#like there is no practice period

[nomazee]

close to your heart and that bed of yours too

you've been having the same weird dream about dan heng, over and over, and it just so happens that he's had the same dream, too.

dan heng x gn reader — 2.4k — super suggestive content but definitely nothing serious or graphic, some guilt abt attraction, dreams, romantic fantasies but not weird ones, kissing and closeness and physical touch, literal sleeping together

notes: forgive me and my debaucherous writing... this is nowhere near smut but it's definitely suggestive they get touchy and feely but it's very emotions-focused...oh my god what did i write this is so

—°+..｡*ﾟ｡*ﾟ+.*.｡.—

It’s probably not possible to get cabin fever on a constantly-running space train, but that’s the only reasonable explanation for the weird, weird recurring dream you’ve been having about Dan Heng. It’s not— not that weird, not weird enough that you feel like a complete deviant, but enough for you to realize that it’s a complete reflection of your innermost thoughts and desires, and that scares you more than anything. 

The dream— it goes like this: 

You wake up—not in real life, but in the dream world, which freaked you out the first time because you didn't realize you were dreaming at all so you thought everything was entirely real—and it’s usually because of the noise of your door sliding open. The instinct to look and see who it is doesn’t hit you. You lay there, gaze fixed distantly on the steel surface of your ceiling until the feeling of your bedsheets moving next to you pushes you to full awareness. 

You still don’t move your gaze until you feel a body—warm, breathing, real real real?—lift up your blankets and slide underneath them, pressing next to you, curling into your side as if seeking out your life source. Your breath catches in your throat every single time as you turn to see that it’s Dan Heng, still dressed in his work clothes because he doesn’t understand the concept of pajamas, and his arm reaches around you and curls around your shoulder and he rests his head on your collarbone, gently, and you can feel his breath fan against the fabric of your shirt and your skin. 

Dan Heng says your name with reverence, with something like desire, and it makes your stomach clench and he turns his body into you more. He tucks his leg between yours—not moving, just sitting there, a reminder of him, his warmth—and he’s so, so warm, it amazes you that he’s like a furnace, and that he’s so unbothered by laying so close to you under all of your blankets. 

And he says your name again, each and every time, and it spurs something in you and you bring your arms around him each and every time, and pull him close, and feel the way he shudders, like a cold breeze wracking his body, like he’s never been this close to anyone before, and it dawns on you that he probably hasn’t—and that thought alone spirals into the realization that Dan Heng would never do this—

And then you wake up. Each time. 

The first time it happened, you didn't realize it was a dream, and you were so overwhelmed with thought after thought and feeling after feeling and sensation after sensation. When you finally woke up, it felt like you were grieving a loss. You felt too cold, and too empty, and curled into yourself and laid in your bed for an hour taking in shaky breaths until you finally got over yourself. 

You couldn't face Dan Heng for that entire day. Which was fine, because he spent his whole day in his room shuffling through the archives, so he was easy to dodge. But then you dreamt of him again. And again, and again, and then it just became a part of your nighttime routine to dream of your own friend so intimately and then wake up and pretend like nothing matters and nothing changed. Pretend like you didn't feel anything, and pretend like these dreams didn't flood you with guilt about your sick sick feelings and your sick sick fantasies. 

You tried to rationalize it, make yourself feel less awful. The dreams never went past him laying beside you, for the most part, and you preferred it that way. If they got any more intimate than they already were, you would’ve thrown yourself off the Express the next morning. 

Regardless, the Dan Heng in your dream and the Dan Heng that you saw every morning were different people, because the Dan Heng you saw every morning would never get so close to you. Would never lay in your bed and breathe on your neck like that. 

Never. That distinction is the only thing that convinces you to let yourself dream. You indulge, and it’s sickening, but you let your dreams happen over and over, and each time you hold Dan Heng tighter and tighter and tighter, and let him breathe against your neck, and feel the rush of his blood circulating through his body. 

One night, in one iteration of this dream, Dan Heng kisses you. It feels so real that it makes you nauseous. His lips were warm and damp and clumsy against the corner of your mouth, and he let out anxious breaths until you tangled your hands in his hair and tugged him closer and kissed him back. 

You woke up sick, running to your bathroom to puke in the sink as your hands shook in guilt. Somehow, you could still talk to Dan Heng normally that day, stomach twisting only the slightest bit whenever your gaze lingered on him for too long. 

Welt might have noticed how weird you were acting. There was a nagging furrow in his brow and he caught your gaze more than once and each time, you felt waves of humiliation crash into you, flooding you in heat and guilt and vertigo. He looked like he wanted to pry in that odd, awkward, old-man-paternal way of his, but you just shook your head and looked away and begged, hoped, wished upon a star that you would have a normal dream tonight.

The night— it goes like this: 

You lay in your bed, staring at your ceiling, leftover remnants of guilt swimming in your lungs and nightly congestion forcing you to take shallow breaths through your mouth. Thoughts run through your mind and slam into your skull at rapid speed. Has Dan Heng noticed how weird you’ve been acting? He hasn’t treated you any differently, but maybe it’s out of pity. Maybe you haven’t been paying enough attention, because you’re so busy replaying that dream over and over and over, obsessive, wondering if you should just let go of the rope you’re suspended on and slam into the water and drown in your wants and your needs. 

So you close your eyes, and you let yourself drift off and wake back up in your dream. You’re on your side now, instead of on your back, and the door is on the far wall behind you. You still hear it slide open, as it always does in this dream, and the footsteps get closer until you hear the shuffling of someone kneeling behind you. And then there’s nothing. 

Your blankets don’t get lifted up. There’s no warm body tucking itself next to you. But there’s— a voice, Dan Heng’s voice, and your heart sinks into your stomach as you hear the pitch of his voice, the vibrations of sound. 

“Are you awake?”

Your brow furrows, and you clench and unclench your fists twice before parting your dry, trembling lips. He’s never spoken in a dream before, not like this. He’s only ever said your name. Your fingers twitch with the instinct to pinch yourself. 

“Yes,” you respond, hoping that the confusion isn’t clear in the timbre of your voice. “What’s— is something wrong?” 

“No,” he says immediately. Clothes rustle as he adjusts himself. You’re scared to turn around and face him. You don’t know what you’d see. “You…” and he pauses, thinking of his words. Dan Heng would rather take a full minute to think about what to say, what words to pick, instead of stumbling over syllables, and it’s so unlike your own habits and as you think of this, your fingers twitch again. This time with the desire to hold his hand, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in this dream, but everything feels too real now and you don’t know where you are. 

Finally, he finds his words. You’re patient with him. “I can’t sleep alone,” he whispers, as if embarrassed to admit it, “not tonight. I trust you.” 

God. He can’t say that. He shouldn’t say that, because your head is spinning and you’re going to throw up. Your hand finds the strength to pick itself up and pinch the skin of your forearm. You’re not dreaming. 

“Yeah,” you cough out, sniffling afterwards to cover up your budding anxiety as you finally sit up and turn to face him. “Yeah, you can, um. Sleep here.” 

When he finally enters your field of vision, he looks the same as he always does—both in your dreams and in real life. It makes you sick. The guilt that you feel now comes more from the fact that he’s still in his typical outfit instead of pajamas. 

“Dan Heng,” you start as you shuffle back on your bed to make space for him. He follows your motion, kneeling on the edge of your mattress before adjusting the sheets around you to tuck himself underneath and lay down. “We need to get you pajamas. I don’t know how you sleep like that.” 

“I don’t sleep,” he admits, “not usually. I don’t need a lot of sleep.” 

“You do. You might not think so, but you probably do. I wish I had a spare set of pajamas, but— they’re all, um, in the wash right now.” 

“It’s okay. Your blankets are nice.” 

Words tingle against your gums, syllables of confessions lighting up in your mouth. You want to tell him that a dream-version of him has slept under a copy of these blankets multiple times before, that you’ve dreamed for weeks about him curled into you and sleeping, and saying your name, and kissing the corner of your mouth. Right now, you’re just laid side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, but you can feel how warm he is and his hand is so close to yours and you just want to hold it. You want him to say your name and look at you and hold your hand. 

“Good,” you say instead of everything else that you could say, because you have a sense of self control at times. 

Then Dan Heng says your name, rolling onto his side to face you, hands tucked underneath the side of his face in a stupidly endearing sleeping position. You follow suit, because your self control isn’t that strong. He doesn’t say anything else. Just your name, once. With reverence and desire. Maybe you’re dreaming it, but you pinch your knuckles again and yet you’re still in the same room with the same man in front of you. 

One of your arms is bent between you two, hand resting on the pillow that separates you two. Dan Heng’s own hand—warm, and breathing, and real— comes up to rest on top of yours, and you cannot believe any of this is happening. You want to pinch yourself again but his hand is curling around yours and he’s inching forward and you hope that your deer-in-headlights expression doesn’t scare him off. 

“Dan Heng,” you whisper, voice cracking with an embarrassing desperation. It’s a warning for him, before he does whatever he’s about to do. But he says your name, again, and his face is so close to yours that you can feel every breath fan against your face, and your entire body is warmed and your hand flips over to hold his, fingers slipping between his and tightening around it. 

“Have you had these odd dreams these last few nights,” he asks, a leading tone in his voice, “because I have. About you,” and he’s too honest, and you have to swallow your saliva before it turns into sweat and blood, and you feel his hand squeeze back around yours. His is shaking, and you find some kind of comfort in knowing that you’re not the only one. 

“Yeah,” you answer, because you can’t get more than one syllable out at a time tonight. Could anyone blame you? Would Dan Heng blame you for that, afterwards, even though his face is so close and his hand is so warm and it’s tight around you, and he’s shuffling around again, constantly fidgeting, and he takes his other arm and slides it around you, hand between your shoulder blades. He hooks a leg between yours, tugging you closer and closer and closer. You’re blinking at him, heart caught in your throat and eyes landing on his lips so that maybe he’ll finally take the hint. 

He does. He does, and as cliche as it is, it’s better than your dream. He kisses you, desperate, and right before your eyes flutter shut you catch the contemplative furrow in his brow. His mouth is—warm, damp, but you feel the crack in the skin in the center of his bottom lip. It scrapes against you and you can’t help the shaky sigh you release at the feeling, and the hand on your back curls into the fabric of your sleep shirt. 

Your eyes are closed, tight, scared that if you open them, you’ll just wake up back in your room, alone and cold again with your empty steel ceiling. Dan Heng’s mouth is moving against yours with a practiced proficiency that you’re almost jealous of. You let your tongue trace the edges of his teeth, carnal in your desires, before you bite down on his lip hard enough to leave a temporary dent. He shudders, hand trembling against yours and lips pulling back from yours as he tucks his head into your neck and lets out shaky breaths lines with addictive sounds. You’re going crazy. He’s driving you crazy. 

The hard, carved metal parts of his clothes dig into you. Your hand goes around him to rest on the back of his head, threading through his hair as his breathing slows against you. “We can go shopping somewhere tomorrow,” you tell him, already thinking of how you’d convince Pom-Pom to land at some shopping district of some planet. “You need pajamas.” 

“There’s no need for me to have that,” he says, stubborn and set in his ways, even with something as mundane as sleep clothes. “My normal clothes are fine.” 

“Not if you’ll be sleeping in my bed.” 

And that makes him succumb to your whims, much too easy for your own good, and you laugh when he lets out a weary sigh at your reciprocal stubbornness. Your fingers keep combing through his hair, soft and meaningful, until he falls asleep. You think you'll get him a blue plaid pajama set. He'd look nice in it.

[andthebeanstalk]

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

[kaninchen-reblogs]

I think this is the funniest fucking notifications I've ever gotten in Morrowind.

[little-pondhead]

Your Ancient History, Written In Wax

-

Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.

No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and hunting Danny down.

The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!

Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.

Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.

It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.

Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.

Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.

Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.

Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.

Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.

He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.

Danny returned to Amity.

The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.

How was he supposed to fix this?

-

In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.

Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?

Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”

“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.

“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”

Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”

Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”

“Here? Now??”

“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”

“I’m not following.”

“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”

“WHAT?”

[starrysharks]

STICKERz

[tradingjack]

cringefail late valentine's day posting some rushed kiss studies bc I worked like 36 of the past 72 hours yippee

and I STILL can't draw kissimg this shit haaard how yall do it 😭😭

[kneelingshadowsalome]

OK OK OK, but can we revisit the daughter "sitcom" scenarios?! I loved them sm.

Imagine Engel is out somewhere, like the store or whatever. Their daughter, who is about 12-13 at the time, just got her first period...😦

She just kinda awkwardly walks into the room and is trying to figure out how to tell him...

Konig is totally panicking, probably frantically calling Engels phone to get home ASAP. Poor boy probably didn't even know that you can get your period at that age and thinks some really bad is happening 😭.

But once everything has settled down, he starts to treat her the same way he treats Engel on her period, maybe even letting her stay home from school.

König is 1000 miles away from his comfort zone

I imagine the conversation goes something like this: (D=daughter, K=König, R/E=reader/Engel)

D: “I think my period just started…”

K: “Ja? Just remember to do your homework.”

D: “No, I mean… I think I just got my first period? I’m bleeding–”

K: “Bleeding? Where?? ”

D: “…??? There...?”

*uncomfortable staring and silence”

D: “I just… Do you know where mom keeps her pads?”

K: “...Pads?”

D: “Dad!! You’re just repeating my words!”

She leaves the room to look for the pads herself while König calls her mother: now imagine a colonel, a commanding officer of thousands of soldiers, responsible for important pre-decisions throughout the whole organization, calling his wife and asking what to do in this kind of a situation 🧍‍♂️ König is rubbing the back of his neck while walking anxious circles in the living room, almost bumps into a sofa while Engel calmly explains what's going on and that this is all completely normal.

When she comes back, König has just closed the phone, sighs, then takes a rather stiff stance to indicate he is about to give an important speech.

“Now then, my pretty young fawn. You are not my little girl anymore… Today, you’ve become a woman–”

“Dad, wtf?!? Ughh….”

She storms out of the room again, about to die from cringe: why does his father have to be such an embarrassment and an awkward mess? Why the hell did her mother even want this odd big loser as her man???

She’s sick of his stupid speeches and ridiculous rules and poor attempts at jokes, she's more than sick of listening to her parents’ disgusting cooing all the time. Only the noise canceling headphones can block out his dad’s profuse lovesick confessions before they start to bonk each other, thinking she can’t hear it all upstairs. Meanwhile she's not allowed to have a life of her own because the "world is a dangerous place"...

She can't wait to get out of this household, especially when even more cringeworthy conversations follow once her mother comes home. The only reason she's eavesdropping is because they're finally speaking of her instead of "how beautiful his sweet Engel looks" or "how silly and clumsy her big bear is":

K: “Does this mean she starts to have boyfriends?”

E/R: “She probably has had a few already.”

K: “What?!”

E/R: “Well not really. They’re just kids, fooling around. I wouldn't worry about it yet.”

K: “Should I talk to her about… you know, birds and bees? Just in case?”

E/R: “You? Absolutely not.”

K: “But–”

E/R: “I’ll talk to her at some point. They probably have sex education at school.”

K: “She can’t go to school. She said she was in pain.”

E/R: *sighs*

K: “What...? I already called them and said she's ill.”

E/R: “She's not ill, silly. It's just a period, it comes every month. You of all people should know...”

K: “Ja, I know... The torture days :)”

E/R: “Torture days for who?”

K: “I'm in so much pain every month, you have no idea...”

(Daughter upstairs makes a furious dive for her headphones :|)

[lunarharp]

Very important conferences.

[tomfrogisblue]

If you ignore them talking about whether they'd eat each others eggs if humans laid them, BOLAS was always a fucking terrifying team.

The whole team is just abandoned experiments, battle strategists and people hanging onto sanity by a small fucking thread.

The team is full of ex convicts, ex war criminals, and plenty of people with a perchant for using massive explosions to make a point.

Even those without good pvp or general minecraft knowledge make up for it easily with sheer bloody-minded persistence and willingness to die for those they are loyal to.

And in the team are some of the most cunning on the island; infiltrators, detectives, murderers, generals, presidents, secret society leaders, conspirators, anarchists

Add onto that the rage of grieving parents...

The other teams should always have been afraid of Team Bolas Rojas.

[scintillyyy]

related to my last rb tho i'm gonna be a bit of a hater again, tho, and say it. you are all very lucky that steph was written as good as she was back in the 90s. all the issues (the jealousy, the not as compentent as male characters, the mistakes, the unreasonableness, etc etc) could have, in fact, been way worse. and might've been, actually, under another writer at the time.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

To Shape A Dragon’s Breath

YA fantasy

a young Indigenous girl finds & bonds with a dragon hatchling - the first time in many generations for her people - and is required to go to the coloniser’s dragon academy in their mainland city, to learn how to raise her dragon and the science of its magic

historical inspired setting on the cusp of industrial revolution with steampunk vibes

bi polyamorous MC, Black lesbian SC, nonverbal autistic SC

[unproduciblesmackdown]

for the first time in ages an ebay search for Alex Kralie's Discontinued Striped Blue American Eagle Outfitters Hoodie turned up a result! a preworn XS one (with photos of a ruler across its height & width to reference against a garment of your own) with a small hole beside the top of the zipper (shown in photos also. mend Or just decide is alex kraliecore as is) & ships out of texas, $12.99 or best offer

[freebooter4ever]

I bet yall thought i was kidding about the thirst drawings continuing till this man scores

[meirimerens]

you know i must have been bone-tired when this part of the herb brides lore didn't come to my mind when i discussed how the Kin fundamentally differs from the cultures it is inspired by um There Is The Human Sacrifice part. like it's an important part of pathologic 2 that you are doing human, or anthropomorphic (if you want to see the Herb Brides as closer to spirits, which comes with its own set of problematics regarding how to approach their oppression) sacrifice. it's an important part of pathologic 2 that you kill a woman, as part of the journey and in direct resonance with you ritualistically killing cattle earlier, and she offers herself to you with cultural and religious significance.

human sacrifices have been done across the globe for millennia, but i cannot, for the life of me, find any source at all that mentions the Buryats (since that was the discussion point) partaking in human sacrifices by the turn of the 19th-early 20th century (or even anything past the 16th). every single source mentioning offerings and sacrifices i've read mentions animals, things such as milk and vodka, and often both at once. would love to read anything about these rituals if papers exist, but i'm personally drawing a blank.

the Kin has Obvious and very Visible influences but it also differs from specific (in this discussion's case, the Buryats) or wider (here, turkic/mongolic as a whole) cultures from the area by so many pieces, big and small, that i wouldn't have enough appendages on my whole body to count them all. and sister. i have plenty of appendages.

[porto-rosso]

there is so much aggressive misinfo abt toxic shock syndrome out there its a nightmare

[sysig]

A bit more Defeated, and thinking about this post (Patreon)