#it tends to be articles these days

[natequarter]

For the “Top 5” ask meme:

Top 5 fiction books

Top 5 nonfiction books

😊📚

fiction (this list could be so much longer):

the last of the sky pirates, by paul stewart and chris riddell. an all-time favourite.

earthsea, by ursula k. le guin. exactly as good as everyone says it is.

the game of kings, by dorothy dunnett. this is my 'currently reading' fave, and it's brilliant

the adventures of alianore audley, by brian wainwright. james bond meets edward iv. sidesplittingly funny

dissolution, by c. j. sansom. i'm not sure yet if it's the best book of the series, but it is the first book, so i'll leave it at that

non fiction:

latin alive: the survival of latin in english and the romance languages, by joseph b. solodow. it sounds incredibly dry but i assure you, it's very insightful

english after rp, by geoff lindsey. a comprehensive breakdown of how standard southern british english sounds, and why conventional descriptions are outdated

henry viii's last victim, by jessie childs. not infallible, but enjoyable for me, personally

tudor england: a history, by lucy wooding. a less tiresome overview of tudor england than usual

what if? by randall munroe. fun nonsense with real science

(link)

[akkivee]

kuukou took ichiro (and sasara lol) to an ankake spaghetti restaurant while he was in nagoya during the 1️⃣📿🎋hinamatsuri event and here he is in his ichiro➡️hitoya voice lines excited to go to an ankake spaghetti shop what if i just started bawLING—

[magical-mystery-tour1967]

I read too much of the Salieri biography. Have you ever eaten too much candy as a kid on Halloween and then tried to sleep? That's how I feel when I read too much of something in one day. Every time I close my eyes, I see his name again.

Salieri.... Salieri.... Salieri....

I CAN'T SLEEP LIKE THIS!!!! PLEASE HELP!!!!

[thistledropkick]

I just wanted to say, thanks again to everyone who likes, reblogs, or adds nice tags to my translations on here. I never intended for this to be a translation account, but it kind of happened by accident anyway, and I really appreciate everyone who has encouraged me to keep sharing translations.

I know that the kind of stuff I'm interested in has a pretty small English-language audience (which is why no one else has already translated it, and why I felt the need to start studying Japanese in order to read it)

I tend to think "no one cares about this but me, so why post a translation of it" but it's good to be reminded that there are other people in the English-language side of wrestling fandom who are interested in the same stuff I'm interested in, and who want to read the stuff I want to translate.

I don't always have the time or energy to write proper translations for everything I want to, but as long as people keep showing an interest, I'll keep sharing what I can.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

5 years later ghost posting from jason sweettooth williams: "In honor of Halloween and all things ghostly, here is the picture I took of a ghost from the stage of the Lyceum Theater on Broadway. I was on stage in the middle of tech and looked up and spotted this. I think about her often but especially tonight on Halloween! #happyhalloween #ghost #theater #bemorechill #broadway"

[rigelmejo]

Thoughts after 9 years of learning Japanese

As you all know, this is going to include rambling. This is not a record of all the things I've done, and the recommendations contained are what I wish my past self would have done - they do not necessarily apply to you. Everyone is going to have their own path that works best, their own mistakes, and what helps me may not apply to everyone.

First mistake I made:

Severely underestimating how much time it would take to learn to do stuff in Japanese. FSI estimates put Japanese as taking 3520 hours (88 weeks at 40 hours a week) for English speakers to learn to around an upper intermediate/B2 level. I did not know that when I started studying Japanese. I didn't even think about looking up an estimate of how many hours I'd need to study to reach my goals, until 4 years into learning.

So I spent 3 years studying 15 minutes a day on average. And then wondered why I was still a beginner. So after 3 years, I'd studied around ~273.75 hours. No wonder I was still a beginner!

I was studying Japanese, while also studying French (for 30 minutes to 2 hours a day some months, average was probably .5 hours a day), and while also studying Russian one of those years (for 1-4 hours per day the year I focused on it - I needed to understand daily conversations ASAP). So Japanese was getting neglected, I had no time to spare for it. Even though out of all the languages I was studying, it probably required the MOST hours to hit progress milestones. With French, progress went 'slow' because I was only studying .5 hours a day, but in 2 years I'd studied 365 hours and had decent reading skills (A2-B1, not sure but wikipedia and news became readable), and I could just keep reading in regular life to maintain and improve my French from there. Russian I stopped studying once I no longer needed it in my daily life.

Finally, after 3 years, of just trying to study the same 300 kanji... I decided to change my study plan. As part of that, I also increased my study time per day for a while, so my study hours started going UP. That probably would have helped no matter what else I did. I just needed a LOT more study hours dedicated to Japanese. No matter what else I did.

If I could go back, I would tell past me that whatever I planned to do to study Japanese, to do it 1+ hour daily. Ideally, as many hours as I could be motivated to do it. 15 minutes was way too little study time per day to see big milestones of progress like hitting A2, B1, B2 skill competence etc. (Or the JLPT equivalents N5, N4, N3, N2, N1).

Second mistake I made:

Being a PERFECTIONIST. Being a perfectionist is not very compatible with learning a language - when learning a language includes imperfect understanding of materials for native speakers for YEARS, and making mistakes in the language for YEARS as you learn how to express yourself better. We made mistakes in our native languages for at least 10 years! For many of us, we made mistakes for 20+ years and still need grammar help sometimes when writing essays or other things. Learning a language is signing up to do it all again, with another language, which we will never be perfect at either. Learning a language is not compatible with perfectionism.

In a way, once I learned being a perfectionist about my study was holding me back, it made: language study way more fun and rewarding, and also helped me practice NOT being a perfectionist. Which was really healthy for me, and freeing, and such a positive in my life that I kept the hobby of studying languages. Because it was SO good for my mental health to embrace making mistakes, and embrace imperfection as the path to improving at the things I wanted to do.

Why was I a perfectionist those first 3 years?

I had taken a Japanese 1 class the first few months of learning Japanese seriously - an excellent class. We did 6 chapters of Genki 1. A class was good for me, in that it FORCED ME TO MOVE FORWARD. I had to move onto the next chapter's grammar and words, I had to practice speaking and writing, I had to accept some level of 'imperfect understanding' to keep up with the fast pace of the class - since I only had so much time in the day to study. If you, like me, tend to be perfectionist? I highly recommend taking classes if possible, that progressively teach more, so you are forced to progress through the material and forced to challenge yourself regularly. So if there's a Japanese series of courses available to you? Then taking the classes as they teach from N5 gradually to N2-1 material, will push you to simply make forward progress.

An added benefit of classes: even if you barely study because of your own motivation, the class will FORCE you to study Japanese at least ~7 hours a week. So with semesters of ~15 weeks, that's 105 hours a semester, and at 2 semesters a year that is 840 hours after 4 years of college classes. More, if you took summer classes or did any independent study OUTSIDE of class, which may put you over 1000 hours after 4 years. Which is going to put you a lot closer to the goals you have, compared to the measly few hundred hours I had after 3 years.

Basically, if you have perfectionist tendencies OR you don't tend to make time for study much, classes will MAKE you overcome those tendencies to a degree.

After 1 semester, I didn't take any more classes. Realistically, I probably could have finished Genki 1 in another few months, then started Genki 2 and finished it in a year, then started Tobira and finished that in another 1-2 years, and reached an N3 level in Japanese in 3-4 years. I did not do that. I spent the next 2.5 years going over Genki 1 over and over, and going over the 300 basic kanji in a book I found, over and over. My perfectionism insisting I perfectly memorized ALL words, ALL grammar, and could use it WELL before moving on. So I held myself back.

So if I could go back and talk to my past self, I'd tell them to pace my study similar to a class. To ignore the urge to fully memorize and be perfect, and push myself through a textbook chapter every 1-2 weeks like my Japanese class had been paced.

If I had just done that, I could have been N4 level in a year (~A2 level, upper beginner). From there, I could have been N3 in another year (B1, lower intermediate), and from there I could have started enjoying media made for Japanese native speakers after 2 years! But that's not what happened lol.

So finally, after 3 years of basically barely studying (15 minutes a day) and re-studying the same absolute beginner materials (Genki 1 and 300 kanji) I decided something needed to change. I had to do something, I wanted to read manga and play video games in Japanese.

Third mistake I made:

Not realizing the importance of specific goals. I went on to waste another year, so year 3-4, studying things that were not directly useful to me.

By specific goals I mean: knowing specifically what you WANT TO DO in the language, and making a study plan to specifically WORK TOWARD THAT GOAL.

An example would be: I want to read Ranma 1/2 manga in Japanese. Specific study plan for that goal: opening up Ranma 1/2 manga and looking up every unknown word and grammar point. OR, for a more general study plan, learning 2000 common words that are bound to come up in most materials, reading a grammar guide summary like Tae Kim's Grammar Guide, and then trying to read Ranma 1/2 manga and look up key unknown words.

So year 3, I looked up what other people were doing to learn Japanese on their own. I learned a lot of people used Heisig's Remember the Kanji book to learn kanji, to make kanji understandable before they started learning Japanese more. I learned a lot of people made mnemonics stories and posted them online - which was good, because I got RTK and struggled to come up with my own mnemonic stories - so I looked up mnemonic stories other people made and read them. I learned a lot of people used anki, so I started using anki. My brain is NOT compatible with anki, long term. I learned that lol. For short periods of a few weeks, I'd manage to study 200-500 hanzi, then I'd forget about the app for a few weeks or months, then come back and have to RESTART since I had to review every anki card again. And again, my perfectionism was holding me back and insisting I 'keep studying' the hanzi in RTK until I perfectly remembered them. And thus, I wasted another year.

Year 4, I could recognize maybe ~500 kanji by meaning, but did not know any actual words. Such as words written with kanji combinations, and what the kanji were actually pronounced like in different words. So I still felt like I knew nothing useful.

Finally, I reflected on how on earth I'd learned to read in French before. I remembered 'oh yeah, I looked up specifically 'how to learn to read in a language' and then followed the advice I found. So basically, with French I had MADE A SPECIFIC STUDY PLAN FOR A SPECIFIC GOAL.

I decided to do the same for Japanese, and this was the first time I made major progress. I looked up 'how to learn to read Japanese' (a goal I will keep setting, in Chinese later, as learning to read is super important to me apparently). I found a few articles of people sharing what they did, and then I stumbled upon Nukemarine's Let's Learn Japanese (LLJ) Memrise user-made course (it used to be called Standard Guide to Japanese Literacy SGJL). The course was perfect. It was free, it included kanji with mnemonics stories, AND words, AND words in sentence examples, AND grammar points, and audio for everything. It was made to build up someone's ability to read in Japanese, and included 6000 common words and all grammar in Tae Kim's Grammar Guide. It was perfect for a perfectionist like me - I could just work through it and know I was working toward my goal, who could not focus with a bunch of resources - it was one single resource with everything I needed in one place in a specific order I could follow. I had a specific study plan, FINALLY, to learn to read Japanese - to learn to DO something in Japanese. Something specific I wanted to do, that would motivate me to study a lot (which I needed), and all I had to do was follow the courses in order.

(And reflecting now, I probably also would have done well to just stick to Textbooks... as well made ones also would've provided the things I needed, in one place. A big mistake I made was not realizing Genki 1 was only Beginner 1 and would not even take me to Upper Beginner 2/Lower Intermediate. Most language textbooks, especially mass produced ones like Teach Yourself and Assimil, usually get a student to A2/Lower Intermediate. So I had assumed Genki 1 was the same... in reality Genki textbooks are WAY slower paced than other language textbooks, providing ~1700 words after Genki volume 1 AND volume 2 textbooks, whereas many other beginner textbooks tend to provide ~2000 words in 1 volume. If I had known earlier Genki 1 had so little information to learn, I would've gone through it faster).

So anyway. I find Nukemarine's LLJ Memrise courses in year 4, and cram study them. I get hyperfocused, and get through 4 of the course sections in 6 months. I learn at this point in my life, that for me, if I prioritize NEW items and simply skip reviews unless I have spare time for them, the knowledge on the items still sticks fairly well. And my perfectionism rears its ugly head when I start doing reviews, and getting obsessed with doing reviews over new-items, and then get stuck in a cycle of trying to continue reviewing until I'm perfect. So I started prioritizing learning/studying NEW items, and only doing Reviews if I had spare time. It made a huge difference for me, and I'd continue following this pattern in future study.

In 6 months, I'd gone through 4 course sections, and I was feeling motivated! I'd studied 1000 kanji, 2000 words, and a lot of grammar! I started wanting to TRY my goals. So I started picking up manga, and trying to read them, and looking up any key unknown words that I needed to understand to follow the main idea. This was similar to what I'd done way back when learning to read French. It worked!

It was going great! I read Yotsubato volume 1, Ranma 1/2 volume 1, Neon Genesis Evangelion volume 1, School Rumble vol 1, and a couple other easy manga I owned. So the next 6 months of year 4 I was enjoying actually DOING my goals. I was reading manga, looking key unknown words up. I tried playing Kingdom Hearts 2 and Persona 3 a few times in Japanese that year, and over time the games became easier to play. At first, it was exhausting, too hard, and then eventually I seemed to have 'permanently remembered' a lot of common words and the games were still 'exhausting' to focus on for more than a few hours but I could understand enough to play and look up key unknown words and follow the main idea. I have really fond memories of playing the opening of Kingdom Hearts 2 in Japanese, and understanding enough to compare it to the English localization, and noticing they used 'kimi' as 'you' instead of 'anata.'

What I learned from that whole of year 4 was: if I had just set that specific goal (to read), and made a study plan to specifically do it, then I could've been doing those things at the end of year 1!

Lessons learned and applied to Chinese:

By year 5, I could play some games I wanted to in Japanese and look up key unknown words, and I was satisfied. I felt that if I wanted to improve my Japanese some more, I could just read/play a lot of Japanese and look up words, for a period of time.

I watched Guardian chinese drama. I fell in love with it. I found out it was based on the novel Zhenhun by priest. At the time, the novel was not fully translated.

I decided I wanted to learn Chinese. I managed to avoid so many of the mistakes I'd made before with Japanese. I had a clear goal: read Zhenhun ASAP. I had a clear study plan: do what worked in French and Japanese, to learn to read ASAP. I had a much better idea of what I needed: structured study materials to work through, focused on common words and grammar points ASAP, prioritizing learning new things over reviews, and getting to PRACTICING reading as soon as possible. As once I started reading, that would motivate me and allow me to keep learning, mainly by just continuing to read. Just like it had with French, and eventually with Japanese.

I also dedicated 1-2 hours daily to Chinese, since I wanted to make fast progress. This was more time than I ever spent on French daily, and I was aware by that point that a language like Chinese was going to take me more hours to reach each progress milestone than a language like French. Because I was studying Chinese 4 times more time than French daily, I actually reached progress milestones in Chinese in around the same amount of months it had taken for French.

So by 3 months I could read Graded Readers in Chinese, by 6 months I could read higher unique character count Graded Readers in Chinese (1000-3000 unique hanzi), and by 6 months to a year I was reading webnovels and looking up key unknown words in Pleco. The whole year 1 of studying Chinese, I kept trying to read Zhenhun every once in a while, to remind myself of my goal and to see my incremental improvement. Also in year 1 I found Silent Reading/Modu and fell in love, it was also not fully translated. I spent a lot of time reading Modu in mtlnovel.com, the first time I read Traditional Characters, and tried to compare them to the English MTL and tried to understand the chapters. Since the only option was MTL, and I knew there were errors in the MTL, so I looked up key words in Chinese and compared to the MTL to try and understand what the chapters actually said. I think I read 20 chapters in mtlnovel.com in Chinese of Modu that year. Then eventually E Danglars made their lovely English translation of Modu, and I was so happy, and read that instead.

Year 2 of learning Chinese, I really focused on learning to Extensively Read - be able to read without looking up words, and guess unknown words from context. Year 2 I read Xiao Wang Zi in a paper book, which was challenging and took 2 weeks but I did it. I found Heavenly Path Notion Site and their recommendations, and read their recommendations for Beginners both intensively (to look up lots of words and learn them ASAP) and extensively (to build reading stamina and speed). I read a lot of webnovels, and fanfictions, and some manhua that year. I watched some cdramas only in Chinese, no English subs. It was going great, I was spending 1-2 hours on Chinese still.

Year 3 of learning Chinese, I took a break. My goal had been to read, and I could now do that if I intensively read by looking up key unknown words for anything I wanted to read. I could also extensively read some things, and I knew from experience now that as I kept extensively reading things, over time what I could extensively read would increase. So I had no pressing reason to improve my Chinese, to study regularly, and I stopped.

I got back into learning Japanese! So now we are in year 7 since I started learning Japanese. I took 2 years off, while I'd been entirely focused on Chinese.

I went back to reading Japanese, and found that thanks to Chinese hanzi-near-cognates in meaning, I could read WAY MORE without looking things up than I used to be able to. I could watch Japanese lets plays if I turned the Japanese captions on, I could read most manga I owned and understand the main idea without looking up any words, I could play my Japanese video games and read the text 'roughly' with the help of the hanzi-near-cognates. I could watch some Japanese shows, if I had the Japanese subs on, and follow the main idea without looking up any words.

Apparently what it took for me to learn kanji, was to learn Chinese hanzi instead - which had been a much easier quicker process for me lol. It took months to learn 1000 hanzi in Chinese, whereas Japanese it had taken me 4 years to learn 1000 kanji! I think the phonetic component of hanzi made them much easier for me, and they clicked easier in my brain, and I still struggle with remembering kanji pronunciations...

So anyway. That floored me. Suddenly realizing, even if I bought a Japanese eBook, I could kind of read it for the main idea! Even if I looked up no words. I had learned more grammar over the years in Japanese than expected, since the hiragana parts of grammar were somewhat understandable too.

Year 7 of Japanese: I really focused on LISTENING to Japanese. Because my weak spot was that I did NOT know many hiragana only words, and I did not know the pronunciation of many kanji words, and I was kind of 'coasting' and able to read what I wanted with my Chinese hanzi knowledge.

I found japaneseaudiolessons.com, and it really helped my ability to parse spoken Japanese faster. My perfectionist tendencies kicked in though, and I ended up reviewing more than moving forward to the next lesson.

I found Japanese Glossika, the old CD courses at a library, and tried to use them too - again, perfectionism kicked in and I did more reviewing than learning new things.

I learned about the 'relistening study method' recommended by a youtuber: relisten to something 5-20 times, and it will improve your listening skills. So I tried out what they said. I had found 'condensed audio' files of some japanese anime I'd seen and games I'd played, so I relistened to them several times. It helped my listening skills for sure.

I also applied the 'relistening' strategy to Chinese, to Zhenhun audiobook and Guardian show condensed audio files, it also worked great.

I realized I had a major weak spot in Listening Skills, and wanted to improve it in all languages.

I think at some point I also took a break to study Spanish, and specifically to study French pronunciation in comparison to Spanish, because I kept confusing Spanish and French reading materials. So I did that for some summer, and really differentiated the sounds of Spanish and French in my mind. Incidentally, since I was trying out a lot of Spanish learning materials for fun - I enjoy checking out learning materials and trying them out - I ended up able to read Spanish non-fiction books by the end of that period. Yes, reading motivates me intensely. I'd found a Linguistics textbook in Spanish at a yard sale and wanted to read it, so I learned enough Spanish to understand it in a year. I had also found The Nature Method textbooks like Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature, and Poco a Poco, and was trying them out.

Year 7 I also learned about the Listening Reading Method of studying, which fascinated me, and I tested it out with Chinese, French, and Japanese. I mostly did it with Chinese, as I most wanted to improve my listening skills in Chinese. And since it also helped with reading skills, it pushed my Chinese reading skills up a bit more. But the Listening Reading Method was really intensive, so I only ended up doing it for around 30 hours (instead of the ~300+ hours per book it recommends). I picked up some of the parts I liked of the LR Method and still do them now - specifically listening to audio AS I read when possible, and relistening to audiobook chapters several times when I have time. But the full LR Method was too much work for me, took too much focus, and it wasn't compatible with the way I like to do things.

I figured I might try Listening Reading Method out again later with Japanese, if and when I felt like it. Or at least the parts of it I ended up continuing to do - like reading along with audio, and relistening to audio many times.

Year 8 of Japanese: Still working on listening skills, this was 2024, as you know I worked through all of the NEW Japanese Glossika app course. It was a disappointment. I don't think it actually taught more than 3000 words, even though it's labelled as having 5,000+ words - I think many of the 'words' are just different forms of the same verb counted as multiple words. I spent 128 hours on it, so more study time than I'd spent on Japanese in years, but as many hours as there are days in the year.

In Year 8 of Japanese, I'd been studying Chinese for 4 years, and aside from reading webnovels once in a while, I wasn't doing much with Chinese.

Year 9 of Japanese: I have learned a lot about what study activities work for me and which ones don't. I clearly know my weak spots I need to learn: I need to learn KANJI WORD PRONUNCIATIONS and spoken Japanese better, so that I can read the actual Japanese words instead of leaning on hanzi-knowledge, and so I can understand Japanese when I hear it.

My study plans for the future for Japanese (so this year 9 and onward):

Work on listening skills. I will be doing this with Comprehensible Input Lessons (like cijapanese.com), Learner Podcasts (like Nihongo Con Tepper and Japanese with Shun), listening to condensed audio of shows/games, keep watching Japanese lets plays, and just continuing to Play Video Games in Japanese and Watch Japanese shows with only Japanese Subs. I think I know around N3 amounts of vocabulary now, and more if you count words I could quickly pick up after seeing the Chinese hanzi in a subtitle of a show or reading-while-listening. Goals: I would like to understand spoken Japanese better so that I can enjoy jdramas that haven't been subbed, Japanese audio dramas, and Japanese audiobooks.

Work on reading skills, later: Continue reading Tadoku graded readers (free), the graded readers on this free site jgrpg-sakura.com, the japanese reading materials on my.wasabi-jpn.com. I will eventually pay for and use Satori Reader app some time I am hyperfocusing on reading, and read as much as I can on that app, then start practicing reading more with novels+TTS (like the Japanese ebooks I have on Kindle), and reading my paper Japanese novels.

I am not even N4 if I take a mock grammar test, so I'm sure my production skills are nonexistent and very poor. But I do know a decent amount of words which I think is around N3 level, I understand a lot more than I did years ago, and I can do a lot in Japanese that I want to do (especially if I look up key unknown words). To be fair, I think I've still barely studied Japanese ~1000 hours over the years, so just studying/doing MORE hours of Japanese will result in progress. From here on I am satisfied with my future study plans. If the Chinese Listening Experiment continues going as well as it's been going, I may apply things I learn from that study plan, to my study plans for Japanese.

Summary:

My mistakes were not realizing how many hours to reach progress milestones in Japanese was going to take, being a perfectionist and prioritizing reviews over learning new material frequently, and not setting specific goals and making specific study plans for those goals until years had passed.

If you're anything like me I suggest: plan to study regularly for a decent amount of time to work toward ~3520 hours in an amount of years you'd like to reach N2 or N1 by (or whatever your goal level of understanding is), if you have perfectionist tendencies then formal CLASSES may be helpful to push you forward or being self-aware you tend to not focus on new stuff enough and purposely force yourself to regularly frequently move onto studying NEW STUFF, and set specific goals of things you want to do IN the language and make a specific study plan to work towards those goals.

[muckmagister]

There's not overarching lore but there are things that I love talking about, and I call those lore because it flows better. What's your favorite GOI?

ah well looking at the list i only recognise a few of these names, like the gamers against weed and the fifth church, so i'm not quite sure enough to say

[witherby]

imagine how cute would be if Bruce brings the little wayne to his work on wayne tower 🥺 the moment would be ruined if some paparazzi taking photos with flash and scaring the baby

Sooo the baby didn't end up getting scared, but this idea did make me spit out 2000 words worth of content. I hope that's a fair compromise :3

THE LITTLEST WAYNE: TAKE YOUR KID TO WORK DAY

Featuring: Bruce talking to you like a colleague, a newspaper article, and an overprotective Damian.

"Morning, Clarice. Donuts and coffee are getting delivered in five minutes if you wanna pop downstairs and help yourself. Afterwards, do me a favor and rebook the consultation with Lexcorp for sometime next month? The further out the better."

Bruce's secretary nodded, fingers flying across the keys to accommodate his request. She tucked a lock of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear and shot him a polite smile.

"Of course, mister Wayne — oh, goodness gracious."

Bruce's placid expression quickly became embarrassed. He tried to walk past her but she was already on her feet and rounding the desk, heels clicking over the linoleum floor to stand in front of him and the bundle on his arm.

"Who is this!" She cried, immediately fawning over you. You stared blankly at her as you suckled on your binky, wrapped up in a tiny Nightwing onesie (Dick got to the clothes first this morning) and hugging your father's arm. "Oh, my, you're the most adorable baby I've ever seen! I'm Clarice! I'm your father's personal secretary, and apparently the last person to find out anything, including when he adopted yet another child!"

"This wasn't a...planned acquisition," Bruce muttered, the tips of his ears pink. He let the blonde gently squish your fat cheeks and you preened under the attention, lifting one fuzzy-wrapped hand to brush against her wrist.

"A planned acquisition. Like you're another company he bought on a whim and not a precious angel," Clarice giggled. "What a doll... If you ever need a babysitter, Mister Wayne, please don't hesitate to call me!"

"I'll keep that in mind," he said, exasperated but smiling good-naturedly. "Have a great day, Clarice."

"You, too! Bye-bye, angel!" She waved, and squealed when you waved back.

Bruce disappeared into his office with you, bouncing you gently on one arm while the other shrugged off the duffel bag he carried with him. Zipping it open, he quickly tugged out a pop-up bassinet to place you in, then the pieces to an enclosed play pen he built and filled with some blankets, a couple toys, and an extra Red Robin binky (Tim got to the toys first this morning).

"Okay," he sighed, scooping you up and relocating you to the pen. "I've actually got to run my own company for a bit, and the others are busy, so you get to hang out with me today."

Bruce rested his arm on his desk, then his chin in his hand, and stared down at you. You were staring intently back at him, the binky bopping up and down as you suckled on it.

"You're a little young to learn the ropes, but I'll explain what I'm doing anyway. Every baby book I've looked at tells me you get something out of it even if you don't understand what I'm saying, so today it's time to do payroll. I'd make you sign an NDA, because you're about to see a lot of personal files, but you don't know how to hold a pencil, read, write, or speak yet, so I think we're fine."

Bruce had two monitors on his desk. He duplicated his screen and spun the other one around so you could watch what he was doing in real time.

"I don't like to delegate this task to other people because the last six times I did, they were eventually found embezzling money. Unfortunately, that tends to happen when you live in Gotham. Right now I've opened the pay software — it's this icon here, where the mouse is circling — and I'm going to ask it to open the time sheets for the last two weeks..."

---

A NEW FAMILY MEMBER? BRUCE WAYNE SPOTTED IN WAYNE TOWER WITH INFANT, SPECULATION GROWING

CEO of Wayne Enterprises Bruce Wayne seen with a baby after exiting his office this afternoon!

[An image of you in your Nightwing onesie, tucked securely in a smiling Bruce's arms as he walks out of an elevator, is printed on the front page of the Gotham Gazette.]

Sources say Wayne filed another adoption form with the courts a week ago and is being met with mixed reviews. Large portions of the public are joking that Wayne has an "adoption problem" while others speculate he is too inexperienced to foster an infant.

"Wasn't his youngest kid, like, 9 when he adopted him?" Asks one Carmine Falconi, recently released from Blackgate on good behavior. "None o' my business, of course, but I don't think he knows how to raise a tiny tot like that. My guys ain't touchin' a hair on that one's head, though. Kidnapping the odd teen or two, sure, go nuts, but even us crooks got codes, and that one's off-limits in my book."

Wayne declined to comment when the Gotham Gazette reached out and remaining family have further refused interviews about the subject.

(Alfred got to the phone first.)

---

The newspaper clipping was already framed and proudly sitting on the dining room table when Bruce woke up the next morning and shuffled downstairs for breakfast with you in his arms. He spared it a tired glance, put you in your high chair, and relented to Damian's insistent shoving so the boy could sit next to and feed you (he got to the pantry first).

"The next time you plan on actually doing your day job," the boy hissed, "bring one of us with you. There was an abysmal amount of security protocols you ignored when leaving work to allow paparazzi the chance to grab photos. I won't let your frivolous behavior cause them harm."

"Are you volunteering?" Bruce asked, gratefully accepting the mug of coffee Alfred handed over. He quietly greeted Dick and Jason as they filed into the room and had a quick rock-paper-scissors match to see who got to sit on your other side. Jason won. "Any networking events I have to attend, you almost always find a way to weasel out of."

"If it will keep our new charge safe," Damian huffed, "I can handle a few stupid luncheons."

"That's not a pass to skip school. If it's between a social or a class, you're going to class."

Damian looked simultaneously pissed and relieved. His fist clenched tightly around the small, silicone spoon, before he forced himself to relax and continue feeding you. You opened your mouth obediently for another offering of mushed-up bananas, apples, and cinnamon baby food from a high quality brand, giving a happy hum.

"Then the duty falls to one of you fools," he snapped at Jason and Dick, "which is akin to trusting a mosquito not to drink from you at the first possible opportunity. You'll pick up the slack when I'm otherwise indisposed."

"No can do, baby bat," Dick said, pouring himself a bowl of cereal and scrolling through his phone. He quickly snapped a picture of you with your mouth open to accept another spoonful of food. "I have a day job, too. I don't even live here. I'm just on an extended vacation until the end of next week, then it's back to Blüdhaven."

Damian focused his glare on Jason next, who smirked back and shook his head.

"Legally dead. So, 'less you want Brucie Wayne and an innocent baby seen all around town with Red Hood, the crime lord, it's a no from me."

Damian weighed the pros and cons. Bruce shot him a look and shook his head, dismissing the idea entirely.

The boy grit his teeth. He scraped the last of the baby food from its jar and fed it to you, then delicately wiped the remnants from your mouth. You gummed at his finger and made grabby hands, indicating your desire to get out of the high chair. Jason scooped you up first with a swift call of "dibs!", carrying you away to get bathed and dressed for the day.

"Then...then you have to go into work with Timothy!" Damian demanded, facing Bruce again, who had finished his coffee by now and was eating a slice of buttered toast. The man raised a brow, looking only marginally more awake than he was at the start of the day.

"Tim hates being at the office with me," Bruce explained as Alfred came around to set a plate of pancakes, eggs, and freshly-squeezed orange juice in front of Damian. "Says the Brucie act is annoying to be around and it drives productivity down at least 8% every time. It's a lie, I've checked the numbers, but if he doesn't want to be at the Tower at the same time as me then I'm not going to push a non-issue."

"You?" said Damian, incredulous. "You aren't going to push a non-issue? You push everything. It may as well be your middle name."

He cut into his food with more force than necessary, cutlery scraping unpleasantly against the plate until he lifted his hands again. He shrugged off the hand Bruce tried to place on his shoulder, chewing angrily on a mouthful of pancake.

"I'm open to ideas, son," the man said, "but here are the facts: You have to go to school Monday through Friday. I won't let you homeschool because you need to socialize with people in your age group. Jason isn't interested in declaring himself alive right now. Dick doesn't live at the Manor full time and has separate responsibilities. Tim is juggling college, Wayne Enterprises, and patrols. Alfred is too ol— is aging gracefully, and might prefer to have more time to himself instead of watching the baby all alone for hours on end."

Alfred took Bruce's empty plate away with a very sharp look, then excused himself back to the kitchen.

Bruce turned in his chair to fully face Damian, who glared at his breakfast like it personally caused this mess, and not one hyper-empathetic man and his bleeding heart for orphans.

"Now, can you tell me how best to solve this problem without the occasional "take your kid to work day," or enrolling the baby in a daycare program?"

Yes, he could. But unfortunately for Damian, he had inherited a bleeding heart of his own, which constricted at the thought of giving his little sibling back up for adoption. Instead, he swallowed his next mouthful of food and sighed.

"More research is needed," he mumbled, which was the closest he could ever get to admitting he didn't know something. "However, my complaints still stand. Let the paparazzi get a bad photo if it means keeping the babe safe. Their well-being is your top priority, so act like it."

"Heard," Bruce said, sounding far too fond for Damian's liking. "Finish your breakfast and then get ready for school."

The boy grumbled but complied, and soon stood next to the door waiting for Alfred to pull a car up to the driveway. He watched Bruce carry you in his arms after he slung the duffel bag with your essentials over his shoulder, tugging the small hood of your red oneside up (Jason dressed you first today) over your head to ensure you didn't get cold.

"Have a good day, Damian," Bruce told him.

"Sure, whatever." Damian took you from his father and adjusted your hood himself. You grabbed his finger in your small fist with all the strength you could muster and tried to put it in your mouth. He gently pried it free, and Bruce popped a Batman binky in there instead. "You will be safe today. When I'm finished conforming to what American society deems a proper education, I will retrieve you myself."

Your binky bopped up and down as you suckled on it, staring silently at Damian. It was practically a yes to him, so he took it.

Glancing briefly at his father, he hesitated a moment, then kissed your forehead and quickly passed you back to Bruce before heading outside to let Alfred drive him to school.

Bruce watched him go with an unreadable expression. He quickly turned and faced Dick once Damian was out of earshot.

"Did you —"

"I'm texting you the picture right now," Dick said, thumbs flying across the keyboard. "What should the caption be for my Twitter post? #BestBrotherEver or #SecretSofty?"

"Either way, he's going to kick your ass."

[retiredteabag]

learning together

• parental Gojo looks after an ill-attached Megumi with abandonment issues

〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰

Megumi is a secretive boy. It seemed to Satoru that he hid everything. If Satoru wanted to know anything he would have to go through Tsumiki, the boys sister, to learn even the smallest of details. And even then, she rarely had anything but a smile to share.

For example, Satoru had been looking after the two little kids for months before he learned that the two of them only had one worn pair of shoes each, that and only a few articles of clothes.

"Well, why didn't you say anything?" He had scolded after seeing the blisters on Tsumiki's feet one night while watching Blues Clues.

He had realized that he would have to become all the more observant to see if there was a need in this household because he knew hell would have to freeze over for those two little kids to admit they could use help. Especially the young boy, Megumi.

It took three incidents before Satoru needed to have an intervention with the boy.

And oddly enough, they always occurred when it was just the two of them, alone.

Megumi always insisted on walking home from school. His sister was all too happy to take part in after-school activities, but the little introvert he was, he just wanted alone time.

This day had been no different from the others, he had been walking home, considering what he would have for dinner, when he saw it.

He would never admit, too ashamed of being called a liar, but the boy often saw things, strange, dark things, things nobody else saw out of the corner of his eye.

And there, right before him was something, watching him in the bushes, it was one of them, he knew it had to be.

Tsumiki always told him to be careful walking home. The woods of this area housed many of the homeless, and it tended to be no place for a child.

But here he was. Frozen still, the shadowy monster seemed to come his way, unspeaking, but threatening non the less.

Megumi threw his backpack to the front of his body, maintaining eye contact while frantically searching for something to defend himself.

There was nothing the boy hated more than being helpless.

His heart pounded in his ears, his fingertips burned with something he didn't recognize. But stronger than anything else, he was afraid. He wanted his dad. He wanted to hide.

He pulled out a pair of scissors, the same he used in art class, his arms trembled. He couldn't bring himself to make the first move so he was forced to wait until the curse came at him. He wanted to cry.

It did not take long.

He didn't even feel the ache in his bloody knees until the burning in his throat superseded all else.

He had rushed back to that apartment the white-haired man had arranged for them without a break in his step. And when the realization occurred to him of what had just happened, be felt the tearful nausea again.

There was no blood on his hands, but they shook with the fury it took to bring that monster to its knees. He had fallen to the ground with the beast, but the plunge of his scissors had gotten rid of it. Even if he was safe, however, he would never believe it.

It took a while to find the key he kept in his backpack. Fumbling fingers kept his keychain escaping his grasp. He was so encompassed by the afternoon's events that he did not even notice the tall man (boy) in the living area.

Satoru came by at least once a week, and recently even more than that. He tried to help the kids with their homework, stock their cabinets with snacks, and ensure their health. Megumi hadn't been expecting him that day.

"Oh! Megs! I've been waiting for you all day, you know, you're never home so late, don't tell me you've made a frien-" Satoru spun around so fast, the air around him seemed to make a noise with the motion. "What have you been doing?"

Put on the defense, Megumi shrunk back, "None of your business." Even after saying it, he worried he would get in trouble, worried he would be punished for talking back, despite Gojo's response to his snark always having been a chuckle, he knew adults hated disrespect.

The taller boy did not laugh now, "Oh, it's not? Megs you make me sad, what's going on? You seem tense."

The man was coming around through the common room and Megumi shuffled his bag to hide his bloodied knees. He didn't understand much of the man but he knew his eyes could also see things others could not.

"What's happened there?" Satoru pointed at the boys backpack.

"Nothing." Megumi murmured, trotting past Satoru and attempting to hide in his room. (His very own, though he often slept with his sister when he felt afraid)

"Ah, ah, ah, you shouldn't go fumbling around when you're hurt, Megumi. Come back here."

No, no, no, Megumi continued on, just about making it to his room when Satoru appeared before him. Megumi didn't know why he wanted to hide so badly, even so, he was frustrated to see the smile on the man's face. He was bent in a funny angle to look at the boy.

The boy would never understand how Gojo moved so quickly.

"Oh my, that looks bad." He made a bleh face, "How did you make it home on those knees, Megs? Hmm... I should give you a pager, shouldn't I, I don't want you running into trouble again without me. That must have been scary. Ugh, no fun at all.” All in one motion, Satoru grabbed Megumi and swung him around his hip.

"Stop! No!-" The boy flushed in embarrassment, but unbeknownst to him, Satoru could see the cursed energy encircling the boy.

And even if he didn’t say anything, he knew that something would have to change so this wouldn’t happen again.

After that day, Megumi did not walk home alone.

---

Satoru had been busy as of late, what felt like mission after mission, he was embarrassed to say, with how busy he was, he sometimes forgot he had two kids in his care.

He felt guilty, but the kids never asked for anything anyway. If they wanted something, he would get it for them. No questions asked.

It had been late one night, coming back after a mission that he saw his calendar and noticed with a grunt what week it was.

The middle schoolers were at camp according to his scribbles. Tsumiki was at camp and Megumi was all alone.

Why had he written this down? Could it be because he had insisted that Tsumiki go, promising to look after her little brother?

Satoru sighs. Did Megumi need anything? He was just a boy... but self-reliant as a man. He had been sure the little guy would be fine, even so, he couldn't deny the tug on his conscience.

Satoru almost went to bed that night before he decided he needed to check on the boy. God knows he wouldn't call - even if it was an emergency.

The sight he saw when he opened the door would stick with him for years. Mainly because he found it amusing.

Little Megumi, face flushed, wobbling on his feet, a blanket around his shoulders, and a kitchen knife in his hand.

"What are you doing!" Satoru yelled from the front door.

"Wha-" cough "-at are YOU doing!" cough "You're not here tonight!"

"Yes, I am! Put the knife down, it's just me, Megs." Satoru folded at his hips and leaned in close to the boy. It was strange, Megumi never let him get so close. "What's going on, were you scared because your sister wasn't here?"

Satoru reached out and pulled the knife out of the boys grasp. His little hands were hot, and when Megumi sniffled, he sounded congested.

"'M not scared..." It takes a staggering moment for the boys' hands to drop. Noticing he had nothing to hold.

"You sick?" And for the first time, the boy doesn't flinch when Satoru reaches a hand to his forehead.

He is, however, quickly swatted away. "No. Why are you-" cough "-here."

Satoru felt bad now, Tsumiki had probably left three days ago, how long had Megumi been sick? And why did the stubborn kid never just ask for help?

Prefacing his care he began, "I'm here because I want to be." Satoru finally lets out. Once again, he scoops the boy up, blanket and all, and is careful to set the knife back in the kitchen before using his now free hand to swaddle the boy. "Have you been sleeping on the couch?"

"Mhmm."

"Alright. No more of that. I'll be here so you just go to sleep."

Megumi didn't have anything to say. He missed his sister. He wanted to sleep in her bed. He wanted to feel safe. He wanted to feel better.

"I have a doctor friend, okay? You'll feel spick and span in no time." Satoru ruffled the boys hair.

"No, I don't wanna see them..."

Satoru furrowed his brows, "Ya know kid, you're not very convincing, I can tell you're definitely running a fever. All sweaty… like a big ball of sweat..."

"Jus' go away." Megumi said as he nuzzled his face deeper into Satorus's shirt, "I don't wanna see them."

"Sorry Megs, I'm perfect in may ways, but healing is not one of my many talents. She's really good, you'll feel better."

"I don't need help. I don't want you-"

"Alright, Megs. Go to bed." Satoru manhandles the boy like a doll, tucking him in so aggressively tight, he would have to put in real work to come free.

The next morning, Megumi had never felt so indebted to someone, and it made him sick, despite having just been healed

---

It was only a year later that Megumi called on his cursed technique.

Deep down, he had always known there was something different about him, something pulling at the surface of his being, but now, looking into the dog manifestation before him, he could finally feel purpose.

"Nice job Megs, that little dog is one of your Shikigami." Satoru grinned down at the boy sitting on the carpet of the family room.

The puppy rolled around on the floor before Megumi, and the boy's heart raced.

"She's mine?" He reached out and the puppy, sure it was a dream, she toppled over herself to nose at his hand.

"Sure is!" Satoru smiled. "And there's many more to come. Haven't you listened to me at all, Megumi? You're gonna be super strong."

But the boy wasn't listening. Blood was whooshing in his ears, saliva was pooling in his mouth, his heart was beginning to thump, but before him was a little friend. He couldn't let her go.

"Alright. You'll probably start to feel light-headed so let go of that energy. You'll be able to call her back again soon.”

Megumi was feeling woozy, that’s for sure, but there was no way he would leave her.

The puppy flickered like a mirage. Blinking slightly, she sat up, wobbling toward Megumi.

He wanted to hold her in his arms but a rush of bile was forming in his throat. His head pounded.

The puppy licked at his hand.

uh oh...

"Stop that Megumi." Satoru placed a hand on his shoulder. "Let go. She's taking too much."

Megumi's throat clenched and he swallowed thickly. Holding onto his new friend tightly.

"Stop, Megumi! Enough!" Satoru grabbed the boy by the shoulder.

The puppy faded from the boy's grasp. Megumi lurched forward, barely catching himself, and puked all over the carpet.

Satoru's hand faltered, but just a moment thereafter, he began to pat the boy comfortingly. "It's okay." He spoke gently, "That’s alright."

The boy's shoulders shook, not with tears, but with the adrenaline rush that comes with the throwing up/fight-or-flight response. He was mumbling, a hand covered his mouth.

"'m sorry. Sorry." He trembled.

Satoru sighed, unsure of how to console the boy. “Hey, 's alright. She was siphoning off your energy too quickly. You'll learn to manage it." Satoru patted the boys back but he was stumbling to his feet now.

"Carpet...sorry about the carpet." He was saying.

Satoru jumped to stand, "What? No, I don't care! It's okay Megumi. You go sit down, I can clean up."

The boy looked angry. "No. I'm fine."

He always seemed to say that.

"Seriously, I don't care about the carpet, just go take a second to calm down, that was probably a lot."

"I don't want a second!” Megumi spun, elbow covering his mouth, uncalled-for anger in his eye. "I don't need help. Just go! I can do it on my own."

There was a surge of annoyance in Satoru before he realized the boy was probably just embarrassed.

Shoko had long since told him about attachment issues and the lack of trust to expect from the boy. He just wished he could get Megumi to let his guard down.

"Megumi." He called firmly. "Stop that. I'm not upset with you, and I don't want anything in return. What I do want is for you to take some deep breaths and drink some water. You're over-exerting yourself."

"Ergh!" Megumi grunted angrily, tears in his eyes, and fled from the room.

When Satoru found the boy again. He was hiding in the coat closet. His face in his hands.

Satoru had to remind himself that the boy was hardly six, and clearly had trouble regulating his emotions. He wanted to have a real discussion with the boy, but he couldn’t do that if he wasn’t comfortable.

Gojo leaned down, slid between the coats in the closet and closed the door.

“W-what are you doing.” Megumi scooted back on the narrow floor.

Satoru sighed, “I want you to talk to me, Megs, can you do that?”

In the dark, it was hard for Megumi to see, but his benefactor could make the boy out perfectly. “What…”

Satoru sighed, considered how to say it, “I know there’s a lot of pressure on you, and I know that doesn’t feel good. But don’t go forcing yourself, okay? Take things with stride, accept help, I don’t want anything from you, Megs, and you don’t owe me anything either.”

Megumi rolled his feet around, tapping his shoes together, “I know you don’t believe me yet, but I’m not gonna leave. Your stuck with me for a while, so let’s try to get along, alright?”

The closet was silent. Satoru felt stupid, his words too plain, his mind scattered.

“Gojo…” the boy stretched his ankles out. “It gets cold at night... I wanna change the therma-thermostat.”

It took all but a second for Satoru to grab hold of the metaphorical raft Megumi was giving him. “What? All this time?!! That’s unacceptable! That’s why you should tell me these things, this is your home Megumi, touch the thermostat all you want!” Satoru pouted, stood, and stretched.

He bent down once more after cracking the door open, the bright light shining into the little boy's eyes.

“Okay, what else should I know?” Satoru reached out to pull the boy to his feet,

And for the first time, Megumi took it.

〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰

This is just a little drabble, I feel like this is some of my worst writing because sadly I have several more ideas about Satoru parenting Megumi

[dwaekkicidal]

Lessons

˚ʚfwb!Bang Chan x fem!Readerɞ˚

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ summary: Just a regular session of your best friend helping you learn Korean <3

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ word count: 1.6k

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ warnings: fem!reader, nicknames; ‘honey and good girl,’ pvssy slaps, playful ass&thigh spanking, Chris calls himself Daddy once lol, rough sex, creampie (try to pee after sex pls <3)

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ notes: max and I spoke about this a few weeks ago and it was soo hot so I wanted to write something for it,,, but then I lost motivation for it for a while😭 anyways hope u enjoy <3

OH and thank you for 700 followers!! (im late so now so ~25 away from 800) :''') I have something planned for if/when I hit 1k hehe, Love u guys :>

DO NOT republish or translate+post my work!

After you had moved to Korea, you made it your sole goal to be completely fluent in Korean as soon as possible. You knew the basics and some vocabulary that got you through day-to-day encounters, but holding an actual conversation past introductions was rather difficult. So, this is how you found yourself in your current situation. Your best friend and fuck buddy of 2 years giving you weekly Korean lessons.

And this? This was a normal thing between you both. Sitting in his lap practicing while he sits there explaining things and kneading your thighs mindlessly. It was a normal occurrence! The only difference is you usually wore sweats or some sort of bottom that would cover your legs more. Today was one of the hotter days of the week, so you disregarded the extras and opted to only wear one of his shirts, nothing else.

His hands rubbed eagerly up and down your thighs, squeezing the flesh like he does with soft pillows. Again, it was normal, but today he seemed to be restless with his movements. You couldn’t help but let out a shaky breath when he mindlessly squeezed the flesh of your inner thigh rather roughly while he translated a word you couldn’t figure out. “What is up with you today? You’re more touchy-feely than usual.”

“Sorry haha. Had a long day so I’m fidgety.. And you know I can’t resist you in nothing but my shirt.” You only hummed in response. You believed what he said, but you also knew that he wasn’t stupid and that the apology was not for his roughness as much as it was for how riled up he knew you were getting. He was never actually sorry about being physically affectionate with you, but you both knew how you tended to get very horny when his hands were on you so desperately.

“Mmmm.. Let me play with you a little while you read, okay?” You shake your head and push your study items away, pulling a laugh from him when you mumbled out ‘Fuck that, I need you.’

“None of that hahaha. Focus on the reading, honey.” He said, placing a kiss on your cheek before leaning down and biting into your neck. You groaned and leaned back into him, grinding against him in an attempt to make him fold in your favor. He let the first few grinds pass as he left hickeys along your neck, but the second your hands cupped him through his shorts he grabbed your hips to still your movements.

“Hey.“ The commanding tone in his voice caught you off guard and had your hands immediately stop in their tracks. “Stop that. You’re going to finish reading this text and then I’ll fuck you nice and good.”

“It’s not that serious, Chris. It's just a few paragraphs, we can do it after or just skip out this week.. Plus it’s your fault I’m this horny anyways.” The attitude in your voice makes him narrow his eyes, and then he grabs your chin and angles you to look back at him.

“Watch your tone. And I’m not gonna tell you again,” His hand grabbed both of yours and placed them on the table before moving to spread your legs open for him. Then, he finishes his sentence and enunciates each word with a harsh smack to your bare cunt. “Finish. Reading. The. Article.” The last one comes off harder than the others and it pulls a squeal from you, making your hands shoot down and wrap around his wrist while your legs slam shut against his hand. He grabs from your inner knee and hooks your legs over his, keeping you spread for him, and he pulls your book closer again.

You can feel the teasing smile on his face after he places a kiss on your cheek and then speaks against it. “You only have one article left, honey. The quicker you read it, the quicker I can bend you over and fuck you into the table~” You can’t help but whine and nod. Once you look down at the material again, Chris’ hands that were previously rubbing your inner thigh move back to rub along your wet folds. 

Then for what feels like the next hour, but was really just 20 long minutes, you slur out the words in front of you as best as you can. Chris’ left hand swapped between drawing circles into your clit and pinching your nipple, while his right hand shoved fingers against your walls. And every couple of minutes he would swap between kissing your neck to sucking hickeys into your collarbone. However, you weren’t allowed to cum and any time you mispronounced something or took too long to read a word, a stern slap was sent against your clit. As long as you continued to read well, he would pump 3 of his fingers in and out of you.

By the time you’re halfway through the material, your mind is foggy and you’re almost drooling on yourself from the constant edging. By the time you’re on the last sentence, your legs are shaking and you're slumped against him letting out quiet moans. Your neck and collarbone were so red from his incessant suckling, and you were desperate to get this over with. And then, when you finally finished, he stopped all movements to place a soft, congratulatory slap on your thigh and massaged your hips.

“Good girl… Now was that so hard?” With that, he hurriedly clears the desk before helping you stand and then standing himself. The chair you both rested on was kicked backwards and your whole world spun as he suddenly pinned you to the desk. You whined as his hand held a tight grip in your hair and pushed your face into the table. His free hand playfully squeezed and slapped at your ass a few times before you heard his shorts and boxers hit the floor.

You sighed out his name as he teased his tip through your folds, silently pleading with him to hurry it up. “Shhhhhh… ‘Atta girl. You did so well, baby. Now let me take care of you, yeah?”

He finally sunk in and nothing but low, whiny moans left your lips as you clenched around him. His free hand grabbed a handful of your ass, squeezing it in appreciation while he slowly sunk every inch he had to offer. Once he bottomed out he gave you only a little bit of time before his thrusts started, albeit slowly at first but quickly ramping up due to his own impatience. It doesn’t take long for him to change to an unforgiving and rougher pace, his hand still holding your head against the table.

“Fff-fuck.. Christopherrr-”

“Yeah yeah, baby. Daddy’s got you. ‘M nice and deep, just how you like it right?” You missed the way he smirked when you let out a desperate ‘Uh-huh’ in response, but you could feel the way it encouraged him when his hips slammed against yours with more eagerness. He keeps this pace up for a while until he feels you tighten around him, and then he changes to slow, deep thrusts that make your eyes roll into your skull. 

The hand in your hair slides on top of yours on the desk, intertwining your fingers, and he leans forward to place his forehead between your shoulder blades, “Mmmm keep squeezing me, Honey. Fffuck, juuust like that..”

When you’re tipping over the edge, he places a kiss on your sweaty skin and moans against it. “That’s it, baby. Cum for me and I’ll fill you up just how you like it, okay?” You want to nod, but everything hits you at once so you can only cry out against your desk.

As your orgasm starts to fade into overstimulation, he fixes his posture and focuses on his hip movements. A squeaky moan falls from your lips as he suddenly bottoms out and the hold on your hip tightens. He threw his head back and bit his bottom lip as he came, attempting to muffle his whiney moans. He rides out his orgasm by sometimes pulling out and snapping his hips harshly against yours.

“Fuck… If that’s how we end the studying session from now on, I might consider this payment.” He jokes.

You let out a breathy laugh and he starts to pull out slowly, pushing you into the table as he did so. You take the moment to catch your breath when you realize he’s gone quiet and there’s the light feeling of breath on your thighs. Your head snaps back and you realize he was kneeling in order to watch his cum slide down your folds.

“Hey!” you whine and place a hand on his forehead, pushing his face away only for him to resist, so you use your feet to push him harder. He laughs at your embarrassment and stands up, pulling you to sit up as well and lifting the shirt off of you. He uses it to wipe you down before throwing it into your hamper and grabbing one of his spare shirts from your dresser. He steals a kiss before covering you in the shirt, then drags you to the living room to watch a tv show together.

You two spend the rest of the night on the couch, watching tv and relaxing in each other’s warmth. It’s no surprise when soft snores are heard and you look down to see his sleeping face squished into your chest. You huff out a laugh before you snuggle him closer. Then, your eyes get heavy until they inevitably close, and you fall asleep too.

Taglist:

@jiminssluttyminx @changisworld @juskz @linohumina

[little-miss-dilf-lover]

can i request

shy tasm peter was meant to eat out the reader so he reads a bunch of articles and watches a bunch of videos and he even makes her squirt for the first time and he’s cocky about it

you absolutely can! frothing at the mouth rn. thanks for requesting 💌

ATTENTION. 18+

tasm peter parker x fem!reader

wc. 1395 warnings. 18+ only. cunnilingus, squirting. mdni

⎯ ☆ ⎯

Peter is naturally very gifted with an abundance of smarts, his brain always seeming to master skills and abilities completely foreign to him. And while he was a jack of all trades, his confidence in those said abilities tend to lack from time to time. His mind making him question if he was even any good at the things he claimed himself to be.

Extensive amounts of time and effort gets put into research and reading, doing whatever deems necessary to fine tune skills.

And while things with you were fairly new, he wanted to make a good impression in the bedroom department. Essentially, he wanted to impress you, show you things that may very well be new to you both. 

Plans were made for you to stay with him this weekend, to spend a night or two at his apartment. There was no definitive talk on what was to happen, but you each knew what it would mean: two adults having their first sleepover as a couple. It was only common sense that it would lead to something more intimate.

Peter’s skills were fairly rusty, his knowledge and confidence on anything intimate seeming to pass with the love of  his previous partner some time ago. And so for the days leading up to your planned arrival, he immersed himself in research and forums: relearning the female form. 

He watched countless videos, all for educational purposes — spending hours on pornsites just to acquire as much information as possible. He really wanted to make this an enjoyable experience for you both, so to him, research was the way to go. 

Peter took a considerably lengthy list of notes, jotting down tips and tricks and techniques to ensure he was confident in getting you off. Though it’s easier said and done. The tricky part was always putting it into practice, applying the knowledge when the time comes.

And so, now you lay on his bed, underwear discarded somewhere on the mattress, bare legs bent in the air as if to keep yourself exposed and available to him. It’s always frightening to present yourself to a new partner: worries of what they may think and say. 

But with Peter, not once did you have those doubts. The way he simply is, is enough to distract those thoughts.

He’d admit, it was rather intimidating. Seeing in person once again just how complicated the female form is. It was almost enough to completely discredit the confidence in all that he’s learnt. But he prevails. 

He itches himself closer, steady breath hot as it hits at your cunt. He’s slow, movements feeling calculated but really he’s just trying to remember the steps in the hazy panic.

He presses a kiss to the crease of your upper inner thigh, the soft, fluttery touch an effort to build you up slowly. His hands cup the backs of your thighs, wandering, needy fingers pawing and squeezing at the doughy flesh. 

And so he presses another kiss, seering the act of affection into the other side, giving both sides similar attention. But between either thigh, there was something else that awaited his attention. Your pussy growing antsy with anticipation, a slight ache forming as he attends to the other parts of you — giving your thighs and ass cheeks the attention your cunt so clearly wanted. 

Though you wait. You keep your hands clasped to your chest rather than the locks of his hair, not wanting to hasten or progress things too much, too soon.  

His kisses eventually circle inwards and he places one to the centre of your folds, the light, brief moment of contact having more of an effect on you than you’d have expected. It was the attention to detail that caught up to you, the slow, timely movements allowing things to build up naturally for you.

He halts with the kisses for now and lines the expanse of your cunt with his tongue, trailing your folds up and down with the flat of the muscle. Unpointed pressure showing his lack of haste in the matter. He reaches your clit and his lips wrap around it, pucking yet another faint kiss. 

But he doesn’t part from it. Instead it’s like he’s latched onto it, mouth covering the sensitive nub with gentle pressure. His tongue pokes out between his lips as he swipes at your clit, flat tongue flickering over it unrushed. 

You release your firm hold around your breasts and instead place your hands atop his head, unable to keep yourself from touching him. Your fingers slot into the messy strands of hair at the front, antsy fingers simply using him as something to hold onto. 

The silent act of tugging his hair is quite enough to egg him on further, to encourage him even. The way you seek him out was something he found rather endearing, erotic too. The way you sound is also quite the confidence booster, your airy deep full breaths wordlessly telling him that what he’s doing is working. That he’s doing something right. 

He parts from your clit for a brief moment to kiss back down the length of your slick cunt, lips halting at the very bottom of you. His tongue sharpens as he begins to lick up you, the slight point curling up against your entrance with the movement. Though that's all it is. Nothing more comes from that little teasing dip into you. 

He laps at your arousal only to spit it back onto your pussy, combining your juices with spit of his own. And it becomes apparent that he’s starting to grow lost in the act, freestyling and abandoning his intricate, mental step by step. Like a sense of pressure and worry leaves his shoulders as he listens to your pants, your bodily reactions continuing to tell him that he’s doing a good job.

Peter retracts a hand from the cheek of your ass, instead moving it towards your cunt. He lines over the mess of your folds with his index, trailing over the spit and juice and arousal as he itches it closer to your entrance. His lips and tongue resume their attention on your clit while his finger begins to guide into you. Easing in with no resistance at all. 

He locates what he guesses to be your g-spot, the ridges and bumps of it later telling him that he’s correct. And so he starts to rub the pad of his finger against it, mimicking a ‘come hither’ motion.

And once again, your reactions guide him: fingers gripping tighter in his hair, breaths growing ragged and strained, hips winding, chest rising and falling. Every single one of your bodily responses coming from a place of deep, unwavering pleasure. His research didn't need to tell him that you were beginning to near your end, he could just feel it.

Many minutes pass with Peter repeating those few movements, the combination seriously altering the ability to control your volume. You whine and pant against him, the hands that once laid atop his head now sit on his shoulders, your force trying to push him away from between your thighs. The feelings of it all growing too intense. 

But that’s not what you really wanted. You didn’t want him to stop and he knew that also.

You feel that pressure build in the pit of your stomach and without much time to prepare, you're writhing against him, an unfamiliar sense of tension accompanying. His finger acts as a plug inside you as he awaits the moment, only retracting when the time feels right. He pulls his index and lowers his mouth, relocating to the bottom half of your cunt — lining himself with you to swallow as much of your squirt as possible. 

And once your convulsing and spasming subsides, he’s pressing soft, reassuring kisses to the inners of your thighs, making conscious effort to help you down easily. He adjusts and repositions himself, moving up the length of your body to hover atop you, face now close with yours once again. His cheeks blushing with pride.

His lips ghost yours and you taste yourself. 

“That was so embarrassing,” you mutter against him, head turning away bashfully.

He maintains eye contact, his head tilting with yours as if to signify the importance of what he’s about to say.

“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

⎯ ☆ ⎯

[bernardsbendystraws]

𝐌𝐲 𝐒𝐥𝐮𝐭 — 𝐂.𝐒.

Synopsis: Chris isn't too pleased with how short your skirt is.

Warnings: Smut, p n v, degrading, praising, possessive behavior

With love and big tits, Rose

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Your skirt was an issue. 

The short article of clothing had been so goddamn annoying to Chris and you all day. 

Chris was annoyed for a couple of reasons. For one, you were his. Only he was supposed to see your soft skin that dangerously high. He could see his buddies trying their best to keep their eyes up, but it was obvious how your thighs were basically magnets to any passing eyes. 

And, on top of that, he was just bothered. Angry and flustered. He was livid at lingering eyes, but his own had caused him a painful issue. An issue that made his pants uncomfortably tight against his groin. 

You were annoyed at Chris’s incessant hands that attempted to magically pull the fabric longer. It wasn’t gonna work and you were getting annoyed waiting for him to realize that. 

Getting dropped off by the group of friends, you both climb out from the back seats. Chris had insisted on sitting in the middle which was unusual. At first, you were grateful for the gesture. 

But, you realized why.

Chris didn’t want you to climb out after him. The skirt was already too short. No one except for him was gonna indulge more in the view. Unbeknownst to you, it was also for proximity reasons. His other buddy sitting in the back would not get to look—let alone touch your exposed thighs. 

So, you sat by the window. Chris’s large hand was covering your thighs, kneading the flesh a little more aggressively than what he casually tended to do. 

And that had you here. 

Chris was no longer trying to pull down your skirt. In fact—he had bunched it up on your waist. 

“Mmmm–Chris!” 

Your moans are muffled by the pillow your face is shoved into. Your nose aches with each thrust, but he’s hitting the exact spot that makes you feel numb with pleasure. 

“Yeah? My girl feels good, huh?” 

His pace lessens for a quick second as he leans over your back, his lips spitting a menacing chuckle. 

“It feels that good?” he mocks, in a faux soothing voice. 

The only thing you pick up on is the word ‘good.’ And it feels so fucking good. Nodding along to his degrading taunts, you moan loudly, lost in the pleasure of him slamming even deeper—-even harder into you. 

“Gotta—fuck—my girl—like the, fuck—like the slut she is, hm?” 

Your pussy is condensing down on him, squeezing him for dear life as you go rigid. Babbling nonsense, you feel your high of euphoria accompanied by a warm dart of liquid with Chris’s stuttering hips. 

Chris slowly pulls out, but you don’t move. You're still gasping for air, not even sure if the world around you exists anymore. Large hands grope on your propped up ass and thighs, spreading to expose you further. 

Your boyfriend grins sickly at the sight, proud of your fucked-out state. 

“Oh baby,” he whispers, soft kisses pressed on your ass, contradicting the way he had just abused your body with pleasure. “Such a slut.” he murmurs under his breath. 

He licks over your dripping cunt, humming at the sour taste of mixed cum.  “My slut.”

[riricatria]

Hi, hi~

I got some comments on the last post about if I'm going to write a profile for Phainon. You better believe that I will, I'm just as big of a hoe for the blond-blue-eyes six-feet-tall-and-super-strong fuckery he has got going on as the next person, but his stupid ass isn't oUT YET RAAAHHHH. Judging from the leaks, the patch in which he's released will drop a considerable lore bomb, so we'll have to wait and suffer together until then ( ;´ n `;)

In the meantime, though, I'm going to write other profiles. Stay tuned for *drum roll*... ☀️☀️☀️ (◕‿↼)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

CONTENT WARNINGS INCLUDE: Dark content (dead dove), cisfem!Reader, drugging (and needles along with that), the general stuff that comes with yandere content (obsessiveness, possessiveness, imprisonment, stalking...), one slap on the face, a gun is involved, gambling, threats of violence (both towards reader and their family), forced non-schmexual touching, vomit mention, NONCON, coercion, rope, fingering, oral in both directions, booty stuff, toys, overstim, brief edging, the boss form, some exhibitionism, this is 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓀𝓎 𝒶𝓈 𝒻𝓊𝒸𝓀.

Disclaimers can be found in my pinned post. The template is heavily inspired by @/cinnamonest!

S-FW

˗ˏˋ ★ 1. General look: How are they like? How do they behave around the darling? Are there any warning signs?

The Gambler. Stay away from the gambler, they all say.

Aventurine of the Ten Stonehearts is a figure you have only heard and read about. He's something akin to a manager, you've conceived. You know of his existence and have a vague understanding of what he does, yes, but that’s where it ends. There's not that much information about him online aside from a few rumours and some fans' musings. Judging from the pictures of him on the news and whatnot, he seems like a flashy yet charming person.

However, all of the people around you, literally every single one of them, are telling you not to pursue any further information about him if your own mental well-being holds any value to you. He’s a dangerous individual — the amount of power his people hold over the entire cosmos is copious.

And, more importantly, he’s an insufferable guy — or so you've been told. One of your friends has seen him face-to-face. They scoff and tell you that the man is just like everybody that has actually been in the same room as him says he is: cocky, cunning and downright malicious. He never lets his smile fall, he never shows anything but the particularly irksome kind of confidence that people who have never been humbled tend to have. Although, to his credit, nobody seems to have been able to knock him down a peg. He's an anomaly that spends his free days travelling and indulging in the art of wagering. He has taken a particular liking to the planet you're currently on, Penacony, for that very reason.

Well, everyone but one single person has told you to stay away from him. Everyone except one of your friends who happens to have caught a tiny little crush on the guy. They're showing you pictures of him, articles, gushing about how mysterious and suave he is. The opinion is contradicting everything you have heard about him so far. Of course, your friend holds no chance of actually getting with him, they know it very well themselves, but it's harmless fun to just imagine, right? You entertain their thoughts, and in the end, the chat does manage to pique your interest a bit.

You shouldn't pry further. Even your own gut is screaming at you not to. Oh, but you just have to see him for yourself. You need to witness him with your own eyes, you need to understand what all the fuss is about. Under the watchful eye of the Family, what’s the worst thing that could happen? And besides, you’re not planning on making a scene anyway — just taking a glimpse at him is enough for you. It would be a miracle if his eyes even managed to land on you out of all the people surrounding him. You’re not worried.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a citizen or just a passing tourist; you could be a member of the Astral Express, an employee at the Reverie Hotel, it’s all the same. There’s a single reason why anybody would decide to visit a planet like Penacony, and that reason is the Dreamscape. It’s all about having fun, it’s witnessing sights beyond anyone’s imagination and experiencing things that you normally couldn’t in the waking world. Surely you have enough things to keep yourself busy with without deliberately engaging yourself with difficult people. But after having heard that the man is around, an opportunity to conduct some research has presented itself. It would be a shame to miss it.

And so, you dip your feet into the pleasantly warm bubbles of the seashell-shaped bath. The liquid is faintly fragrant, a dreamy shade of lavender in colour, and the moment it touches your skin, you feel how all of the accumulated strain is released from your muscles. The room is locked, there’s nobody but you around, and you feel safe enough to settle into the Dreampool and close your eyes.

You’ve been told that there is one single location in all of Penacony where the guy is sure to be found. Taking his infamous nickname into account, it should come as no surprise that that place is a certain casino in the Dreamscape’s Golden Hour, and it’s exactly where you’re headed.

You wander through the bustling streets, crossing the oblique intersections, making your way towards the building with hearts and clubs painted on its high windows. The atmosphere is as lively as ever, the crowds are thick, there are people all around you enjoying what the realm has to offer.

Your heart is strumming in excitement; it feels like you're doing something forbidden — which you kind of are, in a way. Nobody knows where you're at, you didn't dare tell anybody about the adventure you were about to go on. It's supposed to be a surprise for your friend, you're maybe going to snap a few pictures to show them later. That, and the rest of your social circle's opinion on the matter would most likely not be very enthusiastic. Nevertheless, you're your own person: You can do what you want, and if that is wanting to go take a glance at some weird celebrity, that's what you're going to do.

The casino is packed as full as it could possibly be. There are people everywhere, drinking, revelling, and most noticeably, gambling. There’s poker, there’s slot machines, bets, roulette, two men are even playing chess with money on the table, and they have gathered a small audience around them. The atmosphere is surreal, almost: People are yelling, chanting, egging each other on. It’s nearly intoxicating. You have never experienced anything like this before.

However, the reason you’re here is, without a doubt, hidden behind the largest wall of spectators near the back wall. It’s clearly the main attraction of the place.

The multicoloured lights dye the vast room in all the shades of the rainbow. Bass-heavy, upbeat music plays on a volume that's just on the edge of being too loud, and there are men and women alike jumping and dancing all around you. You need to push through rows and rows of people, shoving them aside until you reach the front line of the crowd. There, you’re faced with the sight of a blond, sharply dressed man sitting at a blackjack table, leisurely leaning back in his chair, legs crossed. On his side of the board, there’s a tall tower of chips that’s nearly falling over due to its height.

It's him. Aventurine. You recognize him from all the clips your friend has shown you. The fair hair, the fedora, the extravagant choice in clothing — he's hard to miss. The guy looks nothing but relaxed and sure of himself as he finishes his turn.

His opponent, on the other hand, is sweating bullets. He has a single piece on his side, and as Aventurine proceeds to turn the played cards around, it becomes apparent that even the final chip is about to switch owners. The audience erupts, both in cheers and in anger. You remain quiet, eyes fixated on the man's form.

He carries a strange energy. You’re almost mesmerized. The way he presents himself is so… exaggerated. No, that’s not quite the word. It’s ostentatious. From the hat to the numerous rings adorning his gloved fingers, he practically radiates the aura of someone who could ruin just about anyone’s life within a heartbeat. You don't recall ever being in the presence of somebody with so much sheer charisma that you can feel it seeping into your skin. It fills the entire space. It's intimidating.

He’s looking at you. He’s looking at you.

Your gaze locks with his. As he pulls away from the table, his face pauses mid-expression, leaving behind a strange mix of a smirk and what looks like bewilderment. His eyes, despite being shielded by a pair of tinted sunglasses, pierce into you like daggers. Even through the lenses, you’re able to make out the distinct, peculiar pattern of his irises.

In a split second, he composes himself. The man on the other side of the board is in actual, genuine tears. You only get to witness his outburst for a moment, though, because the casino’s personnel drag him away from his seat, just barely dodging his frantic kicks and punches. His foot hits the table leg as he protests, and the pile of chips on Aventurine’s side topples over and scatters over the cards. The man is spitting out insults, trying to claw at the numerous arms holding him down. You would fear for your own safety if the staff didn't seem to be used to this kind of behaviour.

It's the nature of places like this. People come here and either lose everything they have or leave so rich that they could as well paint a red dot on their forehead. And, the worst part is that it's all agreed upon. You don't belong in a place like this, but you realize the truth of the matter a tiny bit too late.

Aventurine is a showman, through and through. It comes very apparent to you when he turns his attention to the people surrounding him, this time with a courteous smile. You can hardly believe your ears when he opens his mouth.

”Come play with me”, he suggests, pointing a single gloved finger at your chest. He taps the nail against the tabletop, beckoning you closer.

There's a horrible, instinctual feeling boiling up in your stomach. Every single thing about him, every last inch of him, is like a blaring warning sign plastered right in front of your eyes. For perhaps the first time in your life, you experience the true weight of what people mean when they talk about the gut feeling. There is, quite literally, a cold, thick sense of imminent doom deep in your guts. Adrenaline floods into your bloodstream. You're suddenly extremely aware of what's happening in your body.

All the eyes are on you, boring holes through your back, scrutinizing the way your hands twitch, how your jaw clenches. Your vocal cords fail you, and the words that are meant to come out as resolute are reduced to a mere mumble. You try to explain to him that you can’t, that you don’t have any money with you, you don’t understand the least bit about gambling. However, he simply shakes his head and makes a come-hither motion with two of his fingers, saying that ”it’s alright, he’ll pay for you”.

You value your life enough to take the offer without further objections. You pick up the chair that has fallen over amidst all the commotion and set it back on its legs. You take a seat on the other side of the table, sitting across from him. In contrast to your ruler-straight back and clenched fists, the way he picks up one of his chips and fiddles around with it is almost humorous. He spins it between his fingers with an impressive amount of dexterity. Then, after a moment of flaunting his tricks, he slides the item over to your side.

He asks you if you know the rules to blackjack. That you do, at least to the degree of being able to play, and you give him a meek nod. He gives you an acknowledging hum in response. He gathers the cards from under the fallen mount chips and begins shuffling the deck. He doesn’t save his skills in this act either: He twiddles with the cards, twirling them around with little effort, all while wearing a somewhat complacent smirk.

He sets the deck in front of you before asking you to cut it. You do, cautiously picking up a portion of the cards and laying it beside the other half. Judging from the way the corners of his mouth tug up, he’s pleased with your performance. Then, he trails the tip of his finger along the wooden top of the table, all the way to where your singular piece lies. He asks you to place your bet. You comply, pushing the thing forth. You don’t even know how much it’s worth, not saying anything to accompany the action, but despite the bad etiquette, he gives you a pleasant smile.

”All in”, he then states. Mortified, you can only watch silently as he pushes the entire pile of his chips towards you. Some of them fall off the table, rolling onto the floor and in different directions. A few people in the audience discreetly pick them up and slip them into their pockets. You look up at him with a questioning look on your face. However, judging from his expression, it appears that he could not care less about whatever ridiculous amount of money is tied to his haul. He begins dealing the cards.

You should’ve listened to everyone. You should never have even thought about stepping foot into this hellhole, but there's very little you can do about that now. He tells you to play. After a brief moment of contemplation, you open your mouth, speaking the word ”hit” in a quiet, dry tone. He places a card on your side of the table. You ask for another one, and then one more after that.

You need to get as close to 21 without going over the number, right? So, the total of 18 you have currently is a bit of a risky number. You end your round there. You don’t even know why you’re stressing so much; it’s not like you’re actually even playing with your own money — you’re not playing for anything, really. The singular chip can't be worth more than a few hundred credits. Besides, this is basically his other profession; a side hustle. You don't stand even the tiniest chance at winning.

You watch as he lays his cards on the table on his side, expression serene and calculated. He doesn’t look the least bit bothered, obviously, as his fingers glide over the black and gold backs of the cards in accustomed motions. Soon enough, his hand moves to hover above the upside-down one on his side. He taps the tip of his nail on it, prolonging the suspense. Then, with a smirk, he turns it over.

You can’t believe your eyes. He has gone over the limit of 21.

7, 2, 4, 10, it’s 23. You count once, twice, thrice, making sure you're not miscalculating. It's easy addition. You must be seeing things. There's no way. You’re sure that if there is a possibility of dreaming inside the Dreamscape, then this has to be it.

Aventurine spreads his arms and shakes his head in an expression of disappointment, but the gesture couldn’t be further from genuine. His smug face gives it all away; he’s not the least bit dismayed about the result. ”Oh, looks like I’ve lost”, he states in a completely unbothered tone, shrugging before he goes to push the pile of chips towards you. The pieces fall into your lap, in his lap, at your feet, under the table, everywhere. The audience erupts into yells that are just loud enough to drown out the sound of your own hammering heartbeat in your ears.

You leave the casino with heavy bewilderment and an absurd amount of credits that night. You can’t truly fathom a single thing that has happened in the past twenty minutes or so, nor do you really want to. The entire experience is comparable to an acid trip, almost — loud, intense, and completely and utterly incomprehensible.

Every single thing people said about him was true. You had planned out how you were going to tell your friend that you saw him, you had envisioned how excited they were going to be when you showed them the pictures you had taken, but all of a sudden, you don’t feel like ever speaking a word about him in a conversation ever again. Right now, you acknowledge that the correct course of action would be to refrain from visiting the entire Dreamscape for at least a month, if ever again. Your face is going to be recognized. Maybe you're already in the news somewhere. The notion fills you with horror. You can only hope that the insistent feeling of trepidation has left you alone when the morning comes.

But that’s not what is coursing through Aventurine’s mind. The sight of you is burned into his eyes like an afterimage of a bright flash. To say that he’s intrigued would be the understatement of the century. He’s amazed, he’s mesmerized, he’s completely and utterly enthralled by the maiden that happened to wander into the depths of the casino. It’s just his luck, he thinks.

He let you win the round on purpose, of course. There’s no way he could actually lose to some amateur like that. The fortune that has blessed him wouldn’t allow such a thing. It was a split second decision. Losing in front of an audience like that does sting a tiny bit, of course, but this, this is a result far better than any expectations he ever had. His wealth is practically limitless, so a few dozen million credits off his bank account is nothing compared to what he got to witness. He feels euphoric long after, even when he exits the Dreamscape and rises from the pale purple pool. Oh Aeons, he has to find you.

Aventurine doesn’t consider himself to be a person that’s easily affected by emotions and whims. Despite the amiable way he presents himself, he’s very guarded, very mindful about what he shares with others. He seems nonchalant, but inside, all of his alarms are going off at the sheer thought of you. He isn’t used to being bombarded with these kinds of sensations at all. He feels extremely vulnerable all of a sudden, and the feeling isn’t helped by the fact that you’re basically just some passer-by, a meaningless face amongst the crowd. Compared to someone like him, there's nothing that remarkable about you. However, it seems that the universe has decided otherwise.

He has experienced his fair share of fleeting crushes in his life, and he knows how those are: They’re brief, mushy, imaginary scenarios of people that you don’t truly even know, and they dissipate just as quickly as they form. This time around, however, it doesn’t feel like one of those. Whereas he daydreamt about that one person for a couple days a year or so ago, you won’t leave his mind even for a second. The quality of his work is deteriorating. He becomes more aloof, more absorbed in his thoughts. He has trouble concentrating in his own job, and for someone of his rank, anything less than perfection is unsatisfactory. His colleagues are a bit too frightened to comment on it, most likely, but he notices the effects you have on him. You’re indirectly hindering his life.

Truthfully, he’s terrified at the feelings that are growing inside of him. With all he has gone through in his life, personal relationships have always been sort of a taboo to him. His family died, he had to abandon his home, he went to hell and back just to get to where he is now. That, and he’s an especially volatile kind of a person in general. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that what started as brief fascination quickly turns into a full-blown obsession — ”quickly” meaning in a span of a couple of weeks. There’s a part of him that’s telling him to hit the brakes, to stop whatever he’s building up to doing. However, he ends up deciding that, if these emotions truly are a crime against humanity, he will gladly fall even further into depravity; further than he already has, anyway.

When it comes to you and Aventurine crossing paths, you’re under the impression that the casino was the first and last time you ever interacted with each other. That much is actually true, in a way. You see, his story, however, is just a tiny bit different to yours. The IPC has eyes all over the planet, the galaxy, the entire universe. He himself doesn’t need to be the one keeping track of where you are.

He doesn’t stalk you in the classic sense. What he does, however, is find your room number, your phone number, your social media accounts, the names of your family members, your home planet, your friends’ contacts… Nothing is too far out of his reach. Aside from the trivialities (stuff like your social security number), he starts fishing for any and all pieces of information about you that he could possibly want. Your favourite food, what you like to spend your free time doing, your pet’s name, your pet’s favourite food, your shoe size, your pet’s shoe size — nothing is off-limits for him.

There starts to be weird activity in your bank account. Money begins appearing out of nowhere, and the senders are untraceable. The amounts are not that huge, it’s only a few thousand credits at a time, but it’s still very strange. An anonymous account starts following yours. A free meal is delivered to your hotel room. It’s all alarming, and there’s a tiny suspicion in your mind about who the culprit might be. However, even the mere idea is so horrifying that goosebumps rise on your skin. You deliberately turn your back to it.

When it comes to courting, there’s one (1) proper attempt Aventurine makes at trying to woo you, and it’s in the most diabolical way imaginable. It’s a few weeks after the casino incident, and you’re making your way down the streets of Golden Hour yet again. You have managed to get over what happened in your prior visit, promising yourself that you’ll never catch yourself in a spot like that again. After a good few days of feverishly scrolling the news only to find that your face is nowhere in sight, the panic has finally worn off. Instead of engaging in the thrill of gossip, you’re going to spend your stay enjoying the Scape’s delicacies and seeing the wonders of the theme park.

Just as you're about to turn a corner, a couple of hands come up behind you and cover your eyes. ”Guess who”, a male voice whispers in your ear. Huh, you don’t remember any of your friends mentioning that they would be around today, strange. You respond to the person with a sarcastic remark and turn around on your heels, fully expecting it to be an old acquaintance.

Whatever is in your hand drops to the ground. You stare at his lilac and turquoise eyes through the pink shades, your feet frozen on the ground, completely paralysed. It’s a miracle that your stomach doesn’t empty itself on the sidewalk on the spot. Right in front of you, with an uncomfortably slim distance in between, stands none other than Aventurine.

He’s holding two bottles of SoulGlad in his hand. He’s about to open his mouth, but before he can get a single word out, you bolt in the opposite direction as fast as your feet can carry you. It’s easily the most surreal and terrifying experience of your entire life — making the previous scene drop to the second place — and you make the decision, right then and there, that you’re never going to step foot into the Dreamscape ever again. At least not while he’s on the planet, and maybe not even then. Unlike him, Lady Luck must have abandoned you completely. With how your head is spinning and the world is turning, it’s a miracle the encounter didn’t scare you right out of the slumber you're in.

Aventurine, on the other hand, is left standing in the middle of the street with one of his hands still half-extended. Despite what has just occurred, his pleasant expression hasn’t cracked the least bit. This just means that he's forced to take a detour to get what he wants; it’s no big deal, really. He has many aces up his sleeve, after all, and more than half of those are completely out of your control. It's a wicked game you've entangled yourself in.

All in all, there’s not much you can do to change the course of events that is about to follow. You didn’t respond well to his ”advances”, and you clearly won’t let him even approach you, so you leave his hands tied. You have a time frame of a couple of days to leave the whole planet if you’d like to avoid your rapidly approaching fate, but if you don’t manage to do that, it’s game over.

˗ˏˋ ★ 2. Securing: How will they abduct their darling? When, where and how?

He’s nothing if not resourceful. Aventurine, when it comes to just about everything, is used to having his way in, well, one way or another. It’s a selfish way to go about things, he knows, but considering his past, he would say that he deserves as much.

His method of choice in kidnapping you is a bit unconventional, but it works nonetheless. It's his day off, and you haven’t left the hotel yet, he sees, to his delight. It’s a bit foolish of you to assume that the only way he can reach you is via the dream world. There are so many ways he could go about abducting you, there are so many open opportunities, but ultimately, it ends up being a single meal that seals your fate.

You’re having dinner at the hotel restaurant. You have made the decision to leave Penacony — maybe it’s via the Express, maybe it’s on a random spaceship — but you only have a few hours more to spend on the planet. You have decided to indulge yourself a bit, having a nice supper all by yourself while watching people pass by, going on about their day, excited to visit the Dreamscape. You wish you still had that same enthusiasm, but in light of all that has gone down, seeing what the rest of the galaxy has to offer is for the better. You're relieved, actually.

However, not long after you’ve finished your plate, your stomach starts feeling weird. Soon enough, the sensation grows into full-on, unbearable nausea. The meal must have had something wrong with it, is your first thought. Maybe it’s food poisoning, you’re not really sure, but you do start panicking the slightest bit when your vision starts shifting not long after. Your insides are twisting and turning, your head is spinning, you’re losing feeling in your limbs. It’s like you’ve just drank an entire bottle of whiskey. You're not sure if a single sound comes out when you attempt to call for help.

Everything is hazy. You don’t understand what’s happening around you. A person appears in your field of view, at least you think that it’s a person, and they ask something. Simultaneously, you feel a weight around your shoulders. Another voice speaks. You can’t make out a word. You’re barely clinging to your awareness. Then, as the two voices continue chatting, you feel your form being lifted.

Your vision starts going in and out. You can't feel your legs or your hands. You don't know which way is up and which way is down. There's a ringing in your ears, two different tones that you suppose are words, but you can't tell anymore. It’s mere seconds after that you fall into unconsciousness.

Oh, goodness, Aventurine thinks. He knows his luck rarely turns its back on him, but this must be a new record. Not a single person questions why he’s dragging a barely breathing woman on his shoulders. Or, maybe they do question it, in their minds, but none are brave enough to intervene. It’s kind of funny, actually, how easy it would be to kidnap any of these people, and the most prominent reaction from the witnesses would be a brief eye contact. Maybe they're trying to convince themselves that you're just a black-out drunk acquaintance of his, that there's an entirely normal explanation to this. Perceived status is a wonderfully rotten thing, he thinks. Plus, he’s in the core of his element: lying, deceiving, bluffing. He would’ve made a good delinquent, no doubt.

Heaving you through the never-ending hallways and sky-high elevators, he takes you to one of Penacony’s countless suites. It’s one of the many under his name, costing millions of credits, but money like that is nothing to him. He likes his place of stay a bit extra, and besides, he would hate to hear that you’re unsatisfied with what he has to offer. You, unlike all of the luxuries, can’t exactly be bought, so he better leave a great impression in this respect, at least. Bribery in the classic sense could only get him so far, and the thing he wants is you, not the idea of you that’s been achieved by throwing some expensive stuff your way.

He sets your limp body on his bed. You have been completely out of it for the better part of the walk to his room. The drug's effects are a bit too potent, it seems, but it will wear off in a good few hours, and he has that much time to get everything ready for you. He did his fair share of preparations, needless to say, but now that he actually has you, living and breathing, in his clutches, he starts considering things that didn’t seem that important before. What will you think about the colour of the sheets? He can replace those in a heartbeat if you’re not a fan, of course. What about the suite itself? It’s really large, there are more rooms than you can count for you to roam in, but if it’s still not vast enough for you, he can just buy a few more. It’s no big deal, really.

Oh, but he can’t let his mind wander for too long. Your sleeping face is so cute. Your expression is all relaxed, unlike when you laid your eyes on him back in the Dreamscape. Oh, how miserable the past few days of waiting have been for him, but it all has become worth it. There’s a bit of drool at the corner of your ajar mouth. He hopes the food didn’t mess with your stomach too much: As much as he adores you, cleaning puke off the carpet really isn’t his thing.

The few hours it takes for you to wake up are perhaps among the longest in his entire lifetime. He lies down next to you, slipping an arm under your head in a loving manner, making sure that your neck is not straining. He scrolls around on his phone, maybe going through your social media, watching some reels, shopping for some clothes for you to wear. He knows your clothing size, obviously, and your preferred style. Oh, that one’s nice, he’s going to get it for you. That one, too, and that one. He’s just idly killing time by spending insane amounts of credits in the span of mere minutes.

And then, you start stirring. He perks up, immediately putting his phone down on the bed and turning to your form. Your eyes flutter open, glossy and exhausted, wearily staring straight ahead. It’s clear that you’re still at least a bit disoriented. He reaches for your face, softly tucking a piece of stray hair behind your ear. Your half-lidded gaze fixates on his features.

Thank god the hotel walls are thick, he thinks. It’s a miracle that the sheer volume of your scream doesn’t shatter the pink lenses of his shades that now rest on his forehead. You attempt to scramble away from him, but the drug still hasn’t completely left your system, so you only manage to twitch around a bit. Your eyes, wide with terror, are flitting around the room, anywhere but his form, unable to truly focus on anything.

He watches you with something akin to intrigue as you continue your weak flailing and screeching. It’s a survival instinct, he guesses, the way your first response is to alert as much attention as possible, even though there's nobody else around. So, unfortunately, the only attention there is to get here is from him. He's sure you'll grow to welcome it eventually.

˗ˏˋ ★ 3. Life: What is it like to live with them? How do they treat the darling?

The first few days after the initial shock are basically just getting to know Aventurine in general. While he knows just about everything there is to know about you, you can’t say the same when it comes to him. He’s just some strange man from the IPC, and on top of that, his public image is basically limited to how wealthy and flamboyant he is. Aventurine isn’t even his real name, but that’s what you learn to call him by.

You grasp the basics very quickly. The suite will be your home from now on, at least for the time being. You can wander around as much as you want, but it must happen inside the walls of his living quarters. You can do whatever you’d like — flip the entire place over if you’re feeling like it, he can afford that. Your phone? Oh yeah, he got rid of that thing, you won't be needing it. Here, have a new one! The only person you can contact through it is him, of course, but it’s better than having nothing, right? Go on, say thank you.

Furthermore, he lets you know that the two of you are in a relationship now. Alright, alright, it can only be dating for now if it really bothers you that much. He doesn’t understand why you’re so very hesitant, really, he has an entire queue of people lining up to be his partner. If anything, you should be honoured and relieved, even! He could be some ugly 55-year-old fuck that collects girls half his age to be his sex slaves. He’s not like that, and as a cherry on top, he can make your life way better than it was before this. It just comes at the cost of... a lot of things. But no matter.

The money aspect becomes very clear to you very early into your captivity. He throws credits around like they’re receipts he found at the bottom of his bag. You could do as little as mention something you like; it doesn’t even have to be a specific thing, you could say that ”wow, that flower is pretty”, and bam, a bouquet of them is in your hands in less than half an hour. You have nice clothes, as much food as you could ever want, you have electronics, TVs, basically any streaming services that exist, (he probably downloads some popular gacha on your new phone and buys you a billion of whatever the pulling currency is), and you have his attention basically whenever and wherever you want.

And, he sure likes spending time with you. Whether it’s sleeping together, cuddling, just lazing around or being on work business, he has you with him nearly at all times. It really doesn't matter what he's doing, you're most likely going to accompany him.

His one favorite thing to do is just chat with you about mundane things, life, people, whatever. Or, the correct wording would be chatting to you, because you rarely feel like entertaining him with your words. That doesn't matter, though, because he could blabber away at you for hours on end regardless of if you're answering if he didn't have responsibilities to take care of. It gets irritating pretty fast. You're not a big fan of his monologues in general: There’s always a tiny bit of condescension in the way he talks to you. He kind of treats you like you were stupid, in a way, or that’s what it feels like to you.

Aventurine's job, as inconvenient as it is at times, does require him to travel quite a bit. Leaving you behind would be bothersome for a myriad of reasons, so more often than not, you're coming with him on these trips. He can’t have you be alone for too long, you know? He trusts his security measures, don't get him wrong, and taking risks is sort of his thing, but you’re the one thing he would prefer not to mess around with when it comes to that. So, oftentimes, you’ll end up accompanying him to whatever higher-up business is to be dealt with that day or night. It’s scary, you find, to see all the people that get to pull on the strings that control the entire universe's economy, ogling at the unfamiliar person that accompanies Aventurine everywhere he goes.

Oh, and prepare to be obnoxiously dolled up to the max for all of his gigs. Even if you somehow managed to bump into someone you know, you doubt they would recognize you under all of the bling-bling and makeup. If you didn't already, you'll soon come to understand that Aventurine is very particular about appearances.

˗ˏˋ ★ 4. Rules: What kind of rules do they enforce? How lenient are they? How do they keep their darling in check?

You directly ask Aventurine about the rules one time. You’re sitting at the table, having whatever he guessed you were craving for breakfast. He’s been yapping your ear off for the past twenty minutes, but as you air the question, he goes quiet for a while.

Pondering his answer, he tilts his head to the side, and his smile grows. Just by his reaction, you know that whatever is about to come out of his mouth is going to, if not ruin your entire day, then make you want to punch his stupid face in. He taps the tip of his chin with his finger as if considering his response long and hard, making little clicking sounds with his tongue, resting back in his chair with a thoughtful expression.

"Don’t try to escape", is the first thing he says. Okay, yeah, that’s given with whatever fucked-up logic he’s going by. ”Do what I tell you”, is the second rule he comes up with. Sure, you have kind of been forced to obey that one, too. He goes quiet after reciting the first two, and for a moment, you think that perhaps he's actually being serious about this.

Then, then, after remaining silent for a good while, he speaks out a third rule. And it’s not even a fucking rule. ”Your left heel can’t touch the floor when you walk”, or something equally as outrageous. It’s incredibly stupid, so infuriatingly specific, such obvious bait that you wonder if you should stab the fork in your hand into his eye right then and there. Your jaw clenches with the rage you’re holding back, and judging from how his grin deepens, he got the exact reaction he wanted out of you. He’s deliberately riling you up, making you mad on purpose, pushing your buttons until your circuits overload. It's terrible.

No, but seriously, all he actually requires of you is you staying where he wants you to: by his side and preferably with at least a neutral expression on your face. Ah, and don’t talk to anybody. As much as he doesn’t think that anyone would care enough about the ramblings of some random woman, he can’t take the risk of his reputation taking a hit because of it. On the side of all his hustle, he does serious business and represents the IPC, and if you don’t respect that, he’ll have to come up with a more creative solution to keeping you quiet.

When it comes to keeping you docile, Aventurine uses the classic method of locking the door. Since he is a powerful figure, the places he stays in aren’t exactly easy to break into, or in this case, out of. The windows are bulletproof, the locks would require a jackhammer level drill to break, and bursting through the walls is an idea you wouldn’t even entertain, he trusts. All in all, he doesn't really have to take any drastic measures to make sure that you don't escape.

There’s one exception to that, though, and it is if you’re seriously being a threat to yourself or him. Like he said, you can wreck the entire place if you’re feeling like it, but don’t hurt yourself while at it. If it looks like you’re doing less demolishing and more indirectly beating yourself, he might drug you much like he did when he abducted you. He keeps a syringe ready in the locked drawer of his nightstand in case you refuse to calm down. If you're refusing to listen to his warnings, he’ll just come up to you and stick the needle into whatever body part is available. Soon after, you’ll be nice and peaceful again. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off in an hour or two — you can take a nap with him in the meantime.

Oh, and he definitely uses threats to keep you in check. With all the power he holds, he has the ability to seriously affect the lives of those you hold dear. Wouldn’t it be a shame if one of your family members were to lose their job? It would, he bets. So, behave.

˗ˏˋ ★ 5. Consequences: What kind of punishments will the darling face? How do they punish different offences?

He’s… a bit stumped when it comes to punishing you. There’s locking you up, there’s tying you down on the bed, there’s drugging you, but beyond those, he hasn’t really thought about you being disagreeable to the point of him having to step up with actually disciplining you. He’s kind of lenient in this way; you can get away with a lot of stuff without any real consequences.

A big thing about him is that he refuses to make you suffer through things that he had to do back when he was a slave. Regardless of what you do, you’ll always have food on your plate and a bed to sleep in, that kind of thing. He doesn’t know what it is about it exactly, but even thinking of exposing you to those horrors makes his stomach sink. They’re completely out of the question.

What he will do, however, is firmly remind you about who holds the authority here. If you’ve done something really bad like managing to get into his phone or trying to talk to some poor IPC employee while he was away for a minute, you can be sure that you won't get off with a mere warning. He’ll grab you by your jaw or your neck, dig his nails into your skin, squeezing your cheeks together while looking down at you, directly in your eyes. It’s one of the rare times you’ll see him show anything else but self-assurance, and for once, the smile disappears from his face. He hisses right into your ear, telling you to never do whatever you did ever again if you’d like to keep all your fingers and the ability to speak. The point gets across.

The one thing that gets the worst reaction out of him, like with most yanderes, is managing to escape. It’s not only the action itself but also the fact that it takes a considerable amount of wit to be able to pull it off. He’s pretty damn meticulous about his ways of keeping you captive, and if you somehow succeed in slipping past those, he will be livid, both at you and himself.

If you do escape, it’s while on a business trip. As much as he would like to, he can’t always get a maximum security room to stay in, so your best opportunities to flee are when you're staying in a less guarded place. They are few and far between, but they exist.

With both physical and intellectual efforts, you may be able to make it out of the room you're residing in. Maybe it's via an unlocked door, maybe through a window, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that there is an entire nine minutes in between the moment of your breakout and when an extremely nervous assistant interrupts his business meeting to bring some urgent news to Sir Aventurine. She lets him know that ”something that belongs to him has been captured in the VIP lounge”. Digesting the information, he does his absolute best to keep a straight face in front of his expectant business partner, but he can’t help the way his eye twitches. He shortly excuses himself.

The moment you have to face him after his men have caught up to you in the lobby and carried you back to his room is… terrifying. The situation itself is awkward, certainly, at least to the two agents who are holding you up by both of your arms all the while you’re flailing your limbs around and screeching like a cornered animal. The description isn't that far off from the truth, either. It doesn't matter how hard you fight, or how much noise you make, Aventurine only dismisses the two men with a wave of his hand and a blank stare, saying that he’ll take care of it. And oh, he will take care of you, alright.

The second the door locks behind the two of you, you know it’s not going to be pretty. However, whatever it is that you expected him to do, it is not for him to pull out a revolver and point it directly at your head. Your eyes fly wide open, the profanities you’ve been yelling suddenly run out, and your body freezes in place.

He tells you to get on the bed. You don’t comply. He steps over to you, grabs you by the cheeks, presses the gun’s barrel right against your temple and repeats: ”Get on the bed”. You don’t even get a chance to do as you're told before he takes you by the neck and shoves you down on the mattress. Still holding the weapon to your head, he straddles you and reaches over to the nightstand to dig through the drawer.

Knowing what is to come, you flail and make an attempt to snatch the gun from his hand. He slaps you across your face. The action stuns you for long enough for him to pull out the syringe from the drawer and jab the needle right into your neck. You convulse and whine for a moment before going completely slack under him. He closes his eyes and exhales.

Although you don’t get to see it due to being under whatever he has injected you with, his reaction to the ordeal is rough. He sits next to you on the bed, back turned to you, his face hidden in his hands. He’s sweating all over, his cheeks have gone pale, his legs are trembling. He can’t believe you almost got away with it. How many people saw you, he doesn’t know. He can only hope that your little stunt won’t bring irreversible stains to his image.

˗ˏˋ ★ 6. Emotions I: How do they show love? How do they attempt to make the darling love them?

As mentioned before, you come to find out pretty early on that Aventurine is a ridiculously materialistic person. Initially, you think his only way of showing love is through buying you stuff, which is admittedly a fair conclusion to come to. Oh, and he does compliment you pretty often, but the praises mostly sound more like barely disguised insults. He may tell you that you look pretty while looking down at you on the bed where one of your hands is tied to the frame, for example. It’s more belittling than anything.

After a couple of weeks pass, however, you will see that his love language ends up being more about touch than it is about gifts. It will start in very subtle ways like leading you through a hall with a hand slotted against the small of your back or discreetly fixing your hair for you, but it quickly evolves into activities that are borderline inappropriate to do in public. He’ll start kissing you out of nowhere, sneaking touches at your inner thighs, stuff like that. In addition, he will start cuddling you to sleep whenever the two of you share a bed (which is basically always except for the times he’s out all night). And clearly, at least a part of the reason for the aforementioned things is that they get a nice reaction out of you. You’ll become all bothered, all flustered. What, "he’s doing it on purpose"? No, no, he would never. You’re imagining it.

Being able to feel you is a big thing for him. It reassures him that you’re, in fact, a living and breathing person. He has some abandonment issues that stem from unnamed reasons (cough, his entire family dying, cough), so naturally, he wants nothing more than to make sure you’re healthy, well-fed and, most importantly, there. He can’t bear the idea of losing another person. That’s why, whenever he can, he’ll hug you, hold you, caress you, give you physical affection in amounts beyond anything you’ve ever wanted. He might become a bit whiny if you refuse his touches, telling you that come on, just for a bit and come here, let him smooch you. He doesn’t want to admit it, but you hold much more power over him in this sense than you could ever understand. Inside, he’s still an extremely sensitive soul.

If the chance presents itself, he also loves to do fun activities with you. If there’s a free slot in his packed schedule, he might take you to see sights, to eat at expensive restaurants, that kind of thing. It is, admittedly, a nice change from being caved up in a hotel room for the entire day. He won’t say it out loud, but he’s a bit desperate for you to be happy, so if you’ve been grumpy for a long period of time, the likelihood of him taking you out increases tremendously. Time to start sulking for no reason.

He often takes you to the Dreamscape, too, when he has the chance and the two of you are on the correct planet. It’s much more safe to do things there than it is to take you to places in real life since you can’t physically escape from him. Obviously, though, the same rules apply there as in the waking world: Don’t talk to people, do what he says, and so on.

Lastly, Aventurine does, in his mind, show you love by keeping you safe, even though it doesn’t appear that way to you. All the effort he puts into making sure that you’re not in harm’s way is immense, you know? This stuff costs a lot, making sure that nobody gets to hurt you. The word is out, there’s a rumour circulating about Aventurine of the Ten Stonehearts having a lover behind closed doors. Gossip like that places quite the target on your back, so he’s actually doing you a favour at this point. Though, it’s not hard to imagine how all of it looks from your point of view. You win some, you lose some, he thinks.

˗ˏˋ ★ 7. Emotions II: How do they deal with the darling’s emotions? How are outbursts handled? How do they attempt to comfort the darling?

You don’t think that Aventurine is capable of showing genuine emotion, at least anything close to sympathy. He can be happy, he can be angry, sure, but when it comes to you, you have never caught him sparing a single moment to wondering how you feel.

In reality, he has, though, more than you could imagine. His guard is just so high that he never ends up baring any more than tiny glimpses of his true self to you. It's much less risky that way, but it translates to him being pretty horrible at dealing with your sadness and comforting you.

If he catches you crying, sobbing on the bathroom floor (which is not very often since your usual reaction is lashing out in anger), he’s at a loss of what to do. At first, he genuinely thinks that you’re just trying to pull his strings, that all the tears are just some pathetic attempt at manipulating him, and because of that, he ends up just teasing you. He tells you that if you wanted something from him, if you wished to go outside, you could just tell him straight up; no need for all these theatrics. He will ruffle your hair, poke your forehead, treat the entire thing like it's a joke.

However, when you start blubbering about how you miss your old life, your friends, your family, your home, he comes to understand that perhaps this isn’t about manipulation anymore. That’s when he reaches an emotional block he didn’t even know he had. He has never really had to comfort anyone, at least not in a very long time. Suddenly, all of the chaff leaves him, the words he had so carefully planned disappear into thin air, and he’s left with the realization that you, his darling, are having a breakdown right in front of him and he doesn’t have a clue what to do.

You think he’s mocking you. There’s no other explanation for his behaviour, he must be poking fun at your distress. You're not even surprised at this point. So, through your sniffles, you scream at him to leave you the fuck alone.

He’s a bit taken aback by your sudden outburst. He's still in the middle of calculating his options, but now that you’re clearly starting to show a negative response, he knows he has to act quickly. Truthfully, he can’t bear it. He can’t bear it, seeing you in such a state feels like his heart is being torn in half. It’s a visceral sensation. Deep down, he realizes that it’s him that’s hurting you, that it’s all his fault that you are this way. His skull is about to split open from how two completely opposite sides of his psyche are contradicting each other, yanking him in different directions: One wants to keep you locked up and safe, and the other wants nothing more than for your tears to stop. It’s an impossible equation.

Ultimately, the only thing he’s able to muster is cautiously setting his hand over the crown of your head. There, he lets it rest without moving, just silently acknowledging your feelings. It’s one of the only times that you’ll get a genuine, emotional response from him. He doesn’t speak a word, he simply can’t find any, and this is also the first time you can recall that he doesn’t try to fill the void in his soul by talking your ear off. It’s a truly bizarre situation to be in, in every single aspect. You regret ever stepping foot on the same planet as this man.

Afterwards, when you’ve calmed down enough, he’ll be very quiet for the rest of the day. There’s no teasing, no cheeky remarks, nothing. He might spend an abnormal amount of time on his phone, tapping away on his laptop, taking care of ”work business” (he’s looking at an empty screen), and so on. He doesn’t want to admit how affected he is by your sadness.

When the night comes rolling around, instead of spooning you like usual when you go to bed, he turns you around in his hold and tugs your face under his chin. You might ask about it, you may complain that it’s an uncomfortable position, that you can't sleep like that, but he won’t budge. He just tells you to go to sleep and slips a secure, warm hand to your bare upper back under your pyjamas.

He stays up long after you have fallen asleep. He’s afraid that if he closes his eyes, he’ll be haunted by nightmares so tangible that he would rather not rest at all.

Even in the future, comforting you is one of those things that he doesn’t seem to get any better at, no matter how many times he has to do so. It’s always clumsy, always leaves him embarrassed at how little he’s able to do about your emotional distress. You obviously let him know about it, tell him how evil he is, how much you hate him, and truthfully speaking, it does hurt him when you do that. He just doesn’t know how to show it, and even if he did, he doubts he ever would. You would just use it against him, he thinks (you absolutely would).

˗ˏˋ ★ 8. Thing to exploit: What are the darling’s best chances at escaping? Are there things the darling can use to their advantage? How can the darling make things easier for themselves?

So there are a couple of actually viable things here. Your biggest obstacles are his wealth and, well, his luck, and those are two very prominent things to be concerned about. Still, you do have a decent chance at escaping from him.

He’s very particular about the people he allows to see you, but not so much so that there aren't any opportunities there. One of the people you will come to recognize is Jade, but she’s one you should not confide in. She won’t give a flying fuck about your situation. It’s going to be quite a cruel experience for you if you were to talk to her: She might pretend to listen to your troubles, nodding along and offering something close to sympathy, but when you’re done, she will give you a polite smile and let someone know that ”Aventurine’s plaything is acting up again”. That, and no matter what it is that you told her, she will absolutely snitch on you to Aventurine. Not a good idea.

On the other hand, if you ever manage to get into contact with Topaz, she will help you to the best of her ability. It’s a rare chance if you do since Aventurine is very aware of how soft her heart is, and that’s why he has made an effort to keep the two of you from meeting each other. Topaz might, for example, bribe the employees under Aventurine’s command to ignore your escape if you manage to pull one off. There isn’t much she can do about you being locked up, but if the opportunity presents itself, you have a better shot at fleeing than without her help.

Whatever comes after making it out of his clutches, though, is a bit trickier. The IPC has eyes everywhere, all across the universe. You would have to change your identity, your looks, your name, everything to truly be able to avoid being recaptured. You would need to be extremely careful, very clever, and truly, truly lucky to escape from him for good. That, or you need to get another powerful organization on your side. If you somehow manage to contact the Family, for example, they might extend their services to you. Be careful, though, because there’s a chance that if you get someone like, say, Sunday involved, the only things that may change are your location and your abductor.

Aside from getting help from other people, there’s one thing to take advantage of that you might not consider at first. It’s that, although being a man and in a decent shape, you could, in certain circumstances, be able to overpower him physically. You come to see it one time when he’s trying to cuddle you in the bed. You’re not having any of it, you're telling him to stop, but he just won’t give it up. So, mustering up all your power, you turn around in his grasp and manage to get on top of him, briefly being able to pin him down. You’re not sure if you’re just imagining it, but you swear that for a second, there is a fracture in his expression, an ”oh shit”-moment of sorts. He quickly composes himself, of course, grabbing you by the arms and throwing you off of him. However, he is a tiny bit shaken up by the strength you had in you.

So, if you manage to catch him by surprise, there’s a chance that you could escape via the classic means of beating the shit out of him. Especially if you have muscle, this might be the most realistic option for you.

When it comes to making things easier for yourself, the simple answer is just to entertain his whims. Talk to him, spend time with him, tell him what you like, get to know him. He might even spill secrets from his past to you if he trusts you enough. Something like that is quite a strong psychological weapon against him, so it’s recommended to get as much information out of him as possible.

˗ˏˋ ★ 9. Further notes: Is there anything that sets them apart from the other yanderes? What unique qualities do they possess?

Gambling. There’s so much gambling. Anything can be made into gambling. Everything is gambling.

No, but in actual fact, Aventurine uses gambling as a method of getting under your skin just as much as he does it for the thrill. He gets very cruel with it: He might tell you to come to him at a random moment, leaning his elbow against the table while he plays with something in his hand. Look at the coin, he tells you. Heads or tails? Go on, choose. If you guess wrong, he will send a few of his men to your home planet to kill your entire family.

The colour washes away from your face in a matter of seconds. Despite the ruthlessly brutal thing he's suggesting, he has to stifle a laugh. You stammer out that ”no, you’re not going to choose”, trying to act all brave and unbothered, but he can see the way beads of sweat rise on your forehead, the way your eyes start darting around the room. You’re not fooling anyone. He knows exactly how to get you scared.

So, he tells you that if you don’t pick, he’s just going to give his men the command regardless. You look up at him with pleading eyes, wordlessly asking for him not to make you do this. He merely shakes his head in response. After silently staring at his fingers for a good ten seconds with tears threatening to spill past your waterline, you whimper out a strained ”tails”.

He flicks the coin into the air, playing around with it, rolling it over the backs of his fingers. You follow his every movement in horror, eyes going up and down, left and right along with the item. Then, he lands the thing on his forearm.

It’s tails. You don’t even attempt to silence the sigh of relief that slips past your lips as you see the result. He can barely keep himself from chuckling. Of course it’s tails, that’s what he intended for it to be. He would never (okay, almost never) put so much effort into getting rid of people you hold dear, that would simply break your heart, but it’s fun to keep you on your toes. Prick.

Aside from the obvious tricks, Aventurine has very very subtle ways of manipulating you. His methods are so cruel but so miniscule at the same time that you can’t even tell if it’s actually on purpose. The two of you might be resting in his room, you’re lying on the bed with your back turned to him while he’s on his phone. There’s music playing on the stereos. The current song is one of Robin’s; it’s a popular one right now. Soon, though, after the last few notes, the melody fades into silence before the next track starts. However, the very second you hear the first few beats of it, your head rises off the pillow to look at him.

It’s a song you know. Not just any song, though: It’s an obscure track from some band that has less than a thousand listeners on the app. Everybody has at least that one really small artist on their playlist that nobody else has ever heard about, and this is one of those for you. You’re pretty certain that you’re one of the few people in the entire universe who have ever played this song. And now it’s echoing through the room. The phone connected to the stereos is his.

He looks up from his device with a questioning look, gazing at you with the same, serene smile as always. He quirks his brow. You know he’s doing it on purpose. Or at least, you think you know. What if he actually just knows this band? But there’s no way, what are the odds? Well, the odds are in his favour, is what they are. It’s a bet on your part, to decide whether you’re going to confront him about it or not.

You want to be mad at him, want to scream at him, but simultaneously, that would be admitting that his antics have gotten under your skin. Besides, he’s definitely going to pretend that he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. The best course of action is to drop the entire thing. Despite the seething rage nearly spilling over inside of you, you let your head slump back down on the pillow. He’s horrible. (Like half of the stuff he plays through the stereos is also horrendously generic white-girl music. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to you to decide.)

On the nicer end, there are times with him that are actually tolerable. You wouldn't actually use the word "nice" for it since it's still against your will, but on the days when his schedule is completely empty, he may spend the time by playing cards with you.

It's one of the rare times that you don't want to bash his head in. He may call for you, beckoning you over to the table where he's shuffling a deck in his hands. He may teach you a new game, or you could play one that you already know the rules to, but the activity is surprisingly pleasant regardless. He guides you through with minimal teasing, calmly telling you when you're about to make a dumb move, sharing a few strategies with you. You listen and watch as his fingers play with the cards, spinning them around, showcasing his best tricks to you.

He might even let you win some rounds. He will place a meaningless bet on the games you win, telling you that you'll get to decide what you're going to eat for dinner today if you beat him, and when you do, the happiness and pride on your face is enough to make him swallow his remarks. The entire ordeal would actually be incredibly wholesome if it wasn't for the lock on the door and the key in his pocket.

On a completely different side of things, a very questionable encounter you will get to experience while residing in Penacony is when, by chance, you run into none other than a man called Dr. Ratio. It’s on some trip to the Dreamscape, when Aventurine has to take care of work business again, that you get to meet him. The two of them know each other, you come to find, because Aventurine immediately strikes up a conversation with him despite the guy looking less than pleased about the coincidence.

They chat for a while, but then, the Doctor lays his eyes on you. You can nearly see how the gears start turning in his mind. His expression doesn’t really change, but you still watch him go through confusion, apprehension and disbelief all in the span of, like, five seconds.

He doesn’t engage. Maybe it’s because the two are sort of like colleagues — or, rather, they both work under the same organization, but the man simply turns his gaze away from your form, continuing his discussion with Aventurine.

The situation leaves you feeling a bit agitated. You didn’t exactly think that the man would help you, of course, but he could have at least acknowledged you. He could have given you a nod, anything. He might very well have risked his position if he were to do that, you know that, but something tells you that the real reason is that he just can’t be bothered.

NS-FW

˗ˏˋ ★ 10. General look: How does their sexuality manifest? What does sex mean to them? How horny are they?

It’s… a bit multifaceted.

On one hand, Aventurine is undeniably somewhat of a sexual person. There’s a flirty undertone to his behaviour, he doesn’t shy away from showing a bit of skin (the chest window in his shirt is very deliberate), and when it comes to his history, he has had multiple encounters in his past, most likely with all kinds of people. He isn’t particularly reserved regarding sex. And he likes it that way, too. It keeps people guessing, makes it easier to catch deals with certain types of individuals. He’s a very flashy person in general, so it should come as no surprise that it extends to his sexuality.

Then, on another side, there’s a bit of a disconnect between romance and sex in his brain. He has noticed that, to him, sex isn’t necessarily something he uses to show another person that he loves them, at least not until you came into the picture. It’s more about the rush he gets from it, and it feels good, so of course he enjoys it. It’s just not something that he actively looks for or needs.

When you appear in his life, the previous statement loses credibility. He’s obviously still his normal self (at least to a degree), a bit provocative, that’s his style, but for possibly the first time in his life, he notices that he’s actually craving another person in that way. As in, he has an urge to touch you, to feel you under his fingers, to make you feel nice. Before he goes to sleep, while you rest in his arms, unaware of everything that’s going through his mind, he starts imagining what it would be like to have you under him, your hands tied to the headboard, his fingers inside of you. He hopes that you’re already in deep enough sleep not to feel his bulge pressing up against your butt.

He begins entertaining the idea of having sex with you for real pretty early into your captivity. You’re obviously not very willing towards the notion, he knows, but he’s sure that you’ll warm up to him eventually. He has certain tools at his disposal that might end up changing your mind.

˗ˏˋ ★ 11. Limit: How long does it take for them to have the darling? What is the first time like? Do they care about the darling’s willingness?

Physically, Aventurine is not a violent person. Don’t get him wrong, he can absolutely use force if need be, but when it comes to you, he would rather not. It hinders him from reaching his objective, which is ultimately getting you to like him. Forcing you to do something like having sex with him would be barbaric, even to his standards. However, when it comes to his own needs, there are compromises he’s willing to make to get you where he wants you to be.

So, he’s not going to take you by force, no. He’s going to offer you something in return that you simply can’t refuse. Say, how would you feel about getting to see what your friends are up to these days? You haven’t been able to contact them, of course, and he won’t let you do that even now, but what would you think of checking their accounts? Are you curious? He suggests all of this while pulling what you recognize to be your old phone from inside of his breast pocket.

You’re not stupid. You know there’s a catch, and it doesn’t take long for him to air it out to you. If you want to see how your friends are faring, you’ll have to give him a kiss or two. Actually, you need to make out with him and let him eat you out. All of those. It’s not that big of a deal, really, he says. Instead, he insists that he's actually doing you a favour: You’ve been awfully irritable for the past few days, so maybe this could even cheer you up a bit. But you don’t have to, of course. ”It’s your choice”, he says with a tilt of his head and a smirk so detestable that you want to slap it right off his stupid face.

You stare at him with your mouth ajar, all the while he stands in front of you, one hand on his hip while the other is dangling your old phone in your face. He’s being unfair, he’s being so infuriatingly obnoxious that throwing a fit and having to take the syringe would probably be preferable to whatever he has in mind.

But still, the proposal manages to plant the question in your mind: How are your friends faring nowadays? What about your family? You haven’t seen their faces in what feels like ages. You stare at your reflection in the black screen of your phone, looking into your own, desperate eyes. He knows exactly what he’s doing to you, and at this point, as you give in to your emotions, you have no choice but to fall for it. It’s deplorable, really; the way you suck in a determined breath before letting him know that ”okay, you’ll do it” in a tone that’s less than enthusiastic. Your lack of excitement isn't exactly ideal, but he will gladly accept the result nonetheless.

So, he takes you by your hand. However, you immediately whisk it away from him. You tell him that holding his hand is not something you agreed to while wearing a tiny, smug smile. Admittedly, he is a bit irritated by the remark: He raises his brows at you, letting out a contemplative hum, but continues his advances nonetheless. With delicate motions, he lays you on the bed on your back before climbing on top of you with a blush dancing on his features. He leans in for a kiss.

You keep your lips firmly shut. ”Touché”, he thinks, rolling his eyes before using his fingers to pinch your nose shut. It works wonders, and soon enough he gets the chance to slide his tongue down your throat. You don't dare bite him.

His hands are all over you, sliding along your sides, feeling your breasts through your top, all the while he humps his clothed dick against your thigh. Then, his lips start trailing lower, lathering your neck in open-mouthed kisses. It feels like he’s trying to eat you alive, and when he starts unbuttoning your top, you’re quick push your hands against his chest. You attempt to shove him away and point out that whatever he’s doing was not agreed upon.

You’re being difficult on purpose again, he thinks. You nearly celebrate your victory when he gets off of you for a brief moment, but then he lets out a deep huff before reaching for his belt. You don’t really get a chance to struggle before he wraps the thing around your wrists, making quick work of your hands and tying them to the bed frame.

It's when the true weight of the situation dawns upon you, and instead of trying to make the ordeal exasperating for him, you start doing your best to kick him off of you for real. As he tries to catch your legs, your heel manages to land a hit on his abdomen. He lets out a pained oof through clenched teeth, but you only get to enjoy the reaction for a second. There’s a brief change in his pleasant expression, and in the next moment, he grabs both of your ankles and forces your lower body against your chest with his entire weight. He softly tuts at you before pressing his index finger against your lips. He doesn’t even need to speak his mind out loud — a nudge of his head towards the nightstand and a suggestive smirk is enough to shut you up.

He tells you to settle down and relax. It's obviously not going to actually do anything to calm you down, but he feels the need to sort of pretend that this is something you want and need. Moreover, he twists it in his mind that what he’s about to do to you is actually a positive thing. It's for your own good, so get over it.

You’re trying to fiddle with the belt around your hands to free yourself. He watches your efforts with an amused expression. You can try to fight it all you want, he made sure that the thing holds. So, while you’re busy trying to resist him, he hooks his fingers under the waistline of your clothes and pulls your bottoms down. You hiss at his actions, badmouthing him, throwing insults at him. That’s cute, he thinks. Not much you can do about it now, so you should just try to enjoy it, no?

You only get a mere moment to prepare yourself before he starts devouring your cunt like his life depends on it. He just goes for it. And, you come to find that he’s unfortunately incredibly good at it. He starts slowly, giving some teasing licks to your clit, just above your entrance. He's biting down on your inner thighs, pinching around your most sensitive areas, riling you up like no tomorrow. You try your best to close your legs, attempting to shove him off your bits, but he just grabs you by the hips and pulls you flush against his face.

He’s awful. He somehow seems to know just where to prod to get your insides feeling all hot. When he truly gets down to it, after the gentle warm-up is over, you come to find that he's shockingly adept at trying to pleasure you. Still, with some effort, you’re able to distance yourself from the situation. You let your mind wander, thinking about anything else, how the room looks, what you ate today... You zone out and do your best to ignore whatever is happening in your lower half.

Oh no, you must have gotten the wrong idea, he thinks. He pauses his actions, getting up and on top of you from between your thighs before gently caressing your cheek. ”You do know that we’re not going to stop until you come, right?” he asks you.

You can nearly see the hearts in his eyes, the simultaneously pitying and mocking smile on his lips. Your insides flip. You try to bark back at him, telling him that he’s being unjust, that this is not what you agreed upon, but he just shakes his head and lets you know that no, you’re not the one who makes the rules. It’s him. So get comfortable.

Deep inside, he’s a bit offended that your go-to would be trying not to feel anything when he’s clearly putting his heart and soul into getting you off. Instead of disheartening him, though, it only makes him go harder. So, do what you want, nothing is going to stop him from plunging two fingers into your warm cunt. It comes with zero warning, and to his delight, you let out a whiny shriek in surprise. Good thing that the soundproofing is excellent here.

˗ˏˋ ★ 12. Preferences: What is sex with them like? What sort of stuff are they into? What kind of kinks do they have?

Oh, he’s… a freak. When it comes to his preferences, he truly is a force to be reckoned with. There’s mildly kinky stuff that he’s into, and then there are things that he would get a lot of looks for if he were to ever say them out loud. And, (un)fortunately for you, you’ll come to find out about the whole spectrum of his preferences.

There’s very little that he isn’t open to at least trying. He will lowkey go through your old phone's search history and find out all about what you’re secretly into. Nothing like that is off-limits to him. Besides, he will learn to know you even better that way! He doesn’t really understand why you’re so horribly self-conscious about something like this. It’s not like he’ll use that to his advantage or anything.

Bondage

He likes restricting your movements. The degree of it depends: Sometimes he might be satisfied with just tying your hands together, other times it’s your entire body. He’ll bind your calves against the back of your thighs, your whole arms behind your back — he’ll wrap you up like a nice little gift. Which you kind of are, actually; to him, anyway.

He tends to appreciate the aesthetic things in life, so he likes playing around with rope in the bedroom in that sense too. He’s quite skilled with it as well, he knows how to tie nice patterns around your chest, your legs, all of it. He might even install a hook in the ceiling so your entire body can hang in the air if he’s feeling extra freaky. It’s also easier to get through with the act those times, obviously, since you can’t do much struggling when you’re barely even able to wiggle your fingers.

He can basically do what he pleases with you when you’re bound. He can use you however he likes, he can finger you, eat you out, get his dick wet, stick a finger in your ass, whatever he’s feeling like. It oftentimes comes with blindfolding or gagging you, too. He’s a big fan of ball gags in particular: It makes you unable to spit vile words at him, and besides, you look super cute with it, he thinks. Covering your eyes makes you at least twice as receptive, he finds. You twitch more often, shiver, try to yank on the ropes, cry, even. He likes to see you struggle; it gives him an unexplainable, powerful feeling.

Toys, toys, even more toys, and overstimulation

Of course he likes using toys in the bedroom. What is there not to like? They spice things up, make certain things easier, and most importantly, they get you going faster than his hands or mouth ever could. And no, that’s not an insult to him, of course, he knows how to pick you apart with just what he was blessed with, but toys bring excitement. He can’t get the same effect with his hands as he can with a vibrator.

That being said, he really is a big fan of vibes, namely. Small, big, bullet, wand, gentle, industrial level, he’s all for them. He loves how your body reacts to them, especially if it’s particularly visceral.

One of his go-to foreplays is blindfolding you and tying you down like usual, but there's a bit of a twist. You’re expecting him to go down on you, stick his fingers in, whatever it is that he commonly does, but then a whirring sound fills the room. You barely get the chance to react before a vibrator is pressed right against your clit. You jerk back, naturally — the sensation is beyond intense, the thing is pressing directly on one of your most sensitive spots — but he just shushes you and follows your movements with the device. You can't get away. No matter how you struggle, the vibe is not coming off your cunt until you come on it, he lets you know, all in the infuriatingly mocking tone he uses on you when he knows you can’t clap back.

And he keeps his promise, too, and more. When you inevitably do cream on the thing, he doesn’t move it away or turn it off. You start flailing around, of course, you just came and you’re sensitive, but he doesn’t make an effort to stop. Go on, try to get him off of you — he won’t let you. He probably says something snarky like ”oops, my hand slipped”, all the while he continues tormenting you. His free hand slides next to the vibrator’s head, and he uses two fingers to spread your folds further apart. The action brings your clit out further, and he presses the vibrator even flusher against your cunt, aligning it so that it rests directly on your pearl. He notes that it gets an exquisite reaction out of you.

He keeps going, only stopping when you’ve been through a whole lot of orgasms back-to-back, and your entire lower half is almost completely numb. You lost your will to fight back somewhere in the middle, there’s drool on your cheek, your eyes are barely staying open, and most wonderfully, your cunt is fluttering and twitching around nothing. Delectable, he thinks. You really don’t understand what you do to him. It’s a good thing he snatched you away when he did because some other man would surely have taken advantage of you soon enough.

Aside from vibrators, he likes nipple clamps. You, however, tend to hate those the most because of how easy it is for him to tug on the chain that connects them, and you’re already whining. They’re a nice addition to your sessions. A little pinch never hurt anyone.

Butt plugs, dildos, anal beads, whatever it is, he probably has them for you in various sizes and colours. Aside from your cunt, he does like playing around with your ass a lot, so be prepared to get a vibrator shoved up there as well. He usually starts fiddling with the rear hole while you're already under a ton of stimulation from other areas, too, so when you're done, none of your places will have been left untouched. He has very little qualms when it comes to getting you off with different tools.

He will absolutely make you wear a plug to a meeting or an event the two of you attend, too. You’re obviously heavily against the idea, the last thing you want is for others to know what a freak you’re forced to be with, but there’s no changing his mind. Besides, it’s in private when the magic really happens. The idea of you having the toy inside you had him hot and bothered all evening, so when you finally return to his room, he will be insatiable. He will stuff both of your holes full of whatever things he happens to prefer that day, make you walk around the room on a leash with the clamps on your nipples, a vibrator against your cunt, all that stuff. And he won't stop until your slick is dripping down your thighs. It never gets any better.

Going on a tangent from the overstim, edging isn't really Aventurine's thing when it comes to you. Yeah, he might sometimes partake in it, getting you as close to coming as he possibly can without tipping you over the edge before pulling away, but he can never keep it up for long. He gets the kicks out of seeing you come, not almost come. Even if he tried to do it as a punishment, he doesn't think he could actually go through with it for that very reason. Ruined orgasms are another thing, those he might do, but only because of the overstim that follows right after.

Banging you in his boss form

Did you think he would not? No, did you seriously think he wouldn’t use the stone in the bedroom? Of course he would. Having this rare of a tool in his hands would go to waste if he were not to take advantage of it in the sheets at least once.

You don’t agree with the notion in the slightest, he comes to find. You’re straddling one of his thighs while he rests back on the couch, very clearly taking in the sight of you and enjoying the show. The monstrosity isn’t even that much bigger than his usual stature, but oh, he can see it in your eyes how wary you are of him in this form. Your brows are knitted together, and you visibly flinch when he raises his hand to move a strand of your hair off your forehead with one of his talons. The way the tips of his claws brush against your cheek, he shudders at the view.

Come on, then, hop on. Yeah, come on, it’s not even that much different to his actual one. Yeah, he knows, the dick is a strange colour now, and it has a few ribs, but the size is just about the same, and you have taken him before. What are you waiting for?

He bounces his thigh up and down a few times, encouraging you to properly climb into his lap and sink onto his cock. Your bare cunt rubs against his pant leg as he does, and you have to hold back a hiss. Aside from his appearance changing drastically, it seems that his strength has received a considerable boost as well. It wouldn't be wise to make him mad in this form, you admit, so best not to have him wait for too long.

You feel his nails caressing along your spine as you prop yourself on his hips. He’s letting you feel the subtle threat that comes with his touch, his fingers are tapping rhythmically against the bone under your skin, telling you to hurry up if you don’t want him to take the initiative.

You bite into your bottom lip as you feel his cock slide into you bit by bit. You feel every single bump, every single ridge as the thing breaches your walls. He throws his head back in satisfaction, exhaling deeply. He can feel the way your cunt constricts around him, obviously not pleased with the intrusion. Your breaths become ragged as you struggle to take him, your hips are subtly trying to nudge higher and off his junk. He brings his hand down on your thigh, gently pushing you back down. You curse at him in response, but he only shakes his head. You can’t tell what his expression looks like, the mask prevents you from seeing his face, but you would bet your entire life on it being a condescending smirk.

He starts heaving you up and down on his dick. You yelp, using more force to try and get yourself off of him, but there’s no budging him. Instead, he removes his hand from your thigh and slips it in between your legs. His fingers prod around for a little until they find your clit, and he begins rolling the pearl in between his nails. He’s being careful not to poke anything with the sharp edges, of course, and judging from how you go tense and your cheeks flush, he’s doing a good job. You should really be grateful that he isn’t sticking it in your other hole, you know. He’s showing you a lot of grace here, really.

… among other things

As stated before, he has very little restrictions when it comes to sexuality. There are very few things that he is completely opposed to doing, and similarly, there aren’t many things that he hasn’t already tried. In no particular order, more of his favourites include eating your ass, putting a collar on you, tickling you, dressing you up in horrendously humiliating outfits, even gunplay… The list goes on and on and on. However, all of the mentioned things have one thing in common: The reactions he gets out of you are entertaining beyond words.

That, and he’s a big fucking fan of talking to you throughout the activities. Whether he’s in between your legs or dick-deep inside of you, he can’t close his mouth for the love of him. Every chance he gets, he speaks out, praising you, teasing you, degrading you, yap-yap-yap-yap-yap. He says things like "come on, you're taking it so well", "you're so cute when you try to fight it", "it's not going anywhere, you're just gonna have to take it" and "stupid little thing, can't even take this much?". It’s like he constantly has a knife right against his throat that will slit his artery if he stops talking even for a second.

Oh, and he gets really descriptive about his musings. He might let you know what your cunt looks like to him in very precise detail. You wish the one wearing a gag was him and not you. As the cherry on top, he also likes to moan very loudly and right in your ear, even when he's not actually receiving any physical pleasure himself. He tends to mock the sounds that you let out, singing high-pitched whines against your cheek and chuckling right after. God, you wish the chandelier would drop on his ass.

And he gets so damn mean with it. He will belittle you to his heart's content, until your pretty face is adorned by tears, until you're begging for him to just stop. That's when he knows he has you exactly where he wants you: Nice and obedient, and most importantly, so fucked-out that you can barely get a coherent word out. He could bust right then and there with zero stimulation.

One of the most atrocious things he makes you go through is dressing you up in one of those bunny outfits. You know the one, a leather leotard and thigh-highs that barely covers your bits (plus a bullet vibe in your underwear, obviously). That alone would be terrible enough, but in addition, he takes you to some obscure casino while you're wearing the outfit. There’s girls dressed similar to you everywhere, entertaining the guests, but you stay firmly slotted in his lap while he plays roulette and empties the entire table. In his pocket, he holds the remote to the device in you, and obviously, he’s not going to let you catch a break the entire evening. (He will also totally place you as a bet on some gamble. He’s always going to win, of course, but the brief look of terror on your face is admittedly very funny to him.)

˗ˏˋ ★ 13. Punishment: What do their sexual punishments look like? What methods do they prefer?

Sexual punishments are actually a fairly common thing with Aventurine since it’s both exciting to him and effective in keeping you in line.

Out of all of the things he could do to you, he has one singular favourite when it comes to getting a point across, and it’s relentless, merciless overstimulation. You thought the regular sessions were bad? Be prepared to experience the torture at a degree that’s at least tenfold as bad.

If you’ve been misbehaving or being generally difficult, he might just load you up with toys and leave you like that for the entire night. See, it is handy that he has multiple beds available. He can’t have a good night’s sleep if there’s a struggling and moaning person right next to him in the sheets.

You know exactly when you’ve crossed the line between mild consequences and a night in agony. It’s that one distinct look that he gives you, his eyes are the slightest bit squinted, and he raises his brows, urging you to "go on". At that point, you stop whatever it is that you got in trouble for, shaking your head and trying to make up an excuse to get yourself out of the situation, but it’s way too late for that now. In a heartbeat, he has you down on the bed, thrashing around, but it does very little to stop him from chaining you down. ”You brought this upon yourself”, he tells you as he starts digging for the tools in the box under the bed.

He shoves beads in your ass, a generously sized dildo in your cunt, and he finishes the piece with a wand right against your clit. He turns the thing on at maximum setting. There’s no slow build-up like usual, he doesn’t warm you up in any way, it’s from zero to a hundred in a split second. You start screaming at him, telling him to turn it off, to get it off of you, but there’s only so many words that you can get out before he shoves a gag in your mouth.

You’re going to suffer through your punishment like a good girl, he lets you know. There’s no getting out of it, and you can be prepared for at least a good few hours of relentless stimulation. It might be for as long as he’s out on business, it might be overnight, you never know. Not being certain on how far he’s going to take it is a part of the fun, obviously. You’re under his mercy, and that if anything will get you behaving.

It’s also nice how obedient you are afterwards. When he finally gets the toys out of you and unties the bindings, you can barely move. He tells you to apologize to him for whatever you did, and in fear of him continuing the torment, you mumble out a barely coherent ”sorry”. It’s that easy.

Or, he might spank you. This is only when he actually has time to reprimand you, which isn’t that often, but when he does, you despise it. He seems to get even more out of it than the usual overstim hell. Spanking is his go-to if your offence isn’t one that he’s actually that mad about, like trying (and failing) to unlock his phone, for example.

Maybe he catches you red-handed, your fingers still tapping against the screen. Quickly, you set the thing down as if that would get you out of whatever is going to follow. It’s kind of adorable, really, how your eyes go wide like you were just caught digging through a cookie jar. He just tilts his head in curiosity, giving you a soft smirk before telling you to get on his lap.

It doesn’t matter if you put up a scuffle, you’re going to end up lying down on your stomach, chest pressed against his thighs. He uses one hand to keep your arms behind your back while the other one yanks your bottom down. Then he starts landing open-palm hits on your rear. The shrieks you let out are nothing short of exhilarating to him. It’s not even a minute into the act that his clothed dick starts pressing up against your side. It’s very likely that he’ll first switch to slapping your cunt before starting to finger you instead. Whether you like it or not, stimulation down there, no matter what kind, gets you aroused, and he’s pleased to find that you’re already wet for him. He makes sure to let you know that, too, of course.

˗ˏˋ ★ 14. Aftermath: What does their aftercare look like? Is there any?

Aventurine hasn’t done his job right if he can still make out your words after he’s done. Sex with him is obviously incredibly intense from your perspective, so your will to object to his advances afterwards is in the negatives. You undeniably require some attention in the aftermath since you’re barely able to lift a finger in your hazy, post-orgasm state. Plus, he knows the significance of taking care of one's partner after a rough time, even if the act itself is terribly twisted in this context.

He usually starts the aftercare by caressing your face, gently coaxing you out of your delirious state. It’s grossly similar to what a real lover would do: It’s soft and mindful, and most noticeably, it’s a complete contrast to what has gone down just mere moments ago. The next step, if needed, is to rid you of the implements he has utilized that time. He pulls the toys out of you, pinches the clamps off your nipples, unties your arms, slides the blindfold aside. He coos at you while at it, telling you how well you did, how good you were for him. You don’t have the spirit in you to let him know just what’s going on in your mind.

After the imperative part, he usually either takes you to the bath or just goes straight to snuggling your spent body. The latter is the more likely outcome since you tend to flake out quickly after he's done. It’s only the rarest of times that you actually muster up enough willpower to resist his embrace. He’ll be a bit displeased about it if you do, but more often than not, you can’t keep it up for long anyway, so it's not that big of a hassle.

Aftercare, for him, is the most intimate part of the whole act. It’s when he can truly, even if it’s only a glimpse, show you his true emotions. He can get awfully sentimental in these moments, too. He’s very responsive to anything you might ask or wonder about, his job, his colleagues, even his past if the stars have aligned. These are also moments when you can use his lowered guard to your advantage. Get that info.

˗ˏˋ ★ 15. Further notes: Is there anything that sets them apart from the other yanderes sex-wise? Are there any unique aspects to them?

The… The gambling continues in the bedroom. It’s no joke.

It’s, like, 30% of his entire personality, so why would he not include it in the sex? You think it’s beyond ridiculous, you let him know that he could perhaps consider using the brain cells that the Aeons have blessed him with, but no. You are going to gamble in the bedroom.

Think of it like this: Pure chance gets to settle what you’re going to do that time. Look, the coin will decide whether it’s going to be his fingers or mouth, and the number on the die determines the number of rounds. And no, you’re not going to get out of this one, either. Don’t you think it’s kind of fun, too? You’re throwing your bodies in the game, what could be more thrilling than that? Or, how about this one: The coin dictates if it will be the plug or the wand, and the dice will tell you the setting. Exciting, no? So, heads or tails? ”Fuck off”? Hey, that wasn’t one of the options.

Moreover, Aventurine, perhaps a bit unexpectedly, isn’t that big of a fan of receiving. It’s a bit of a complicated matter to put into words, but from the psychological viewpoint, being on the receiving end of sexual activities does very little for him. He doesn’t know why that is, exactly. He’s aware that his head is a bit fucked up in a couple of places, but that’s where it ends. It’s not like he won’t occasionally end up having you suck on his dick or similar, but he won’t actively seek it from you. He would much rather observe how each of your barriers collapse one by one under his prying touch. Dicking you down is also more about you than it is about him, and he doesn't necessarily have to come each time himself.

The exception to this is that if you, in the very implausible scenario that it occurs, voluntarily offer yourself to him. If you, out of your own volition, come up to him and inform him that you would like to give him head, he will unquestionably agree to it. He doesn’t even let himself consider if what you’re doing is just a manipulation tactic, simply because he’s so overjoyed by it. He won’t show it, of course — he’ll act all pompous, the usual routine, but inside, he can barely contain his elation. Of course, you’re only doing this to get something out of him, but oh well. He might as well enjoy it.

One more peculiar thing about him is that, no matter what you do, he will never actually hurt you during sex. It doesn’t matter if he’s punishing you, for a serious offence, even, he will (almost) never slap you around beyond your butt or draw blood or anything like that. He just can’t get himself to even think of doing those things to you. There will be threats, sure, those keep you pliant, but you can be certain that you’ll never be hurt physically aside from what’s strictly essential. Your nerve endings in a certain few places may very well be fried, but never anything more severe.

A/N

This was a bit of a tricky write in the sense that Aventurine’s character has an incredibly rough backstory. Don’t get me wrong, obviously the topics at hand in this writing are equally as heavy in the real world, but the difference is that it’s meant to be horny content here. Aventurine’s lore isn’t meant to be hornied at all, at least not in my eyes, so avoiding those tones brought some difficulty. I sometimes find it hard to walk the line between the two moods.

That being said, I decided not to touch on the topic of his past too much for this reason. Above all, these are fictional characters we’re dealing with, and technically I could write almost whatever the fuck I want, but this is where my ethics stand. I hope you had a good read regardless!

(Off-topic but I can't believe I had to do research on gambling out of all things to write this piece. What a ride.)

Extra Special A/N

I got an inquiry if I could tag people when dropping a new profile. So, I present to you, my one-person taglist ⋆｡°✩

@yourfavouritecitizen

[animeomegas]

Omega!Haku x Alpha!Reader - My Alpha

Congratulations to Haku, the winner of the second poll! It has been ages since that poll, but a lot happened in my life lmao I've been wanting to write some streamer!AU for a while though, so I hope you all enjoy!

Summary: It was equal parts flattering and embarrassing that you had apparently been named hottest alpha streamer by some weird, trashy gossip magazine. Your mate had his own thoughts on the matter, too.

Words: 1.7k

Warnings: None that I can think of, other than the fact that I didn't proof read this :D

"'How does it feel to officially be the hottest streamer?'" you read out from your chat, already feeling heat rush to your face. "Ugh, chat, seriously, so fast? That stupid listicle was bullshit by the way, there are so many alpha streamers hotter than me."

Nooo, you're super hot

True, but ur up there

I was most surprised by second place lol did he pay for that position?

one time my oma walked in while i was watching the stream and asked if i was chatting with a friend... i wish ☠️

You laughed awkwardly. It was still so weird to have parasocial relationships like this. Most of your friends had already filled the bullying quota when they'd found the article listing you as the number one 'hottest and most eligible' alpha streamer, but you would prefer bullying over people agreeing. It was so embarrassing!

"'What is your type then? For no particular reason 👀'," you read out this time, rolling your eyes. "That is privileged information! I'm a delicate alpha, you know, I can't go around letting such things slip. Think of my reputation!"

i bet ur into some weird shit lmaooo

I could see you with a super cute omega, like the type to give you cavities, just my opinion

oh no but how can i build my whole new personality in order to make you love me if i don't know what you like??? /hj

Speed dating stream pls!!

are you even single?

You looked at the last question and just answered with a wink and a finger to your lips. You and Haku had been together for over three years at this point, but he was still a secret. You hadn't wanted him to get any unwanted attention, nor have his career impacted by popping up on stream, and he seemed to agree.

Haku had actually just recently decided to quit his job now that you were making enough from streaming to support both of you, and was spending time tending to the house and working on projects. He had taken to full time domesticity with effortless enthusiasm, but he hadn't mentioned anything about his stance on popping up on stream having changed, so you continued on as you had been for years, happy to follow his lead.

You turned back to your chat to find a flood of thirsty messages.

i hope ur single because then i have a chance loooool

No way an omega hasn't mated you yet, you're so perfect!

i don't even know if you're mated but u deserve better regardless lol

anyone else notice how they always wear high collared clothes? 🤔

if you do have a mate i bet they aren't good or pretty enough for you, i swear

You were about to send a message to your mods to get some of the more toxic viewers timed out for a bit, when the click of the door to your office made you jump.

Was that Haku?! You startled and quickly muted your mic and pulled off your headphones. The door was behind your monitor and cameras, so no one could see him, but that didn't mean there wouldn't somehow be a reflection or rumours spawned by the sound of his voice. Didn't he know you were live?!

Sure enough, Haku glided into the room, long, brown hair loose and floating behind him, the strands brushing over the uncovered shoulder as the oversized t-shirt he was wearing fell off at one side. He was also wearing a little touch of make up, only noticeable because you knew his face better than you knew your own. Make up? But he was staying in all day, wasn't he?

You almost forgot that you were on stream for a moment until you stood up and the chair behind made a noise against the floorboards.

"I'm on stream right now," you said quickly shooting him a grin. "I'll be done in a few hours, okay?"

Haku only tilted his head and smiled, holding up a plate with a couple of savoury pastries on it.

"I made lunch." His voice was light as airy, but there was an undercurrent that made you pause. "I thought I could bring it in."

"Thank you, baby, I'm on stream right now though." You were blocking most of the camera and the microphone was off, but you were sure they could all tell that you were talking to someone, and there would be a barrage of questions as to who, especially just after the conversation you'd been having.

"I don't mind popping in to say hello," he said, that gentle smile still on his face. "Just for a second."

You blinked, mouth moving around nothing for a moment. He wanted to pop up on stream? It took a second to comprehend what he was dropping on you so suddenly, but you managed to boot up your brain with a slightly flustered smile.

"Oh! Yes, um, of course, if you want to." Haku started moving to your desk, putting your plate on the side. "Are you sure, darling, I don't want to open a door that can't be closed, you know?"

You sat back down, glancing at your chat briefly. Haku was still out of frame, but you could see him looking also.

Everything okay???

who're they talking to 👀👀

if that's their mate i bet our favourite streamer is way out of their league lol

Haku's eyes hardened.

"I'm sure."

"Okay, okay, right, I guess we're doing this!" You took a deep breath and turned the microphone back on. You were just going to play this cool, like it was no big deal. "Sorry guys! Funny timing actually, seeing as we were just talking about this, but my mate actually came in to bring me lunch! And he's the best cook ever, aren't I lucky?"

You lifted up the plate of mushroom tartlets towards the camera, careful to keep any from sliding off.

"He wanted to say hi, so you guys better be nice to him, okay?" You tried to keep your voice light and playful, but still serious enough that your mods would know what to do about anyone who said anything cruel.

Haku, understanding your introduction, poked his head into frame and gave a little wave, bashfully tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. You expected him to crouch beside you, but instead he gracefully slid straight onto your lap and leant his head against yours. One of your hands settled on his waist automatically.

"It's lovely to be formally introduced to you all. My name is Haku." A sweet smile pulled at his lips. "I've lurked in the chat before and you all seem so... friendly."

The chat went wild, moving so fast you could barely comprehend it.

UM????

Did they just summon a god live on stream???

👀👀👀ahhhhhhh

He is so pretty wtf

my self esteem is dead now lol i'm suing for damages

what is his name what is his name what is his name pls pls pls

is this a prank?

this reminds me of that meme about dating so far out of your league it makes it look like your partner is doing charity work lol

Your eyes narrowed on that last one. They didn't have to point it out so abruptly.

"That was mean," you pouted. "But admittedly true, Haku is well out of my league."

Haku giggled and the speed of the chat only increased.

wtf wtf wtf

he's laughing it's so pretty i feel like crying suddenly???

how did you two meet?

pretty boy pretty boy

this is literally the hottest omega i've ever seen

it feels like he's looking at me i'm embarrassed 😍😖

"Nonsense," Haku said, softly tucking his hair behind his ear. His shirt slipped a little more off his shoulder and you hurried to put it back. "I'm the lucky one here."

Your heart warmed, almost enough to drown out the immediately disagreeing of your chat.

Um lol

lies and slander

they wish!!

"Wha- you guys are supposed to be on my side, y'know?"

You immediately received about a hundred messaged along the lines of "not anymore".

Haku laughed again, kissing you on the cheek and silencing your complaints.

"I won't hijack your stream any longer." He turned to look at you, his eyes meeting yours for a second. Even after so many years, he took your breath away like no one else. "It's been fun though... It was lovely meeting you all. Don't hog my alpha too much though, okay?"

yes sir

whatever you say 🥴

if you get lonely you can have me as well!

How long have you been dating? Are you married?

nooooo don't go, haku stream when????

Haku stood, leaving your lap cold and empty. For a moment, he leant back down, lips to your ear but certainly speaking loud enough to be picked up by the microphone.

"Eat your food," he whispered. "I made it with love, after all."

Haku reached out with a finger and ran it around the side of your face. You could feel yourself getting warm. You were probably staring at him like a fool and everyone could see, but you couldn't find the power to stop.

With that, he left the view of the camera and exiting the room, but not before giving you a wink right as the door shut behind him. His scent lingered all around you, soft and alluring, and oh so tempting.

You swallowed harshly. You really didn't want to stream anymore. Thankfully the camera was waist up.

Chat wasn't showing any signs of slowly down.

if you don't eat his food and tell us how it tastes i will literally riot

did you sell your soul for him??

does he have any siblings?? cousins?? any dynamic or gender is fine, asking for a friend

their face lol honestly i don't blame them

🥴i thought I was watching a stream today not meeting an angel

couples onlyfans when? i'd pay for it

dude i'd pay so much for it i'd be homeless

You took a deep breath and pasted a smile back on your face.

"Alright, alright, that's enough everyone, don't be creepy! Let's get back into it."

[yintous]

꒰ 🧺 ꒱ ─── (𝓨OU) ON MY ARM?ㆍ₊⊹

gn! reader ; hoo boys and embarrassing things they’d do while crushing.

notes. pure fluff, not proofread, based on this ask! [masterlist]

PERCY JACKSON

“this one’s for you” and the ball lands EVERYWHERE but through the hoop

tends to talk louder when he passes by you with his friends (it’s borderline obnoxious sometimes because everyone around you can hear him 😭)

once thought that your ig note was about him so he replied with his own, and he realized that it was NOT about him when he saw another person’s name suddenly written on your note (he struggles to sleep at night when this flashback occurs)

you and percy were playing soccer with mutual friends and instead of kicking the ball to you, he accidentally threw his shoe at you 💔

looks through his profile and imagines himself as you so he could see if he looks cute or not from a third-person perspective

JASON GRACE

“the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” “no” “oh ok 😔”

was praying that you’d send him a bicep picture so he can show off for you like the way those people on tiktok do (he never got a bicep picture)

you leave him on delivered for five minutes and he’s already pacing around, clutching his hair and overthinking about what he did wrong

tried impressing you during a night of just dance and he was as stiff as a brick

was accidentally the first to view your story because he was stalking your highlights

LEO VALDEZ

when he was talking to you, he tried to lean on something to look cool and tripped on his own feet

searches up “flirty pick up lines to make crush fall in love with you” and has read a concerning amount of articles about it

doesn’t skip those random tarot readings about love on his feed and ends up giggling after finishing them

was chewing gum while talking to you and it flew out of his mouth when he laughed at something you said (he was trying to make his laugh sound as cool as possible too)

“where my hug at? 😏”

imagined you saving him from harm’s way before going to sleep. sometimes clarity by zedd, foxes play in the background too

FRANK ZHANG

there’s this photo of him photobombing a picture with your friends and staring into the soul of the camera on accident

what makes things even worse is the fact that he doesn’t know where the photo is— when he tried finding it in the internet, it was impossible to do so. it just weighs on him right before he falls asleep 🥀🥀

you once overheard frank yelling “I DO NOT HAVE A CRUSH ON [NAME]!” at leo when he was teasing him; when frank saw that leo was looking at a person behind him, he turned around and immediately became red at the sight of you

to this day, you still don’t know if he was trying to convince leo, himself, or you

genuinely feels comforted by perfumes or specific scents that remind him of you

© yintous do not copy, repost, plagiarize, or feed any of my work into ai.

[jewish-microwave-laser]

really good opinion piece by hamza howidy, a gazan man who is living in exile in europe. he was tortured and imprisoned by hamas twice for protesting against them, and now is helping start a new organization called realign for palestine advocating for peace over violence and pragmatism over extremism in activism for palestinian liberation!

i'll also be posting some quotes from this article by themselves bc i've found that the short and punchy posts tend to get more eyes than the long ones

[...] For three consecutive days, thousands of Gazans risked their lives to raise their voices against Hamas, yet their efforts have been overlooked by the so-called pro-Palestine movement in the West and by most of the news media as well. As someone who once tried to protest Hamas and ended up in their jails and torture chambers, I understand what this neglect feels like. I know the deep sense of betrayal that has touched every protester, the painful realization that they have been abandoned, left alone with no one willing to hear them.  It's as if the world has resigned them to a fate of living under Hamas’ rule, as if their suffering is too inconvenient and does not fit into the Western narrative of Palestine, which is why they have forsaken the actual people of Gaza, like me. Last week's protests were a watershed moment for Gazans, when so many in Gaza finally understood the true meaning of fake solidarity ‒ that to the Western "pro-Palestine" movement, Palestinians are not seen as real people with real struggles but as tools to be used in their ideological battles. Not only were the protests ignored by "allies" in the West, but so were the lives of the protesters and all they represent. 

'Pro-Palestine' activists protest for Columbia student. Where are they for protester killed by Hamas?

Hamas wasted no time in going after the leaders of the protests, threatening, torturing and even killing them. The family of Oday Nasser Al Rabay, 22, says the protester was tortured to death by Hamas simply for demanding a free Gaza ‒ free from Hamas and free from war. Where was the outrage from the "pro-Palestine movement" activists? Where were the protests in Western capitals for Oday? Nowhere. Because he did not fit into their ideological framework because his killing was not useful and too inconvenient to their narrative. Meanwhile, when a protester with a distinctly different profile ‒ Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student ‒ finds himself detained in the United States, the pro-Palestinian activists who claim to advocate for the oppressed wasted no time in flooding Western streets with protests calling for his release. His arrest became an emblem of resistance, sparking global campaigns to bring him home. But what about the young Palestinian from Gaza who, without the protection of international institutions, was tortured to death for his dissent? Oday was left to rot in obscurity, his brutal murder by Hamas nothing more than an inconvenient fact for the same movement that fervently defended Mahmoud. This stark contrast is not only a failure of solidarity ‒ it's also an indictment of the hollow, opportunistic nature of the so-called pro-Palestine movement. Mahmoud, a student in the West, was elevated to the status of martyr. Oday, a young man from Gaza, was left to die at the hands of the very regime that Western allies refuse to confront. The hypocrisy is staggering.  If the pro-Palestinian movement is unwilling to stand with the Palestinians in Gaza—those who are risking everything to break free from the shackles of Hamas—then what kind of movement is this?  If the pro-Palestine movement cannot recognize the bravery, the sacrifices and the legitimate demands of those fighting to end the reign of terror in Gaza, to end this war and to rebuild their city free of Iranian influence, then it exposes itself as nothing more than a vehicle for political expediency. It is a movement that uses Palestinian lives when convenient and discards them when they are inconvenient. If this is the solidarity these "allies" offer, then it is an insult to the struggle for justice, an empty gesture that does nothing to advance the cause of true liberation.