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take-it-on-the-run · 3 months

Text

Not A Lot, Just Forever

Dean Winchester x Pregnant!Reader

After throwing up morning after morning, the reader discovers her illness isn't what she initially thought.

Word Count: 4.1k

Tags: Pregnancy, unexpected pregnancy, brief description of motel bathrooms, vomiting (repeated), self-blame, mention of reader's mother dying in childbirth, mention of childbirth related deaths, anxiety, brief loss of consciousness, Dean is a sweetheart and will make a great father.

Characters: Dean Winchester, Pregnant!Reader, Sam Winchester, Castiel

@ghostlyaccurate requested: "Hii! I'm not sure if I already sent you this request, or if I sent it to someone else (oops🤭) but could I request a Sam Winchester and/or Dean Winchester x reader (your choice which one of them, if not both sepperately) where he helps reader deal with morning sickness, though he only finds out she's pregnant on the third day in a row that he's with her while she throws up. Ty!!"

Read it on AO3!

A/N: Adrianne Lenker title. I really really loved this request! I feel like writing the pregnancy trope is a sort of hard task to do, so I hope I brought it justice. I love love loved writing this, and I hope you enjoy reading it! Thank you for the request @ghostlyaccurate, and I promise I'm trying my damnedest to work through my inbox <3. Every mistake here is completely and 100% my own and of my own doing. (P.S. can you guess how hard it was to find "aesthetic" pictures of a bathroom and pregnancy tests for the pictures for this fic?? I think the ones I found actually work pretty well! Another thing, what happened to the yellow text color? I use it to tag fluff fics, and it's gone :( ).

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Your head hung over the foul toilet bowl of whatever motel you, Dean, and Sam were holed up in, and a rancid smell invaded your nose. In earnest, you didn’t have the slightest idea where you were. The past couple of hours had been filled with a slight fever and the constant need to use Dean as a pillow. Halfway through the drive between towns, you convinced him to switch out driving with Sam so he could join you in the back seat.

The worn tile of the bathroom floor offered you minimal comfort, and the fact you’re supposed to be up for a case in two hours made your stomach churn over again. Ditching your normal avoidance of motel bathrooms, you gripped the edge of the toilet and emptied your stomach again.

“Y/N?” Dean’s groggy voice called out from behind the door, “Are you okay in there sweetheart?”

You squeezed your eyes together, cursing yourself for being loud enough to wake him up. Sneaking out from his arms was a feat enough already, trying to suppress the sound of you losing your guts at four in the morning wasn’t going to happen; even in a perfect world.

“No,” you groaned as he softly opened the door, “I feel like shit De, and you know how much I hate throwing up. And how much I hate motel bathrooms.” You whined. Your hair was falling to the front of your face and you were cursing whoever decided a bathroom didn’t need a working air vent.

Dean hummed softly, pulling the hair back from your face and holding it with one hand as he sat behind you on the floor. He pressed his lips to the back of your head softly, and gently traced shapes on your collarbone as you laid back on him.

“Just breathe, I’ve got you if you need to go at it again.” He said softly, cradling you in his lap as you tried to breathe. He ran his hand through your hair as your breathing started to hiccup less, and eventually, he sat you on the closed toilet lid to get you water.

You felt ashamed to be keeping him up at this hour. Your phone clock read 5:13 AM, almost an hour past when you’d originally gotten up. He already doesn’t get enough sleep as is, and here you are sitting, waiting for him to get back like you aren’t able to take care of yourself.

“Here you go, drink slowly. Did you use the mouthwash I gave you?” He asked as he handed you his water bottle. He stood across from you, tucking his hands into the pockets of his pajama pants. You nodded softly, gratefully gulping down the contents of the bottle.

The bags under his eyes were already enough to make you feel guilty. Hunters were used to running on minimal sleep, but with you around, he’d just gotten into the six-hour range. He rubbed his face, inhaling like he normally did when he was trying to make a decision. You didn’t want to go out for the case. You barely wanted to move your body to get back in bed and salvage what little sleep you could before life kicked you back into gear.

“Do you want to stay here while Sam and I talk to the family?” Dean asked as if he could read your mind.

I love you so damn much. You thought, bowing your head with a sigh of relief. You didn’t want to be the one to bring up staying in; neither of you ever wanted to admit you needed breaks, but if the other one was to bring it up, it made the process easier.

You nodded, pushing yourself to your feet as he opened the door for the two of you, “yeah, I think that’s best for all of us. Don’t need me puking in the victim’s bathroom as you guys ask your questions.” You tried to joke as you and Dean crawled back into bed, tucking yourself into his arms, and splaying your legs haphazardly on top of his.

The next morning wasn’t any better.

Sam and Dean had come home late from questioning the family, and you were barely aware of them unloading the Chinese food they brought for you. Dean sat with you against his chest, still half-dressed as an FBI agent, as you wolfed down the egg rolls he got. You found yourself starving when they offered you food, but now you regretted eating anything at all.

You found yourself hung over the toilet again, but thankfully only had to put up with one round of saying goodbye to your lunch. You were able to get yourself up and over to the sink, where you repeated Dean’s routine from the morning before.

You leaned against the counter in the small kitchen, Dean’s water bottle filled with tap water in your hand. You turned to dump the rest in the sink when the creak of a floorboard behind you had you spinning on your heel in record time.

“Jesus Christ, Dean. Why are you up?” You asked in a hushed tone, placing your hand over your racing chest.

“I could ask you the same thing,” He crossed the small room and came over to embrace you in his arms, “did you get sick again?” He asked innocently, but the combination of those words, and the pitiful shift of his eyes was enough to make you feel like a child. You were a grown woman, you knew damn well how to take care of yourself much before the Winchesters were in your life.

You huffed in annoyance, pulling back from Dean’s chest. You felt your face begin to heat up, and it felt like anything Dean could say had the chance to send you over the edge.

“Yes, I did. Right now, I feel like my body is too hot and too tight for my bones, and I also feel like anything you say is going to make me hit the roof. Even if it’s nice, I just don’t think my brain can take in any more words without wanting to jump ship.” You said you rubbed your temples. Things like this had happened occasionally in the past, and before Dean, you figured it was just because you were a rigid person. One night a particularly bad migraine had led to you yelling at him because he offered to get you some medicine. Instead of just leaving you to stew, like every other partner did, he simply asked you to explain what you were feeling. No judgment, no interruptions, and he’d do whatever you said would make you feel better in that moment.

Now, whenever you felt overwhelmed, he did the same. He’d swallow any sarcastic comment or solution to your problem and listen to you. No matter what was bothering you, at whatever hour of the day, he was at your side, doing what you asked of him without hesitation.

He just nodded, pressing his lips to your forehead before he led you back to the bed you two were sharing for the case. His body threw off heat like a bonfire, and your normally freezing hands were appreciative of that. In this moment, however, it felt like you were burning from the inside out.

You adjusted yourself between the sheet and the comforter, so the two of you could still touch without pressing your skin together. Dean waited for you to still before he made himself comfy, and he gently ran his fingers through the ends of your hair.

“Is this okay right now? Do you want me to leave you be?” He asked, in as soft of a voice as he could. You hummed, smiling at the tingling sensation running through you. Comfort, and a warmth that wasn’t burning to the touch, crawled up your back, and into your head. You tried to focus your eyes for a couple of seconds more, but without your control, they forcefully fluttered shut.

“Y/N.”

Sheet tangled between your limbs, and you could see the light through your closed eyes. Opening them, you find an unexpected sight. Instead of Dean, or Sam, standing at your bedside, the trench coat-clad angel you’d met five years ago.

“Cas,” you rubbed your eyes as you sat up, “what are you doing here? Where’s Sam and Dean?” You asked.

Cas sighed and sat at the end of your bed. He shot you a quick look, before focusing his eyes on the blank wall in front of him. He tapped his fingers on his legs, a habit he picked up from Sam.

“Dean called me and told me you were sick. I came in, and told him I’d try and cure whatever… ailment is afflicting you.”

You smiled at the way he spoke, and the fact Dean went out of his way to try and help you out, but there was something off about Castiel’s demeanor. You sat up and touched his arm to get his attention.

“Cas, what’s wrong? Did something happen that I should know about?” You asked softly.

“I think you’re pregnant, Y/N.” He looked at you, and there was a rift of guilt lingering in his eyes.

A course of confusion and shock coursed through your body before you felt a rotting pit settle at the bottom of your stomach.

“Why would you… think that, Cas?” You felt a tightness taking over your throat, rubbing your hand across your neck to try and loosen it.

“I can sense life forms. Human ones, at least. It was hard to tell with Sam and Dean here, but once they left I was able to confirm my suspicions.”

Your hand traveled to your lower abdomen before your mouth spat out a request without thinking.

“Pregnancy tests. Can you get me some, please? I just,” you ran your hand across your forehead quickly, “I want to confirm, using non-magical means.”

Cas nodded, “of course. I’m going to assume you don’t want me to let Dean know?”

You nodded your head before swinging your legs over the side of the bed. Deep down, you knew Cas was right. You were late by a few days, but you’d chalked it up to the illness that’s kept you on the bench for this case. You didn’t usually react as poorly as you’ve been to an illness, even when you’d gotten a terrible case of Pneumonia.

Getting up from the bed, you walked into the bathroom as Castiel vanished to get you a couple tests. Looking to the mirror, you’re met with a form of you that was a little scary; purple, slightly-puffy eyes, smeared makeup that hadn’t been washed off from days before, and your skin was breaking out in places it hadn’t before.

Dean hadn’t said a word about it, but even someone as blissfully ignorant as him had to have noticed the way your face wasn’t looking like your own.

Dean.

You’d have to tell Dean you were pregnant, with his child. That you’re going to be parents.

What if he didn’t want to be a father at thirty-five?

Children weren’t one hundred percent out of the question, but they were longer down the line in hunters’ lives. If you were lucky enough to get out of the life unscathed and find someone who would want to settle down with, you’d likely be creeping into your mid-forties, at best. Mary had gotten lucky with John, but now they’d both been taken away by the thing they’d spent half of their marriage avoiding.

What if you weren’t ready to be a mother at thirty-four?

For you, it wasn’t the question of wanting to have kids, but you never saw you or your boyfriend backing out from hunting anytime soon. To add on, you’d heard of many nasty births that ended in fatality for the infant or the mother, including your own. Every time you and the boys were on a case involving a child, you’d be extra reckless. Dean picked this up within the first couple of times you’d almost gotten yourself killed to save a kid, and you explained your fear to him. The fear of a mother not being able to welcome her child home in her arms, or the child not seeing his mother again, and their fate lying in your hands. You’d already ripped apart your family, and you tried your damnedest to keep as many together as possible.

A ruffle of feathers and a sharp knock on the bathroom door snapped you out of your thoughts.

“You can come in, Cas.”

Wordlessly, the angel stepped into the small motel bathroom holding a plastic bag. He pulled out three different pregnancy tests and set them on the counter.

“The woman working there said I should get a couple just in case one doesn’t work like it should.” He said as you picked up the first test. “I’m telling the truth, but I understand you wanting to confirm this to yourself.”

I know Cas, you thought, but you didn’t say a word. Instead, you stared at him, waiting for him to leave the bathroom, but he had a blank look on his face and didn’t move a muscle.

“Cas, I’m going to need you to leave the bathroom for me to do this.”

“Oh, sorry. Of course. I forgot how ‘hands-on’ human tests can be. I apologize.” He said blatantly before stepping out of the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.

Fuck me.

That’s what got you into this in the first place, dumb ass.

After twenty disgustingly long minutes in the decrepit motel bathroom, you walked out holding four positive tests. Cas was sitting on Sam’s bed, staring out the window, but immediately stood up and crossed the room to you. You handed him the tests, and he placed them on the table between the two beds.

“How do you feel?” He asked. Another thing he picked up from his years on earth was the ability to know when to ask what questions.

You felt blank. Void of answers and solutions to the situation at hand. Whether or not to turn left, or right.

“I… don’t know what to do, Cas.” Your voice broke along with the tears you were holding back, and a sinking feeling of hopelessness began to dig its way through your head.

Neither you nor Dean are ready to be parents. What if Dean’s angry? He would never kick you out of the bunker. The bunker is the only real home any of you have had in a long time, but is it safe? Is the world safe enough to bring a baby into? A Winchester baby, who would no doubt be a target from birth. What if the baby doesn’t make it to full term? What if this baby kills you like you killed your own mother?

“Y/N,” Cas placed his hand on your shoulder, “I’m going to ask you to take a breath.” He drew his hand up and waited for you to inhale. Taking in a shuddered breath, you followed the flow of his hand, stopping your heart from running up your throat.

“Thank you.” You said, sitting down on your bed and grabbing the pregnancy tests off the nightstand. Two pluses, two double lines. You and Dean were careful and used a condom whenever you found extra time together, but somehow God decided that rubber wasn’t going to work as intended.

“I think I’m going to just lay here,” you tuck yourself under the bed sheets once more, the tests shoved into your pajama pants, “and wait for Dean and Sam to get home. I’ll get him out of this stuffy ass room and tell him in private. Sam shouldn’t have to witness if we- if we argue. I know it makes him feel awful.”

“That’s a smart plan. You need to take this one step at a time and do it carefully. I know Dean cares for you deeply, but if you need someone to support you, all you have to do is call for me.” Cas squeezed your shoulder reassuringly.

“Thank you, Cas.” You yawned, pulling your body further under the covers of the bed. Castiel smiled slightly, before turning away and disappearing with a familiar rush of wings flapping.

Your body was covered head to toe in sweat, and the bed sheet you wrapped around yourself was thrown onto the floor. No light entered the room, and the time on the alarm clock read 1:43. Your stomach churned in a familiar way, and as you got to your feet you finally noticed neither of the boys were in the room.

You clambered to the bathroom, phone in hand, trying to call Dean. One hand braced on the toilet, and the other tried to thumb down to his contact. There wasn’t any time to think about the fact you were carrying a baby inside of you, the baby whose father is missing in the middle of the night with no calls or messages.

They always call. You thought before you set your ringing phone on the floor to throw up for the first time that morning. The phone rang, the sound slowly driving you insane each time you redialed Dean’s number between dry heaving into the bowl.

Your hair was sticking to your forehead, poorly swept away and held back by a rubber band you found on the sink. The heat, the pain, and the fear of losing contact with the Winchester brothers combined with the reality of you being pregnant was finally built up enough to break the swarm of emotions you barely choked down when Cas was in the room earlier.

Eyes burning, you slumped against the sink cabinet and brought your phone to your ear as you called Dean once again. You let out a sob, tears rushing down your face and neck, leaving behind a slightly burning trail. Your breathing became uneven, the sound of your own heart drumming through your ears drowning out the ring of your phone. Letting your phone slip to the floor, you brought your knees to your chest and folded your arms as a nest for your forehead.

Neither of the boys called within the twenty minutes you were in the bathroom, your phone was now close to being dead, and no muscle in your body wanted to obey your brain telling them to move and do something. You weren’t a weak woman, you took the cards you were dealt and tried your best to win, but sometimes all you could do was fold.

“Y/N? Y/N?”

A hand pulled your face from your knees, and you could barely see with the light of the bathroom now on and blinding you. A warm hand rested against your cheek while another briefly touched your forehead.

“Help me get her up, Sammy,” your eyes fluttered closed and you felt two arms hook under both your arms, laying them over shoulders as your feet lightly dragged across the floor.

“I’ve never seen her this bad, Dean.” The voice you now recognized as Sam said. Your legs were swept up from under you and you were laid on the bed you’d crawled out of.

You felt the tests still pressing in your pockets, and you thanked whatever greater being was willing to listen. There was no way you wanted to Dean to discover that information on accident.

Dean.

The other voice was Dean.

You moron, who else would it be?

The bed next to you dipped down, and you felt a gentle hand tuck a few stray hairs behind one of your ears. The sweat covering you was sucking every inch of clothing to your skin, and all you wanted to do was peel either of the pair off.

“I thought Cas was going to come here and help her out,” you heard his voice straining as he spoke, and you felt your heart snap in two.

You moved your hand, as heavy as it felt, and squeezed the first part of him you touched.

“Sweetheart,” you could feel Dean’s breath as he hovered over you, “you’re scaring me here.”

“Cas…” you gave out a heavy cough, “he came. He helped me figure out what’s been happening.”

A glass of water was brought to your mouth, and you took every drop of it. After swallowing the cup, your eyes finally were able to open. You were greeted by a worried Dean hovering very close to you, and a worried Sam crossing back from the kitchen holding Dean’s water bottle.

Sam set the bottle on the bedside table and sat on his bed, facing you and Dean. Dean’s attention was solely on you. His hands grabbed both sides of your face and brought his lips to your forehead, before resting against it.

“Hey,” you said, chuckling slightly, “I didn’t mean to scare you, De. You, or Sam.” You sat yourself up in bed.

“Did Cas tell you what’s wrong?” Sam asked, looking at you expectantly.

“He did, but… is it okay if I talk to Dean? Alone?” You asked softly.

Sam shot Dean a look, which Dean promptly returned with one that had Sam standing up, and walking into the hall.

Orange rays of light shone from the window of the room, and you could just barely see the sun climbing on the horizon. Dean moved to hold you in bed while you gained the composure to tell him you were both parents.

“Dean…” you breathed steadily, trying to even your heartbeat that was ramping up once more, “I have to tell you something-”

“I kinda gathered as much sweetheart,” he said lightly, lines forming around his forest-lorn eyes beautifully.

“- it’s important. I mean, it’s going to change our lives, for the rest of our lives.”

Dean’s face became more serious, pulling you to face him as he crossed his legs.

“You know you can tell me anything, Y/N.”

Do it, now. Just say-

“I’m pregnant.”

The air hung heavy around the pair of you as you handed him the tests in your pocket, and you could see the clocks turn in Dean’s mind as he stared down at them.

“But we used a rubber?” He said, and you could guess where his thoughts were wandering.

“We did, but you’re the only person I’ve been with for years, Dean, I need you to believe me when I say that.” You said reassuringly as you could without sounding like you were lying.

His face broke into a small smile, and he brought his thumb to trace over your lower cheek, “I know, sweetheart. I trust you with my heart, I just know not to use that brand anymore, seems like their effectiveness is questionable.”

You laughed, tears drying in your eyes as you pushed at him playfully, “Dean! You gave me a heart attack, you son of a bitch!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry okay!” He laughed, capturing you in a giant bear hug and rolling you on top of him. You looked down at him and brought your lips down to his.

“You’re going to be a father,” you said, beaming at him while smiling the hardest you’d ever in the longest time

“You’re going to be a mother,” he replied, smiling just as hard. Your face fell slightly, and the word mother finally kicked into your head. “Hey,” Dean said as he saw your face shift, somehow remembering the story you told him all those years ago, “Remember, we’ve got an angel on speed dial, and you know how hard it is to take out a Winchester.”

Your heart warmed at the statement, the baby inside of you was just as much L/N as it was Winchester. You loved Dean with your heart, as did he love you, and now the two of you were going to brace the dangerous world you’d spent years protecting with the amalgamation of that love.

You brought Dean’s hand to your stomach as he brought his other hand to your face. His calloused fingers were gentle on your skin, and small crinkles formed around his eyes as he smiled, holding his hand at your stomach as you gazed back at him.

A knock sounded at the door, making you turn your head around before you and Dean burst into laughter, and told Sam he could come back in the room to tell him the news.

#spn #supernatural #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #destiel #deancas #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester angst #dean winchester x y/n #dean winchester x you #dean winchester x female!reader #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester fic #dean winchester x pregnant!reader #dean winchester smut #supernatural fic #supernatural fanfiction

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resplendent-ragamuffin · 2 months

Note

I have encountered issues with JVP in the past in regards to not accommodating kashrut/shabbat observance (and wheelchairs), but previously hasn’t heard about the Mikvah thing. Do you have any sources I can refer to?

Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy. The noise I made when I saw this ask.

You are probably unaware but I have literally been working on a post on this topic since February. Bless you for asking me about it and giving me a reason to share it. Genuinely. I'm delighted.

Without further ado, now that I've finally finished:

On the JVP Mikveh BS

Some of you are no doubt aware of the Jewish Voice for Peace Mikveh Guide (on JVP’s website here, and here on the Wayback Machine in case that link breaks). You may have seen the post I reblogged about it, you may have seen the post about JVP in general on @is-the-thing-actually-Jewish, or you may have heard about it elsewhere. Or maybe you’ve somehow managed to avoid all knowledge of its existence. (God I wish that were me.) Even if you know about it, even if you’ve scanned through it, you probably haven’t taken the time to read it through properly.

I have.

God help me.

I was originally looking through it to help draft the @is-the-thing-actually-Jewish post back in February, but some terrible combination of horror, indignation, and probably masochism compelled me to do a close reading, so that I could write this analysis and share it with you, dear readers. For those of you who’ve never heard of a mikvah, for those of you who’ve immersed in one, for those of you who’ve studied it intensely—I give you this, the fruit of my suffering, so you too can understand why “Mikveh: A Purification Ritual for Personal and Collective Transformation,” written by Zohar Lev Cunningham and Rebekah Erev for Jewish Voice for Peace has got so many people up in arms.

Brace yourselves. It’s going to be a long journey.

First off, a disclaimer: When I say something is “required in Jewish law” or whatnot, I’m talking about in traditional practice / Torah-observant communities; what is often called “Orthodox.” There’s a wide range of Jewish practice, and what is required in frum (observant) Judaism may not be required in Reform Judaism, etc. Don’t at me.

Second note: I myself am Modern Orthodox, and come from that perspective. I’m also very much more on the rationalist side than the mysticism side of things. I did run this past people from other communities. Still, if I’ve missed or misrepresented something, it was my error and was not meant maliciously.

Third: I am not a rabbi. I am a nerd who likes explaining things and doing deep dives. Again, I may have made errors–please let me know if you spot any, and I’d be happy to discuss them.

Now then. Before we get into the text itself, let’s give some background.

WHAT IS THIS MIKVEH THING ANYWAY?

A mikveh (or mikvah, both they and I switch between spellings; plural mikva’ot) is a Jewish ritual bath, sometimes translated as an immersion pool. Some communities or organizations that run mikva’ot will have a single all-purpose all-purpose, some have separate human- and utensil-pools, and some have separate women’s and men’s pools. The majority of the water in a mikvah has to be “living waters,” i.e. naturally collected rather than from a tap or a bucket. Some natural bodies of water can also be used, such as the ocean and some rivers (ask your local rabbi). The construction is complicated and has extremely detailed requirements. Here’s an example of a modern mikvah:

(By Wikimedia Commons (ויקיגמדון) - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17373540)

Whoever is being dunked (the scientific term) has to be entirely immersed, and the water has to be in direct contact with all of them. That means no clothes, no makeup, no hair floating on the top of the water, no feet touching the floor, no clenched fists. You have to be completely clean as well, so no dirt is obstructing you from the water.

In essence, a person or thing is immersed in a mikvah to change their/its state from tameh (ritually “impure”) to tahor (ritually “pure”). I use quotes because “pure/impure” aren’t really good translations—they have value judgments that tameh/tahor don’t. There’s nothing wrong with being tameh, you aren’t lesser because you are tameh—it’s just a state one enters when one comes into contact with death and related concepts. (There are also different levels of both.) As a matter of fact, technically speaking even after going to a mikvah basically all people are tameh now—the tum’ah (“impurity,” sort of) that comes from contact with dead humans can only be removed by the Red Heifer offering (see Numbers 19), which we can’t do without the Temple. (Why I say “all” even if you’ve never been to a funeral is a much much longer tangent that I’ll spare you for now.) To quote one of my editors on this, mikvah is “about the natural oscillation between states of ritual purity and impurity. Men go to mikveh after having seminal emissions. Menstruating women go to mikveh on a monthly basis (emphasis added).” It’s just states of life.

In the days of the Temple, one had to be tahor to enter it (the Temple). Archaeologists have found a ton of ancient mikva’ot in Jerusalem that were presumably used by people visiting the Temple, which personally I think is extremely cool.

Nowadays, there are three main traditionally required uses for a mikvah. First, and most importantly, observant married women will go about once a month as part of their niddah (menstrual) cycle, part of practice known as Taharat HaMishpacha, or “Family ‘Purity,’” which at its root is a way to sanctify the relationship between spouses. Until she immerses, a wife and husband cannot resume relations. And not just sex—in some communities, they can’t sleep in the same bed or even have any physical contact at all.

The second use is for conversion—immersion is a central part of the conversion ceremony. One enters the water a gentile, and emerges a Jew.

The third usage is a bit different as it’s not for people. Tableware—plates, cups, etc.—made of certain materials have to be immersed before they can be used. This isn’t what the Guide is about, so I’m not going to go into that as much, but felt remiss if I didn’t mention it was a thing. If you want to know more, Chabad has an article on it here.

Aside from uses required by Jewish law, there is a strong tradition in some communities for men to go to the mikveh just before Yom Kippur, or sometimes every week before the Sabbath, to enter the holiday in as “pure” a state as possible these days. (The things they’re “purifying” from still made them tameh, it just matters less without the Temple.) There is also a strong custom to immerse before one’s wedding. Less traditional communities have also started using mikvah for other transitional moments, such as significant birthdays or remission from cancer. There has recently been an “open mikvah” movement, which “is committed to making mikveh accessible to Jews of all denominations, ages, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities (Rising Tide Network old website, “Why Open Mikvah”).”

To quote others:

No other religious establishment, structure or rite can affect the Jew in this way and, indeed, on such an essential level. —Rebbetzen Rivkah Slonim, Total Immersion, as quoted on Chabad.org

The mikveh is one of the most important parts of a Jewish community. —Kylie Ora Lobell, “What Is a Mikveh?” on Aish.com

How important? According to Rav Moshe Feinstein, one of the great American rabbis of the 20th century, one should build a mikveh before building a synagogue in a town that has neither, and even in a town where there is a mikveh but it’s an inconvenient distance away from the community (Igros Moshe: Choshen Mishpat Chelek 1 Siman 42).

A mikveh is more important than a synagogue.

I’d say that’s pretty important.

Tl;dr: A mikveh is the conduit through which a convert becomes a part of the Jewish people. It is traditionally used to sanctify the relationship between spouses. It was required for people to go to the Temple, back when we still had it. It is extremely central to Jewish practice.

So. What does JVP have to say about it?

THE JVP MIKVEH GUIDE

The document in question is titled “Mikveh: A Purification Ritual for Personal and Collective Transformation,” by Zohar Lev Cunningham and Rebekah Erev. I am largely going to quote directly from the text and then analyze and explain it.

Now let me be clear. I’m not trying to say the authors aren’t Jewish. I’m not saying they’re bad people, or that you should attack them. I am not intending any of this as an ad hominem attack. But given the contents of this document, I do think it is fair to call this appropriative, even if it is of their own culture—in the same way someone can have internalized racism, or twist feminism into being a TERF, I would argue that this is twisting Judaism into paganism. In fact, while I use “appropriation” throughout this document, an extremely useful term that’s been coined recently is “cultural expropriation”--essentially, appropriative actions done by rogue members of the community in question. One example of this would be the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles, which is the source of a lot of the Madonna-style “pop Kabbalah.” It was founded by an Orthodox Jewish couple, but it and its followers are widely criticized by most Jewish communities. In much the same way, the Guide is expropriation.

We start off with a note from the authors.

Hello, Welcome to the Simple Mikveh Guide. This work comes out of many years of reclaiming and re-visioning mikveh. The intention of this guide is to acknowledge and give some context to what mikveh is, provide resources related to mainstream understanding of mikveh and also provide alternative mikveh ideas. Blessings for enjoyment of this wonderful, simple Jewish ritual! Zohar Lev Cunningham & Rebekah Erev

This is fairly normal, though “alternative mikveh ideas” is a bit odd to say. I also find “blessings for enjoyment” to be odd phrasing, somewhat reminiscent of the Wiccan “Blessed Be,” but it could be a typo.

The first main section is titled “Intro to Mikveh,” and begins as follows:

Mikveh is an ancient Jewish ritual practice of water immersion, traditionally used for cleansing, purification, and transformation. It's been conventionally used for conversion to Judaism, for brides, and for niddah, the practice of cleansing after menstruation.

This is relatively accurate, and credit where credit is due avoids making niddah out to be patriarchal BS. I do object slightly to “purify” as a translation without further explanation, as I went into above, and “cleansing” for similar reasons—it implies “dirtiness,’ which isn’t really what tum’ah is about. Also, though this is pretty minor, a bride going to the mikveh before her wedding is actually a part of the laws of niddah. I’d also note that they entirely leave out that it was important for going to the Temple in ancient times, though given this is published by JVP I’m not terribly surprised.

For Jews, water signifies the transformative moment from slavery in Egypt, through the parted Red Sea, and into freedom.

On the one hand, I suppose it’s not unreasonable to connect the Red Sea and mikveh, though I think I’d be more likely to hear it the other way around (i.e. “going through the sea was like the people immersing in a mikveh and being ‘cleansed,’ so to speak”). Though they were, rather importantly, not actually immersed in the water. However I don’t think I’d say water as a whole signifies the Splitting of the Sea. In fact, water imagery is more often used to signify the Torah, see for instance Bava Kamma 82a.

There is also a mystical connection to mikveh as a metaphor for the womb of the divine.

A mikveh being like a womb is also not uncommon. It’s found in the Reishis Chochmah (Shia’ar HaAhavah 11,58) and the writing of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (The Aryeh Kaplan Anthology, vol 2., p. 382; both as quoted in 50 Mikvahs That Shaped History, by Rabbi Ephraim Meth), see also “The Mikveh’s Significance in Traditional Conversion” by Rabbi Maurice Lamm on myjewishlearning. Filled with water, you float in it, you emerge a new being (at least for conversion); it’s not an absurd comparison to draw. I’m not sure I’ve found anything for the Womb of the Divine specifically, though. (Also, Divine should definitely be capitalized.)

Entering a mikveh is a transformative and healing experience and we have long wondered why it is not available to more people, including the significant trans and queer populations in Jewish communities.

So. I am NOT going to say there’s no problem with homophobia and/or transphobia in Jewish communities. It’s definitely a community issue, and many communities are grappling with it in various ways as we speak. And I’m certainly not going to say the authors didn’t have the experience of not having a mikveh available to them—I don’t know their lives, I’m not going to police their experiences.

However, while Orthodox mikvahs are often still restricted to married women (who by virtue of the community will generally be cis and married to men) and potentially adult men (given the resources and customs, as mentioned above), there are plenty of more liberal mikva’ot these days. Some even explicitly offer rituals for queer events! The list of reasons to go to the mikvah linked up above, for instance, includes:

(Mayyim Hayyim, “Immersion Ceremonies”)

Again, that’s not to say there aren’t issues of queerphobia in the Jewish community, but if you are queer and want to go to the mikvah, there are options out there. If you’re looking, I’ve included some links at the end.

When we make ritual, we are working with the divine forces of presence and intention. The magic of mikveh comes in making contact with water. Contact with water marks a threshold and functions as a portal to bring closer our ritual intention/the world to come.

This is…a weird way to put things. I would say this is the start of the red flags. “When we make ritual,” first of all, is, to quote @the-library-alcove (who helped edit this), “a turn of phrase that is not typically associated with any branch of Jewish practice; we have a lot--a LOT--of rituals, and while it's certainly not completely outside of the realm of Jewish vernacular, the tone here, especially in light of the later sections, starts veering towards the vernacular of neo-paganism.” One might say “make kiddush” (the blessing over wine on Shabbos and holidays) or “make motzi” (the blessing over bread), but not generally “make ritual.”

The next section is titled “Who Gets to Do Mikveh?” Their answer:

Everyone! Mikveh practice is available to all of us as a healing tool at any time.

The healing tool part isn’t the original purpose of mikveh, but there are some who have used it as a part of emotional recovery from something traumatic, by marking a new state of being free from whatever caused it, see for instance Mayyim Hayyim’s list linked above.

The “everyone” bit is a little more complicated. To explain why, we’re going to skip ahead a little. (Some of these quotes will also be analyzed in full later.)

We want to make mikveh practice available as a tool to all Jews and non-Jews who want to heal wounds caused by white supremacy and colonialism. [..] To us, a queer mikveh welcomes anyone, regardless of spiritual background or not. […] Queer mikveh is accessible physically and spiritually to any and all people who are curious about it. You don't have to be a practicing Jew to enter queer mikveh. You don't have to be Jewish. (pg. 2, emphasis added)

Now, I am told there are mikva’ot that allow non-Jews to immerse. I have yet to find them, so I don’t know what rituals they allow non-Jews to do. I also haven’t been able to find any resources on non-Jews being allowed to immerse. I have found quite a few that explicitly prohibit it. If there are any sources you know of, please send them to me! I’d love to see them! But so far everything I have come across has said that mikvah immersion is a closed practice that only Jews can participate in. (Technically, to quote the lovely @etz-ashashiot, any non-Jew can do mikvah…once. And they won’t be non-Jews when they emerge. There is also one very extreme edge-case, which is absolutely not mainstream knowledge or practice, and basically isn’t actually done. You can message me if you’re curious, but it’s really not relevant to this–and even in that case, it is preferable to use a natural mikvah rather than a man-made one.)

If there are any legitimate sources that allow non-Jews to do a mikvah ritual, I would assume said non-Jews would be required to be respectful about it. Unfortunately, this is how the paragraph we began with continues:

Who Gets to Do Mikveh? Everyone! Mikveh practice is available to all of us as a healing tool at any time. You don't need any credentials. Your own wisdom is all the power you need to be a Jewish ritual leader. (emphasis added)

This is where we really go off the rails. First of all, you need more than “wisdom” to lead a Jewish ritual. You need to actually know what you’re doing. You can’t just say “oh you know what I feel like the right thing to do for morning prayers is to pray to the sun, because God created the sun so the sun is worth worshiping, and this is a Jewish ritual I’m doing.” That’s just idolatry. Like straight up I stole that from a midrash (oral tradition) about how humanity went from speaking with God in the Garden of Eden to worshiping idols in the time of Noah (given here by Maimonides; note that it continues for a few paragraphs after the one this link sends you to).

Second of all, this is particularly bad given this guide is explicitly to Jews and non-Jews. As @daughter-of-stories put it when she was going over an earlier draft of this analysis, “they are saying that non-Jews can just declare themselves Jewish ritual leaders based on nothing but their own ‘wisdom.’”

I hope I don’t need to explain why that’s extremely bad and gross?

While we’re on the topic of non-Jews using a mikvah, let’s take a moment to address an accusation commonly mentioned alongside the mikvah guide: that JVP also encourages (or encouraged) self-conversion.

I have been unable to find a separate document where they explicitly said so, or an older version of this document that does. This leads me to believe that either a) the accusation came from a misreading of this document, or b) there was a previous document that contained it which has since been deleted but was not archived in the Wayback Machine. EITHER is possible.

Even in the case that there was no such document, however, I would point out that such a suggestion can be read–intentionally or not–as implicit in this document. This is a guide for mikvah use by both Jews and non-Jews, and includes an idea that non-Jews can perform Jewish rituals on their own without any guidance or even background knowledge, as quoted above. Why would a non-Jew, coming into Jewish practice with very little knowledge, go looking to perform a mikvah ritual?

I would wager that the most well-known purpose of immersing in a mikvah is for the purpose of conversion.

Nowhere in this guide is there any explicit statement that you can do a self-conversion, but it also doesn’t say anywhere that you can’t, or that doing so is an exception to “you don’t need any credentials” or “your own wisdom is all the power you need to be a Jewish ritual leader.” It may not be their intention, but the phrasing clearly leaves it as an option.

Even if this were from a source that one otherwise loved, this would be upsetting and disappointing. The amount of exposure this document is getting may be at least in part because it comes from JVP, but the distress and dismay would be there regardless. If there is further vitriol, it’s only because JVP is often considered a legitimate source by outsiders, if no one else–in other words, by the very people least likely to have the background to know that this document isn’t trustworthy. It’s like the difference between your cousin telling you “the Aztecs were abducted by aliens” versus a mainstream news program like Fox reporting it. Both are frustrating and wrong, but one has significantly more potential harm than the other, and therefore is more likely to get widespread criticism (even if you complain about your cousin online).

On the other hand, as one of my editors pointed out in a moment of dark humor, they do say you don’t have to be Jewish to lead a Jewish ritual, so perhaps that mitigates this issue slightly by taking away a motivation to convert in the first place.

Returning to our document:

We do mikvahs in lakes, rivers, bathtubs, showers, outside in the rain, from teacups, and in our imaginations.

At this point the rails are but a distant memory.

In case you’ve forgotten what I said about this at the beginning of this post (and honestly I wouldn’t blame you, we’re on pg. 9 in my draft of this), there are extremely strict rules about what qualifies as a mikvah. Maimonides’s Mishnah Torah, just about the most comprehensive codex of Jewish law, has eleven chapters on the topic of the mikvah (though that includes immersion in it as well as construction of it). I’m not going to make you read through it, but let’s go through the list in this sentence:

Lakes and rivers: you might be able to use a river or lake as a mikvah, but you need to check with your local rabbinical authority, because not all of them qualify. In general, the waters must gather together naturally, from an underground spring or rainwater. In the latter case, the waters must be stationary rather than flowing. A river that dries up in a drought can’t be used, for instance. (The ocean counts as a spring, for this purpose.)

Bathtubs and showers: No. A man-made mikveh must be built into the ground or as an essential part of a building, unlike most bathtubs, and contain of a minimum of 200 gallons of rainwater, gathered and siphoned in a very particular way so as not to let it legally become “groundwater.” Also, it needs to be something you can immerse in, which a shower is not.

Outside in the rain: No? How would you even do that?? What??

Teacups: Even if you were Thumblina or K’tonton (Jewish Tom Thumb), and could actually immerse your entire body in a teacup, it wouldn’t be a kosher mikvah as a mivkah can’t be portable.

In your imagination: Obviously not, what the heck are you even talking about

We will (unfortunately) be coming back to the teacup thing, but for now suffice it to say most of these are extremely Not A Thing.

Mikveh has been continually practiced since ancient Judaism. It is an offering of unbroken Jewish lineage that we have claimed/reclaimed as our own.

I find the use of “claimed/reclaimed” fascinating here, given this guide is explicitly for non-Jews—who, whether or not they are permitted to use a mikvah, certainly shouldn’t be claiming it as their own—as well as Jews. I find it particularly interesting given the lack of clarity of how much of JVP’s membership is actually Jewish and JVP’s history of encouraging non-Jewish members to post “as Jews.” Kind of telling on yourselves a bit, there.

(Once again, I’m not commenting on the authors themselves, but the organization they represent here and the audience they are speaking to/for.)

We want to make mikveh practice available as a tool to all Jews and non-Jews who want to heal wounds caused by white supremacy and colonialism. We want to make mikveh practice available for healing our bodies, spirits, and the earth.

Setting aside the “Jews and non-Jews” thing, since I talked about that earlier and this is already extremely long, I do want to highlight the end of the paragraph. While there are some modern uses of the mikvah to (sort of) heal the spirit, I haven’t heard of anyone using a mikvah to heal the body—as a general rule Jews don’t tend to do faith healing, though of course some sects are the exception. Healing the earth, however, is absolutely not a use of a mikvah. Mikvah rituals, as we’ve now mentioned several times, are about tahara of a person or an object, and require immersion. You can’t immerse the earth in a mikvah. The earth contains mikva’ot. Healing the earth with a mikvah is a very strange worship (IYKYK).

We acknowledge that not all beings have consistent access to water, including Palestinians.

This is a tragedy, no question. I don't mean to minimize that. However, it is also unrelated to the matter at hand. The Guide also doesn’t give any recommendations on how we can help improve water access, so this lip service is all you get.

A lack of water does not make mikveh practice inaccessible.

Yes, in fact, it does. Without a kosher mikvah of one variety or another one cannot do anything that requires a mikvah. That’s why building a kosher one is so important. I haven’t gone looking for it, but while I’m sure there’s lots (and lots and lots and lots) of Rabbinic responsa out there of what to do in drought situations, you definitely do need water in all but the most extreme cases. If you do not have water, AYLR (Ask Your Local Rabbi)--don’t do whatever this is.

The spirit of water can be present with us if we choose to call for water, so even when water is not physically available to us we can engage in mikveh practice.

This is just straight up avodah zarah (“strange worship,” i.e. idolatry) as far as I can tell. The “spirit of the water”? What? We’re not Babylonians worshiping Tiamat. What source is there for this? Is there a source??

Like all material resources, the ways water is or is not available to us is shaped by our geographic and social locations. The ways we relate to water, what we decide is clean, treyf (dirty), drinkable, bathable, how much we use, how much we save, varies depending on our experiences. We invite you to decide what is clean and holy for your own body and spiritual practice.

This is going to require some breaking down.

To start with, let’s define “treyf.” To quote myjewishlearning, “Treyf (sometimes spelled treif or treyfe) is a Yiddish word used for something that is not kosher [lit. "fit"]. The word treyf is derived from the Hebrew word treifah, which appears several times in the Bible and means 'flesh torn by beasts.' The Torah prohibits eating flesh torn by beasts, and so the word treifah came to stand in for all forbidden foods.”

You may note the lack of the word “dirty” in this definition, or any other value judgments. Myjewishlearning continues, “over time, the words kosher and treyf have been used colloquially beyond the world of food to describe anything that Jews deem fit or unfit.” While this does have something of a value judgment, it’s still not “dirty.” I can’t say why the authors chose to translate the word this way, but…I don’t like it.

Now, when it comes to what is kosher or treyf, food and drink are most certainly not based on “our experiences.” There are entire books on the rules of kashrut; it generally takes years of study to understand all the minutiae. Even as someone who was raised in a kosher household, when I worked as a mashgicha (kosher certification inspector) I needed special training. What is considered kadosh (“sacred” or “holy,” though again that’s not a perfect translation) or tahor is also determined by very strict rules. We don’t just decide things based on “vibes.” That’s not how anything in Jewish practice works.

Water, in fact, is always kosher to drink unless it has bugs or something else treyf in it. And mikvehs aren’t even always what I’d consider “drinkable;” I always wash utensils I’ve brought to the mikvah before I use them.

We come to our next heading: What is Queer Mikveh?

What is Queer Mikveh? To us, a queer mikveh welcomes anyone, regardless of spiritual background or not.

As I’ve said above, I have yet to find a single source (seriously if you have one please send it to me) that says non-Jews can go to a mikvah. As one of my editors for this put it, “to spin appropriation of Jewish closed practices as ‘queer’ is not only icky but deeply disrespectful to actual queer Jews.”

Also, and this is not remotely the point, but “regardless of spiritual background or not” is almost incoherently poor writing.

As Jews in diaspora we want to share and use our ritual practices for healing the land and waters we are visitors on for the liberation of all beings.

I have tried to be semi-professional about this analysis, but. “Jews in the diaspora,” you say. Tell me, JVP, where are we in the diaspora from? Hm? Where are we in diaspora from? Which land do we come from? Which land are we indigenous to, JVP? Do tell.

Returning to the point, I would repeat that mikvah has nothing to do with “healing the land and waters.” It’s ritual purification of whatever is immersed in it. You want to heal the land and waters? Go to your local environmental group, and/or whoever maintains your local land and waters. Pick up trash. Start recycling. Weed invasive species. Call your government and tell them to support green energy. You want liberation for all beings? Fight bigotry—including antisemitism. Judaism believes in action—go act. Appropriating rituals from a closed religion doesn’t liberate anyone.

We have come up with this working definition and welcome feedback!

Oh good, maybe I won’t be yelled at for posting this (she said dubiously).

Queer mikveh is a ritual of Jews in diaspora. We believe the way we work for freedom for all beings is by using the gifts of our ancestors for the greatest good. We bring our rituals as gifts.

I have nothing in particular new to say about this, except that I find the idea of “bringing our rituals as gifts” for anyone to use deeply uncomfortable, given Judaism is a closed religion that strongly discourages non-Jews from joining us, and that has had literal millennia of people appropriating from us.

It acknowledges that our path is to live on lands that are not historically our peoples [sic] and we honor the Indigenous ancestors of the land we live on, doing mikveh as an anti-colonialist ritual for collective and personal liberation.

Again I would love so much for JVP to tell us which lands would historically be our people’s. What land do Jews come from, JVP? What land is it we do have a historical connection to? What land do our Indigenous ancestors come from??

And why does it have to be our path to live on lands other than that one?

Secondly, to quote the lovely @daughter-of-stories again when she was editing this, “Mikveh as anti-colonialism, aside from not being what Mikveh is, kinda implies that you can cleanse the land of the sins of colonialism. So (a) that’s just a weird bastardization of baptism since, mikveh isn’t about cleansing from sin, and (b) so does that mean the colonialism is erased? Now we don’t have to actually deal with how it affects actual indigenous people?”

I’m sure that (b) isn’t their intent, but I will say that once again they don’t give any material suggestions for how to actually liberate any collectives or persons from colonialism in this document, including any links to other pages on their own website*, which surely would have been easy enough. It comes across as very performative.

*I disagree strongly with most of their methods, but at least they are suggesting something.

Queer mikveh is a physical or spiritual space that uses the technologies of water and the Jewish practice of mikveh to mark transitions. Transition to be interpreted by individuals and individual ritual.

I have no idea what the “technologies of water” are. Also usage of a mikvah to mark transitions beyond ritual states is a fairly new innovation, as mentioned above.

Queer mikveh in it's [sic] essence honors the story of the water. The historical stories of the water we immerse in, the stories of our own bodies as water and the future story we vision [sic].

This just sounds like a pagan spinoff of baptism to me, if I’m being honest. Which would be non-Jewish in several ways.

Queer mikveh is accessible physically and spiritually to any and all people who are curious about it. You don't have to be a practicing Jew to enter queer mikveh. You don't have to be Jewish.

First off, once again whether or not non-Jews can use mikvah seems at best extremely iffy. Secondly, accessibility in mikva’ot is, as one of my editors put it, “a continual discussion.” We have records of discussions regarding access for those with physical disabilities going back at least to the 15th century (Shut Mahari Bruna, 106; as quoted in 50 Mikvahs That Shaped History by Rabbi Ephraim Meth), and in the modern era there are mikva’ot that have lifts or other accessibility aids. That said, many mikva’ot, especially older ones, are still not accessible–and many mikva’ot don’t have the money to retrofit or renovate. Mikvah.org’s directory listings (linked at the end of this) notes whether various mikva’ot are accessible, if you are looking for one in your area. If you want to help make mikva’ot more accessible to the disabled, consider donating to an existing mikvah to help them pay for renovations or otherwise (respectfully) getting involved in the community. If you want to help make mikva’ot more accessible for non-Orthodox Jews, try donating to an open mikvah (see link to a map of Rising Tide members at the end of this essay) or other non-Orthodox mikvah.

Queer mikveh is an earth and water honoring ritual.

Not even a little. We do have (or had) rituals that honor the earth or water, at least to an extent–the Simchat Beit HaSho’evah (explanations here and here) was a celebration surrounding water; most of our holidays are harvest festivals to some extent or another; there are a large number of agricultural mitzvahs (though most can only be done in Israel, which I suppose wouldn’t work for JVP). (Note: mitzvahs are commandments and/or good deeds.) Even those, though, aren’t about the water or earth on their own, per se, but rather about honoring them as God’s gift to us. This description of mikvah sounds more Pagan or Wiccan–which is fine, but isn’t Jewish.

Queer mikveh exists whenever a queer person or queers gather to do mikveh. Every person is their own spiritual authority and has the power to create their own ritual for individual or collective healing.

Absolutely, anyone can create their own rituals for anything they want. But it probably won’t be a mikvah ritual, and it probably won’t be Jewish.

Do you know what it’s called when you make up your own ritual and claim that it’s actually a completely valid part of an established closed practice of which you aren’t part? (Remember—this document is aimed just as much at non-Jews as at Jews.)

It’s called appropriation.

With the next section, “Some Ideas for Mikveh Preparation,” we begin page three.

(Yes, we’re only on page three of seven. I’m so sorry.)

The most important part of mikveh preparation is setting an intention.

This isn’t entirely wrong, as you do have to have in mind the intention of fulfilling a mitzvah when you perform one.

Because mikveh is a ritual most used to mark transitions, you can frame your intention in that way.

To quote myself above, “usage of a mikvah to mark transitions beyond ritual states is a fairly new innovation.” I’d hardly say it is mostly used for marking transitions.

You can do journaling or talk with friends to connect with the Jewish month, Jewish holiday, Shabbat, the moon phase, and elements of the season that would support your intention.

If this were a guide for only Jews, or there was some sort of note saying this section was only for Jews, I would have less of a problem. But given neither is true, they are encouraging non-Jews to use the Jewish calendar for what is, from the rest of the descriptions in the Guide, a magical earth healing ritual.

This is 100% straight up appropriation.

The Jewish calendar is Jewish. Marking the new moon and creating a calendar was the first commandment given to us as a people, upon the exodus from Egypt. Nearly all our holidays are (aside from the harvest component, which is based on the Israeli agricultural seasons and required harvest offerings) based on specific parts of Jewish history. Passover celebrates the Exodus and our becoming a nation. Sukkot celebrates the Clouds of Glory that protected us in the desert. Shavuot celebrates being given the Torah.

According to some opinions, non-Jews literally aren’t allowed to keep Shabbat.

If you are a non-Jew and you are basing the collective earth healing ritual you have created under your own spiritual authority around Jewish holidays and calling it “mikvah,” you are appropriating Judaism.

Full stop.

This isn’t even taking into account the generally Pagan/witchy feel of the paragraph, with “moon phases” and “elements of the season.” Again, if you want to be a Pagan be a Pagan, but don’t call it Jewish.

Things only go further downhill with their next suggestion for preparation before you go to the mikvah.

Divination: A lot can be said about divination practices and Judaism.

There certainly is a lot to be said. First and foremost, there’s the fact that divination is forbidden in Judaism.

(Screenshot of Leviticus 19:26 from sefaria.org)

One method of divination they suggest is Tarot, which is a European method of cartomancy that seems to have begun somewhere in the 19th century, though the cards start showing up around the 15th. While early occultists tried to tie it to various older forms of mysticism, including Kabbalah, this was, to put it lightly, complete nonsense. (Disclaimer: this information comes from wikipedia; I’ve already spent so much time researching the mikvah stuff that I do not have the energy or interest to do a deep dive into the origin of Tarot. It isn’t Jewish, the rest is honestly just details.)

I have nothing against Tarot. I think it’s neat! The cards are often lovely! I have a couple of decks myself, and I use them for fun and card games. But divination via tarot is not Jewish. If I do any spreads, I make it very clear to anyone I’m doing it with that it is for fun and/or as a self-reflection tool, not as magic. Because that is extremely not allowed in Judaism.

The authors suggest a few decks to use, one of which is by one of the authors themselves. Another is “The Kabbalah Deck,” which—holy appropriation, Batman!

In case anyone is unaware, Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) is an extremely closed Jewish practice, even within Judaism. Traditionally it shouldn’t be studied by anyone who hasn’t already studied every other Jewish text (of which there are, I remind you, a lot), because it’s so easy to misinterpret. I mentioned this above briefly when explaining cultural expropriation. Pop Kabbalah (what Madonna does, what you see when they talk about “Ancient Kabbalistic Texts” on shows like Supernatural, the nonsense occultists and New-Agers like to say is “ancient Kabbalistic” whatever, it’s a wide span of appropriative BS) is gross, combining Kabbalah with Tarot is extremely gross. I’m not 100% sure, as the link in the pdf doesn’t work, but I believe they are referring to this deck by Edward Hoffman. For those of you who don’t want to click through, the Amazon description includes this:

(Screenshot from Amazon)

Returning to our text:

Another practice that's been used in Judaism for centuries is bibliomancy. You can use a book you find meaningful (or the Torah) and ask a question. Then, close your eyes, open the book to a page and place your finger down. Interpret the word or sentence you pointed at to help guide you to answer your question.

Bibliomancy with a chumash (Pentateuch) or tanach (Bible) in Jewish magic is kind of a thing, but the tradition of Jewish magic as a whole is very complicated and could be its own entirely different post. This one is already long enough. This usage of bibliomancy is clearly just appropriative new-age BS, though, especially given you can use “[any] book you find meaningful.”

Also, if you aren’t Jewish, please don’t use the Torah for ritual purposes unless you are doing it under very specific circumstances under the laws for B’nei Noach (“Children of Noah,” also called Righteous Gentiles; non-Jews who follow the 7 Noachide Laws).

Sit with your general intention or if you aren't sure, pose a question to the divination tool you are using. "What should be my intention for this mikveh?" "What needs transforming in my life?" "How can I transform my relationship with my body?"

As I hope I’ve made clear, there are very specific times when one uses a mikvah, even with more modern Open Mikvah rituals. You always know what your intention is well before going—to make yourself tahor, or mark a specific event. I’m not here to police how someone prepares mentally before they immerse—meditation is fine, even encouraged. But magic? Like this? That’s not a thing. And given the fact that divination specifically is not only discouraged but forbidden, this section in particular upset a lot of Jews who read it.

Those of us already upset by everything we’ve already covered were not comforted by how the Guide continues.

How to Prepare Physically For Mikveh: Some people like to think about entering the mikveh in the way their body was when they were born. By this we mean naked, without jewelry, with clean fingernails and brushed hair. This framing can be meaningful for many people.

We went into this at the beginning of this essay (about 6500 words ago), but this is in fact how Jewish law mandates one is required to immerse. This is certainly the case in most communities, whether you are immersing due to an obligation (as a married woman or a bride about to be married) or due to custom (as men in post-Temple practice) or due to non-traditional immersion (as someone coming out); wherever on the spectrum of observance one falls (as far as I could find). A mikvah isn’t a bath, it’s not about physical cleanliness—you must first thoroughly clean yourself, clip your nails, and brush your teeth. Nail polish and makeup are removed. There can’t be any barriers between you and the water. Most mikva’ot these days, particularly women’s mikva’ot, have preparation rooms so you can prep on site. When you immerse, you have to submerge completely—your hair can’t be floating above the water, your mouth can’t be pursed tightly, your hands can’t be clenched so the water can’t get to your palms. If you do it wrong, it doesn’t count and you have to do it again. It’s not a “framing,” it’s a ritual practice governed by ritual law.

We suggest you do mikveh in the way you feel comfortable for you and your experience.

This isn’t how this works. If you have a particularly extreme case, you can talk to a rabbi to see if there are any workarounds—for example, if excessive embarrassment would distract you from the ritual, you may be able to wear clothes that are loose enough that the water still makes contact with every millimeter of skin. But you need to consult with someone who knows the minutiae of the laws and requirements so you know if any exceptions or workarounds apply to you. That’s what a rabbi is for. That’s why they need to go to rabbinical school and get ordination. They have to study. That’s why you need to find a rabbi whose knowledge and personality you trust. For someone calling themselves a religious authority in Judaism to say “you can do whatever, no biggie” with such a critical ritual is…I’m not sure what the word I want is.

The idea is to feel vulnerable but also to claim your body as a powerful site of change that has the power to move us close to our now unrecognizable futures.

The idea is to bathe in the living waters and enter a state of taharah. Though that could be an idea you have in mind while you are doing it, I suppose. I could see at least one writer I know of saying something like this to specifically menstrual married (presumably cis) women performing Taharat HaMishpacha (family taharah, see above).

For some people, doing mikveh in drag will feel most vulnerable, with all your make-up and best attire.

Absolutely not a thing. As I said last paragraph, the goal isn’t to feel vulnerable or powerful or anything. It may feel vulnerable or powerful, but that is entirely besides the actual purpose of the ritual. What you get out of it on a personal emotional level has nothing to do with the religious goal of the religious practice.

And if you are wondering how one would submerge oneself in water in full drag, don’t worry, we’ll get there soon.

For some, wearing a cloth around your body until just before you dip is meaningful.

This is just how it’s usually done. Generally one is provided with a bathrobe, and one removes it before entering. You don’t just wander around the building naked. Or the beach, if you’re using the ocean.

If you were born intersex and your genitalia was changed without your consent, thinking about your body as perfect, however you were born, can be loving.

I’m not intersex, so I’m not going to comment on the specifics here. If you are and that’s meaningful to you, more power to you.

We enter a new section, at the top of page 4.

Where To Do Mikveh: There is much midrash around what constitutes a mikveh.

“Midrash” is not the word they want here. The midrash is the non-legal side of the oral tradition, often taking the form of allegory or parable. This is as opposed to the mishna, which is the halachic (legal) side of the oral tradition. They were both written down around the same time, but most midrashim (plural) are in their own books, rather than incorporated in the mishna.

There is, however, a great deal of rabbinic discussion, in the form of mishna, gemara, teshuvot (responsa), legal codices, and various other genres of Jewish writing. More properly this could have just said “there is much discussion around what constitutes a mikveh.”

Most mikvot currently exist in Orthodox synagogues[—]

This is perhaps a minor quibble, but I don’t know that I’d say they’re generally in synagogues. They are frequently associated with a local congregation, but are often in a separate building.

[—]but there is a growing movement to create more diverse and inclusive spaces for mikveh. Mayyim Hayyim is a wonderful resource with a physical body of water mikveh space. Immerse NYC is a newer organization training people of all genders to be mikveh guides. They also work to find gender inclusive spaces for people to do mikveh in NYC.

This is true! Mayyim Hayyim is a wonderful organization I’ve never heard anything bad about, and ImmerseNYC also seems like an excellent organization. Both also only allow Jews (in which group I am including in-process converts) to immerse.

The mikveh guides thing I didn’t explain above, so I’ll take a moment to do so here. Because the rules of immersion are so strict, and because it’s hard to tell if you are completely immersed when you are underwater, most mikva’ot have a guide helping you. Depending on the circumstance and the mikvah, and depending on the patron’s comfort, who and how they do their jobs can differ somewhat. For a woman immersing after niddah, it will usually be another woman who will hold up the towel or bathrobe for you while you get in the water, and will only look from behind it once you are immersed to make sure you are completely submerged. If you are converting, customs vary. Some communities require men to witness the immersion regardless of the convert’s gender, which is very much an ongoing discussion in those communities. Even in those cases, to my knowledge they will only look once the convert is in the water, and there will likely still be a female attendant if the convert is a woman. While there are negative experiences people have had, it is very much an intra-community issue. We’re working on it.

Mikveh can be done in a natural body of water.

Again, this is true, though not all bodies of water work, so AYLR (Ask Your Local Rabbi).

Some people are also making swimming pools holy places of mikveh.

We’ve already explained above why this is nonsense.

In the Mishneh (the book that makes commentary on the torah [sic]) there are arguments as to what constitutes a mikveh and how much water from a spring or well or rainwater must be present.

The main issue in this section is their definition of the Mishneh. As I explained above, the Mishna (same thing, transliteration is not an exact science) is the major compilation of the Oral Torah, the oral tradition that was written down by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi so it wouldn’t be lost in the face of exile and assimilation. It’s not so much a commentary on the (Written) Torah as an expansion of it to extrapolate the religious laws we follow. It’s certainly not “the book that makes commentary on the Torah.” We have literally hundreds of books of commentary. That’s probably underestimating. Jews have been around for a long time, and we have been analyzing and discussing the Torah for nearly as long. There are so many commentaries on the Torah.

The second issue is that while there are arguments in the Mishna and Gemara (the oral discussion on the Mishna that was written down even later), they do generally result in a final decision of some sort. Usually whichever side has the majority wins. Variations between communities are still very much a thing, and I can explain why in another post if people are interested, but there usually is a base agreement.

We are of the school that says you decide for yourself what works.

The phrasing they use here makes it sound as though that’s a legitimate opinion in the Mishnah. I cannot emphasize how much that is not the case. While I myself have not finished learning the entire Mishnah, I would be willing to wager a great deal that “whatever works for you” isn’t a stance on any legal matter there. That’s just not how it works. While some modern branches of Judaism may have that as a position, it is definitely not Mishnaic.

If you are concerned about Jewish law, the ocean is always a good choice. There are no conflicting arguments about the ocean as a mikveh. As the wise maggid Jhos Singer says in reference to the ocean, "It's [sic] becomes a mikveh when we call it a mikveh." Done.

(To clarify, I don’t know if that typo was carried over from the source of the original quote or not.)

This is true. However if you are concerned about Jewish law I would very much urge you to look to other sources than this one—be that your local rabbi or rebbetzen, the staff at your local mikvah, or a reliable website that actually goes into the proper requirements. If you want to use a mikveh according to Jewish law, please do not use this document as your guide.

We recognize immersion in water does not work for every body. Therefore, a guiding principle for where to do a mikveh is: do a mikveh in a place that is sacred to you. Your body is always holy and your body is made of mostly water. Later in this guide there is more information on mikveh with no immersion required.

I cannot emphasize how much I have never once heard this before. This, to me, reads like New Age nonsense. If you are unable to immerse in a mikvah, talk to your rabbi. Don’t do…whatever this is.

Our next section is a short one.

Who To Do it With: Do mikveh with people you feel comfortable with and supported by.

This is fine, though many mikva’ot (perhaps even most) will only allow one person to immerse at a time.

Do a solo mikveh and ask the earth body to be your witness.

With this, we return to the strange smattering of neo-Paganism. The “earth body” is not a thing. Yes, the Earth is called as a witness in the Bible at least once. It’s poetic. You also, unless you are converting, don’t actually need a witness anyway. A mikvah attendant or guide is there to help you—if you were somewhere without one, you could still immerse for niddah or various customary purposes.

Do mikveh with people who share some of your vision for collective healing.

As I’ve said before in this essay, collective healing is not the point of a mikvah. If you are Jewish and want to pray for healing, there are plenty of legitimate places for this–the Shemonah Esrei has a prayer for healing and a prayer where you can insert any personal prayers you want; there’s a communal prayer for healing after the Torah reading. You can give charity or recite a psalm or do a mitzvah with the person in mind. You can also just do a personal private prayer with any words you like, a la Hannah, or if you want pre-written words find an appropriate techinah (not the sesame stuff). If you want to work towards collective liberation, volunteer. Learn the laws of interpersonal mitzvot, like lashon hara (literally “evil speech,” mostly gossip or libel). Connect fighting oppression to loving your neighbor or the Passover seder. We have tons of places for this–mikvah isn’t one of them.

Next segment.

What To Bring to A Mikveh: 1. Intentions for the ritual for yourself and/or the collective.

See previous points on intention.

2. Items for the altar from your cultural background[…] (emphasis mine)

If I wasn’t appalled by the “immersing in makeup” or the “do divination first,” this would be the place that got me. This is wrong on so many levels.

One is not allowed to have an altar outside of The Temple in Jerusalem, the one we currently do not have. It’s an extremely big deal. One is not allowed to make sacrifices outside of the Temple. Period. This is emphasized again and again in the Torah and other texts. Even when we had a Temple, there were no altars in a mikvah.

And you certainly couldn’t offer anything in the Temple while naked, as one is required to be when immersing in the mikvah.

Even when we did bring offerings to altars (the Bronze Altar or the Gold Altar, both of which were in the Temple and which only qualified priests in a state of tahara could perform offerings on), the offerings were very specifically mandated, as per the Torah and those other texts. Even when non-Jews gave offerings (as did happen) they were required to comply. You couldn’t just bring any item from your cultural background. This is paganism, plain and simple.

Now, again, let me be clear: if you’re pagan, I have no problem with you. My problem is when one tries to take a sacred practice from a closed religion and try to co-opt it as one’s own. It’s a problem when someone who isn’t Native American decides to smudge their room with white sage, and it’s a problem when someone who isn’t Jewish tries to turn a mikvah into a pagan cleansing rite. And even if the person doing it is Jewish--I have an issue when it’s Messianics who were born Jewish, and I have an issue when it’s pagans who were born the same. Either way, whether you intend to or not, you are participating in appropriation or expropriation.

Which makes the line that follows this point so deeply ironic I can’t decide if I’m furious or heartbroken.

After suggesting that the reader (who may or may not be Jewish) bring items for an altar to a mikvah, the Guide asks:

[…] (please do not bring appropriated items from cultures that are not yours).

Which is simply just... beyond parody. To quote one of my editors, “This is quickly approaching the level of being a new definition for the Yiddish word 'Chutzpah,' which is traditionally defined as 'absurdist audacity' in line with 'Chutzpah is a man who brutally murders both of his parents and then pleads with the judge for leniency because he is now an orphan bereft of parental guidance.' If not for the involved nature of explaining the full context, I would submit this as a potential new illustrative example.”

The next suggestion of what to bring is

3. Warm clothes, towels, warm drinks

All these are reasonable enough, though most mikva’ot provide towels. Some also provide snacks, for while you are preparing. They may also not allow you to bring in outside food.

4. Your spirit of love, healing, and resistance

This, again, has nothing to do with mikvah. The only spirit of resistance in a mikvah is the fact that we continue to do it despite millennia of attempts to stop us. Additionally, to me at least “a spirit of love” feels very culturally-Christian.

Our next section is titled “How to Make Mikveh a Non-Zionist Ritual.”

Right off the bat, I have an issue with this concept. Putting aside for a moment whatever one may think of Zionism as a philosophy, my main problem here is that mikvah has nothing at all to do with Zionism. In Orthodoxy, at least, Jews who are against Zionism on religious grounds perform the mitzvah the same way passionately Zionist Jews do, with the same meanings and intentions behind it. It is performed the same way in Israel and out, and has been more or less the same for the last several thousand years. It is about ritual purification and sanctification of the mundane, no more and no less.

There is a word for saying anything and everything Jewish is actually about the modern Israel/Palestine conflict, simply because it’s Jewish.

That word is antisemitism.

How to Make Mikveh a Non-Zionist Ritual: Reject all colonial projects by learning about, naming & honoring, and materially supporting the communities indigenous to the land where you hold your mikveh. Name and thank the Indigenous people of the land you are going to do your mikveh on.

If you removed the “non-Zionist” description, this would be mostly unobjectionable. We should absolutely help indigenous communities. The framing of “reject all colonial projects” does seem to suggest that there is something colonial about the usual practice of going to the mikvah, though. I would argue that the mikvah is, in fact, anti-colonial if anything—it is the practice of a consistently oppressed minority ethno-religion which has kept it in practice despite the best efforts of multiple empires. Additionally, while Zionism means many different things to those who believe in it, at its root most Zionists (myself included) define it as “the belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in our indigenous homeland.” Our indigenous homeland being, of course, the land of Israel. (This is different from the State of Israel, which is the modern country on that land.) If you are a Jew in Israel, one of the indigenous peoples of the land your mikvah is on is your own. That’s not to say there aren’t others—but to claim Jews aren’t indigenous to the region is to be either misinformed or disingenuous.

Take the time to vision [sic] our world to come in which Palestine and all people are free.

I really, really dislike how they use the concept of The World To Come here. The Jewish idea of The World To Come (AKA the Messianic Age) is one where the Messiah has come, the Temple has been rebuilt, and the Davidic dynastic monarchy has been re-established in the land of Israel. Arguably that’s the most Zionist vision imaginable. This isn’t to say that all people, Palestinians included, won’t be free—true peace and harmony are also generally accepted features of the Messianic Age. But using the phrase in making something “non-Zionist” is, at the very least, in extremely poor taste. (As a side note, even religious non-Zionists believe in this–that’s actually why most of them are against the State of Israel, as they believe we can’t have sovereignty until the Messiah comes. They do generally believe we will eventually have sovereignty, just that now isn’t the time for it.)

Hold and explore this vision intimately as you prepare to immerse. What is one action you can take to bring this future world closer? Trust that your vision is collaborating with countless others doing this work.

Having a “vision” of a world where all are free isn’t doing any of the work to accomplish it. A “vision” can’t collaborate. At least not in Judaism. This sounds like one is trying to manifest the change through force of will, which is something directly out of the New Age faith movement, where it is known as “Creative Visualization.” Even when we do have a concept of bringing about something positive through an unrelated action–like saying psalms for someone who is sick–the idea is that you are doing a mitzvah on their behalf, to add to their merits counted in their favor. It’s not a form of magic or invocation of some mystical energy.

(Once again: I have nothing against pagans. But paganism is incompatible with Judaism. You can’t be both, any more than you can be Jewish and Christian.)

Use mikveh practice to ground into your contribution to the abundant work for liberation being done. We are many.

If you will once more pardon a brief switch to a casual tone:

Nothing says liberation like *checks notes* appropriating a minority cultural practice.

The next section of their document is titled “Ideas for Mikveh Ritual,” and this is where the Neo-Pagan and New Age influences of the authors truly shift from the background to the foreground.

We start off deceptively reasonably.

Mikveh ritual is potentially very simple. Generally people consider a mikveh to be a full immersion in water, where you are floating in the water, not touching the bottom, with no part of the body above the surface (including the hair).

Technically, most people consider a mikveh to be a ritual bath (noun) in which one performs various Jewish ritual immersions. But if we set this aside as a typo, this is…fairly true. What they are describing is how one is supposed to perform the mitzvah of mikveh immersion. However, in much the same way I wouldn’t say “generally people consider baseball to be a game where you hit a ball with a bat and run around a diamond,” I wouldn’t say it’s a case of “generally people consider” so much as “this is what it is.”

This works for some people. It doesn't work for everyone and it doesn't work for all bodies. Because of this, mikveh ritual can be expanded outside of these traditional confines in exciting, creative ways.

Once again, if you are incapable of performing mikvah immersion in the proper manner, please go speak with a rabbi. Please do not follow this guide.

Before we continue, I would just like to assure you that. whatever “exciting, creative ways” you might be imagining the authors have come up with, this is so much worse.

Method One:

Sound Mikveh: One way that's felt very meaningful for many is a "sound mikveh." This can be a group of people toning, harmonizing, or chanting in a circle. One person at a time can be in the center of the circle and feel the vibrations of healing sound wash over their body. Another method of sound mikveh is to use a shofar or other instrument of your lineage to made [sic] sounds that reach a body of water and also wash over you.

This makes me so uncomfortable I barely have the words to describe it, and I know that I am not alone in this. This is not a mikvah. If someone wants to do some sort of sound-based healing ritual, by all means go ahead, but do not call it a mikvah. This is not Jewish. I don’t know what this is, aside from deeply offensive.

And leave that poor shofar out of this. That ram did not give his horn for this nonsense.

(I could go on about the actual sacred purpose of a shofar and all the rules and reasons behind it that expand upon this, but this is already over 9000 words.)

Method Two is, if anything, worse. This is the one, if you’ve seen social media posts about this topic, you have most likely seen people going nuts about.

Tea Cup Mikveh: Fill a special teacup. If you want, add flower essence, a small stone, or other special elements. Sing the teacup a sweet song, dance around it, cry in some tears, tell the cup a tender and hopeful story, hold the teacup above the body of your animal friend for extra blessing, balance it on your head to call in your highest self. Use the holy contents of this teacup to make contact with water.

This is absolutely 100% straight-up neo-pagan/New Age mysticism. Nothing about this is based on Jewish practice of any kind. Again, I’m at a loss for words of how to explain just how antithetical this is. If you want to be a witch, go ahead and be a witch. But do not call it Jewish. Leave Judaism out of this.

They end this suggestion with the cute comment,

Mikveh to go. We’ve always been people on the move.

Let me explain why this “fun” little comment fills me with rage.

As you may recall, this document was published by Jewish Voice for Peace. Among their various other acts of promoting and justifying antisemitism, JVP has repeatedly engaged in historical revisionism regarding Jews and Jewish history. In this context, they have repeatedly ignored the numerous expulsions of Jews from various countries, and blaming sinister Zionist plots to explain any movement of expelled Jews to Israel (“In the early 1950s, starting two years after the Nakba, the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim,” from “Our Approach to Zionism” on the JVP website; see @is-the-thing-actually-jewish’s post on JVP and the posts linked from there).

So a document published by JVP framing Jewish movement as some form of free spirited 1970s-esque Bohemian lifestyle or the result of us being busy movers-and-shakers is a direct slap in the face to the persecution we’ve faced as a people and society. No, we aren’t “on the move” because we’re hippies wandering where the wind takes us . We’re always on the move because we keep getting kicked out and/or hate-crimed until we leave.

But there is no Jew-hatred in Ba Sing Se.

Method three:

Fermentation Mikveh: Some food goes through natural changes by being immersed in water. If we eat that food, we can symbolically go through a change similar to the one the food went through.

Again, this has no basis anywhere in halacha. We do have concepts of “you are what you eat,” specifically with reference to what animals and birds are kosher, but there isn’t any food that makes you tahor if you eat it. In the Temple days there were, in fact, foods you couldn’t eat unless you were tahor.

Jews may like pickles, but that doesn’t mean we think they purify you.

Also, the change from fermentation is, if anything, the opposite of the change we would want. Leavening (rising in dough or batter, due to the fermentation of yeast) is compared in rabbinic writings to arrogance and ego, as opposed to the humility of matza, the “poor man’s bread” (see here, for example). Is the suggestion here to become more egotistical?

As we wrap up this section, I’d like to go back to their stated reason for using these “alternative” methods (“It doesn't work for everyone and it doesn't work for all bodies”), and ask: if these really were the only options for immersion, would these really fill that same spiritual need/niche? These obviously aren’t aimed at me, but from my perspective it seems almost condescending, almost worse. “You can’t do the real thing, so we’ll make up something to make you feel better.” If any of them had an actual basis in Jewish practice, that would be one thing, but this just feels…fake, to me. Even within more liberal / less traditional streams of Judaism, there is a connection to halacha:

“We each (if we are knowledgeable about the tradition, if we confront it seriously and take its claims and its wisdom seriously) have the ability, the freedom, indeed the responsibility to come to a [potentially differing] personal understanding of what God wants us to do… [Halacha] is a record of how our people, in widely differing times, places and societal circumstances, experienced God's presence in their lives, and responded. Each aspect of halacha is a possible gateway to experience of the holy, the spiritual. Each aspect worked for some Jews, once upon a time, somewhere in our history. Each, therefore, has the potential to open up holiness for people in our time as well, and for me personally. However, each does not have equal claim on us, on me…Portions of the halacha whose main purpose seems to be to distance us from our surroundings no longer seem functional. Yet some parts of the halachic tradition seem perfect correctives to the imbalances of life in modernity…In those parts of tradition, we are sometimes blessed to experience a sense of God's closeness. In my personal life, I emphasize those areas. And other areas of halacha, I de-emphasize, or sometimes abandon. Reform Judaism affirms my right, our right, to make those kinds of choices.” – Rabbi Ramie Arian

“[Traditional Reconstructionist Jews] believe that moral and spiritual faculties are actualized best when the individual makes conscious choices…The individual’s choices, however, can and should not be made alone. Our ethical values and ritual propensities are shaped by the culture and community in which we live. Living a Jewish life, according to the Reconstructionist understanding, means belonging to the Jewish people as a whole and to a particular community of Jews, through which our views of life are shaped. Thus, while Reconstructionist communities are neither authoritarian nor coercive, they aspire to influence the individual’s ethical and ritual choices–through study of Jewish sources, through the sharing of values and experiences, and through the impact of the climate of communal opinion on the individual. …While we may share certain values and life situations, no two sets of circumstances are identical. We hope that the Reconstructionist process works to help people find the right answers for themselves, but we can only assist in helping individuals to ask the right questions so that their choices are made in an informed way within a Jewish context. To be true to ourselves we must understand the differences in perception between us and those who have gone before, while retaining a reverence for the traditions they fashioned. If we can juxtapose those things, we ensure that the past will have [in the phrase of Reconstructionism’s founder, Mordecai Kaplan,] a vote, but not a veto.” – Rabbi Jacob J. Straub (Note: the Reconstructionist movement was founded in the late 1920s, and has gone through a very large shift in the past decade or so. I use “Traditional” here to refer to the original version of the movement as opposed to those who have shifted. Both are still called Reconstructionist, so it’s a bit confusing. This is on the advice of one of my editors, who is themself Traditional Reconstructionist.)

You may note, neither of these talk about inventing things from whole cloth. To paraphrase one of my editors, “You don’t completely abandon [halacha], because if you did how would you have a cohesive community? Even in a ‘do what’s meaningful’ framework, you’re taking from the buffet, not bringing something to a potluck. Even if you don’t see halacha as binding, there are limits.”

(Again, disclaimer that the above knowledge of non-Orthodox movements comes from my editors, and any errors are mine.)

The next section is “Prayers for Mikveh.”

As a note, I’m going to censor the names of God when I quote actual blessings, as per traditional/Halachic practice. I’ll be putting brackets to indicate my alterations.

I’m not going to go much into detail here, because frankly my Hebrew isn’t good enough, and the six different people I asked for help gave me at least six different answers, but I will touch on it a bit.

First, the Guide gives a link to an article on Traditional Mikveh Blessings from Ritualwell (here is a link on the Wayback Machine, since the original requires you to make an account). Ritualwell is a Reconstructionist Jewish website, and accepts reviewed submissions. Here is their about page. The blessings on this page, as far as I know, are in fact exactly what it says on the tin. I’m not sure the first one, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu al ha-t’vilah, is said for non-obligatory immersions (i.e. not for niddah or conversion), as it is literally a blessing on the commandment. The second blessing at that link is Shehecheyanu, which the Guide also suggests as a good prayer. This is the traditional form of the blessing, given at Ritualwell:

Baruch Atah Ado[-]nai Elo[k]eynu Melech Ha-Olam shehekheyanu v’kiyimanu v’higiyanu lazman hazeh.

Blessed are You, [LORD] our God, Monarch of the universe, Who has kept us alive and sustained us, and brought us to this season.

(As a quick note, you may notice this is not quite how they translate it on Ritualwell–I have no idea why they say “kept me alive,” as it’s definitely “us” in the Hebrew. There’s a long tradition, in fact, of praying for the community rather than ourselves as an individual, but that’s not the point of this post.)

The Guide, however, gives an alternate form:

B’rucha At y[-]a Elo[k]eynu Ruakh haolam shehekheyatnu v’kiyimatnu v’higiyatnu lazman hazeh. You are Blessed, Our God, Spirit of the World, who has kept us in life and sustained us, enabling us to reach this season.

Under the assumption that most of you don’t know Hebrew, I’m going to break this down further. The main difference between these two is grammatical gender–the traditional blessing uses masculine forms, which is common when referring to God. However, while there are often masculine descriptions of God, it is worth noting that Hashem is very specifically not a “man”--God is genderless and beyond our comprehension, and masculine is also used in Hebrew for neutral or unspecified gender. A whole discussion of gender and language is also beyond the scope of this post, but for now let’s leave it at: changing the gender for God in prayer is pretty common among less traditional Jews, and that’s fine. Some of the changes they make (or don’t make) here are interesting, though. The two letter name of God they switch to is–despite ending in a hey (the “h” letter)–not feminine grammatically feminine. I’m told, however, that some progressive circles consider it neutral because it “sounds feminine.” “Elo-keynu” is also grammatically masculine, but a) that’s used for neuter in Hebrew and b) it’s also technically plural, so maybe they didn’t feel the need to change it. Though if that’s the case I would also have thought that Ado-nai (the tetragrammaton) would be fine, as it’s also technically male in the same way. I’m also not sure why they didn’t just change ”Melech HaOlam” to “Malkah HaOlam,” which would be the feminine form of the original words, but perhaps they were avoiding language of monarchy. It’s apparently a not uncommon thing to change.

One of the responses I got said the vowels in the verbs were slightly off, but I can’t say much above that, for the reasons given at the beginning of this section.

Also, and this is comparatively minor, the capitalization in the transliteration is bizarre. They capitalize “At” (you) and “Elo[k]eynu” (our God), but not “y[-]a…” which is the actual name of God in the blessing and should definitely be capitalized if you are capitalizing.

The Guide next gives a second blessing that can be used:

B’rucha at shekhinah eloteinu ruach ha-olam asher kid-shanu bi-tevilah b’mayyim hayyim. Blessed are You, Shekhinah, Source of Life, Who blesses us by embracing us in living waters. -Adapted by Dori Midnight

The main thing I want to note about this is that…that’s not an accurate translation. It completely skips the word “eloteinu.” “Ruach ha-olam” means “spirit/breath of the universe/world,” not “Source of Life,” which would be “M’kor Ha-Olam,” as mentioned above. “Kid-shanu,” as she transliterates it, means “has sanctified us,” or “has made us holy,” not “blesses us”--both the tense and the word are wrong. “Bi-tevilah” doesn’t mean “embracing us,” either, it means “with immersing.” In full, the translation should be:

“Blessed are You, Shekhinah, our God, Spirit of the World, Who has sanctified us with immersion in living waters.”

The Shekhinah is an aspect/name of God(dess), though not a Name to the same level as the ones that can’t be taken in vain. It refers to the hidden Presence of God(dess) in our world, and is the feminine aspect of God(dess), inasmuch as God(dess) has gendered aspects–remember, our God(dess) is One. It’s not an unreasonable Name to use if you are trying to make a prayer specifically feminine.

(Though do be careful if you see it used in a blessing in the wild, because Messianics use it to mean the holy ghost.)

“Eloteinu” is, grammatically, the feminine form of Elokeinu (according to the fluent speakers I asked, though again I got several responses).

It is, again, odd that they don’t capitalize transliterated names of God, though here there is more of an argument that it’s a stylistic choice, Hebrew not having capital letters.

The Guide then repeats the link for Ritualwell.

Finally, we come to the last section, “Resources and Our Sources:”

First, they credit the Kohenet Institute and two of its founders. I do not want to go on a deepdive into the Kohenet Institute also, as this is already long enough, but I suppose I should say a bit.

The Kohenet Institute was a “clergy ordination program, a sisterhood / siblinghood, and an organization working to change the face of Judaism. For 18 years, Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institutes founders, graduates and students reclaimed and innovated embodied, earth-based feminist Judaism, drawing from ways that women and other marginalized people led Jewish ritual across time and space” (Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute Homepage). It closed in 2023.

I have difficulty explaining my feelings about the Kohenet Institute. On the one hand, the people who founded it and were involved in it, I’m sure, were very invested in Judaism and very passionate in their belief. As with the authors of the Guide, I do not mean to attack them–I’m sure they’re lovely people.

On the other, I have trouble finding a basis for any of their practices, and most of what practices I do find trouble me–again, with the caveat that I am very much not into mysticism, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Of the three founders, only one (Rabbi Jill Hammer) seems to have much in the way of scholarly background. Rabbi Hammer, who was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary (a perfectly respectable school), has at least one article where she quotes the New Testament and a Roman satirist making fun of a Jewish begger who interpret dreams for money as proof “that Jewish prophetesses existed in Roman times,” which to me at least seems like saying that the Roma have a tradition of seeresses based on racist caricatures of what they had to do to survive, if you’ll pardon the comparison. In the same article, she says that Sarah and Abigail, who are listed in the Talmud as prophetesses “are not actually prophetesses as I conceptualize them here,” (pg 106) but that “abolitionist Ernestine Rose, anarchist Emma Goldman, and feminist Betty Friedan stand in the prophetic tradition.” Given God says explicitly in the text, “Regarding all that Sarah tells you, listen to her voice” (Genesis 21:12), I have no idea where she gets this.

The second founder, Taya Mâ Shere, describes the Institute on her website as “spiritual leadership training for women & genderqueer folk embracing the Goddess in a Jewish context,” which to me is blatantly what I and some of my editors have taken to calling Jews For Lilith. Now, it is possible this is a typo. However assuming it is not, and it would be a weird typo to have, this rather clearly reads as “the Goddess” being something one is adding a Jewish context to–which is exactly what I mean when I say this guide is taking Paganism and sprinkling a little Judaism on it. If it had said “embracing Goddess in a Jewish context,” I’d have no problem (aside from weird phrasing)--but “the Goddess” is very much a “divine feminine neo-pagan” kind of thing. We don’t say “the God” in Judaism, or at least I’ve never heard anyone do so. We just say God (or Goddess), because there’s only the one. In fact, according to this article, she returned to Judaism from neo-Paganism, and “began to combine the Goddess-centered practices she had co-created in Philadelphia with what she was learning from teachers in the Jewish Renewal movement, applying her use of the term Goddess to Judaism’s deity.” The “Goddess-centered practices” and commune in Philadelphia are described earlier in the article as “influenced by Wiccan and Native American traditions, in ways that Shere now considers appropriative (“After Kohenet, Who Will Lead the Priestesses?” by Noah Phillips).” I’m not sure how it suddenly isn’t appropriative now, but taking the Pagan practices you were doing and now doing those exact same rituals “but Jewish” is, in fact, still Pagan.

Shere also sells “Divining Pleasure: An Oracle for SephErotic Liberation,” created by her and Bekah Starr, which is a “divination card deck and an Omer counter inviting you more deeply into your body, your pleasure and your devotion to collective liberation.”

I hate this.

I hate this so much.

For those who don’t know, the Omer is the period between the second day of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, 50 days later. It’s named for the Omer offering that was given on Passover, and which started the count of seven weeks (and a day, the day being Shavuot). The Omer, or at least part of it, is also traditionally a period of mourning, much like the Three Weeks between the fasts of the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av–we don’t have weddings, we don’t listen to live music, we don’t cut our hair. It commemorates (primarily) the deaths of 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva in a plague (possibly a metaphor for persecution or the defeat of the Bar Kochba revolt). It is often used as a time for introspection and self-improvement, using seven of the Kabbalistic Sephirot as guides (each day of the week is given a Sephira, as is each week, so each day of the 49 is x of y, see here). It’s not, as Shere’s class “Sex and the Sephirot: A Pleasure Journey Through the Omer” puts it, a time to “engage…toward experiencing greater erotic presence, deepening our commitment to nourishing eros, and embracing ritual practices of…pleasure.”

The final of the founders, Shoshana Jedwab, seems to be primarily a musician. In her bio on her website, scholarship and teaching are almost afterthoughts. I can find nothing about her background or classes. She’s also, from what I’ve found, the creator of the “sound mikvah.”

So all in all, while I’m sure they’re lovely people, I find it difficult to believe that they are basing their Institute on actual practices, particularly given they apparently include worship of Ashera as an “authentic” Jewish practice, see the above Phillips article and this tumblr post.

The institute also lists classes they offered, which “were open to those across faith practices - no background in Judaism necessary.” If you scroll down the page, you will see one of these courses was titled “Sefer Yetzirah: Meditation, Magic, & the Cosmic Architecture.” Sefer Yetzirah, for those of you unaware, “is an ancient and foundational work of Jewish mysticism.”

You may recall my saying something some 5700 (yikes) words ago about Jewish mysticism (i.e. Kabbalah) being a closed practice.

You may see why I find the Kohenet Institute problematic.

I will grant, however, that I have not listened to their podcasts nor read their books, so it is possible they do have a basis for what they teach. From articles I’ve read, and what I’ve found on their websites, I am unconvinced.

Returning to our original document, the Guide next gives several links from Ritualwell, which I’ve already discussed above. After those, they give links to two actual mikvah organizations: Mayyim Hayyim and Immerse NYC. Both are reputable organizations, and are Open Mikvahs. Neither (at least based on their websites) seem to recommend any of the nonsense in this Guide. In fact, Mayyim Hayyim explicitly does not allow non-Jews to immerse (unless it’s to convert). ImmerseNYC has advice to create a ritual in an actually Jewish way. I would say the link to these two groups are, perhaps, the only worthwhile information in this Guide.

They then list a few “mikveh related projects,” two of which are by the writers. The first, Queer Mikveh Project, is by one of the authors, Rebekah Erev. The link they give is old and no longer works, but on Erev’s website there is information about the project. Much of the language is similar to that in this guide. The page also mentions a “mikvah” ritual done to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, in which “the mikveh…[was] completely optional.” And, of course, there was an altar. The second project, the “Gay Bathhouse” by (I believe) the other author and Shelby Handler, is explicitly an art installation.

The final link is to this website (thanks to the tumblr anon who found it), which is the only source we’ve been able to find on Shekinah Ministries (aside from a LOT of Messianic BS from unrelated organizations of the same name). So good news–this isn’t a Messianic. Bad news, it also seems to have a shaky basis in actual Jewish practice at best. It is run by artist Reena Katz, aka Radiodress, whose MKV ritual is, like “Gay Bathhouse,” a performance project. As you can see from the pictures on Radiodress’s website (cw for non-sexual nudity and mention of bodily fluids), it is done in a clearly portable tub in a gallery. As part of the process, participants are invited to “add any material from their body,” including “spit, urine, ejaculate, menstrual blood,” “any medication, any hormones they might be taking,” and supplies Radiodress offers including something called “Malakh Shmundie,” “a healing tincture that translates to “angel pussy” made by performance artist Nomy Lamm” (quotes from “An Artist’s Ritual Bath for Trans and Queer Communities” by Caoimhe Morgan-Feir). The bath is also filled by hand, which is very much not in line with halacha. Which, if you’re doing performance art, is fine.

But this Guide is ostensibly for authentic Jewish religious practice.

And with that (aside from the acknowledgements, which I don’t feel the need to analyze), we are done. At last.

Thank you for reading this monster of a post. If you have made it this far, you and I are now Family. Grab a snack on your way out, you deserve it.

Further Reading and Resources:

https://www.mayyimhayyim.org/risingtide/members/

https://www.mikvah.org/directory

https://www.mayyimhayyim.org/

http://www.immersenyc.org/

https://aish.com/what-is-a-mikveh/

https://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/1541/jewish/The-Mikvah.htm

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1230791/jewish/Immersion-of-Vessels-Tevilat-Keilim.htm

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/why-immerse-in-the-mikveh/

Meth, Rabbi Ephraim. 50 Mikvahs That Shaped History. Feldheim Publishers, 2023.

#jvp #mikvah #mikveh #teacup mikveh #jewish #long post #I know so much more than I ever wanted to about this movement now #every time I did more research I found something worse #thank you very much to those of you who helped me with this #bless you all #and bless those of you who read through all of this #six months of my life #my ramblings #asked and answered #queerdo-mcjewface #I can't wait to see how my inbox is going to explode now hahahaha. haha.#will this be the post that finally gets me on the blocklists?

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firewasabeast · 1 month

Note

prompt: the rest of the 118 see tommy and buck be affectionate together for the first time. not just the aftermath, like with the wedding kiss, but they actually witness it. cuteness overload!

It took a few weeks for everything to calm down enough for everyone to get together.

The 118 was adjusting to working under Captain Gerrard.

Bobby and Athena were adjusting to moving into an apartment half the size of their house.

Hen and Karen were adjusting to visits with Mara every chance they could get.

Chimney and Maddie were adjusting to having two young girls running around the house.

Eddie was adjusting to being alone.

And Buck was less adjusting and more enjoying his new romance with Tommy.

He didn't mention Tommy much at work. He got sick of Gerrard's one-off comments pretty quickly. Usually, he would have been egging him on every chance he got, but it turns out he was more protective of Tommy than he originally realized, and anytime his name came out of Gerrard's mouth it made him want to punch the man.

It was easier to not bring him up.

When Bobby and Athena had finally settled into their new place, which very conveniently had a grilling and picnic area on the roof, they invited everyone over.

Bobby made sure to include Tommy in his invitation. His and Buck's relationship may have been new, but he was an old friend to the majority of the 118, and a new friend to those he hadn't known all that long.

He did not include the fact that Athena was insistent on seeing their dynamic because, “One of them is gonna give the other a run for their money and I can't figure out which one's which yet.”

In fact, the majority of the group was interested in seeing Tommy and Buck together. Everyone except Eddie, who accidentally witnessed far too much of their dynamic a couple weeks ago when he decided to head into Buck's place without knocking first.

It would be the last time he ever made that mistake.

The others couldn't help their curiosity. It was the first time Buck had ever seemed so settled in a relationship. The first time he wasn't asking for near-constant advice. The first time he wasn't endlessly concerned he was doing something wrong or about to screw things up.

Something was different. Something had shifted. They wanted to know what it was.

And while Hen and Chimney had known Tommy for a long time, they hadn't exactly stayed in touch after he left. Up until the cruise rescue, Hen hadn't really spoken to him at all, and Chimney would send him a text or two each year just to ask how he was keeping up. The Tommy they knew was closeted, scared, defensive under Gerrard's leadership, cocky, and seemingly always searching for something... more.

“I'm kinda bummed,” Buck said as they headed up to the roof.

“What?” Tommy glanced at him curiously. “Why?”

“Because everyone already knows you,” he explained. “I can't introduce you as my boyfriend.”

Tommy smiled, eyes crinkling up in the cute way Buck loved. He switched the wine bottle he was holding to his other hand took Buck's hand in his, giving it a squeeze. “You can still do that, if you want. I mean, they might look at you funny, but who cares, right?”

Buck squeezed his hand back. After a moment, he gasped, eyes widening as he did a little jump. “I can introduce you to all the kids!” he exclaimed.

Tommy couldn't help but laugh at Buck's excitement. “That sounds perfect, Evan.”

*****

Bobby wasn't sure how they'd gotten to this point only five minutes into Buck arriving, but here they were. Before Tommy had even handed off the wine, Buck was going into a story on Gerrard mentioning the 1933 Griffith Park Fire, but he had been wrong about some information.

“And I was trying to tell him how twenty-nine people died, not twenty-seven, but he was insistent that I was wrong. I knew I wasn't. I had just spent a couple hours the other night reading over articles about it. When was it, Tommy?” he asked, turning to his boyfriend, “Two nights ago?”

“Uh, three. Three nights ago.”

“Right, three nights ago. See, two people died later at the hospital, so they weren't included in the initial death toll. So, obviously, I had to get online and show him...”

As Buck continued, Bobby nodded along, trying to take in at least some of what he was saying. Sometimes, when Buck got on tangents like these, it was hard to keep up.

As the discussion got more heated, Bobby noticed Tommy's hand drifted to Buck's back, resting at the base. Buck continued without missing a beat, but his voice calmed and his posture relaxed.

“Did he ever admit defeat?” Tommy asked. To Bobby's surprise, Tommy had kept his eyes on Buck the entire time. He seemed genuinely interested in every word that was coming out of Buck's mouth.

Buck shook his head. “No, he'd never do that. But he was quiet for the rest of the day, so I took it as a win.”

“Oh, that's definitely a win,” Tommy agreed.

Not that he ever doubted, but it was then that Bobby knew his initial analysis was correct. Tommy was good people, and he was good for Buck.

*****

Hen's eyes drifted over the rooftop, settling between Tommy and Buck. She had noticed earlier how they always seemed to gravitate toward each other. Now was no different. Even though they were on opposite sides of the roof, Buck talking to Maddie, and Tommy having a very expressive conversation with Jee, they would steal glances at each other. A smile here, a wink there. Buck even gave Tommy a little wave, like they hadn't been sitting side by side only five minutes ago.

“I don't think it's just the honeymoon phase for those two,” Athena said, scooting a chair closer to Hen before sitting down.

Hen rolled her eyes affectionately at yet another tiny wave from Buck before turning to Athena. “I think I agree. I've never seen Buck so smitten before, and I don't use that word often.”

“Mhm,” Athena hummed with a nod. “Tommy seems just as smitten as Buck. I don't ever remember him looking so peaceful before. I haven't worked with him much since he transferred to Harbor, but I remember what he was like before.”

Hen huffed out a laugh. “Arrogant?”

“And stiff.”

“Yeah. He changed a lot, especially after Gerrard left, but this is different.”

They kept watching as Jee got distracted by Mara and they ran off to play. Tommy walked over to Buck, who held out his hand for Tommy to take before Tommy was even close.

As soon as he could, Tommy took his hand and sat down beside him on the little couch. Buck leaned in close, whispering something in his ear, then they laughed deep and loud.

“If I watch anymore of this I'm gonna throw up,” Hen said, standing up. “I'm gonna go rescue Karen from whatever game Denny is showing her on his phone.”

Athena laughed, squeezed Hen's hand as she went by, but kept her attention on the boys.

She couldn't seem to look away.

*****

Maddie tapped Chimney's thigh, nodding toward where Buck and Tommy were standing in a corner of the rooftop, watching the sunset. They had their arms wrapped around one another, occasionally stealing a chaste kiss. “They look so happy,” she said, a warm smile on her face.

“Yeah, they do,” Chimney agreed. “I'm happy for both of them. They're good together.”

“Yeah, they are. Did you know Buck hasn't even been to his loft in a week? When he's not working he's at Tommy's place.”

“And they're not sick of each other yet?” Chimney laughed. “Oh, they're in deep.”

Before Maddie could respond, Eddie was coming up to them, kneeling down beside Chimney. “We gotta hide the clipboards.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm serious, man, we're gonna be in deep trouble if we don't.”

Maddie leaned forward. “Why do you need to hide the clipboards, Eddie?”

Eddie motioned to Buck and Tommy. Tommy had an arm around Buck's shoulder now, both of Buck's still wrapped around Tommy's waist. He had his head resting against Tommy's shoulder, and Tommy pressed a kissed to the top of his head. “Have you seen the two of them? I'm not even gonna go into what I witnessed a couple weeks ago-”

“Thank God.”

“-but they've got it bad for each other. I give it six months before they're engaged. You know what happens after that?”

Chimney thought for a second, sucking in a breath when the realization hit him. “Wedding planning.”

“Wedding planning,” Eddie repeated.

Maddie shook her head. “You guys are crazy.”

“What? You don't think they'll be ready to walk down the aisle in six months time?” Chimney asked.

“Oh, no, they definitely will. You're just crazy if you think not being able to find a clipboard will stop him. I don't know if you guys know this, but Notes app Buck is far worse than clipboard Buck.”

#bucktommy #911 #tommy kinard #evan buckley #prompt

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starlightsalvatore · 3 months

Text

hunger / damon salvatore x reader

i'm back !!! I needed to write a damon one-shot while I work on a new fic and this just tumbled right out of me lol

hunger / damon salvatore x reader

word count: 3.1k

warnings: everything??? drinking, swearing, blood sharing, oral (m and f receiving), unprotected p-in-v, a tiny bit of degradation?? this is self indulgant filth, seriously 18+ mdni

You ran a hand through your hair as you walked back and forth, unsure of what else to do with the restless energy surging through your system as you tried to fight one of your most basic, primal urges… hunger. Your fingers drummed against your thigh as you tried to focus on anything else, find something in your brain worth occupying your mind and switching course from the visuals running through your head. Your recent transition had been a shock to everyone, and Stefan had you on a tight leash to keep you in check… and you’d been on board, at first. You never wanted to cause harm, to be the reason someone else’s life ended, but with the itch in your veins threatening to undo you completely you couldn’t really find it in you to care anymore.

You heard your door push open and your head snapped up to see Damon walking in, two glasses and a bottle in his hand with an unamused expression, “if you don’t knock it off I’m going to have to replace the floor,” he said, setting everything on the dresser before pouring two generous cups of bourbon.

“Not now, Damon,” you sighed, ignoring him entirely as your feet remained on course.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asked and you shook your head.

“Not really,” you said as he shoved a glass in your hand, his eyes telling you to drink which you did… all in one gulp and he was a little surprised as he took it to refill.

“Well, something’s gotta give,” he replied as you finished the second as quickly as the first. “At this rate the bottle will be gone in a minute and I’m not replacing original flooring.” He gripped your shoulders, halting your movements and you huffed, looking up at him.

“I’m hungry, Damon,” you said, as if it pained you to do so and he furrowed his brow.

“The freezer is full- oh,” he cut himself off, realizing that’s not what you meant as a smirk spread across his features. “You want your blood at 98.6,” he said and you rolled your eyes, pushing him off you.

“Will you cut it out?” You poured another glass, hoping at some point the alcohol would subdue your cravings but you knew that was about as likely as him leaving you alone, so you tried another angle. “I can’t… Damon, the blood bags aren’t doing it for me, I can’t think, I can’t sleep… will you please take me out?” For a moment you thought he’d say yes, revel in the opportunity to feed with abandon with someone else, but it wasn’t that easy.

“No can do, sweetheart,” he replied and your brows pinched. “I’ve got enough on my plate without you losing control and giving me more bodies to deal with.” He was right, there was too much going on and you spinning out wasn’t an option, but that didn’t make it any easier of an answer to tolerate. He gave you a once over, it wasn’t as if he didn’t want to take you out… he would have loved to, but you were new and he knew you could eventually get to where he was, one day you’d be able to feed and leave them alive with no memory of what had happened, but that day wasn’t today, you had a long way to go and he couldn’t afford to have you slip up.

But… he couldn’t afford to have you slip up. One look told him you were wound tight, the diet Stefan had you on was restrictive, never enough to fully satisfy, and the less you drank the tighter you spun, threatening a catastrophic snap he could only assume was looming on the horizon with how frustrated you looked right now. He ran through his options, knowing letting you sit in this hunger any longer would result in a much bigger problem, but the only thing he could think of posed another set of issues and would lead to him teetering on the edge instead of you.

He let out a sigh, closing the distance between you and plucking the glass from your hands to discard on the dresser and you looked up at him questioningly, the invasion of space catching you by surprise. His normally bright eyes were dark and swimming with something you couldn’t understand, deep blue pools you found yourself getting lost in as you waited for him to say something. “You need to feed,” he said and your eyes fluttered shut just at the thought.

“I need to feed,” you whispered and he nodded, catching your chin between his fingers and forcing your head back up when you tried to look down and the action had your breath catching somewhere in your throat.

“You still haven’t felt it, have you?” he asked, voice low and you shuddered. “What it’s like to sink your teeth into something…” you shook your head, Stefan hadn’t allowed you to drink anything that didn’t come from a cup. “Poor thing,” he chuckled, he could feel the tension radiating off you in waves, you were practically shaking beneath him as you fought to retain your grip on your sanity, on your control.

“Damon,” you sighed, eyes pleading and he just smiled as he gripped your hand and brought it up to his neck, the pulse beneath your fingers driving you wild.

“When you feed you have to be careful… if you bite just along here,” he said, dragging your fingers along the vein, “you can control the flow. It doesn’t have to be messy,” he explained and you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the subtle way his skin moved with each beat of his heart, the sight bringing the veins beneath your eyes to the surface, your fangs descending.

“Don’t fight it,” he said, noticing you trying to rein it in, and you were having a hard time focusing on anything with the way his hands were trailing up your arms, pulling you closer. “Go on,” he tilted his head just slightly, “give it a try.” he encouraged and this pulled your focus, eyes snapping to his as you tried to ascertain if he was being serious. You had a lot left to learn, but blood sharing was personal, and you knew that… but all you saw in those dark blue eyes was a fire simmering beneath the surface you were sure was a mirror image of your own.

You slowly reached onto your tiptoes, as if he were a deer in the woods threatening to startle and bolt, but the closer you got the harder it was to resist, anticipation burning through your veins at the prospect of giving in. Your fangs were tentative as they broke the skin just where he’d indicated, but the first drop of blood immediately made you feel dizzy and intoxicated… It wasn't enough. You quickly grew feverish, your hand wrapping around his throat as you surged forward, crashing into the wall behind you and he let out a grunt as his back collided with the hard surface, pinned in place as you fed.

“There you go… that’s it,” he said, leaning back as he relaxed and let you take what you needed. His arm snaked around your waist while a hand brushed the hair from your face, cradling the back of your head as warm blood radiated through your body. A soft groan fell from his lips as you drank from him, and the sound elicited an unexpected reaction from you, your hand tightening around his throat and your body pushing flush against his and despite everything in you telling you to continue, you forced yourself back knowing if you didn’t stop you’d bleed him dry.

Your eyes were wild and satisfied as they met his, and he dragged his thumb across your bottom lip, collecting the remnants and you were almost surprised when your lips wrapped around him, ensuring you didn’t waste a single drop. His smirk returned when he felt your tongue slide across his skin, “better?” he asked and you nodded, keeping him in your mouth for maybe a second longer than you needed to. The air was charged between you, you’d just crossed a line in the sand and you wanted to push a little further, go a little farther…

Part of him knew he should put an end to this… stop before it went any further. He knew it before he’d even offered up a vein for you, he knew as soon as he did he’d be teetering on this ledge and he didn’t have that much self control when it came to you. Perhaps, if he really analyzed the situation, he knew somewhere in the back of his mind why you’d been so worked up, he knew what you needed and instead of letting you wreak havoc on the blood cooler he let you push him against a wall and take what you wanted, he let you feed from him in the most intimate way he could think of.

And when you were looking up at him like that, eyes mischievous and holding an unspoken challenge with his blood still on your plump lips, who was he to resist? Your chest was heaving with anticipation as you waited for him to do something, anything, and the movement was so fast you almost didn’t register his hand curling around your throat, flipping you around and slamming you against the wall with such force you were sure you’d be dead if you were human. Your gasp of surprise was swallowed by his mouth on yours, searing and frenzied as he connected your lips and kissed you with a hunger that rivaled your own only moments ago.

You both fought for dominance, neither one of you willing to submit just yet but you were outmatched… he grabbed your wandering hands and pinned them above your head, grip so tight you whined as he kissed down your neck, biting into you the same way you’d done with him and you couldn’t help the moan that fell from your lips as he did. Your hips rolled forward and feeling his hardening length against you gave you the surge of confidence you needed to break your hands free, sliding down his chest to pull his shirt apart, buttons flying and clattering against the floor as you pushed the fabric over his shoulders.

His lips were greedy across the expanse of your chest as he nipped and sucked the soft skin, tearing your shirt to shreds as he pulled it from you, a mess of fabric in your wake as you surged forward and pushed him into the wall opposite you, regaining your upper hand. Glass shattered on the floor around you as the force rattled the dresser but you couldn’t find it in you to care what had broken as your hands pulled his belt free, fingers quickly undoing the button as you sank to the floor and pulled his jeans with you.

His length stood erect in front of you and you were quick to take him in your mouth, focusing your tongue on his swollen tip as your hand worked what didn’t fit, and you couldn’t help but moan around him at the groan that fell from his lips, “such a good girl,” he cooed, his sweet words undercut by the harsh hand in your hair gripping and pulling you closer, forcing you to gag around him and the sensation had his head falling back against the wall. Tears sprung to your eyes at the sharp pain in your scalp and the way he was hitting the back of your throat, but all you could focus on was the throbbing between your thighs and he didn’t miss the way you clenched them together, desperate for friction.

You were quickly on your back, too caught up in the moment to bother moving to the bed and you pushed glass aside as he settled between your legs, tearing your underwear off and diving in like a man starved and you could feel his smirk against you at your surprised moan, head hitting the floor as your back arched in pleasure. He switched between your clit and your entrance, not giving either attention long enough to give you what you really needed, and you whined as your fingers threaded through his hair, tugging harshly.

“Damon, please,” you sighed, hips bucking against his face and he focused his attention on your sensitive bundle of nerves, tongue expertly working you up as you shamelessly moaned his name. Somewhere in the back of your mind you knew with the way you kept slamming each other against walls and the floor, the breaking glass, and the sounds falling from both your lips someone might come to make sure you were alright, but you couldn’t find it in you to care… not when he felt as good as he did between your legs.

Your moan changed in pitch when he slid two fingers into your entrance and it went straight to his cock, his head swimming as he watched you come close to falling apart above him. When he crooked his fingers just so your grip in his hair tightened, pulling him closer as you started to grind against him, “fuck, just like-” you were cut off by your own moan when he started massaging that spot inside you, legs trembling as you careened off the ledge. His touches remained merciless as pure euphoria surged through your veins, your head cloudy as your body trembled.

“So fucking beautiful,” he muttered against you, kissing his way up your body and you tugged him closer to reconnect your lips, tongues swirling against each other as you tasted yourself on him. His hands felt greedy and possessive as they roamed over you, gripping tight enough to leave bruises that would heal before they even had a chance to form, and it was as if neither of you could get enough. You pushed forward, tugging him up with you and all but throwing him onto the bed and his smirk was devilish as he watched you crawl on top of him.

He looked like he was about to say something but you didn’t give him the opportunity as you kissed him, rough and demanding as your hips settled above his, hand reaching between you to line him up at your entrance and you both let out groans as you took him inch by inch. The stretch was sweet, filling you almost to your breaking point as you settled fully and started to roll your hips against him, shuddering at the feeling.

“Fuck,” he moaned as you started to bounce up and down, setting an unforgiving pace and you felt like you could feel him everywhere, every nerve ending radiating with fire. He sat up to wrap his arms around you, hips bucking to meet yours in a way that had your head rolling back and he took the opportunity to sink his teeth into your neck and you had never felt pleasure like this before. His hand was firm around your throat as your body shook with each thrust and soon you were boneless in his lap, only able to hold yourself upright as he drank you in.

When he pulled back you licked along his lips, face changing at the taste of blood and he swore he’d never seen anything sexier. Neither of you was going to last much longer, not like this, and he delivered a rough smack to your ass that had you whining and rolling against him. “Oh my god,” you breathed out, letting your forehead fall against his and he smacked again, gripping the tender skin, “Damon-” you tried, but nothing would come out.

“What’s that, sweetheart?” he teased, gripping your hair and pulling you back to look at him, “oh, look at you… all cock drunk and fucked out,” he teased and you had nothing to say as a firm thrust had you seeing stars. You buried your face in his neck, fangs sinking into his skin as you felt your release barreling towards you, the mixture of blood and his steady thrusts too much to bear and a streak of red trailed down your body as you came, only able to shout his name as you cried out.

Your grip on him was maddening, pulling him right over the edge with you as you milked him for everything he had, and when you both slowed to a stop you were having a hard time catching your breath, your mind floating somewhere above you as you tried to return to your body. You felt his tongue along your chest, cleaning up your mess as you leaned back and he tried to commit the sight to memory… your hair wild, cheeks flushed, and skin dewy as blood lingered along your skin.

You still weren’t fully with him, stuck in a haze as you felt him whisk you into his bedroom, and into the bathroom and it wasn’t until you were under the stream of water with him that you hummed contently against his lips as he kissed you softly, “there she is,” he chuckled.

His hands were delicate as they roamed you, and yours slid down the front of his chest as you looked up at him, doe eyed and happy. “That was…” you trailed off, unsure of what word to use to fully sum it up and he placed another soft kiss on your lips.

“Everything you ever dreamed of?” he provided and you laughed as you swatted his chest.

“Hush,” you replied, feigning annoyance but you didn’t have it in you to feel anything other than bliss. The rest of your shower was spent with wandering hands and sweet kisses, a stark contrast to how rough and domineering you’d been with each other and when he pulled you into bed and wrapped himself around you, you looked up at him as your fingers trailed along his chest absentmindedly.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, and you flushed slightly under his gaze.

“It was more than I dreamed of,” you answered, and he raised a brow in question. “I haven’t… I hadn’t done that since turning, I didn’t know it could be like that,” you explained and realization passed over his features.

“My god,” he chuckled, “no wonder you were wound so tight.” His hand on your back was comfortable, holding you tight against him as he rubbed soothingly, “we’ll go on a little trip this weekend,” he said as you rested your head on his chest.

“A trip?”

You felt him nod, “away from all the chaos here… we’ll find you some warm bodies and I’ll teach you how to do it the right way, you don’t have to live a life of blood bags forever.”

“I don’t know, you seemed to do the trick,” you teased and he laughed.

“Sweetheart, you have no idea what you’re missing.”

#damon salvatore #damon salvatore x reader #damon salvatore x you #damon salvatore fan fiction #damon salvatore fanfiction #damon salvatore smut #damon salvatore fluff #the vampire diaries #the vampire diaries fan fiction #tvdu

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wakebymoonsleepbysun · 8 months

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Dogday!! Trying to figure out a way to send a Y/N in there to help him.

Rambles under the cut.

(I drew my sona in these cuz self-indulgent, but if I ever write anything it'll be a reader insert with little to no canon design.)

Design notes: Took some elements from his game model as well as his cartoon design. I think when we see him, he is emaciated and/or stretched out, the way CatNap is said to be able to stretch. Don't know if that's an ability all Smiling Critters have though. For now I'm saying it is SOMEWHAT but CatNap is the better at it by MILES. In any case, that's why he's not quite as lanky as he is in game, and is also a bit shorter.

I also he can be bipedal or quadrupedal, much like CatNap seems to be able to switch back and forth. A bit more animalistic than his cartoon counterpart, but part of that is just him not wanting to tower over the children and employees all the time, so drops down to all fours quite a bit.

The fur texture on his ears in the game cave him a floofy cocker spaniel look so I went with that instead of the less floofy ears he has in the cartoon and his original plushie.

The white pupils being absent when we see him I believe is a sign of how weak he is. When healthy, all the Bigger Bodies Smiling Critters have them, much like CatNap does.

Trying to actually keep his huge open-mouth smile at all times, unlike with my FNAF stuff where I give them more of an ability to emote. That said trying to get him to look angry or sad was a challenge. Sad I think worked okay but the one where I meant him to look angry he looks more cocky or smirky than mad. Tender moments are a bit harder too, as keeping that huge grin with more tender eyes results in him looking either drunk or horney or just like he's not taking the moment very seriously, haha.

And the story? Not sure yet, bouncing around a few ideas, though I don't think I'll have the reader and the player be the same person. Reader might be someone who came up in PlayCare alongside Dogday. Perhaps they knew each other as kids when Dogday was still human. Haven't decided how much of this Dogday remembers or at what point the reader realizes Dogday is their old friend who got "adopted".

Reader grows up the Playcare and is given a job once they're an adult. (Something something starting the brainwashing and normalization of bullshit early to make employees who are more willing to look the other way?)

Dogday somehow kept them hidden during the Hour of Joy and the reader's been living in the caves ever since. (The caves open up so much possibility for people being hidden in the factory. Much easier to say there's an unknown offshoot of a natural cave system than an unknown part of the factory.)

How are they staying fed? Uhhhh...cave mushrooms? Trips to the surface? Moss? Stale vending machine candy? I don't know yet.

Not sure how to pull a happy ending out of this horror but I'm trying. Maybe the reader convinces Dogday to leave after Ch 3 because he'd be too weak to help anyway or something? And uh...I'm just gonna pretend since he's kinda a plushie he can be sewn back together even though I'm PRETTY SURE canonically the inclusion of blood and guts makes that...not a thing.

Just remember guys...all winds blow away...eventually.

#poppy playtime #dogday #ppt dogday #ppt3 #poppy playtime chapter 3 #spoilers #ppt3 spoilers #poppy playtime spoilers #ppt x reader #ppt dogday x reader #dogday x reader #x reader #my art

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faithisyours · 2 months

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Can’t Imagine Losing You

Azriel x Fem!reader

Summary: Azriel’s been acting moody lately, and you've had enough.

Warnings: ANGST! but also fluff. Smut, smut, SMUT! possessive Az, whimpering whiny Az, sort of a switch dynamic between the two, P in V, coming inside, oral both receiving, some ass stuff, i think that's it, not proof read

Word Count: 4.5k

A/N: Hey y’all! Sorry for being MIA. Here’s another fic as a peace offering. I wanted to try some angst so hopefully I did it right. This whole thing took so many turns. Hope it's comprehensible. If you have any requests for fics you'd like me to write, I'm all ears (i need ideas, please I’m begging). As always, minors go away. Majors, enjoy!

“I have some work I need to do at the House of Wind today. It shouldn't take long.”

You were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast, enjoying the warm summer breeze coming in through the open window when Azriel informed you he had to leave. You were disappointed, but not at all surprised. It seemed like there was always something to do, some report needing finished or some training schedule needing tweaked. And it was always your mate who needed to do it, especially on his off days, it seemed.

“Can you stay for breakfast at least?” you asked, infusing your words with hope to mask the disappointment.

“I’m sorry, my love, I can’t. I’ll see you later.” He pressed a swift kiss to the top of your head before practically running out the door. There was no, “I’ll make it up to you later,” or, “How about breakfast tomorrow?” or even an, “I love you,” before he had disappeared.

Instances like this had been happening more frequently over the past couple years, but recently it had gotten out of hand for you. You had been mated to Azriel for over a century at this point, and had known each other far longer than that. You originally assumed that these instances were caused by Azriel being distracted by his work. Being the spymaster for the Night Court was a lot to manage. But more recently you had begun to wonder if the spark had dimmed for Azriel. If he had started to feel differently than he had when you two were first mated.

You decided that tonight you would bring up your concerns with him. You prayed to the Mother it was only because he was so busy and not because he had begun to feel differently about being mated to you. For now, though, you finished your breakfast, put away the extra food you had made for Azriel, and got ready for your day.

Since Azriel wasn’t going to be home until later, you figured you could get some errands done while he was away. Azriel had been running low on his sleep tonic for a while now, so you decided to stop by your favorite apothecary and pick him up another one. While you were out, you figured you could stop by the market and get some more wine to replenish the stash you and the other ladies of the Inner Circle had drained not too long ago. You also picked up some ingredients you would need for dinner tonight.

It was nearing noon when you decided to head back home, but as you were making your way back, you passed the shop you had gotten your favorite lingerie set from. It couldn’t hurt, you thought, to go in and look around. It had been a while since you got a new set, and you thought you should treat yourself. If you found something you liked, of course. And as soon as you walked in, a rich purple satin set caught your attention. It was perfect; simple yet sexy, and looked rather comfortable as well. It had criss-cross straps that circled around the back and waist, to connect to the bottoms, which were detailed with black lace on the hips. You didn’t have a purple set yet, and you thought maybe Azriel would like it too. Maybe if things went well tonight you would let him see it.

You made your way home, purchases in hand, including that satin set, and hoped by the time you got there that Azriel would be home. But he wasn’t. You entered an empty home, warm yet breezy from the window you had left open, and started unloading your purchases. You put the wine on the rack, the ingredients for dinner on the kitchen table, and Azriel’s sleep tonic on his bedside table. Lastly, you fished that purple satin set out of its bag and tried it on.

You didn’t bother trying it on in the store because you already knew your measurements and didn’t want to bother anyone anyway. Just like you suspected, it was incredibly comfortable, and it fit you like a glove. Exhaustion washed over you then, even though it was a little past noon. Going out to run errands always seemed to suck the energy right out of you.

You didn’t bother taking off the set, but instead rifled through Az’s shirt drawer to find your favorite one of his, a flowy black cotton button down, and threw it on. Even though Az wasn’t here right now, you still wanted to feel close to him, hence the shirt. You curled yourself up on his side of the bed, enveloped in the comfort of his scent, and closed your eyes. The last thought you had before falling asleep was hoping this whole thing was a misunderstanding.

–

You awoke to the sound of a door slamming. You sat up, wiped the sleep from your eyes, and made your way towards the kitchen, the most likely source of the noise. You saw Azriel, leaning over the kitchen sink looking out the window. You glanced at the clock above the hearth, noting you had been asleep for about 4 hours.

“Hey Az,” you said groggily, “Sorry I didn’t meet you at the door, I was taking a nap. Did you just get home?” you asked, walking closer to him. He gave you a grunt in response. You noticed his shadows swirling agitatedly around him, making you stop in your tracks. “Az, are you okay? Did something happen?” A million thoughts cycled through your head in seconds. Did something happen at work? Are Cassian and Rhys okay? Is he mad at you? Did you forget something he asked you to get at the market?

“I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it.” His answers were clipped, monotone. “I'll be in our room.” he pushed off from the sink and brushed right past you, not even bothering to look you in the eye, give you a kiss, or look even the slightest bit apologetic for his attitude.

“I got you more sleeping tonic. It’s on your bedside table,” you informed him. You got a closing bedroom door in response.

You had a lot of patience. You prided yourself on the amount of patience you had. But it was warring paper thin for your mate. You decided to make dinner to take your mind off it, and to hopefully give him time to calm down. It’s not like he’d never been moody before, but this was a little much. He was starting to act like a teenage son, not your mate.

–

Thirty minutes later dinner was done and on the table. You went over to your bedroom door, still closed, and knocked, then poked your head in.

“Dinner is done. I made one of your favorites,” you informed Azriel, who was just walking out of the connected bathing room when you had poked your head in. He had changed into something more comfortable since the last time you saw him.

“Be right out,” he responded, glancing at you as he said it.

You walked back out to the kitchen table and began to load up both your plates with food. Azriel joined you just as you sat down. He immediately started eating, seemingly not concerned that the food was still hot enough to burn his mouth. And it looked like you would be carrying the conversation this evening.

“Was everything alright at the House of Wind today?” you pried, hoping the question came off as inconspicuous.

“Everything is fine. It’s handled now,” he offered, still shoveling food into his mouth.

“Alright. Good. I just wanted to -”

He cut you off. “Can we just eat in silence please? It's been a long day.” The words were stern, but his tone was soft, tired. You paused at his words, letting them sink in. Maybe this was just a bad day for him. Maybe he would be better tomorrow. Maybe this conversation should wait, if he’s pretty tired already. But how long had this gone on? How long have you wanted to say something about it?

“No,” you said simply. He paused, a fork-full stopped midway between his plate and mouth. Finally, he looked at you. “No, we’re not going to sit in silence. I have something I want to talk about. And I realize you may have had a shitty day, but I also had a day. I did things I want to talk with you about. I’ve wanted to have a conversation with you since this morning. So, no, actually. I’m not going to sit here in silence. Okay?” You stayed staring into his hazel eyes until you got a nod, but you wanted his answer in words. So you kept gazing into those hazel eyes until you got one.

“Okay. Alright,” he said, lowering his fork and pushing away from the table slightly, keeping his eyes on you. “What did you want to talk about, Love?”

His use of that endearment almost makes you reconsider this conversation. Almost. “I wanted to talk about your workload. And how it’s affecting me. And your treatment of me.” He only nodded, encouraging you to continue. “I feel like your workload doesn’t leave time for us anymore. It seems like the amount of stuff you have to do on a daily basis is way more than it used to be. You barely get any time off, and even on your days off you still have to do something. Like today. And I want to know if that’s how you feel, too.” You gave him time to consider.

He cleared his throat. “I like to stay busy. You know that. I haven’t noticed an increase in my duties, but even if there has been, I’m not sure if there is anything I could do about it. Everyone’s plate is already full. I can talk to Rhys about allocating jobs, but I can’t make any promises.”

You nodded, if only to give you something to do. That was not the answer you wanted to hear, but you could work with it. You wanted to broach your next point, but you were scared he wouldn’t take it well. You took a deep breath. “This… this leads me into my next point. I feel like…I feel as though you haven't been treating me how I want to be treated recently. Like sometimes I get my mate Az, and other days I get Azriel the shadowsinger. Or I get moody, likes-to-slam-doors Az who can’t bother to answer his mate in full sentences because he's too pissed off at something he doesn’t even want to tell me, his mate, who he should be able to tell everything to, even if it “doesn’t concern me.”” Your voice had started to rise, but you couldn’t help it. You were angry. “And this was why I wanted to talk about your workload. It feels like you’re getting upset more because you have more to do, which in turn makes you unintentionally take it out on me. you regard me as a permanent fixture in this house, but I am not. I will leave if I am not treated the way I deserve. And Gods, Azriel, I hope that this is the only reason, that it is only because of you working too much, because if it’s something else, if it has to do with your feelings towards me changing, I don’t…I don’t even…” you trailed off, holding back a sob that had started climbing your throat.

Azriel was now standing, making his way over to you. He knelt down right in front of you, taking your hand in his, his eyes, full of worry and confusion, searched yours for answers. “Okay, alright, you’re right. I have been acting like a jerk to you recently. And I’m so sorry for that. Truly. Work has been a lot to deal with recently, but that’s no excuse. I'll talk to Rhys about getting more time off. So I can spend it with you, alright? But how could you think my feelings have changed? How could you even think that?” His look was incredulous.

You swallowed the lump in your throat, or rather, tried to. “We’ve been mated for a century. A lot can happen in that amount of time. I thought maybe…maybe the spark was dimming for you. Maybe you changed your mind. About me. About us. And if you did, that would be alright. I would live with that, if it made you happy.” You work your confession out between sobs. “I just…I guess I just got scared. I don't want to lose you.”

His eyes were still on yours, but the emotion in them had shifted. Now they were full of anger. Not anger for you, but rather anger at himself. How could he treat you like this? In a way that made you think he did not love you anymore. He had failed, he realized. He was failing you, your relationship, your trust in him. He had to fix this, had to try harder. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said with conviction, no room left for argument. “I love you. So much. More now than I did a century ago. Every day I love you more. I didn’t even think that was possible, but with you it is. You’re not getting rid of me even if you wanted to, okay? I’m staying, and I’m going to try harder, get more days off, spend them all with you. You’re the love of my life, ya? Nothing will change that.” He pulled you into a hug, kissed away your tears, and kept kissing you until your cheeks were dry.

He kissed you one more time, hard, on the cheek, then went back to his side of the table and sat down. He thanked you for dinner, asked about your day, what all you did, and in turn told you what had happened at the House of Wind. Apparently one of the Illarian camps had started some fights with another camp over space and resources. Rhys had thought it was taken care of, but there was another fight today, which resulted in Azriel having to go over there, break it up, and be the peacekeeper longer than he wanted. Hence him coming home late and in a pissy mood.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” he stated, cutting off your story of you in the market today. It wasn’t a conscious thought to cut you off. He had only just now realized you were wearing his shirt, and basically nothing else. He had been so distracted by what had happened today and you bringing up your concerns that he hadn’t even noticed. Possession coiled in his stomach like a serpent strangling its prey. Seeing you in his clothes, even though it was a rare occurrence, always made him hard. He couldn’t help it. Your strong, soft body wrapped in his shirt, the sleeves rolled up to your elbows, exposing all that lickable skin. It made his knees buckle.

“Is that okay?” you asked tentatively. He was looking at you now like a starved man, which you knew he wasn't, given the finished plate of food before him. You rarely wore his clothes, mainly because you swam in them due to how big they were on you. You guessed he was just surprised to see you in something of his, but that didn’t explain the heat in his gaze. “I put it on after I got home from running errands. I wanted to take a nap and I figured you weren’t using it so…” you explained, trailing off.

“You’ve been wearing my shirt all day. Only my shirt.” It wasn’t a question. More like a repetition of the fact in order to understand. But it wasn’t just his shirt you were wearing. As he said it he noticed the purple strap poking out by your shoulder. A purple strap. You didn’t own any purple undergarments. “What is that?” he asked, his gaze burning a hole in your shoulder.

Before you could even answer him he said, “Purple. You don’t own anything purple.” His gaze was lighting you on fire, his eyes full of slow understanding, pupils blown wide with lust.

You got up from your chair, pushing your empty dinner plate slightly forward, and walked around the kitchen table to his side to stand right in front of him. “Well, while I was out,” you started, your voice low and seductive, “I passed by that shop, you know, the one I got that royal blue set from.” Azriel knew exactly what you were talking about. Remembered your squirming form underneath him while you were in that set. He was starting to feel lightheaded from how much of his blood had gone to his crotch. “And I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go in and see if they had anything as good as that royal blue set.” You were teasing him now, you knew it. But it was so fun, you couldn’t help yourself.

“Please, my love. Please let me see it. Let me see you,” he begged, winned. It was music to your ears. He was so hard it looked like it hurt. He had started slipping off his chair onto his knees in front of you, his scarred hands coming up to grip your hips. He was actually begging.

“You want to see it?” you taunted. He nodded, swallowing audibly. “Alright, but no touching. Not yet.” You pushed his hands off your hips, which was more difficult than you thought it would be, and began unbuttoning the shirt. Each button you worked to undo made Azriel’s breathing heavier, until he was practically panting. His hands were clenched so tightly at his sides you were sure his fingernails would leave marks on his palms.

You felt like a goddess; the man you adored more than anything knelt at your feet, completely enraptured by you, in awe of all you are. You reached the last button, undoing it achingly slowly, just to see your mate break out in a sweat. His hands were clenching his thighs hard enough to bruise, his chest heaved like a dying man, and the only thing shining in his eyes was need. Need for you, need to touch you, need to be buried in you until neither of you could tell where one ended and the next began. Azriel was a gentleman, but right now, here in front of you, he was the embodiment of pure animalistic lust. One word from you and he would snap. Just how you liked him.

You let the shirt part, giving him a nice view of the valley between your breasts, as well as the crossing straps and lower, to where those straps connected. You dragged one side of the shirt down off your shoulder, then repeated the movement on the other side. Finally, you let the shirt drop off of you, leaving you only in that purple set. You stepped closer to him, and caressed his face with your hand.

“Please.” It was barely a whisper, but you heard it, saw his lips part to form the word. His eyes were pleading with yours. He needed you. Now.

“Okay,” was all you said before he was on you, standing, gripping your hips, kissing you, running his hands over all that satin. He was everywhere all at once, biting your lips, coaxing moans from your throat, groaning over the feel of you, and you reveled in it all. His hands came around the back of your thighs, and suddenly you were being picked up and carried down the hall, towards your shared bedroom.

You were placed gently onto the bed, which was still rumpled from your nap earlier. Azriel leaned over you, taking you all in. “I love the purple, but I need you naked,” he said, peppering your jaw with kisses. You reached down to your hips and unhooked the straps from the panties. Azriel quickly figured out how to get your top off, and in a matter of seconds he was dragging the purple satin down your breasts just so his hands and lips could cover them again.

He took one of your nipples into his mouth, rolled the other between his fingers, and sucked and licked and pinched and bit till your chest was littered with marks from him. All the while, moans and whimpers poured out of you. Azriel reveled in the divine sounds you made, the sounds he made you make.

He made his way down your body, drawing closer and closer to where you needed him most.

“Please, baby. Please let me taste you,” he whispered, pleaded, begged. You gave him confirmation, that one word he needed to hear, then he was dragging those purple satin panties down your legs and throwing them across the room. He parted your legs, exposing your glistening core to him. The look in his eyes was that of absolute hunger. He didn’t bother with teasing you. He put his tongue right on your cunt, giving you no time to adjust or think before he licked a stripe from your entrance to your clit, spreading your arousal across his tongue.

You propped yourself up on your elbows so you could watch him; watch as he devoured you, drank from you, absolutely consumed you. He licked and sucked at your clit, brought it between his teeth, and eased the bite with more licks. Your head fell back as you moaned his name, lost in the pleasure he was giving you. Sooner than you even thought possible, you were on the edge of release, that coil in your belly drawing tighter and tighter. Without warning, Azriel slid a finger into you, curling it in a way that had you falling apart. He added a second, and it was your undoing.

You came with Azriel’s name on your lips. He worked you through your pleasure, continued to lick and suck till you were shaking from overstimulation. You pushed his head away, but he wouldn’t budge. He kept on licking you, drinking every drop of your release straight from the source. You were boneless, soar from overstimulation, but you could feel another orgasm rising within you.

Azriel moaned from the taste of you, the vibration making your hips buck. He continued to work his fingers into you, curling perfectly to reach that spot that made you scream. Profanities and pleads and promises poured from your mouth, but Azriel didn’t stop until you were coming again, on his fingers, on his face, on his tongue. Finally, after drinking every last drop of your essence, he worked his way back up to your mouth.

He kissed you until you came back to reality, until your limbs regained function. You kissed him back, moaning from the taste of yourself on his tongue. And then you were pushing him onto his back, straddling his hips to keep him there. He struggled a bit, pointing to his pinned wings, but you only smiled at him. “Is the Illarian baby pinned?” you taunted him. He stopped struggling, but instead glared at you. So you dragged a finger down one of the veins in his wings, and a moan slipped past his lips.

“That's what I thought,” you muttered. He was still fully clothed, and the contrast of your nakedness only spurred you on further. You kissed him, long and deep and unhurried, while you unbuttoned the length of his shirt. He broke the kiss to shed his shirt, so you turned your attention to unlacing his pants. While you worked, he kissed and nipped your neck, working marks into your soft flesh. You worked his pants down his legs, aided with Azriel’s help, and eventually he was naked underneath you.

You pressed him down to lay flat on the bed, then started your journey down towards his hard length. As you worked your way down, you liked and sucked and bit until his skin was littered with marks, just like yours was. You scraped your nails down his arms, down his sides, till he was shivering from your touch.

Kneeling now between his legs, guided a hand towards his length while you kissed his hips and rolled the skin between your teeth. His hips bucked at the fist fell of your hands on him, which made you smile. “So responsive,” you purred, then licked him from base to tip. He let out a moan that had your thighs rubbing together. With your tongue, you licked up the bead of precum that had frond, then promptly took as much of him into your mouth as you could.

Azriel speared his fingers through your hair, not to control your head but to steady himself. Your mouth was a dream to him; warm and wet and perfect. Second best only to your cunt. You hollowed your cheeks, taking him deeper and deeper into your mouth until he was hitting the back of your throat. Az was panting at this point, his skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Your mouth felt so good, but he needed to be inside you.

“I’m gonna…please…I need to be inside you,” he panted out. You pulled your mouth off him with a pop, then gave him one last lick before you climbed your way back up to him. You kissed him, mainly just so he could taste himself on you. Then you positioned your hips just above his, readying yourself to sink onto his length.

Using his hand, he parted you, spreading your slick on you and on his hand. He eased you onto his cock slowly, letting you adjust to him. Every time you took him, it was an adjustment. You hoped that would never change. You both made an obscene noise when he was finally, completely in you.

“You want to be filled, baby?” he asked as he ran the fingers he had parted you with down between your ass cheeks. Yes, you wanted to be full of him, wanted to be overwhelmed by him, wanted to feel him everywhere. You nodded. “Words, love,” he chided softly.

“Yes, please Az,” you wined. That was all you had to say before he worked his fingers into you, using your slick on his fingers as lube. He gripped your hips with the rest of that hand and the other, a bruising grip that was sure to leave bruises.

Azriel was sitting up slightly now, and even though you were on top of him, he set the pace. Slow rolls of your hips guided by his hands started you off. All you could think about was how full of him you were, how overwhelming the feeling of him everywhere was. Your pace quickens, spurred on by your whimpers and his moans. Your eyes were locked with eachothers, and within Azriel’s you saw his bottomless pool of love for you. His pupils were blown wide, and so were yours.

You kissed him, hard, and he returned it even harder. You’re moaning into eachothers mouths, the only goal being to guide each other to your peaks. You could feel that ache building, that need for release drawing closer and closer. Azriel could feel it too, reveling in the way your walls gripped him. He shifted his free hand around to play with your clit, and then you were coming, harder than you had in a while, cresting on a silent scream.

Azriel was right behind you, fucking sloppily into you until you were gripping him so tightly he could barely move. He came, chanting your name like a prayer, until his voice went hoarse.

You both laid there, panting and boneless, for minutes or hours or days, you couldn't tell. Eventually he guided you off of him, pulling out of you with a hiss, to lay you next to him. He gave you a kiss on the cheek before getting up to go to the bathing room. You heard the sound of water rushing into the tub, and in the next minute Azriel came back in, picked you up bridal style, and whisked you into the bathing room.

He set you down gently into the warm water then joined you, settling in right behind you. He pulled you back so your back was against his chest, then proceeded to wash you with a soapy cloth. When he was done you returned the favor, batting his hand away when he tried to protest. You finished up in the bath, dried each other off, then slipped into some sleeping clothes and then bed.

“We’re okay, right?” he asked, pulling you closer to him. Your heart melted, warmed by the idea that he wanted to make sure.

Yes, Az. We’re all good,” you replied, giving him a kiss on the nose.

“Okay. good,” was all he said before he tucked you tighter into him and you both fell asleep.

#acotar #azriel fanfiction #azriel fluff #azriel shadowsinger #comfort #acotar fic #fanfiction #night court #azriel x reader #fluff #angst with a happy ending #angst #smut #azriel smut #acotar smut #azriel angst

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knightyoomyoui · 6 months

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[SMUT] TWICE Tzuyu x Male Reader - "First Time"

Here's a Tzuyu smut for 2024, which is the first and one of my two remaining smut fics left before I offically end my TWICE smut anthology series. I guess I can't give that much hint already for what's gonna be the final one, since I feel that you guys know already if I say that it would be my toughest challenge so far on both writing one-shot fanfic and a smut genre respectively. Just noticed that simply my main agenda right now after returning for my hiatus is to finish everything I've left behind that are this close from being complete, and it all starts here. Enjoy reading, you horndogs lol. WARNING: mature content, contains smut, +18 WORD COUNT: 5800+ TAGS: friends with benefits, vanilla sex, masturbation, oral sex, thigh fuck, blowjob, pussy licking, ass eating, fluff, doggystyle, anal, body worship

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You are heavily concentrated on the project that you are currently working on your desktop. It was already 11PM and you haven't had any dinner yet since you're the type of person who wants to finish a work when so invested in just one sitting.

Stretching your back on your swivel chair for a second after you switched to another template in your editing application, you heard your doorbell rang from outside. It surprised you because it's unlikely to have visitors at this rate of time.

Eyeing the heavy long metal beside your door, you carefully made your walk through the door and braced yourself to open it. Gripping the doorknob tight, you slowly turn it. Before you were about to swung it open, a familiar voice spoke from the outside, even surprising you more.

"Y-YN a-are you still there?"

She might have probably seen the lights from your windows still open, and essentially confirming if you are still awake inside or not anymore as she knows that you can sleep on either the lights are off or on, and she's aware also of what time is it already for her to do this.

Any threat or risks that you felt was completely swooped away when you heard her voice. Opening the door wide, there you saw your bestfriend Tzuyu standing in front of you.

As she raises her head, your eyes caught a glimpse of her own... and it doesn't share the same good condition. Her looks baggy, reddish, and... watery.

"Tzuyu, what brings you here?" You asked her curiously. "A-and... did you cried?"

Tzuyu nodded and in a swift moment, she slowly comes up to you and hugged you. You were dumbstrucked at her actions and what happened to her that made her be like this, but what matters first is that this poor lady in your arms definitely needs some comfort.

Raising your arm, you gently patted and rubbed her back as you let her pour all her tears on your shoulder. "Just let it out, Tzuyu. I don't know what is going on, but I'm here for you okay?"

That's the reason why Tzuyu primarily chose to come right at you whenever she needs help. You were just there all the time for her, and it's so rare for people to make an alloted time for their special someone to accompany them whenever they need to.

"Let's go inside, it's already late." You invited her in to the house. She quickly followed and remove her grasp at you as you paved the way for her to enter.

She stepped inside, and you closed the door. "Let's go there." You pointed at the couch next to your workplace.

Tzuyu silently followed your command before she finally spoke as she got to sit comfortably. "Thanks for this, YN." Her voice was shaky and rough.

"What happened, Tzuyu? Is something wrong going on?" You asked her as you poured some hot glass of milk and cookies for her. "I know you always come by for my help but I didn't expect you to be here in the middle of the night."

"I-it's my parents." She wiped her tears off and clasped her hands together, laying them down on her lap. "They're having another huge miscommunication again. It's been like that for almost a week already, and I can't stand it anymore seeing them like that. I had enough, that's why I decided to run away and come seek for a place to stay in... through you."

You understood her purpose of appearing here immediately. "And you're free to stay here whenever you want, I'll do everything for my friend." Tzuyu smiled at that, but almost sincere as she felt slightly different at that statement. "What was your parents arguing about, if I may ask?"

"It's about my dad going out frequently these days looking for some cash to borrow from. I think he's been into loaning for sometime, much less to our knowledge. He got fired from work when the company he was working in decided not to accept everyone who has a health condition due to safety regulations, and he got both detected that he has acute diabetes and is already middle aged." Tzuyu began to explain.

"My mom was a stylist at a salon but her salary wasn't enough now for just us to sustain because we need it now too for my dad's treatment. Then, just now, they got into an argument when my mom learns that my dad was secretly making loan from most people these days without her permission. You know how loan sharks can be dangerous, right? But my dad just defended that he just want to do something for us to still gain money and he doesn't want to stay at home doing nothing for her family."

Tzuyu started to tear up once again, from the mixed emotions she's having from both of her parent's side in their tough situation. You once again assisted her by giving her a clean cloth to wipe her tears away. "Now I get it. I do understand your father's point though. It's hard for a parent to just find their selves doing nothing when they know the hard time their family must've been going through.

It's their responsibility to take care and provide their daily needs, and not doing that so will ick them uncomfortably. Even if doing loans was also quite not a good idea, atleast you can see how your father loves you and your mom. Your mom was just angry at your fad because she doesn't want him to get in danger once he couldn't be able to pay all his dues in no time."

Tzuyu nodded at you, pinpointing all the comments you have to say regarding her concern, as it makes sense anyway. "I was starting to consider to help them by looking for some job to do to earn money for them, but I'm not that decided yet plus... I don't really feel it yet to engage at work while I'm still studying you know."

"Ahh, the fear that you might be unable to do both of them simulteanously, huh. You don't want to fail your grades, isn't it?"

"Yeah." You were right. You know Tzuyu to be actually a smart girl based from the earlier times when you first met her and your experience of her being your classmate. She has a lot of potential, but what you like about her is that she's careful on using those and avoid the possibility of wasting it on the wrong time.

"You know what, save it for tomorrow. You should go to rest, you look unsettled at the moment. It's already midnight." You mentioned as you looked once again in her droopy eyes and gloomy demeanor. "We can talk about this again for tomorrow."

"T-thank you again, YN." You nodded for her gratitude. "Stay here, okay? You want to watch TV?" She agreed. You opened it for her. "Entertain yourself there with your milk and cookies, I'll be just finish my task here."

She obliged, and she lets you do your thing there on the desktop. Minutes have passed, and with all those glances Tzuyu has been giving on your busy self, she began to get curious at what actually you are doing.

She stood from her seat and approaches you. Peeking at the monitor of your computer, you were shocked when she ducked next to your side, her pretty face almost inches away from you.

Your fingers nervously types from the keyboard and moves the mouse as you just let her observe what you are doing. "What's for the edit?"

"Commission." You simply answered. "Client requested to create a presentation for her upcoming thesis research. She has no other time left because she spent too much researching and revising her topic. Good thing she already has parts prepared for me to input for each slides."

Tzuyu hummed. She continues to watch you do your work while also admiring the fact that you are doing a sideline also apart from your current education. "So you are part-timing too?"

"Freelancing to be exact. I'm the one who looks for clients and offer service. Mostly editing, as you can see."

You started to sense the purpose pf her inquiry. "You know Tzuyu, my only advice about what you're planning is that you are doing right. Don't rush about it. If you don't feel the passion of it then don't head straight. It's hard to do something that you didn't even feel doing in the first place."

Tzuyu keeps that in mind. "Can I put up some suggestions?"

"Sure do. Would love to hear it from you."

She then began to point out some more details she can imagine in her head and you judged it with her by trying it on your work. It almost took half an hour before you finally finish it, saving you some more time of impring your butt too much on the chair for sitting too long and tiring yourself up.

Fortunately, Tzuyu helped you to wrap up early. "Oh wow, I didn't know you were so good at designing. Tzuyu, I swear I see some potential in you."

Tzuyu blushed and became embarassed. "Damn it, YN. Stop fluttering me." You chuckled and awwed at her cuteness. "But thank you."

"You should consider freelancing too, maybe you can attract a client that pays a lot but I hope you can endure the huge assignment."

"I'll take note of it." She nodded. You noticed that she already emptied her milk and cookies. "Cmon, let's get you to your room for tonight."

Tzuyu followed you and both ended up in a bedroom that is cozy and suitable enough for a single person to be used. "You can sleep on the bed, I'll be here on my extra cushion here."

She gasped and became shy at your gentleman act. "B-but, YN... this is y-your room. I'm fine-"

"No buts, no ifs. You are a woman who should be treated with respect. Now please, you can take mine for the night."

You were about to set up the cushion on the floor but Tzuyu tugged your arm. "Yes?"

"C-can you just stay with me on the bed?"

You became speechless at her request. The fact that you are about to sleep with Tzuyu close to you has effectively boosted the blood cursing through your body, creating goosebumps on your skin. You became red and flustered about it.

"W-what? Why?"

"I- I can't sleep without hugging something." Tzuyu pouted.

"I have an extra pillow though."

"I need something big that fits me to cuddle." Her voice became even more softer. You sweared that your heart is about to melt. "I have a life-sized bear that my mom bought for me since I was a kid on my home but I don't want to go back there for now. So... c-can you be my cuddle bear for now, if you might?"

You sighed heavily at how Tzuyu looks so pure and beautiful pleading at you with her puppy eyes and that mellow visuals. This is what's pulling you back: it's your freaking crush and the idea of sleeping with her on the same space, same bed is what's unraveling your lack of composure.

But you don't want your friend to be sad and disappointed because of your stubborness. "Alright, fine. You can hug me in your sleep."

"Yay! Thank you, YN!"

Both of you laid down on the bed you turned around with Tzuyu facing your back, as you can't endure much longer seeing her face too long, although it would be a delight to have such this wonderful sight before you sleep and to wake up in the morning.

She wraps her arms at your waist and hugged you tightly. You blushed when you felt her soft breasts squished on your upper back, sending your heart to race. She buries her face at the crook of your neck before sending a chilling whisper close to your ear.

"Goodnight, YN."

"G-goodnight, Tzu..." You breathily replied before you and her doze off to slumber.

The next morning, Tzuyu woke up first than you. Her eyes slowly opened, regaining her sight, and the first thing she saw was your side-profile. You were now laying flat on your back beside her.

She indulges the pleasant view of your peaceful state, smiling on her own happiness to have such an amazing friend and an irresistable crush like you. Although her frown began to shape from her lips when she remembered the reality that she is still uncertain if you do feel the same for her.

Intaking this moment of you and her in one bed, nothing around but a room filled of silence and being struck by the bright sunlight of the morning. She looked at your bodies laying together until her eyebrows furrow when she spotted something strange under you.

Tzuyu saw a hump-shaped formed onto the blanket that is covering your lower blanket. She was curious to see what it is as she noticed how it almost seemed like it's moving.

Taking off the blanket around you, it had her thinking twice if what she just did is not right at all.

But that doesn't mean she didn't like it at all.

Tzuyu was staring at the source of that hump, and that is coming from your short that is having a tent marked on your crotch.

Unlike from the blanket, what she's looking at was even more obvious at what shape it is. It was long, large and diagonally laying down, measuring it as it reaches down to the upper part of your thigh.

Tzuyu was blushing hard as she realized that she just witnessed you having the most common thing for boys: a morningwood. You have no idea at all that you have a woman beside you who is clearly seeing how hard you can get with whatever reason it may be.

She became so curious, almost deciding if she'll take a touch of it to found out what it feels. Her hands raised up and fidgeting to go forward onto your crotch.

That is, until she got interrupted when she shrieked a little as she saw you moved, and your new position got her swallowing her threat and nervousness crawling inside.

You are now laying sideways, with your front figure now facing her. Tzuyu can feel your morningwood pressing against her bare thighs, and she swear that it's driving her hormones crazy when her skin can feel the warmth of your covered erected cock laying down on her touch.

"He feels so big, oh my goodness." Tzuyu whispered. She even teased it by gently bouncing your cock on her thigh by moving it up and down slowly. Her thighs start to rub with each other as she is beginning to become horny.

"N-no... control yourself, Tzu. You don't want to end up harassing your friend while sleeping. This isn't right." Tzuyu quickly shook her head before carefully removing herself away from your side, standing up from the bed.

As she is now on her feet, she glanced downwards and noticed a wet spot on her shorts. She was shocked to see that she got easily wet thinking about your elongated cock earlier. It had her panicked and rushed quickly at the bathroom to aid this.

Minutes later, you woke up after still in your morning wood, not having any clue that Tzuyu seen that beast earlier. You tried to fixed it by repositioning it on your boxers and hid it under the hem of your shirt.

You exit the bedroom and saw Tzuyu preparing your breakfast on the table. "Wow, Tzuyu I wasn't expecting that you'll be the one to cook." You chuckled as you saw the mouthwatering scrambled eggs and fried rice with the plates.

"Well, I don't want to do nothing while staying here you know. I want to remain productive too." Tzuyu smiled. Her eyes glided down to your shorts and remembering what she just saw almost distracted the stability of her mind. "G-good morn-ning, YN.", she awkwardly greeted you.

"Good morning too, Tzu. Let's eat?"

The two of you began to eat and start some random topics to talk during your breakfast. After both were finished, you volunteered to do some dishes while Tzuyu asks permission to take a shower in which you granted and willingly let her borrow your spare clothes for the meantime.

While you on your way back to the kitchen to grab a new clean rug from your storage area, you heard something that catched your attention from the bathroom door. Your hearing is very sharp and sensitive that's why you can immediately catch on the sounds around you.

And this one is a bit surprising and... enticing. You pressed your ear closer at the door and there you heard loud and clear the sound of someone moaning inside. It definitely is coming from Tzuyu and judging from the noise she's creating, you probably guessed that she must be doing something to satisfy her needs: and you cannot believe it that you have your girl bestfriend masturbating in the bathroom of your own freaking house.

You quickly rushed away out of the door when you noticed that the noise stopped. As you returned to the kitchen, you gently massaged your cock getting hard from that sultry noise.

Is s-she... Fuck, I'm getting turned on with my friend masturbating. Goddamn, control it YN. You don't want her to caught you acting lewd." You hissed yourself before continuing with your dishes.

Tzuyu emerged from the bathroom, just as time you finished washing dishes. You sheepishly avoided her by quickly grabbing your towel and take your turn next at the bathroom to shower.

As you stepped inside after closing the door to see Tzuyu sitting on the couch and looking at her phone, you looked around your bathroom and had you imagined Tzuyu doing her own business earlier in this exact spot.

It made you rush quickly on taking a bath while fighting with the urge to masturbate by squeezing and massaging your cock and balls with soap, basically edging yourself away from doing so.

It was then you finished, you realized that you forgot to bring your clothes with you at your rush. "I have to be quick."

You opened the door and was about to dash outside when it shocked you that Tzuyu was walking at the same direction as you, emerging out from the kitchen, resulting in her to collide at your naked body. Her feet accidentally pulled your towel after she slumped backwards to control her balance, causing your towel to unveil your lower part.

Both became speechless and flustered as you realized that your largened cock has now exposed to Tzuyu's innocent eyes. You tried to cover it with your hands despite it's massive size. "O-OH SHIT, TZUYU DON'T LOOK!"

You exclaimed to her but instead she remained staring, gawking at it's size. "Oh my god please turn around, i'll take back my towel. I'm so s-"

"You don't have to, I've seen it already."

"Huh?"

Your face crumpled in confusion at what Tzuyu said. "I-I've seen your thing a while ago after I woke up and I noticed that it's... h-hard. It's bulging on your boxers that I was concerned it might break it by itself."

"And I-I felt bad about it, I- I almost want to help it..." Tzuyu slowly steps forwards, removes your hands from blocking it and returns her sight at your cock now pointing at her, she inspects how it throbs everytime her eyes stare longer at it. "T-Tzuyu wait..."

"Does it give you difficulty right now, YN? I-I'm willing to help you, if you d-don't mind." Tzuyu looked at you with her mischievous soft demeanor. You gasped at her offer.

"But Tzuyu, are you sure about that? This is so embarassing but..."

"Hmm?"

"I don't have a problem w-with it, it's just that... oh God I can't form my words coming out of my mouth well!"

"Don't stress yourself, you said it already." Tzuyu shushed you as she patted your chest. She leaned at your face and landed a surprise kiss on you, making your eyes widen and jaw drop more at her action. "For now, just let me repay you in return for helping me by doing t-the same for you~"

She slowly lowered herself down to her knees, now kneeling in front of you. Her eyes and now leveled equally with your cock facing at her. She bit her lips and viewed at it with mesmerizing gazes. "I've only seeing these from the internet, and I was so right that to see this in personal is a much better deal to admire. I might get addicted with this."

Her hands surrounded the thickness of your cock. She slowly pulls it and bends it upwards, tightening her grip before she starts pumping it in a dangerously slow pace. She heard your deep sigh and looked upwards to see your face floating in cloud nine.

"Does it feel good, YN?"

"Y-yeah, it does. God, it's so much better than using my own hand."

Tzuyu smiled at that compliment. She started to stroke you even more, her fist kept that grip before her other available hand started to come to play too, targeting your testicles.

Your hanging huge balls got fondled with care. "It feels so full and heavy, YN." She pointed out. "Are you even doing it?"

"Y-yeah..." you said as you started to hold her hair and rub it gently.

"How often?"

"J-just... two times in a week, sometimes months." Your breath became raggy as she began increasing the speed of her fists jacking off your thick meat. "Oh god, Tzu..."

"Are you ready, YN?"

"For what?"

She didn't had to reply verbally, but instead gave you the answer orally by circling your mushroom head leaking pre-cum already with her tongue.

"S-shit! I'm sensitive t-there, oh!" You gasped loud as Tzuyu continues to do foreplay on your helpless cock, licking the entire length and juggling each of your balls with her puckered mouth.

After feeling satisfied, she now puts your entire meat inside her mouth and starts bobbing her head off. She fucked herself with an increasing force until her nose is now touching your groin.

Tzuyu pointed at her head and hair to signal you something in which you understood right away. You gripped it and started doing the favor on your own by fucking her mouth with your own choosing of speed.

Your desire on having such lustful act with Tzuyu is making you overwhelm, urging you to participate further in this with her. With the tightening of your groin, you mercilessly pounded her face to race through the end.

"I'm cumming, Tzuyu. Where do you want me in?"

Tzuyu just pointed at her throat. Few pumps and that's all it took for you to blast off your warm seed, filling up her mouth with your load that was saved up for months of your inactivity to ejaculate.

She slowly lets go of your cock with a loud pop before cleaning her lips with the remaining traces of cum left. "We can do it right here, but my pussy is unavailable for now. I-I don't want to get pregnant y-yet..."

"It's fine, Tzuyu. I respect that." You got her point. She must be fearing that she might cause additional stress for her parents in the middle of their financial crisis just to assist her on supporting her pregnancy and the child's needs once she gave birth to it.

You took a mental note that now you're having sex with her, a necessary caution would be required first to perform to ensure the safety.

"But that doesn't mean we can't pleasure ourselves anymore without that. You can still use my body... wear condoms, but only for this another hole I got behind me." She said as she stood up and turned her back on you, making her posture upright as she presents you her ass and rubbing it on your cock.

You had enough of her teasing, you lifted her shirt up and pulled her through her torso. Your hands climbed up to her bra-covered boobs. They are average sized at it's finest, perfect enough to fit in your palm.

You unclasped her bra and removed it around her, now playing on her naked tits while you devoured her neck with supple kisses. She purred and yelped at the sensation she's getting from you pleasing her.

Your fingers pinched and twirling her nipples before you turned her around and made her kiss you. You carried her body and brought her on the couch while she is wrapped around you.

You sat on the couch with her on your lap. Letting go of her lips, you then head on to her breasts by give the attention it deserves, sucking and licking the light-brown delectable areolas and nipples that she have while massaging each it to intensify the pleasure.

Tzuyu was just moaning at your active mouth running around her sensitive area. Your hands then moved around her ass as you kneaded her cheeks from her short before you hooked on the waistband and removed it from her legs.

Her now exposed underwear is the only garment she has left. She crawled on the bed and went all fours. You switched behind her and kneeled, facing her alluring ass as you removed her underwear and took a sniff on it.

Her asshole and the outline of her restricted pussy is now visible to your hungry eyes. Without no more hesitation, you rubbed yourself around her cheeks, making her gasp at the air that you blew from your nose and mouth having in contact with her private areas, tickling her into goosebumps.

You start licking her pussy, wiggling her outer walls before you spreaded it with your fingers then inserted it inside, making Tzuyu scream in surprise. Your mouth then worked next on her hole and sucked on each of her cheeks to grab a taste of her cake.

"Mmmhhmmphhh yeah you're so good at this, YN oh fuck~" she said while grinding her ass across your face and feel your fingers pumping back and forth in her pussy. She started to shiver when you quickened your movement, leaving her in a screaming, groaning mess.

"Ughhh yes fuck fuck fuck YN i'm so close, keep that fingers deep within me~" Tzuyu purred as she gripped tight at the back of the couch, enduring the huge pleasure being provided to her by her dear bestfriend.

"I'm cumming, i'm cumming on your face YN!" Tzuyu yelled before she squirted her love nectar straight to your awaiting face and mouth, tasting and slurping her juices as you slowly rode her orgasm out with slow fingering.

You didn't let Tzuyu to recover some more time as you stood up and jerked your cock at the gaps of her ass. "Are you ready, Tzu?"

"Yes, please. I can take it. I want it to be you, YN. You're the only one I trust."

"I'm glad so, Tzuyu. Tell me if I need to stop okay?"

She nodded. You directed your tip to her entrance and slowly entered. You heard Tzuyu groaned as each inch are now pressing her hole.

"A-ah wait, YN let me adjust." Tzuyu hissed and fixed her position in all fours. "Alright, continue."

You gently pushed deeper and now your cock is inside her ass. You started to move, and you gasped at how tight her ass feels around you, feeling the way she clench when your crotch bumps at her ass.

Sensing that this makes it even feel much better fucking her, you started clapping her ass as you feel like it. Tzuyu just continues to blabber random words of praises and constant moans while your speed changes from rough to vanilla.

Her sultry, sexy voice has reduced to a hum when she felt another splash of wamrth inside of her, but this time in her hole as you shoot another load of cum on her ass with regards to safety of commiting sex with her.

As you pulled out, you saw some few overflow out of her asshole. You gritted your teeth in guilt. "I-i'm sorry, I think I may have done it too much."

Tzuyu giggled and sighed at your considerate behavior. "Don't feel too bad about it, YN. It just means that you really gave it all... which is what I really want from you." She winked.

You blushed before standing back up. "I'm gonna go grab some tissue." You said as you left her for a while before going back to wipe the remaining cum on her ass to keep the couch left unstained with the smell of sex.

"Want to go for one more round?" She challenged you with a smirk as she sat properly beside you, crossing her legs.

"I'm in. What do you want next?"

"Hmm, I think it's time for you to decide for this one. I'm already satisfied with my own cravings, now it's your turn." Tzuyu said, posing herself like she's in deep thoughts. "May I ask you one? What part of my body do you actually admire?"

You traced her naked body but there's this one specific part that drives you crazy whenever you get hynoptized at it's perfect shape and thickness. "If i'm going to be honest, your best gift that was sculpted by the gods for you is your heavenly thighs, Tzu." You swayed your head while whistling at how magnificent it looks.

"Tell me more about it." She flirtatiously whispered at you while playing with your hair.

"I love your ass, those cute tits and that talented mouth too, but your thighs are just too immaculate. Too unmatchable. It's so jiggly..." You started to ran your hands around her well-built thighs. "So smooth, so thick... I would be really honored to be suffocated in these damn pillows."

"Now you gave me an idea to show me what more of these can do." Tzuyu winked. She reaches for your semi-limp cock, awakening it back to it's full size by flicking her fingers around the bulbous head. Her legs shifted above your lap, with your cock sandwiched between those voluptuous thighs to die for.

"And you are very lucky to experience such a rare service coming from such Thighwanese beauty." She smirks before she squishes your hardened cock and strokes its skin with her thighs by lifting both her legs up and down.

"Ugh... mmmphh oh~" You moaned at the relaxing feeling of her thick thighs pumping off your shaft, eager to empty your remaining load you got. Tzuyu was enjoying the sight of yourself trapped and savoring the sensation of her strongest exual appeal.

"How does it feel having my thighs wrapped around your big cock, YN?"

"It's amazing..." You shut your eyes and gasped heavily at the feeling. "Shit, I can't hold much longer if you're doing like this to me Tzu!"

"Cum. Cum for me, YN. Let it out."

You assisted her legs on stroking you by holding her ankles while you buckle your hips, banging her juicy thighs smeared with your pre-cum as it ripples from the impact until you shoot another stream of sticky cum all over it including her knees.

Tzuyu lets you rest as she removes her legs from you and scooped all your cum on her fingers before eating it. She also cleaned your softening cock in payback to what you did to her ass a while ago, sucking it off until no drops are left.

She laid her head beside your arm and cuddled at your body. "I'm sorry if this is too sudden, YN. I got carried away that I started to act like this."

"It's fine, Tzu. You just wanted to destress, let's say in such different way." You nodded. "But it doesn't matter, as long as I get to make you happy and satisfied, I'm always open to accompany you." You smiled at her and caressed her hair. However, it disappointed when you changed from becoming serious.

"And also, I should be thanking you too Tzuyu for this moment. I've only done this for the first time with a woman, and... to be honest I have to dare myself saying this to you that... you are my ideal girl. The one that I admire for months now. The one that my heart only prefers." Your confession was heard in such clear and simple statement by Tzuyu, and she was very strucked and touched listening at your words.

"And what we did means so much to me because I get to do it with the girl that I love, although it saddens me to think if do you even feel the same as mine. I know I could've confessed to you in a much better setting and better time but I just want to express it all right now to clarify that these isn't just driven from lust, but through my sincere admiration for you that is swirling inside my heart. I love you, Tzuyu."

Tzuyu pursed her lower lip and smiled sweetly at your message. She holds your hands and looked dearly at you. "I'm relieved to know that this is both our first-time having sex together. I was a bit nervous and shy at first but I just let my desire and desperate need of your touch control me, and I'm also glad that it has to be you too, YN. I couldn't imagine other deserving man than only you who I can allow take my virginity."

She went forward and turned your face at her to perform another passionate kiss. "Because I love you too, YN and I will cherish this moment that we did."

"Through that, I must take responsibility for this too. Now shall I ask you something then?" You said.

"Go on." She chuckled.

"Will you be my girlfriend, Tzuyu?"

She grinned brightly at your initiation. "I would be very willing to."

After your heated session with Tzuyu, both of you went to wash yourselves again while doing another quickie session after can't stop getting enough yet with your insatiable bodies.

Now back on getting dressed up, you and Tzuyu proceeded to discuss about her family problem story where you have finally lended some advices for her that might be helpful about their current situation.

More than a week later, you helped her to return back on their home after saving enough courage to confront her parents. When they saw her made her heading back to their home, the married Chou couple welcomed their daughter as they have now settled into peace.

Tzuyu and you then decided to maintain their relationship secret for the meantime as they start to date and explore their affection for each other further. You are also planning to accompany her on looking for a part-time job after she decided that she really needs it, as she prepares herself to balance it with her studies. Not forgetting this kind of relationship you established with her, you and Tzuyu would proceed to fulfill more of your fantasies together mostly taken place at your home like pleasuring yourselves in other various positions that involves rimming, entertaining yourself when one of you is bored by feasting on her pussy, boobs and your cock, or even your most favorite of them all: compressing your face in between her flawless ass and thighs until you end up unconscious.