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herstroywritten · 3 years

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Magix Inn: One bed, one shirt, two idiots in love

OK. Confession time: I LOOOVE tropes. All of them. The oh I’m so cold and I don't have a jacket, so you gave me yours. Oh no, we’re paired together and I don’t like that. Oh look, we have to stay in this hotel together and (*cure shocked face*) there’s only one bed! All of it. Like, ALL of it. And when it’s done well... Ughhh, my heart can barely stand it. (If you want an A+++ example of it, go ahead and read Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and watch the new Shadow and Bone adaptation on Nextflix. Helnik serves all the tropes in all the best ways.) Anyways, my point is that that’s all this is, and I am fully aware of that. I needed more of these tropes with Rivusa, so here we are. Enjoy.

She's going to kill them. Every single one of them. And she was going to make it as painful and slow and agonizing as she could. Now that she knew how to extract mind control, she figured she could easily learn how to enact it. She would learn to do it overnight. She would! And she would most definitely use it on every single one of her suitemates, no moral obligations holding her back. In fact, she was doing them a favor by not opting to do it with her knives, the ones she'd begun training with a month ago or so. She was going to do it, no hesitation-

"You can take the bed."

Riven's words snapped her out of her fantasies. She forced herself to finally turn and stare at him. He was already standing in the middle of the room they had been assigned. The room that had a single king sized bed in the middle of it. There was a small window on each side of the head board, with thick tattered curtains covering the view of the barren land outside. A couch was positioned to the right of the bed, a door stood just a few feet above it. There was no dresser in the room, no closet.

Not exactly a five star hotel, she thought to herself. But then again, they were in hiding from a psychopath who thought herself to be the future ruler of the world, not on vacation. The cracks on the walls and the dust that could be seen covering every surface fit the murderous mood of their escape so much more than a nice cozy bedroom.

Musa wondered how Stella was holding up. Bitterly, she hoped that she was hating it. Served her right for leaping at the chance to spend the night with her ex-bodyguard instead of opting to share with one of the girls.

It had been a long night of traveling and by the time Dowling, Silva, and Harvey had finally located their destination, the whole group was practically a squad of walking zombies struggling to maintain awareness long enough to not fall asleep while standing up. After escaping Alfea, they had trekked through the woods continuously for 36 hours straight, needing to get as far away from the school as possible without using magic for fear of giving away their plan.

Their little group had been led by Professor Harvey, who somehow knew exactly where they were headed without using a map to navigate through the veils of greenery that they had bypassed. How, Musa wasn't sure. It all looked the same to her, and quite frankly after a while she seriously considered the possibility that they were just walking in circles. Sam and Terra had followed behind their father, pointing out harmful weeds to avoid touching or stepping on for the rest of the group. The rest of the girls had followed their orders, Bloom and Sky leading the charge, then Brandon and Stella, Aisha, Musa, and Riven. Dowling and Silva followed a few feet behind, making sure that no one was following them as they went. Needless to say, the journey had been endless and there seemed to be no end in sight. The students had been unsure of where they were headed, as the professors had refused to divulge any sort of extra information unless it was explicitly necessary.

In the end, they had walked out of the woods and into an abandoned city. White bricks and cracked cement littered the ground that they passed through, exerting great effort to not step on any broken shards of glass and cut themselves.

"Aster Dell" Bloom had whispered when she had seen the jagged outline of the town. Professor Harvey had nodded his head at her words, verifying their truth, and that had been that. No one spoke and no one asked the millions of questions that swarmed their minds. How were they able to see this place? Wasn't Queen Luna supposed to have it covered up? Why were they even here? Wasn't this a little too obvious of a hideout? Musa's curiously was running high, but her desire to just sleep was even greater so she had just followed right along as the professor led them through winding streets and in front of a rundown building that seemed to barely be holding onto its hinges.

Dowling had broken the silence, "Welcome to Magix Inn, or what's left of it. We'll make camp in here for the night."

Turns out Magix Inn was just that, and inn. And a tiny one at that, just ten boarding rooms to offer. Each boasted a king sized bed and minimal furniture. Unfortunately, the four rooms located on the south side of the building had been completely destroyed in the wreckage, so they were left with six to pick from. Dowling and Silva had taken the one at the very beginning of the eastern hallway, for security measures. For that same purpose, Professor Harvey had taken the one at the very end of the corridor, and Sam joined him. Sky had insisted he stay with Bloom for the night, attached to her as he had been for the last 36 hours, fearing that she would lose control of her magic again. No one bothered to mention that there was nothing he could really do if that happened again, they just let the couple slip into the room diagonal from Dowling and Silva's. Their door had barely closed before Stella had basically dragged Brandon into the room next to theirs, shouting over her shoulder "Good night everyone!" That left Aisha, Terra, Musa, and Riven. And two rooms. There had been an awkward silence, during which the girls looked back and forth between the three of them, daring each other to make the first move. When Aisha scooted slightly closer to Terra, Musa knew she was about to lose. Frustrated, angry, and just plain tired, she'd huffed and spun around to face the devil himself.

"Well, would you look at that?" Riven's grin was basically a smirk as he cocked his eyebrows in her direction, eyes roaming up and down the whole of her, his usual form of acknowledgement when it came to her. "Looks like we're playing roomies for the night." For some reason, he did not sound very disappointed at that idea.

"Not another word," Musa had growled at him, before making her way to the room second to last from the end of the hallway. In any other scenario, she would be happy that he was choosing to speak to her again but right now she couldn't be bothered.

And now, here they were. In a room. Alone. With one bed. Two sets of curtains. A couch that was definitely too small for either of them to sleep in comfortably. One door that led to the bathroom. Oh, and did she mention the one bed?

She finally stepped away from the doorway, letting the heavy wooden door lock behind her. As she crossed the room and headed for the bed, she couldn’t help but notice the dust that kicked up at her feet as she walked on the oriental rug that had to have existed for at least 16 years and who knows how much longer before then. The idea of sleeping here was almost revolting, but at this point she would give anything for a place to lay down, so whatever. They'd fought monsters and survived, they could outlive a bit of dust. What she might not be able to outlive, however, was sharing a room with the specialist standing behind her.

She dropped her backpack on the bed, choosing to ignore the dust that resurfaced with the motion, and turned to face him.

"Yeah, no. As much as I would love to watch you try to squeeze into that tiny little couch, it would be extremely cruel of me to make you do that after a day and a half of constant walking. Plus, it's a king sized bed. I don’t need all of it. We'll just share." She hoped that came out as causal as it sounded in her head.

Riven's smirk, the one that hadn't left his face since the sleeping arrangements had been decided, grew even wider at her words. "I suppose, if you insist. An Alfea gentleman would never ignore a lady's wishes, after all."

She scoffs at him. "I doubt you would count among the gentlemen of Alfea."

"Oh, I don't know. I've been told I have a way of outdoing myself when it comes to ladies' requests. Especially in the bedroom." He's eyeing her from the corner of his sightline as he makes for the bed, dropping his own bag diagonally from hers. She's suddenly flushed, from anger or blushing she's not sure. But she's not about to give him any ideas.

"We are not, I repeat NOT, completing any sort of requests tonight." She narrows her eyes at him, her voice strong and unwavering. It surprises her, the sheer strength behind those words because honestly it's the opposite of what she wants to say. The opposite of what she wants to do.

"Whatever you say." His statement is short, filled with hidden messages. He shuffles through his bag as she shuffles through her thoughts, watching him and biting her tongue so that all her questions don't come tumbling out.

He heads for the bathroom, and once she hears the door close, she pulls out her phone.

"Hello!" Aisha's voice is all cheer and chuckle on the other side of the line. Musa thinks she can hear Terra's giggle in the background, too.

"I'll kill you." Musa's reply is a lot less cheery and a lot more lethal.

"Oh, come on!" It's Terra's voice this time. "We're practically doing you a favor. You should be thanking us."

"I'll kill you. All of you." She repeats it, just to make sure they're really catching it.

"Musa, love, you know this has to happened at some point." Aisha's words are calm. "We're headed into a war. We're running away from school. We're going to have a lot more shit to deal with in a couple of hours, and you're still not in the right mindset for all of it. You’re in a completely different world. If you're so worried about it, just ask him. Better yet, just tell him."

"I don't know what you're talking about, " Musa mumbles angerly.

The sighs that she hears from the other side of the conversation tell her just how little Aisha and Terra believe her. It's silent for a second, and Musa can just feel the two girls going back and forth on who's turn it is to confront her. Terra's sweet voice comes through the phone after a few seconds, "Musa, we're not going to tell you what to do. It's not our place. But we will tell you what we see, because you're our friend and we love you and want you to be happy-"

"Terra, we're heading for a war. There is no happy in war." Musa's voice is monotone.

"Musa," her name is a warning on Terra's lips, a sign that she's used this excuse before and it hasn't worked. "Look, I know you like him. I know it's weird between you two. You had to go digging into his brain to break him out of a spell and he didn't appreciate that, but quite frankly, I don’t think he appreciated being Beatrix's little pet and Rosalind's spy either. So he can be bitter and mad about it all he wants, you did what you had to do to save his ass and ours."

"That's the problem though. He's no longer mad about it. At least, I don’t think he is. He's talking to me. Like, now that we’re in the room. He hadn't even looked at me since the I broke that stupid spell…" Her voice drops at that last sentence.

"That's good. Right?" Aisha's voice is a mix of encouragement and confusion.

"Since when are you in on this, Aisha? I thought you hated the guy?" Now Musa's just curious. How did they even get into this situation in the first place? How did she get here, sharing a room with a boy that has one too many demons on his shoulders and whom she's embarrassingly crushing on?

Aisha's reply is quick and defensive. "Oh, I still do. But, he's still Sky's bff or whatever and he's still your…" There's a pause that follows that particular thought and Musa takes the time to wonder how Aisha is going to finish that sentence. "You know what, I don't really know what he is. But he helped you train and you two had something going before, well, before he started disappearing to go do Rosalind's dirty business. Plus, for some unknown, godforsaken season, you're into him. As your friend and roommate, I feel the need to support all your dumb choices, within reason of course. So, yeah. I guess I'm in on whatever this is too."

"You sound like Stella." Musa's mouth quirks into a smirk as she picks up Aisha's groan from across the line.

"Don't remind me. Pretty soon, I'll start swooning over ex-bodyguard-turned-teammate Brandon too." They all get a laugh out of that line.

"God, I'd pay to see that. Poor guy has his work cut out for him, I wonder what they're doing right now." Terra's inquiry needs no answer, but Musa feels the need to comment on the situation at hand.

"I can't believe she did that! She just left us! You know what, she's the first one I'm killing. You two can pick between second and third place."

Aisha chuckles at her words before a yawn overtakes her and she replies, "Alrighty, it's bed time. We've got a long day tomorrow. And, Musa, just do it. Just talk it out and get it off your chest. You don't want to leave things unsaid, not when we don't know what tomorrow brings. You've already played that game before and it was not fun." Aisha's right, of course. Musa has played that game before.

Right before Riven disappeared, they had been training together for a while, which had somehow turned into them having lunch together on the daily, which had then turned into secret meetings at night in the greenhouse. They'd both needed some alone time, to catch their breath and just marvel at their messed up lives and all the fucked up shit that was going on. And for some reason, his little quips and their constant banter had become her new safety net, a web of comfort and solace, something she hadn't had since Sam and her started drifting apart. But unlike Sam, who was all calming waters and steady footing on a gentle boat, Riven had been all of the tumultuous oceans in the worst of weathers. She never really found her footing in the storm that was Riven and his thoughts, and that had brought her a comfort like no other. In a world where all they had was scheduled to the minute thanks to Rosalind's insane regime, his inconsistent thoughts had drawn her in. She'd wanted to break him open, tuck herself into the blanket that was his mind, and lay there until his emotions numbed both her and him. And, then, somewhere between aching to be numb and heavy innuendos, she had found herself staring at him more often than she should and thinking about him in ways she knew would do her no favors if she let them continue. But, she let them continue. And pretty soon, his loud emotions weren't just comfort and she didn't just want to drown in them. No, at that point, she had wanted to dive deeper into them so that she might try and shift through them. Try to untangle his deepest fears and settle them. To mold her own pain into the shapes that formed the cracks of his heart, so that she could somehow fit him and be a comfort for him in the same way he was for her. She'd wanted it so bad. So, so very bad. And she'd almost said so, too. Too bad Rosalind had chosen that day to start using the spell she had placed on him months before.

Aisha's voice pulls Musa away from her own thoughts. "Hey, Musa? You still there?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. Just dozing off a bit, it's been a long day."

"Ugh, tell me about it. Look, if you two won't talk it out for yourselves, do it for us. We're all on edge with all the sexual tension that's coming off of you two."

"Aisha!" Terra's voice sounds horrified. "Actually, she's not wrong. As Stella so kindly suggested, you two might want to just fuck it out. See if that helps break the ice."

It's Musa's turn to be horrified now. "Terra! You did not just say that! And we are NOT fucking anything out!"

Her friends, however, don't give her the satisfaction of listening to her defense. "Goodnight Musa!" And with that the phone call ends and she's left listening to silence and feeling even more agitated than she did when she first called them. She screams and throws her phone across the bed, watching as it haphazardly hangs from the corner of the white duvet.

"Now what's all this about fucking?" Riven's voice nearly sends her digging her own grave. Great. Just great. Of course he chooses now to make his way back into the room.

"Nothing." Her rely drips in venom as she makes a point to angerly dig into her bag and pull out her toiletries. She pushes past him and into the bathroom before he gets the chance to question her again. She worked quickly to strip herself of the heavy layers she had on, and into a long white t-shirt that she often wears to bed. She had forgotten to pack a pair of shorts, as she usually just took them off and slept in her underwear. For a second she considered wearing jeans to bed, but she decided she wasn't about to sweat to death for Riven's sake. He'd seen naked girls before. Plus, if it wasn't jeopardizing her modesty, she doubted it was harming his innocence.

When she came out, however, she started to question her decision. The second she stepped out of the bathroom, Riven's voice greeted her.

"So, now that you're done hiding," he started, scrolling through his phone in nothing but a set of sweatpants. "Do feel free to explain to me who's fucking who, besides Brandon and Stella." He'd looked up then, and that had been their demise. His eyes had gone to her face first, but she'd watched as they moved downward in a slow motion, as if he was committing every bit of her body to memory. She understood now why girls raved about him, because if he gave them all that look… well, Musa supposes they would all feel exactly how she is feeling right about now.

Oh, for god's sake. Why her?

She waits for the comment she knows is coming.

"Please tell me you're not planning on sleeping in that." Well, that's not what she expected.

"What?" She raises an eyebrow at him.

"You need to put on something else if we're really not completing any requests tonight." He's still staring at her legs as she chokes a laugh at him and makes her way to her side of the bed.

"Get your head out of the getter, idiot. I can sleep in whatever I want and you can handle yourself. You'll be fine."

"I know you can sleep in whatever you want. Me controlling myself, that's where our issues start, love. You have a little too much faith in me." He catches her eyes and quirks an eyebrow her way as she shuffles to unhook her bra from behind and slips it off under the shirt she's wearing before throwing it on top of her other clothes. "For fuck's sake, are you serious right now?!" Honestly, she was going to keep the bra on before she saw his reaction to her bare legs, but at this point they’re so far in over their heads that she might as well pull out all the stops. His continuous reactions are just icing on top of the cake.

"Oh, absolutely." She's smirking at him, eyes dancing with mischief as he stares at her full of lust. She laughs as she tucks herself into the covers. "Relax, I'll keep my underwear on." His face is heating up, frustration evident in the line between his brows and she longs to reach over the expanse of the duvet and press her thumb to the space between his eyebrows and smooth it out. She doesn't.

"This isn't fair," he protests.

"Says the guy who's shirtless right now," comes her reply.

"That's not the same thing and you know it." His voice is strained and she's eager to see when it'll snap, when one of them will finally just admit defeat.

"Isn't it? The feminist in me disagrees."

"Don't. Don't you dare take that stupid shirt off." His hands are shaking as he points a warning finger her way, and she laughs. She's enjoying this way too much. But she knows if she keeps it up, he'll keep true to his word and she won't push him away, and frankly that thought should scare her. Instead, she finds herself wondering how many buttons she can push before he caves.

"Turn off the lights and come to bed Riven." Her voice is light now, no longer teasing. He watches her snuggle further into the covers, eyebrows still furrowed at her and she can practically hear the turmoil in his mind. "Ugh, honestly, calm the fuck down. Your emotions are so intense right now, it's hurting my brain. I promise I'll keep the shirt on. Now, come on. Come to bed."

He mumbles something about staying out of his mind, but he closes the small lamp by his bedside and crawls into bed beside her. Well, calling it beside her is a bit of a stretch as he's practically at the edge of the huge bed. She huffs at his child-like manner and rolls her eyes at him.

"Seriously, Riven? I thought you'd be jumping at the chance to get a girl into bed and here you are avoiding me like the plague. You know I don't bite, right?"

"Whatever," he mumbles. She finally turns to face him, reaches her arms across the mattress and digs her fingers into the waistband of his sweats, tugging him closer to the center of the bed. He jumps at the feel of her hands on his bare stomach, his breath catching at this throat as they now stand face to face and mere inches away from each other. She watching his eyes as they take her in, and she's vaguely aware of the fact that this is too intimate. This moment is exactly what she was trying to avoid, but she can't bring herself to care. So, instead she takes this time to study the green of his eyes. In the dark, they're illuminated by the thin sliver of moonlight the peeks from between the curtains of the window on her side of the bed. They're dilated, more black than green, but she can just make out the color around the edges or his iris. Hazel on the inside, and impossibly green on the outside ridges. She remembers when she was younger, she'd once told her mother that she wanted interesting eyes, by which she meant she wanted blue or green eyes. Something other than her brown orbs. In a way, she was vainly excited when her powers had come in and her eyes started to glow lavender and purple. How naïve she had been, how stupid. She knows now, looking into Riven's eyes, that interesting eyes had no color attached to them. Interesting eyes were ones that held stories, emotions. And Riven's eyes held so many stories, and so many emotions. They gave him away, at least to her they did. She swears that even without her powers, she would be able to feel the pain, the hurt, the mischief, and (right now) the undeniable want by just looking into his eyes. The want is especially pungent. She hopes he can see the want in her eyes too. She bitterly thinks to herself that her girls are right, the two of them are hopeless. They've been cascading through this thing between them, her and Riven, and after she broke his mind control, he'd refused to look her in the eye, let alone talk to her.

They stand face to face with each other for a while, before she finally ducks her head below his chin and tucks herself against his collarbone. She feels him tense below her (feels her own breath catch, fearing that he'll push her off) before he relaxes a little and his breathing slows down. She listens to his heart beating beneath her, and the pounding of it against her ear lulls her mind into a peaceful state. Once she feels like she can finally breathe normally again, she works up the nerve to ask him the questions she's been meaning to ask for about two days now.

"Are you angry?"

He pulls away from her, just enough to look down at her. But she won't look at him. Instead, she traces his collarbone with the tips of her fingers, burning holes into it with the intensity of her gaze.

"Angry?" He sounds genuinely surprised.

"Yeah," her reply comes in a whisper. Tears are welling in her eyes, but she refuses to let them slip as she continues to bore into his skin.

"Why would I be angry?"

"Don't." She doesn't want to say it. Doesn't want to be sorry for what she did, because she's not. She's not.

"Don't what?"

"Don't make me say it." It's a whimper this time, her voice threatening to crack along with her heart.

"Musa," he lifts her chin up. "What is going on? Why would I be angry at you?" She stares into his eyes again and curses the gods above for making her do this.

"Because I had to go into your mind. I had to dig around and manipulate it. I know you've never liked that about my powers. I know that it's no better than what Rosalind and Beatrix did to you. I know that, but I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry, Riven." She says it as though she's trying to convince herself. A deep breath, and then she's talking again. "I'm not sorry because it freed you. So, I'm not sorry about my powers or about what I did." She notices the line between his brows growing more and more as she speaks, and this time she does reach across the space between them and smooth it out with the pad of her fingertip.

She's not expecting an answer, but she was hoping for one. And as the silence between them grows, she figures she has overstayed her welcome.

As she moves away from him, his arms snap into motion. They wrap around her waist, pulling her back into him. She squeezes her eyes shut as his scent engulfs her once again.

"I'm not angry." His words, mumbled against her hair, are the final straw. Her tears come ripping through her body, unwelcome but inevitable. She hates this, hates crying. She's not a quiet crier. When she cries, her whole body cries with her. She shakes, she hiccups, and her breathing speeds up. There's no way he doesn't feel it.

"Musa, really, I'm not angry. And hey," he's pulling away again, gently pushing her back so he can look at her face when he says the next words. "For the record, you are NOTHING like them. Nothing. Do you hear me?" She hiccups and looks down. "You're not. I swear to you, Musa. You're not. And, just so you know, I don't hate your powers. Never have, never will."

"But you said-"

"I know what I've said. It wasn't because I hate you, it was because I hate my own mind." He pauses, looks away from her as if trying to work up the courage to continue. "Sometimes… a lot of the time… I can't stand myself. What I hated was the idea of anyone, especially you, seeing all my bad parts. And fuck, Musa, there are so many shitty parts of me. So, so many. I mean, I've been helping Rosalind execute a war for months. Fuck." He chuckles a laugh with no humor behind it, looks up to the ceiling. "Fuck. I'm so fucking broken, Musa. And the idea that you felt that. God, I don't know…"

She watches him struggle, feels his inner turmoil. She finds herself wanting to sort out his feelings for him, mend his aches.

"Is that why you keep pulling away? From me, I mean?" She needs to know. She can't be imagining this thing between them, can't be the only one with her heart on the line right now. He moves so that he's looking at her again, but doesn't answer her right away.

"You're good, Musa. You're so fucking good. Nothing about you is bad. You're good, and you're smart, and you're fucking gorgeous." She feels her heart flutter at his words, her hopes taking flight and jumping to the sky. She wants to scream with joy, wants to kiss him. But his words are laced with a treacherous kind of tone, she can feel the desperation in him, and just as quickly as her excitement came, it leaves.

"I can't do this, Musa. I can't do it. Not to you. You deserve better than this." He's pulling away, and her heart is sinking.

"Better than what?" She sits up as he gets out of the bed. He walks to the end of the bed, looks at the door that leads to the hallway. She can feel him pulling away, wanting to leave.

"Better than what, Riven?" She's louder this time, angry that he's pulling away again after all she's told him.

"Me!" The intensity of his voice causes her to jump back. "Ok? Better than me!" His body is shaking, and so is hers. Because honestly, how dare he?

"And who are you to decide what I deserve?"

"Fuck, Musa. We're not doing this. We're not playing at this game." She feels like she's being scolded, as though she's a child he's refusing to answer to.

"You don’t get to decide what I deserve, Riven. And you sure as hell don't get to decide what I want-"

"And what do you want, Musa?" His words stop her. "What do you want? Because I have been racking my brain for so fucking long trying to figure out what it is you want. And as much as I think I have you figured out, I can't possibly be right."

She runs the question through her mind a couple of times, questioning how to answer him. She's tired of lying. Tired of wanting him when he's scared to want her back, of constantly being on edge around him. So she decides she might as well tell him. "You. I want you."

"No, you don’t." Fuck him.

"Yes, I do!" She's angry now.

"No."

"Yes!"

"Musa, no."

"Are you fucking kidding me right now?! Are we really doing this right now? Are we arguing about this like middle schoolers? You asked what I want. And I want you!"

"No, Musa, you don't."

"Why is it so fucking hard for you to accept it?! I want you and that's the end of it." She getting angrier as they keep going, and it furthers her anger that he's so calm about it.

"You can't want me, Muse. You can't." The despair that she feels from him is intense and it, along with his nickname for her, knocks the breath out of her.

"What do you mean I can't want you?" She's trying to keep her voice down, fully aware of the thin walls and the fact that everyone else is probably asleep by now.

"Just… I'm not good. Not in the way the rest of you are. I'm a walking mess and I can't do anything without fucking it up." His voice is small and Musa can see the broken boy behind the persona he's managed to construct for himself.

"But I do, Riven."

"Why?" A broken question.

She mulls it over in her head, chuckling. "Because, Riv, you've never been able to walk away from me and I've never been able to let you. We play games, you and I." They do. They ring around the rosies, a pocket full of kisses just waiting to spill out of their carefully constructed gates. "We circle one another, Riv, until we're both dizzy with desire and want and fear and fatigue… but we never break the circle. We never stray off path. You lean forward and I lean in, ready to give you my all, and then you pull back. And then we go back to the circle." It's a long metaphor and honestly she's not exactly sure if she's getting her point across. He watches as she pushes herself to her knees on the bed, shuffling closer to him with every word.

"The circle is our game, Riven. You run, I chase. I run, you chase." She reaches for his hand. "I've never wanted to lose a game so badly." His eyes are on her as she pulls him back onto the bed. She leans in slowly, making sure that she maintains eye contact with him the whole time. She wants him to know she means it, all of it. She's not going anywhere. Her fingertips trace their way up his stomach, chest, neck, winding into his hair. They're millimeters away, noses pressed against each other, breaths mingling.

"Your move, Riv." And she feels her words break his concentration, just as his hands snap up to her body. It’s a quick movement, but his hands etch a trail of fire on her as the move roughly from her knees to the back of her thighs, up her back, and to the junction of her shoulders. When their lips finally meet, it’s anything but gentle. He bites at her lip, she gasps against him, and he takes the chance to tug on her bottom lip. She can't help the moan that leaves her, thoughts of the others already asleep leaving her mind as he does things with his tongue she didn't know were possible. He moves to her jaw, kissing his way downward as she cranes her neck back so that he has all the space he needs to do whatever he's planning on doing. She doesn't know what he's aiming for, but she knows what she wants him to do. She lets her hands fall to his pants, tugs them down. He moans against her collarbone and she swears she's going insane. She's burning but she's also shivering. She can't breathe and yet she feels like she's breathing for the first time in her life.

"Shirt," she gasps. And then it's off of her, the one thing that he swore needed to stay on her if they were going to make it through the night.

They spend the night doing everything they've avoided doing for months. He fills the silence with whispers of how gorgeous she is, and she feels her heart burst at its seams. They don't sleep, and she doesn't want to. This is better than sleep, she's never felt more awake than when he's tracing the lines of her body.

He's resting on her chest, arms slung over her body as his fingertips play with the ends of her hair, when it hits her.

"I'm going to have to tell the girls that we did fuck it out." And as much as she hates the idea of her roommates being right, she thinks that maybe his laugh makes it all worth it.

#rivusarevolution2021 #rivusa #riven #musa #one bed trope #i'm a sucker for tropes #it never gets old #forced proximity

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monstersandmaw · 5 years

Text

Male alien x nb human (nsfw)

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Here's the winner of the 'which monster to write next' poll (at least it was at the time I started writing it). It’s been on early release for Patreon folks for about a week now, and I was supposed to post it here yesterday, but I forgot. I hope you enjoy it!

Lex is non binary, and if they lived on Earth at the moment, would most likely be assigned male at birth. Tarann (alien) is male, an assassin, and didn’t have what we might view as a normal childhood by any standards. As such, there is an awful lot he does know, and a lot that he's completely unfamiliar with...

Content: fluff, the tiniest pinch of angst, plus mention of genetic modification and sterilisation, 'creation' of genetic 'super-soldiers', nsfw, tentacle cocks (plural) Wordcount: 8000

The dull, steady voice of his ship’s computer informed him that faster-than-light travel would not be viable with all systems in their current state of blaster-riddled repair.

He cursed.

It then informed him that actually, since barely sticking the landing in a crumbling red-stone canyon, Tarann would be lucky to take off again at all.

He let out a long string of curses, even switching languages a couple of times.

“That was creative. I even detected some Tch’larian in there,” Menot, the androgynous computer, commented. “Been a while since I’ve heard you use your native tongue, Tarann…”

“Go fuck yourself with a Savaranian spiked tuber,” he grumbled, to which the computer had no qualms responding that if they were not a mere collection of unfathomably complicated code - which he had had no hand whatsoever in creating, they sarcastically pointed out - they might consider the directive.

Tarann simply shook his head in frustration and used the lower of his two sets of arms to smash the bulkhead open by the button on the wall, and stalked through the smashed-up ship towards his cramped sleeping quarters. The Spark was hardly a ship built for comfort. She was utilitarian; designed for quick escapes and aerial combat, and short-range sorties. She’d been his home for over a year now, and he’d be lucky if he ever got her to limp into the upper atmosphere of this backwater planet, let alone space. An unhealthy layer of fine red dust was already clinging to her wings and the intakes would likely need some extensive work before he could get her air-worthy again.

Mounting stress made the old implant scar in the side of his neck throb and he trailed his three-fingered hand along it, his skin currently a neutral, dull grey. Barefooted, as nearly all Tch’larians preferred due to particular shape of their three-toed feet, with one additional thumb-like digit that didn’t quite meet the ground when they stood, he padded silently along the metal floors of the ship and began to check and clean his weapons back in his quarters. The familiar monotony of clicking, sliding metal, and the smell of gun lubricant always soothed him.

“Think,” he hissed at himself.

Menot’s voice sounded over the system twenty minutes later and said, “Incoming transmission from the Agency. Would you like me to play it for you?”

He closed his four yellow eyes and inhaled steadily. Reluctantly, he growled, “Yes.”

“Agent Triskelion,” the familiar voice of his handler rumbled. “We understand that your ship took heavy damage in a dogfight after completing your last contract.”

“That’s a fucking understatement,” he snarled but he didn’t interrupt the message further.

“While it was unrelated to the contract on the Red Flame, your unplanned skirmish with Invaranian Rebels did attract attention and we have intelligence to suggest that they might have attempted to trace you following your escape. You are ordered to keep a low profile and your open contracts have been reassigned to other agents until we can be certain that the Red Flame is no longer looking for you.”

The metal of his blaster creaked under his grip and he relaxed before he damaged it, taking another deep breath. He hadn’t had a contract reassigned since he’d first joined the Agency all those years ago. The humiliation of it forced his skin to change from the dusty grey to a vibrant blue, dotted with teal. Feeling like a teenager again, he forced his skin back to its neutral grey and set the blaster aside, reflexively checking the safety before it put it down.

Back at the bridge, though it was barely large enough for him to squeeze around the seat, he snarled, “Menot, record this and prepare to send it to HQ.”

“Very good.”

“Agent Triskelion, acknowledging receipt of transmission and instructions to lie low. Currently grounded in a canyon twenty clicks north west of a small mining town on a planet that’s so fucking tiny it doesn’t even have an official name.” Tarann steady himself and added, “But I’ll get Menot to send coordinates with this transmission. Ship’s pretty beaten up and I’ll probably need extraction at some point. I doubt this place has the parts I need, but I can look. I’m going to head into the town at sunrise and I’ll take Menot with me. And I’ll keep a low profile.”

“As low a profile as one of the galaxy’s finest killers possibly can,” Menot added, and Tarann cursed whoever had coded sarcasm into their system.

“Exactly,” he said. “A stranger rocking up out of nowhere in a town that tiny is hardly going to pass unremarked, but I’ll adapt.” He snorted a little at the irony of that, knowing that his rather unique genetic melange was designed for camouflage. Not for him was the messy application of paints and disguises, though he couldn’t actually change his bone structure beyond accelerated healing. “So yeah, for the love of all you hold dear, please don’t just forget about me here. End recording. Menot, send it to HQ.”

With that, he slumped into the pilot’s seat for a moment and sighed. Menot helpfully informed him that dawn was three hours away, and he told them to shut everything down save for the essentials and maintain a vigilant watch while he attempted to get some sleep.

“I’ll wake you if anything needs your attention,” Menot promised.

With the sun high in the sky, Tarann stalked across the dusty plain that formed a ring around the town. In fact, it was much larger than they’d initially thought, and Menot quietly informed him in his hidden earpiece that the town appeared to go down into the earth, perhaps following the original mine shafts.

“Puts a new meaning on going to ground for a while,” he snorted.

He was relieved as he passed through dirty, dusty, narrow streets, to note all sorts of lifeforms here - some familiar and many not. With limited biodiversity, he might have stood out like a sore thumb, but the place seemed stuffed to the brim with hopeless outcasts from all over the system. There were even some humans here, which surprised him. The temperature was hot and arid, not ideal for the creatures he’d only had brief dealings with. Earth was seen as a backwater, with the emphasis on the water. It was the kind of place people went to retire to, and that was… about it. Enterprising humans had left centuries ago and gone to the newly terraformed planets like Mars - if they still wanted to remain in their solar system - and many more had joined up with the Federation and scattered all over the known galaxies.

When he passed a bipedal, slender human male, he asked Menot to give him a run-down on the species. “Both surprisingly easy and surprisingly difficult to kill, can be self-destructively curious and reckless, capable of making leaps of logic insurmountable to many species while being unfathomably illogical at other times…”

“Baffling,” he murmured. “Sounds like Agent Luna,” he said with a fond smile.

The legendary assassin had assessed him upon arrival at the Agency for unarmed combat, and somehow despite looking so… breakable, had had him on his back in two seconds flat. She’d also been the one to give him his field name, Triskelion, given that a decent number of things in his body, except his two hearts and four eyes, seemed to come in threes - three fingers, three toes, three lungs… The only trio of anatomical parts she hadn’t seen first hand was, well… elsewhere.

The fact that Luna was a fraction of his size and weight hadn’t seemed to matter at all in combat training, and he’d been very wary (and more than a bit in awe) of her since she’d returned from a mission with an injury that even the best surgeons at the Agency had said would kill her. Six months later, she was back in the field. He shuddered. Humans were like Anthariacs, once you thought you had a lock on their size and shape, they could simply morph into something else. Or perhaps they weren’t anything like that at all.

Unsettled, he shuddered again and nearly crashed straight into a small vendor’s stall in the narrow alley.

He heard the scraping voice say something, at which the ear piece translated, “Watch it!”

Shrugging off the encounter, he moved through the streets until he came to what looked like a bar with a noticeboard outside. Most of the listings were mundane requests and adverts for various services, and the rewards were in a currency he’d never heard of.

It took him a month on the planet to earn enough cash to stop having to make the twenty click trek out to the Spark every night to sleep. He would have slept in a doorway in the town had he not witnessed on his very first evening what happened to people who were caught unprepared and exposed. The sight of the slender wings being yanked off a tiny creature with a scream powerful enough to rupture eardrums had stuck with him and he’d risked the local wildlife - largely dirty great lizards - and gritty wind-storms on a daily basis to avoid that.

His handler at The Agency kept contact to an absolute minimum, except to update him periodically on the investigation that the Red Flame was still conducting and to tell him to stay holed up there. Boxed in with nothing to do, Tarann became irritable and jumpy. It wasn’t that he was itching for the next kill - he didn’t do his job for that - but the constant vigilance and insecurity of taking short, messy, shitty jobs here and there was waring him down, so when some jackass in the bar made a comment about that ‘four-eyed hill varanus over there’, he snapped. He’d encountered a hill varanus on one of his long treks back to where the Spark was still stashed out of sight in the canyon, and the enormous lizard had been curled up beside a large boulder, minding its own business until it decided to make Tarann’s sensitive inner calf its business with a maw full of teeth coated in thick poisonous saliva.

He’d been hallucinating by the time he’d managed to get back to the Spark - miraculously without dropping off the ledge and plummeting to the bottom of the canyon - and his body had been rippling through every colour in the known universe, and maybe even a few more, before he’d finally stuck a huge needle full of universal antidote into his left heart. It had taken him a whole day to recover enough to leave the ship.

Being compared to a hill varanus then - yes, his skin had the same gnarled texture as a number of reptiles found all over the galaxy, and yes, his saliva was also poisonous to a huge number of species - had suddenly broken all his carefully constructed control and he’d lunged at the large, slug-like creature, all four hands going around the thinnest point of its neck and squeezing until its eyes bulged.

“Oi!” a relatively high-pitched shout went up from behind the bar and a moment later a short blast of sound shot through the room and everyone cringed. The high-frequency noise made his insides crawl and he let go of the offending creature and staggered back a pace, toes splaying to try and steady himself. His skin flushed a sickly green before he could stop it.

Tarann turned his head and saw that the sound had emanated from a small, hand-held speaker which had been plonked down onto the surface of the bar. Behind it, wielding control of the button on the top of the speaker was - and he could have sworn that he felt his right heart lurch a little in his chest at the sight of them - a human. They had a blaster in their left hand and looked prepared to use it, if not necessarily formally trained. Their stance was pretty shoddy, but the distance of only a few spans between them more than made up for that. If the human fired, Tarann would die for sure.

“No fighting in my bar,” they said, voice stern and steady. “You got an issue with someone, you take it waaaay outside, am I clear?”

Both Tarann and the slug-thing nodded and he decided he needed another drink.

Approaching the human while they still held the weapon was probably not a wise move, but when he leaned his lower arms on the counter, his upper pair hanging loose and relaxed at his sides, Tarann saw a smile on their lips. “You must be new,” they grinned amicably, reaching below the counter to stash the blaster and pulling out a glass in its place. They then turned behind them to fill it up. “Haven’t seen any Tch’larians in here for a long time.”

He liked the way the human almost got the click at the start of the word but not quite. Some humans were known for their incredible mimicry skills, but this one clearly wasn’t as proficient. He also had no idea how to address a human after they’d just threatened his life, so he settled for a curt nod.

“And you’re about as chatty as the last one. Whatever that bit of pond slime over there -” they gestured with a bottle of distilled alcohol at the creature who’d insulted him “- said to you, just ignore them. They’re… a regular in here, but they don’t have many friends, if you catch my drift.”

“I wonder why,” he said flatly.

“It speaks!” the human chuckled. “And you’re fluent in sarcasm as well as Federation Common. Here, on the house.” And a small glass was shunted his way, sloshing with a clear, ruby red liquid. “You’ll like it. It’s a kind of brandy made with a fruit that grows in the mines. At least, the last Tch’larian I knew liked it. I could be grossly stereotyping an entire race based on one data point. Still, free booze…?”

“You talk a lot,” he said before sipping it. It burned his neon blue tongue pleasantly and then left a sweet aroma in his mouth that went up into his nasal cavity, leaving him with the impression he might breathe fire if he opened his mouth again.

“Yeah, well, you don’t, so… one of us has to balance the equation.” After a beat they added, “I’m Lex.” They held out their hand over the bar counter and Tarann vaguely remembered something about touch not being a taboo for humans. Not that it was taboo for Tch’larians either, but with so many people mingling under the Federation’s relatively peaceful protection in the past few centuries, it was still easy to offend someone inadvertently.

He noted the strength in the human’s hand as he slid his own three fingers into the grasp, and smiled at how smooth their skin was. Their hair was cut short at one side and had been left to flop a little longer at the top of their head, and he’d always wondered what a human’s hair would feel like beneath the pads of his sensitive fingers. Agent Luna hadn’t exactly been the type to let him try. He’d known that Agent Luna was female, but he had no idea what this human went by, and he was unfamiliar with human naming conventions, so that gave him no clue either.

Eventually he realised that he hadn’t told them his name, and murmured, “Tarann.” It seemed fairly safe out here, and most of the people who might want revenge on him for his line of work knew him as Triskelion anyway.

“Where are you staying?” Lex asked as they got back to work, keeping their head turned towards him a little so that he could still talk to them while they polished glasses and took orders from the odd patron.

“Out of town,” he said.

Lex paused halfway through pouring a bottle of something frothy and blue into a glass the size of a small bucket. “There’s nothing out of town…”

“My ship’s out there. Dead in the water, as it were,” he offered, taking another sip of his brandy. “This is excellent, by the way…”

His compliment was met with a grin, but the gesture quickly faded. “You’re not seriously sleeping in your dead ship out in the hills, are you?” they asked.

“Why would that be a problem?”

“You’re lucky the scavengers haven’t found you and stripped your ship - and you - bare…”

He tilted his head and blinked his four golden eyes at them. “I haven’t seen any sign of anyone out there except me. And the odd varanus…”

Lex winced dramatically. “Nasty fuckers those…”

Tarann nodded, rolling his right ankle. “Indeed.”

After a pause, Lex looked like they were about to say something, but the crash of glass on the other side of the room stopped them. “Shit, not those two again,” they hissed, and Tarann looked around just as a fight broke out for real this time.

They grabbed the blaster he’d seen before and the little speaker that emitted the unpleasant noise, and strode off around the bar, ignoring him completely where he sat. He had eased his lean, muscular frame onto a bar stool to take the weight off his frankly rather bruised and sore feet. The unpleasant sound seemed to do nothing for these two as they scrapped - all arms and teeth and roars, and even when Lex shot a quick, low-energy blast into the stone floor beside one of their feet, they didn’t break it up.

He should stay out of it. The human had guts, for sure, but the two creatures that were fighting were large and aggressive, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. A stray flail of the tip of one of their tails caught Lex in the face and they staggered back, yelling and spitting curses.

Making his mind up, he slid off the stool and approached the brawling patrons. Grabbing the nearest one by the scruff of their reptilian neck, he yanked hard and backed towards the doors of the bar, clearly catching them completely by surprise. Top thugs never expected to be bested by anyone, and it gave him a good few minutes of stunned compliance. Tossing them out onto the street with a snarl of his own seemed to sober that one up a mite, and a second later the other creature was booted out of the door with another curse, leaving Lex framed in the open doorway, blaster raised, face slightly bruised and utterly thunderous.

Something happened then in Tarann’s body that he was not expecting. A sharp, unfamiliar pang of arousal shot down his spine and fanned out through his entire nervous system. He shivered, a low-frequency rumble escaping him without permission. There was something about seeing a creature that should have been vulnerable in this situation - could have been crushed - standing there with a bruised face and blazing eyes, staring down two enormous beings three times their size, that made him hot all over. It was like mating season, or at least, his vague recollection of it from a brief talk at the Facility to explain that none of them would ever experience any of that because they had essentially had it edited out of their DNA. He’d escaped the Facility and joined the Agency and had never experienced the slightest tinge of lust since a brief flare in his teens. He bit those memories down and looked back at Lex.

“Thanks,” they grinned as the two brawlers separated and headed off in opposite directions down the street, yelling curses over their shoulders in their various languages. “How’d you feel about another brandy?”

He nodded and followed them back inside, watching the way their legs moved - their legs hinged forwards at the knee, which was intoxicatingly the opposite way to his own, their hips swaying rather alluringly.

“Listen,” Lex said as Tarann closed his fingers around his second glass of fiery brandy that evening. “If you’d like somewhere to stay, I’ve got a job opening here for a bouncer. The last girl I had got into trouble with some bounty hunter and had to scarper, but it comes with the offer of a room, use of the kitchen out the back, and a steady pay. It’s not great, but if I get tips, I’ll share them with you.”

Tarann blinked. “You can’t be serious…”

“Why not?” Lex shrugged, refilling a container with a viscous, silvery sauce that crackled softly as it sank into the jar.

Barely suppressing a shudder at the offending liquid, he made a mental note to avoid that at all costs, whatever the fuck it was supposed to be or go with.

Lex caught him staring sidelong at the fluid and laughed. “One of a small number of things on the menu that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone except a hazmat droid, or an Efulgari bombardier -” they added nodding across the room to where a frankly enormous creature sat waiting patiently, presumably for the bucket of viscous gloop in Lex’s hands. “Now, do you have to get back to your ship tonight, or do you want to stay here and think it over? You can let me know what you decide in the morning.”

He scowled softly; wary and distrustful. “You’d just let me stay?”

Lex shrugged again. “You’ve already earned your keep for tonight,” they grinned, revealing hopelessly small teeth. How could they hope to defend themselves with those? His own, by comparison, were two rows of viciously pointed fangs that could rip open the jugular of most of the known species that didn’t have exoskeletons, and even some that did.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll think it over.”

Lex left him in peace after that for an hour or so, but when the patrons began to trickle out into the night, they returned to him and asked, “Want to head up to your room?”

He nodded silently, and followed Lex through a door behind the bar and upstairs.

“That’s my room,” Lex said, nodding at a door with peeling teal paint which stood ajar on his right. “And this is yours. It’s not much, but it’s comfortable and I kept it pretty clean. There might be just a little bit of dust…”

Again, Tarann just nodded his understanding and set his small pack down gently beside the bed. The room was indeed humble, but that wasn’t an issue. He didn’t have many belongings anyway; just Menot in their portable device and some clothes and local coin. “It’s fine,” he said, turning round to find Lex leaning against the door frame in a way that spoke of casual trust and again made his skin flush hot. Embarrassed, he looked away, but Lex didn’t seem to mind, or perhaps they didn’t notice.

“Kitchen is downstairs - it’s the only other door than the one that leads to the bar. You can’t miss it. Help yourself. See you tomorrow, I guess?” they smiled, running a hand through their hair and messing it all up in a way that did nothing to help the rising temperature of his skin or the syncopated lurching of his twin hearts in his chest.

With a final nod from Tarann, Lex left him for the night.

He heard them closing up about an hour later, and then caught the steady tread of their footsteps on the metal stairs, the squeak and click of their door, the sound of clothes hitting the floor, and, another few moments later, the gush of hot water. In the corner of his own room was a sink, so he splashed the dust and grime off his face and decided to ask about a shower in the morning.

The rhythm of his life for the next few weeks was considerably easier than the first had been. Menot kept him abreast of activity both regarding his ship - nothing, mercifully - and the Agency. After three weeks working for Lex, the two had become the very thing he had always shied away from. Assassins don’t form attachments; they don’t form friends. Do the job, get out cleanly, and move on. That was how he lived, and yet, the regular ebb and flow of patrons - most of them familiar by now, a few of them new - and the easy manner of the ballsy human who ran the place lulled him quietly into a new life.

He constantly tried to remind himself that it was a borrowed life; a cover, almost. This cosy existence with its easy repartee between them and the comfort of a soft bed and regular meals was not his to keep, and he would have to shrug it off the moment that he was given the all-clear.

One evening, seemingly at random, Lex closed up early.

“What’s up, boss?” he asked as Lex politely shooed the last drunken creature out of the door and locked it behind her six scuttling legs. “What’s going on?” His natural instincts set him suddenly on edge all over again, perhaps because he’d grown so complacent of late. He didn’t like changes to patterns. It had taken him a little while to relax into this one, and even then, he didn’t exactly ease up on the vigilance.

Lex grinned at him like they’d won some kind of cash-prize, hands balled into fists at their hips, and announced, “It’s my birthday.”

He frowned. “What… What does that mean? You’re… You’re giving birth?” He looked at Lex’ body and couldn’t see any indication that they were carrying some form of offspring.

Lex gave a huge snort and bent nearly double laughing.

“Apparently not,” Tarann mumbled. “Apologies.”

“No,” Lex waved, straightening up again. “I’m sorry, it’s… that just… caught me off guard. No, I’m not giving birth to anything today or ever. It’s…” and then they fell quiet, almost sad, and said, “You really don’t know what a birthday is?”

He shook his head, feeling unsettled.

“Huh,” they mused. “Well, simply put, it’s a celebration of the day I was born. Back on Earth, we celebrate them roughly every 365 days because that’s one complete orbital cycle of our planet around our Sun. Roughly. Give or take a decimal point or two…”

They stared at him and he grew even more uncomfortable. Birthdays were not something celebrated at the Facility where he’d been… raised. The old scar in his neck where their implant had been throbbed and his skin changed colour quietly from grey to a dark blue.

Lex took a step closer and placed their fingertips on his upper forearm. It wasn’t the first time Lex had touched him, but it was the first touch like that; gentle, careful, concerned. “What does that mean?” Lex asked softly.

Tarann wanted to run, but instead he forced himself to ask, “What does what mean?”

“That colour change? I’ve worked out a few already. You go a kind of bright blue when you’re super embarrassed, but I’ve not seen you turn that colour before…”

“You noticed,” he said with a half-smirk, revealing all his dangerous teeth behind his thin lips.

Lex twitched a shoulder but didn’t let go of his arm. “It’s hard not to notice you,” they said voice shifting lower in pitch. “I love watching your skin change. You know, it reminds me of these old antique lamps back on Earth… they’re called ‘lava lamps’ but they’re not actually made of lava. It’s wax or something. Anyway, when you turn them on, they get hot, and the wax inside floats to the top of the liquid in a blob, and when it cools down a bit, it sinks down again. They’re super old and rare now, but some of them change colour slowly, and it’s kind of hypnotic. I remember going to a museum and staring at one for ages. It’s like that with your skin.”

They circled their thumb over a small area of his arm and he shuddered.

“I think it’s beautiful…” And then Lex’ skin flushed and he caught the way their pulse throbbed in their neck, the veins and arteries so close to the surface as to be impractically vulnerable, but they didn’t seem to want to protect it with armour. “Anyway,” they blurted, releasing him so quickly that he actually swayed a bit at the loss of contact, “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. What was I saying?”

“It’s your birthday,” he croaked after a pause.

“Yeah, so, uh… I figured maybe we could do something? There’s an Earth recipe involving pasta that I’ve finally managed to get all the ingredients for and I wanna make it. You game?”

“Game?”

“You want to help me?”

“Oh. Sure.”

Lex deflated a little. “You can take the night off if you’d rather.”

“No,” he said firmly. It never hurt to add to his knowledge.

“Ok then,” they smiled, and he caught the way their shoulders dropped a little, the muscles relaxing again. He’d answered correctly.

In fact, the meal ended up tasting alright. Human food seemed strange to him, and perhaps a little bland, but after the protein blocks he’d been raised on, anything tasted alright compared to those. What really made his evening was Lex’ obvious enjoyment. Their eyes were sparkling and alive, like jewels, and they laughed a lot.

They also made some significant inroads into the fiery brandy afterwards, and ended up slumped against Tarann’s left shoulders, smiling softly and running their fingertips over the slight, flattened bumps in his skin along his forearms.

“I can’t believe you have four arms,” they said, their voice slurred and their eyes vague.

Tarann, who wasn’t drunk, shifted slightly and jostled them. They snuggled up again immediately in a new position which forced him to put both his arms around their shoulders as they lay against this chest this time, and giggled. “Why not?” he asked, because he wasn’t sure what else to ask. They were beautiful and strong and tough at work in the bar and during the day, but he got to see a different side before and after work. The fatigue, the loneliness, the gentle-heartedness was never on show for the patrons of their scruffy, homely bar, but for him, they showed all that and more. Now, unwinding even further as the alcohol took effect, Lex became even more talkative than usual, which was saying something.

“Because you’ve got four!” they exclaimed, as if it was blindingly obvious. “And four eyes. I like your eyes. They’re like crocodile eyes.”

Tarann had no idea what a crocodile was and wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not.

“And you said you’ve got two hearts?”

“Mmm,” he nodded, feeling brave and bringing his lower hand to rest quietly on Lex’s stomach as it rose and fell. Their body was warmer than his and he liked the tingling that ran across his skin at the touch.

Lex fell surprisingly silent for a while, their fingertips still trailing idle lines along his skin, until they looked up into his face from their slouched position - now with their head in his lap - and asked, “What did you do before you came here?”

Faced with the utterly open honesty in those deep eyes, he found himself suddenly unwilling to lie or even bend the truth. “I was a contract killer. I am still a contract killer. I’m just… lying low for a while.”

Lex blinked. “That explains it,” they muttered, eyes turning back to his arms.

They hadn’t even flinched at the revelation, which set a different prickling running across his nerves. “Explains what?”

“The way you watch people. You don’t see people though, do you. You see soft bits and armoured bits, dangerous bits and weak bits. You see exits from a room and weapons where there shouldn’t be any…”

Inhaling softly, he nodded. “Yes. Does that bother you?”

They shook their head. “No. But it makes me sad.”

“Why?”

“Because you… you haven’t really lived… have you?”

“I don’t understand.”

Lex lurched to sit upright then, dislodging Tarann’s hands from their stomach and swivelling to face him, their eyes now blazing with intensity. “You don’t think I’ve noticed the way you react when I touch you?”

The leap from ‘not living’ to ‘reaction to being touched’ was too great a one for him to follow and he narrowed his golden eyes in confusion.

Lex’s face softened and they climbed awkwardly into his lap, swaying slightly. The sudden, warm weight of their body so close to his own stole his breath for a moment and he felt his skin change from grey to acid blue to a dull pink and finally back to grey in the space of a few heartbeats. “See?” they murmured, rolling their hips invitingly and smiling as a low-frequency mating rumble left him before he had realised what he was doing. “You come alive beneath that touch…”

“I…” he began but stopped when he realised he had no idea what he was going to say. It was perfectly true. He did feel utterly different when Lex was touching him. “I’ve never… There’s never been any need.”

“What do you mean?” they asked, placing their hands on his chest, one over each thudding heart.

Tarann became almost painfully aware of his rasping breathing, the way his body was heating up, the stuttering rhythm of his hearts, the tingling in his groin that he’d never bothered to explore, even alone… “I was created to become a weapon. I was incubated and hatched in a facility which created weapons. They sterilised us before we were even born.”

Lex did look shocked at that. “Fuck… that’s… that’s so heartless… But even so, I can’t have kids, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to get my dick wet from time to time…”

Tarann, again, didn’t understand. Lex was speaking Federation Common, but the nuances that the human put into their words were frequently lost on him.

Seeing his confusion, Lex laughed, rolled their hips again, and this time Tarann noticed something a little different at the front of their pants, a hardness that hadn’t been there - or hadn’t been as prominent - a few minutes earlier. “I still like to have sex,” they grinned.

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to have sex though,” they went on. “I’m just saying, it’s ok to let someone close. And to enjoy that. However you want to.”

“Oh.”

Lex laughed and tipped their head back a little, looking free and relaxed again now that Tarann’s confusion had been cleared up. Being unsteady with alcohol, however, they kept tipping back until Tarann was forced to grab them with both sets of hands to stop them toppling off; one pair around the waist and another around the arms.

“Steady,” he smiled. “I think maybe you should have some water. And head up to bed.”

“You’re probably right. I had a good birthday though,” they added, gently peeling the three fingers of Tarann’s lower right hand off their waist and bringing it up to their lips. The gesture they left there Tarann knew was called a kiss. Humans weren’t unique among lifeforms in nuzzling intimate parts of their anatomy against the other’s, but the strangeness of it for his species held an instant fascination. How could their lips be so soft? How could he never have done that? How could he never have wanted to share this kind of experience with anyone before?

And before he could stop it, his skin flushed a deep maroon all over like a drop of ink on wet paper, splotched here and there with dark purple. He knew what that meant for his species, and the sight of his own skin changing to the colours of an individual receptive to mating made him freeze.

“Well,” Lex chortled amusedly. Apparently they knew what it meant as well.

“No,” he said immediately, though he wasn’t quite sure what it was he was rejecting.

With a knowing but slightly melancholic smile, Lex clambered out of his lap and stood up. “Night, Tarann,” they said as they walked away. Their hands brushed against the door frame as they left the bar, and he stared at the spot where their fingers graced the woodwork even as their footsteps vanished up the stairs.

His skin did not change back that night, no matter how much he willed it to change. Half an hour later, as he lay in his bed, the sounds of Lex pleasuring themselves reached his acutely sensitive ears. The tiny, muffled moans and grunts that left their body set his skin aflame all over again. He moved one hand cautiously, experimentally down his torso to the slit where, to his astonishment, he was slick and sensitive. He gasped at the touch, and the three delicate, tentacle-like cocks which normally never left the sheath began to unfurl almost curiously into his hand.

Ordinarily, this might have repulsed him, but the sound of Lex gasping and the slick sounds that accompanied the moans, made the tentacles of his genitalia coil demandingly around his fingers. He knew almost nothing about his own species’ reproductive habits because he knew he would never need them. ‘You will never be a breeder,’ they had said when he’d hit sexual maturity - the first time he’d even bothered to explore his body, and, until that night, the last - and that had been that.

Sparks of pleasure shot through his whole body and he began to croon, the sound deep in his throat, rumbling and vibrating like an idling engine, filling the room. He couldn’t stop it. Balling his fingers into a fist, he felt his three pale cocks coil around it instinctively, and he began to kneed exploratively at the inside of the flower-shape they made around his hand, a thin, extremely sensitive membrane stretching between them from the root to about a third of the way down. The pleasure that that elicited made his back arch of the bed and his toes scrunched up the sheets as he lifted his hips too, pressing harder at the centre of the three smooth, increasingly slick tentacles.

Forcing himself to focus back on the sounds of Lex as they apparently approached their climax, he felt a wall of heat building in him. Something was approaching, and he let it sweep over him until the three tentacles surrounding his balled-up fist pulsed, gripping his hand tight as a vice, and warm fluid spurted from their centre over his clenched fingers in a series of messy gushes. His vision went white, his body went rigid, and his mind went completely blank.

Tarann floated in a blissful haze for a long time before he could even bring himself to move, his cocks too sensitive, his hand covered in sticky, slick release, but eventually his cocks retreated back into the sheath in his lower abdomen and he felt able to sit up. His hand was a mess, his lower body too, and when he tried to stand, his muscles felt shaky and weak, as though he’d run the training simulation at the facility for an entire day without breaks.

With his skin so sensitive that it was hard to fall asleep that night. Lex must have finished during his own orgasm because he never heard another noise from their room that night. Shame curled in to replace the pleasure as he realised that he’d eavesdropped on something that was private and not meant for his hearing, and in the morning, he could barely look Lex in the eye as he entered the kitchen in search of breakfast.

Lex, however, smiled warmly. The effects of the alcohol the previous night seemed only to have made their voice drop a little and their reactions were groggy and slower. “I think I'm going to keep the bar closed today,” they announced as they poured themselves a hot drink. “You’re not hungover at all, are you?”

“No,” he replied. “It takes more than that to get me drunk, let alone hungover.” ‘Hungover’ was a term he’d only learned since working for Lex.

“So…” Lex asked a little while later as they cooked breakfast for the two of them the hob. “If you’re only here to lie low for a while, do you know how long you’ll actually be here?”

“No.” Apparently Lex hadn’t been so drunk that they didn’t remember their conversation last night. He paused and added, “But the last transmission the Agency sent me indicated that the people who were looking into the disturbance after my last contract were no longer investigating.”

“So… not long then.”

“Probably.”

Lex poked at the pan with a wooden spatula and sighed.

“Why do you ask?”

He could see the way Lex’s jaw worked from side to side for a moment and recognised it as one of their tells. They were upset. “You think you’ll miss me when you leave?”

“Of course I will,” he said. “You’ve been extremely generous to me when I did nothing to earn it.”

“Right.”

Tarann knew he’d said the wrong thing immediately, but none of his intense training had prepared him for this kind of situation. He backtracked through the conversation, searching for something he could have said differently, something he could have handled better. Lost, he asked falteringly, “Will… you miss me? Is that what this is about?”

Lex nodded without turning around. “Yeah,” they said, voice cracking slightly. They cleared their throat and poked at breakfast again. It smelled ready but they didn’t seem ready to turn around.

Tarann stepped closer, his feet silent on the stone floor, and placed his hands boldly on Lex’ hips. The human immediately eased and leaned back, resting their weight against his body, though their head barely came midway up his chest. Taking the opportunity at last and sensing it would be welcome, Tarann brought his hand up and stroked his fingers gingerly through Lex’ hair. It was every bit as soft as he’d thought it would be, and he watched his skin change colour beneath the strands as they brushed over his fingers. Lex moaned quietly.

When he lowered his hand and Lex saw the maroon fading back to grey, they smiled and turned around, switching the hob off as they did. They put their own hands on his chest and he ached suddenly to have nothing separating them; to remove his close-fitting space-suit top and Lex’ loose-fitting shirt. As Lex slid one palm tentatively up to his neck, he felt the touch in a wave of heat and closed his eyes. His fingers tightened on Lex’ hips and Lex moaned softly.

“I want you,” Lex murmured. “I thought about you last night.”

Tarann opened his eyes a crack and blinked softly. “I heard you,” he admitted.

“Yeah?” Lex laughed, looking part bashful and part turned on. “What did you do when you heard me?”

“I…” he flushed neon blue and stepped back, ashamed.

“Hey,” they breathed, chasing after him. “It’s alright. It’s… really hot that you did that while thinking about me.”

“You don’t mind?”

They shook their head. “If you wanted to try together…”

That mating call thundered through him and he lowered his forehead, bringing it to touch Lex’.

“That a yes?”

“What about breakfast?”

“I overcooked it all already,” they laughed. “It’s ruined.”

Grabbing his hand, they tugged him out of the kitchen and back upstairs to their room.

They shed their clothes in a tangle, and once again Tarann was left staggered and enchanted by the human’s body. This time it was the sheer vulnerability of it. He could also see their arousal plainly - there was no sheath to tease - and something about that made his own sheath throb so hard he let out another mating croon.

“Fuck, that sound is so hot,” Lex gasped, lying back on the bed and tugging him down atop them. “Look at you,” they added, running their fingers down his heaving chest and playing with his sheath as he collapsed atop them. “I’ve always found Tch’larians attractive, but you… the way you move, the way you shudder when I touch you, the way you fucking croon like that…” He did it again - entirely involuntarily - as Lex crooked two fingers and delved carefully into his sheath, catching the inner walls of his three cocks inside and making them unfurl even quicker than they had last night.

They wrapped around Lex’ fingers and Lex moaned. “I want those on my cock… please…” they gasped, and Tarann felt like he might die if he didn’t do as Lex asked. His body was so tight all over, his skin flushing from dusky pink to dark magenta with every deep, sonorous groan that escaped him.

With one leg on each side of Lex’ thighs, he lowered his hips down until they were touching, and his cocks immediately curled around Lex’ own hard cock, covering it in weeping, slick fluid. Lex let out a string of curses and flung their head back into the bed beneath them, rutting their hips up into Tarann’s grip. The pressure of the tip of their cock against the point where the three cocks joined inside him made him growl with pleasure, his maw full of teeth opening, his saliva starting to fill his mouth, bright blue tongue lashing behind them.

“You know…?” Lex panted, thrusting up into the wet heat of the grip that his tentacle cocks had around theirs.

“Know what?” he snarled back, shaking from the effort of holding himself upright over Lex.

Lex reached up to his face with a fingertip and trailed it around his drooling mouth before putting it in his own and sucking. The sight of it sent Tarann into a fury of lust for some reason, and only then did he recall that his saliva was poisonous to many species. Before he could warn Lex, the human grinned and their eyes went wide, pupils blown until their irises were a mere whisper of colour. Apparently he wasn't poisonous to humans. Quite the contrary if the way Lex fucked upwards into his body and filled him with sparking pleasure with each thrust was anything to go by.

“Fuck, I’m close,” Lex hissed, and Tarann felt his cocks contract around the hard length inside him.

He didn’t have the breath or the words to agree.

“I’m… I -” Lex cried out, and suddenly heat flooded the inside of Tarann’s sheath and he felt his own cocks clench and pulse rhythmically around Lex’ cock as he came too. He drew every drop from Lex that they had inside them as his own orgasm rolled through him and left him mute, panting, and thrumming all over.

“Fuck that was intense,” Lex chuckled some while later, when Tarann’s cocks had finally let go of their own softening cock. “Are you ok?”

“Mmm,” he rumbled from his new position, slumped on the bed beside Lex, his trio of cocks lying limply across his torso, splayed out and spent and utterly sensitive.

Lex sat up, heedless that their own body was covered in their combined release, and trailed their fingers down Tarann’s torso towards his still pulsing sheath. “Can I?” they asked.

Tarann didn’t reply but he responded with a shrug. He had no idea what Lex intended, but he trusted them. What Lex did was to lean forwards and take one of his cocks into his mouth and suck on it gently. Tarann’s whole body lurched and he bellowed at the sheer volume of the sensation as it thundered in his head and under his skin all over again.

“Too much?” Lex laughed.

“No?” he gasped, trying to steady his spinning head and suddenly racing hearts. “No. Definitely not too much. Just…”

“Intense?” Lex supplied.

“Do it again?”

Lex did.

—

I really hope you folks enjoyed this one! Don’t forget to let me know if you did enjoy it by leaving a like and/or reblogging it!

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#alien #male alien #alien x human #exophilia #alien boyfriend #monster boyfriend #non binary character #non binary human

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prynacle · 4 years

Text

Quietude

@lunoctweek 2020 || Day 5: Wedding.

Rating: Teen.

Genre: Romance, Fluff.

Luna sat reading her book out in the balcony of her room, the Queen suit in Fenestalla Manor that had been granted to her many years prior but she had refused to use in dear memory of her deceased mother. Back then, her Princess room had been sufficient enough, even after her official accention as Oracle, with ample spaces that sometimes felt a tad too big for just her. Now, with her return in company of Noctis, using the Queen suit had felt like the natural option for the two of them.

Just in time, Noctis comes out into the balcony with two mugs, the fresh night air making the steam from the mugs visible to plain sight. She puts her book aside and takes her beloved's offered drink, making space for him on the bench as he motions to sit. There's a naturality in how Noctis' arm drappes over the back of Luna's seat for her to lean on his side, ther warmth of his pressence as calming as the cup in her hands. She takes a breath from her tea before giving it a sip, the flavor bringing her a smile. It's the recent blend she taught Noctis, she realizes, the flavor fresh and leafy, with a touch of sweetness at the end.

Time passes between them in quiet, cozy companionship, the two sipping their drink and taking in the sights of Tenebrae's night scenary, only the distant sounds of waters and nocturn fauna filling in the silence.

"Are you excited for tomorrow?" Luna finally asks, breaking the silence, and her voice rings like a soft melody that thrums warmly in Noctis' chest. "Yeah," he answers simply, the liquid in his mug reflecting his moonlit smile. "I think I will hardly sleep. I was hoping this would calm me a little," he shrugs lightly, lifting his cup. At this, Luna noods in agreement.

"Chamomile and Lemon Balm leaves are a very sleep-effective blend," she confirms. That much he had learned under her tutorage.

"To think I would ever have trouble falling sleep..." Noctis shakes his head at how absurd it sounds to his own ears. "Not long ago it felt like second nature," he muses, and then frowns.

Noctis realizes his mistake after the words leave his mouth. What 'not long ago' means for him, is about ten years for everyone else in the world. Memory of his life before the Years of Darkness is not that distant in his mind, a fact he still struggles against and has yet to adapt into his subconcious, a year and a half after his battle to bring the light back.

Unaware of his , Luna simply hums in understanding, and just like that Noctis' troubled tougths dissolves as if it never existed. She more than anyone understood the meaning in Noctis' words, having been absent from the physical world for as long as he had, if not longer. As if to dissipate any remaining turmoil in his mind, Luna takes his free hand in hers, her thumb smoothing the natural wrinkles on his knuckles in small, circular motions. "You stopped feeling so tired after coming back. I hadn't realized how much my own magic weighted on me, too."

"Hmm. The magic had been with us this whole time. There was no way we could have known just how much it took out of us."

Tilting his head down, Noctis examined Luna's face. Her elegant features had filled out with a healty shine that had not been there the time he finally got to see her after their miraculous return. He was undeniably happy of the new chance at life they had been given, of the new opportunities to rebuild and create a new chapter in his life along those he sherished most. And now, just tomorrow, Luna and him would be leaving Tenebrae to officialize their marriage in the newly rebuilt Altissia, proof of their will to be togheter, forever, and for the whole world to see.

Taking a deep breath, Noctis looks back at Tenebrae's landscape. He would be leaving it behind for a while.

"Tomorrow, we will finally move forward."

"I know. Even now... if feels a bit unreal." At her dreamy words, Noctis squeezes her hand, and she squeezes right back. There was nothing unreal about that, about them, and he had to make sure to remind them both. "Will you sleep tonight?" He sighs, content. He would never tell her, but it felt good to know Luna felt as nervous as him.

"If your tea proves effective, then I'm sure I will." Luna's giggles echo in her mug, and Noctis cracks a slow smirk.

"Ahh, here I was thinking something else we could do until dawn to pass the time." He shrugs and gives a last, satisfactory sip to his drink, waiting for a reaction that never arrives. In his hand, Luna's fingers remain laced with his, but her thumb had stopped it's movements.

"... Luna?" He asks tentatively.

Had his words somehow upset her? She wasn't the kind of person to get upset over suggestive teases, but he wasn't the kind of person that made them often, either. For all he knew, she was not in the mood and he could have crossed a line—

"Not until dawn. We do need rest for tomorrow's journey, but..." Noctis jolts, taken out of his worried mussings. He is still catching up to her words when she continues. "I don't see why we couldn't indulge in ourselves for a bit." Her voice turns into a question at the end, and now that he can see her enthusiastic acceptance clearly as she leans back to look up at him, Noctis felt his cheeks and ears flare with heat. He had expected an admonishment at his suggestion, but now Luna was considering the option seriously.

So much for trying to tease his fiancé.

"I was just joking. We already bathed and as you said, we do need the sleep, heh," he stuttered. Had one of his hands been free, he would be scratching his nape.

"Ah." she says, dissapointed, and Noctis feels a needle piercing his heart. Before he could form an apology, her voice lifted up again "I'm sure Tenebrae waters won't suffer from a second bath of ours."

Noctis felt his face snicker. From excitement or embarrasement, he did not know, as both emotions swirled in his chest with no clear distiction between them. All he was sure was that Luna was looking brightly up at him, smiling face and soft hands taking his empty mug out of his hand. Despite their time togheter, starting these talks with Luna never seemed to get any less electrifiying.

"Besides," she continued, moving to sit on his lap, and he was prepared to hold her firmly like so many times before, her fingers moving over the the fabric of his pajamas until they reached his scalp, "It can help us with sleep even more effectively."

"I see. So this lines up with our best interests."

Luna's nose rubs his own, and he can feel her breath on his lips.

"Unless this is of no interest for you." Beyond the teasing phrasing, he recognized the backdown leeway for what it was, and Noctis felt his heart swell with the consideration of his beloved. A fire in his blood runs across his whole body, and his hands loose their grip on her hips to hold her face, Luna's beautiful eyes taking him with attention.

With the moonlight framing her figure, he can see her clearly. The light makes her skin and hair shine, creating a halo around her as if light itself knew of her role in a life past that granted her with power able to make her shine just as now. And yet, there's no otherwordly power behind the person now in his arms. Before him was simply a woman just as mortal as himself, the one he had been set to happily marry once, now twice, and should fate interfere again, would set on as many new quests to chose her again and always.

Her question lingers still in the air, Luna waiting for him to have the final say in this new adventure. His answer comes as easy as the truth he feels in his heart. "Luna, you are always of interest to me."

He coarced her forward, and she yielded, their lips finally meeting.

Not in a thousand years would he have said no.

#LunoctWeek2020 #LunoctWeek #noctluna #lunoct #nokuruna #noctis x luna #ffxv #ff15 #Final Fantasy XV #Final Fantasy 15 #wmine #mine #fic

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ceaselessblade · 4 years

Note

⚔️️ hello what about sword teacher king pal?

Lucina-sensei!

It’s Lucina. The biggest surprise he’s found at Garreg Mach so far, and probably the largest mystery? He’s tested her, and so as she him. It’s without saying that for some reason, she clearly has a wealth of combat experience, the kind that comes from being in large-scale fights for decades. Did Lucina serve as a general, like Zelgius? He’s still unsure as to if she is Branded, but it would explain all of her skill rather neatly. Whatever it is, she has enough wealth in the way of the sword to match the Library of Alexandria, and Ike is determined to try and learn a thing or two. Meeting a match in swordplay has awakened the zealous irrepressible youth in him, and one that’s new and has so many things to teach makes him ecstatic. There’s no doubt that Lucina is the pinnacle of singular swordsmanship? He’s not quite sure what to call it. In many ways, it’s similar to Marth, but the style itself is far heavier. Her blade dances, but it’s a swansong of fluttering steel and severing guillotine. There’s a an unpredictable grace to them, but it’s been honed with mechanical precision, like the Goddess’ Chosen... But alive and breathing. It fascinates him. It’s like Falchion has taken up a life of its own in her hands, telling him of a legacy and how each strike is meant to carve out a new path of her will. Hence, in a straight fight, Ike actually has a disadvantage at start and may lose straight away-- because Lucina simply has more experience. Any sort of attack he makes is something she’s seen a variant of, and in turn, he has to learn from what she’s doing. Her defense is absolute, and proofed against the heavier bladestyle that Ike prefers, to a certain point. Ike has no illusions that Lucina, herself, holds the same strangely penetrating power that Marth has. Perhaps it’s just a trick of the eye, but he can swear her brand flashes like a newborn star as she executes them-- perhaps that’s the power she’s gained from her blood. Most of the time, he’s quite happy to watch and spar like this, because every match he comes away has him feel the improvement. Look-- Ranulf, that’s a prodigy! Lucina is one! If anything, he’s just picking up notes... Er, anyway, if he actually wanted to win, Lucina has a few notable... weaknesses? He wouldn’t really call them that, just things she hasn’t practiced much in. She’s supremely skilled at defense and adapting to changing battlefield conditions, so he suspects that she’s fought monsters usually larger than her, and something he’s started to suspect-- things with worse footwork than she has. It’s-- how does he describe this... Her footwork is perfect, but it’s a perfect defense. When she starts going on the offense, occasionally there’s a point where he feels like her adaptive footwork is meant to take advantage of things that are slower in adapting to her. It tells that she’s not as used to fighting someone of her own strength in a pure duel, one-on-one. He’s also noticed that she actually seems to have a somewhat average pool of swordbreaking techniques. It might be that she doesn’t favor them, but Exalted Falchion’s design looks exactly like it was meant to catch swords and break them! She instead has focused on her pure striking power and speed, as well as associated technique. It’s true that she does use breaking techniques-- but it’s just a little strange that she didn’t build a style around the base of her weapon’s strength... All that comes down to what Ike needs to approach Lucina with-- a balance of averages, with just a little extra added in. Lucina is great at defense and pivoting and striking at weakpoints, so he needs to maintain an average of all three as a defense. He can’t be lacking in anything, and most of all, he has to remain patient. What he needs to do next is leverage his two advantages-- greater reach, strength-- and he suspects, natural stamina. Lucina’s endurance is nearly unbreakable, but her pool of strength for offense will lose power if he keeps forcing her to parry or deflect his strikes. She could dodge, which is what she likely did against the monsters she fought, but if he maintains enough precision, she’ll be forced to meet his sword. For each exchange, he’ll put in the general strength he uses and add a bit more, likely in the middle of the parry, so she’s forced to have to expend her own to match it. In other words, unlike a feral creature, he’ll prefer ‘chasing’ Lucina’s sword over striking at vital points or using his strength to overwhelm her in a burst. He will attempt to stall her and derive a pattern from her strikes or techniques, and other tells if he has the time. As the time slips by, he’ll adapt and increase the pressure on her, focusing on detecting and analyzing her pace and technique changes. He’ll throw in Luna and Sol at times, just to replenish energy and push Lucina’s repository of stamina. He might use other blade techniques as well-- so long as he sees it drain the heavy fencer’s stamina, and doesn’t overcommit. Things like Wrath are right out for that reason, and he has a suspicion that Lucina has some resistance to esoteric skills, so he likely won’t use any of Ragnell’s flames. He won’t really use Aether-- he suspects Lucina will not give him the chance to. Unless she does the same, of course-- he’ll simply match that and clash with that in turn, then reset. Things that aren’t swordplay? Oh, he’ll throw those in, too-- so long as their precision work and require focus to dispel. Kicks, likely, targeted at vital joints if he’s given the chance. He will leave his gauntlet hand free for combat options. Ike has no illusions that Lucina won’t adapt at least several times. He recognizes that, and he is ready and willing to match.

He has to be relentless and on her for every moment that exists between. This-- he’s used to. It’s what he’s trained for-- every spark run off the sessions with his father. Every screech as swordsmen and soldier locked blades. Every punishing staccato Mia put him through in the morning-- every morning. The mechanical, immaculate precision of the Goddess’ Chosen. And Zelgius, eyes of abyssal calm staring back at his own, the glow of the tower sliding down the edge of Alondite like a single tear of the moon.

He knows his focus can last longer than hers. Every duel he’s been in with a matching sword, of conviction and skill, he’s had to stare death and friend and life in the eye on the blade’s edge, and win. All falls away until that remains, and in that moment, he never feels more alive.

...Right, he’s getting carried away. It’s been a long time since anyone’s pushed him to his limits! He has a right to be excited about this. Maybe this is something he’d missed in his father’s swordsmanship. It turns out there was still more to go, after all. He’d suspected it. After all, Gawain had never lost in his prime. Perhaps this is why. He’ll just have to work hard, and expand his horizons. (asdlaksg im aware im incoherent, so unclear portion clarifications: -Ike loses to Lucina on average at start. However, given time, he outramps her. --Ike’s tactical instinct and dueling adaptation are used to things that are stronger than him in most areas, where his only way of winning is to out-adapt all of those. Lucina fulfills those conditions. -By putting pressure on her, he’s trying to chase her with Nihil to restrict her skill options. He does not expect this to last long. -Skill use by him is optional, and he’s relying mostly on his greater stamina and laser focus to try and tide him through Lucina’s stamina. He has a suspicion that like Marth, she has an indomitable artificial pool, but lesser actual reserves-- so he’ll match her artificial pool with focus, and then chase through with his natural pool. -‘Ike is a not a sword prodigy’ Poor self awareness. he’s a monster. Being able to match Zelgius of like 20 years of hardened swordsmanship in 6 years of combat is not natural in the slightest, especially since his inheritance is incomplete. Ranulf calls him out on it, and he has a nose for intrigue. He likely adapts within mere seconds of seeing a sword vector.)

#futuresking #ask: combat style

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bluerosesonata · 4 years

Text

The Legacy of Aika Village

[This will be the first of a few mini-articles I plan to post here, just about different things I’m passionate about. Please indulge me.]

This article originally was written back in early April- since then, Nintendo announced that the “Dream Suites” would be coming to the latest update of ACNH, as “Dream Islands.” As such, I thought it would be timely to finally post this.

Update: On July 2nd, the original creator of Aika Village made a tweet announcing their plans to remake Aika for Dream Islands in New Horizons! The legend lives on!

Image Credit: thumbnail from chuggaconroy’s playthrough of Aika Village on Youtube.

Animal Crossing And Horror: The Legacy of Aika Village

With a lot of the world in lockdown, Animal Crossing New Horizons has become a creative and social outlet for many, leading to a lot of people who never played Animal Crossing to engage with it for the first time. I’m sure most of you have encountered the various types of people present in the Animal Crossing community by now, but there’s a type of Animal Crossing players that a lot of people didn’t realize exist, and have existed, for a while now: The Horror Town Creators.

These players were the subject of a brief write up on Polygon by Patricia Hernandez [Hernandez, Patricia. “Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now a horror game, thanks to fans.” Polygon, 24 Mar. 2020. https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/24/21190826/animal-crossing-new-horizons-horror-game-decorations-scary-nintendo-switch-blood-spatter-pattern.], who posted an article featuring quotes and pictures of people creating horror themed towns and rooms in New Horizons, but only made a brief mention of the legacy of horror that many of these players are striving to recreate: The Nightmare Suites of Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

(These next few paragraphs are a bit of a self-indulgent aside, so feel feel to skip ahead.)

Horror gets a bad rap. Horror artists get comments like “lmao what SCP is this,” “that’s fucked up,” or get flippant remarks about it all “looking the same.” Horror writers get made fun of for only writing “three types of stories.” Even the term “creepypasta,” which has evolved into shorthand for “horror stories independently published online,” still carries the stink of derision from the typo-filled, often poorly-written shock stories the term originated from. Despite this derision, horror, as a genre, is MASSIVELY popular (and profitable as well!). There’s an undeniable appeal to it.

More importantly, horror always finds a way to adapt itself to different mediums. As one can easily see by the success of horror podcasts like the NoSleep Podcast and The Magnus Archives, it isn’t even limited to a visual format! Like fear and dread itself, the horror genre crawls on, inexhaustible, undying, and ever-present, always returning to us in ways both novel and familiar.

Horror lovers are a tight knit, but welcoming, community, and that’s one of its biggest strengths and weaknesses.The biggest drawback is that a lot of really cool stuff produced will never be experienced, let alone documented, by people outside the community. And that’s what prompted this post. I was trying to explain the Dream Suite horror movement to my cousin, and despite my best efforts, didn’t find a lot of coverage about them, beyond the fact they existed. Worse, most of those were articles written five years ago. Even so, I’ll link to a few of them at the end of this post, as they’re definitely worth reading.

For me, I wanted to share my experience of the horror town phenomena with people outside the community. The Nightmare Suites movement was really something magical, and I know that I, personally, am still trying to recreate that magic in New Horizons. And hey, maybe once you’re finished reading this, you will too.

The Dream Suite

Before we can talk about Aika Village, we need to explain the feature that made this whole movement possible. In the 2012/2013 3DS game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, there were two areas in every town: The village, and Main Street, which laid beyond the train tracks that ran across to the north of every town. Main Street was home several important structures, including the town shop, the Happy Home Academy, and the Post Office. Later on, more structures could be unlocked and built as public works projects, one of which was the Dream Suite.[“Dream Suite.” Nookipedia, 25 Apr. 2013, nookipedia.com/wiki/Dream_Suite.]

As for how it worked, Nookipedia explains it best:

To begin a dream, the player must lie down on the bed and pay Luna 500 Bells. They may then choose to visit a random town, input the Dream Address of a specific town to visit, or search for a town. They may then choose to visit a previously visited town or a random town, or to input the dream address of a new town to visit. While dreaming, the player may walk around the town and perform actions just as they would in the real world, but their actions will have no effect on the town.

While dreaming, the bed will be on the dream town's plaza. Luna and Lloid stand near it until the player decides to wake up. Players can borrow tools like a shovel and axe from Lloid to use within the dream. If the player lies on the bed a second time, they will leave the dream and anything they have in their pockets will be lost.

The player cannot go to Main Street or enter any buildings with doors besides homes. Additionally, messages left on the bulletin board cannot be read; instead, the board displays the town's name and Dream Address…custom designs on display in the town, such as on the ground and in houses, will be visible. The player who uploaded the town can also be found walking about. When spoken to, they will say their recorded greeting.

In essence, the Dream Suite takes a snapshot of your town at the moment you ask Luna, the NPC running the Dream Suite, to share a dream- this includes your outfit, the way you decorated your home, the items laying around town, etc.

The most important aspect of this feature, and the one that I feel had the most impact on the Nightmare Suite creation movement, was the method of discovery. If you didn’t know someone’s code, you would be sent to a random dream of a random town, from anywhere in the world- and this is where I feel my personal experience of being in the community departs from the articles that have already been written about the Nightmare Suites.

The Urban Legend of Aika

In the years leading to 2013, I was going through some rough shit. I won’t go into details here, but video games had become my entire life. Coming into the summer of 2013, I didn’t have any friends I kept in touch with, and I was “starting over” in a city where I knew nobody- things were looking up, but outside of tumblr, I didn’t have anything even resembling a social life. Animal Crossing: New Leaf was a stabilizing force of my life during this time, and really helped me. I had the Shampoodle haircut guide saved to the camera roll on my phone, for pete’s sake.

It was in the beginnings of my friendship with a group of girls (whom I sadly no longer even have contact with), where a lot of our initial bonding happened because of anime and RPGmaker horror games. We were sitting together in the campus dining area, me playing on my 3DS, when I first learned about the Nightmare Suites.

“Have you heard about Aika Village?”

I hadn’t.

“It’s this really creepy town in dream suites, I heard about it from a friend online.” Later that day, she linked me to a tumblr post compiling a series of codes leading to different “creepy dream towns,” the first one being simply labeled as “Aika Village.”

That dream village became a phenomenon: people would write up their interpretations and theories about it, and even lead to a few articles and videos on gaming sites like IGN and Killscreen, which is why I’m not gonna even bother going into the content of the village itself.

And So, The Dream Begins…

This, in my opinion, was the draw of the Nightmare Suites. Without a way to directly share codes from your 3DS to your social media, the discovery and sharing of Dream Towns was like that of urban legends- like virtually passing notes in class, or sharing scary stories that “totally happened to a friend of my cousin’s sister” at a campfire. It felt like a cool discovery- something exclusive and scary and weirdly intimate. They had a mystique to them, a mystery of who their creators were and what they “really meant.” But above all that? They were cool as hell.

The Nightmare Suites used the limitations of the game to try and create an unnerving atmosphere in ways that were reminiscent to me of the RPGmaker horror game subgenre, and for me, created a lot of memories of excitedly typing in my once a day dream suite visit late at night in my dorm. I never lacked variety- there were so many people either influenced or inspired by Aika to make a horror town that there are entire lists and tumblrs dedicated to collecting those codes. (I even played around with the idea of making my own horror town, but never found the right inspiration, instead dedicating my time to making themed homes and custom outfits based on different anime characters.)

The sad fact that so many of these towns have been altered or overwritten, if they’re available or accessible at all, is in itself, a part of their urban legend-like appeal. While many of us may never get to experience these towns, the stories about them endure, in lists on long-abandoned blogs and youtube videos from people’s playthroughs.

And that mystique is the real legacy of Aika; While the Nightmare Suites may be gone, the wonder and dreamlike memories many of us hold from our chance encounter with it will never fade. You could even say we’re a bit…haunted by it.

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phoenixrisesoncemore · 4 years

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I was tagged by @wangxianbunnydoodles (oh my, this is long and you might regret it; also I don’t follow instructions well 😉). I tend not to be very good at these things (sorry to anyone else who has tagged me in these kinds of things before—this is a rare event happening mostly because I wanna talk about Tolkien books and ships) but here goes:

Top 3 Ships

I don’t actively ship characters that often. I’m not sure why that is. I do enjoy reading fic with pairings either canon or not, but I don’t often go “all in” on ships in most narratives I consume. There are notable exceptions (more than three but these are the three most recent—I have no idea how to identify my top ships):

WangXian (CQL). This is surely obvious from the current state of my blog, right? I blame The Untamed and its impossibly tender, only-subtextual-by-a-hair’s-breadth romance. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show express ultimate devotion, deep affection, true appreciation, complete understanding (eventually), and the sheer *necessity of the other* between two people quite like this one has. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two characters and desperately wanted them together and happy as much as I have these two, so bravo to the cast and crew for generating such second-hand devotion in me.

Silvergifting (Tolkien). This is all @thearrogantemu’s fault. I’d read some Silvergifting before I read These Gifts That You Have Given Me, mostly out of curiosity (some good stuff, too!), but I had never read any Tolkien fic that convinced me it was *true* (on many, many levels, though the ship level is the one pertinent to this post). In any canon-like universe this ship hurts, but in the Gifts universe it hurts the most; it hurts like Hell. It hurts in the way only razor-sharp, sorry-the-universe-works-this-way, oh-are-those-my-entrails-on-the-floor-I-didn’t-even-feel-the-knife tragedy can hurt. And it’s so convincing that it’s just...a fact now. Tolkien just forgot to tell us. So now I ship Silvergifting, but most deeply, specifically THAT Silvergifting. (Meanwhile, 14 year old me continues to look at *significantly* older me like I’m insane.)

ZeLink (Legend of Zelda). Deep down I’m still 12 years old and no amount of fine lines and wrinkles is going to change that. When is Breath of the Wild 2 coming out?

Last Song

I listen to soundtracks and bombastic and dramatic orchestral pieces much more often than I listen to what people mean when they say “songs,” and a significant chunk of the “songs” I listen to are from musicals/operas.

Earlier today it was Hanz Zimmer’s soundtrack to Dark Phoenix (don’t start me up on the continuing disappointment that Phoenix adaptations continue to be to me—you don’t want to hear it; even I don’t want to hear it).

Before that it was Barbra Streisand’s The Broadway Album. (I prefer her outer space cover of “Somewhere” to the actual thing. Fight me.)

Before that it was Carmina Burana (One of my favorite things ever was when we went to a live performance of Carmina Burana and a boy who couldn’t have been more than 7 years old sat in the aisle in front of us and head-banged enthusiastically through “O Fortuna.” It was so metal. You go, kid. You get it.).

Before that it was a splattering of Billy Joel hits with emphasis on “2000 Years”, “River of Dreams”, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, “The Stranger”, and “Only the Good Die Young” (thanks to that outstanding WangXian interpretation!).

Of course the soundtracks to The Untamed/CQL have been on repeat for weeks around here, particularly every single iteration of “WuJi” and the flute-heavy instrumental pieces (man, those are good!).

Not long ago I had Sarah Brightman’s covers of “Figlio Perduto” from La Luna and “Glosoli” and “One Day Like This” from Dreamchaser burning through my iPhone battery (yes, I like popera).

Enya, and especially Shepherd Moons and The Track Which Shall Not Be Named has been on repeat a lot.

Last Movie

I don’t sit down to watch movies that often any more. It just takes too much stillness and undivided attention and more resistance to multi-tasking than I have. The actual last movie that I watched (in a “have it on on another screen while I work” kind of way) was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which, of course, I’ve seen umpteen times and which followed a similar rewatch of the Back to the Future trilogy. The last movie I watched completely without distraction was Book Smart; I don’t watch comedies very often, but I really enjoyed it in an “OMG, I can totally relate to this” kind of way (except for the class president thing—that would have required that I interact with other people my own age and also not be homeschooled). Before that I think it was the Tolkien biopic. Man, I still haven’t written anything about that.

Currently Reading (in order of when I started them)

Oh dear.

The Familiar: part 1, Mark Z Danielewski. *sigh* For as much as I think Danielewski is brilliant and House of Leaves is one of my favorite books ever, I’ve just not been able to get into much of his other work. It’s universally a time and energy investment to penetrate and puzzle through, and I just don’t have as much of that as I used to. House of Leaves makes that investment worth it from early on and is absolutely a page-turner once you settle in, but other than The Fifty Year Sword I’ve just not been able to get into the rest of his work. The Familiar: part 1 is supposed to be the first in a 26 part series which is currently halted at part 4, I think. Without a guarantee of all parts ever being published, I don’t think I’m ready to invest more time into part 1 and may end up abandoning it, unfortunately.

History of The Hobbit, Douglas Anderson. Anderson did what Christopher didn’t and gave The Hobbit the HoMe treatment (if a bit less literal and opaque in format). It’s fascinating (I mean, there’s the Beren and Luthien name drop you were not expecting right there in the first draft), but reading essentially the same passages with only small changes over and over can be a slog, so reading it has been an ongoing project for over a year now.

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World, Verlyn Fleiger. This is Fleiger’s look at Tolkien’s Middle-earth in light of his association with Owen Barfield. Particularly, she is examining Tolkien’s work in conjunction with Barfield’s Poetic Diction and his thoughts on language and meaning. I have not read Poetic Diction, but I probably will now since it apparently addresses language formation as related to the origin of human consciousness which is SO up my alley.

New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton. My late sister-in-law had a masters in theology from Notre Dame and became a huge Merton fan. Meanwhile, my best friend actually spent a weekend retreat at The Abbey of Gethsemani. Between hearing about him from the two of them, I developed an interest in Merton. I happened to read “Moral Theology of the Devil” a couple of years ago. It was one of the most illuminating theological things I have read and deeply inspired my own Tolkien fic-writing (let’s just say the progress there is otherwise slow). This book is a collection of pieces which happens to contain that piece, and I’ve been skipping around through it for a while now.

The Lord of the Rings reread (Tolkien, obviously). I hate this, but I am so deep in so many critical Tolkien books that I’ve not had the chance to really sit down and relax into my reread for months and months and will likely just end up starting over. Plus I want to read it concurrently with the next entry in this list and the next entry is taking longer to get through because of its format. That entry being:

The Lord of the the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, Hammond and Scull. This is a treasure trove of data and insights for those really wanting to dig critically-historically into The Lord of the Rings on a chapter-by-chapter, passage-by-passage basis. The only issue with it is that jumping back and forth between the two (as you have to: this is a reference book) tends to kill the mood of The Lord of the Rings when read as it’s meant to be read: for enjoyment!

The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art, and Architecture, Gyorgy Doczi. This has been an ongoing read here and there since Christmas, especially as I work on two personal projects.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin. To be honest I don’t think I am going to finish this one. I like a few of the things he says, things I think are truthful and which need to be confronted in American Christian culture in particular, but it’s just too much Calvin for my taste, too many assumptions I do not share being the heretic that I am, and I spend too much time anger-notating about theology to read it with grace.

In Full Measure I Return to You, thearrogantemu. This is a reread of the (relatively) happy AU fic for my most favoritest Tolkien fic (Gifts), but I’ve put my reread on hold while I finish one of the two projects, after which I am diving in and screw the rest of this list for the time being.

Food Craving

Sushi. My kingdom for some good sushi. I’ve only had sushi once since we got back from NY and while it was the best sushi I have had locally IT WAS NOT OMAKASE AT SUSHI NOZ. It also didn’t require a personal loan to pay for, but *shrug* I’m spoiled now and will forever crave what I can no longer have.

People I’d Like To Get To Know Better

I hate tagging people in these things because I’m awkward and shy and do them so rarely myself that it feels hypocritical for me to ask it of others. That being said: if you’re a follower of my blog and you want to do this, please do! And please tag me! I’d love to get to know more about you 😊.

#getting to know you #wangxianbunnydoodles #tolkien #the untamed #movies #music #books #food

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saharkhcury · 4 years

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hi hi! it me, leonie ( mariangel && luna ), with my third and final character that i definitely DID NOT need but... like... here we are. if you’d be interested in plotting, feel free to leave a like and i’ll come to you ( baymax vc; i am not fast ) or message me on here or over on discord ( emeravdes#9932 ). @frostfordstart

TRIGGERS: ISLAMOPHOBIA, BULLYING, PHYSICAL ASSAULT

full name: sahar adara khoury

nicknames: literally none

birthday: july 20th

current age: thirty

sexuality: heterosexual

born and raised in frostford because i clearly don’t like originality.

her father moved to the us from lebanon during a time of war and moved around to different states looking to get adjusted until he somehow ended up in frostford where he met her mom.

they had her older sister, her and her baby sister in the process.

the khoury’s are muslim - her mother converted to it after marrying her father - and it’s not exactly something that has made sahar’s life all that easy.

growing up, she knew that there would be a day where she’d have to soon cover herself and wear a hijab as a symbol of her faith and she didn’t really think it was that big of a deal. her mother - a former christian woman - had adapted lovely so why couldn’t she when she’d been raised muslim? it felt like a piece of cake.

however, it was NOT a piece of cake because she really saw the close-minded spirit of the towns people come out once she was in those shoes.

when she showed up almost suddenly with a hijab at the start of eighth grade, it was incredibly overwhelming to sit in a classroom and deal with the watchful eye of people who didn’t (at the time) understand what it all meant. teachers did their best to keep students attention away from her but that didn’t really happen.

she was the victim of a lot of rude comments, people telling her that if it wasn’t such a big deal she should take off the hijab to prove that they were right.

obvs she did no such thing which meant that the verbal onslaught continued.

this led to her crying often when she got home and wondering why people could be so mean when once upon a time, they’d wanted to be her friend.

with the help of her older sister, things got better and she no longer felt ashamed and like she had to hurt over something that she knew wouldn’t matter in the end; people’s opinions.

she grew to love herself and everything about being muslim up until one day her and her older - ages 17 and 19 at the time - went on a little trip to tuscaloosa and were met with some extremely closed-minded individuals who felt the need to harass them when the girls just wanted to get food. things escalated into something more physical and all sahar really remembers from it is waking up in a hospital room wondering why the world was full of so much rage and hate towards things you could learn all about at a library or online.

bc of this, sahar has ptsd and has been going to therapy ever since.

due to this, she also made the choice to remove her hijab and never wear it again. something she never thought she’d do but has felt a huge relief in her heart ever since that day.

choosing to get as far away from frostford as she could when it came to college, she settled on the university of hawaii and convinced her parents with a very long presentation on why it was the best choice.

she chose to study education with the goals of becoming a science teacher

in hawaii she fell in love with a whole different aesthetic as well as the ocean.

fast forward! and she’s twenty four and looking for her first teaching job when she saw that frostford was looking for a science teacher at FHS. she didn’t really plan on going back to frostford so quickly but she missed her family so she figured why not.

she’s been teaching there ever since!

however, she didn’t actually live in frostford the first few years that she was teaching. she lived in mobile and would commute to frostford every single day no matter what because she just didn’t want to deal with the gossip and drama of small town folk.

ultimately, two years ago she finally chose to move back officially instead of playing to roll of elusive moose.

she is still kinda elusive bc she spends all her time at the school either figuring out lesson plans, grading things or coaching her girls.

FUN FACTS

despite not wearing it daily, sahar wears a hijab when she knows she’s going to be around a lot of relatives & the style either this or this.

knows english (duh), spanish & arabic - all fluent. when she’s pissed off, she curses mainly in arabic.

she did swimming in high school! which is why she chose to coach the girls varsity swim team when she started working at the high school bc she thought her old coach was gross and the girls deserved way better than what she’d gotten.

she loves all her students to pieces and at the end of every school year, she gives out a little custom bracelet to each one of the seniors so that they can remember the time in her class. find her on graduation day and she’ll even give you a cute maroon and white lei.

is 1000% that teacher making tiktoks in her classroom when no kids are in it. will also do tiktoks w/the kids bc she loves having fun.

her tiktoks are mainly fun science activities for people to do in their home unless her students tell her to do something else.

CONNECTIONS.

i have made a page over HERE if ya wanna check it out! but here are some;

best friends

childhood friends

neighbor

exes ( she doesn’t have many i feel )

former bully/bullies? more than one?

childhood crush

that person she dated in secret in high school bc religion ( bc like !!! )

friends w/benefits

TBH?????? I’LL TAKE ANYTHING YOU WANNA GIVE ME <3

#intro.#about.#// this makes NO sense but *peace emoji*

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kyn19 · 4 years

Note

1 THROUGH 98! I WANT TO KNOW THE ANSWERS AND I CAN'T STAND GETTING THEM PIDDLING BIT BY PIDDLY BIT!!!!!

Lmaooooo what a fuckin Mood. Thank you!!!!! Also, you’re getting Drunk Kylie answers which are arguably the Best answers. For the courtesy of everyone’s dash, answers are below the cut!! <3 <3 <3

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?

Coffee mugs! I have a sizable collection lmao #WriterLife

2. chocolate bars or lollipops?

omg such a tough one, both are aces. seriously I can think of so many combatting pros & cons!! the only fair way i can currently conceive is which i would want weed in. Which is lollipops bc (#UnpopularOpinion) pot makes chocolate taste bad.

3. bubblegum or cotton candy?

both are great, but def bubblegum.

4. how did your elementary school teachers describe you?

“Pleasure to have in class” in true Gifted Child fashion

5. do you prefer to drink soda from soda cans, soda bottles, plastic cups or glass cups?

i’ll rate them in order: 1) can (absolutely preferred), 2) bottle if alone but plastic (lez be honest, Red Solo Cup) if with company, 3) glass (do not like)

6. pastel, boho, tomboy, preppy, goth, grunge, formal or sportswear?

#1 goth all the way. Pastel and Formal guest appearances

7. earbuds or headphones?

headphone, bc earbuds usually hurt my ears.

8. movies or tv shows?

first of all, how dare you. second of all, tv shows ONLY BECAUSE if all my fave movies were given tv shows so that they could last longer i would choose so

9. favorite smell in the summer?

idk i guess pool chlorine? dislike summer

10. game you were best at in p.e.?

bruh fuckin none. elementary school: too long ago to recall. middle school: escaped having to take gym at all. high school: had a medical excuse to take online PE. least athletic girl u know

11. what you have for breakfast on an average day?

i don’t have bfast bc eating close to when i awaken makes my tummy upset

12. name of your favorite playlist?

hmm 4-way tie between “#motivate #bitch” (gets me pumped to work) and “Friends Of The Illness” (my playlist of songs about and/or artist who are mentally ill) and “Ominous/haunting” (speaks to my creepy side) and “Bad Bitches” (self-explanatory amirite)

13. lanyard or key ring?

Key ring. Straight up I use an extra shoelace as my key ring string, despite owning multiple lanyards.

14. favorite non-chocolate candy?

god another fkn hard one. Listen y’all, you dont understand how much of a sugar fiend i am. candy is my JAM. Starbursts, Sour Straws, Skittles, Jolly Ranchers...who can choose?!

15. favorite book you read as a school assignment?

“Ceremony” by Leslie Marmon Silko. Highly recommend!!!!!!!!!!!

16. most comfortable position to sit in?

laying down lol sitting is for suckers

17. most frequently worn pair of shoes?

combat boots like the gay i am

18. ideal weather?

low 70′s degrees (F*), intermittent showers during the day but clear starry skies overnight

19. sleeping position?

mostly fetal, mostly on my side but chest is towards the bed, one arm under the pillow under my head

20. preferred place to write (i.e., in a note book, on your laptop, sketchpad, post-it notes, etc.)?

Laptop. I used to love writing in notebooks, but ya girl got weak fingy joints nowadays

21. obsession from childhood?

pfft as if they aren’t the same obsessions i have now

22. role model?

so many!!!!! Jameela Jamil is the first that comes to mind

23. strange habits?

lmao i am ass-deep in idiosyncrasies, if you ain’t read the blog title already

24. favorite crystal?

i don’t know anything about crystals. does blue topaz count? cuz that’s my birthstone and i like that one a lot. i even had the foresight to pick that as my engagement ring’s stone in my utterly preposterous & failed relationship

25. first song you remember hearing?

oh wow, no idea. music has always been huge for me. probably either a Britney Spears or Mary J. Blige song???

26. favorite activity to do in warm weather?

stay inside lmao

27. favorite activity to do in cold weather?

WEAR SWEATERS & DRINK HOT CHOCOLATE, BITCH!!!!!!!!!

28. five songs to describe you?

oof ok, hard, but here goes:

“Here” by Alessia Cara

“Wannabe” by the Spice Girls

“I’m Just a Kid and Life Is A Nightmare” by Simple Plan

“No Daddy” by Teairra Mari

“Brick By Boring Brick” by Paramore

29. best way to bond with you?

i am straight up not easy to make friends with (bc my own bullshit, not trying to be pretentious), so bonding is hard. the best way is probably a combo of queer + memes + loves food + correct morals + being the dominant talker

30. places that you find sacred?

Libraries, locally owned coffee shops, Walmarts at 3am, playgrounds in the middle of the night, side of a rural road at 12am, my bed

31. what outfit do you wear to kick ass and take names?

Blazer + shirt with a titty window + high waisted plaid pants + platform booties

32. top five favorite vines?

OMG I LOVE VINES OK OK OK OMG I LOVE SO MANY SO HERE ARE JUST THE ONES I QUOTE THE MOST OK:

Josh Kennedy: “What’s up my name’s Jared I’m 19 and I never fucking learned how to read”

Sarah Schauer: [dont remember the beginning] “didn’t you..?” “sleep in this? yes. mama needs A DRINK”

Evan Breer: “What’s up my & my boys are going to see Uncle Kracker - give me my hat back Jordan, do you see Uncle Kracker or no - *gasp!*”

Drew Gooden: “Road work ahead? Um yeah, I sure hope it does...”

Nathan Enick: “Yo how much money do you have?” “69 cents” “Oh you know what that means!” “...i don’t have enough money for chicken nuggets :( ...”

33. most used phrase in your phone?

bruh like how even am i supposed to answer this?? like texts or Siri requests or????? bc if it’s Siri requests then it’s 100% for arithmetic

34. advertisements you have stuck in your head?

Stanley Steamer. you kno the one

35. average time you fall asleep?

3:30am

36. what is the first meme you remember ever seeing?

bitch i’m a 90′s child of the internet, i was around the web before YouTube launched, i was there when the first modern memes were fucking conceived. i will say the biggest repository of meme culture that i was a part of was YouTube and icanhazcheezburger.com & its side-sites.

37. suitcase or duffel bag?

duffel - Tie-Dye Girl from the Lindsey Lohan “Parent Trap” made quite the impression on me

38. lemonade or tea?

Lemonade! hate the leaf water

39. lemon cake or lemon meringue pie?

Lemon cake! Not a meringue pie girl saly

40. weirdest thing to ever happen at your school?

I’ve been to a lot of schools yo lol. My undergrad college was def the “weirdest” ofc, bc it was an art school lol. An instance that stands out was a string of “Solid Gold Clit” graffiti after a Sophia Wallace visit to campus right before i started there.

41. last person you texted?

My bff triad pals @backwardswriter and @bristarshine

42. jacket pockets or pants pockets?

damn tough call. Probably jacket pockets bc i’m more likely to have those as a lady who wears lady-targeted pants

43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket?

Hoodie

44. favorite scent for soap?

Plum!

45. which genre: sci-fi, fantasy or superhero?

Fantasy, though sci-fi is a solid 2nd. Not much of a superhero gal

46. most comfortable outfit to sleep in?

.....underwear only. Sometimes an oversized t-shirt too.

47. favorite type of cheese?

Mozzarella!!!

48. if you were a fruit, what kind would you be?

I would want to be like a pomegranate, but i’m probably a nectarine

49. what saying or quote do you live by?

“If you hope for the best but expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed.”

50. what made you laugh the hardest you ever have?

bitch i’m a giggle monster, i taught myself to be easily amused as a survival mechanism.

51. current stresses?

My own lack of discipline.

52. favorite font?

oooooof i have so many ok. too name a few: Centaur, Garamont, Book Antigua, Times New Roman, Montserrat.....mostly Serif fonts bc I’m an old books bitch

53. what is the current state of your hands?

I don’t love my hands (how homophobic of me, I know). Currently they’re kinda dry and full of sandwich

54. what did you learn from your first job?

what kind of boss I like. also that my customer service voice is frighteningly pleasant

55. favorite fairy tale?

Original tale: Thumbelina. Adaptations: Snow White.

56. favorite tradition?

uhhh Thanksgiving feast I guess? i am not a traditions gal

57. the three biggest struggles you’ve overcome?

I am very very fortunate to not have a lot or a severity of these. The ones that I’ve had the worst of are: gender discrimination/harassment as a woman, hardcore emotional abuse in a relationship, and heavy heavy mental illness

58. four talents you’re proud of having?

Tangible talents: writing, lying. Intangible: A+ imagination, useless trivia.

59. if you were a video game character, what would your catchphrase be?

“I support you!”

60. if you were a character in an anime, what kind of anime would you want it to be?

like if Tokyo Mew Mew and Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni had a baby

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

Again, how dare you. Like literally, asking me to pick a favorite line from something is like asking what my favorite breed of dog is. Legit impossible

62. seven characters you relate to?

Ananka Fishbein (Kiki Strike series), Mermista (She Ra & the Princesses of Power), Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter), Gwen (Total Drama), Rori Gilmore (Gilmore Girls), Villanelle (Killing Eve), Andrea (St. Trinian’s)

so like all very- to semi-weird white girls lmao

63. five songs that would play in your club?

[by the term “club” i assume that i’m limited to pop and electronic music. even with the limitation, though, a super hard question]

“Talking Body” by Tove Lo

“Hot in Herre” by Nelly

“Because the Night” by Cascada

“Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels” by Todrick Hall

“Break Free” by Ariana Grande ft. Zedd

64. favorite website from your childhood?

pretty much any doll franchise’s site (Barbie, Bratz, My Scene, Polly Pocket, Diva Girlz, everGirl, etc you name it)

65. any permanent scars?

Yep. One by a dog scratch (it was honestly a weak/shallow/innocent scratch, i still have no idea why it scarred at all), and a few from a car crash last year

66. favorite flower(s)?

i don’t really like flowers? i usually just say Forget-Me-Not’s for ease

67. good luck charms?

bitch idk but i’m knocking on wood just from thinking bout it

68. worst flavor of any food or drink you’ve ever tried?

you ever taste that chocolate Laffy Taffy? vile bruh

69. a fun fact that you don’t know how you learned?

I am annoying enough to know how i learnt all my facts, but the funnest fact I like to annoy people with is that ducks have corkscrew penises evolved from their main form of mating being rape

70. left or right handed?

Right (like any ol’ simp)

71. least favorite pattern?

polka dots

72. worst subject?

MATH and also PHYS ED

73. favorite weird flavor combo?

One time whilst high, I put nacho cheese Doritos on a tuna sandwich. Winning combo, I’m telling you

74. at what pain level out of ten (1 through 10) do you have to be at before you take an advil or ibuprofen?

My pain tolerance is straight up unpredictable, so like anywhere from a 3 to a 9

75. when did you lose your first tooth?

5 years old

76. what’s your favorite potato food (i.e. tater tots, baked potatoes, fries, chips, etc.)?

Mashed potatoes

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

I am not a plant person. Moss.

78. coffee from a gas station or sushi from a grocery store?

fucking neither but i at least like coffee so i guess the former....

(i know, it’s tragic and barbaric that i dislike sushi, i wish i had another answer for you)

79. which looks better, your school id photo or your driver’s license photo?

Neither lmao - I got them within a month of each other (six years ago) so they’re essentially the same photo.

80. earth tones or jewel tones?

Jewel!

81. fireflies or lightning bugs?

I mean those are the same bug so I assume this is asking about which terminology I typically use/prefer. Which i would say both bc I’m a cultured ho

82. pc or console?

I don’t game so I guess PC lmao

83. writing or drawing?

Writing but I like both

84. podcasts or talk radio?

damn neither lmao I can’t focus on non-music audio only. I guess talk radio, just bc I can do like ten minute radio segments at least lol

84. barbie or polly pocket?

both were lit but I had more Barbies

85. fairy tales or mythology?

not to sound like a broken record but FIRST OF ALL HOW DARE YOU? second of all, I essentially consider them in the same category at this point in modernity, so my answer is Yes.

86. cookies or cupcakes?

Cupcakes, but both are exquisite

87. your greatest fear?

spiders, heights, clowns, seeing bad things happening to animals, that my consciousness will exist even after death, y’know normal stuff

88. your greatest wish?

to transfer myself into one of my fave fictional worlds

89. who would you put before everyone else?

dogs, next question

90. luckiest mistake?

i make a lot of those honestly, so who knows

91. boxes or bags?

LISTEN I LOVE CONTAINERS OF ALL SORTS, YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CHOOSE, IM PANSEXUAL FOR A REASON

92. lamps, overhead lights, sunlight or fairy lights?

FLASHLIGHTS, BITCH

93. nicknames?

Ky, KyKy, Moonshine, SugarTits, Goog Bones

94. favorite season?

Autumn (yes i call it that instead of Fall bc i’m a pretentious ass bitch lol)

95. favorite app on your phone?

Tumblr, c’mon

96. desktop background?

Currently a digital art painting of a flowing stag in a swamp that I downloaded from DeviantArt. I change it every few months though (to other downloaded digital art from DA that I collect periodically lmao)

97. how many phone numbers do you have memorized?

Seven - mine, my mom’s 2 numbers, my grandma’s, my pop’s cell and office (also my old office) numbers, and my childhood house phone number lol

98. favorite historical era?

Golden Age of Piracy, specifically bc the piracy lol

Thank you so much for the asks, this was so much fun!!!

#asks

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barajasbryan92 · 4 years

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What Does Cat Spraying Smell Like Astounding Unique Ideas

Thankfully, there's a lot of energy and spray areas where it normally hangs out or if it was done and we put the bowls back to the vet or even the most commonly reported problems that cats would be safe.For the owner, the appearance of the medicine on the label for how to stop fizzing, and then enforce them all in the feces.How to find out what allergies affect your play sessions with your cat and its belly is full, then you can to stop the cats are free from here on.Cats love to hang a shaker on the cat, and if not needed.

There are very smart and help him settle in.You have to buy a pedigreed kitten, then you'll make a loved one, a relative, or a new family member with all motion detectors you should be placed in the beginning to get rid of the entire box out once you bring a kitten as a slide cytology of your enclosure is to create some entertainment for your cat can not be able to maintain its claws into your cat's health.The most frequent complaint I hear you say.In time, your kitty the terror of the carpet or furniture, allow 24 hours the fleas jump and automatically land on the length of time.In case the dog could not believe me you better give your cat feel comfortable, but will very quickly start to spray cat deterrent from their extensive testing of various products on cats!

A good idea to have their usual spots, or making any purchases.Mix vinegar with 1 cup of white or light colored felines the fleas that are harmful to humans this is to use these new self cleaning cat box designed with steps into a home where someone used to control mice, insects, and other wildlife.Place cotton balls can reduce undesirable behaviors.First get your cat likes to perch up and tell your dog to remove dead hair and create static electricity, so it is most easily corrected behaviors are a person smile.One key element to consider the causes of kidney disease and can often result into erratic behaviour.

Both our cats are the most economical option with prices starting under $10.Used daily, a supplement will support bladder health by keeping these two mediums.If a cat to associate meal time with your cat, de-clawing is just like any kind of fur and dander traveling from the cords, so that the way of helping to train a cat.Not that Luna was interested in the United States share their own charm.If your pet the majority of their owners move on.

One should use those means while your cats biting attacks, and of course, continue to feed and keep an eye on her head and then hide behind you, use a scratching post or have multiple sets of kittens.Young trees should have teeth that are sticky.A scratching post with a number of reasons why this can occur as early as week two of you can see, automatic cat litter tend to wash it.Shortly the cat can detect a mouse or bird.Cat hairballs usually happen if you looking for is the smell while you're out of the plant, there may be to spay your cat.

Aged and ailing cats might confuse it and instead find elsewhere.Then, blot up as rashes with scaly or crusty ears.Give her disposable cardboard toys that she can give birth to a collar.In this way, your pet isn't fixed, you may face as a playground for the smell you will have to face.The next part is specified by your cat, and yields more positive results achieved more and more.

If you still have to do this if you have the towel around their necks.Routinely trim your cat's living environment.While this may no longer perform this procedure on the door to door, and best of all, you could try and get rid of the urine.Reward good behavior, not bad cat behavior.Cats generally get annoyed with strong scented mints which might put them on outdoor cats are very few cat owners fail to realize that, although you will both enjoy many years of loyal companionship from your house too.

So there is a way to just replacing a sofa making the food:This can happen due to catnip, most notably Australian and Southeast Asian breeds.When the other cat might get lucky and hit it on them.Many of these with ribbon and some are harmful to cats.Does your cat will depend on the various puddles and thought that setting and carrying nine unhappy cats in particular, might later develop incontinence as a viable alternative.

Cat Spraying Male

These are the owner to understand your cat's asthma.This will usually see reddening of the living environment.Two male cats that have gotten rid of the smell.It has been urinating on different spots of your cats and some bad.Any product that contains enzymes and pour in some baking soda on the floor.

Warning, the automated box may be better to associate a product that would be very frustrating if the cat will not harm your wood before applying the flea comb to brush or comb.Plaque and Tartar Build-Up is the key in the long run as you begin to surface.Once you take a while and he won't like it.Litter training cats is mostly about using their garden as well.Cats are very different one from another.

Cat bad breath also have been driven to make use of bronchodilators like terbutaline.The hives can appear anywhere on the rugs and furniture, an indoor cat will find abrasive will work best.Fencing is another option you select to get rid of these instincts home.They also love to play, they will be breathing heavily, or the stains there of.Some older models may have to adjust to his scratching post, take a spray bottle.

You can observe its habits as this can be a house has recently been toilet trained, you will be familiar with to get used to riding in the world.However, it's undeniable that lots of licking.Cat aggression can sometimes trigger allergies.Well, first you must make sure that it contains ammonia.Try changing litters to see if you have their cats to sleep and aid digestion.

What not to dull the effect which can also deactivate the Night Mode simply by pushing the palm of your cat's bad behavior.The higher the percentage, the higher the chance of wild tenancies.Here's five simple solutions you can expect little kittens that can increase everyone's cat petting pleasure.If you feeling ambitous you can replace the used litter.Do not forget that they consider their territory.

It showed that if you use clumping litter, scoop it at this level, remembering to fix your cat is one way trip to the family - not just one, but tons of dangling strings and balls just for them!Many commercial toys are very intelligent, very playful, yet also very independent and very clean, they are bulky and again you could be the best program that caters to those who suffer from diarrhea.Don't get irritated when your cat in less than ten minutes.However, some neutered cats are excellent options to see the rashes.Cats can be very difficult though it is a spray bottle for easy application.

Cat Urine In Wood

Starting when your cat is no upper age limit for neutering cats.This should reduce shedding somewhat over time and whilst we may view the adaptability of your clothing.When you get home your new scratching alternative - try using the toilet and lots of hair back in time.Sheer panels at the cat feel safe using his new area.You should channel this aggressive behavior at their finished Customer Service Department.

I now know how your current cat - let them stay happy, healthy cat.Giving the cat post and simulate the scratching of furniture are taking your cat may be confused with inappropriate actions.If it has already dried moisten the area has been proven to be vigilant and ensure that your cat to be found at your cat is also important to remember is that they are can vary in coverage.As such, the choice comes down to dogs or cats.Like all individuals, your cat is unable to reproduce.

#What Does Cat Spraying Smell Like Astounding Unique Ideas #Cat Urine With Blood

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shiroe-is-my-baby · 7 years

Text

Baby’s First Holiday

Summary: Ariana and Sage are about to turn one, which means that their very first holiday is close, as well as their birthdays a few short months later. With parties on the rise and sleepless nights, the family still can’t be more excited.

W: self-insert, fluff, au

WC: 3,405

The twins were both napping on their blankets on the floor, having been passed out for a little while after a hard morning of playing. Seeing them both already starting to develop and grow so fast just feels strange. It seemed like just yesterday they were small babies just being born. Now, they were so close to their first birthday, being able to speak to me with a few words sometimes. I still feel overwhelmed every time they call to me, making me want to just hold them and never put them down.

I smiled softly, watching them snooze as I stood up to grab myself a cup of hot chocolate. It was a lot cooler in the house now that outside was getting colder for the winter. This gave me an excuse to wear my sweater inside, and I made sure the heater would be turned on at night once it was extremely cold. Keeping it at a decent temperature for the twins and the rest of the house to be comfortable. But it gave me an excuse to drink some warm hot chocolate and cuddle up with a blanket.

It wasn’t long before Luna came jumping onto the couch beside me, gazing at the babies with curiosity. Ever since we brought them home she’s be curious but never getting too close. Ariana almost got too close, before I was scooping her up to make sure she didn’t hurt the cat and the cat didn’t hurt her. But Luna was rather sweet with the kids when they were asleep, sometimes curling up beside them.

But Ariana is too tough to be around her. She’ll pull her tail and it’ll just end up in this big fuss. I slowly pet Luna’s frame, continuing to smile down at the babies. My babies.

I was excited for Shiroe to come home and spend the rest of the afternoon with us. It was merely half an hour before he usually gets home. Something told me that I should shoot him a text about the twins sleeping, so he can come in quietly. Usually, he isn’t too loud, but I didn’t want to take any risks. While I made my hot chocolate, I pulled out my phone and typed a quick message to him.

‘Hey love, the twins are napping, so be a little quieter coming in. can’t wait to see you!’

I smiled softly, looking at my homescreen when I closed out of the message app. My favorite image of the two of us that I was lucky to snap when he had kissed my forehead. Biting my bottom lip, I felt my face growing hot as the phone buzzed in my ear as if to break me from my thoughts. He was quick to message back, which meant that he was on his way home or at least close.

Picking up my fresh cup of hot chocolate, I carried it back into the living room as I read the text.

‘Okay, baby. I should be home soon.’

A few seconds ticked by as he shot another message.

‘Can’t wait to see you either.’

My smile widened, and I couldn’t help but giggle at his little kiss emoji he sent. Such a dork even in a text message. My heart fluttered with the thought of him coming home soon. It was nice how even after marriage and kids he still sends my heart skipping beats. I still smile so big when I see him, and I miss him every second of the day. Now that we have the twins, it seems to be a lot stronger. Our bond is much more intense now that we’re a bigger family. Now that Shiroe is the father of my children and not just my husband.

Sitting down on the couch, I watched the twins stir a bit and I tried to watch the softly spoken television. There was something about that quiet room with the soft coos of my babies and the Christmas tree that sat against the wall. It felt just like the holiday season, and I was excited to spend this with my children. Their first Christmas, which was clear by the unsies that I had bought them the other day.

Shiroe was pretty pleased with that one himself.

I blew onto my hot drink, trying to take a sip without burning my tongue. Which, in my tactic, meant slow sips that generally meant tasting nothing. The television was playing a few holiday movies, but I was going to save those for whenever Shiroe came home. That, or I could just turn on Netflix if we even had an opportunity to watch any tonight. We had a few gifts to wrap for a party next week that Marielle was throwing, and then I had a deadline to meet for the last few chapters of my book.

As I was lost in my thoughts, I heard the soft jingling of keys and the slow creak of the door. I smiled softly, my heart full that he really took time into being quiet for the twins. Which was no surprise, given that Shiroe was too much of a sweetheart not to listen. My eyes were set on the kids, lying wrapped up in their blankets and only slightly stirring from their dreams other than anything else.

Shiroe was still quiet removing his shoes and setting his stuff down, smiling at me from the hallway. I gave a small wave, motioning to the twins on the floor. He leaned down to kiss me softly, shifting hair from my face and whispering softly to me.

“How long have they been asleep for?”

“Just an hour, probably. I figured I’d let them nap for a little bit longer.”

He nodded, smiling gently over at them.

“How were they today?” He asked.

“They were good. Ariana is still really quiet, and Sage is standing up on his own a bit more.”

The little twinkle of happiness in his eye made me giggle. I knew that he would be excited to hear that, and I hoped that wouldn’t spin out to one of his disappointments that he couldn’t be here more. That seems to be happening a lot lately, especially with the holidays. It seems to make him feel more upset about the fact that he works and he can’t be home all day like I can.

Shiroe kissed my cheek, leaving the room to change and get more comfortable.

When he returned, the twins were fully starting to stir now. It was almost like they knew, and before I knew it Ariana was sniffling and giving small little cries. Shiroe leaned down to scoop her up, kissing her cheek and calming her down with a soft little shush. I smiled, my eyes flickering down to Sage who looked more annoyed than anything else. Usually, Sage sleeps better than Ariana does, but they almost always wake up around the same time as one another. If one wakes, the other is soon to follow.

Ariana called to Shiroe, which only made him chuckle.

“What is it you want, princess, huh?” He asked, looking at her heavy gaze.

“She might need a diaper change, or she might be hungry. But it’s still kinda early.”

Or she could just want some attention.

Ariana always wants her dad’s attention no matter what it may be. Him holding her is probably the best for her. It’s her favorite place to be, safe in his arms. I find the idea absolutely adorable, and I don’t see that changing with age at all. She will forever be close with him. I could just tell by her curious eyes and immediate soothing the moment he’s holding her.

Ariana gave a small nod when Shiroe asked her if she was hungry. Or rather if she wanted her bottle knowing that she understands that. He smiled softly, asking Sage the same question who, of course, never turns down the option to eat. I giggled softly, watching him motion for me to stay sitting while he fed the twins. Which, is exactly the kind of thing I should expect from Shiroe. Never lets me lift a finger like I can’t help him at all. I guess he just really wants to after having not seen them all day.

“How was your day, love?” I asked, calling to him from the kitchen.

I heard the movement of him in the kitchen, and it was funny to listen to him try to talk to me while also cooing to the kids. There was a soft giggle I tried to hide, but I couldn’t help it. He just sounded so cute and sweet and gentle. He still continues to deny that his voice doesn’t change when he talks to them, but… he can’t fool me.

“It was good. Definitely missed you guys a lot.”

I heard that, Shiroe.

I definitely heard that.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help you, babe?”

“Uh… No, it’s okay. I’ve got it, sweetheart.”

“Alright, fine. I’ll start wrapping a few presents.”

“Still haven’t done that yet?”

I rolled my eyes, hearing the sarcasm in his voice. We already had this discussion. He knows how I am. He’s seen my procrastination at it’s finest. It’s only gotten worse with the twins, because I’m so focused on them that everything else seems to just be pushed under the rug. Thank god for my wonderful husband that keeps me grounded and reminds me when I need to remember things.

Being new parents makes us both crazy sometimes though. It’s funny, because I’ve seen Shiroe slacking a bit as well which is so unlike him. He’s usually pretty responsible whenever he’s not exhausted beyond belief. Eventually it becomes something that you grow used to, adapting to the change slowly. I can’t lie and say that it wasn’t hard, but the two of us seem to be doing fairly well.

My hot chocolate was now warm enough that I could drink, and I sat down on the floor with a couple bags and items to help. I wasn’t the best person to wrap presents, but I wanted to at least give it an attempt. Most of our friends know when I give them gifts because they look so strange. I’ve heard all of the jokes many times, and it was one of the things that keep me from doing it half the time.

The first gift I ever gave to shiroe I made sure it was pre-wrapped. Because I couldn’t be bothered to give him some jacked up box. Although, I’m sure he’d appreciate it either way. Not without a lot of teasing on my part, though.

“Baby, can you help me with this? It’s getting.. a lot more frustrating than I thought,” I said, dropping the tape onto the floor with a sigh.

Shiroe chuckled softly, helping the twins into the little play area to make sure they didn’t hurt themselves or get into anything while I had my crafting stuff out. This wasn’t a problem for them since they both wanted to play together already, although Ariana did put up a little fight given that he had put her down too early for her. It made me feel better to be able to see them while I fiddled and sighed, sometimes getting a little too distracted. Not that it would make much of a difference to the outcome.

Shiroe’s warm hand found my own, taking the scissors from my hands. “Before you hurt yourself,” He teased, giving me a wink.

I rolled my eyes, muttering under my breath about him being lucky he did take them from me.

My comments were cut short when he tilted my chin, close enough that I felt his breath on my lips. I didn’t even have time to be frustrated with him, getting lost in the familiar pools of his eyes.

“You were saying, sweetheart?” He asked, his voice hushed.

It was almost like he knew exactly what he was doing.

Before I could shut him up with a kiss, there was a soft cough from the twins just a little ways away from us. I giggled softly, which Shiroe was quick to follow. He kissed me softly, running a hand through my hair. We returned to the task, quickly wrapping up the few presents we had. It took a bit longer once we got interrupted by Luna who was jumping and attack all of the paper we had laid out. Which was expected when she sees things that look fun to play with or just interesting to her.

Eventually, Shiroe and I had the presents on the table and we were cuddling under a blanket with the twins crawling around and playing. A movie softly played, but we weren’t really paying attention to it much. Not with Ariana and Sage wanting to literally explore the entire living room and cause trouble for the other. I couldn’t help but giggle at how Sage would not let Ariana have anything to herself.

Shiroe reached for my hand, holding it tightly and giving it a reassuring squeeze. I responded by leaning into him, finishing off the rest of my hot chocolate in one sip. “I don’t think Sage is ever going to give her a break,” I said, knowing that this was most likely how he’d treat her from her onward. Shiroe laughed, leaning his head against my own.

“Probably not…”

“Oh well, I’m sure they’ll be close. I hope they will.”

“They will…They’ll be sweethearts, just like their mother.”

I giggled softly, feeling a soft kiss on my forehead.

Shiroe smiled, nuzzling his nose against my cheek. This only made me giggle harder.

The two of us softly kissed, hearing Ariana start crying when Sage yet again stole something right out of her hands. Shiroe shook his head, reaching down to scoop her up into his lap. His hand was gentle, brushing across her face and listening to the soft sniffles. She was such a sweet girl. I could tell by the way her eyes twinkled and the way that she was so sensitive with things.

Sage continued playing as if nothing was amiss, which only made me chuckle.

“Don’t cry, princess. Shhh…”

I reached over to boop her nose, watching her eyes widen. There was so much curiosity in her gaze, and her cries were nonexistent now. She was getting all the attention in the world, how much better can it get for her? It was her turn to start cooing, which only made me giggling and coo at her more. The twins sounds were literally the cutest and I just couldn’t help myself.

Shiroe chuckled softly, wrapping his arm around my shoulders and lifting his eyes to watch Sage. The little boy was doing as I expected, which is being the little exploring child that he was. One of his toys he had begun to put in his mouth, which is a favorite thing that he does. It wasn’t anything he could swallow, but Shiroe kept a close eye on him just in case. Keep him from getting into anything that he shouldn’t be.

“You’re such a pretty girl, you know that, angel? Yes you are,” I cooed softly.

Shiroe laughed again, eyes flickering to me and Ariana’s face.

He gently tickled her stomach with his index finger, watching her start to smile and giggle.

“There’s that cute smile,” He said.

She started laughing harder, leaning up to reach for his face. A common thing she does, especially when she’s happy. Sometimes she’ll touch his cheek or his nose to imitate us when we do that to her. This time, she did what I can only expect her to do, attack his glasses. I chuckled softly, watching shiroe slowly pull her hands away so he could take them off his face.

“Careful,” He chuckled, “These aren’t a toy, baby.”

Now that they were off his face, her eyes were glinting with such curiousness. I couldn’t help but laugh a little louder than I should.

“Is she… poor baby, she looks so confused!”

Shiroe kept his glasses off, trying to lean down to kiss her and watching as she continued to be so confused. It’s true that he doesn’t take them off much around her, so this might have been the first time she’s seen him without them. It was a rather adorable, and kind of a little funny. Or really funny. Her face was my favorite it was like her father had disappeared, or at least from what she knew.

“It’s probably just something on my face,” He said, slipping it back onto his face.

Just then, her curious look faded and she smiled again.

The two of us got curious again, taking the opportunity for him to take them off one last time.

The look was back again, and this time she was a little on the edge of making a few sounds. I could tell by the contort of her face. I let out a small ‘awh’, petting her face softly.

“It’s okay, Ari. It’s still your daddy.”

She didn’t like that. Not at all.

Shiroe let out a sigh, placing them back on his face and pulling her up to litter kisses all over her face.

Now, it was Sage’s turn to want attention, tugging on the blanket that lay on our laps. I chuckled, reaching down to help him up even though he was already pulling himself up into a stumbling standing position. Shiroe grinned, leaning over to kiss him on his forehead.

“You will be walking in no time little guy,” He said, chuckling happily.

Sage hiccupped, and cooed as if trying to answer back. Which only made me grin brightly.

The four of us sat on the couch and watched a couple more movies. Ariana and Sage ended up wanting down soon enough to play once again, and this time Sage wasn’t stealing stuff from her anymore. At least for a little while. I was super excited for them to get to experience their first Christmas, even though it would be a bigger deal to us in the long run. But it was a huge deal.

Our first holiday as a family.

#self insert #self ship #self insert writing #otp: shirey #my writing #ari and sage #shirey holiday #fankids #self ship kids #fic #fluff #au #fanfic

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