#never forgiving joseph for thinking he was cool

[c-nstellati-ns]

gonna be honest, i really didn't give a shit about strohiem, until he kidnapped my man speedwagon. he was instantly on my bad side after that. believe it or not, he was the first jojo character i openly hated.

even him helping the protagonists didn't change my thoughts on him.

DUDE YEAH SERIOUSLY. ever since then whenever he came on screen, i became so irrationally angry and annoyed, i hate him so fucking much….. speedwagon has to easily be one of my fav characters in jojos overall so ANYONE who lays a finger on my man gets their ass WHOOPED. i wish santana had killed him if im being so honest rn

[imaginexwwe]

SPRING BREAK 5 - Roman Reigns

TIME SKIP (MINOR)

•

REAL NAMES WILL BE USED

•

A GUILTY Y|N IS ON A MISSION TO TRACK DOWN HER BABY DADDY AND APOLOGIZE (🤣)

•

PART 4 (×)

•

"This is so cool." Tori squealed, as we pulled closer to the stadium where Extreme Rules 2016 was being held. "Like so cool."

I giggled at my best friend's excitement, playfully rolling my eyes as I glanced back at her from the passenger seat. "Calm down."

"Calm down?" Tori repeated, her words in the form of a question instead. "This is our first time seeing wrestling in person and it's at a major pay per view. So no." She added, poking her tongue out at me. "I will not calm down. You should be getting more excited if anything."

My giggling slowly eased as I sighed.

I wish I could be excited.

This is my first, well me and Tori's first pay per view like she said.

And the both of us have been getting more and more into wrestling lately after taking the time to actually admire the craft of wrestling entertainment and all.

But I'm scared.

I'm scared to see Joe after how I basically snapped on him for no reason after breaking up with Austin for good.

And it definitely doesn't help that I hadn't talked to Joe.

I mean, it's not like I called him or anything.

I've actually been too scared to call him, but still.

I'm carrying his baby.

You'd think he would call me or at least text.

Something.

"I'm sure he'll be happy to see you." Tori said bringing me out of my thoughts.

It was almost as if she knew what I was thinking.

"I hope so." I mumbled, as Colby brought his rental car to a stop.

I just...

I really, really like Joe and now that I don't have my ex breathing down my throat, clouding my judgment, I could see us being serious.

Like a real couple.

But of course it's not just up to me.

Joseph still has to forgive me.

As soon as my brother parked and took the key out of the ignition, the three of us were out of the car.

And within minutes we were walking through the arena, surrounded by wrestlers and backstage workers.

A few wrestlers I had quickly become familiar with over the couple months I'd been watching wrestling and a few that I either weren't familiar with or just wasn't a fan of.

"Oh my god." Tori half yelled, half whispered, pulling on my arm, causing me to stop dead in my tracks. "That's The Usos." She gasped out trying to low-key point to Joe's twin cousins without being caught. "I've never been one to go for brothers but those two -"

"Are happily married." Colby said, laughing as he cut my best friend off, earning a scoff from her in return.

"I was joking, idiot." Tori verbally spat at my brother as he again, led up through the crowded hallways eventually coming to a stop when we reached a area with a lot of tvs, more wrestlers and a few backstage workers.

All of whom seemed to be tuned into the current match that was taking place.

Wait.

That's Joe, I mentally confirmed with a smile forming on my face as I watched the father of my unborn baby kick ass inside the ring.

This is so cool, I thought, silently echoing Tori's earlier words.

Ugh.

He looks so good out there in his element.

His hair wet, and falling around his face.

His muscles flexing as he preformed move after move.

That sexy, yet extremely cocky smirk on his face because he knows he's the best and no one else is on his level.

And don't even get me going on his body.

"God, I love that man..." I mumbled to myself.

My eyes getting wide after I realized what I had said.

Did I actually mean that?

Do I love Joseph?

Or was I just getting lost in the moment as I stared at him through the screen infront of me?

"I'll be right back." I heard Colby say, looking from me to Tori as he snapped me back to reality. "Stay right here." He added, before quickly disappearing through the crowd of people moving in both directions.

Shit.

Did he hear that?

I bit down on the inside of my cheek.

It was a habit of mines when I'm nervous.

"I heard that." I heard my best friend whisper in my ear with a giggle as she nudged me with her elbow.

Of course.

If anybody were to catch me slipping it would be Tori.

"I don't know what you're talking about." I shot back, continuing to focus on the screen, rather than the stupid smirk I know Tori was displaying on her face right now.

"Bullshit." Tori giggled even more.

Before I could think of something to say back, the sound of applause was heard through backstage and Tori and I both found ourselves joining in.

Joe had won the match against his opponent and was proudly holding up his titles in both hands, as he stood over his latest victim.

That smirk of his...

No, Y|N, I thought, mentally slapping myself.

You can't spiral again.

"Hold up." Tori spoke up again, probably taking note of my silence. "Why are they booing?"

"Apparently it's what the crowd does for the character he's playing." I answered with a shrug. "Some heel thing, I think." I again spoke up, explaining to her what my brother had told me a few weeks ago when I was curious about the boos that were noticeable louder than the applause.

"Oh, okay."

I nodded, unconsciously placing my hand on my belly to rub circles into it. "I guess Joe will be coming back here in a few." I said, looking over at Tori.

"Yeah." She replied, nodding before looking around. "I wonder where your brother went though."

Yeah...

Where did my brother go?

"He did say he'll be right ba-"

Before I could finish what I was saying, an all to familiar theme, that I had gotten to hear plenty of, over the last month or so, rang throughout the arena.

Gasps being heard from people close by and those that occupied the crowd.

Colby.

My brother, Colby was sprinting towards the ring as Joe stopped his celebration taunting to the audience, to glance over at the entrance, a surprised expression now replacing his previous cocky one as he watched Colby come closer and closer to the ring.

Wait.

When did he have time to change into his wrestling gear?

"Holy shit." Me and Tori said, simultaneously as we continued watching, both our eyes glued to the screen.

Colby finally reached the ring, taking no time to slide inside of it, soon standing eye to eye with Joseph.

The two men exchanged a few words to each other, neither man backing down from the other.

Then in the blink of an eye, my brother had taken control of the moment, grabbing Joe and preforming a pedigree on him.

Why didn't Colby tell us he was going to be back in action tonight?

Or at least me?

I'm his sister for goodness sake.

As the drama continued to unfold out in the ring, Joe's cousins Jimmy, Jey, and Solo Sikoa could be seen coming to the aid of their Tribal Chief as Joe's wise man Paul Heyman stood outside of the ring, a look of disbelief on his face.

And only for what seemed to be two or three seconds, my brother held up both of Joe's titles, dropped them, then disappeared through the crowd, just before the Usos entered the ring tending to Joe.

Barely escaping far into the crowd before Solo could catch him.

This was not how I imagined my first pay per view but I must say, I was not disappointed.

•

Colby was the first to come through the curtain that led back into the backstage area and me and Tori wasted no time fighting for the chance to be the first to congratulate him.

Well more like excitedly question him.

"Why didn't you say your knee was healed enough for you to get back in the ring, Colby?" I asked, throwing my arms around my brother in a hug.

"If I told, it wouldn't be a surprise."

"Well that was a pretty awesome surprise, Colby." Tori said, joining in on the hug.

After a few more seconds, hugging my brother I pulled back, glancing up at him. "So, what..." I stuttered out. "What did you say to Joe out there in the ring. I mean, I couldn't really hear but it looked like it was a heated exchange."

"We were just in character." Colby said nonchalantly, with a shrug. "We weren't being Colby and Joe in the ring we were being Seth and Roman. Don't worry. I told you I was cool with you and him."

I nodded, biting down on my lip.

But you also said you were gonna kick his ass in the ring. I thought remembering my brother's words from a couple weeks ago.

Did he already have his plan in motion that night?

Or is all of this just a coincidence?

And again I'm just over thinking.

Fuck!

I just wish I knew what was sa-

Oh there's my man.

I mean my Joe.

Ugh, there's Joe.

"Hi, Joe." I called out to him, waving my hand like an idiot.

I probably looked like Forest Gump when he was waving down Jenny.

What is wrong with me?

"Hey." Joe replied, as he made his way over. "What are you doing here?" He asked awkwardly as his eyes locked on mines.

His beautiful brown eyes.

"Colby brought us out."

This is awkward.

Like this conversation spells awkward.

But why?

This isn't like us.

Me and Joe were practically strangers and we had a better conversation then, compared to this one.

Is he still mad at me?

"I uhm..." I again found myself stuttering on my words. "I've been texting and I even called a few times but you hav-"

Joe grabbed my hand, pulling me away from my brother, Tori and his cousins who weren't exactly in arms reach, but still close by.

I'm not sure they were close enough to hear but I guess Joe didn't want to take chances.

As me and Joe walked off, I noticed he was lost in conversation with his friend and fellow superstar Bayley.

There was no way he knew Joe had dragged me off.

But Tori had of course.

She stood off to Colby's side, giving me two thumbs up with a huge smile on her face.

But back to my brother...

Why was he seeming off today?

First he was quite the ride here.

Then the surprise attack on Joseph.

It's just, for someone who's supposedly okay with me and one of his best friends, he's hadn't been acting okay.

I don't know, maybe he was just trying to get back into his Seth Rollins mind set.

Cause if he wasn't, he would have brought us out with him.

No matter how much Tori and I had begged.

"Where are we going?" I asked Joe, realizing we'd been walking for what seemed like forever in a five month pregnant woman's mind. "Joe?"

Still, ignoring me, Joe finally came to a stop in an empty room.

A dark empty room.

Why are two of the men that means the most to me being so strange today?

"Sorry about that." Joe said, finally speaking up for the first time since he pulled me away from my best friend and brother. "And I'm sorry I was ignoring you. I was just still pissed from you snapping on me a couple weeks ago." He explained, making me feel guilty all over again.

Joe flicked on the lights and all of a sudden my eyes had to adjust to the brightness, as I slowly looked around, immediately realizing this was the room Joe is sometimes seen in backstage while he's either yelling at his cousins or watching his cousin's on going match.

Well one of them anyways, considering Smackdown isn't filmed at just one arena so there's no way it's just one room.

His private locker room.

Yeah, that's it.

"Can I?" I asked, pointing to one of the chairs, practically power walking to it the second Joe nodded.

"How are you?" Joe asked, sitting down in the empty chair next to mines. "How's the baby?"

"I'm good." I answered, looking down at my belly. "And the baby's good." I said, answering Joe's second question. "He or she actually kicked last night." I giggled, glancing over at Joe.

I felt my lips turn up into a smile as I remembered that amazing feeling of those little kicks.

It even had me questioning if I still wanted to go through with the adoption.

Or if I wanted to keep this baby.

I mean, as much as I hate to admit it because I was so sure of my plan...

I have been getting used to this pregnancy and the idea of having a mini Joe.

Or even a mini me.

"Could I feel?" Joe asked as I quickly nodded.

"Of course." I verbally answered him, watching as he stood from his chair and came over to squat in front of me. "But don't expect to feel anythi-" I stopped talking, as a gasp escaped my lips.

The little kicks were back.

Okay wow.

Scratch that.

That was a big kick.

"That's our baby." Joe gasped, smiling up at me as I smiled down at him. "We made that."

Again I nodded, feeling tears stinging at my eyes.

Yeah we did.

"Either it doesn't want daddy's hand on me or it is excited to finally feel your touch, cause that's the biggest kick I've felt so far." I joked, giggling again while also making Joe laugh.

"I'm gonna take it as it likes my touch." He replied, as he continued rubbing my belly.

I sighed dreamily as I continued to watch Joe. "I love your touch too." I sighed out, my eyes widening for the second time today as I realized I had embarrassed myself yet again.

What is it with me and this man?

At least I didn't make a mistake and admit my love for him again, in front of him this time.

Tori hearing me was enough.

And maybe Colby if he'd heard.

"Please ignore that." I mumbled, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. "I didn't mean for you to hear that."

"I'm happy I did." Joe replied, standing up again and going back to the chair he was previously sitting in. "With how you been acting these few months, I was starting to think I was more into you than you were into me."

I shook my head.

How could he think that, when he looks like he does?

You'd think that man never has to worry about a girl being into him.

And don't even get me started on how great of a personality he has.

Basically Joseph's the whole package.

And more.

"I'm sorry." I finally apologized. "Especially for the way I snapped on you a couple weeks ago. It's just even though I wasn't really into my ex, I still, for some reason was hurt finding out he was still cheating on me and when you asked if I left him for you, it just set me off. And I know you didn't mean it like that, when you asked, I just couldn't help but take it that way." I rambled as Joe quietly listened. "Can we just blame it on the hormones?" I asked, with a playful pout.

"This time." Joe answered.

And for a few minutes everything just seemed right between us again.

Joe and I were laughing.

Catching up on what's been going on in our lives

It was like my last day in Miami again, before I had to say bye to the man I've quickly come to love.

"There's something I've been meaning to ask." I said, still looking over at Joe. "Why didn't you tell me that you had talked to my brother about us..?"

Joe raised an eyebrow at me, giving me a confused look.

Like, a really confused look.

"I don't know what you're talking about, babe."

OMG he called me babe again.

I don't think he's called me babe since Miami or when I last saw him at my house.

It just feels so right hearing him call me th-

Wait.

Did he say he didn't talk to Colby about us?

"The last time you were in Iowa, Joe." I said, nervously. "Colby said you came to see him at Black and Brave and told him about us." I added, hoping to jog his memory.

"Y|N." Joe replied, letting go of my hand that he'd been holding for a while now, using his thumb to stroke small circles onto it, his facial expression showing signs of nervousness also. "I didn't know your brother knew about us, that's why I brought you in here so we could talk. And if he does, he definitely didn't find out from me. I haven't even talked to him since I've been back on the road."

My heart rate began increasing.

And my throat all of a sudden felt dry.

Very dry.

This would explain why Colby had been acting weird since the second Tori and I had asked if we could come to the show with him.

I'm betting he wasn't as okay with me and Joseph like he said he was to me that night.

He probably didn't really want me to come here because he was worried about me seeing Joe but knew it'll be more suspicious to say we could come with him.

Colby had lied.

But why?

And if Joseph didn't tell him...

Who did?

•

😱

•

T A G S -

@southerngirl41 @alyyaanna @seeingstarks @harleescreepycreations @mikaylathenerd5

[3xm-draconic]

JJBA: Tainted Love. (Kars x Holly Jostar part 1)

I MADE A FANFIC!!!!!

WARNING THERE IS A LITTLE SPICY WORDING.

Part 1: Kars’s Return & Revenge Plan.

When Kars awoke he could hardly believe it, he was back, back on earth!

He relished the feeling of cool moist earth beneath his feet and air in his lungs but most of all he cherished the thought of getting his revenge on Joseph Jostar.

Kars learned the year was 1969…31 years had been in space. He had managed to track the pesky primitive down to a place called “new-york” and observed him from afar, “I want him to suffer, truly suffer for what he did to me” Kars snarled to himself. Kars saw from his vantage point on a high rooftop that Joseph had grown old and slow so a physical fight with him would be anticlimactic “what good would it be to snuff out a weak old man’s life?” Kars mumbled…but then he saw her.

A beautiful young woman, about 20 in age who turned out to be Joseph’s daughter, she was sweet and meek and fragile “if I kill her that would break his old heart…hmm but no that’s still not enough” he grumbled.

He watched her for a while, followed her for a day or two, observing her every move.

She was just so…saccharinely sweet, she radiated an air of beauty and delicateness…but also kindness and compassion…Kars was amused. “I know what to do now, I know how to make Jojo suffer” he plotted “I’ll convince his sweet daughter to love me then I’ll break her heart…and poison his bloodline” Kars devilishly thought.

Holly, that was her name, Holly Jostar, Kars followed her one night as she was out, a group of men with ill intentions swarmed around her, Kars saw his opportunity and acted.

Kars swooped down from the rooftop and snatched her away, “who-who are you?” she said, both afraid and…a little excited, “Kars, my name is Kars” he whispered seductively, “well it’s…nice to meet you..I never knew I had such a handsome guardian angel” she giggled, Kars grinned “perfect, she’s falling already” he thought.

He visited her regularly, in secret of course from Joseph.

He brought her flowers, played guitar for her, took her flying across the city, she fell in love with him faster and faster…but…she also did things for him.

She baked for him, sang for him and even drew wonderful portraits for him…

One night, during the time humans call “Christmas” Kars started to rethink his plan, he had grown to really like Holly…perhaps even…love her.

Like he had loved Esi before…

Kars felt the heat of the hearth and heard the howling of the wind outside and was reminded of them…and of who took them from him. NO. He needed to avenge them.

He may love Holly…and it may hurt his heart to do this…but he could not forgive Joseph.

That night he and Holly took their relationship further than before…they became closer on a more…carnal level.

But all the while, even in the deepest throws of passion, Kars felt guilt, guilt for what he was doing. 

It did not take long for Holly to find out she was with child…his child.

An Abomination.

Kars went through with it…

He found Joseph, told him everything and laughed at how angry and horrified he was…but deep down he was disgusted with himself for hurting Holly, he hurt someone he loved…again.

Kars escaped Joseph’s wrath, for an old man he could still put up a fight…but Kars didn’t want to fight anymore…he was done.

He had avenged his lover and his son’s deaths by ruining his second chance at love…Kars fled.

He adapted his body and fled to the deepest darkest part of the ocean where he sat in the void in silence…eventually he just stopped thinking.

[cullxtheherd]

✨ for more of that crispy fried man

Love these prompts btw, top notch

this one is going to be really, really rough. please be aware that the following music video depicts physical/more abuse of a man by a woman. the content within this drabble will feature a non-graphic, non-consensual relationship with a minor. though i will do my best to pen this gently and quickly PLEASE avoid this piece if you will be triggered by anything mentioned above.

a brief explanation: somewhere around two weeks ago i had made an addition to someone else's post mentioning a few reasons why i think jacob seed doesn't enjoy being nude or having sexual/physical contact and now i plan on telling you the rest of it, i suppose. i have headcanoned this a while and spoke to a very few people about it, but have never really written it down because... well?? ugh.

music video/more behind the cut

𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞 𝐚 ✨ 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢’𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐡𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐥𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐮𝐩

[x]

Rome, Georgia 1987

"Mama," Despite the obvious and clear protest in his voice Jacob stands stock-still; afraid though he would easily be able to overtake her, “Stop it.” He is just-barely sixteen and foolishly hopeful that she’ll listen this time.

“You know,” She slurs, a lecherous hand groping, “You look just like your Daddy did when we was young.”

He wrenches his eyes shut, cheeks a salted red. ‘She’s just drunk,’ He reasons, ‘She’s only done it a few times . . .’ Swallowing roughly he manages to dig up just enough courage to divert her unwanted attention, palm swatting. “Mama, please.”

When she reaches for him once more he merely flinches, stuck like glue again. His teeth grind as he thinks about Joseph and Johnny and the fact that Joe will soon be hitting puberty . . .

Part of him is certain he is doing the right thing by taking this kind of abuse so they won’t have to, but? The rest of him is beyond repulsed by what is happening to him.

He is disgusted with himself when his body responds.

Rome, Georgia 1995

Jacob pulls into the parking lot and a nearby neon sign advertises ‘𝔻𝕀ℕ𝔼ℝ’ against the windshield, flashing in the partial darkness. He is nervous, hands yellowing around the steering wheel of the barely-running bucket of bolts he calls a truck. Reaching for the rapidly cooling coffee in the cup holder he takes a sip; it’s bitter and choc full o’ grinds but? It’s helping.

It takes a few minutes of convincing himself before he turns the ignition over and he basks in the silence it leaves behind. Winter has taken hold and the air is crisp, biting at his nostrils when he steps out; he shivers into the camouflage bearing his last name.

Partially in another world of jostling nerves and wet grounds stuck between his teeth he doesn’t notice his date approaching and when she nudges into him playfully he very nearly jumps out of his skin, “God dang it girl!”

“Hey!”

Something about the way her lips quirk up into a smile has him more than ready to forgive and forget and already he knows that he is doomed. “Hi,” The way his stupid, foolish heart bump-ticks into gear he is certain: this is the one.

Thirty minutes later finds them cozied up in a booth, feet bumping under the table and? Jacob is, surprisingly, enjoying himself out in public. Since the war it has been difficult for him, especially when he is having a flare up of skin or breathing problems. He is often crabby and unpleasant, but he is quite content to sit in this place until closing time if his companion so desires.

An hour after the remaining food on their plates has gone cold he is happy to escort her out to her car, hands pressed into pockets to escape the cold. Not being one for much physicality he doesn’t prioritize closeness, even on dates - even though he is feeling well about this one in particular.

“So,” She tries as they approach her vehicle.

“So,” He echoes uselessly.

A silence passes between them and as it approaches the cusp of becoming awkward she takes initiative, pulling him in.

Jacob jumps visibly, heart pounding and mind a tumbling racket. He’s seen all the movies, he knows what she’s expecting, but? He freezes, staring down at her and he feels both shameful and useless.

Though she approaches him with much different intent he is still right back in that moldy, crumbling house. Stuck in that floral wallpapered, shag carpeted, atrocity of a bedroom.

Sensing his distress she prompts, softly, “Are you okay?”

It takes a beat of his mouth working ineffectively before he produces sound and it is strangled; rough. “Yeah,” He lies. Jacob tries to reason with himself - perhaps spur himself into gear, but he remains glued.

“Rachel, I’m Sorry,” He tries at the same time she issues:

“It’s okay.”

They both laugh, trying to dispel the cumbersome aura that has overtaken them both.

Moving against the side of her car he mirrors her pose and as the last employee leaves the parking lot they both look up at the sky; curtailing the subject.

“I’ll explain,” He offers after a long silence, hand carefully snaking down to take her own, “Just need time.”

Rome, Georgia 2012

It has been six years since Rachel died in the fire but, here in the middle of the alleyway, rummaging through an Applebees dumpster he still talks to her as if she were right beside him. It first started out as a ploy to get the other homeless Vets to leave him the absolute fuck alone, but it has turned into much, much more than that over the years. He?

Isn’t really sure who or where he is most of the time.

“Mama said, she always told me- she said,” Picking out a fresh tray of someone’s leftovers he is happy with his find; it’s recent enough to be enjoyable, “Stand still and shut up! Did you know?” Pushing the cart he’s wrangled from God-knows-where he stacks his dinner for the night on top in the fold out portion that would normally host a child. “It’s the key to the universe, Rachel.”

“Jacob?”

His name echoes down the alley but he doesn’t respond, moving along.

“Hold on, I think- I think that’s him!”

“Jacob!”

Footsteps approach and he is oblivious, holding a conversation with his long-dead spouse, “She never was, never! But Johnny and Joe-Joe!” He snaps his fingers, pushing a point he doesn’t vocalize to a partner that can not respond, “Yep! Gotta get back, the baby will want his bottle.”

“Jacob. . .”

“Don’t you recognize us?”

It takes nearly seven days before he really, truly responds to either of them and? It is all at once, unexpectedly.

“John?” As the sun sets over the roadside motel, a new dawn beckons over them, “Is- is that really you?”

“Yes,” Though the full grown man’s face is unfamiliar to him the smile that breaks out, bridging the wrinkles of his nose is one he has dreamt of, “Yes! Joseph!”

“J o e is here?”

The outside door opens, cigarette smoke and a woman’s laughter wafting in, “Jacob,” Although his excitement is immeasurable at the recognition he remains measured and calm as always. “Brother,” Coming in close he opens his arms in offering; waiting for acceptance before moving in.

For the first time in many years Jacob Seed cries, right into the fabric of his brother’s vest.

Hope County, Montana 2016

“Do not fuckin’ touch me, w o r m,” It was an unfortunate side effect of his earlier experiments at the Grandview Chalets. He no longer attends viewing or training events, busy with his work at the Center but the formula remained the same: degrade, demoralize, devalue in any and every way.

Control in chaos.

“Regret the God damned day I ever had them leashes installed- stop!” Using a heavily booted foot he plants it in his captive-turned-aggressors chest, “These tools are not here for your gratification, they are here to remind you where you stand in the local food chain.”

Leaning in he grips the length of chain, pulling up as he pushes down with his foot, “You are nothing,” They begin to squirm, trying to recoil instead of draw him in, “You are a meaningless sacrifice,” Another one rattles its cage, begging for the wrong kind of attention and he wonders if the Bliss had been tampered with, “You are ALL meat!”

[rgs-savant-praytell-airor]

Eli Eli lemesabatchne

Never go* back

.

Cigg-Heart.cv-tyhomas pab.elden.gma

.

headscar robert

.

2012prt2wound gee

..........

Mother this is your son, this is your mother

Heaviness sorrow

1st born of egypt I am jospeh genius prodigy

Father forgive them they know not what they do

No & distress

Phallanx

Into your hands I commend my spirit

No war just peace

Athletes foot celebs

Dandruff blue

Ezcema Barrio fino

That make a man an offender over a word

Miracles are lies hence a wicked and adulterous generation seekers after a sign. The image.

C.i.a/thief1/kid

Fbi/thief2/leopard

Area 51/illuminati/barabbas

It is finished

Never again

Dream nation Scitz scitz scitz.

America

Pdf.2 birds 1 stone.

P.s.

Really without jesus you are a caveman, praytell the Bible is true only in America lol, turkey what have we done really a misunderstanding great peace if you aren't scitz.

You must be baptized for the remission of sins make that mustard seed grow, their is no fury in me ask the gs, blameless from the beginning, faabs heh. Think original sin and the ents and why venus is a wasteland.

Young messiah.

Rgs the alien peace deal if it is in you and you give birth to it, genetics a fickle thing my friend, both innocent and guilty both in the know and don't know, but think sober by faith we know redeem by his love,

A talking baby thus, eyes red as wine

Such as it was when I had rgs as a child, they removed the essence of depression aka the fear of hell, so whoever knew me was innocent and whoever grabbed my faith slowly and immediately as they heard and believed were not depressed, great peace the 90s, that was nutrient network subdued by flouride.

Immaculate teeth thus, blue beyond blue,

Then the flouride was rgs and all we had was hard earned faith the scriptures, getting to the root or the passing into the next life, rgs again and as I said above now considering the suicidal, weather self or others still the "angels" of death, but as I said they were all healed according to what they could know and thus believe always rooted in jesus christ mwahhh.

Rgs an element in your body goes missing and angels of God come to fuse into you and leave you the heir to their madness threw a little love bump pleasure a riddle in your DNA to heal the world's woes threw genetics thus rgs.

Bottom line threw the lineage of jesus christ sin which produced death was bred out weather baptized or not from the fury their original sin their caveman DNA which exists in duality of the root of holyness in life, always striving for love and peace yet waring for the same result,

Jesus no fool, he is the way the truth the life, the world so old it thinks it hates you but this is america united we stand in love, we're just confused and blessed,

Remember the dream their all in the mental hospital if c.t. was as stormed as when I came back and took upon the burden of the question why why in all its fullness and the pain of the scitz,

Now that we know stay cool and keep the secret, vote trump 2024 and have a good time.

Isaac miracle

Jacob image

Joseph nutrient network

Benjamin old man

Judas born again 2 2

Moses 2 eyes scitz

David spiritual

Solomon flesh paper scitz

Elijah flouride activation

Elisha fill*ing heh

[bloodgulchblog]

Where to Start on Halo Books: A Guide For Nerds that Want In

There's a lot of Halo, so let me tell you about a couple books I think are good places to dive in. They're all early ones, and I think any of them can serve you well depending on what you want/what sounds cool to you.

If you like starting from the beginning of things, care a lot about the origins of the Master Chief, were into Captain Keyes, or are just coming in off the TV show and would appreciate an introduction to ground yourself on the main continuity's lore because it's different, start with The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund.

It's not the best Halo book, but it's serviceable gamer fiction, you can tell the author really genuinely cared about it, and it sure is the first one! It's a prequel to the first game, and covers the beginning of the Spartan program, the training of the young Spartans, the growth of Keyes as a captain, the origins of Cortana, and finally the eponymous fall of the stronghold world Reach itself which leads on into the game.

One thing to note: this is the oldest Halo novel, but the last revision to it was about 10 years after it came out. Try to find a copy from 2010 or newer. The old ones with Halo 1 era graphics on the cover and the xbox logo on the spine, while very vintage #aesthetic, have a couple glaring errors that got corrected later.

If the cover has this art piece on it, you're good. There's like one fiddly detail that can be different between copies of it and it doesn't matter much.

(Unfortunately, the audiobook never got updated.)

If you don't like prequels, are still to this day haunted by not knowing what happened between Halo 1 and Halo 2, want to spend quality time with the adult Spartan-IIs, you care a lot about the Master Chief as a character, and you thought Cortana and Sergeant Johnson were fun and want a book with both of them, you can start with First Strike (also by Eric Nylund.)

This one bridges the gap between Halo 1 and Halo 2. I think it can stand pretty well as an entry point if you're coming in with a good knowledge of the games anyway.

The Fall of Reach may not be one of my most favorite Halo novels (it's important but I don't enjoy reading the whole thing) but First Strike is definitely one of my favorites. If your tastes align with mine and you like what I have to say about Spartans and the Master Chief in particular, a lot of the roots of that are in here. I think it is a more coherent book than FoR.

Like FoR, this one is one of the oldest books so keep an eye on edition. (This one doesn't have many huge glaring continuity issues that I know of, though.)

If you fucking love prequels, want worldbuilding and backstory, enjoy pain and suffering, want to start even more at the very beginning, are curious about Smart AIs and/or are starving like an animal for Covenant lore, or loved Sergeant Johnson more than anybody else and don't care about Spartans, you could start with Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten.

Contact Harvest is set about 30 years before the first Halo game, and tells the story of humanity's first contact (and conflict) with the Covenant at the planet Harvest. Joseph Staten was the head writer at Bungie during the original trilogy era, and this is a very competently written book. (...Just forgive the awkward sex scene at the end.) Staten's a stronger writer in craft terms than Nylund, and he gets to unfold a bunch of foundational Halo universe lore in here. This had our first big look at the Covenant from an inside perspective, and our first good look (outside a Spartan's perspective) at what humanity was worried about before the Covenant showed up. It has a couple of Smart AIs as major characters, and I still think it is one of the best portrayals of them.

Also, it's about Sergeant Johnson and he's a cool dude.

If you read any one of these three, you can read either or both of the other two if you want to keep going. If you vibe with what Nylund's doing and get curious where he's going with it after First Strike, the next title you want is Ghosts of Onyx. If you liked what Staten laid down in Contact Harvest you will probably enjoy Tobias Buckell's The Cole Protocol, which is also heavy on the colony perspective while its Covenant chapters are about a (much younger) Arbiter.

After that, you're off the Halo lore tutorial levels and are free to do whatever you want, you'll figure it out. (Or stop, possibly. It is a regrettable quality of Halo that there are probably many places where it is wise to stop.)

But hey, while we're here.

If you don't actually care about backstory lore and just want to read a good story, you really like the tension between humans and aliens, you feel like the period right after the war is over sounds really rad, you're all about trauma and recovery, and you have somehow come to the unwise conclusion that you trust me with your life...

You could read Envoy, by Tobias S. Buckell.

Envoy is very self-contained from most of the rest of the lore, but it's really good. It's really really good. I loved it a lot. It's probably not a great place to start with no grounding at all in Halo, it comes from much later in the continuity, but... Keep that in your back pocket for later, maybe.

[joejoeba]

Hi! So, I've recently gotten into Jojo within the past few weeks/months (what is time???) and I have gotten really into it to the point where I've probably annoyed some of my friends by gushing about it😅. I've heard that happens a lot apparently???

Anywhoooos, I love your JosuYasu content! Brings me absolute joy to see them being so warm with each other and I go weak seeing new updates with them (happens with the rest of your stuff too) but my main thing to start some convo is (because I have not seen everything) what are some JosuYasu Headcanons you have?

(Asker's note: I'm really just piggybacking on your most recent point as an excuse to talk about this, if it disturbs you at any point then feel free to keep trucking on and my wishes for you to have a good day!)

Yeah I also fell just. Headfirst DEEP into jojo, making an instagram was not for fun it was a necessity

but YELL HEAH JOSUYASU HCs:

They are each other's types but they only realize it after they meet. Okuyasu: likes pretty, soft and kind and bright people (he can develop a crush on anyone but this is like his type). Josuke: rough tough 'n buff boys babyyyyy

It says in Josukes profile that he's still growing, so he has the potential to be as tall as his daddy. Okuyasu however has stopped growing. Josuke ends up like half a head taller than Okuyasu and they both really like that actually

Josuke is trans and he told Okuyasu but Okuyasu didn't understand so he just went oh cool and it's only MUCH later through some funny shenanigans that he actually realizes it

Okuyasu also does not realize Josuke is gay until he's explicitly told and Josukes like "WHAT about me made you think I was straight???"

Only ones allowed to touch Josukes hair are his mom and Okuyasu, but only rarely.

Out of respect, Josuke doesn't badmouth Okuyasus family to his face, but he has some strong opinions. Okuyasu forgives Keicho and his dad, but Josuke does not.

One of their hangout traditions is going to the cemetery together.

They have an almost telepathic bond (possibly enhanced by Josuke having Hamon??) and dont need words to understand each other. Very convenient but frustrating for people around them.

Okuyasu cannot understand why Josuke won't let him take hits for him, since Josuke can just heal him anyway and can't heal himself. Josuke says something about being tough and being able to take his own damn hits but he really just doesn't like it when Okuyasu is injured.

They do argue as teenage boys do but never seriously. They get along shockingly well for two guys with anger issues.

Josuke started grabbing for Okuyasu when there was a sudden explosion in movies and stuff, eventually they just cuddle the whole time. Might as well right?

Okuyasu leans into the bad boy image and gets a leather jacket and a new motorcycle, tattoos and stuff, and Josuke is VERY appreciative.

Okuyasu convinced Josuke to try therapy. It didn't last, but it helped some. Joestar boys are stupid stubborn about that stuff.

Tomoko basically adopts Okuyasu and is not at all surprised when the boys admit they're dating

Josuke is super popular with girls ofc, but not so much with other guys. Okuyasu frequently gets into fights because he heard someone talk shit about Josuke.

Okuyasu gets a tattoo of a diamond or something over his heart and Josuke almost cries about it. And then gets a matching one with a hand

Josuke makes Okuyasu write a list of things he missed out on as a kid so they can do it together.

Serious shit: getting out of an abusive situation sometimes feels worse before it feels better. There's a rough period where Okuyasu is learning how to live without any kind of abuse, and it's hard on both of them. Okuyasu keeps half-expecting Josuke to hurt him in *some* way because its all he knows. Josuke feels helpless in being unable to convince his best boy friend that hes safe, and or feels bad to know you're not trusted. Josuke goes to Jotaro for help, but even Jotaro is out of his element about it. Joseph ends up getting Okuyasu a SWF issued therapist for free and it helps a lot.

Josuke does romantic stuff like make a mixtape, bring flowers, etc etc. It makes up for how he's not great at verbally expressing himself. Okuyasu can be a little unromantic, but then he says shit like "my favourite colour used to be green but now it's pink because it reminds me of you" completely serious and it makes up for it lol

They stay best friends forever. Very much "married to my best friend" vibes, they just genuinely really enjoy each other's company, they love hanging out.

On like 30% of the photos they have of themselves Okuyasu is crying or about to cry

Josuke sometimes gets called on for Stand business by the SWF, and he almost always turns them down UNLESS he can take Okuyasu with him. Package deal, baby.

At first, Okuyasu didn't like hands on his face (even while kissing) but now he's come to associate it with better things and kinda loves it.

Josuke makes a whole point of being PROUD of his HUSBAND. Like if they go out to eat and the waiter says "and for your friend?" or something, Josuke is like EXCUSE ME that HANDSOME MAN is my HUSBAND. And then to Okuyasus face hes like hey nerd got your lame spiceless fries lol

Josuke taste tests everything new for Okuyasu to make sure it's not spicy. Before they even start dating.

Even well into their relationship, Okuyasu will wonder what the fuck he did right enough to have a boyfriend like Josuke.

Okuyasu has an animal adoption problem they end up with like 3 cats, a dog, and a chicken

Josuke is hoodie/t-shirt/sweater thief supreme.

The closest they come to bro-breaking up is when Josuke goes to college. Because it's so far, and because he doesn't like not being there for his mom and Okuyasu if they need him, he actually considers not going. Okuyasu hates the idea of holding him back (what Keicho instilled in him) and gets pissed off about it, they have a big fight, its dramatic. They make up or course, and Josuke does go to college. It's really hard and stressful but he calls Okuyasu all the time and it helps. Okuyasu learns to live by himself and branches out a bit, sets up a life for himself outside of Josuke. They both needed to learn to live apart, hard as it was, to be ready to be together.

Okuyasu fully becomes a member of the Higashikata and Joestar family. When/if they marry, he leaves the Nijimura name behind, effectively ending that bloodline. He's very happy in his new, HUGE family.

Josuke takes Okuyasu shopping bc otherwise Josuke ends up spending way too much money.

Okuyasus pet names for Josuke: beautiful, gorgeous, babe, your highness, prettyboy, sailor and of course....bro.

Josukes pet names for Okuyasu: handsome, sunshine, babe, billion dollar boy, sweetheart, hot stuff and of course....bro.

They're stupidly embarrassingly completely head over heels in love with each other.

[thatsthetriick]

JJBA  characters walking on you changing (1)

 This was inspired by the ‘Harry potter characters walking in on you changing’ POVS, I don’t know who originally created it since I saw a LOT of them, so please inform me who is the original one, but this is inspired by those tiktoks heh.

Jjba SDC(part 3) characters walk in on you changing

﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉

Disclaimer: Characters walking on you changing, perhaps a bit OOc? Kakyoin and Jotaro are aged up here, gn! reader

﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉﹉

Joseph Joestar

⇢“OH MY GOD!”

⇢ The whole hotel would probably hear him panicking.

 ⇢ He would apologize a lot and immediately closed the door with a tint of blush on his face due to embarrassment.

 ⇢ He won’t wait outside anymore and just go back to his room and try his best not to talk about it but he can’t stop thinking about it and it bothers him the whole day, he won’t bring it up with you and pretend like it never happened but he still blushes of embarrassment

⇢ He tries his best not to bring it up with you and for him it’s awkward, and he never told anyone what he witnessed and what happened so it just stayed between the two of you. But he’ll eventually forget about it, but he still sometimes walks in again and some days he would remember the previous experiences, he usually walks in you changing whenever he’s tired or his mind is somewhere else which is the reason why he keeps witnessing you change.

Muhammad  Avdol

⇢ “Apologize Lady/Mister (Y/n), I will wait outside”

⇢ He’s cool and calm about the situation but a faint sound of him gulping can be heard as he speaks, he quietly locks your door and waits outside as he starts feeling embarrassed at walking in like that.

⇢ He doesn’t inform the others and doesn’t bring it up since he assumes you were also embarrassed on what happened, thought he’ll never forget it which makes him more cautious in the future and began knockinig.

⇢ “Pardon for my intrusion earlier.” he would apologize later which you would forgive him and wouldn’t mind it at all and he would advice you to lock your door and you would just simply giggle and take his advice.

Jotaro Kujo

⇢ “Tch, lock your doors next time.” he pulls down his cap a bit as he speaks.

⇢ He’ll close the door but wouldn’t lock it, he’d either walk away back to his hotel room or he’ll wait depending if what he needs to inform you is urgent, but he’ll mostly just leave back to his room but the image stays on his head.

⇢ He won’t tell anyone about it but usually Polnareff or someone else witnessed it and would constantly tease him about it and it would take a few days for the teasing to die down before it’ll start again whenever something reminds the crusaders about the time Jotaro walked in on you changing.

⇢ He would knock in the future instead of walking in the room to prevent the same situation to happen again, and would still remind you to lock the doors everytime he notices that your door is unlocked.

⇢ Deep inside he feels bad for walking in on you because you probably felt embarrassed so he wouldn’t bring it up anymore and tries his best not to think about it anymore and would comment Polnareff or Joseph’s teasing so they would shut up. Nevertheless the memory would pop up in his head from time to time.

Noriaki Kakyoin

⇢ “Oh! My deepest apologies! I’ll lock it for you.” 

⇢ He would walk in your room with his eyes close as he smiles while he tells you what he needs to tell you but as soon as he opens his eyes he quickly and calmly apologies and locks your door and waits outside.

⇢ He would be embarrassed as well for that and would apologize the whole day, even though you’ve forgotten about during the day he would still apologize whenever  you two are behind the group.

⇢ He is polite and respectful so he would never say what he saw or what happened between both of you since obviously that is something not to brag about. In the future he would knock or just walk in the room with his eyes close.

⇢ Even if you weren’t changing he’ll try his best to look the other way whether you were changing or not and you found it cute of him to do so.

Jean Pierre Polnareff

⇢ “Oh mon dieu! Has anyone told you that you look perfect 

Mademoiselle/Monsieur?”

⇢ He doesn’t mind the view and would wait for you to react and you would probably throw spare clothes or pillows towards him and he would quickly lock your door and look out.

⇢ He would wait outside and tease you from the outside as you change, he would bring it up and use this experience for flirting purposes in the future, in the end you both laugh about the experience and just make fun of it.

⇢ He would tease you and you would playfully get angry and play along and just laugh at the end to make it less awkward, so in the end it didn’t seem awkward or embarrassing for the both of you and you two eventually forgot about it.

⇢ He doesn’t tell the others about it but since you two are so loud joking about it the others are informed of it and are genuinely curious to what happened between the both of you, Jotaro would just be annoyed at both of you joking at your own personal joke that you and Polnareff knows.

⇢ He would also bring this memory up when you are down or the mood is negative, he would use this as a way for you to cheer up and you would still laugh about it and it never gets old.

Sorry for incorrect grammar, or typos it’s like 3 in the morning, if you want more of these headcanons plz inform me ok bye

[jostepherjoestar]

Do the Stardust Crusaders prefer an adorable or sexy s/o?(not poly, like what does each member prefer? also i hope this made sense)

Stardust Crusaders and their preferences HC’s

suggestive // gn reader

So this one made me think a little since in my opinion your fave will ALWAYS like you no matter what! So instead of only going by “adorable or sexy” let’s widen it up and delve a bit deeper into their preferences personality wise and style wise :D (ofc u will always be their favourite dw 😌) Kakyoin and Jotaro are kept sfw!! 💖✨

Avdol

Avdol is such a kind and understanding soul but still never afraid to voice his opinion in an earnest manner. He’ll appreciate that sentiment in his partners too, open to many ideas and understanding others’ way of thinking.

He does enjoy someone who’s a bit rowdy or playful to help bring out that side in him. Being silly together and just overall heightening the playful atmosphere really puts him at ease.

That’s the exact reason he secretly loves a little bit of chaos around him. Avdol himself is calm and determined but drama and unexpected events always seem to follow him. Don’t worry though, he loves being able to stride in and show off his abilities he’s so proud of!  

Be sure to work on your debate skills though, the man is a whole library of knowledge and if you end up in a discussion he needs you to be able to offer your substantiated opinion. If you talk him into a corner, be sure to soften the blow to his ego with lots of hugs and kisses afterwards 😌

Style-wise the man doesn’t have strong preferences. Earthy tones and a natural flare complement his own style very well though, so he loves a bit of a scholarly look as well. Show up in a long coat and cute glasses carrying some cool old books you’ve found and he might just swoop you off your feet hehe!

If you wear a minimalistic set in the bedroom- think dark burgundy, chocolate, burnt orange, he cannot take his eyes off of you. He’ll treat you like the absolute present you are while he unwraps you 😏  

Polnareff

Let this man spoil you for the love of all that is good!!!

He has SO much love to give and he will shower you by the bucketload so you better enjoy his antics! He thrives off of complementing you, albeit with the cheesiest lines, anything to see your cheeks flush. Also expect lots of cute gifts!!

If you’re a bit clumsy, get embarrassed easily and are a bit shy... Polnareff will never let you go, he’s so smitten by the way you stand behind him so often while meeting new people as he chatters away. He’ll pull out his best charming jokes to get you to laugh and when he sees how cute you are trying to hide your smile he’ll come smother you with kisses.

Loves it when you go along with his jokes and impulsive nature but prefers it if you’re a bit more responsible, the man struggles with self control so needs some guidance and someone to hold up the stop signs.

He will also look up to a more dominant person just as much, wanting to make sure he does everything to be on his best behaviour to please you. But he never looses that cheeky side and loves getting reprimanded for it. (not just in the bedroom, daily life as well) So make sure to keep that leash tight ;D!

Ok as much as I hate to say it... this man’s style tastes can be a bit tacky. If you like pink he’d love to see you in anything cutesy and frilly, perhaps to a worrying degree. Be sure to gently steer him to your own choices, he’ll forget all about his own ideas if you show a bit of skin anyways. This man is too easy to distract for his own good 🙄

Oldseph (forgive me Suzy Q 🙏)

Because he is the way he is *sigh*, he loves being yelled at for his antics. Joseph will never stop acting like a child no matter his age, that youthful sparkle always present even as he has started to take life a lot more serious.

Boss him around a little too much and he’ll pick you up just to smirk at you until you shut up. Eye-rolls are the dead give away that you like him and he’ll gladly accept them along with the annoyed sighs.

If you reside on the other side of the spectrum- playful and offering a childlike wonder too, he’ll take it all the way. Everyday is a silly playdate, joking around, showing off, any way to impress you and pull you along into the fun.

He LOVES vintage clothes, the fifties are his favourite era style wise and adores it when you dress the part. Joseph ain’t no chump so he’ll always offer to pay the deft fees of authentic vintage pieces. Hell, he’ll even fly you overseas if there happens to be a special item on sale that you’ve been eyeing.

Just like Polnareff, he loves to spoil you. Indulging your every need, even when you’re grumpy or mad at him. It’s his life’s goal to make those droopy corners shoot upwards with his dumb jokes and antics.

Stroll up in nothing but stockings and garters and he’s dead. Good job you killed the un-killable Joestar! But before his soul ascends the mortal plane he’ll ravish you, sure to buy you a new pair that’s even prettier.

Jotaro

As we all know this edgy dude doesn’t love loud annoying people. But here’s a secret he’ll never audibly let slip: if he sees you holding yourself back, trying not to be “too” much of anything he might not like... that next yare yare is him admitting he doesn’t mind it, as long as you don’t start yelling. He’ll actually enjoy your excitement, quietly of course, sure not to let others onto his amusement of your cuteness.

If you share his interests (marine biology, reading, nature in general) he’ll feel a bit more inclined to talk about them, just a smidge. Jotaro enjoys listening to you talk about your passions though, even if they differ from his. That intent stare taking in the way your eyes sparkle, that cute smile making butterflies flutter in his stomach.

Even though he loves going on walks, admiring nature and inhaling the fresh air, he is a secret homebody and would love it if you shared the sentiment. Lounging on the couch in comfy clothes, quietly enjoying each other’s presence while doing your own things, just basking in the shared space.

Since this is SDC Jotaro, he’s in the early stages of his love for showing off his accessories and he likes it when you do too. Just a couple of small hints at your likes through cute pins or a small chains.

He likes to be stylish but is by no means that into fashion, he knows what he likes and sticks to that. But if you’re a bit more of a fashionista he’ll share his opinions on louder outfits that attract a lot of attention. Just don’t take it too personal, he means well 😬

Likes you best in your comfortable pj’s, wrapped up like a cute burrito in a dolphin blanket 🥰

Kakyoin

As much as the jokes get made, if you’re the mom friend, he’s constantly trying to do right by you. A doting nature that still lets him be independent will make him go 🥰😍!!

Love and kindness towards others is so endearing to him, and if you’re not afraid to speak your mind openly, he might have to confess his love right this minute. He won’t be shy in letting his liking for you show either, offering charming jokes and compliments whenever you’re near.

And if you share his dry genZmemer humour, gently starting to drop hints that you’re not afraid to be a bit edgy you become his ultimate favourite person.

Because of his introverted nature, he likes someone who is a bit more independent as well, offering yourselves time and a comfortable pace to move in throughout the relationship.

He also greatly admires a strong need for justice and loyalty to a cause, it shows integrity and intelligence. That fiery passion in your eyes invigorates him just as much!

Kakyoin loves elegance and something that complements your features, no matter what style. He does have a bit of a thing for having matching colour palettes or at least ones that complement each other.

Cool gem tones are his favourite; emerald, ruby, sapphire...the list goes on.

At home though...get him a random shirt with a ridiculous slogan or phrase and he’ll wear it till it’s barely hanging on by a thread. Make him one too, a plain white shirt with a scribbly drawn frog or a meme-y phrase! He’ll wear it forever, being reminded of his love for you every time he laughs at the visual 😊

[voiceless-terror]

More than Enough

For @tma-mspec-week Day Three: Polycule

Characters: Jonathan Sims/Sasha James/Tim Stoker/Martin Blackwood

Rating: Teen

Summary:

“But what if-” Once again, Jon struggles to find the right words. He knows their situation is unorthodox to most people, and the thought of Martin looking at him differently is too much to bear. “What if he doesn’t understand?”

“Then explain it to him,” Sasha relays patiently, her hand never leaving his. Things are always so clear to her, Jon envies that. “You’re my partners, you’re dating Tim, sometimes me and Tim have-”

Or: How One Became Four.

It starts with Sasha and Jon.

She’s fresh off six months in Artefact Storage, shell-shocked and stand-offish. Jon starts a few months later and they learn the ropes together. She warms up, divulges little tidbits of her time in the other department that Jon devours. He’s young, hungry for answers and Sasha’s already jaded by her few years in academia. This is just a transitional job, she assures him. It pays better than most research gigs and allows her to keep up a certain lifestyle. 

“I’m looking at other places, putting out feelers,” she confides in him one day over coffee. It’s become their daily ritual, a mid-morning break where they can commiserate on the staid academics that ask too much of them and the fanciful statements that end up on their desk. “Whatever you do, don’t get stuck here.” She leans back in her chair, gives a cynical little smile. “Or maybe you should. It’ll be different for you, you’re a man.” He starts a protest but she cuts him off. “It’s an old boys club and you know it. Besides, I know all about your extra meetings with Bouchard. He’s never done that with anyone else. Who knows - in a few years you might be my boss!”

He scoffs at that. Jon feels like he’s treading water. He’s a great researcher, sure, but he hasn’t exactly made himself popular among the others. He’s quick to bite, dismissive, blunt. It’s why he and Sasha get along so well, tucked away in their own little world. Of course she would notice the attention from Elias; Jon’s flattered by it, even if he stammers his way through every interaction. Elias seems to find this amusing, but Jon wants to impress him. 

Though not at the cost of his friendship with Sasha. “I always mention your work to him. I’m rubbish with technology, but you-” She rolls her eyes.

“Don’t, he’ll see right through that. Manipulation’s not your strong suit.” Jon stares down at his rapidly cooling drink, an embarrassed flush spreading across his features. But her hand reaches out to grasp his and a fond smile lights her features. “Thank you, though. It’s sweet of you.”

Jon likes Sasha. Their personalities occasionally clash, but never for too long. Jon’s quick to forgive and Sasha’s too fond to hold a grudge, though she’s loath to admit it. So when her roommate suddenly moves out and she’s left in a bind, it’s only natural for Jon to take her place. He’s been rent-poor, living paycheck to paycheck in a shitty studio that’s still an hour’s commute. Sasha’s closer and her flat’s substantially nicer; she offers and he accepts, easy as that. It’s a practical move, and Jon has to admit his lonely little flat is starting to feel suffocating. 

They fit together easily, like pieces of puzzle slotting in place. Sasha’s brutally efficient in her personal matters; bills and maintenance that Jon finds overwhelming and confounding she takes care of with ease. He’s heard her on the phone in that light, practiced tone of hers as she casually threatens the landlord for necessary repairs. Jon finds himself relaxing bit by bit, feeling comfortable in his own skin as she snarks at the dinner table over a dish he’s made. He used to cook for Georgie like this. Now he cooks for Sasha.

“You’re good at this,” she comments one night over chana masala. “Loads better than the frozen meals I’m used to.”

“It’s nice, having someone to cook for. Harder to do it for one.” He feels a bit uncomfortable with the admission, though he knows he shouldn’t - this is what it’s like, when you love someone.

He’s never said that to her, of course. He gets attached too easily but never knows quite how to show it. And it’s not his usual sort of love, he doesn’t want to date her. She’s more than a friend, and Jon’s never had many of those; he has no metric to measure this against. He thinks he could stay in this flat with her forever, so long as he could see her smile every morning and yawn every night. 

On a Saturday morning she stumbles out of bed and makes her way over to the kitchen. “Morning,” she grumbles, as she reaches for the coffee pot and kisses his forehead. Jon doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

On a Wednesday night Jon drinks too much. 

“Sasha,” he slurs, her arm the only thing keeping him from falling off his stool. “I want you t’ know…”

She smiles indulgently, takes a sip of her drink. “Yes, dear?”

“I-I love you.” She pauses and Jon’s heart drops. “N-Not like that, but like friends. Good friends. Very good friends. But m-maybe not.” She’s still smiling, that’s got to be a good sign, right? “I-I just love you, okay?”

And then she laughs, puts an arm around his shoulder and pulls him close. “I love you too. Stay with me forever, okay?”

He takes her hand between his and promises, with all the solemnity a drunken man can muster, that he’ll stay with her forever and then some. The next morning, while they’re both nursing massive hangovers, Jon broaches the subject again.

“Did you mean it?” he asks tentatively, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. “What you said last night. Do- do you want me to stay forever?” She turns to look at him, bleary eyes suddenly alert.

“Yes.” There’s no tease in her words as she leans into his side, a warm weight on his shoulder. “I don’t think I’ve ever meant anything more.”

Jon stays.

______

Two years later, Tim joins the Institute.

He’s handsome; charming, but subdued. He’s been assigned a desk near theirs, invading the quiet little corner that had become their world. Tim greets them both with a smile and a perfunctory handshake before settling down at his desk and powering up his laptop. He doesn’t speak to them again.

Jon watches as he goes back and forth between circulation and his desk, building an impressive stack of books- The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi, The Congress of Clowns and Other Russian Circus Acts. Sasha told him he worked in publishing, Jon knows she got that information through her usual nefarious means. Perhaps he’s writing a book, Jon says. Sasha thinks otherwise.

“He’s one of those,” she says over sandwiches and tea. She invited Tim, but had been turned down with an apologetic smile. 

“Hmm?”

“Like you.” She sets her drink down, eyes him with her steady gaze. “He’s got a reason.”

Mr. Spider doesn’t like it.

Jon shivers at the reminder. Sasha never brought it up after he initially confided in her one vulnerable night last year; she just held him through the shaking and the tears. He’s only told the story twice; once at eight, again at twenty five. It never got easier.

“No one believed me,” he whispered, tucking his face into her shoulder as his body itched from phantom legs skittering across skin. She squeezed him back.

“I do.”

They’re friendly enough to Tim, giving him his distance while still trying to be helpful. Jon points him in the direction of texts and scholars who might be useful, Sasha teaches him a few of her more invasive tricks that Jon refused to learn. Slowly, bit by bit, he opens up. Never shares his story, no- but he smiles, jokes around with them, accompanies them on their lunch breaks and eventually entices them to after work drinks. 

He’s handsome when he smiles, Jon thinks to himself as Tim regales them with stories of dates gone wrong. Sasha catches his eye and winks. He wonders if she’ll tire of Jon now that Tim’s around. He’s everything Jon’s not; good-looking, confident, secure in his intelligence. Sasha laughs so freely around him. He could ground her where Jon cannot- they can be a chaotic force, the two of them. It’s why they keep to themselves.

But at the end of the night it’s Jon’s hand she takes, swinging it gently with hers. “Stay with me forever?”

He smiles. “Forever.”

They invite him over to their flat one night in spring, when the trees are blossoming and Jon’s allergies are acting up. He’s sniffling miserably on the couch, Tim sprawled next to him as Sasha pours some wine. Despite his misery, Jon’s content.

Tim nudges him with his foot. “So what’s your deal?” he asks in a wheedling tone, though his smirk betrays an almost imperceptible anxiety. It’s strange. “You and Sash. Dating, roomies…?”

It’s Sasha who answers, handing Jon a glass of wine and standing before Tim, tall and proud. “Jon’s my partner.” It’s matter of fact, and Jon can’t help the warmth that floods him. “We’re not dating. I’m not interested in that.” She hands him his glass with a smirk. “But if you want to romance Jon, feel free.”

Jon sputters as she laughs- he’s transparent, as usual. They’d talked about it briefly- Sasha’s fine with him dating other people, but Jon’s never felt the need to. Sasha’s enough. She still is, but he can’t deny the way his heart swoops whenever Tim aims that smile in his direction. Sasha likes him too, in her own way.

Tim’s still gaping at them and Jon can’t help but join in on the laughter, as embarrassed as he feels. “Is the great Timothy Stoker nervous?” Sasha says in between giggles. “Guess we know how to shut him up now.”

“L-Look, can you blame me?” Tim says, a smile growing on his face. “You two can be very intimidating, not to mention gorgeous-”

Jon kicks at his leg. “Don’t joke.”

“No, we are.” Sasha interrupts, daring him to disagree. She turns that deadly smile back on Tim, delighting in his falter. “So what’ll it be, Stoker?”

There’s silence, Jon can feel his heart racing. They’ve got this all wrong, Tim doesn’t want him, Tim’s going to leave, Tim doesn’t understand-

“Can I take you out to dinner tomorrow night?”

Jon blinks. “Uh, yes?”

“He likes Thai!” Sasha calls as she walks over to her bedroom, leaving the two of them on the couch, laughing nervously. 

“So you’re bi, then?” Tim asks, scooting closer to Jon and throwing a blanket over their legs and an arm around his shoulder. It’s warm in all the right ways and Jon leans closer, the awkwardness dissipating at the touch of his hand. 

“I prefer pan,” he replies. It’s the first term that felt right to him. Georgie used to make some stupid joke about a ‘gender buffet’ and him ‘having one of everything.’ It still makes him smile. “And- and you should know I’m also ace. So there’s some things I won’t be able to do for you.” He looks for disappointment in Tim’s eyes and finds none. “I hope that’s alright.”

“Of course.” Tim smiles like he means the words and Jon feels light, almost dizzy. “Are kisses alright?”

He nods shyly, and Tim takes this as his cue to pepper him in obnoxiously loud smooches- one in his hair, another on his nose. Jon manages to bat him away after Tim almost gets him in the eye. 

So Tim and Jon are dating. Tim takes him out to dinner, the movies, one memorable night of karaoke. Sasha joins in when she wants; they go to museums and lectures. One night she laces her fingers through Tim’s, smiling at his wide eyes.

“What?” she says innocently, doing the same with Jon. “I’ve got two hands.”

On Wednesday nights Tim goes to the gym. Jon sits at the table, passes Sasha a bowl of reheated spaghetti before settling down in his chair. He fidgets, not touching his fork.

“What is it?” Sasha asks, setting her own fork down. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

“I-” he stutters, sighing as the words won’t come. Just tell her like you practiced. “I’m not trying to, well- hmm. I don’t want to insinuate anything-”

“You would never.”

“But, I’ve noticed- I’m not- Tim is very handsome.”

Sasha smiles indulgently. “Mhm. Go on.”

“And I’ve noticed. I don’t- if you wanted to-” Goddamnit. Pull yourself together. “I wouldn’t mind it, if you were to - that is, if you’d like to engage in-” He closes his eyes, purses his lips in frustration. “Please stop me.”

“Why Jon,” she replies, her voice coy and teasing. “Are you giving me your blessing?”

Jon sighs, his face warming as he opens one eye- she’s grinning, just as he expected. “...Yes?”

Six months later, Tim moves in.

_______

“Jon wants to bring a boy home!”

Jon smacks him in the arm and scowls. “Tim, don’t-”

“What, it’s true!” He leans back in his chair, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Jon wants to knock the smile off his face and maybe onto the floor, if he can get a good kick in. “I don’t blame you and in fact, I encourage it. Martin’s a catch-”

“Martin?” Sasha perks up. “Finally!”

“Not you too-”

“Jon, he’s a very sweet boy-”

“-good-looking, too!”

“And if you want to bring him over, please do.” She reaches across the table to give his hand an encouraging, if condescending, squeeze. “I’ve seen the way you look at each other.”

“But what if-” Once again, Jon struggles to find the right words. He knows their situation is unorthodox to most people, and the thought of Martin looking at him differently is too much to bear. “What if he doesn’t understand?”

“Then explain it to him,” Sasha relays patiently, her hand never leaving his. Things are always so clear to her, Jon envies that. “You’re my partners, you’re dating Tim, sometimes me and Tim have-”

“I don’t think I’ll need to go into that much detail just yet,” Jon cuts her off, ignoring Tim’s snicker. “It’s just...what if he thinks it's weird?”

“Weird can be good. And if he doesn’t agree, well - he’s not worth your time.”

If only it were that simple.

It’s been about three months since he first ran into Martin in the break room. He’d seen him around plenty of times, but despite his hulking form, the man can make himself very, very small. It wasn’t until he quite literally ran into him, causing him to drop his newly organized files, that Jon got a good look at his face.

It was a nice face. Soft, kind, with big blue eyes and curly red hair that fell across his forehead. He wanted to touch it, tuck it behind Martin’s ear and he almost did, despite the man’s rambling apologies and meek demeanor. He stood there, frozen, even as Martin handed back the file with a bashful smile.

“Sorry, I’m pretty clumsy. Are you alright?”

Jon was fine. He should probably say that.

“Y-Yes. I’m Jon.” Wow. Smooth.

“I know.” Martin put a hand behind his neck, nervously chuckling. “You’re quite known around these parts.” His eyes widened and his face turned red. A nice red. “N-Not in a bad way, of course! You’re- you’re just very smart and- and direct- and oh Lord, that’s not a compliment, is it-”

“Thank you for my file,” Jon replied robotically, his eyes trained somewhere over Martin’s shoulder and not on his very, very blue eyes. “I have to take my leave now.” Why are you talking like this?

Their next few encounters were similarly stunted and awkward. Martin made tea at ten every morning, coincidentally when Jon got his yogurt from the fridge. He started making Jon a cup as well; he wasn’t sure if Martin was particularly excellent at making tea, or if it just mattered that he was the one making it. Jon tried not to dwell on the sentimentality of it all. 

He shouldn’t want another partner. He’s got Sasha, who he loves, and Tim, who he also loves, albeit in a different way. They should be enough for him. They are enough. But Martin makes him tea and asks him how his day is going and smiles at him and people don’t do that. He tells himself he just wants a friend, but he finds his mind wandering- Martin’s hand in his while they walk down the street, Jon nestled into his side on a movie night and Tim’s there too, because Martin is very comfy and handsome and warm. Sasha’s in her armchair reading a book because tonight they’re watching a romantic comedy and she hates those. Jon hates them too but Martin likes them, of course Martin likes them-

No. He’s getting distracted. And he’s standing in front of Martin like an idiot, saying nothing. This is going terribly. Why did he ever think this would not go terribly-

“Jon? Are you alright? You look like you’re about to have a stroke.”

“I’m not having a stroke,” Jon responds on auto-pilot. “I’m trying to think of a clever way to ask you out but you are very distracting.”

Shit. Martin stares at him, mouth open in shock. He’s got nice teeth. Very straight.

“Um- I-I thought you were with Tim?” Martin squeaks out. Oh God, I’ve scared him. Do I keep going? “Or- or Sasha, oh! I’m not accusing you of -”

“No, you’re correct,” Jon grinds out, willing himself to be calm. He doesn’t want Martin to think his frustration is aimed at him. “Sasha’s my partner and I’m dating Tim, and sometimes Sasha and Tim-” No! Abort! “-sorry. We’re together. But, um, I-I also like you, and I think Tim likes you but he hasn’t said- I’m sorry, this is going all wrong.” He looks down at the floor, clenching his jaw. “I understand if you say no.”

“I’m not saying no,” Martin’s voice is lower now and Jon feels a hope rise in his chest. He’s not? “So it’s, it’s like an open thing? You’re accepting applications?” Jon would laugh at the joke if he weren’t so paralyzed with fear.

“Not really? It’s, we aren’t dating around or anything, but I suppose it is open, in a way.” He pauses, takes a deep breath. “Open for you.”

Martin’s smiling like he can’t believe his luck, and it confuses Jon because who wouldn’t want him? Kind, handsome Martin who makes him tea and doesn’t laugh at his stupid jokes but rolls his eyes affectionately and tells his own in turn. Jon doesn’t think he’ll ever understand his humor but it makes him smile and that’s important. And now Martin’s taking his hand and he- oh fuck Martin’s taking his hand Martin’s got his hand and it’s warm, just like he knew it would be-

“I-I think I’d like that.” A squeeze. Jon dies but only a little. “Wow, this is sort of crazy for me, y’know? You’re all so, so intimidating and good-looking-”

“Yes, we are,” Jon agrees, squeezing his hand back. “But we’d like to buy you dinner, if you’re amenable.” Martin laughs and says yes, he’s very, very amenable. It feels right holding Martin’s hand. It feels right to see him with Tim and Sasha, smiling and joking. It feels right to lean into him at the end of the day, to nudge his side in the night and apologize in the morning.

Martin’s lease expires in seven months. They start looking for a new apartment after three.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29032062

[samissosexyyy]

Tumblr thought it would be hilarious to delete all my work and not let me answer requests :').

YES I SHALL WRITE THE PLATONIC ANGRY PARENTS-

And thank you-I woke up and was talking to my friend in the morning and my brain just: jojo villain yandere dads. Mudad mudad mudad mudad anger.

Anyways, here they are- Do these even count as headcanons???? I dunno-

Dio, Part 1

Vampire form of course.

First thing first, We all know he'd be a great dad. Protective already, But make him a yandere platonic father? Oh boy, Trust me, You'd be spoiled and treated like royalty.

Now, I'm gonna say in this scenario you were on of his victims child. I'll say you'll be around 5 to eight.

Somehow you managed to catch his eye, Is it because your parent was just as bad as his? You reminded him of his mother? Or maybe you resemble him, and have three moles on your ear. Or, perhaps, A younger joestar? Either way, You somehow had him feeling like a father, and, according to one of my friends, Araki had said DIO would treat his children like they were royalty, And they would be so spoiled.

So, Mudad would end up taking you in, kidnapping, whichever honestly. He'd be holding you like a loving pet owner would, if you got scared, he'd probably be confused. Honestly he'd have you turned into a vampire quickly, as he knew he wouldn't be able to have children as a Vampire.

Truthfully, I think you'd end up never noticing how he'd occasionally pull you closer, or how he'd glare at anyone your age or older going near you. Or how he'd give you some strict rules, Like no dating anyone. E v e r. And why would you ever want to hurt your papa like that?! You wouldn't want to do that, right?! Of course you wouldn't! Dio knew you'd never betray him like that!!

Truth be told, he'd guilt you if you tried to go against his words. But punishments? No no, He'd never actually purposefully hurt you, Unlike his love interest, he'd NEVER want to cause you pain ever. He'd hate himself and wouldn't forgive himself for years. Centuries. Infact, he'd beg for your forgiveness.

The Pillarmen

And satannnaaaaa

First of all, You aren't a pillarchild. You'd most likely be some kind of god, vampire, or a young hamon learner. Or even related to the Joestars or Ceasar.

So, Let's say you're immortal who can walk in the sun. We all know you'd be the joestar side, Right? So, That means you'd end up hating or feeling pity for the pillarmen. First, You'd probably end up trying to make Santana hally when he awakens. Unlike with Joseph, He'd probably know not to attempt to attack you. Let's say you have symbols like Dio Over heaven, We all know how that would work.

You'd end up as a being worshipped by them, probably kidnapped after they destroy the Joestars.

Let's say they defeated Joseph and the others, and you were still a deity, You'd most likely be weaker then them in this scenario. They'd probably treat you like a kitten at first, like a baby before they all felt a connection. As if you were a child of their own, so they'd give you rules. And we all know how rules go with yanderes.

Let's say uh- you fell for a mortal.

"No. No."

[Crush name has fallen from a high place.]

"DADS WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUU-"

"NO CUSSING IN THIS CHRISTIAN MINECRAFT SERVER!"

or something like that :')

Honestly, You'd have bird dad, and a bunch of other dads. Santana would honestly be like the cool big brother honestly. You'd probably want horns too so-

They would totally buy you halloween horns to put on your head so you'd be happy baby

Now, Hamon user? They'd probably find you like a cute animal at first, probably going easy on you like it was a game of tag. Soon, they'd realize how weak and fragile you are, After all, You are just starting hamon. They'd probably kidnap you to spite Joseph and his side at first, before... Well, You didn't expect to become a vampire and treated like royalty when all you've been treated like is uh... Considering Lisalisa is your coach, I'd say you'd be happy if it was someone else doing this for you.

Josephs sibling? WOAH Joseph, When did you get a cute sibling? Pfft, Not your sibling anymore, They just adopted your ex sibling nerd.

But, All jokes aside, They'd probably be surprised that you were more mature then your brother, and...you sorta resemble a certain Coach... Oh, Humans all look the same, haha.

They'd probably kidnap you infront of Joseph just to make him feel guilt and rage, After all, Why not get their prized treasure and make Joseph angry? They'd give you more rules, until Joseph was gone, of course.

And, sadly, Not even you crying would stop them from making you into a vampire infront of your big brother, breaking both of your hearts.

Don't worry you got ice cream later smh.

Ceasars sibling? Mini pancake? Haha, They'd kidnap you as soon as they felt parent like tendencies. No denying them, infact, they'd make sure you saw ceasar get defeated by the ro ck. But don't worry! You have new parents and a brother-! Haha, Poor you.

Part 3 DIO AKA mudad!

Honest to god you'd probably have to be a stand user with a weak or strong stand, or, you were one of his kids he had with a lucky woman who survived and got a naked polaroid of him as a 'wow you lived! Congrats, now go have my kid lmao' gift. Or, Maybe you were a normal kid who was kind to him, even if he,,,,  did some questionable murder infront of you. And maybe you were a young

Now, Let's say you were a strong stand user. He'd end up wanting to use a flesh bud until he realized... He never had a kid, that he knows of, and decided to raise you! At first he'd be upset you had a strong stand like your mudad, but realized you could protect yourself from those dreadful joestars! Congrats, You became a Brando! :) How unlucky, Considering this DIO would probably force vampire masks onto you, or even using fleshbuds as a threat. Either way, You'll always be papas baby!

Yoshikage kira.

Like I said in my first post of this, He'd want to have a nice average life. You having a stand wouldn't be a problem, Since he'd probably convince you Josuke and the others are awful and rude.

Josukes sibling? Well, He'd end up telling you he can help your brother with his murder issue if you come with him. You don't exactly have a choice since Killer queen would easily overpower you if you had disagreed. You'd end up being a normal and peaceful child before long, Infact, He'd have to pretend he had adopted you behind his 'wifes' back.

Hayotos friend he never talks about? Congrats, You are now stuck with a crazy and loving father! And a mother, I suppose. And you get your best friend as a brother! You'd never be able to leave, how sad. But, You'd have your new mom and your dad to talk to-! And killer queen cuddle time.

Now, Let's say you were his own kid. Wowzers! You think its normal for your father to bring women hands home, after all, You are pretty young and your father told you most adults do this. Ah. How enjoyable.

Doppio/Diavolo

Oh dear. You poor child.

Either you were related to trish, and he somehow felt like you wouldn't be a problem before they felt more of a father love towards you, Most likely somehow getting rif of the traitors and your big sister.

"Where's big sister?"

"Don't worry about her, She's spending time with your mother."

Smh quit LIEING you jERK!

But seriously, Doppio would be like the fun mom asking you if you'd like bake cupcakes in his spare time! Read you bed time stories and whatnot! Diavolo would be awkward and "wanna play baseball or whatever kids like to do these days?" Awkward dad alert.

"My kid is fine!"

The kid they kidnapped/raised:

Casually trying to beat another kid with a baseball.❤💚💛

Honestly they'd insult everyone elses kids while here their kid is, casually scared of baseball.

Pucci

Papa priest! We all know he'd adopt you! I head canon him as gay, considering DIO and him were totally a thing.

So, He'd probably have you study Lord DIO bibles, and casually have you hate Jolyne. Probably even give you a stand, And even show you that DIO is the best! Worship! Protect yourself and all that!

Jotaro would probably scare you,  so I can see you holding onto Pucci while Jotaro appears anytime, so pucci would infact love it when you snuggle onto him lime a cute kitten. Hell, you even Sneeze like a kitten!

Honestly You'd be kept under watch 24/7, but you'd think it was normal, after all, Your father would mever do something so awful like Those Joestars claim...right?

Diego

Oh wow- dino dad :)

Let's say you were a big fan of his, Then, Well,You wouldn't mind having him as a dad, Now would you? He is your idol, Right? Yeah. Yeah!

He'd probably carry you around upside down, Hot pants just questioning his sanity as he drops you a million times. Hot pants would probably end up carrying you most of the time.

Mama hot pants and father Diego. Y es.

And, Let's say you were traveling with Johnny. Congrats. You've put yourself in a even worse situation considering Diego would become worried and paranoid over those two idiots hurting you! And he hates the idea of his baby boy/girl/child being hurt by barbarians!!!

Even though he'd probably hurt you on accident if I'm gonna be honest.

Kidnapping isn't a very easy job, so of course he had to knock you out! What was he supposed to do?! Ask you to come stay with him forever?! No! Maybe! HuawhuKaia-

Honestly not too many rules, just don't leave his side ever! Except when going to the bathroom. You'll be tied to his horse. No whining >:(.

Funny Valentine

Honestly what did you think he was going to do? Pick some random child? No no, He'd choose the PERFECT child! You were so lucky! Wow! The daughter of the mos powerful man ever! Lucky you, Right?

No. You don't get alone time unless it's you sleeping or bathing. You wear what he wants, and no.

Dating not allowed. Bad. No no no no no.

"No. No dating. Your lips will fall off."

"but mommys lips didn't-"

"Your face will melt off."

Basically you'd be bossed around and treated like royalty, as long as you listen to you dad!

Honestly I don't know if this is headcanons, if if it isn't feel free to scream at me in the comments-

AND I AM SO SORRY ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO ACTUALLY ANSWER, SO I HOPE YOU SEE THIS AND ARE ABLE TO ENJOY IT??? I GUESS???

[ichayalovesyou]

~Act One: In Denial of Pon Farr~

Blood Moon~by Saint Sister, Madrid (Album)

“To return home, and take a wife… or die.”

Spock is feeling anxious and unusually lonely, more resentful of his complex heritage than usual. Feeling rejected, but not by Jim, he finds his thoughts wandering to T’Pring. Who he feels deep resentment toward, she hasn’t contacted once him in the two decades he’s been gone from Vulcan. He has yet to realize it is the beginnings of Pon Farr.

“I am sure, you craved me once before. When I think of all the fruit I’ve found, and how easily you left it on the ground.”

Evening On The Ground (Lilith’s Song)~by Iron & Wine, Woman King (album)

“I hoped that I would be spared this.”

Spock’s yearning and loneliness transforms into anger and frustration. He knows Pon Farr has begun, and he hates it. He has no desire to return to Vulcan, worse still, he loathes that he yearns for someone who he does not know. Worse still, she’s not the only one he’s longing for…

“We were born to fuck each other one way or another but I’ll, only lie, down by the water side at night”

I Want You (She’s So Heavy)~(Originally) by the Beatles, performed by the Cast of Across the Universe, Across the Universe (Album)

“How do Vulcans choose their mates… Haven’t you wondered?”

Spock cannot bear the tearing between Human & Vulcan halves that has come ferociously to light under the stress of Pon Farr. His duty is to that man on the bridge, but the call of Koonut Kalifee is only getting louder. He has no desire to burden Jim with horrible display of emotion. Yet desire is quickly becoming all that he can think about.

“I want you, I want you so bad, it’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad.”

~Act Two: Blood Fever, The Nightmares of Plok’tow~

Howl~by Florence + The Machine, Lungs (Album)

“To have their logic ripped from them, as this time does to us.”

The first, foreboding rumblings of Plok’tow have begun. He dreams of a hunt, he’s chasing someone, he does not know who. Each time the blood of this faceless, slaughtered, ravaged victim is a different color, every time he turns around, green, red, green, red, green, red, green, red…

“Like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins, I want to find you, tear out all your tenderness.”

The Horror of Our Love~by Ludo, You’re Awful, I Love You (Album)

“It strips away our veneer of civilization.”

The dreams are getting worse, more violent, detailed, intense. He knows his quarry-

Jim.

He tears his captain apart in a thousand visceral, grotesque ways, physically, mentally, no love, no hate, no want, just blinding hunger. And the most frightening part, he enjoys it. He begins withdrawing from Kirk, for fear of what may happen should dreams threaten to become reality.

“Carnivorous and lusting, I’ll track you down among the pines.”

Become the Beast~by Karliene, Become the Beast (Album)

“It is the Pon Farr, the time of mating.”

The last of his Blood Fever dreams occurs after Kirk confronts him about his behavior. This one is, much to Spock’s relief, not violent. The lyrics are spoken through the faces of fellow Vulcans- T’pring… childhood tormentors… Sybok… his cold and disapproving father… T’pau… Surak… himself.

The rage and hunger has cooled into ice rather than fire, for now.

“Do I terrify you? Do you feel alive? Do you feel the hunger? The desert howl inside?”

The Woods~by San Flemin, Jackrabbit (Album)

“You humans have no conception.”

When James Kirk grabbed the shiv from Spock’s hand in their confrontation, a shard of Spock’s Blood Fever came with it. Spock was spared a nightmare this final night, but not Jim. The dream even dared to be pleasant initially, alone together in the woods. Before the arena of Koonut Kalifee erupted violently around them, as did Spock. Yet, before Spock could deal the final killing blow, Kirk found himself sinking into the sparkling sands below. He startles from his slumber, feeling suffocated.

But he does not remember how, or why.

“The nights are lovely dark and deep, but I’ll appear when you’re asleep. You’ll wake up with a sudden hurt, your mouth and nose all full of dirt”

~Act Three: Kalifee, the Death of A Friend~

Take Me Down~by Brother, Pax Romana MMV (Album)

“I’ll get you to Vulcan somehow…”

All Jim knows is that Spock is getting worse, and that he needs him. Not knowing, and not daring ask whether the shiv was meant for himself or Spock haunts Kirk, as does the ghost of his forgotten dream. He does not know what will come of this wedding. Only that he will do whatever it takes to make certain Spock lives. No matter what, it’s a race against time.

“The powers that be, the powers that run you through, I’m taking a stand I know what it comes down to, God knows I do.”

Hunting Grounds (feat Joe Cotela of Ded)~by In This Moment, Mother (Album)

“He is deep in the Blood Fever, he will not speak with thee again.”

Kalifee has begun, Spock has completely lost himself to the Blood Fever, and Kirk must fight for his life. He finds himself outmatched by the environment, and by Spock’s rage. He knows two things, he has no desire to die, but he cannot, under any circumstances, kill Spock. (I imagine this duet could be as seen as Maria Brink=Kirk, Joe Cotela=Spock)

“Like a predator sink my teeth into your neck.”

Die Today~by The Txlips Band & Guitar Gabby, Queens of The New Age (Album)

“Kill Spock? That’s not what we came to Vulcan for is it?”

The Kalifee has been an intense drain, Kirk knows, deep down, that not even the “Triox Compound” could save him in this fight. He feels his life flash before his eyes, he bears no ill will toward Spock, he’s not in control of himself. He reflects on their relationship, and how much it has meant to him, and accepts, that for Spock to live, he has to die.

It was worth having known him, saving a friend isn’t the worst way to go out…

“If you die today, if we die today, at least I’d be in your arms.”

Pearl Diver~by Mitski, Lush (Album)

“You may find, that having, is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.”

Spock is absolutely distraught, he’s disgusted with himself, he loathes every single Vulcan he’s ever known, but most of all he is angry with Kirk. That he had to be the moth to his flame. How dare he want to get close to him! How dare James Kirk ever have the stupidity, the courage to love him?! The wanting had driven Jim to his death, and himself to murder. It was illogical, and he will never, forgive either of them for it. Curse having, curse wanting, and curse himself too.

“But hunter you were human don’t forget it and go safely. And I? I’ll live without you, though the struggle will be daily.”

Sweet Dreams~by JOSEPH, I’m Alone, No You’re Not (Album)

“I shall do neither, for I have killed my Captain, and my friend.”

Spock languishes in the agonizing hours between the Kalifee and confronting Bones about what must be done. He prays for a short and cruel life… and dares ponder the question, do Humans have Katras?

“I’ll return to my sleepless night, dreaming with my eyes open, watch the shadows play on the ceiling.”

[The final act is a little on the smutty side, here’s a read more just to be safe.]

~Act Four: The Need is Met~

To Be Alone~by Hozier, From Eden EP (Album)

“I shall offer no defense, their is no excuse for the crime of which I’m guilty.”

Though overjoyed and relieved that Kirk is alive, Spock continues to anguish over the reality that had Bones not intervened, he would have killed him. Jim knows better this time, he will not let Spock continue down this path. A tender and honest conversation puts salve to Spock’s fears. In any event, while the Kalifee burned away the Blood Fever, it becomes clear the needs of Pon Farr still remain. Kirk suggests, delicately, to put a new Bond in place of the old.

Spock accepts.

“You don’t know the hell you put me through, to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you, to feel your weight in arms I’d never use.”

Mermaid’s Calling #2~by the Cast of The Lure, The Lure (Album)

“The ancient drives are too strong, eventually they catch up with us.”

The thrum of Bonding needs no words, it is not just a joining of minds, but of bodies as well. They complete one another, no thoughts, no voices are required. They soon find that the physiological differences between them can be more than a little… fascinating.

“…”

The Deep~by PHILDEL, Wave Your Flags (Album)

“One touches the other, in order to feel each other’s thoughts.”

The tangible, physical world of course has it’s pains and pleasures, to be joined physically is one thing, to be joined in soul and mind alongside those sensations is a different ordeal entirely. If this, completeness, is what it means to be Bonded, Kirk now understands why Vulcans go mad over it.

“Give me a sign ‘cause it runs through my mind like your heat, caught in the web you’re so easily lead to the deep.”

The Mermaid~by Kate Rusby, Life in A Paper Boat (Album)

“In this way, our minds are locked together...”

Unbeknownst to anyone else in the universe, James Kirk & S’chn T’gai Spock are now Bonded, and neither has ever felt less alone. For once, it does not matter to Spock that he is of two worlds, here, he is home. For once, Kirk does not feel as though he is forced to live the Enterprise’s life, this time, she helped him live his. A shining, blissful moment in the vast, expansive sea of stars that they have devoted their lives to exploring.

For them, the journey itself, is home.

“In peace now, the sea it comes, and peace now, in her arms where I’ll be love, sleeping in the sea.”

[jojosbizarrefanfics]

Oh my GOD! I just read the Jotaro x reader x Star Platinum and One bed Polnareff x reader fan fic. Oh my goodness. Man it was so hot! 😳 Your content is superb. 😁👏 May I request a fan fic with a fem reader and Avdol (it can be either SFW or NSFW). She travels with the Stardust Crusaders and one morning she walks past his and Joseph's hotel room and sees him with his hair down and she gets super flustered at his beautiful long luscious locks. Joseph even notices and has a little scheme brewing.

Aw thank you! I just picture Joseph like that meme of Kris Jenner “you’re doing amazing sweetie” godjfkskfkskf

Sorry this took so long!! I’m the worst! 😭 Gonna make this NSFW, we’re not shy around here

You knew Avdol had long hair from the ponytail behind his knots. It was no secret, but that didn’t stop you from being surprised when you spotted him after what must have been a wash day.

Joseph was stepping out of the room as you were passing by, which is when you noticed him. He still hadn’t gotten fully dressed yet and was shirtless, but his hair caught your attention. You hadn’t seen his hair outside of the way he normally styled it, and his tight, voluminous curls made him look like a model.

Avdol didn’t notice you looking, but Joseph certainly did.

“Oh, (YN)!”

“Joestar-san! Good morning; sorry, I nearly ran into you.”

He chuckled. “It’s quite alright. Say, can you help Avdol and I with something?”

“Sure, what is it?”

Joseph brought you into the room he was sharing with Avdol without much warning. “Hermit Purple captured a few spirit photographs, but we can’t quite figure them out. Maybe you can help?”

“Yeah, let’s take a look,” you said.

“(YN)!” Avdol exclaimed. “Forgive my indecency.”

You just smiled at him. “You’re fine, Muhammed. Nothing to worry about.”

Avdol tried to play it cool but was spacing out the whole time you were reviewing the spirit photographs with Joseph. The way you said his name made his knees feel weak, and he could have sworn that you kept sneaking glances at him. He wasn’t sure why you’d do that, and he was confused by his combined initial knee jerk reaction to look away and desire to have you look at him just a little bit longer.

Joseph made a comment about stepping out to grab some food for everyone with Polnareff, which left Avdol alone with you. Joseph closed the door behind him and grinned to himself, hoping his matchmaking skills were sharp.

You could tell Avdol was feeling a bit flustered, especially since he had only thrown on his jacket earlier. As you straightened out the spirit photographs on the table, certain that Joseph was just looking for an excuse to get you alone with Avdol, you decided you’d have to be the one to make the first move. “Your hair is beautiful.”

“Huh?” He was caught off guard.

You smiled softly at him as you leaned against the table, hands on either side of you to grip the edge as you faced him. “I’ve never seen it down before. I’d say you should wear it more often like that, but I imagine your knots are a bit more practical when we’re facing off against Stand users.”

Avdol let out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, that’s for sure. Today was a wash day. Thank you.” The tension between the two of you was thick enough to cut with a knife. There was a long pause, both of you unsure of what to say, and then Avdol said, “Mr. Joestar isn’t getting food, is he?”

“I don’t think so,” you said. “I think he caught me checking you out when I passed by and wanted an excuse to have us talk to each other.”

Avdol laughed. “He thinks he’s subtle.” Then, it dawned on him. “Wait... you were checking me out?”

You couldn’t help the giggle. “I mean, yeah. Look at you, Muhammed! You’re really handsome.”

He felt the heat rising to his cheeks. “You think so?”

You nodded. “Yeah, I do. Sorry if I’m being too forward-”

“No, no!” Avdol interjected. “I mean, I don’t mind you being forward. Truth be told, I’ve been holding back quite a bit since we don’t know where this road will end.”

“All the more reason to enjoy the here and now, yeah?”

Avdol nodded as he approached you. A large hand gently caressed your cheek as he kissed you, finally breaking the tension you both felt since Joseph let you in their hotel room.

Avdol was warm to the touch, likely a byproduct of his Stand, and his skin was incredibly soft - you could tell he had recently moisturized. His lips felt right on yours and once you both started, you found it hard to stop. After a few moments of kissing, Avdol gently lifted you up to sit on the table you were leaning against to not have to crane his neck down as much.

Avdol felt a shiver run down his spine as your hands slowly ran down his chest, admiring the dips and curves of his muscular frame. His hand that had caressed your face was now on the back of your neck but his free hand found it’s way to one of your thighs. He gave it a gentle squeeze near your knee and enjoyed the feeling of your soft flesh in his grip.

You knew you wanted more and you knew Avdol had been holding back, so when you broke your kiss for a breath, you decided to speak up. Your forwardness hadn’t failed you yet. “Avdol, you can touch me if you want.”

You made eye contact as Avdol took in what you said. He smiled at you and simply said, “I do want to.”

When you kissed again, you ran your hands below his stomach. As his own hands crept up your thighs and moved their way inward, you palmed his crotch and could feel that he was rather stiff. Avdol groaned into the kiss as he gripped at your upper inner thighs. One of his hands moved to your hip and the other moved over to your clit.

Avdol began to rub you from the other side of your pants, and the added friction from the fabric provided a pressure that had your head spinning. You continued to palm his cock through his pants and you could feel him grow progressively harder.

As Avdol rubbed you through your pants, his other hand moved up from your hip and dipped beneath your shirt. He pushed your bra down to free your breasts and gently pinched one of your nipples. The dual sensation between your nipple and your clit pushed you extremely close to orgasm, and so you decided to let Avdol know by undoing his pants for easier access to his bare dick.

The feeling of your skin on him made Avdol moan into your kiss. You both broke from him, feeling desperate for breath and for each other.

“I want you,” he admitted, remaining ever the gentleman. “Is this mutual?”

“It is,” you confirmed. “And I don’t think Mr. Joestar will be back for a while.”

As Avdol stepped back to remove his pants, you quickly discarded OC your own clothing, leaving you nude and still sitting on the edge of table. Avdol tossed his jacket last, and once he did, he pulled you closer to him in his arms so only part of your ass was on the edge of the table. Locked between one of his arms - which had wrapped behind you and planted firmly on the table to support you better - and his body, Avdol kissed you deeper than ever as he thrust his cock into you.

One of your arms wrapped around his shoulders, careful to not pull on his hair in the process, for support as Avdol fucked you on the hotel room table. He smiled into the kiss as he felt you coming on him and as you groaned into his mouth.

When you nearly slid off the table after a particularly intense thrust, Avdol was quick to catch you. With his cock still in you, Avdol turned you around and laid you on the bed. Your legs hung over the side of it, with only your back and head on the mattress running parallel to the pillows. The sight of a nude Avdol above you was a lovely on, and even better as you watched him continue to thrust his cock in and out of you.

Avdol lifted one of your legs up to deepen the thrusts, which had you moaning more loudly than you’d care to admit. His other hand slid up your stomach and then landed on your breast, kneading it for a moment before he played with your nipple again. This had you coming again, and Avdol leaned down to kiss you when he could feel it.

Avdol wasn’t far behind you, and he pulled out to cum on your stomach once he was ready. Once he finished, he laid down beside you to catch his breath and didn’t hesitate to pull you into his arms. His fingers ran through your hair, a rather soothing motion that nearly lulled you to sleep until you remembered that Joseph would eventually return.

What reminded you was his boisterous laugh heard down the hallway. Avdol was quick to help you clean up, and you were dressed just in time for Joseph to come back in, carrying some wraps from a deli down the road.

“Ah, (YN), there you are!” Joseph belted. “You like fried tofu, right? That’s all they had today.”

“Yeah, thank you, Joseph,” you said with a smile. He glanced to the table and noticed one of the spirit photographs had fallen off and picked it up.

“Any time,” he said. Mission accomplished, he thought.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Eccentricity [Chapter 14: Love Keeps The Monsters From Our Door] [Series Finale]

A/N: Thank you for your encouragement, enthusiasm, laughter, rants, screeches of anguish, and unapologetic thirsting for “sexy undead Italian man” Joseph Francis Mazzello. I hope you love this conclusion more than Baby Swan loves pineapple pizza. 💜

Series Summary: Potentially a better love story than Twilight?

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. (The #1 song I associate with this fic!)

Chapter Warnings: Language.

Word Count: 7.7k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk @rhapsodyrecs​

Mercy

We have to stay in the Vladivostok palace until her transformation is complete, and I hate it.

The floors are cold and sterile and every clang of noise ricochets off them like a bullet. The earth outside is stripped bare and hibernal. There is no green to interrupt the bleakness of the sky, the cruel absence of color: no spruces or hemlocks or bigleaf maples, no evergreen forests, no verdant fields, only a grey that bleeds from the sky in sheets of hail and driving rain. This land is a stranger. So many of the faces, too, are strangers, although they try. Honora sits with me—her large dark eyes, like mirrors of mine, polished and wet with aching pity—and braids my hair. Morana invites me to bake homemade bread with her. Austin tries to make me smile. Cato visits me as much as he can, because he feels responsible; or maybe he would do it anyway, maybe lessening suffering is as instinctual to him as bloodshed is to so many of our kind. And when Cato is with me, I do feel a little better, like my story might belong to somebody else, like it’s a name I can’t quite remember, like it’s a transitory moment of déjà vu I can catch glimpses of but never touch. And yet, still, I send him away.  

I don’t want to be with Cato. It’s painful for him to be around me, I can see that. It’s painful for Rami, and for Ben, and for Joe, and for Lucy and Scarlett. It’s even painful for the Irish Wolfhounds that Cato found locked up for safekeeping in Larkin’s study; they skulk around the palace vigilantly but leave great swaths of uninterrupted space around me like open water. So I conjure up a mask of brave, hopeful acceptance and wear it everywhere I go.

Joe says very little, never leaves the girl he calls Baby Swan’s side, dabs her scorching skin with washcloths soaked in ice water and murmurs in sympathy when she screams through the unconsciousness, from beneath the ocean of fire we all know so well. He nods off sometimes, snatching minutes of sleep like fireflies in a jar, before jolting awake to make sure her heart is still beating. When Ben isn’t checking on them, he’s with Cato, helping to draw up plans for the future, reminiscing about the past with slick eyes and clinking midnight glasses of whiskey. Scarlett sprawls across the desk in what was once Larkin’s study and spends hours on the phone with Archer as she gazes up at the ceiling, telling him how to care for the farm animals and the garden, reassuring him that we’ll be home soon, whispering things to him that I try not to hear; and I know she wouldn’t want me to anyway. Lucy weeps delicate, ceaseless tears as she perches on the staircase landing and Rami entombs her in his arms, never having to ask what she needs from him. And I wander meaninglessly through the echoing, unfamiliar hallways like a moon without a planet.

I know what they all think about me, perhaps even Rami, for I keep it buried as deep as all skeletons should be: that I’m irrevocably kind, effortlessly forgiving. That I’m as incapable of bitterness as I am of aging. But they’re wrong. It’s a choice, and it always has been, ever since a late-November dusk in 1864 when madness eclipsed mercy. Every day I choose whether to surrender to the beckoning, malignant hatred that lurks in the back of my bedroom closet, in the dusty and ill-lit loft of the barn roped with cobwebs, in the twilight tree line of the western hemlocks crawling with shadows that whisper through fanged teeth. Every day I decide whether to become a monster. And it has never been harder to remember why I don’t.

My future is unimaginable. The nights are endless. I feel black, razored seeds of what I am horrified must be bitterness burrowing beneath my skin and taking root there. I am consumed by infected, fruitless questions that I can’t silence: Why Gwilym? Why Arthur? Why Eliza and Charlotte? Why is it always fire?

The first words that Gwilym ever spoke to me, as I unraveled from unconsciousness under a grove of sycamore trees with smoke still clinging to my unscarred skin, rattle around in my skull like windchimes beneath thunderous skies. His voice was colored with an accent I couldn’t place, and yet it sounded like home: You’re in a dark place right now. But you don’t have to stay there.

That might have been true once. That might have been true in the ruinous autumn of 1864. But now I can’t find my way out.

Seventy-three hours after our arrival in this barren corner of the world, Charlie Swan’s daughter  wakes up as a vampire. Her heart is perfectly still, her skin faultless, her senses sharp, her mind as impenetrable as ever; at least, that’s what Lucy says when she finds me. And Lucy tugs at my hand, wearing her first smile in days, insisting that I have to come meet the newest member of our coven, to welcome her. I don’t know how to tell Lucy that I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to love this girl, that I don’t have it in me to love anyone but ghosts. And yet—compliantly, yieldingly, expecting nothing but disappointment in the monster I have become—I follow her.

The door is already open to the Swan girl’s room; chattering, beaming vampires flood in and out like the tides. I step inside. And I see the way that Joe looks at her, the way that Ben does; and all those seeds that I had feared might be bitterness blossom into nothing but open air.

It’s Not A Fucking Wedding (A.K.A. 13.5 Months Later)

The ocean is a universe. Its arms are not ever-expanding, spiraling galaxies of suns and planets and nebulae and black holes, this is true; its belly is not a vacuum of inhospitable oblivion, its bones are not invisible strings of gravity, its language is not a silence older than starlight, older than eternity. But the ocean is a universe nonetheless, its borders tucked neatly around the seven continents, slumbering there until the next hurricane or tsunami or ice age comes conquering; and inevitably equilibrium is restored—like defibrillator paddles to a heart, like naloxone to an addict’s blood—and our two worlds can coexist side by side once again.  

The ocean’s arms are sighing waves, bubbling and brisk, grasping and retreating in the same breath. Its belly is swollen with life from immense blue whales down to swarming clouds of single-celled, sun-hungry phytoplankton. Its language is ancient whispers; not parched and blistering and brittle sounds like the desert’s but cool, serene, supple, engulfing. And I can hear them all, if I listen closely enough. I can hear the sentient whistling of orcas, the breaking of waves against rocks, the scrabbling of sand crabs beneath the earth, the gruff distant barks of sea lions, the rustling of evergreen pine needles in the breeze. And I understand now why it was always so easy for vampires to be introspective, to lapse into thoughtful, unhurried silences. I could imagine spending decades just sitting here with my knees tucked to my chest and my hair whipping in the brackish wind, watching the seasons roll by like a wheel.

Joe was coming back from the gravel parking lot. I turned to watch him: red U Chicago hoodie, messy dark auburn-ish hair, a pizza box clasped in his hands. The GrubHub delivery driver was returning to his car with the toothiest of grins.

“Buon appetito!” Joe announced, dramatically presenting me with the pizza box. It had become our post-finals tradition each semester: pizza at La Push beach, half-pepperoni, half-pineapple.

“Grazie, sexy undead Italian man. Your accent is getting so good!”

“I know, right?! I’m on a twelve-day Duolingo streak. I can’t let that little green owl dude down.”

“I’m impressed, I’ll admit it. I gotta brush up on my Welsh. Why’s the GrubHub driver so cheery?”

“I tipped him $500.”

I smiled, opening the box and lifting out a semi-warm slice of pineapple pizza. Elastic strands of mozzarella cheese stretched like rubber bands until they snapped. “Aww, really?”

Joe plopped down onto the cool, damp sand beside me. “No. I lied. We’re actually having a torrid love affair.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “How could you possibly have time for all that?” Between school, business ventures, family activities, and me, Joe was very rarely unoccupied. And he preferred it that way.

“I’m so glad you asked. I’m very speedy, if you recall. And that’s just one of the exclusive services I offer. I am a man of many talents. I make people’s wildest dreams come true. Who am I to deny the GrubHub delivery man the wonderland that is my spindly, annoying body?”  

“You are the fastest,” I said, winking.

“Oh shut up! I mean, uh, uhhh, silenzio!” He pointed his slice of pepperoni pizza at me reproachfully. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not the fastest at everything.”

“Whatever you say, mob guy.”

He lunged for me, pinned me down in the crumbling sand, both of us laughing wildly as the crusts of our pizza slices bounded off and were snatched up by diving, screeching seagulls. He growled with mock savagery, braced his hips against mine, kissed his way from the corner of my jaw to my lips. That oh-so-familiar commanding, craving ache for him came roaring to the surface; and now there was no bittersweet edge to it, no inescapable backdrop of lambent numbers ticking down from five or ten or fifteen years to zero. Now there was only the calm, unurgent promise of forever.

“Joe—!”

“You have besmirched my honor, Baby Swan. I am left with no recourse but to refresh your clearly flawed memory and prove you wrong.”

“Public indecency? That’s illegal, sir.”

“Okay, you gotta stop stealing my catchphrases. It’s extremely difficult for me to come up with new ones. I’m almost a hundred years old, you know.”

“Alright, I guess you’re not bad in bed for a basically-centenarian.”

He smiled down at me, his dark eyes alight, the wind tearing through his hair, one palm resting on my forehead, uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I asked, worried.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just really glad we’re a thing.”

“You better be. You’re kind of stuck with me now. You’ve stolen my virtue, you’ve made me fall in love with your entire demented family, you’ve forced your torturous immortality upon me. I’m not going anywhere. Unless you ever stop funding my pineapple pizza addiction, of course.”

Joe chuckled as he climbed off me and took my hand in his, pulling me upright. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, by the way. Your insistence on being a sort-of vegetarian. It’s embarrassing. You’re the wimpiest vampire ever. You’re a disgrace to the coven.”

“I eat animals!” I objected.

“Yeah, when you have to.” And Joe was right: I steered clear of flesh outside of the two or three times a week when I hunted. For environmental sustainability reasons, I mostly consumed deer or rabbits; although the very occasional shark was my guilty pleasure. Joe gnawed on his second slice of pizza and peered out into the overcast, dusky horizon, wiping crumbs from his stubbled chin with the back of his hand. “We only have one more of these left,” he said at last, a little sadly. “One more finals season at Calawah University. One more celebratory dinner at La Push.”

“We’ll just have to get used to a new view. Pizza by the Chicago River, maybe.”

Joe looked over at me, thoughtful again, smiling. He had received his acceptance letter to the University of Chicago three weeks ago. I got mine eight days later. “It won’t be hard for you to leave Forks?”

“It will be. Once upon a time I didn’t think that was possible, but I will miss Forks. And not just because of Charlie and Archer and Jessica and Angela and all the Lees. But it was hard to leave Phoenix, and I’m sure one day it will be hard to leave Chicago. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”

Joe nodded introspectively. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

“Don’t quote classic rock songs at me, mixtapes boy.”

“You love my mixtapes,” he teased, circling his left arm around my waist, pulling me in closer, touching his lips to my forehead. Mint and pine and starlight sank into my lungs like an anchor through the surf. “And that saying actually goes all the way back to Seneca, my dear.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still philosophizing in some cloudy corner of the world somewhere.”

“Not to my knowledge. Although that’s an intriguing thought. We need more famous vampires. Caligula would have made for very interesting conversation. Lincoln, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Dante...I guess it’s possible that anyone is still around. Maybe we should turn Meat Loaf. You know, for the good of posterity.”

“Is it not enough that they’re already cursed with student debt and global warming?”

Joe cackled, took my face in his palms, kissed each of my cheeks one after the other, then nudged my nose with his. “You ready to go, Baby Swan? I suspect we’re expected to participate in some holiday festivities tonight.”

“I’m ready,” I agreed. We threw our leftover pizza to the seagulls, disposed of the grease-spotted cardboard box, and walked back to my 1999 Honda Accord with our pulseless hands intertwined.

The evergreen trees along Routh 110 fled by beneath a sky freckling with stars. Sharp winter air poured in through the open windows. And I could feel that it was cold, in the same way that I could feel the warmth on Forks’ rare sweltering days; but there was no discomfort that accompanied that knowledge. Pain only came when the sky was unincumbered by thick clouds churning in off the Pacific, and then it felt something like staring into the sun had as a human. Sunglasses helped, but the surest remedy was avoidance, was surrender. And what an inconsequential price to pay for forever.

“Wait,” I said, spying the mailbox that marked the start of the Lees’ driveway. “They still deliver mail on Christmas Eve, right?”

“Uh, I think so, why...?” And then he remembered. “Oh, yeah, let’s check!”

I pulled up beside the mailbox and Joe leaned out, returning to his seat with a mountain of Christmas cards and business correspondence and advertisements from Costco and Sephora. He sifted through them until he found a single white envelope from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. It was addressed to a Mr. Benjamin August Hardy. Joe held it up to show me as we drove down the driveway, the Lee house coming into view and ornamented with a frankly excessive amount of multicolored string lights and inflatable reindeer.

“Oh my god!” I squealed, drumming the steering wheel.

“You want to be the one to give it to him?”

“Are you serious?! Yeah, can I?”

Joe passed the envelope to me as I parked my geriatric Honda, which Archer had pledged to keep alive as long as physically possible. In return, Ben let him and Scarlett borrow the Aston Martin Vantage no less than once a week. I dashed out of the car, up the steps of the front porch, and into the house that bubbled over with the sounds of metallic kitchen clashes and frenetic voices and Wham!’s Last Christmas.

“Ben?!” I shouted.

“Hi, honey!” Mercy called from the living room, where she and Lucy were putting the final touches on Scarlett’s gown. Scarlett was playing the part of semi-willing victim, wearing gold heels and an impatient smirk and her hair out of the way in a milkmaid braid; her train of vivid red lace billowed across the hardwood floor. From the couch, Archer and Rami were playing Mario Kart on the big-screen tv and nibbling their way through a tray of homemade gingerbread cookies.

“Oh wow,” I said, clutching the envelope to my chest, mesmerized. I kept waiting for Scarlett to start looking like a normal person to me, and it never happened. Tonight, in the glow of the flameless candles and kaleidoscopic Christmas lights and draped in lace the color of pomegranate seeds, she was Persephone: a goddess of resurrection, a face that death himself could not pass by unscathed. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lucy. Seriously.”

“One day I’m going to get you out of those thrift shop sweaters,” Lucy threatened me, placing a pin in the fabric at Scarlett’s waist.

“Yeah, okay. Let me know when that shows up in one of your visions.”

“Bitch,” Lucy flung back, snickering, knowing how improbable that was. I still appeared in her visions extremely infrequently, and then only when I happened to be standing next to whoever the premonition was actually about.

“Language, dear,” Mercy tutted, inspecting the hem of Scarlett’s gown.

Joe arrived beside me, his arms still full of mail. “ScarJo, I almost didn’t recognize you! Why do you have, like, no cleavage or fishnets or thigh slits?”

“Why do you have like no eyelashes?” Scarlett replied. “See, I can ask unnecessary and invasive questions too.”

Joe frowned, wounded. “What’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“Lucy, darling, I think it’s just a tad uneven on this side,” Mercy said, showing her. “Maybe by half an inch...?”

“No, seriously, what’s wrong with my eyelashes?!”

Mercy replied distractedly: “Nothing, honey, you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Mom!” Joe groaned.

“It really is gorgeous,” Mercy marveled as Lucy flitted around her to investigate the hem situation. “And so Christmasy. So perfect for the season. Scarlett, dear, you were right after all, and I’m so sorry for doubting you. I’d just never heard of a red wedding dress before.”

“Mom, it’s not a fucking wedding!” Scarlett exclaimed, for probably the thirtieth time since Thanksgiving. “It’s a nonbinding, informal celebration of an egalitarian romantic partnership. Will somebody please inform this woman that it’s not a wedding?!”

“Yes, yes, of course, whatever you want, sweetheart,” Mercy conceded dreamily.

Joe pointed to Archer. “Isn’t he supposed to not see the dress until the day of or something?”

“What a great question!” Archer replied, still deeply invested in Mario Kart. “You see, that would be the case if this was a wedding. However, I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not.”

Scarlett grinned triumphantly at Joe. “There you have it.”

She might snap petulantly, and she might complain, but Scarlett wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t want to; we were all intimately familiar with the futility of trying to force Scarlett into anything. The not-wedding, as improbable as it seemed, had been her idea from the start. And she wasn’t doing it for herself. She wasn’t even doing it for Archer. Scarlett was doing it for her mother.

The first six months had been hell for Mercy. She didn’t resent me, as I had feared she might; Mercy made that clear, and Rami confirmed it. But she was gutted. She wouldn’t speak of Gwil, wouldn’t listen to us talk about him, locked every photograph of him away in dark drawers, wandered around with a remote, uncanny, unseeing smile until she walked straight into walls; and then she would blink inanely up at them, as if they had dropped out of the sky rather than been built by her own hands. She baked hundreds of cakes and almost never slept. She told us she was fine every time we asked, which was more or less constantly. But on the very rare occasions when she was left alone, Mercy would unfailingly end up in the field behind the Lee house, gazing out into the forest of western hemlock trees with tears snaking silently down her cheeks, the muted light of the cloud-covered setting sun flickering red and furious on her face like wildfire.

And then one afternoon, a package had arrived from Arviat, Canada, where Cato and the rest of the surviving Draghi had relocated shortly after the rebellion at Vladivostok. It was five feet tall and another three wide, and what we found after carefully peeling away all those layers of foam padding and packing tape was a portrait of Gwilym so skillfully painted that it could have been mistaken for a photograph. Mercy had stared at it for a long time—ignoring Lucy’s attempts to guide her away, deaf to any of our concerns—until she at last picked up the portrait herself and said, quite evenly: “I think we should hang it in the living room, don’t you?”

Things had been better since then—very, very gradually, and yet unmistakably—and Gwil’s portrait remained mounted above the living room couch like a watchman, his eyes sparkling and blue, his faint smile stoic and fond and omniscient. But even in the wake of Mercy’s continued improvement, none of us kids were about to risk another agonizingly despondent Christmas. So the solution was obvious. We would keep Mercy preoccupied with what thrilled her more than absolutely anything else: the pseudo-weddings of her children. Rami and Lucy had already secretly volunteered to go next year...and after that, who knew? And there was one other thing that was making Mercy’s burden a little lighter these days.

Charlie sauntered into the living room, wearing an apron covered in cartwheeling Santas and wiping white dust like snow—powdered sugar? flour? baking soda?—from his ungainly hands. He was palpably proud. “The sugar cookies are officially in the oven. And I managed to fit them all on one baking sheet, isn’t that great?! Cuts down on dishes!”

“Why, yes, I suppose it does!” Mercy said, alarm dawning in her eyes. Had my beloved father placed the globs of dough too close together? Would we end up with one hideous, giant monster-cookie? Only time would tell. Providentially, Archer and Joe could be counted on to eat just about anything.

Joe sniffed the air, his forehead crinkling. “What’s burning?”

“Nothing should be burning,” Mercy replied, almost defensive, forever protective of Charlie and all of his profound, incurably human imperfections. Sometimes I thought that she preferred him that way, that he was a link to a simpler world in the same way I had once been, that he was a puddle of memory she could drop into, that maybe he wasn’t so unlike her first husband Arthur. “Not yet, anyway. The cookies need at least ten to twelve minutes at 350.”

“Wait, 350?!” Charlie exclaimed, horrorstruck. “I thought you said 450!”

“Oh, this is tragic,” Scarlett said.  

“I can fix it!” Mercy trilled buoyantly, breezing off to the kitchen as Charlie followed after her with a fountain of apologies. She shushed them away affectionately, patting his chest with her soft plump hands, chuckling about how luckily they had fire extinguishers stowed away in almost every closet just in case. And there were other reasons for that besides Charlie’s perilous baking attempts, but he didn’t know them. Now the record player was belting out Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas.  

Archer lost another round in Mario Kart and exhaled a great, mournful sigh. “Hey, Baby Swanpire, can you do something about this guy?” He nodded to Rami. “This is criminal. It’s nowhere near a fair fight. He knows every freaking time I’m about to toss a banana peel.”

Rami smirked guiltily up at me from the couch, not bothering to deny it.

“Do you mind?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” Rami replied. “I want to show this loser I can beat him even without the benefit of mega-cool extrasensory superpowers.”

“Rude!” Archer cried.

“So rude,” Scarlett agreed, smiling.

“Okay, here we go.” I sat down beside Rami, still holding Ben’s envelope in my right hand, and laid my left against Rami’s cheek. And I felt a fistful of numbness—like instant peace, like milk-white Novocain—pass from my skin into his, rolling into his skull, deadening whatever telepathic livewires had been ignited there in the August of 1916. The effect would last anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours; and it worked on every vampire I’d met so far.

“Whoa, trippy,” Rami murmured. “It’s still weird, every single time.” He peered drowsily around the room. “It’s...so...quiet?! You guys really live like this? No one is constantly bombarding you with sexual fantasies or romantic pining or depressive inner monologues? How do you function?! Now I’m alone with my own thoughts, that’s actually worse!”

“Hurry up and beat him while he’s all freaked out and vulnerable,” Scarlett told Archer.

Archer laughed, picking up his Nintendo 64 controller, radiant with the promise of vengeance. “Yes ma’am.”

“Any good mail?” Lucy asked Joe.

“Yeah. Coupons and a ton of Christmas cards from random people. The vet sent us one with alpacas on it, so that’s cute. Oh, and here’s one from our favorite Canadians.”

Joe held up the card so we could all see. The picture on the front showed Cato and Honora sitting on a large velvet, forest green couch with a hulking Christmas tree illuminated in the background. The others were arranged around them: Austin, Max, Ksenia, Charity, Araminta, Akari, Morana, Phelan, Aruna, Adair, Zora, Sahel, and a few new faces I couldn’t name yet. They were all wearing matching turtleneck sweaters. And every single one of them was smiling.

Joe cleared his throat theatrically and read the text on the inside of the card:

“Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(Oh, and Scarlett, congratulations on your not-marriage.)

- Cato Douglass Freeman”

“That bastard,” Scarlett muttered.

Rami offered me his controller. He had just slipped on a banana peel and rocketed off a cliff. “You want a turn?”

“No, thanks though. I have to talk to Ben. Is he around?”

Rami shrugged ruefully. “I would help, but my brain is temporarily broken.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes, taking a gingerbread cookie from the tray and biting into it as Lucy batted crumbs from the red lace dress, exasperated. “I think he’s out in the hot tub.”

“Cool. I shall return.”

Joe took my spot on the couch as I departed, shoveling cookies into his mouth, seizing Rami’s controller and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

I opened the door to the back porch, and frigid December air rushed in like an uninvited guest. The field was coated with a thin layer of snow, the animals safe and warm in the barn, the garden slumbering. And in the spring and summer, when blossoms of a dozen different varieties came open beneath the drizzling grey skies, Mercy’s calla lilies didn’t bother my allergies at all. Nothing did anymore. Ben was indeed in the hot tub, puffing on his vape pen, wearing only a beanie hat and swim trunks.

“What flavor is that cartridge?” I asked as I approached. “Gummy bear?”

“Close. Strawberry doughnut.”

“Ohhhh, yum!” Ben passed me the vape pen, and I took a drag as I kicked off my boots and sat near him on the rim of the hot tub, slipping my bare feet beneath the steaming, roiling water. Then I handed his vape pen back. “So. Guess what I have for you.”

“Uh.” He glanced at the envelope. “Jury duty.”

“Better.”

“Someone I hate has jury duty.”

I flipped the envelope around so he could see the University of Chicago logo on the front.

“Oh god,” Ben moaned.

“Don’t you want to see what it says?”

“Not really,” he admitted, grimacing.

“Come on, Ben. Open it.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?!”

Ben sighed. “Look, if I open it and it’s bad news, it’s gonna make Christmas weird. Rami will know. They’ll all know. They’ll all feel bad for me and it’ll be pathetic and depressing and awkward. You can look if you want to, just don’t tell anyone else yet.”

“It’s not going to be bad news,” I said, tugging at the floppy top of his beanie hat. He swatted my hand away, but he was smiling grudgingly.

“You have positively no way of knowing that. Unless Lucy’s had a vision I’m unaware of.”

“She hasn’t. You know she never sees anything important.”

“She saw you coming,” Ben countered.

“She saw human-me and Joe in love and gobbling down pretzels at a Cubs game. So I’d say there were at least a few minor details missing.”

“There’s no way I got in,” Ben said, his green eyes slick and fearful and now fixed on the envelope. “We can’t all be geniuses like you.”

“That’s an unfair accusation. I’m far from genius. I’m just obsessed with the ocean.” I’d written my senior thesis on the feeding habits of Pacific angelsharks, and my advisor was still trying to figure out how I, an amateur scuba diver at best, had managed to get so many quality photographs with my underwater camera. The secret, of course, was superhuman agility and not needing to breathe.

“I fucking hate calculus. The MCAT wrecked me. I got a 517.”

“And their median score is a 519, so I’d say you still have a fighting chance. Plus you have like eight million volunteer hours.” Ben had spent the vast majority of the past year either in class or at the hospital. The psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. Siegel, had been more than happy to take one of Gwil’s foster children under her wing. Every human in Forks except Archer believed that Dr. Gwilym Lee had drowned in a tragic boating accident while he and Mercy were on vacation in Southern California, and that his body had never been recovered. The town had held a wonderful remembrance ceremony and dedicated a free clinic at the hospital in his honor. “Now open it.”

“You do it,” Ben relented finally. “My hands are wet. Go ahead, open it up and tell me what it says. And then kindly euthanize me to end my immortal shame.”

“That wouldn’t work,” I pointed out, tearing open the envelope. I pulled out the tri-folded piece of paper inside, flattened it against my thighs, and read the typed black text.

“...Well?” Ben pressed, vaping frantically.

I looked up and smiled at him.

“No way,” he whispered.

“I hope you like pretzels and bear-themed baseball teams, grandpa.”

And for a second, I thought he might bolt up out of the hot tub, hooting victoriously, splashing water all over the back porch as he danced around bellowing that he’d gotten into one of the best medical schools in the world, that he would be following me and Joe to Chicago. But that wasn’t Ben. Instead, a slow smile rippled across his face: it was small, but perfectly genuine. Pure, even.

“Goddamn,” he said, watching me. Venom doesn’t just resurrect or ruin; it forms a bond that is simultaneously intangible and yet immense. It’s an evolutionary adaptation, a way to facilitate stability and the building of covens in an often violent and ruleless world. And now that he had turned me, Ben had family here in Forks in more ways than one.

“Gwil would be so proud of you, Ben.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

The back door of the house opened, and Joe stepped outside. He studied Ben for a moment, and that was all it took for him to know. “Benny!” he shouted, elated.

“I know, I know. Fortunately, I look amazing in red. Thanks, supermodel genes.”

“This is going to be so fun!” Joe said, sprinting over to wrap Ben—who was characteristically lukewarm on this whole physical displays of affection business—in a hug from just outside the hot tub. “We’re going to go furniture shopping, and eat deep-dish pizza, and find apartments right next to each other, and mail home Chicago-themed care packages, and get you hooked up with some gorgeous Italian woman...or whatever you like, I guess I shouldn’t assume. Women. Men. Gang members. Marine mammals. Jessicas. Whatever. There are options.”

Ben laughed as he playfully shoved Joe away. “Sounds like a plan, pagliaccio.”

“Oh my god, stop learning Italian without me! You realize you have to tell Mom now.”

“I will,” Ben agreed, with some trepidation. “I’ll wait until after Christmas.”

“It’ll be hard for her,” I said. “But she knows it’s what you want. She knows it’s what’s best for you. So she’ll get through it. I think it would be worse for her if you didn’t get in, if she had to see you unhappy.”

Ben nodded, exhaling strawberry-doughnut-flavored vapor, gazing up at the stars, Orion and Auriga and Lynx and Perseus reflected in his thoughtful jade eyes. “She’ll still have Rami and Lucy and Scarlett here with her. And Archer. And Charlie.”

“Especially Charlie,” Joe said, grinning.

Mercy would have to leave Forks eventually, of course. The Lees had already been here for nearly four years; they could stay another ten, perhaps fifteen at the absolute maximum. And there had been a time when ten or fifteen years seemed like quite a while to me, but now it felt like I could doze off one afternoon and wake up on the other side of it, like swimming a lap in the sun-drenched public pool back in Phoenix. We would find a new home somewhere after Joe and I finished our PhDs, after Ben finished medical school, maybe Vancouver or Buffalo or Amsterdam or Edinburgh or Dublin or Reykjavik. Wherever we went, I hoped it wouldn’t be far from the sea. But Mercy couldn’t bear to leave Forks yet. It was the last home she had shared with Gwil, the last house they would ever build together, and leaving it would make his loss all the more irrevocable. She would be ready to leave someday, but not today.

In the meantime, there would still be visits for breaks and holidays. Scarlett and Archer had the shop to keep them busy, a brand new eight-car garage that held a virtual monopoly on both the Forks and Quileute communities. Lucy had opened a bohemian-style clothing boutique downtown, which confounded most of the locals but attracted more adventurous customers from as far away as Seattle. Rami was interning for a local immigration lawyer and entertaining the possibility of applying to U Chicago’s law school in another few years. And Mercy had the farm; and she had Charlie. He had asked her for cooking lessons to try to help rouse her a few months after Gwil’s death, and it had grown from there. If it wasn’t romantic just yet, I believed it would be soon. And there were moments when I thought my father might have figured something out, when his eyes narrowed and lingered on me just a little too long, when his brow knitted into suspicious, searching lines, when the hairs rose on the back of his neck and some innate insight whispered that we weren’t like him and never could be again. But then he would chuckle, shake his head, and say: “You’ve gotten weird, my gorgeous, brilliant progeny. But Forks looks pretty good on you.”

“Can I talk to you upstairs?” Joe asked me suddenly; and did I see restless nerves flicker in his dark eyes? I thought I did.

“Sure,” I replied, climbing down from the hot tub. “Ben, are you coming inside? My dad is trying to bake Christmas cookies and failing miserably. It’s pretty hilarious. Not that you should be the one to critique other people’s kitchen-related accidents.”

“I do enjoy your company a lot more now that I don’t want to murder you and slurp you down like a Chick-fil-A milkshake,” Ben said. “Yeah, give me a few minutes and I’ll be there.” And as Joe and I headed into the house, I saw Ben pick up the acceptance letter that I’d left on the rim of the hot tub and read it for himself with incredulous eyes, grappling with the irrefutable fact that it was his name on the opening line, that he had somewhere along the way become the sort of man who dedicated his immortality to saving lives rather than ending them.

In the living room, Scarlett was back in her yoga pants and absolutely brutalizing Archer in Mario Kart. Rami and Lucy were entwined together on the loveseat, murmuring, giggling, feeding each other pieces of gingerbread cookies. In the kitchen, Charlie was leading Mercy in a clumsy waltz to Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love, and each time he fumbled his steps or mortifyingly trod on her feet she would cry out in a peal of laughter brighter than the sun she had learned to live without. Joe spirited me up the staircase, into his bedroom—which, honestly, was more like our bedroom now, in the same way that my room in Charlie’s house had become Joe’s as well—and closed the door.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Your dad totally ruined our song. Now I can’t hear it without thinking about some moustached guy in plaid trying to seduce my mom.”

“It’s the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for. Meat Loaf is vanquished. Oh, just so you’re aware, Renee and Paul are getting an Airbnb and coming up for New Years.”

“Cool. Do they still think I have a super embarrassing sunlight allergy and will break into hives and asphyxiate and that’s why we can’t visit them in Florida?”

“Yup.”

“Spectacular. Also, can you please tell me what’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“They’re just a little sparse, amore. But I still like you.”

“Well, I am only moderately attractive, you know.” Then Joe steeled himself, taking a deep breath. Uh oh. He was definitely nervous. I still couldn’t believe I had the power to make him that way, but here we were. “So I get that we’re doing presents with the whole family tomorrow morning, and you do have some under the tree, so don’t worry about that. But there’s one I wanted to give to you alone. You know. With just us. Without an audience. Or whatever.”

“...Okay...?” A secret gift? A naughty gift? “I hope it’s a new vibrator.”

“Shut up,” Joe begged, laughing. “Here.” He reached into the drawer of his nightstand—our nightstand—and produced a small blue box topped with a turquoise bow. It wasn’t a ring, I was sure of that; I didn’t feel especially attached to the idea of marriage, and neither did Joe to my knowledge. How could rings or papers seal commitment when you already had eternity? I was right: the mysterious present was not a ring. When I removed the lid and emptied the box into my palm, what appeared there was a small plastic airplane.

“What is this?” I asked, amused but puzzled.

“Are you not college educated? It’s a plane.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that. But it’s also like two inches long.” I scrutinized the plane. “Are you magically transforming me into a tiny, tiny, little plastic person? Is that my gift? Because I actually got you something good.” And I really did: there was a collection of vintage Chicago Cubs photographs from the 1910s and 20s downstairs under the Christmas tree, packaged in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wrapping paper.

“We’re going on a trip,” Joe said, grinning. “The day after Christmas. It’s just a short trip, nothing huge, don’t get too excited, we’re not going to Mt. Everest or Antarctica or anything. I think you’ll still like it. But I don’t want you to know where we’re going until we’re there.”

“How will that work? Considering the tickets and signage and pilot announcements and obnoxiously noisy other passengers and all.”

“ScarJo’s going to fly us.”

“Really?!” We were taking the jet. We almost never used the jet. “What’s in it for Scarlett?”

“She found out that Archer’s never had In-N-Out Burger before and is very much looking forward to initiating him into the cult of deliciousness.”

“Oh nice. I could go for a vanilla milkshake myself, now that Ben mentioned them.”  

“Obviously I’m gonna buy you all the milkshakes and animal-style fries you want. Bankrupt me, bitch. But we have to get one other thing taken care of first.”

“So it’s somewhere they have In-N-Out Burger...” I pondered aloud. California? Texas? Las Vegas? I felt a brief but unambiguous pang of homesickness for Phoenix. But there was nothing there for me anymore.

“Stop,” Joe pleaded. “I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much. Please forget that. Get a traumatic brain injury or oxygen deprivation or something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m rather indestructible at the moment.”

He smiled wistfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

There was laughter downstairs in the living room. I could detect the aroma of a fresh batch of sugar cookies baking in the kitchen, mingling with the cold night air and pine trees and peppermint candy canes. I loved Christmas. The entire world smelled like Joe. The U Chicago décor, classic rock posters, and Italian flag were now interspersed with National Geographic pages and photos of the two of us together. The Official Whatever You Want Pass hung in a small, square picture frame on the wall above Joe’s bed. Our bed.

“How real is it, Joe?” I asked quietly. I climbed onto my tiptoes, linking my hands around the back of his neck with the tiny plane still tucked between my fingers. “Seriously. The wishes thing.”

“The world may never know. Akari never met me as a human, so she wouldn’t be able to say. But if I had to place a bet...” He shrugged, grinning craftily. “Kinda real. Kinda not real. Just like vampires, I guess.”

“I am alarmingly glad that you’re real, mob guy,” I said, abruptly somber. “I never thought I’d meet someone who saw me as remarkable, who could make me see myself that way. And it’s miraculous. And it’s terrifying too, honestly. Being a thing with you. Falling for someone you could have for centuries and lose in a second.”

“It’s the scariest thing there is,” Joe concurred, taking my hand to lead me back downstairs.

Joseph

Scarlett looks like a goddess, and she knows it. But she’s not one of those magnanimous, fragile, harp-plucking, pastel-colored goddesses. She’s ferocity and wildness and crimson like blood, and that’s exactly why Archer loves her. And as they stand in front of the Christmas tree with their hands clasped together—ivory on bronze, snow on sun—with matching sprigs of holly in Scarlett’s hair and pinned to the jacket of Archer’s suit, reciting truths but no promises, I can’t help but watch the other faces in the room: Rami, Lucy, Ben, Charlie, Mom with her beaming smile and shining eyes, the woman I met sixteen months ago and now can’t fathom life without. And it occurs to me for the first time that love, in its cleanest form, isn’t something that changes people as much as it allows them to become who they truly are.

On the evening of December 26th, as soon as the sun dips beneath the western horizon, we board the jet in the Forks Airport hangar. It’s much easier for Scarlett to fly at night; otherwise she has to wear two or three pairs of sunglasses on top of each other, and even then it’s still painful, it still feels like blinding needles burrowing into the jelly of her retinas. That’s not a wrench in my plans or anything. It needs to be night where we’re going, too.

Vampire hyper-acuity notwithstanding, FAA regulations require Scarlett to have a copilot, so Archer joins her in the flight deck with his newly-minted license and spends most of the journey flipping through the latest issue of Motor Trend. As we begin our descent, he peeks back at us and teases: “It’ll be your turn eventually, guys. Scarlett and I did our time. Rami and Lucy can go next year. And after that...unless Ben happens to find someone worthy of a not-wedding...” He wiggles his black eyebrows.

“Bring it on,” I reply casually. “Fake wedding are my jam. It’ll be ocean themed. Or Roaring ‘20s themed. And we’ll all do the Cha-Cha Slide in the living room and shame Ben as a bonding activity.”

“Mercy can set up a mashed potatoes bar,” Baby Swan adds.

“Yeah. With pineapple.”

“No. Not on potatoes.”

“Yes on potatoes.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Too late,” I tell her, touching my lips to the knuckles of her cool, steady hand.

We touch down at a small noncommercial airport just outside the city, and Scarlett and Archer stay back to secure the plane as Baby Swan follows me outside. And she realizes where we are as soon as the wind hits her, as soon as her eyes soak up the sand and cacti and cloudless night sky like rain swallowed up by parched earth.

“Phoenix,” she whispers, smiling like a child.

“But wait, there’s more!” I announce in my best Billy Mays voice. I take the little glass bottle from my pocket, walk across the runway to the naked desert, crouch down when I find a suitable spot, and fill the bottle with dry, sandy earth that crumbles in my palms. Then I seal the bottle with a tiny cork and bring it back to give it to her.

“I know what it’s like to have to leave home,” I say. “You’ve had to say goodbye to Phoenix, and soon you’ll have to say goodbye to Forks, and next will be Chicago, on and on forever. You’ll always be leaving the places you learn to call home. Every five or ten or fifteen years, we start over again. Like a snake shedding its skin, like a hermit crab swapping shells. Like the water that travels from rain to seawater to mist and then back again. But now you can always have a little piece of home with you, and maybe that will make it easier.”

She takes the glass bottle and shakes her head in disbelief, in wonder. Because this is exactly what she wanted, what she needed, even if she didn’t know it yet. “Joe...how did you...?”

“What’d I tell ya? I’m a talented guy. Now you have to dance with me.”

She laughs. “Oh no. Hard pass. I don’t dance.”

“When we’re alone in my bedroom you do. So just pretend we’re alone now. In, like, a really really spacious, sandy bedroom. With probably some lizards.”

“Fine. But only because I’m willing to degrade myself for milkshakes.”

She slides the glass bottle of Arizona earth into her pocket and takes my hands. She’s still a pretty terrible dancer, honestly. She hasn’t lost that. And I love that about her. I love damn near everything about her. And it took me a long time to figure out what exactly her subtle yet peerless cocktail of fragrance is, because it wasn’t somewhere I’d ever been. The scent that drifts from her pores—the scent that now lives in my bedsheets like a shadow or a ghost—is sunlight and heat and clarity and resilience and wisdom older than the pyramids. Her scent is the desert.

Now she’s mischievous, her eyes gleaming with the reflections of the Milky Way and the full moon and the stars that are dead and yet eternal, just like us. “So what, you think you’re Vampire Boyfriend Of The Year material now or what? Some dirt and In-N-Out Burger? That’s the height of your game? Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my perpetual existence? I totally should have pursued that polyamorous triad with Scarlett and Archer when I had the chance—”

“Yeah,” I say, very softly, smiling, tilting up her chin to kiss her beneath the universe and all its eccentricities. “I love you too.”

[jojosbizarreblog]

Hi id like to request a lil fic plz!! Maybe something like reader doesn't know how to express their feelings for Polnareff, so they write it all down in an anonymous letter and leave it for him to find. But it backfires because he instantly thinks someone else sent it and starts trying to figure out who it is and everyone is pretty much watching him run around looking for the "mystery girl" like 😑😑😑

(Honestly that is SUCH a Polnareff thing to do XD)

(I’m sorry that it took so long to do T^T Please forgive me)

An Anonymous Admirer (Polnareff x reader)

You can’t seem to get your feelings to a certain French man out to him in person, so you decide to write a letter. It turns out that said French man might be denser than you thought.

The folded sheet of paper in your hands stared back at you as if mocking you for your cowardice. You’ve been standing outside Polnareff’s room for the past five minutes, trying to muster up the courage to open the door and deliver it. This would your only chance, seeing as Joseph had conveniently ‘forgot’ Polnareff’s room keys on your table after a visit with you. Now, you all were out ‘searching’ for them with Polnareff. 

Steeling yourself, you quickly unlocked the door and stepped into the room, making your way to the bedside table and putting the folded-up letter where it was sure to be seen. You were out and locking the door back behind you in a few quick seconds. Heading to where the rest of the Crusaders were, you discreetly passed the keys to Joseph, who called out, “We found them!”

Polnareff brightened, taking them from the old man. “Ah, merci! Where did you find it Mr. Joestar?” 

Joseph froze, then awkwardly laughed. “It happened to be behind a plant, and (y/n) saw them,” he lied.

It didn’t seem like Polnareff caught wind of the lie as he picked up his bag. “Alright then. I’m going to go back to my room. Should we meet up here for dinner later?”

Avdol nodded. “We’ll meet up at six.”

With that, the group dispersed and you left for your room with your heart beating out of your chest. You wondered how it would pan out...

It turned out that Polnareff was way denser than any of you ever thought he would be. You were all currently seated around a table, listening to Polnareff rant and rave about his ‘mysterious admirer’, that was you, sitting right next to him. Kakyoin looked like he was about to die of laughter while Avdol looked on in exasperation. Jotaro looked like he was about to blow a gasket and poor Joseph looked defeated at the fact that the oh so obvious plan failed.

“I wonder who wrote this for me... their writing is absolutely immaculate!” Polnareff exclaimed.

You were slowly dying on the inside, embarrassment eating you up. Was the note too indirect? It couldn’t be... he even talked about the writing, YOUR writing, of which he had seen several times over! Granted, you did use your best handwriting for this, but it couldn’t have been too difficult to deduce the owner of the letter.

“I’m gonna find the one who wrote this!” Polnareff declared. He turned to you and said, “Would you like to help me?”

Jotaro groaned and slammed his fist down, pushing back his chair. “I’m going for a smoke,” he said, looking straight at you. “Solve this before I get back.”

“Man, what’s up with him,” Polnareff wondered as he watched the teen walk out. “I don’t know why he would be so worked up over nothing.”

Except this wasn’t nothing. This was a pretty big something, you’d just confessed your deepest feelings on that piece of paper that Polnareff was waving around. You let out a silent scream as Polnareff went back to gushing over the note. It would have been flattering, and it was, if not for the fact that Polnareff was so incredibly dense.

Having enough of his gushing, you leaned over and whispered to him, “H-Hey Polnareff... a moment, please?”

He looked at you with a confused look and nodded, getting up to follow you out of the hotel. You two passed by Jotaro coming in, and you swore you heard him mutter, “About time.”

You and Polnareff stepped out into the cool night air, where the chatter of the dining hall faded into a distant lull. wiping your sweaty palms on your pants, you didn’t look at him. “About that note...” you began.

“Ah yes!” Polnareff agreed, eagerly looking at you. “Do you know who put it in my room?”

“Uh...” 

His hopeful eyes staring at you made you nervous. You didn’t know why, but this was more nerve-wracking than any of the other Stand Users you’ve encountered before. 

Oh god, he was still staring at you. You squeezed your eyes shut.

“Iwastheonewhoputtheletterinyourroom!” You exclaimed in a rush of air.

You cracked an eye open to see Polnareff frozen. He didn’t make a move and your heart began sinking down into your stomach. This was a mistake, you shouldn’t have listened to Joseph’s ‘love advice’. You should have just—wait Polnareff was moving closer to you—wait he was hugging you—

You let out a squeak as Polnareff squeezed you tight. This was not what you were expecting. as he parted from you with an overjoyed grin on his face. “Really, cher?!” 

Nodding bashfully, you replied, “Y-Yeah...” 

He laughed and swung you around in a circle. “Amore! That’s wonderful! I have feelings for you too!”

You wriggled in his arms. “W-Wha—Polnareff what?! You do?!”

He nodded fervently and you squealed and launched at him, wrapping your arms around his neck and pressing your lips again his. Polnareff froze in shock.

You drew back to see him with a flustered look on his face, cheeks ablaze with a red blush. He blinked and hid his face with his hands. “Mon cher, I-I—”

Never in your life did you expect to see Polnareff so flustered. You beamed at him. “S-So does that mean...?”

He jumped. “O-Oh! Y-Yeah! If you want to I—”

You laughed and kissed him on the cheek. ”Of course I do!” Taking his hand in yours, you began tugging him back into the building. “C-Come on. The others are probably wondering what’s taking us so long.”

Polnareff stumbled after you like a puppy, an adoring smile on his face. 

[nonbinary-androids]

Tamara, The Betrayer

So, I was writing a response to a post by @teartra and @fxthieves (link will be in first rb) that was talking about the characters, and me being me, I wanted to hone in on one really niche aspect of Tamara’s character and then it hit 1k words and I decided it needed to be its own post lmao

I’m going to put this out there: I like that she does this! It adds a really interesting layer to her character, and especially in regards to how the reader will interpret her relationships with Call and authority! However, the way that these fairly serious breaches of trust are handled (or rather, not handled) is.... really bad.

Also, as an additional preface: I am not arguing whether or not Tamara was right to betray Call in these situations, nor does any of this make Tamara a bad person or a bad character- they make CC and HB bad writers, and Tamara seriously underdeveloped. Don’t let this make you hate her!!! Let this be the motivation that you need to write her the narrative that she deserves!

There are two main betrayals that I’m going to bring up here: when Tamara tells Rufus about Alastair in TCG, and when she abandons Call with Joseph in TSM.

Both of these happen because Tamara thinks that she knows better than Call, and so she goes over his head and reports him to authority figures; namely, the Assembly. In both cases, there is danger in going to the Assembly. In TCG, the Assembly know knows to target Call’s father, and Call has serious (and reasonable) worries that Alastair will be hurt. In TSM… well, even before the whole continuation of the war thing, she knows that the Assembly has imprisoned Call in the past. Now that’s he successfully raised the dead, what does she think they’re going to do??? Throw him a party?

Now, I’d like to note that this is narratively appropriate- someone has to raise the stakes (although how high the stakes rose in TSM is.... borderline laughable), and Tamara does this in a way that tells us about her and creates drama within the group to be brought up later. The problem here is that it never really comes up again, as so often happens with these books. Call just forgives her after a little while (or after no time at all in the case of TSM), which makes their relationship feel really awkward, makes Tamara look like an asshole, and makes the whole Aaron-in-Call’s-head thing so much weirder- like, fam, this girl was ready to start a war bc you didn’t want to kill him, but now that he’s living in your body (and feeding you lines?), it’s all cool?? No hard feelings from anyone involved????????? Hello????????????????

If they had actually fought over this and come to a compromise- I’m not saying it would have sold me on Calmara, but jesus christ, it would have made me a lot more comfortable throughout TGT. It definitely would have made their relationship more secure!

Going a little deeper into the implications that these betrayals have for the Calmara relationship, I think that this says something about the way that she sees Call.

As a disabled person, the way that she circumvents Call’s judgement kiiiiiiind of feels like ableism. One of the biiiiig issues in the realm of ableism is something called “infantiliziation”. On Tumblr, this is usually discussed in regards to turning people into soft uwu (usually very femme, for extra sexism) babies who can’t make their own decisions and calling them idiots, etc. This is also more commonly discussed in regards to afab trans people, east Asians, and neurodivergent folks, but it’s still a big problem in physically disabled people- however, this is usually seen in the later stages, where disability/presentation is seen as a reason to take away autonomy. That sounds drastic, but it often happens in small ways, often ones that are intended to be helpful, like steering a wheelchair user without asking, or trying to lead a blind person by grabbing them. It often happens subconsciously!

Whether or not you think it’s ableism, I think it does show that she thinks of herself as above Call, at least unconsciously. She decides unilaterally that her own judgement is best in both of these cases, even though Call is more informed on the issue at hand. Now, you could argue that Tamara was coming at it from a less emotional, more objective angle, but she also steamrolls Call’s attempts to justify/explain his rationale, which makes this questionable to me. (Again, not arguing whether or not she was right to do this, just going over how this affects her character!) This makes sense for her character- she comes from a place of really high privilege within the mage community, and we see her benefiting from it.

This is likely also a reason for the way that Tamara betrays Call; she does it by going to the Assembly. Tamara grew up with the Assembly, and as a rich legacy with parents on the board, she’s never really seen them as anything but good. In other words, she grew up with a massive amount of privilege, and it’s this privilege that makes her turn to these authority again and again. She believes that they are fair and rational, most likely because they are fair and rational to her, even with evidence to the contrary.

(Sidebar: that privilege also ties in to something I’ve mentioned in the past: Tamara is the book smart one of the group, and she understands how to move through mage society, but she is not the one with real knowledge of the world. The person with actual practical knowledge of this system, the world, and how it treats people? That’s Aaron!)

Now, I'm going to reiterate what I said at the start because I know that this seems to be a very negative piece: DO NOT HATE ON TAMARA BECAUSE OF THIS!!!!!!!!! Yes, I’m talking about a lot of flaws that she has, but those flaws are good! Flaws tells us about who Tamara could be, should be, and how she should have grown over the course of the narrative. This is also a very narrow analysis, focusing entirely on two interactions, one of which happened when the books had gotten so bad that they’ve largely been ignored. Tamara Rajavi has the potential to be an incredible character, and her flaws are just one facet to be explored.