night from the Underground?" Gaster inquired.

"Well, yeah. Where else'd I be comin' from?" Sans stuck his head in the sink, opened his mouth, and turned the faucet on.

"Apparently, a place where you can be drunk enough to lose an entire day."

The boss monster coughed violently, turning the water off before he drowned himself. "Where I what?"

"You set out with Snowdrake two days ago. The High Priestess expected you back at some point yesterday. It is Sunday, and she had to attend matins, or else she would have come with me to check if you were dead or merely sleeping off your overconsumption of...hmm." A pair of hands took hold of Sans' skull and pulled it down for closer inspection. "You still smell like apples. The priestess also said she smelled it the other morning." Sigh. "At least you spent the missing day here, judging by the age of those apple cores, and not out gallivanting after poachers." Gaster released him. "By any chance, did you stay in human shape for a long time, then eat, and then remove your device before you went to sleep?"

Sans couldn't remember anything. "...Yes? I think?"

"I would call you names, but as I did not figure it out, either, I will call you only one: idiot." The doctor sighed again. "Apples ferment fairly easily. I've never heard of fluctuating magic levels and shifts in internal chemistry rendering them an intoxicant after consumption, and there's no reason for such a weak form of alcohol to affect you this badly, but it's a viable hypothesis. No more cider or apples for you, young skeleton, until we can test the theory in a more controlled setting. Till then, we'll need to check the rest of the house before we can leave in good conscience."

The forensic evidence was not difficult to unravel. Most of the house was fine, but little puddles led from the wet patch in the living room where Sans had fallen asleep all the way into the bathroom, where every single towel was wet, either from being thrown on the wet floor or folded up and placed inside the tub...which was full of water. Without being told, Sans sheepishly set to work unplugging the tub, wringing things out, and draping them over surfaces where they could drip dry. His drunk self must have been experimenting with his human form, taking several baths and...

Oh. Oh, wow. Now he sort of knew what he'd been doing yesterday. It wasn't his fault that he'd gotten so worked up from snuggling Frisk; when he awoke, he'd had the idea to put the chain back on and see if that one thing down there would happen again, and it had. The little he knew of male human physiology and its parallels to monster reproduction had finally coalesced; he'd realized was going on and what he could do about it, and did it. It'd been really fun for a while, but then he...had he had to stop for some reason? Had his hands gotten tired, or was it something else that wasn't working? He couldn't remember.

As for what had been working, damn. He still loathed humans, but this explained a lot.

He had some questions, though. He'd have to peruse Frisk's textbooks when he got back, or ask the doctor, in the event the books failed to cover the finer points of magic boners.

Gaster watched him tidy up in silence. When the bathroom was back in order, he said crisply, "Find your device and come with me. Frisk has been working very hard and sleeping very poorly, and she needs moral support."

That sounded about right. Sans found his silver chain tied to a light fixture in an empty bedroom, put it on, and followed Gaster out of the house, stopping long enough to lock the not-quite-damaged front door.

It was a cold enough morning to see their breath; they passed several children pretending to hold cigars and exhale smoke. "Nice day," Sans complained, huddling deeper into his overcoat. "D'ya mind if I just go somewhere no one can see an' take a shortcut back?"

"She made her decision," said Dr. Serif.

Sans came up alongside him, sure he'd misheard. "She did what?"

"She decided to throw the box away yesterday morning. I disposed of it myself. It's gone."

They walked. It was cold. "Huh," said Sans.

"Indeed."

Five minutes passed. They kept walking. It was still cold.

The doctor looked sidelong at him. "Are you all right?" he asked delicately.

Sans shrugged. "Is she all right?"

Dr. Serif looked this way and that as they stopped at a crosswalk. Several heavily laden wagons were trundling by, drivers and horses alike shivering in the relentless wind. "Not entirely," he said over the noise of wheels crunching on pavement. "She's no longer uncertain of herself, but she has been writing letters nonstop instead of sleeping. Lord Owen has departed to visit his sister for a few days, just in time to miss the news. Did the first fortune have any sort of timetable attached?"

Sans shook his head a little. There was nothing to say, so he didn't bother trying.

One of the wagons was stopped because a horse had decided to take a break in the middle of the street; the driver was climbing down to convince it otherwise. "I'd like you to attend a discussion with my colleagues this afternoon," said Dr. Serif. "Most of them are excited about the possibilities of solar energy conversion, but several are requesting more details before they will support the project."

"Sure," Sans mumbled.

The wagoners behind the recalcitrant horse were getting impatient. If the doctor felt the same way, he didn't show it. "Two weeks," he said, as if to himself. "It's been approximately that long since you were captured, hasn't it? It feels much longer."

No answer. Dr. Serif shifted around until he was facing Sans and took a look at his chest. He grimaced. "Sans, may I just say—"

"Ya think she'll let me come back?"

The doctor blinked. "Beg pardon?"

Under the sounds of the drivers cursing and other pedestrians complaining, Sans said, "Even if she marries that fu—friggin' dork, it's not like she's gonna be locked up fer the rest of 'er life. An' it's not like I'm gonna learn every damn thing she knows in one month. If she can't come to the Underground, I'll just hafta drag my bony ass back here for more lessons. Right?"

"More or less," said the royal sorcerer.

"But..." Sans rubbed his chapped lips, which made them hurt more. "Remember when I talked about killin' someone if they bugged me, and Frisk said I was just doin' what I wanted, 'n not ta come back if I did? What if I run into poachers again and I have to kill 'em?"

"...Because of a life-and-death situation, or because you personally cannot stop yourself?"

"I dunno! Both?"

Dr. Serif discreetly wiped his nose on a handkerchief. "I suspect her definition of 'life-and-death' differs from yours, but I believe she was more concerned with your self-restraint. Let me ask you this: have you ever killed a human purely for enjoyment, or found an excuse to kill one who was not an immediate threat? Even if eliminating someone was fully justified, have you ever deliberately used a slow or painful method to inflict more suffering?"

For the first time since he'd become a boss monster, the thought of slaughtering humans made Sans uncomfortable. "I only ever fight 'em where they're not s'posed ta be," he pointed out. "The only ones ya see out that far are lookin' ta catch monsters. I'm not goin' to their villages or anythin'."

"You're not answering me. I repeat, have you ever—"

"What am I s'posed t'do?! Sit down everyone I see carryin' a buncha chains an' explain that it hurts our feelin's when they're mean to us?"

"I think you'd be better off asking yourself these things instead of trying to argue with me. I also think you know what Frisk would say if you were to ask her directly."

Sans shuffled his feet, wiggling his toes inside his leather boots. The stubborn horse and its wagon had finally started moving down the street. "Here's another question," said the doctor. "Have you ever successfully restrained your temper around the High Priestess?"

The human-ish boss monster glared at him. "Are you kiddin'? Ya think I wanna worry about breakin' 'er like a twig every time I get pissed off?"

"I do not." Dr. Serif employed his handkerchief again. "Have you ever fully lost your temper with her, or in her presence?"

"Well..." He thought guiltily of the time he'd badgered her about singing till she damn near whistled a hole through his skull, and he smiled at how she'd climbed on the table to get in his face afterward. Man, he'd deserved that. Then there was the dent he'd bashed in the tabletop that other time... "I was just bein' a dick. I didn't even think about hurtin' 'er."

"Really? You've made it sound as if it is not possible to restrain yourself in moments of duress. The High Priestess is a remarkable young woman, but she is a human being, just like the ones you—"

"She's not like them, an' I'll break yer fuckin' neck if you say that again."

The people standing near them inched away as Dr. Serif looked at Sans. Sans stared at him, unblinking, until the doctor sighed. "If I have to put literally everything in a Frisk-centric context to get through to you, I will," he said testily. "Do you think she would be pleased to hear you threaten to kill someone for insulting her, which I was not?"

Sans bit the inside of his weird, fleshy cheek. "No," he admitted.

"You will not be with her all day, every day for very much longer. Do you really think she would allow you to return if she had reason to believe you'd killed or needlessly injured anyone in the interim?"

Sans tapped one foot, then the other. "Dunno how she'd even know if I did. S'not like I'd be strollin' up t'her with blood 'n guts all over...my..."

He trailed off as a memory prodded him: that dream recounting his very first encounter with poachers, how he'd crunched the sorcerer's spine and then slammed the other humans into each other until they stopped screaming. He'd enjoyed it immensely till he heard that familiar whistle behind him and realized that Frisk was standing there, seeing him in all his murderous glory.

The moment he heard that sound, before he even turned, he'd instantly gone from elation to abject terror. He thought she would run away from him, or demand some kind of justification he couldn't give, or tell him never to come near her again; she could have accused him of tricking her, pretending to be the kind of person who wouldn't do something like this, much less enjoy it.

She hadn't. She didn't even flinch when she saw the literal blood on his hands. She'd just been herself—said she wanted to see him, apologized for hurting his feelings, and opened up to him about her fears and frustration, as though he hadn't just slaughtered a bunch of people and laughed about it. When was the last time anyone had asked him for help with anything, period? Had anyone ever asked him for touchy-feely advice? In the last few months, he'd spent so much time away from the Underground that even Pap had pretty much stopped bugging him about puzzles or picking up his socks whenever he was home.

...Damn. What if he enjoyed killing stuff so much because it was the only thing he was good for anymore? If he could somehow stop, what would he have left?

And the worst part was that after all that, she'd still wound up hugging him again, and even now, his SOUL was still a little mushy around the edges.

He didn't understand. Frisk wasn't blind or stupid; how could anyone with half a brain see what he was capable of and still care about him that much?

And why was he getting aroused again?!

The last wagon had trundled out of the way. "It's very simple," the doctor remarked, pulling Sans along by the elbow as the backed-up crowd surged forward around them. "What would you rather have? Freedom to be as horrible as you wish, or the right to ever see Frisk again?"

"But—"

"But what, Sans?"

But what, indeed. All this moralizing was background noise compared to the fact that she'd chosen her "adequate" future, and the only thing he could control was whether he'd be allowed to drop by from time to time. He had no right to pout – or be a complete fucking wreck – because she'd taken his advice and stopped agonizing over her decision. It wasn't as if anything had really changed, as far as he was concerned; she wasn't going to stop being his friend or teacher just because she was getting married to some human moron. Was it her fault that his deep-down, germ-sized hope of somehow fitting into her second fortune had been crushed like it deserved?

Stupid Gaster. If he hadn't given Sans that stupid chain, the idea of fathering her kid would never have been so cruelly plausible. Sans remembered how he'd found out he could make a tongue for himself when he wanted: he'd been curious about Toriel's famous pies a few years back and wanted to see if he could taste them somehow. In the same vein, the chain hadn't given him brand-new powers of smell or touch or boners, just shown him how he could've done it at any time.

Then Gaster had gone and told him for a fact that skeletons and humans could have children together, which meant sex, which brought it all full circle: he should be capable of manifesting and fully employing the relevant equipment, just like his tongue. Of course, there was that awkward size difference between him and the average human, and Frisk was even smaller than average, but if he could conjure a thing with magic, wouldn't it be logical to assume he could adjust it as needed? Hell, why couldn't he temporarily downsize his overall structure long enough to—

"—ans? Sans!"

The boss monster twitched. Dr. Serif had tugged him down a side street and looked ready to slap him to get his attention. Sans raised his hands. "What? Whaddya want?"

"I want to ascertain how you're going to behave before we arrive." The doctor somberly folded his arms, then spoiled the effect by getting the handkerchief out to blow his nose. "Are you going to be a friend, or a problem?"

There was that painfully accurate summation again. He needed to remember that he was operating under different rules than human males, or even other monsters: his actual parts weren't the biggest issue, no pun intended for once. He had to accept that it wasn't gonna happen. "I'm her friend," answered Sans. "Not like I can be much else. She's not a boss monster, so..."

"No...no, she is not." The doctor paused, as if in thought, then took Sans' elbow again. "To the castle, please, the stairwell outside her quarters. I don't know about you, but I'm freezing my ass off."

 ~

 Sans was so nervous to face Frisk again that it was both a relief and a letdown to find out she wasn't in her rooms. "I did wonder," he remarked to Gaster as they threw off their disguises. The boss monster stacked some logs in the fireplace and tossed a handful of flame on them. "Right after I came here, she said her mom was sick, but I never heard anythin' else about it. This's the first time I know of that she's gone t'see 'er."

"Rosa doesn't do well with most visitors," Gaster explained. "She suffers from a degenerative neurological disorder. Frisk ensures she has the best possible care, but there is little to be done except keep her comfortable."

Sans scratched his metacarpals—using fire always made him itch. It was no wonder now that Frisk hadn't wanted him to go bug her mom with questions about her visit to the Underground. No wonder she was always so stressed, either, with a dad who was somehow neglectful and nosy, and a mother physically and mentally out of commission. Poor lady—and then, when she'd just wanted a little bit of guidance from the fortune-teller, she'd gotten this fate-of-the-world shit dumped on her!

That did it. No matter how crappy and torn-up he felt, Sans vowed he wasn't going to do anything to make her life harder. He wouldn't kill that Owen guy; he could help deliver stuff, make sure no one tried to murder her before the wedding...

Fuck. He wished he'd never gotten caught, or that someone, anyone else had come to get him out of his cell that day. He'd known better than to get close to another human, he'd done it anyway, and now look what had happened!

...No, whatever he was feeling, she had to be feeling way worse, even if it was for different reasons. As things were, at least he could be here to help. He'd have to keep telling himself that.

Gaster had picked up a huge folder and was leafing through its contents, his face impassive. "She's left you some guidelines for your next set of experiments," the older skeleton said, indicating a small set of books and papers on the counter. "Completing them to the best of your ability would be an ideal apology for your absence. Let me know if you need help."

The boss monster could see the sense in that, so he read over Frisk's list of supplies and recommended recipes, each book marked conspicuously with a new bookmark. He had to smile at that. Her handwriting was cute, too, with little swirls on the ends of some letters.

The materials she'd set aside for him included a block of alfalfa hay, cubes of alfalfa meal, and pellets of various plant materials, though it was mostly alfalfa. Sans amused himself as he worked by thinking alfalfalfafalfa until the word fell apart and reading it made him snicker. Hay, he had to stay sane somehow!

It wasn't enough. Waiting for Frisk was killing him. Her lunch was delivered a couple of hours after they got back, and she wasn't there. Gaster told him not to be alarmed, that she'd probably been called to mediate something or help someone else now that she was being accompanied by humans instead of a giant skeleton, but that didn't make Sans feel any better.

Eventually, when the mixtures had all been applied to the seedlings and everything was labeled and recorded and double-checked, Sans got so antsy that he started looking through the other books on the worktable. One had a freshly dog-eared page that made him open it up to smooth it out, wondering why she'd bothered to get the damn bookmarks if she wasn't going to use them, and then why she'd been reading up on truth spells.

Huh. There was a scribbly mark at the start of one paragraph: The stronger the application, the less ambiguous a subject's words become. Sarcasm, hyperbole, and similar rhetorical devices cannot be employed to say anything the subject does not sincerely believe to be true. Sans shrugged, put a bookmark in like God intended, and set it aside.

"It's time," the royal sorcerer said presently, several hours after lunch. He put the folder away and beckoned to the younger skeleton. "This way. Please leave your device off."

Sans had forgotten about talking with the other sorcerers, and absolutely did not want to go. The doctor had to speak to him rather sternly and at great length about the importance of alternative energy, educating the highest levels of human society and allowing the best possible knowledge to be passed down therefrom, filtering out rumor and bad information before it began, all for the mutual benefit and future coexistence of monsters and humanity.

Sans still didn't wanna. Dr. Serif ended up having to shove him bodily out the doors and most of the way down the hall, unseen hands prodding him until he gave up.

Nevertheless, with his resolution to make things smoother for Frisk, Sans got through the meeting pretty well. It was held in a library with about a dozen whey-faced nerds in black robes, most of whom were too curious to be scared of him; he had to spend a half hour answering questions about monsters and letting them watch him breathe and talk and all sorts of crap first.

Then they went over Dr. Serif's notes, clarifying a few points Sans had forgotten or mixed up. The boss monster had to admit that the sorcerers were good about catching mathematical discrepancies, and one woman had some solid ideas about different alloys that could improve the solar arrays' efficiency and reduce the chance of warping or melting the panels. Her wavy hair reminded him of the High Priestess—one of her half-sisters?

Whatever. The discussion lasted a few hours, and though he did find it interesting, Sans wanted to see Frisk so badly that the moment they adjourned and Dr. Serif indicated he was going to go to his own quarters, the boss monster didn't even bother leaving the room before he teleported himself back. The guards were getting used to his sudden appearances, and informed him without much fear that Her Eminence had returned less than half an hour ago.

Sans faced the double doors and fought down his sudden nervousness. It was cowardly of him, but he couldn't bring himself to knock. Instead, he eased a few tendrils of magic through the crack in the doors – did she even realize the barrier was permeable there? – and lifted the bar very, very carefully, setting it against the wall on that side with as little noise as possible. The doors swung open on well-oiled hinges, and Sans shut them behind him just as quietly.

She wasn't in the workroom. The light outside was fading; the bedroom was dark, as was the office, and the dressing room. To his surprise, he heard faint splashing sounds from the tub—what was she doing in there so early?

At a loss, Sans wandered over to the worktable. At least he'd cleared it before they left for the meeting. The problem was that the dent was showing, the one from their argument over transitioning monsters from slavery to partnership. He still hated the idea, but there was no reason it couldn't work, maybe, eventually...in the other future where she'd opened the box.

Sans shook himself and applied his frustration to that stupid dent, hating the loss of self-control it represented. Sure enough, when he released a burst of magic over it, the damaged wood creaked, swelled, and filled itself back in like rising bread dough, leaving a solid surface with only a few fissures. I'll be damned, I fixed something on purpose, he mused, poking at it.

The splashing in the bathroom stopped. The skeleton froze, wondering if she'd heard or felt anything, but then the sounds resumed. It occurred to him for the first time that she probably didn't have clothes on, and he immediately decided to think about something else. Oh, look, there was the folder Gaster had been reading the whole afternoon. Sans reached for it—

Something shot straight through his SOUL, seizing his entire body up, magic and bones and all. It was a sweet, unearthly sound—it was Frisk.

She wasn't humming, or whistling, or tapping a rhythm on something with her hands. She was singing, very low, just loud enough to give him chills: "The years now before us, fearful and unknown—I never imagined I'd face them on my own..." A deep breath. "May these thousand winters swiftly pass, I pray—I love you, I miss you, all these miles away..."

Sans was rigid, every fiber of his being waiting for the next verse. But the voice had faltered, and the next sound was an all-too-familiar sniff, and another, till it became clear that she was, if not actively crying, too upset to continue. Well, no shit, that's the sappiest thing I've ever heard and you're already a mess, said a very tiny corner of his mind.

Meanwhile, his feet were moving, and the rest of him followed straight to the bathroom. Too bad she hadn't locked it, because he could not physically stop himself from opening the door and striding in to kneel by the tub, reach down, and drape his hand over the very startled priestess' back and shoulders, pulling her as close to him as the side of the tub would allow. "Hi," he murmured into her hair.

Nothing happened for several seconds. "...Sans?" Frisk had hunched over in alarm when he burst in, but after a moment, her hand crept up to rest on his humerus, though she remained huddled against the high enamel side. "What..."

His eyes were closed, his mind still a hazy mess of feeling. It didn't help that she smelled amazing, and she felt amazing, and...

"Sans?"

She was much warmer than before. Well, that made sense. The bathwater was very hot, and she was in the bath.

Something felt different under his hand. How had she gotten even softer? His metacarpals flexed, and she squeaked. "Sans!" she hissed.

"Hm?" How was he supposed to concentrate on anything when he was touching bare skin?

Wait. Why was he touching b—

Oh.

Shit.

...So, if she was in the tub...that meant he shouldn't move his hand down like—

"SANS!"

 ~

 The good news was that she didn't seem sad anymore. The better-than-expected news was that once the shock wore off, she wasn't really angry with him, though he didn't know that right away. The split-second he snapped out of it, Sans had been so mortified that he took a shortcut straight back to the bedroom and locked himself in, half out of fear for his personal safety and half afraid she'd be mad enough to leave again if he hung around.

But within ten minutes, she was knocking on the door and saying his name. "Nope," he muttered back.

A sigh. "Please let me in, Sans. I just want to talk."

Dammit. Sans twitched a phalange at the lock, and it clicked open.

Frisk was in her purple robe, face still flushed. Sans remained sitting on the side of bed by the opposite wall, staring at the cold fireplace, awaiting his doom.

Another sigh. She clambered onto the bed, or so he inferred from the rustling of the mattress and the scent that drifted over him a moment later. "You're not in trouble. That was my fault," she said, strangely matter-of-fact.

Blink. Blink. Blinkblink. "How."

The priestess shifted around, and he risked a peek at her. She was sitting at about his-arm's-length away, her hands and feet tucked in, legs pulled up and cheek resting on her knees. "I wasn't sure if I'd heard you come back or not. I was lonely, I wasn't thinking. I had this stupid idea to...I don't know, lure you in, if you were here?" Frisk buried her face in her fuzzy sleeve. "That didn't sound any better in my head." Squirm. "I didn't think I was using that much magic. I wasn't thinking at all. I'm so sorry."

Okay. That was unexpected. Sans was relieved, but didn't know whether to also be pleased or angry or what. He could start by kicking himself that he hadn't gotten any kind of look at her—she was so small that when she was scrunched up at one end of the tub, he'd have to be looking straight down to see anything, which he hadn't. He hadn't busted in there with any intention except to be near her.

So...should he tell her that he didn't understand many nuances of human interaction, but he was pretty sure that being lonely was the worst possible reason to call someone else in while she was in the tub? She probably didn't think that he was as functionally male as he was, which was completely understandable, but still...

Still, here she was. And it turned out that his tiny, squishy, beaten-up hope, the idea that he could somehow cram himself into a bigger role in her life than "pet project," wasn't as dead as he'd thought. It was resurging, and so was the now-familiar urge to grab her, except this time, he knew exactly what he was supposed to do with it. He knew that she'd missed him and had just admitted enticing him in while she was naked, and—

Sans didn't remember that he was a boss monster, or that she trusted him not to do anything like this, or any of the other terrible things that could happen if he got carried away. He was shifting his weight to reach over and pull her toward him when she said, with her face still buried, "Where were you yesterday?"

Oh. Right. The skeleton moved back, screaming internally and crossing his legs as hard as he could. "I—I wasn't off hurtin' anyone. I was at yer house...uh..." There was no other way to say it, was there? "I was drunk as hell, pretty much the whole day. Doc says switchin' back and forth from me ta human 'n back made some wacky chemical reaction that fermented all the apples I'd had, 'n...yeah. I didn't do it on purpose, I swear."

She raised her head, frowning. Sans wracked his brain for something to make her stop it. "At least we found the core of the problem, huh?"

Her expression lightened a little. "All right, I believe you." But then she frowned again. "Please don't do that again. You really scared me when you didn't come home yesterday."

Come home? Was she trying to fucking kill him? "Sorry." Sans forced a laugh. "You can always come check on me when we're asleep, right? Now I know ta clean up whatever I'm dreamin' in case I have company."

The young woman fidgeted, tugging a lock of hair behind her ear. "Do you have a lot of those, where you're reliving things you've done?"

She didn't sound upset. Why didn't she sound upset? "Sometimes," he admitted. "Depends how I'm feelin' when I go ta sleep, what I've had to eat, how tired I am, that kinda thing."

Frisk rested her head on her knees again, looking right at him. "You weren't always like that, were you?"

It wasn't an accusation. It was a calm, non-judgmental invitation to talk about it if he wanted to, which made him feel worse. "Well, no," he said, throttling down his...everything. "I wasn't a giant psycho till I got hit 'n started growin' like this." The boss monster tapped his sternum. "It's been a little at a time, but I get bigger n' meaner every year. Back when me an' Pap first met Kris, I hated humans, but I never woulda dreamed of killin' 'em full-time. Now..."

Her gaze didn't waver. "Did King Asgore order you to guard the Underground from poachers?"

"Nope. 'Fact, 'm really not s'posed to be out there at all. No one is." Sans scratched the back of his skull. He could still feel it where she'd touched him the other night. "I started doin' it a few years ago when a kid came through Snowdin cryin' fer his mom. We all knew she'd gone t'look for her husband 'cause he left to hunt some deer 'n didn't come back. So out I went, and I found 'er pretty quick. They'd wrung all her magic out. She was still alive, but not for long."

Someone knocked on the outside doors. Frisk very quietly rose and went to open it, bringing their dinner inside and putting the heavy bar back in place. Then she returned to her spot on the bed. "So the King doesn't know what you're doing?" she asked.

Why were they talking about this depressing shit instead of hugging some more? ...Probably because he couldn't trust himself right now to stop at hugging. Besides, he'd never told anyone any of this – especially not Pap – and he'd probably never be this comfortable with anyone else. "Oh, he knows," said Sans. "He's just useless, an' scared of me."

"Asgore? What do you mean?"

Her eyes had gone wide. Sans studied them for a second, thinking vaguely nice things about the color of wine and being very lovely in general, but it wasn't enough to drag him out of the mood he was working himself into. "I mean he's no good without the Queen, and she's hunkered down in the Ruins 'cause she blames him for everythin' that happened with Chara before the accident. Meanwhile, his big dumb ass knows she's right, but he won't apologize 'cause he's still pissed that she stood up to him in fronta everyone and let the humans go, as if killin' 'em woulda brought Asriel back. It's almost worse than havin' no rulers at all." The boss monster looked at his hand, feeling his eyes light up. "There's no food, no leadership, no one knows what's gonna happen."

"Sans—"

It was too late. Now that he'd started, the words came pouring out: "It wouldn't be so bad if everythin' in the Underground wasn't made of pure magic, but when there's that much fear and anger goin' around, you can actually see it build up, like fog. No joke. It's this shit-awful funk just kinda hangin' over everything. A couple years after the humans left, it got so bad that it even started infectin' Papyrus. The first time he yelled at me – I mean, screamin' at me outta nowhere, when I wasn't even buggin' him – I went out an' I saw this cloud over our house, and I just kinda snapped."

His hand opened and closed. Frisk stayed quiet. "I was so pissed that I tried ta pull some of that crap out of the air with my magic, just t'see what'd happen," Sans continued, "an' it actually worked. It came down, and it vanished. So I grabbed all the rest of it I could find, 'n it stayed gone. 'Fore I knew it, Pap was his old self again, 'n everyone seemed a little happier."

She shook her head. "When you say that it vanished, do you mean it evaporated, or did you absorb it?"

"Yep! Turns out when my magic touches any of it, I can't get it out again. It's just...in me. An' I hafta siphon more it off every couple of years, or everyone starts gettin' screwy again." He chuckled, a hollow sound that made her wince. "Gotta say, it's powerful as hell. The more I take, the stronger I get, an' now look at me." Sans shrugged. "I dunno. It's like gettin' hit with that explosion opened a hole in me I could fill with whatever I wanted, an' I didn't have anything else ta put in it."

Frisk watched him in silence, letting Sans get the last of his thoughts out. "So here we are. Pap's stayed his cool self, I'm a big ol' grouch, an' I could probably take Asgore in a fight if I really wanted. He knows damn well what I'm doin', but as long as I'm out protectin' everyone, he doesn't hafta worry about what else I'm up to, an' I feel like a helper. Everybody wins."

"I doubt that," the priestess murmured. "If you've spent years soaking up all the negative energy in the Underground and then feeding it with constant violence..."

It was now dark outside. Sans made a careless gesture. "I'm hungry. Ya hungry? Let's—"

"I'll go back with you."

The skeleton stopped in the act of pushing himself to his feet. He slowly turned to face her. "What did you say?"

"You asked me to come with you to speak to Asgore. This is my answer," she said calmly. "We still have a little over two weeks left. I've organized a series of inspections that will probably end up with more monsters being confiscated and placed in my custody. We can have one of them bring a letter to the Underground ahead of time to let him know we're—"

"Nope." Sans got up and went into the workroom. "Time ta eat." He unloaded the trolley, got everything set out, put the trolley out in the hall, barred the doors, and sat down.

Then he sighed, and went back to the bedroom, where Frisk was still sitting on the bed, just staring at him. "Look. Frisk. I've been thinkin' it over, an' it was a bad idea. I..." He shut his eyes as tight as he could. "Asgore will kill you. Okay? You've got the most unbelievable SOUL I've ever seen, and he'll see it, too, an' he's gonna try ta take it. He's gotten so bitter since Toriel left that I don't think we could even talk to 'im. He'd kill you, or we'd hafta kill him."

Frisk stood up on the bed, so that she was only a couple feet shorter than him, several feet away. "It's true, then? A monster can steal a human SOUL to become more powerful?"

"It's true, and it wouldn't be 'more powerful.' Try 'godlike.' An' that's just a regular monster 'n human. If Asgore got ahold of your SOUL, he could kill every human in this kingdom, an' nobody could stop 'im."

Her face had grown pale. "I see," she managed. Frisk slowly sank back to the mattress. "I...go ahead and eat. Please get started without me."

Sans felt that helpless anxiety that, unbeknownst to him, was so common among males of both species—should he at least try to comfort her first? "'Kay," he rumbled. "'m really sorry, Frisk. If there was anythin' I could do ta—"

"Please get started without me!"

Crap. He should've just listened to her. "Okay, okay, I'm goin'!"

Sure enough, the moment he stepped into the workroom, the bedroom door closed, and Sans felt a fresh barrier go up. He sat down and poked at his food. It didn't look that great anymore, but he might as well be miserable, not miserable and hungry. It wasn't like she was going to be in there all night, right?

...Right?

 ~

 No sooner had they stepped out of the flowery cavern than she heard more footsteps, bigger and heavier ones. "Asriel!" It was a woman's voice echoing from far off, stern and a little scared. "Asriel, my child, where are you? They'll be here any moment!"

"Here, Mama," called her new friend. "We're coming." He tugged gently on her hand, and she let him guide her down a long, purple-tiled hallway.

"'We'?" The motherly voice was moving toward them. "What do you mean, dear? No one else should be down here unless—"

They rounded a corner, and so did Asriel's mother. She'd sounded like a normal human mom, but she was another goat monster, with short horns and a purple robe. "My goodness!" The goat-lady hurried forward and dropped to her knees in front of the child. "Where did you come from, little one? Are you hurt? Is he hurt, Asriel?"

"No, Mama," he said, smiling at the child again. "I found him in the golden flowers. He got separated from the others and fell down here."

"I see," the goat-lady said, her voice sounding funny. But then she smiled warmly at the human, who smiled right back. She'd never had a real mom, and this one seemed like everything she'd ever dreamed of, except with more fur. "Welcome to the Underground, my child. I am so very pleased to have you with us. I am Queen Toriel, and it seems you've been lucky enough to meet my son, Prince Asriel."

The little human looked up at him in terror. The prince? Had she been rude to him, or to the Queen? Should she bow, or say something royal, or—

"It's all right, Kris," said Asriel. "Mama, I'd like to take him to the house and get him cleaned up before the rest of the humans arrive. We'll be in the Great Hall as soon as we can."

"You most certainly will not! You will go tell your father that I am attending to our very first guest, and we will be there when Kris is ready." Toriel got to her feet and took the child's hand from Asriel. "Come with me, little one. Off you go, dear." She made a shooing motion at her son.

Asriel sighed, but arguing was clearly not an option. "Yes, Mama. I'll see you again soon, Kris!"

The child nodded, watching him disappear around the corner with amazing speed. Monsters could do that, couldn't they? At least some of the stories seemed to be true.

Toriel smiled down at her again. The child suddenly felt strange, but in a good way. Asriel was wonderful, and his mother looked so loving that the child wanted to throw herself into her arms right there.

And just like magic, the Queen released her hand, knelt, and opened her arms for a huge, warm, cloud-soft hug. "Poor child," Toriel murmured, the vibrations in her chest rumbling against the human's cheek. "We will take care of you for as long as you are here. I promise."

The child burrowed her face into the monster's robe, where no one could get mad at her for crying. If this was what the Underground was really like, then she wasn't scared anymore. She wouldn't run away; she'd stay as long as the others did, and fib all they wanted her to. She wished she could stay forever!

 ~

 Sans jerked awake as a fork rattled onto a plate. "Dirt," said Frisk. "Sorry about that."

He'd fallen asleep on the workroom floor. It was dark out; the clock was about to strike 2. "What're you doin' up?" The skeleton got up and sat at the table.

"Cleaning," she said pointedly, stacking the last plate onto the last tray and setting them on the neglected trolley.

There was a stack of paper and a couple of ink bottles laid out, and Sans recalled how Gaster said she'd been writing nonstop. "What's all that?" he asked suspiciously.

"It's paper." Frisk sat down and grabbed a fresh sheet. "I have arrangements to make."

Sans made a rude noise, ignoring the twinge in his SOUL. "Yeah, but isn't it kinda soon? He hasn't even asked ya." He rapped the tabletop with his knuckles. "What's the first step again with all that crap? Gettin' a ring?"

The priestess paused, face going blank. "The first...?" She shut her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Can I assume you had a talk with Dr. Serif on your way here?"

Twinge twinge. "Yep. He tol' me he threw the box out for ya." Twiiiiinge. "He wasn't lyin', was he?"

"No." She opened her eyes. "I've checked your work on the seedlings. I don't know exactly what you had in mind for that last batch of pellets, but we'll see how it goes over the next week. Do you have any questions?"

What the crap? Was that all she was going to say? Maybe she'd do some other thing when the seedlings had grown a little more. "Uh, yeah, one question. How much sleep did ya get just now? I was up fer a couple hours before I passed out."

"Hm." The priestess rummaged in a little box of writing supplies. Only two witchlights were on, just enough to show that she looked terrible: pale, red-eyed, and...resigned, as if someone had done something really awful and left her to deal with it, but it was somehow her fault, too.

"Don't 'hm' me, lady. Ya look like total crap," he said bluntly.

Frisk ignored him, fishing out a pen. He was ready to demand an explanation when she started whistling again, the same beautiful but sad song from before. This felt much more pointed than her usual soothing noises, but it was still effective; Sans could muster just enough energy to be indignant that she was putting him back to sleep, and then his head was on the table, and he was asleep.

 ~

 To Sans' surprise and frustration, the next few days followed the same pattern, but worse. There was no more hugging, or talking about feelings, or any of the things he'd grown to expect. Frisk stayed a little too busy and grew more and more tired, but she ignored his questions, saying she'd explain what she was doing once it was over; after the second day or so, it was all he could do not to blow up at her. He couldn't force her to act happier now that her decision was made, but it sucked that he'd advised her to pick something and stop being miserable, and she'd picked something, and now they were both miserable.

Not only would she not talk to him, she kept inviting Dr. Serif to the workroom to go over solar panel specifications or observe his experiments. There was no more quiet time alone together in the mornings or evenings: if they weren't studying, she was writing, or so mopey and distracted that it wasn't fun to beat her at chess anymore. The moment they were done eating dinner, she took a bath and went straight to bed, or at least to her office, leaving the light on and probably doing more goddamn work instead of sleeping.

She also started making him escort her into town in the afternoons to help her carry stuff. She'd gone instantly from no interest in shopping whatsoever to buying large quantities of the most random things imaginable: play scripts, different types of magic stones, miniature targets for archery practice, hair accessories, bath items, bolts of silk, children's toys, dance charts, expensive figurines, sheet music, a silver tea service, books on education—it couldn't be some kind of weird impulse thing, because the few times she let him peek over her shoulder as she wrote, he'd seen that she was making shopping lists. Whenever they brought another load of crap back to her rooms, she didn't unpack anything, just had him stack it clear up to the ceiling in her office.

The kicker was that Frisk didn't even seem to enjoy hoarding all that stuff, or anything else she was doing. She almost never smiled at him or made puns anymore. She just kept writing, and dodging his questions, and looked ready to cry pretty much all the time.

It would've been neat if his libido had also gotten mad and decided to grab its toys and go home...but no. Sans had now perused enough of Frisk's science and anatomy textbooks to piece together the entire picture of human reproduction; through his own hands-on experimentation – in the bathroom, in the middle of the night, sober this time – he could say with reasonable confidence that the process for humans and monsters was much more similar than he'd thought, and everything was working fine on his end. If he had his skin on, he could of course feel more, but he couldn't finish. As himself, the process took a lot of concentration, and he got weirded out if he looked down at it too long, but—

Why was he even bothering? Sure, it felt pretty great, but he wasn't a human. He was a monster, and monsters weren't designed to waste their time or magic playing with themselves. His instincts were all pointed straight at Frisk, and now that he knew what he was supposed to do, it was getting harder – ha – to content himself with alone time. He couldn't stop thinking about holding her again, and he didn't think it was that disingenuous to want to point out to her how much better she'd feel if she'd opened up to him again. And then sex.

...Damn it all to hell. Was the entire second half of his apprenticeship going to be like this?

 ~

 It was her own fault. She wasn't supposed to be there. She'd snuck in to get some chocolate from the refrigerator, and when she heard the grown-ups come in, she realized she'd taken too long to sneak back out. The best she could do was run behind Toriel's armchair in the living room and flatten herself against the back of it at an angle. Never mind how hot the fireplace was; they already sounded mad.

"For the thousandth time," she heard the King say in his big, rumbling voice, "if I had known that he could not marry you—"

"Then I still wouldn't have been welcome in my own home. Would I, Papa?" The child buried her head in her arms. It was her. Chara. She wasn't even pretending to be nice anymore. All her hatred was out in the open, aimed right at her former parents.

"My dearest child, please," Toriel said desperately.

"Your dearest child? Where? It would be so lovely to meet them! Ah, don't tell me—did you pick up another stray human?"

"Chara," protested the King.

"Is it Kris?" A short, cruel laugh. "I'm sure you'd rather have a boy this time! If they get someone pregnant, they don't have to deal with the consequences, do they? By all means, you can have him. I know you both love surprises."

The little human wished she was dead. Toriel and Asgore were both such nice people! Why was Chara saying these horrible things to them? Did she really like anyone? Was it some kind of game to her to be so pretty, act so perfect, and sing such amazing songs, then turn around and be a bigger monster than anyone with fur or horns?

"What do you want, Chara? What would you have of either of us? We cannot turn back time, but—"

"But you can do whatever you damn well please now. Don't worry, Mama, Papa. You might've thrown me out like a dog, but I made do. At least I survived."

The armchair rocked back into the child's body as Toriel sank into it. Asgore was silent; there was no sound except the Queen's sobbing.

More footsteps. Oh, no, it was Asriel. He was going to come in and see his mother crying and hear Chara, and—

"Big brother!" Light, prancing footsteps ran to meet Asriel. "I'm so sorry, Azzy, but we were talking, and I think I upset Mama," Chara said sheepishly. "Can you and I go for a walk so she can calm down?"

"Of course!" A brief pause, as if Asriel was seeing his parents' expressions. "Er...we'll be back in a bit. Is that all right?"

Asgore grunted. The child could feel Toriel shaking through the back of the armchair, though the Queen held her tears back till the front door had closed behind Asriel.

The King cleared his throat. "Tori, I—"

"Don't you 'Tori' me! Not now. Maybe not ever!"

The child hunched down even further as Asgore hurried away down the hall, slamming the bedroom door. This couldn't be happening. Maybe, if she stayed still enough, she'd wake up. If she was still...if she was good, maybe—

 ~

 Fourteen days were left of his month at the castle.

Frisk had gotten up looking as pale and worn as usual, but the moment Sans saw her leave her office, he knew something had changed. She was still unhappy, but now she also looked determined. "We're having dinner with His Majesty and Prince Gaius tonight," she announced as he unloaded breakfast onto the table.

"Oh yeah?" Sans glanced at the tray of unopened mail. "How d'ya know? You didn't mention it yesterday."

"I just decided it," she said flatly.

Sans sensed this was not the time to ask stupid questions, and he couldn't think of any smart ones, so he nodded and turned his attention to his food while Frisk wrote yet another note and put her scary-looking official seal on it. A few words at the double doors, and a guard ran off to take it straight to the King.

The course of the day itself was decided for them: before they had finished eating, someone else came to the doors with a sheaf of papers. Frisk brought them back to the table and asked, "Do you remember how I mentioned surprise inspections on how monsters are being kept?" She held up the papers. "I ordered fifteen of them for last night. These are the reports."

That explained several of the letters she'd been working on. "Didja ever get those records you wanted from the doughy guy?"

Frisk didn't crack a smile, but at least she wasn't frowning. "Yes, the Cardinal provided them the day you took Snowdrake home. I'll keep my promise to show it all to you, but I wanted to get the worst of the worst taken care of first. This way, you don't have to worry about anyone being in immediate danger. Please get started on those root measures while I go through these."

He did, and she did, and Sans could only console himself that he at least knew what she was writing this time. Of the fifteen near-simultaneous visits, five had resulted in citations and scheduled followups, while eight monsters had been found in such dangerous or unsanitary conditions that the Church agents had immediately confiscated them. That explained why she hadn't told him sooner what those letters were for—he might have gone straight out to liberate the monsters.

Frisk had prepared a dozen custody letters with blanks for monster and owner names and specific offenses, so that she had only to fill those in to get the custodial paperwork started. In the meantime, the monsters were being cared for in temporary quarters by people who knew that the High Priestess would hear of anything at all being done wrong and take swift action to correct it.

Watching her scribble her way through the pre-written letters and the documents necessary for the deposits on each monster, Sans had to reflect on the amount of time and forethought all of this had required, and congratulated himself on not going off on her for being so little fun the past few days. Granted, it was a pretty low bar, but he'd stumbled all the way over it! Even if she was going to marry some other schlub, he, Sans the skeleton, had been a helper, and he hadn't had to kill a single person to do it!

...Huh. He really had helped, and he really hadn't killed anyone, had he? Now all he had to do was keep his hands to himself and focus on his genuinely interesting homework for a couple more weeks, and...and he'd figure out what to do then.

Once Frisk was done and had summoned someone to whisk the papers away to their exciting new life, she had a new task for him. "When you return to the Underground," she told him, "I'll send as many seeds and herbal ingredients along with you as I can. But you also have your salary, and if you're going to use it for large quantities of foodstuffs, we need to arrange it ahead of time. I've compiled a list of current prices for wheat, barley, different kinds of beans, rice, and other nonperishables. Please look through these and make a rough estimate of what you'd like to pick up on your way back. I'll pay for the rental of a horse and wagon, or wagons, depending what you choose and how many trips we want to do."

"Neato." Sans glanced at the tray of letters, still untouched, and recognized the crest on one that had fallen slightly askew from the pile. "Hey, isn't that from yer boyfriend?"

"Don't be childish," Frisk said, so sharply that he wished he'd kept his mouth shut. She plucked the note out of the stack and ripped it open, scanning the few short lines. "Of course he heard about it already." The priestess tossed the note aside. "Before you ask, no, he's not proposing. He says he'll be there another week, and then they're both going to visit their parents."

Interesting. Sans didn't know if the guy was being overly confident that she'd wait for him, or what. Ha, maybe rich humans just took so long to set up big weddings that he was giving her a couple months' head start to get her shoes made or something.

...Actually, that could be the case. But at least it'd be a while before the guy came back! Who knew? Maybe he would choke to death on something or fall off his horse or—

Sans knew he should try to not wallow in evil thoughts, but it wasn't his fault: Frisk had bought some perfume when they were out yesterday, a light vanilla with hints of citrus that made her smell like candy. He'd had trouble focusing around her before, and now Sans found himself crunching his femurs together to help remind him that no.

Still, he had plenty else to think about; figuring out what to buy for the Underground, how much everyone would like of which food within his budget, was kind of like a puzzle. Papyrus probably wouldn't have enjoyed it, but Sans got so into it that lunch came while he was still scribbling in the margins. "We have more paper, you know," Frisk remarked at his shoulder.

That sounded more like the lady he knew. Sans didn't know what she'd been thinking, but as long as she was happy again, or on her way there...

Another good thing happened a little while after they were done with lunch. A couple of servants came puffing down the hall with two enormous boxes that turned out to be a cavernous black overcoat trimmed with white fur, a giant red shirt, and correspondingly large trousers. "Surprise," Frisk said as the men unpacked everything. "I ordered them when you were out with Snowdrake. I thought you could use more than one set of clothes. Very fancy, I know."

It was almost exactly the same outfit as his human form, but real, and exceptionally well-made. How much had the materials alone cost, never mind getting clothes this size in less than a week? "Are these slippers?" Sans demanded, lifting out a pair of enormous black slippers.

She grinned for the first time in days. "Remember the time we were arguing about whether you needed shoes? Here's a compromise. Try them on, please."

The shoemaker must have thought she was joking about his size, but the joke was on him: they fit perfectly. It was more comfortable than clacking around with bare bones. Way more. "Huh," he said.

"Excellent. There's no charge for these, by the way. Consider it hazard pay for taking me to the festival, and all that shopping." Frisk gave each of the servants a hundred-dinar piece and nodded them and the empty boxes out of the room.

Aaargh, she smelled great and she was being ludicrously generous—oh, good, she was going into the office now to let him try the new stuff on. Well, from a civilized point of view, he could see the sense in having more than one set of clothes: he'd only had his newish ones washed one time, and had worn the gross old ones while he waited. This way, he could just throw those out.

...Or he could throw out the other set, too. The black and red ensemble was warm and comfortable, it had great pockets, it looked cool, and he was never taking it off.

That resolution stayed with him all the way to their dinner with the King. When they arrived at the small dining room where King Stephin ate with his son every night, Sans remained decked out in his new stuff, including the slippers. To his absolute bemusement, not only had Frisk not argued, she'd donned a black dress with little sparkly bits and a garnet necklace and earrings. It was stupid and dumb of him to be so pleased that they matched, but, they matched.

This did not escape the King, who welcomed him with the same cordiality as their first meeting and gave Frisk a weird look as she came in. The Prince was a thin, sandy-haired, sickly-looking kid who had obviously been warned about him, because when the greetings and introductions were over, he seemed more relieved than scared. When he wouldn't stop staring, Sans ignored his own instructions and looked directly at him to say, "No worries, I don't bite."

Gaius nodded, fascinated. Frisk took a dainty spoonful of soup and, under the table, kicked Sans in the tibia. "Sans has made remarkable progress in his studies," she said pleasantly.

"Oh? How wonderful," the King said, also pleasantly.

"Yes, he'll be invaluable to his people when he returns to the Underground. I wanted to ask you, Majesty, to consider whether it may be permissible for me to accompany him there for a short time, to offer him my continued assistance."

Sans glanced at her in disbelief. Yes, he'd heard right, and she was smiling at him in open defiance. The skeleton had to force himself not to snarl at her. What the hell was this?

The King didn't seem much happier with the idea than he was. "That may not be wise, Your Eminence," he replied. "I wish relations between our nations were at a point where such a venture would be possible, but I have been made to understand that my brother monarch is no longer inclined to receive human emissaries. We must consider your personal safety."

"Of course." Frisk sipped her wine, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "It's a pity you couldn't have visited with the last delegation, Majesty. I'm sure you would have enjoyed catching up with King Asgore."

From the King's stiffened back and tightened mouth, Sans guessed that it was one of those polite little conversational bitch-slaps humans were so good at. He wasn't sure about dishing one out to the actual King, but the old man seemed to recover well enough. "Indeed," he said. "I'm sure your pupil will prove capable."

Frisk inclined her head, earrings swaying. "I hope this will be the case, Your Majesty, and that the knowledge he gains from us will be useful enough to prove our good intentions to his King."

The conversation moved right along from there, but Sans was barely listening. He made the correct noises when Gaius started babbling at him about the book he was reading about people fighting each other with giant cats or swords or something; he sort of laughed at Stephin's jokes; he let the High Priestess tell them about the things they were working on. "Sans says there are magic flowers in the Underground that will repeat whatever you say back to you, and to the next person who touches their petals," she informed the young Prince.

"It'll repeat anything?" Gaius asked eagerly, no doubt plotting the sort of words he'd say.

"Any sound at all. If I ever make it to the Underground, shall I bring one back for you?"

The boy agreed so enthusiastically that he started coughing, and dinner was brought to an end by the arrival of dessert: apple turnovers. Sans took several, mind still buzzing, though he noticed that, like the rest of the food, the things were pretty damn tasty. So was she messing with him, or trying to throw him off so he would be too distracted to do something rude or scary?

No, she knew exactly what she was doing: as they bowed their way out and returned to her workroom, her head stayed high, and she carried herself to her dressing room with absolute certainty. Frisk came out in her robe and stopped in front of Sans, who was blocking the bathroom door. "Yes?" she asked rhetorically.

"Oh, nothin'. I'm just tryin' ta figure out what's wrong with my ears. It sure sounded ta me like you told His Majesty that ya don't care if my Majesty wants to rip your heart out 'n eat it."

The priestess feigned dismay. "I'm so sorry to tell you this, Sans, but...your ears, they're—"

"Not now!" Sans jammed his hands into his pockets, leaning down to look her in the face. "I already told ya, I'm not takin' you with me! Ya got that?"

"I got it." Frisk crossed her arms at the waist. On a hunch, the boss monster checked her SOUL—oh, fuck, it was already that bright? And her determination was still rising. "That's really unfortunate. It'll make getting in a lot more difficult for me, not to mention dangerous," she added.

The boss monster ground his teeth. "Ya know what's not hard or dangerous? Keepin' yer ass away from the Underground!"

She smiled, and said, "No."

Sans was at a complete loss. He had never heard anything more definite than that one word. "Why 'no'?" he asked, incredulity overtaking his anger for a moment. "Do ya really not trust me to teach the others the stuff I'm learnin'?"

"That's not it," she replied.

"Then what the hell is it? Are ya curious? Do you wanna tell everyone yer mom said hi or somethin'?!"

"No." Frisk's arms dropped to her sides. "I want to tell them that I say hi." She smiled again, but in a wistful, absolutely unyielding way. "Thank you for being so patient with me the past few days, Sans. I haven't..." Her smile disappeared, one hand brushing her hair back and the other curling into a fist. "I lied to you. I lied to everyone, but I should've told you the truth already. I..." She swallowed, her pulse racing so that he could see it in her throat. "I opened the box, Sans."

The clock ticked. The fire hissed and popped.

"No you didn't," the boss monster said blankly. "The doc threw it out for ya."

"He threw it away after I opened it," she said, enunciating each word carefully. "After our dream, I woke up, I opened the box, and I took out this little orb inside it—" Frisk made a small circle of her thumb and forefinger to illustrate its size. "I made a barrier. I stuck the orb into it, and when I pulled the barrier back in, the memories came with it."

The skeleton felt as if someone had opened the top of his skull and vigorously swished his brains around, then slammed the top back on. "So...?"

"So I gave him the box out in the hallway in front of the guards, and we acted as though I'd never opened it." Frisk swallowed again. "It's been coming back to me in bits and pieces, but now I know what happened. Mostly. And I am telling you—" Her face hardened until she was almost unrecognizable. "I am going back to the Underground, with or without you. I'm going to see everyone again or die trying. I am not exaggerating, Sans. Do you understand me?"

"Hell fucking no, I don't understand you!" Sans' foot rose and hit the floor so hard that, even with the slipper on, he felt a board crack beneath the carpeting. "Whaddya mean, 'go back'? Are ya makin' shit up 'cause you have some kind of death wish?"

She was breathing rapidly, her throat still pulsing. "A death wish? How many times has someone tried to kill me here, Sans, even in my own bedroom? If I go with you, at least I'll have someone to hide behind!"

"I'm not takin' ya anywhere more dangerous than the candy shop, or whatever other shit you wanna get next." He snorted. "'sat why you've been buyin' all that crap? Are ya gonna play Father Christmas an' bring everyone in the Underground a buncha presents?"

"Yes," she snapped. Sans was seriously considering teleporting in order to avoid wrecking something when Frisk went on, "Think about it. Who do you think the targets are for? Do you want Undyne destroying your front window again because she got carried away and forgot that Monster Kid couldn't catch any of her spears? Then Papyrus had to send her home because she treated cleanup like another challenge and kept pounding the glass instead of sweeping it up."

Cold shock poured down Sans' spine. "Wha...how—"

"The magic stones are for Alphys to study. She's probably starved for more plays to read, and she can act them out with the new figurines, but she'll have to share the scripts with Mettaton. The luxury goods are mostly for him, and a few are for Toriel. Does she still have trouble with the skin itching at the base of her horns? Either way, I also got her some books on teaching. I'll leave the tea service outside Asgore's door with a note on it—shall I go on?"

"This isn't funny!" Sans was breathing heavily, too. "What—how the fuck d'you know all that? None of the humans were there when Undyne broke the window! It was just us an'..."

"And Kris."

Sans shook his head wildly, stumbling back until he bumped into the bathroom door. "This is messed up, Frisk! Ya found Kris and didn't even tell me?! How long were you gonna sit on that?!"

"I only just found out, and I'm telling you now," she said firmly.

Sans' SOUL felt sick, and ecstatic, and so scared that he wanted to hurt something. "Okay. Great. Perfect. What are you tellin' me now, Frisk? Where is he? Is he okay? What else did he tell you?"

Frisk shut her eyes. She opened them. "We don't give Papyrus enough credit," she commented. "He figured it out before I did, and you still don't—"

"Would you fucking stop the cryptic bullshit an' spit it out already?!"

"Fine! I'm Kris!"

Another crystallized moment. Sans felt his head move back and forth, back and forth, on its own. "Shut up."

"I'm not joking."

More shaking, spreading down his frame. "What the hell, Frisk," he muttered, almost more disappointed than angry.

"They brought me along to see how the monsters would treat a child, as a guinea pig," she spat. "Why do you think I was allowed to spend so much time with you completely unsupervised?"

"Just knock it off, Frisk! Kris was a friggin' boy!"

"Kris had short hair and wore boys' clothes! It's not the same thing!"

"God damn it, Kris was, what, four or five—"

"None of you ever asked me how old I was! I was ten, thank you, but I was so malnourished that I probably looked like a toddler!"

Sans dropped to a squat, resting his elbow on his knee and his hand over his face. "I don't fuckin' believe this. Didja get brainwashed, or is this some kinda joke?"

"Why in God's name would I or anyone else joke about this, Sans?!"

"I don't fucking know!" Sans slammed his fist into his femur so hard that Frisk jumped. "Ya know what? We're done here. I'm goin' to bed." He got up, hobbling a little to move past her. "Have fun in yer little fantasy world. Lemme know when—"

"Do you want to see my stripes?"

Sans stopped as though he'd run into a brick wall. He could feel his sockets burning red-orange as his SOUL tried to yank him backwards. Sans slowly turned to look at Frisk, who hadn't moved, her back still to him.

Stripes. Sans watched, too heartsick to speak, as the young woman opened the neck of her robe and began easing it off her shoulders.

It wasn't entirely Papyrus' fault. Sans should have been keeping at least one socket on them, but it was late and he was busy on the floor with some very important dozing. A pillow came flying at him, and he caught it with his eyes still closed, sending it end over end back at Papyrus.

"NYEH HEH! WELL DONE, BROTHER! (PSST! HUMAN! LET'S HIT HIM WITH THE SPECIAL ATTACK NEXT!)"

Kris giggled. "Okay," he whispered, somehow even louder than Pap.

"ARE YOU READY TO SURPRISE HIM? VERY WELL! ONE! TWO! ...WHOOPSIE!"

Sans did not see what happened next, but he did hear the distinctive sound of a full glass of water being knocked flying, and sighed, opening his eyes.

"ACK! YOU ARE WET, HUMAN! SANS! PLEASE ASSIST KRIS BEFORE HE MELTS!"

"I'm gonna melt?!"

"probably. i dunno." Sans got up and beckoned to the child, who was holding his shirt away from his body in obvious panic. "you go get a towel, pap, and i'll find the squirt something dry to wear."

That got him a smile. Sans led the way to his own room, where he probably had a clean shirt somewhere. He switched the light on and selected a likely suspect from the top of the laundry pile. "here we go. survival of the fittest, amirite, kiddo? heh. gimme your shirt, and we'll put it over—"

Kris had already pulled his shirt off. He was painfully thin compared to the other humans Sans had seen, but as the kid turned to wring the wet shirt out – all over the carpet, sigh – it wasn't his protruding ribs or spine that brought Sans up short. It was the livid pink and too-white lines criss-crossing each other in the middle and lower parts of the little human's back, with one or two errant marks near his shoulders.

Scars. Those were scars. Someone had hurt the kid so badly that it'd messed up his skin for the rest of his life. How could—

Sans didn't mean to stare, but Kris looked up and caught his gaze, and the absolute worst part was that he smiled, and laughed a little. "You're lucky. None of your stripes probably show."

"stripes?" the skeleton repeated.

"Yeah." The child's tone was so casual that Sans' SOUL hurt. "It's okay. Mama told Cook to stop leaving so many marks."

Sans gestured, almost mechanically, for Kris to raise his arms. The child did so, and Sans pulled the dry shirt down over his head, tugging it down until the hem almost reached Kris' knobby knees. Then the monster did something that confused the human quite a bit: he leaned forward and put his arms around the child, resting his hand on Kris' head. "no one gets stripes around here, pal," he said into the human's fleshy ear.

Pause. "They don't?" queried Kris.

"nah. it's a very important monster rule: no stripes. if anyone tries to give you any more, you just send 'em to me and pap. we'll explain the rule for you." Very, very thoroughly, he thought, gritting his teeth.

"Oh. Okay." Kris dutifully put his arms around Sans, with a slightly puzzled air. "Thanks, Sans."

Holy moly, did the poor kid not know how hugs worked? What the actual hell was wrong with humans? The skeleton stood up and held his hand out. "c'mon, kiddo. let's go tell pap your skin melted."

"Okay!" Back on familiar ground, Kris hopped up and down. "Can we tell Toriel my skin melted?"

"haaa ha ha ha no."

And they'd gone back to Pap's room, and Pap had immediately bought it, and they'd snickered while he lost his mind about what Toriel was going to say and whether they could make some new skin for him out of paper. Sans had pointed out that that would make bathtime problematic, and—

And Sans had never, ever told anyone about the "stripes."

And now he was watching a beautiful young woman ease her robe all the way down to the small of her back, and there was the same pattern of scars, the same long, thin pink and white lines he'd seen on Kris twelve years ago. "It's not a trick," she said, her voice a little too calm and steady. "You can touch them if you still don't believe me."

"I believe you," he said roughly, but he couldn't help himself: a second later, Frisk jumped as his phalange grazed the spot where the most lines intersected. "Shit! Sorry. Sorry!" Sans snatched his hand away. "I...I believe ya, I swear. I just—"

"It's all right. Go ahead." She turned her head enough for him to see her attempt a smile. "It doesn't hurt anymore."

Liar. Sans sat down and crossed his legs, accepting the pain where he'd hit himself. He turned his hand and very gently ran the side of his forefinger down her back, starting at the velvety, unbroken skin below her neck and across the bumpy scar tissue. Then he did what he'd seen her do too many times and wiped his eyes on his sleeve, where the red wouldn't show. "So...Kris, huh?"

"That's me." Frisk's voice cracked. She was clutching the robe against her front, so that he could only see the graceful lines of her shoulders, and the marks someone had put on the sweetest kid, the best person anyone could ever meet.

"They had to remove my memories at St. Brigid's," she continued. "My father didn't go with the delegation because his wife was about to deliver and had already been sick. She died while we were on our way to the Underground, and he started checking on all of his illegitimate children. After they made me leave with the others, I was sent to the convent to be educated, and I was a mess." She swallowed twice. "All I wanted was to go back to the Underground. It didn't matter how many times they told me the monsters didn't want another human down there. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep, I just kept—"

"What the fuck! Of course we wanted ya there!" Sans slammed his fist into the floor. "Do you have any idea how much everyone missed you?!"

"Yes! And I wanted to go back just as much!" Frisk's facade was crumbling rapidly. She hadn't pulled up her robe yet, possibly because her hands were clenched too tightly. "I didn't know if everyone was all right after the accident! No one would tell me anything!"

"No. They tore it all outta your head instead." Sans ground his eye sockets into his sleeve again. "An' ya got it back, and you've keepin' it to yerself?"

"I'm sorry!" The pain in her voice was so raw that Sans flinched. "I'm sorry! Kris wasn't real, it was just me! And no, I didn't tell you any of this! I was so scared of what you'd say, if you'd believe me or not—"

He hadn't. He hadn't believed her. She'd had to get half naked to prove it. If Sans could have ripped his SOUL out and punched it, he would have done so right then and there. "Whaddya mean, it's 'just you'?" he demanded, rougher than he meant to.

Her head drooped, leaving a long curve of neck and shoulder that the stupider parts of him couldn't stop staring at. His instincts were starting to kick in: she was hurting, she needed him, she'd already showed him this much skin and let him touch her—

Sans' whole body twitched as another thought crashed in: the fortune. Her second fortune.

The pain of that sorrow and regret will be unbearable for a time, and they will not be yours alone.

But the rest of it, the joy and power, and a child—

Frisk buried her face in her hands, shaking her head harder and harder. "I have to go back, Sans. I have to! Please, Sans, take me home with you! I just want to go home! Please—"

Sans didn't think, he acted. Frisk gasped as he turned her around and opened his overcoat to sweep her under it before he put his arms around her, holding her as tight as he dared. "Okay," he said, swiping at his eyes again. "Okay, kitten. I'll take you with me. We'll both go, and we'll tell everyone you're back." After all, the monsters – especially the King – would never accept the humans' High Priestess trying to cozy up to them, but they just might listen to Kris, especially when she was returning Sans to them safe, bringing food and gifts. They wouldn't let Asgore hurt her.

That was the difference in her fortunes. The other humans had done too good a job of erasing "Kris" and turning Frisk into the ideal High Priestess. If she hadn't been brave enough to remember everything—

This wasn't fair! He already loved her so much, and now this? What was he supposed to do?

Right now, he just held her as she buried her face in his new shirt and gave vent to huge, racking, wailing sobs, finally letting out years of grief. He allowed her to cry until she started hiccuping, and then he started petting her hair and just a little down her neck and shoulders, nothing objectionable—all he needed to do to quash his sex drive was think of Kris smiling ruefully about his "stripes." The bones of his face itched where the red kept trickling down, but the sky could have started falling, and he wouldn't have moved before she was ready.

[rorykillmore]

and this one is for @mikexxwheeler who asked for something with mike and villanelle, who were a BLAST to go back and write for since it’s been a while since we rped them together

merry christmas jace!!!  consistently our friendship is one of the things that brightens up my life the most, and i wanted to tell you how much i appreciate you just... reaching out to me and maintaining that even during the times when we’re not actively writing together or anything. even if it’s just one of our silly memes or a joke about whatever crazy thing a politician did recently (or linking the star wars holiday special in its entirety, which of course we then proceed to drop everything and watch.) it always just. instantly lifts my mood to get a message from you, and being friends with you is one of the things i’ve treasured most over the years. as carrie fisher would say... [weird emotional musical number set to the tune of the star wars theme]

She’s not the kind of person who drops ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ into her internal monologue without actually preparing for the worst that could happen. She isn’t stupid.

“Are you sure you do not want to be seeing Star Wars, or something boys your age should like?” Villanelle asks conversationally as she and Mike wait in the concessions line outside the movie theater. “Apparently there’s a new one out.”

“Yeah, but I heard it sucks,” Mike tells her with thinly veiled disdain. “They made the main character, like, the granddaughter of Palpatine, or something.”

“Which one is Palpatine?” asks Villanelle, who hasn’t seen a Star Wars movie since she was about twelve.  “Wait -- is he -- ?”

Mike nods grimly, and Villanelle throws back her head and cackles in abject disgust. 

“It’s not funny. It’s gross.”

“It is really gross. I’m laughing as a coping mechanism.”  Shaking off any unwanted thoughts of crusty old men fucking, Villanelle squints down at the ticket she’s holding.  “So what is this movie we’re seeing? ‘Demons’?”

“Yeah, it’s a re-release of an old one. A horror movie, I think. It actually came out in like, 1985, I think, so I just missed it.”

Villanelle cocks her head thoughtfully to one side. “The horror movies that came out in the 80′s were the best. They were so campy and stupid.”

Mike laughs.  “Yeah, I figured it’d be fun.”   And then his smirk turns into a more genuine smile.  “Thanks for coming with me.”

Villanelle shrugs and takes a sip of her soda.  “This is what friends do, right?”

It isn’t as rhetorical a question as it sounds, but Villanelle is pretty sure of the answer, at least. Movie nights are nice, normal things that people do. Even she isn’t compelled to mess this up too badly in the course of only a couple of hours. So her aside, what could possibly go wrong?

They enter the theater together, snacks and drinks in hand, and Villanelle barely pays attention to the woman in the shiny silver mask who hisses “Ow!” as she accidentally cuts the side of her face.

---

Really, it’s no wonder that Mike barely had to bribe her to tag along. Villanelle likes movies. She’s always liked movies. And this one is the perfect combination of campy and gory, so she is comfortably enjoying herself right up until the scene where one of their characters cuts their face on a weird looking demon mask -- and proceeds to begin to turn into a demon themselves.

“You know, this is basically just a zombie movie,” Villanelle leans over to murmur to Mike. “They probably just called it ‘Demons’ because Italians are so Catholic.”

But Mike is busy frowning at the screen, surprisingly unimpressed by the gnarly display of body horror taking place in front of him.  “Wasn’t there a lady out in the lobby who cut her face on a mask like that?”

“Was there?” Villanelle raises her eyebrows in surprise. She does vaguely remember it now that Mike has brought it up, but she shrugs. “Probably just part of the immersive experience.”

Teenagers. So easily spooked by movies like these.

“Hey. What the hell happened to Rosemary?” A guy in the row in front of them growls, stoking the fires of Mike’s unease.

“I’m pretty sure that was where she was sitting, too. She’s missing!”

It is a slightly... strange coincidence, but Villanelle only twists around in her seat briefly to make sure they’re not attracting any attention.  “She probably just went to the bathroom. Relax.”

“Go check.”

“What?”

“Villanelle, if we’re about to get stuck in the middle of a demonic apocalypse, we’d better get a jump on it.”

Villanelle grimaces in irritation, but reminds herself that Mike has survived the odd supernatural possibly-apocalyptic scenario on occasion before. She needs a refill, anyway. “Fine. But you are coming with me.”

“I can’t go into the girls’ restroom,” Mike protests.

“You can wait outside. Just in case I get turned into a demon, and it’s up to you to warn the rest of the world.” Villanelle gets up and starts inching her way out of the aisle without waiting for an answer. It isn’t long before she hears Mike shuffling behind her, following as she knew he would, ever incapable of resisting a taste of adventure even if it is under completely ridiculous circumstances. 

Villanelle never would have imagined she’d have anything in common with Mike Wheeler, of all people.  But sometimes she thinks he’s been through so much that at the end of the day - even if he hasn’t yet admitted it to himself - he wouldn’t ever be able to settle for a normal life again either. So in that way, they are the same.

“Arm yourself,” Villanelle tells him as they reach the lobby, only half-joking. She gets a flat look in return, but then Mike does pick up a broom a janitor left propped up against the side of the wall, raising his eyebrows at her as if to say ‘happy?’

Villanelle gives him a cheeky little thumbs up before she steps into the women’s restroom.  There is no need for her to arm herself, because - as always - she has come prepared, a knife strapped to her ankle, a tiny hand-sized pistol tucked into her jacket lining.

(She’s not the kind of person who drops ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ into her internal monologue without actually preparing for the worst that could happen. She isn’t stupid.)

But when she steps into restroom, everything seems calm, almost to her vague disappointment. What has she become, if she is very nearly craving the unlikely possibility of demonic mass hysteria? She misses the good old, simple days. When she was content to get her adrenaline rush by slashing a few throats, and never stretched her imagination unreasonable lengths beyond that.

There is a woman standing in front of one of the sink mirrors. Villanelle assumes she must be Rosemary, if the way she is dabbing at her face is any indication. The cut on the side of her cheek looks normal, and Villanelle decides she’ll just get a quick closer look before delivering the all-clear to Mike.

“Do you need a band-aid for that?” Villanelle asks, sidling up and quickly slipping into Girl Talk Mode.  “I think I have one in my purse...”

“That’d be great,” Rosemary says with a relieved smile, and now that Villanelle is closer she notices... there’s an unusual amount of blood dripping down her jaw, for a wound that seems comparatively shallow.   “It’s weird, I just can’t get it to stop bleeding.”

Fortunately, Villanelle hadn’t been bluffing, and really does have a bandage in her purse. She fishes it out and offers it to the other woman, watching closely as Rosemary uses it to cover the wound and...

...Within seconds, it bleeds right through.

Okay. That is definitely not normal.

“Mike?” Villanelle calls back out into the lobby.  “I thiiink we have a problem.”

“What’s happening?” Mike calls back to her, but Villanelle doesn’t answer him right away.  She’s too busy watching in growing, morbid fascination and disgust as the wound starts to pulse and throb, like there is something under Rosemary’s skin burrowing its way to the surface to get out.

“Mike,” she calls more insistently. 

“What! I can’t come in there!”

“Oh my god, it’s not like there is a force field, or something --” But Villanelle’s retort breaks off into a horrified shriek as the wound on the side of Rosemary’s face explodes.

“Villanelle!” 

This time, throwing all caution to the winds and evidently deciding that his dignity is not as important as Villanelle’s life, Mike comes rushing into the restroom just as Villanelle is flattening herself against the wall to avoid the worst of the oozing... pus... no, she does not want to even describe it internally.

“What’s happening to her?! Is she --” 

Rosemary’s screams turn feral, and Villanelle has to interrupt Mike’s question to pull him out of the way as she slashes at him with... are those claws?

“It’s the movie! I fucking told you it was just like the movie!”  Mike shouts. Rosemary rounds on them again with wild, animalistic yellow eyes, and Mike... promptly smacks her right in the face with the broom handle.  Her neck snaps back at an unnatural angle.

“Ha!” Villanelle laughs, recovering in the midst of all this chaos. “Nice hit.”

“Thanks. Wait, I mean -- what do we do?!” 

“Run?” Villanelle guesses, unsure if there is any way to actually kill this thing. Rosemary’s seems to be snapping her neck back to its normal position, and neither of them stayed in the theater long enough to know if the demons had any significant weaknesses. 

Mike spares a moment to shoot her a frantic look.  “But she’ll get out and spread the virus to other people!”

That sounds like their problem, Villanelle wants to say, although she supposes she can easily enough see how a supernatural pandemic might eventually become her problem as well.

Rosemary lets out an unearthly snarl and lunges forward again. It is not so much the threat of being scratched and turned, or at least dismembered, that makes Villanelle react (although that alone is obviously enough) -- as does the sight of her wide, gaping jaws. And all that slimy pus stuff she’s drooling everywhere.

“That is fucking disgusting,” Villanelle tells her, before pulling out her pistol and firing three close range shots into the woman’s head.

It... works. Effectively. As one might expect.

Rosemary stumbles back and falls into a pool of her own blood, twitching unpleasantly in what seems to be a round of dying spasms. Villanelle fires one more head shot, just to make sure.

“O-okay. I think you got her.” Mike sounds slightly shaken, and it’s only then that she remembers that she just brutally shot a person right in front of him. Then again, she is not really sure Rosemary counted as a ‘person’ at time time. Never the less, Villanelle lowers her gun and turns so that she’s at least half-obscuring Mike’s view of the body.

“That was kind of easy.”  She scrunches her nose up a bit.

Mike takes another steadying breath, but he’s doing a better job of composing himself than she might have expected.  “...Yeah. Uh. I think we maybe just... prevented an apocalypse?”

Villanelle considers that for a couple of seconds. It almost feels kind of anticlimactic. “Huh,” she finally says with a shrug.  “Guess I will add it to my resume. Stop it at patient zero, that’s what I always say.” Or what she would always say, if she’d ever been involved in any humanity-threatening spread of disease before now.

“Is now a good time to say ‘I told you so?’” Mike quips in return, and Villanelle gives him a passive-aggressive (but also sort of playful) shoulder check as she passes on her way to the restroom’s exit.

“I guess we call the police. And they can call in Hazmat people to clean up the body, or something.” Already, she’s kind of wondering how exactly they’re going to explain the weird, meta experience of watching a movie and then having that movie repeat itself in real life. Then again, it’s probably par for the course for the cops around here, by now.

“Wait,” Mike says suddenly.  “What about the mask?”

Ah. He’s right, she realizes, following his gaze over to the lobby display where the mask still sits. The apparent source of the virus, if the movie lore holds up.

“Well, we have gotten this far by being genre savvy, so I don’t think we should have it over to the police,” she muses.

“Yeah, no way.  One of them’ll cut themselves while they’re joking around, or something, and infect the whole police station. Always happens.”

“So... we keep it?” Villanelle tries to run through some other, smarter possibilities in her head.  “Burn it? Bury it? Throw it into a volcano? We could do that. There’s one out in the Prehistoric Wilds.”

Mike starts to grin, and Villanelle squints at him suspiciously.  “What is so funny?”

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head.  “Just... the volcano thing. It’s just like in Lord of the Rings.”

Villanelle pulls up short as their very first conversation comes ebbing back to her. Unexpectedly, what accompanies it is a trace of amused warmth. And she grins back at him briefly.  “Guess we’ve come full circle.”

“We really have.”

Villanelle makes a note to get out of there before he remembers to make a communism joke. 

[rgr-pop]

LONG POST AIRING GRIEVANCES ABOUT DUMB SHIT IN BEAUTY COMMUNITY!! 

oh my GOD. okay, so, small youtuber who is climbing. beloved by many small youtubers because she is a regular girl and very nice and FROM UPSTATE NEW YORK and has social justice interests, she also posts a lot of drama content and some people (including me tbh) really like the way she kind of ~~democratizes drama content. don’t @ me it’s whatever. reddit HATES her because her mother buys her a lot of makeup for her birthday (literally) and she is not into self-punishing no-buys which is the only thing people like right now very coincidentally (going on a no-buy is apparently how you end landfills).

this youtuber is fat and not conventionally pretty--I really hate even saying the latter because it is objectively not true and also an evil thing to say even nicely, but for example she is always talking about how she doesn’t really care that her lips are small and is not interested in overdrawing or “fixing” them, and getting flamed for it. in the community (the respectable arm of it, which is the rddt, where we are ostensibly not allowed to be like “she looks terrible”), where there is smoke there is fire, and “not skilled at makeup” + maybe some nebulous complaints about whininess = she is a fat girl, end her. (”rude” = black youtuber too much power, end her.)

i’m talking about sm*key gl*w whose name is hannah, hannah #1, i think it is interesting to contrast her with the other hannah that i talk about sometimes--i try not to talk about her too much because we sort of teechnically have real world social connections and, also, i just feel bad for her. i feel desperately bad for hannah #2, because she is in her thirties having lived in art communities and global urban centers but for the first time in her life having to reckon with things like--”it is not appropriate to talk about calories at dinner, etc.” that is the second hannah, and while she is sweet and interesting to many in the small youtube community precisely because she is very alien to them (has mfa), it’s very difficult to watch, and sometimes i think she is the most “toxic” youtuber i follow. she is not an originator in any way, but she found herself in the center of a so-called anticonsumerist movement in small beautube that is kind of taking over, which is related to but not exactly minimalism--you have probably heard me talk about this already, at length. a good example of this is that second hannah recently said in a video that she was thinking of doing a shopping “fast.” i don’t know how she became this person, and how she held onto this kind of personality in spite of being in lots of communities that i am also in or have friends in where i know that if you talked this way about dieting etc. at a social event, someone would probably softly scold you. she somehow insulated herself from this kind of learning, i don’t know, then she threw herself into beautube where a woman who maybe sort of likes art and writes poetry and has heard of “fair trade” before is an absolute anomaly, but that community--like literally, where people do liposuction and skinny teas!--has only encouraged this absolutely unreal nasty and BAD behavior. etc. i have a lot of feelings about this.

so first hannah is a fat girl who is not rich--we will get to that!--but spends her money primarily on makeup. people HATE her. second hannah is thin, possibly rich in family origin (i think she is) but basically your average working artist in life. she frames her so-called overconsumption not even precisely as an addiction but specifically as a lack of willpower that she also struggles with when it comes to sometimes eating sugar (really). both of these hannahs consume and talk about quite a lot of luxury makeup--second hannah is very openly committed to luxury purchase as part of her self-conception. second hannah sometimes goes on “shopping diets” though, so people praise her! it is evil. 

above is the shit i hate day in and day out but the points below will have more to do with the screencap +...upstate new york, i guess. henceforth we are only talking about first hannah.

so this girl is from some kind of small town around rochester or syracuse--something up there. iirc she goes to a suny school i had never heard of (i looked it up and it is a “suny comprehensive college,” though i can’t remember if she transferred out of this school to a bigger school. but, as many of you know, sunys are cheap as hell and should be protected at all costs, this school costs well under half what my state school did, for residents anyway.) she is in her mid-twenties and not graduated yet, due to struggles she has had (and spoken openly about) as well as having gone to community college. they LOVE to bring up how she is too old to be a college student! she’s like...idk 24 or something. she is going to school to be a social worker in one of those accelerated programs, which she has found quite difficult (again, spoken openly about this) and which also requires, as many of you know!, lots of extra work, unpaid and paid. she said somewhere that she does not have student loans, but i don’t know if her parents paid for her college or just shouldered loans, or if she paid for it, or if it is all financial aid. (”not having student loans” is something that enrages people, ESPECIALLY when someone doesn’t have loans because they got need-based aid.) again, she probably had some financial catastrophes due to school failures (speaking from experience here), but: sunys is cheap as hell and there are a million reasons why someone could go to one and not be struggling with loans!

where was i...her parents. watching this has fascinated me! her dad was a school teacher and her mom is a social worker--absolutely public servant middle class. i thiiink (could be wrong) that her father retired already and ended up retiring from a principalship, so they were probably extremely comfortable by the time she was in college, but they are definitionally middle class. the biggest controversy around this youtuber is that for birthdays and christmas her mother goes fucking insane--probably spent two to four hundred dollars on her for her birthday. she talks about this all the time: her mother and her are very close and their hobby is shopping. people treat this like the bougiest fucking thing on earth and it is ba nanas. straight up, this girl has probably never even HEARD of anthropologie. listen, i can’t afford to live like her either but i recognize poor shopping when i see it. working class people like to blow their money on bullshit and to take issue with that is demonstrably racist and classist! i will not hear this conversation over again in 2019. for example, hannah made a video about her “high end bag” collection, in which she said she got a bcbg bag on sale for like $30 but had never heard of the brand before. she had once been gifted a kate spade bag and her DREAM was to purchase one on her own. she buys coach at the local coach outlet, which is a regional attraction. THIS GIRL IS NOT BOUGIE! THEY ARE JUST MAD THAT SHE OWNS CLOTHES AND IS ALSO FAT! she did a closet tour where she talked about how she has like 50 crop tops, they were ALL like forever 21. they are just mad about fat girl in crop tops. there is nothing to see here! does she have too much shit, and shop too much? sure. welcome to flyover country you dumb bitches. that is what I think about that!

so, she definitely makes money on youtube, but mostly enough to sustain youtube and makeup buying (possibly some savings? unsure. i know she said this in a video but i forget.) she has lived with this boyfriend of hers for a number of years and they are building a life together that doesn’t immediately include marriage, probably largely for financial reasons. i get the sense that his jobs pay a lot of their bills, but he just finished getting a teaching MA of some kind (i think he is a math teacher? i already forgot) and is entering the regular teaching job market. based on some of the following i think his parents might be wealthier than hers but i think they might also be teachers. as you can see in the screenshot above, people are enraged at this girl for apparently being a gold digger for getting a house with him before they are married! 

people are SO pissed that she was “able to buy a house” at age 25, but they did not watch the video! in which she said that they had been dealing with the death of her bf’s step grandpa all year, and the family had decided that they should take over the step grandpa’s house. (step grandpa’s family does sound “richer” because, according to her, this house had been owned by a GREAT grandparent and paid off decades ago.) her descriptions of this house are confusing to me because she keeps referring to it as both “old” and “from the eighties,”; I think it is an actually old house that had not been “updated” since the eighties. seems like the family did not “gift” it to them as much as sign it over to them in exchange for them being the ones to take out the renovation loans, which allegedly she said are $50k. unclear to me if she and her bf got approved for that loan--probably not, I think it was taken out in the family’s name. ($50k is too much to put into a house in rochester imooo but I am reserving my judgment there! rochester has a very flyover housing economy, much like ours, but with a much higher end, I think?)

so anyway, these vultures are sociopaths. “ Who gives someone a house no matter how much they like them? That seems wild to me” ...p-parents? dead grandparents? is your will gonna be like “my kid has to buy their OWN house like i did!” who are these people

YES SOMETIMES YOU STOP NEEDING YOUR HOUSE, WHEN YOU DIE

anyway I’m done. I just thought this thing would be of interest in particular to the upstate new yorkers. the whole condition of the indebted working-middle class is just like inconceivable to people who consume only ideologically pure content by wealthy west coast whites all day long 

[autisticstarseed]

TSS analysis; Why zak’s powers don’t work on every cryptid

Just a lil theory on something I’ve been thinking about lately;;;

So first off, I’m gonna list some of the cryptids Zak’s powers never worked on:

Argost (never recognized he was a cryptid, and afaik never attempted)

The Nagas (never attempted)

The Hibagon (attempted, didn’t work)

Tsul Kalu (attempted, didn’t work and got visions instead)

So what do all of these characters have in common? The ability to speak or strongly understand human language.

So basically, I think rather than something to do with intelligence, it’s more about social skills. After all, Zak’s powers are centered around the need to communicate with and persuade a cryptid. If a cryptid speaks english, why would he need to communicate telepathically? If he can persuade them with actual speech, then it makes sense that his powers wouldn’t be necessary, and also, wouldn’t be strong enough because the creature can mentally reason with him just as well.

Argost taught himself English and appeared very smart, even smarter than Zak at many times, so obviously if Zak’s powers simply work by connecting to a cryptid’s brain, that explains why he’d never ever notice Argost was a cryptid himself. In other words, Argost had pretty much developed the brain of a human.

The Nagas he always knew were cryptids, but again, they were intelligent and spoke clear english, so there was never a reason to try. Even with Tsul Kalu when Zak has premonitions of the ‘future’, the nagas are never shown with the orange glow around their eyes. They’re not being controlled, they’re directly asking Zak for further instructions because they understood verbal commands. Drew even mentions herself how ‘willing to negotiate’ these creatures are when Rani Nagi tries to pull the atlas pin, which of course implies a strong ability to reason.

The Hibagon is the best example of this theory, because he was literally just a human brain in a cryptid body. He obviously spoke very clearly (”Did the giant gorilla thingy just use the word persue”) and could understand english, which a lot of the episode actually seems based around. IE, the Saturdays ability to reason with a creature when Zak’s powers couldn’t. 

And as for Tsul Kalu, beyond obviously being a Very smart and skilled hunter with the ability to use weapons and strategize, he never spoke at all, But he clearly understood english and other basic social cues (Doc explained the concept of him being Zak’s father and that this fight is his responsibility, and he nodded in agreement.) My best guess for the visions was that Tsul Kalu was just cryptid enough for Zak to get into his head, but not enough to control, so instead of a usual connection and persuasion, the tables were turned and Zak literally saw his thoughts (specifically, ‘his worst fears’) being broadcast vividly as mental images because of how advanced this cryptid was. I say this because this is the only time this happens, and the only time Zak deals with a cryptid like this. Tsul Kalu was on just the right wavelength for Zak to see his thoughts, but not match them, so they came as visions.

And then there’s Fisk; He speaks in a way where Zak seems to consistently understand him, but it’s unclear on how well the rest of the family can. (They’re shown a few times being able to make out what he’s saying, but a lot of it seems like context clues.) One theory might be that he’s speaking with a thick Lemurian accent, which Zak would understand because of the Kur and Lemuria connection. So basically, Fisk speaks and understands english, but not nearly as well as the other characters I’ve described, so that might be why Zak can still occasionally use his powers on him. 

It could also have to do with the fact that (as revealed in The Underworld Bride) all cryptids have to have at least some slight subconscious desire to do what he’s asking of them. With these other cryptids Zak really has no chance, but Fisk and him have their intense brotherly bond, so it makes sense that he’d be inherently easier than the others to persuade. 

The only cryptid that doesn’t match this theory is Munya, because (like Tsul Kalu) he also doesn’t speak, but seems to understand english+social cues, yet Zak’s powers are shown to be effective on him. But I thiiink I have the answer; Zak is seen controlling him only a select amount of times, and every single time he’s in his full spider form. When he’s in this form, he does seem to be (for lack of a better term) more ‘cryptid brained’ than his natural form. He still seems to understand better than most cryptids, but you could definitely argue that that’s why he’s able to be controlled. 

TLDR; The reason some cryptids weren’t recognized and couldn’t be controlled seems to have something to do with their ability to speak or understand human language because Zak’s powers are, at their core, just a way to communicate with cryptids. If he can already communicate, his powers are obsolete.

[daemoninwhiteround2]

Answer 21 questions and tag 21 people you want to know better.

Tagged by @whumpbby

Nicknames: Dae (I even think of myself as Dae on occasion!) and a bunch of variations on my ‘family’ nickname

Zodiac sign: Gemini

Height: 175cm! 

Hogwarts House: I got Gryffindor the first time on Pottermore and then Slytherin, but I think I’d be in Ravenclaw :)

The last thing I Googled: ‘poetry degree Australia’. I’m currently completing a diploma of Library and Information Sciences, and have a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Lit, but I really love poetry and was thinking about studying it next year.

Favorite musicians: ahh, I don’t have one. I listen to nearly every major genre of music!

Song stuck in my head: whumpbby mentioned Grave digger by Blues Sarcaceno and whilst I don’t know that, I now have Gravedigger by The Dave Mathews Band stuck in my head. Gravedigger, when you dig my grave, would you make it shallow so that I can feel the rain?

Following: like 350ish? I try and keep it around that.

Followers: I thiiink it’s 250ish. honestly have no idea why I have more than, like, say, ten of you.

Do I get asks?: I send asks! nah, I don’t get asks a lot, but when I do, lately it’s been compliments on my writing (which are so lovely to receive and I treasure each and every one of them!).

Amount of sleep: I have that weird thing where I’m tired during the day and wide awake at night - for example, it’s 3:43pm right now, and all I want to do is take a nap. left to my own devices I’ve been known to sleep for 15+ hours, but it’s usually around the 5-7 mark. 

Lucky number: I don’t ... have one? is that weird?

What I’m wearing: work out clothes so when 5pm rolls around I can leave straight away.

Dream job: writing a whole bunch of stuff (short stories, novels, poems, etc) and getting paid enough for it that I can move around a lot

Dream trip: Ireland! I also really want to go to Norway - my ex was from there and she showed me some absolutely lovely pictures. I also really want to go back to Japan.

Instruments: I have studied piano, recorder, and bass recorder. I definitely cannot play any of them.

Languages: English and Japanese. I used to be conversational in Japanese but, yall, it’s been a while.

Favorite songs: according to iTunes, my most played song is Fragile World by Alberto Rosende, followed by Know Who You Are from the Moana soundtrack, and then Dead Girl Walking from Heathers. I’m also currently really into the Hadestown soundtrack.

Random fact: everything is mostly made of space and some atoms

Aesthetic: a clear, cold night with uncountable amounts of stars. purple shading to blue, to green, to gold, to copper, beautiful and metallic and distinct only when the light hits it just right. space and stars and crystals and plants and the ocean, unknowable but beautiful.

21 people is a lot! @sweetvanilla1atte @nerdybonbon and anyone else who wants to do this!

thanks for tagging me in this whumps! it was fun!

[elyvorg]

Appmon thoughts: AI just wanna DiVE into a friendship

On my first watch of Appmon, I came out of it with Eri being my favourite character, but while I still loved her during my recent rewatch, I also found myself gravitating towards Yuujin and his friendship with Haru. Perhaps I needed that second watch to properly appreciate their part of the story while knowing exactly where it was going. It's interesting enough to me that I have a bunch of stuff to say about it, some of which applies even before getting into the whole spoilery deal with Yuujin. (And while the fact that there is a spoilery deal with Yuujin is not in and of itself a spoiler, I am going to go into quite a bit of detail about it, so probably don't click the readmore if you haven't seen Appmon.)

First off, let's temporarily ignore the fact that Yuujin turns out to be an AI and think about their friendship as if it were just a normal friendship between humans. Even though Haru is the protagonist, the series actually shows us more of how Yuujin feels about Haru than of how Haru feels about Yuujin. We know that Yuujin fits Haru's image of an ideal protagonist, and that he's Haru's precious best friend, but that's about it in terms of complexity on Haru's end. The interesting thing about Yuujin, though, is that even though he appears to be the cool, calm, unflappable "protagonist" on the surface, he isn't really like that. That's just a front that he's good at putting up, but in truth he pretty much always has no idea what he's doing. We see this again and again, both in flashbacks and in the main story, in which Yuujin has appeared to be:

the star transfer student soccer player teaching his new team how it's done - but he ends up pushing them too hard and being too harsh on them because he doesn't think to consider how they're feeling.

the team leader who knows the right way to go on the orienteering trip - except actually he was only pretending to know and gets them all lost and all the kids except Haru get mad at him.

the unflappable guy telling Eri it's going to be all right when they're trapped on a crashing train - except when it's over he admits that he was scared too and could only stay so calm because he believed in Haru, who had texted him saying he was trying to do something about it (even though at this point Yuujin had no way of knowing for sure that Haru actually could do something about it).

the cool and confident hero showing up to save the day with his new Appli Drive - but in reality he only got his Appli Drive like ten minutes ago and has never been in the AR Field or fought with Offmon or done anything like this before in his life.

the reassuring buddy to shy little Offmon - but when Offmon distances himself from them because of the whole Shutmon thing, Yuujin worries that he wasn't really a good friend to Offmon at all and whatever he was doing to try and get him to open up was just making things worse.

And every single one of these times, the person who was there for Yuujin and reassured him and gave him the courage to keep going was always Haru. Because Haru may be quiet and lacking in confidence, but he's smart and thoughtful and sensitive and actually knows what to do in all of these situations. Even if he might not have believed it until he started fighting together with Gatchmon, Haru can actually get by just fine without Yuujin - but Yuujin would be lost without Haru. That's why, when Yuujin says that he thinks Haru is the real protagonist out of the two of them, he's not just saying that to cheer Haru up; he absolutely means it.

(Fun fact: Appmon's insert song for "evolutions", Be My Light, has lyrics that are almost certainly meant to be about this, particularly in the verses. See for yourself.)

Even without the part where Yuujin's actually an AI, that's just a fun character dynamic between friends in and of itself. The whole "confident charismatic hero-like character really has no idea what he's doing and puts all his faith in his best friend who lacks confidence but can actually Get Shit Done" as one of the selling points of a friendship is something I also very much enjoy from the main duo in Gurren Lagann and from a certain pair of friends in Danganronpa V3, so perhaps that's why I'm so drawn to Haru and Yuujin as well. But it's also particularly interesting in this case because of Leviathan's involvement. Leviathan specifically designed Yuujin's personality to fit Haru's image of an ideal protagonist, in order to maximise the chances that they would become friends. I find it pretty neat that, even though Leviathan presumably intended Yuujin to be this perfect, flawless protagonist character that Haru would just one-sidedly look up to, Yuujin actually turned out to be far more flawed and realistic and human than that, and that's the real driving force behind their friendship.

Now, there's a surprisingly common school of thought I've seen among people who've watched Appmon that assumes Yuujin started out as nothing but a soulless AI just following Leviathan's orders and pretending to be Haru's friend, and that he only gradually started to care and grew a "soul" after spending enough time with Haru. One particular line in the last episode has Den'emon assume that was the case, which is probably where so many people get this misconception from. But I really do think it is a misconception, for all the reasons I've just gone into. The series goes to deliberate lengths to show us Yuujin's side of the friendship, to show him being flawed and having doubts and being reassured by Haru, even right at the beginning of their time together. Both of the flashbacks to when the two of them were younger are presented from Yuujin's perspective, and Yuujin talks about how he felt at the time and how Haru helped him to cheer up and feel better about himself. If he really started out as soulless, he wouldn't have actually felt anything back then at all.

(Then there's also the part where Yuujin explicitly says, once everything's gone down and he's been temporarily released from Leviathan's control, that he had no idea he was an AI created by Leviathan. That line alone makes it completely unambiguous: if he started out not feeling anything and only gradually started to care, he would remember not feeling anything, so he would have known that he was an AI. But even if that line wasn't there to confirm it, I still think all of the flashbacks and the way their friendship is written makes it pretty clear that Yuujin always had a soul from the very beginning. And if he had been aware of his nature as an AI who exists to aid Leviathan, I really don't think he would have just carried on doing nothing about it until it was too late.)

It's not like the idea of AIs still being people who have feelings and are capable of genuinely being friends with someone right from the beginning of their existence is a novel concept in this universe - Appmon are AIs who are exactly like that, and I thiiink the timeline works out such that Minerva created the Appmon at roughly the same timeframe as Leviathan would have created Yuujin. The only difference is who created them; obviously Minerva values human emotions and is therefore more likely to try and put them into her creations, whereas Leviathan usually wouldn't. But even so, Leviathan specifically created Yuujin to blend in with humans and appear convincingly like a real person among them. There's two possible ways to do that: create an emotionless AI that is essentially the perfect liar and can flawlessly pretend to be Haru's friend while always knowing that it only exists to serve Leviathan; or, create an AI with emotions who is actually a person and will genuinely be Haru's friend, whose AI can then be overridden and controlled when need be. The latter comes with far less risk of Haru ever figuring it out.

It is strange to me that Leviathan - or, I guess, YJ-14, the soulless AI controlling Yuujin's body until the last episode that talks and thinks more or less like Leviathan would - makes such a point of telling Haru that everything Yuujin did was all just its own calculated act to fool him and not the actions of a separate AI who really was his friend. It doesn't really make sense for it to be a deliberate lie, because the end goal is to have Haru reach God grade, and it should have known that telling the pure, precious Haru that his best friend never really existed would most likely just cause him to have a huge breakdown and become non-functional. So the only reason YJ-14 tells him that anyway has to be because... it actually believes that's true? Perhaps YJ-14 is not a complex enough AI to have the self-awareness to properly comprehend the divide between itself and Yuujin, so it just considers all the programming that makes Yuujin Yuujin to be an extension of itself, not understanding that Yuujin really was his own person and really did feel all that emotion and friendship when he was in control.

(Though it's quite possible that I'm giving the series a little too much credit in trying to piece together YJ-14's motivation like this. It could be that this is just another of the writers' bizarre decisions in how they presented this part of the story because for whatever reason they wanted to try and convince us Yuujin really wasn't real until it turned out that he was, and so they had YJ-14/Leviathan act in whatever way facilitated that without thinking about if it made sense from their perspective. It wouldn't be the only time Leviathan acts in a somewhat bewildering way in order to drive the story they want to write.)

I also enjoy Minerva's role in Yuujin's story, in that she initially assumed he was soulless and just Leviathan's tool, but along the way she realised that he was an actual person who cared about Haru and wanted to protect him. You can even see the very moment she changes her mind, when Yuujin's name changes from red to blue in her interface just after he was talking about how he's always on Haru's side. She decided to give him an Appli Drive for a much more specific reason than the others: she wanted to try and counteract whatever plan Leviathan might have had for using Yuujin against Haru, and upon realising how much he cared, she concluded that Yuujin himself would be her biggest asset in doing so. The question that she asks him with his Appli Drive - "do you have a friend that you would give your life to protect?" - is probably the most important of all of Minerva's questions. She's doing two things: confirming that he really is a person who truly cares about Haru and isn't just Leviathan's tool, and giving him the resolve to sacrifice himself for Haru if need be, because, for him more than for anyone else, it might actually come to that.

[allurasims]

seasons tag  🍁❄️🌷☀️

thank u @sandisims for tagging me! 💝 my answers are under the cut x

1. which season are you gonna play with first?

probably summer? just so i have time to dress all my sims in their autumn/winter clothes lmao

2. from what you’ve seen in the trailer, what are you most excited about?

EVERYTHING. but most especially ice skating/roller skating, bee keeping and turning my sims into demi-gods of thunder lmao

3. what’s your favourite season irl?

normally i’d say winter, but this year’s summer in the UK has been so lovely i might have to change my mind askdaklsd

4. what’s your favourite flower / plant?

orchids! and hibiscus 🌺

5. are you going to create a new sim/family or are you gonna keep your current household?

i have a looot of families i’m playing rn so i’ll probably keep em x

6. what would you like to see in this new add-on that you haven’t seen yet?

i’ve seen people say that based on what we’ve seen in the trailer they don’t think there’s gonna be a new world/neighbourhood and i rlyyyy hope that’s not true

7. how do you feel about not getting a new neighborhood with seasons?

LMAO i promise you i hadn’t seen this question before i answered question 6 :’) but yeah if it’s true then i’m upset!!

8. snow, rain or sun?

snow! i love snow. it doesn’t really snow here but i get enough rain and sunshine

9. favorite refreshing summer drink?

pink lemonade maybe? basically any drink with lots of ice cubes added lmao

10. favorite hot drink in the winter?

hot chocolate obvs x

11. walk through the forest or by the beach?

probably the beach, less bugs flying around 😣

12. swimming pools or the ocean?

the ocean’s beautiful but way too salty, i can’t open my eyes underwater :( so swimming pools it is 

13. where would you like to travel if you could go somewhere right now?

i’ve been planning to go on holiday with my bf and i wanna go somewhere scenic with lovely warm weather - italy, south of france and greece are our options right now 🌞

14. how is the weather today?

it’s raining. yuck. after days of gorgeous sunshine and hot weather now its just humid and wet :/

15. what new traits would you like to see in the new add-on?

i agree with @sandisims: definitely something along the lines of “Hates the heat/summer” or “Hates the cold/winter”. maybe “Hayfever” or something like that for the summer?

16. do you like to play with supernatural creatures like vampires and aliens? and if so, would you like witches/faries/elves?

tbh i like keeping my game semi-realistic tbh i haven’t got the vampire expansion pack and a few aliens have infiltrated my town but i haven’t really played around with them much. fairies and elves sounds super cute tho!

17. what is your favorite thing to do during winter?

stay inside and drink hot chocolate, wrapped up under a blanket 🐻

18. … during spring?

uhhhh shop for new clothes bc at this time of the year some people are still wearng scarves, some people are wearing denim shorts hahahaha

19. … during summer?

summer happens for like a week in england so i gotta go out and get as much as i can lmao

20. … during autumn?

stepping on crunchy leaves 🍁

21. have you pre-ordered seasons? and if you haven’t are you going to pre-order it or wait till it comes out?

i haven’t preordered it and i’m gonna wait until another website releases it for a cheaper price hehe

22. in which neighborhood are you gonna play in sims first?

maybe san myshuno? i have a lot of played households there

23. do you listen to music while playing? and if you so, what are you favorite songs to listen to?

i don’t really listen to music i always have the stereo on in my households and i hum along to mainly the pop station haha 

24. What’s your favorite thing to do in the sims? creating sims, building, etc?

i thiiink i love playing? like creating stories in my head for my families, getting them to the top of their careers, watching the townies grow up along side my sims etc

25. what’s your favorite kit/pack/add-on?

i think i really love dine-out! i love taking my sims to the restaurant and i have sooo many different restaurants placed in every neighbourhood :’)

26. and finally, what add-on / pack would you like to see next?

i’m really not sure, seasons is the one thing that i’ve been waiting for and now we’ve finally been blessed with it 😭😭😭 but i adored sims 2 university so maybe that?

i tag @capricornsim @galaxysuede @fleecie @mortimergth @ravin-sims and anyone else who wants to join in!! (sorry if any of you guys have already done it and i just havent seen!!) <3

[itsamiorio]

What’s Normal? [March 5, 2019]

IN PROGRESS

Rio makes his way down the street after work as he listens to the fast-paced conversation on the other end of the line, it almost going over his head in the moment as he tries to do his best to match the questions, wanting to provide as much help and support as he could, before the conversation eventually ends, causing Rio to let out a sigh, a pang of worry moving through him that he wasn't helping enough or doing the wrong thing. Realizing that he wasn't too far from where Archer lived, Rio turns the corner from his usual route walking home, making his way past Father Demo Square as he makes a quick stop at Molly's cupcakes, a smile twitching on his lips as he sees the most adorable ghost ones, buying them up before taking them with him to Archer's, knocking on his door, hoping that his BGF was home.

Archer continues to spin a giggling Andie as he moves along to the baby shark remix for the umpteenth time, inadvertently stepping on a toy as he hears the knock on the door, letting out an anguished groan as he leans against the wall, opening the door as he takes a few deep breaths, "Whewwwwwwww...Riooooo!" He exclaims as he opens his eyes to take in the unexpected form of his best friend, "Loookitt who it is bunny!" He coos, ushering him inside, "What up, wot up, wutttt up?!"

"Hi, Andie!" Rio warmly and sweetly replies, moving to wave to his best friend's daughter before giving her a high five, afterwards setting the cupcakes down on the table to show them to Archer. "Was in the neighborhood, so thought I'd pick up a Spooky Special Surprise..." He begins, slowly taking off the lid for the big reveal, a smile crossing his lips, before the prior thought crosses his mind. "Your friend is a bit...intense sometimes, and I don't think he needs to be," Rio offers, thinking on the conversations with Emerson after he had begun talking to him about his condo search after Archer had introduced him. "I mean...when we were his age, we were just hunting ghosts, living in our small apartment, eating pizza on the couch...that's what's normal at 22, right?"

A smile warms Archer's lips as he takes in the interaction between Rio and his daughter, an excitement sparkling within his eyes as he takes in the cupcakes, eagerly moving to nab one, "Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!!" Moving to take a bite of the cupcake, before allowing Andie eat some of the icing herself as he hears Rio's words. "Emerson?" He asks, a bit of confusion moving within him before a smile moves onto his lips, "What's normal? I dunno if that's the word I'd use." He offers back, giving a laugh. "Different strokes for diffy folkies, righto?"

A warmth and happiness moves through Rio as he takes in his best friend's reaction to the donuts, before he nods his head in affirmation. "Yeah, I guess...I'm torn between wondering if he should be having to get involved in the world of real estate and Adulting at his age, but also wondering...if maybe I should have been a bit more Adult then myself," Rio admits, thinking of just how not put together he was at that age, wondering if he had been as focused as Emerson was, if he'd be even further ahead and better able to provide for his family.

"Hhmhmhmhmh, I thiiink you're right-o where you're s'posed to be!" Archer muses aloud, giving Rio's arm a light jostle, "Age is fake, just like the time on the click clocks. You're the haps now, right? You have a bootiful wife and deh babsiesssss, you just need some cats and you're goldennnnn." He declares brightly, before his jovial face takes a bit more of a seriousness across it. "Thanks though, for helping Emerson out and everything thang, it means a lot! You're the beesiest kneesiest pallo, there ever right was."

A smile forms on Rio's lips as he hears his best friend's words. "You're right, but you are the spoopmaster, couldn't expect anything less," he affirms, moving to give Archer a playful jostle back, thinking maybe a cat or two might be nice, before he sees Nery again, looking a bit heavier than usual, causing him to study her. "Is...Nery pregnant?" He offers as he bends down to pet the fluffy white cat, before turning to look up at Archer again. "Any time, any friend of yours is a friend of mine, always, just like how you're always the best ghoul friend," he affirms warmly.

A bright smile crosses Archer's lips as he does a bow, keeping Andie close to him, supporting her from dipping as he does so at Rio's words, before settling onto the couch beside Nery, moving to sit Andie beside him, as she begins to gently pet Nery, moving to draw Rio into a tight embrace, "Proud of you, for the alwayssssssss." He affirms, as he gives his back a rub, drawing back after some time, nodding fervently in affirmation, an excitement crossing over his features as he places two fingers on both sides of Rio's temple, "Seven weeks. Your daddeh senses were a ring-ting-a-ling ringinnnnnnnnng, quicccck tell me what you think she's having?!" He questions back, with a toothy grin.

"Proud of you always, too," Rio warmly affirms, before his attention falls on Nery a smile crossing his lips. "I'm going to take a risky bet and say...all girls," he offers, moving to give Nery another few soft stroke on her head, before turning his attention back up to Archer. "What's your guess?"