#negotiating boundaries

[whump-tr0pes]

Honor Bound 6 - 28

Honor Bound 6 - 28 (Chronic Pain) @badthingshappenbingo

Red X for posted, white X for requested! Send in your requests! If you don’t see a prompt here that you already requested, please send it again!

This is a series. Start here, continued from here.

This is a sequel to Honor Bound, Honor Bound 2, Honor Bound 3, Honor Bound 4, Honor Bound 5, and the prequel Vera.

AO3

Masterlist

Contents: tattooing, chronic pain, old injury, blood, past consensual sex, negotiating boundaries

~

By the time Brandon had finished half of Zachariah’s tattoo, Sam was beginning to sweat through their shirt. Zachariah had long since sweat through his. Sweat was beading on his brow, running into his eyes, and Brandon had given him a rag to mop his face so he would be more comfortable.

“Just let me know if you need to stop, man, and we can stop,” Brandon had said a few times. Every time Zachariah would bite his lip and shake his head and say he was fine, really, and Brandon would keep going, at least until the next time he would ask. He was asking it every few minutes, now.

Still, Sam hoped no one would notice how much pain they were in. Sitting on this stool with nothing to support their arm, the old wound had long since begun to ache. Old, throbbing pain radiated up and down their arm. The palm of their right hand prickled where normally there was only unsettling numbness. They cradled their arm against their chest.

It had been so, so long since they’d had a bad pain day.

Still, thankfully, everyone seemed to be focusing on Zachariah. It was nice to find the luxury even to be in pain without drawing the worried and guilty glances of their family. Living under the watchful eyes of Isaac, Gavin, and Gray was – well, it was what Sam wanted, but it came at the price of knowing their pain hurt the ones they lived with and loved so dearly. It was nice to be able to exist, even in pain, and not have to so carefully mask it, even for a few hours. Masking it took more energy, which made the pain worse, which just made it harder to mask—

A hand fell on their shoulder. They flinched and sucked in a gasp. Fire jolted through their wound to their hand and they cried out.

Brandon pulled the tattoo machine away from Zachariah’s shoulder and all eyes turned to Sam. They shuddered and ducked their head at the awful, familiar guilt and worry in everyone’s eyes, the way everyone seemed to reach for them at once…

“I’m fine,” they bit out – an instinct. Their hand spasmed against their chest.

“Whoa,” Brandon mumbled as he set the tattoo machine to the side. “You all good?”

“I’m fine,” Sam said, more forcefully this time. “It’s just—”

“You’re really pale,” Isaac said weakly. It was his hand on their shoulder that had startled them.

Sam squeezed their own wrist tightly as they dragged in a shaky inhale, pushed out a hissing exhale. “Yeah,” they croaked.

“Do we need to take a second?” Brandon said. Sam raised their eyes to him. He looked as relaxed as if they were talking about their lunch plans, as if Sam wasn’t moments away from throwing up all over his floor.

“No,” Sam breathed, squeezing their eyes shut and forcing another deep breath. “No, you can keep going. This is just… this is just something that happens.”

Zachariah shifted in his chair. “Um… I think… I might need a minute.” His voice was shaking, sweat beading on his upper lip. He looked like he had just run ten miles.

“Sure,” Brandon said, nonchalant as could be. He set the tattoo machine and stained cloth down.

The fire was fading, but the crushing ache was not. Sam leaned their head against Isaac’s chest as he stood beside them. “G-getting better,” they murmured. “It’s just… I think it’s just sitting here. Making my arm hurt.”

“Fair enough,” Isaac said gently. He wound his arms around them and held them close. It felt nice to be held, even though Sam could feel his heart hammering against their cheek through his shirt. “Maybe I can take you home? Gavin can stay here with Zachariah?”

“Uh…” Zachariah sounded better than he had a minute ago, but not by much.

Sam lifted their head and glanced at Zachariah.

He stared at Brandon apologetically. “Could I actually… be done for today? I’m sorry, but… it’s more than I thought I could—”

Brandon lifted a gloved hand, stained with ink and blood. Zachariah fell silent. “No problem at all, dude. Like I said, we didn’t have to finish this today. Let me cover this, and you can just come in tomorrow and I’ll finish you up. Deal?”

“Deal,” Zachariah huffed, sagging with relief. Sam sagged with him. Isaac’s arm wound around their shoulders, and they nearly slumped off their stool and into his embrace. Gavin appeared at their other side. Their mouth twitched, and embarrassment prickled in their stomach, before they raised their eyes to look at him; he looked pale, too, and tired.

He probably needs rest more than any of us right now.

Still, Sam could tell by the hard set of his mouth that nothing could have pulled him away from watching the Stormbeck crest disappear from Zachariah’s shoulder.

“—'ll probably bleed a bit,” Brandon was telling Zachariah as Sam blinked against the pain fogging their thoughts. “And leak some ink. If there’s more blood than, like, just a little bit, come see me. But don’t worry about a little blood and ink. I mean. You’ve had a tattoo before.”

“Yeah,” Zachariah said weakly. He flinched as Brandon wrapped clear plastic over the half-finished tattoo.

“Yeah, so, tomorrow morning I have another job, but tomorrow afternoon I’m free. Come by then and I’ll finish you up. Everybody good to make it home?” Brandon looked around at everyone, his eyes staying on Zachariah longest. Sam nodded and leaned against Isaac.

“W-we’ll make it,” Gavin murmured through pale, thin lips. His arm slid around Sam’s waist, although he looked like if Sam leaned even slightly against him, he would collapse.

The sweat on Zachariah’s skin was already starting to dry. He raised his damp t shirt and mopped his brow, then looked at Sam. He offered them a tentative smile.

“Halfway there,” he said softly, and held out his hand to them. His palm was warm as they slid their hand into his.

Brandon tore the plastic wrap and tucked in the ends, smoothing down the last stray bits. “Okay, you’re all good,” he said, and rolled his little table of tattoo supplies against the wall. The tattoo machine clinked as he began to disassemble it.

Sam released Zachariah’s hand and pushed themself unsteadily to their feet. Zachariah rose beside them. Isaac and Gavin stayed on Sam’s either side, Isaac being especially careful not to jostle Sam’s arm. Sam breathed slowly through the pain, which had dulled now to a steady throb. The pain hadn’t been this bad in… in weeks. Still, it crawled into their muscles, digging into their very bone, and ate at them. When they passed through the door to Brandon’s shack and felt the cool breeze on their face, they heaved a sigh of relief.

“Home, then?” Isaac said gently. His eyes belied his worry, but… there wasn’t as much guilt there as Sam expected.

They leaned into him, but froze as they felt Gavin stumble at their other side. They chewed their lip and caught themself casting a worried glance of their own at Gavin. “Um…”

“Why don’t…” Zachariah stared at his feet as he spoke. Sam hoped that one day he wouldn’t look so frightened, all the time. “I mean, um… Sam, if it works for you… you could come over to my place, and, um… I’ll…”

I’ll take care of you.

Sam swallowed past the lump in their throat that formed at Zachariah’s unsaid words. They forced a smile.

“…I’ll make us dinner if you want. And we could just hang out… have a quiet night.”

Sam blinked.

“Sam?” Isaac said. “Does that sound okay?”

“Um.” Sam met Zachariah’s eyes, stomach fluttering with embarrassment. He had never been the one to coddle them, not when they had to wear the sling, not when they needed to sleep half the day because they were still healing, never. Still, if Zachariah were to take care of Sam… they couldn’t imagine him ever making them feel guilty for it. They nodded numbly. “Yeah,” they said. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

A shy smile played at Zachariah’s lips. “Great,” he breathed.

Sam squeezed Gavin with their intact arm and laid their head against Isaac’s shoulder. “See you back at the house later, then?”

“Only if you want to,” Isaac said, and kissed the crown of Sam’s head. “If it works better for you to stay the night at Zachariah’s, no worries there.”

“Sounds good,” Sam said, and stepped away. Isaac and Gavin waved at the two of them as they headed toward their house. Before they could disappear from sight, Gavin collapsed against Isaac’s side. Isaac’s arm wound around Gavin’s waist and they kept walking like that, Gavin leaning all his weight against Isaac, until they turned a corner and disappeared from Sam’s sight. Sam swallowed hard and looked up at Zachariah. This time, neither of them bothered to conceal the worry on their faces.

∴

Zachariah’s cooking was amazing. Now that Sam thought about it, they didn’t think they had ever had a dish that Zachariah had made himself. Cooking was so often a communal thing with the family, and so often something simple that could be thrown together quickly to serve six people, then seven, growing until they were a ten-person family; rice, some kind of vegetable, and some kind of meat with a delicious sauce was the usual fare. Besides, that made leftovers easy, too. For someone to cook something just for themselves was so rare that it almost never happened.

Still, Sam could scarcely believe that they had gone all this time – more than three months – without tasting Zachariah’s cooking. Even without the fancy spices that he was used to having in the city, he had made some kind of rice-and-tomatoes-and-chicken dish that had Sam going back for seconds, even still a little nauseated from the pain. Now they were stretched out on the couch, regretting the second helping but happy to be cuddling in Zachariah’s lap, a sack of microwaved dry rice propped under their sore arm. They heaved a sigh and rested their head against Zachariah’s broad chest.

“Good?” Zachariah murmured, and Sam detected the slightest hint of self-satisfaction in his voice. It made them smile.

“You know it was,” they groaned, burying their face in his shirt to hide their smile. “You… you tricked me into eating so much. You… coerced me, Zachariah Medina.” Pain twinged through their old wound. They sucked in a breath through their teeth and held their hand tightly to their chest.

Zachariah’s mouth made a firm line. “Still pretty bad, huh?” He shifted the bag of rice, pulling it higher into Sam’s armpit.

“No, it’s, ah…” Sam pushed out a slow, shaky breath. “Not as…” Their stomach lurched, and they clenched their teeth together to keep from being sick all over their own lap. Another slow breath in, another slow breath out. They glanced up and found Zachariah’s warm brown eyes staring into theirs.

His lips trembled – no, they weren’t trembling, they were just moving soundlessly like he was trying to choose which words to say. Sam closed their eyes. They couldn’t focus on both him and the pain at once. They couldn’t deal with—

“We… don’t have to hang out, if you don’t want to,” Zachariah said. Sam’s shoulders relaxed as they realized there wasn’t any disappointment in his voice at all. They opened their eyes again, their gaze unfocused. They wet their lips.

“I still want to… be around you,” they croaked. “I just… sorry, it’s just… hard to deal with… this. Right now.” Their left hand curled into a fist.

“I get that,” Zachariah said. “I do. So… how do you want to be around me? It’s up to you.”

Sam drew a deep breath in through their nose and blew it out through their lips. They glanced around the small living room. There wasn’t much to the space; there was a small table with a few chairs, some shelves set up that had been stocked with a few weeks’ worth of food, the kitchen leading off to the right. In the other direction led the hallway to the bathroom and bedroom. Sam’s eyes lingered on the hallway.

“Um…” Even without their meaning to, their mind strayed to the ways the both of them had spent their time together for the past month. While Gavin had been missing, Zachariah had been as much a prisoner in the farmhouse as if he had been chained there.  He couldn’t go on walks with the others like he used to, or swim in the lake, or go into town. There had been so little to do but lie in bed together, clothed at first, then not, then…

Sam swallowed hard and returned their gaze to Zachariah’s. “I’d just really like to lie down,” they said woodenly.

And I don’t want to fuck you tonight. Please, please don’t ask me to fuck you tonight.

Zachariah nodded once. “Sounds good,” he said, and opened his arms.

Sam felt tired in their bones as they pushed away from his chest and stiffly got to their feet. The warm bag of rice slid onto the couch cushions, but Zachariah waved their hand away from it.

“Let me,” he said with a gentle smile.

Sam shuffled to the bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light before they crawled on top of Zachariah’s blanket. They lowered themself onto the left side and curled into a limp ball. The bed dipped as Zachariah joined them.

“I don’t want to have sex tonight,” Sam mumbled.

There was a slight huff as Zachariah tucked the warm compress under Sam’s arm and settled behind them, curling around their body and pulling them close. “I figured,” he said softly. “I don’t feel like it, either.” There was a smile in his voice.

“Yeah?” Sam shivered as he nuzzled into the back of their neck, pressing a small kiss into their curls – and then he settled, his breath fanning out over their hair.

“Yeah.” Zachariah’s thumb rubbed back and forth, back and forth on their left wrist. They were grateful for the touch, for his warmth, and for the fact that this was the extent of it. Isaac would be worried, and guilty, and sad, his hands reaching out to Sam, perhaps clutching at them so that he could remind himself that they were alive, and that he wasn’t about to lose them, but Zachariah… Zachariah just was.

“Hmmm,” Sam hummed. The heat was helping. As their muscles relaxed, the pain ebbed, just the slightest bit. Still, their palm kept tingling. They wondered if this pain would last, or if it would be gone when they woke.

Continued here

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[doe-prince]

Look what my partner found outside in the snow! The broken mother immediately reminded me of this drawing I made in 2022.

She's there but she isn't.

I love this sculpture! It's perfect as it is.

[methed-up-marxist]

'consent' is for navigating contracts and sociality with strangers, it is the attendant psycho-logistics of alienation. Recognising that what you want, need and desire all emerge from a complex history in which other people undeniably play a role necesarily forces you towards concepts such as 'mutual flourishing', 'care', and 'nurturing'. The current social domination of consent is a mirror of the reality that we have no actual power over our lives and can only furnish an image of that power thru unleashing brutality on those we are close to. Create communism.

[soulinlove]

You don’t have to be loved or accepted, but you must be respected.

[altschmerzes]

hate when i see a post and i just Know it’s gonna majorly prevent me from writing anything for like. a solid week.

[smiling-shoe]

Jing Beiyuan: I want to wake up next to you for the rest of my life.

Wu Xi: I get up at 6 a.m.

Jing Beiyuan: ...I want to fall asleep next to you for the rest of my life.

Wu Xi: And I go to bed at 10 p.m.

Jing Beiyuan:

Jing Beiyuan: I want to be with you at a daytime and watch you training from a quiet and cool place while playing with your sable?

Wu Xi: That would make me happy too.

Jing Beiyuan: 🥰

[daughterofhecata]

Kaj's Kink January #3

So. Gestern bin ich nicht dazu gekommen, weil der Tag unerwartet stressig wurde, aber jetzt gibt es die offizielle Liste der Prompts für Januar, wie gehabt erstmal ohne Pairings, die bleiben vorerst ein Geheimnis, auch wenn sich einige davon sicherlich durch einen Blick ins Dokument ermitteln lassen, falls sich jemand die Mühe machen will 😄

soft & healthy + watching s/o masturbate

voyeurism

punishment & aftercare + safewording

(semi) public

smoking

shibari

filmed + deep throating

praise + cockwarming

roleplay

D/s + in public + phone sex + needy

mile high club

first time + thigh fucking

jealousy + smoking

edging & aftercare + size kink

mirror + parallels

scratches + belated realization

size difference + car sex

subspace + overstimulation

seconds

familiar face

lingerie

blindfolded + collar

dub con + burnplay

praise + facial

watching

daddy kink + body worship

harness + quiet + power bottom

body worship

threesome + sex pollen

sex tape + somnophilia

vampire AU

Bonus:

[redacted] -> Cotta/Reynolds

[redacted] -> Jeffrey/Finnley/Peter

[redacted] -> Donatelli/Morales | Cotta/Goodween

[redacted] -> Reynolds/Jeffrey

[redacted] -> Cotta/Goodween | Caroline/Monique

[brinnanza]

I think it's important to resist the urge to pathologize ultimately harmless behavior like maybe you can trace it back to its parent disorder but if it's not harmful to you in any way that isn't a symptom it's just a trait

[windcarvedlyre]

Genshin (of course :P) What's the funniest or craziest AU idea you've ever come up with?, What's a character or ship you haven't written/drawn yet but would like to some day?, and Has your favourite character/ship changed over time?

From this ask game!

12. What's the funniest or craziest AU idea you've ever come up with?

I'm not the sort of person who has a bajillion developed AUs, but I've had this really weird concept rotating in my brain recently where... you know how in the webtoon Venti was diffused into the ground while asleep? What if some dire circumstances and distance from Mondstadt forced him to do that with a person? And his powers leaked a bit, making them almost an anemo archon lite for a while?

Originally I was thinking of Jean being the other person but I realised Kaeya would be way more interesting. Temporary anemo archon substitute Kaeya carrying around the dormant soul of a god he still has very mixed feelings about, lmao.

13. What's a character or ship you haven't written/drawn yet but would like to some day?

God, so many, and the main thing holding me back is drawing human faces is suffering (and in the case of anything romantic, lack of irl experience). I'm honestly tempted to do a challenge where I draw every genshin character until I git gud.

Maybe I'll have something to contribute to zhongven nation eventually. It needs more content so I feel like it's my duty.

23. Has your favourite character/ship changed over time?

I don't think so! In terms of preferences after the favourites, maybe I wouldn't be so terminally Mondstadt brained if Diluc hadn't carried me through so much?

Shipwise diluven was my second favourite but kaeven might be overtaking it- despite having like no content- because of the sheer potential it has to be interesting. I always end up obsessed with ships that feel like they should be a trainwreck but have some way the characters could be dragged, kicking and screaming, into realising they have a ton more in common than they thought.

Furiven's growing on me a lot as well; it has a lot of potential in terms of interesting parallels between the two.

[haggishlyhagging]

People have called me naive for not being "pragmatic" enough to accommodate the so-called "political realities" of compromise and concession making in my work. But like Douglass, Luther King, Shakur, and Malcolm X taught —institutions do not respond to negotiation, they respond to pressure. Their positions are not based on best practice theory or innocent misunderstandings, but on investment and attachment to power. So, in my view, it is the tactic of polite political negotiation that is based on assumptions that I would call naïve, because political negotiation assumes that politicians and institutions respond to reason and negotiation at all—that they are interested in things like common ground, good-will, good ideas and coherent thinking. They are not.

When we build a movement based on negotiation, it hurts us in two main ways: firstly, because it ignores the way that institutions truly operate. Transgenderism and its denial of biological sex and female existence has turned the statement "women are female" into a political one. What this statement (which used to be a mere fact) now represents, is not an argument or a piece of information, but the reassertion of a boundary that is being violated in the interests of power. When feminists make the now-political assertion that "women are female," but make concessions in the process of negotiating with the powerful (for instance by referring to "transwomen," or "trans rights," in campaigns against sex self-identification laws, by calling men who wear feminine clothing "she" out of "respect," or by shunning women who don't comply with these compromises), these concessions undermine the very boundary that their political truth telling was intended to assert in the first place. We will not get very far, for very long, like that.

-Renée Gerlich, “On Twenty-First Century Patriarchy, and the Place of Women's Hearts in Women's Movement” in Spinning And Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century

[recurringwriter]

we're not gonna slow you down, we're not gonna hold you to it

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius/Felicity Eirian Gloucester, Rufus Blaiddyd/Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, Rufus Blaiddyd/Original Character(s) Additional Tags: Rufus but Better, Explicit Sexual Content, Threesome - F/M/M, BDSM, Spitroasting, Pegging, Come Swallowing, Oral Sex, Blindfolds, Elixir (healing item) as lube, Angst, Polyamory Negotiations, Breathplay, Banter, Praise Kink, wow no wonder this is so long, Rufus is an oc in this, Houses Rufus, Begging Summary:

Rodrigue and Felicity have been seeing Rufus with some regularity, but it's the first time the three of them are meeting in Fraldarius. Rufus has some requests, that he feels he cannot ask from most of his other partners. Rodrigue and Felicity are happy to oblige, but trusting each other and their feelings is a little more complicated than any of them expected.

[emi1y]

tours will have you finding out that even the most trusted mutuals have been taylor swift fans all this time. jerry seinfeld voice not that there's anything wrong with that 🫢

[cattatoir]

Personally I think if scifi writers want to talk about big, unexpected alien ideas etc with aliens they should stop going the “they want to eat us” route. Like just doesn’t strike me, even in 23rd century or whatever thinking, as a cultural difference. More an imminent and unavoidable existential difference

[an-absolute-nightmare]

g-guys, if you're going to write an x reader fic in the first person pov, maybe put a heading at the top specifying that it's an x reader? because i just read a the most horrific scenario and i was so devastated for op that something like that happened to them and then i saw the tag and it was fucking. character x reader fic

[altschmerzes]

one of the struggles with writing this qpr two aces fic and with other like. nonromantic, nontraditional etc relationships in writing is like. when i’m writing something particularly something i haven’t written very often, i like to see how other people go about it, yknow? and one of the things writing about those relationships sometimes includes is like, augh this is so hard to articulate lmao. but like. deciding to Do Something together, to introduce some aspect of intimacy or some life decision they’re making together, and it’s so hard to get any kind of reference for people writing about characters doing that in a way that’s not romantic. 

(and i know that the conversations could look the same regardless of the nature of the relationship, but i am just so intensely romance repulsed i can do No ‘research’ using ship fics bc i literally just can’t read them.)

and so it’s like. i am flying blind. i have no idea if this sounds okay or if it sounds stilted or if the language is wrong or the terminology is off or the characters don’t sound like themselves etc it’s all so. augh. yells.

[avatar-state-kate]

I enjoy the ambiguity of succession where the writers feel comfortable implying things without showing us concrete answers but you’re interpretation of this point is going to say a lot about what you think about Roman and gerri so I have to ask