#ok I’m going to start reading the light novel

[patchworkprince]

bookstore buys ☺︎

[roanniom]

Issa! I was rereading your fic about Eddie’s ears being really sensitive and it got me thinking: what is Steve’s most sensitive spot?

Maddie you are a DREAM for asking that. I kept trying to think of different things but for some reason my brain would not let go of the idea that it’s his chest??

Steve Chest Hair-rington

Like he’s lying with his head in your lap while you sit on the couch. He’s reading a magazine and you’re reading a novel. It’s a lazy weekend, warm in your apartment because you have the heater on and he never put on a shirt this morning when he rolled out of bed.

Absentmindedly you lay your hand on his abdomen after flipping a page, shifting in your seat beneath him. He hums and reaches up to play with your fingers for a second before also reaching to flip his own page. Without the weight of his hand on yours you slide it up and begin thoughtlessly combing through the hair dusting his chest.

You don’t think anything of it. You’ve passively touched his chest many times before. But as you continue smoothing your hands up and around his chest, you begin to notice that it’s begun moving up and down a little more. His breathing is getting shallower beneath your palm.

Without turning your head you cast a glance sidelong to take him in. Though he still holds his magazine aloft, his eyelids are closed. You experimentally caress him, with more intention, and notice a quiver in his bottom lip. Your brain lights up in immediate interest over your new discovery. But you don’t want to spook him, so you continue at the same rate.

In the next circling sweep of your hand, you make contact with one of his nipples and you feel his body shudder. The sudden movement has you looking over at him more fully and your mouth waters when you realize that in the time since you’ve started touching him, he has fully tented his sweatpants.

“Stevie. You got something to tell me?” you coo. Steve drops his magazine flat on his stomach and looks past it to his raging erection.

“What? You mean the fact that I’m hard?” he asks. So fucking casual. He even looks up at you from his reclined position with his head on your lap, a lazy grin on his face.

“Yeah. The fact that you’re hard,” you say, rolling your eyes. “What did it? You looking at something dirty in that magazine or…” you trail off and scratch your nails lightly through the thicket of hair on his chest again. Steve’s hips shift impatiently and he huffs a laugh.

“Well obviously it’s that,” he says, gesturing up to your moving hand. “I get turned on whenever you touch me.”

You let your fingers ghost over his nipples again and his hips buck. You smirk down at Steve and a deep red blush colors his cheeks and neck. You quirk a brow and he frowns.

“Ok, maybe I like you touching me there. Specifically.”

You delicately pull Steve’s magazine out of his grasp and place it, and your book to the side. He watched you, confused, but when you pull at him to have him shift on your lap he silently lets you maneuver him.

He ends up with his head on the pile of pillows that had been sitting besides you on the couch, his back now rested fully across your lap. Steve’s breath catches in his throat as you simultaneously do two things - 1.) you slide your hand across the hairy plane of his chest with your left hand and 2.) you reach and palm his cock through the fabric of his sweatpants.

Steve let’s out a quiet groan, his eyes rolling as he shuts them. He reclines in your arms. Completely at ease in your grasp.

“My my, Stevie. Have we discovered a new sweet spot?” you tease, playing lightly with his nipples again and loving the affect it seems to have on him.

Steve opens his eyes and grins up at you. In spite of the warm flush that’s spread from his neck, down his cheeks and onto the chest you’re attending to, Steve doesn’t look embarrassed.

“Guess so, baby,” he agrees. He brings his hand on top of your right one, squeezing to make you grasp the shaft of his cock in a firmer grip. “Wouldn’t mind if you kept discovering more.”

Your stomach flips pleasantly over his casual dominance. Even in this extremely vulnerable position - in your lap, melting under your hands, turned on by something so simple - Steve still finds a way to make you feel like he’s running the show. Arousal pools between your legs, but you’ll get to that. For now, you think, pulling your hand out from under his so you can shove it under the waistband of his sweats and grasp his cock - you want to explore some more.

[monstersandmaw]

Male dullahan x gn reader (sfw)

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

OH boy, this is a personal one for me on a number of levels (which usually means it's gonna tank), but here's the first of my five new commissions - this one is for the incredibly supportive and sweet @doomfisthero.

It features one of the Supernatural Biker Gang I mentioned in this post, which a lot of you seemed to like, so I hope you're keen to meet the cheeky, goofball dullahan with a heart of gold! Not gonna lie, I went way over the agreed wordcount for this one because it's the world I've already started building, and it's got characters I've already been thinking of for a while.

Content: gender neutral reader who experiences severe anxiety around being pranked/practical joked, which occurs at one point in the story. There’s no malicious intent or bullying behind the prank, and it gets discussed afterwards. The reader is a writer, doing research for a story about bikers, and has no idea that there's something a little 'extra' about this gang. Their friend, Adi, is dating one of them already, and I hope to write their story soon too.

Wordcount: 9216

“God, this was such a stupid idea,” you muttered as you approached the only shop on that wide, empty side street. Its metal sign swung gently back and forth in a light, autumn breeze, displaying a full moon on a black background, with a cruiser-style motorbike silhouetted in front of it, and the white, artfully-distressed font underneath it read ‘Full Moon Motorcycles’.

A second later, your friend stepped out onto the pavement and you knew there was no turning back. Adrianne grinned at you, so you kicked your feet back into motion and closed the distance between you, offering her a small hug. Your leather messenger bag bumped against your hip with the movement, and you wondered if perhaps you should have left your notebook and stuff at home for this first time. It felt more like an interview than getting to know them, and you were worried the group of unfamiliar bikers might take offence that you essentially wanted to study them for your novel.

“Ready to meet the gang?” she laughed, sweeping her messy, dark blonde hair back out of her eyes. “God, you look terrified. Come on, they’re nice! Except maybe Pixie. Don’t mess with her, but she’s not here today. Or Demon, but even he’s ok when you get to know him, I swear.”

“Not helping, Adi,” you grumbled.

Ever since she’d started working for Dahlia Ink across town about six months ago, Adrianne had been hanging around with the group of bikers who all got their ink done there it seemed, and it had almost felt like serendipity in action when she’d told you about them over coffee last weekend. You didn’t tend to talk much about your writing, even with your friends, but you trusted Adi, and she’d always been supportive of your career as an author, so you’d shyly opened up to her about your latest idea for a story featuring a group of bikers. You did leave out the part where the bikers in your story were mostly vampires and werewolves, with a few other supernatural species thrown in as well. Fantasy had always been your comfort-genre, but people had snickered in the past and made you feel like it wasn’t a ‘serious’ genre that ‘serious’ writers pursued, so you’d omitted it this time while telling her about it.

“It’s the perfect excuse for you to come and finally meet Țepeș then!” she’d blurted excitedly into the foam of her cappuccino, her green-brown eyes going wide with excitement at the idea of including you in her group of new friends. They all had weird nicknames, and you had no idea if it was a ‘biker’ thing or just a ‘them’ thing, but you’d been burning up with curiosity about them ever since she’d first started dating the one called Țepeș. “I’ve been dying to find an excuse for you to come meet him. Plus you can ask him anything you want to know for your story, and — oh…”

Her face had fallen, and you’d frowned, heart dropping already. “What?”

“Eh, he’s… he’s not completely non-verbal, but Țepeș doesn’t exactly find talking easy. Maybe you could come to the shop and meet the rest of them instead though? I’m sure Pickle or Pumpkin would love to talk your ear off about their bikes…”

“I dunno, I don’t want to get in the way,” you’d said, trying not to let that tiny, kindling ember of hope in your chest wink out completely. “But if you wanted to ask them…?”

She’d run it past her boyfriend, and Țepeș had said he’d ask Hank. Hank, apparently, was the guy who ran the bike shop where they’d all met and first formed their group, and two nights later, you’d got a text in all caps from Adi saying ‘BASIC BIKER 101 FOR WRITERS IS ON!!!! When are you next free?!!!’

A week later, you and your messenger bag with notebook and pens had shown up outside Full Moon Motorcycles, with little clue what to expect, and a heart full of trepidation.

Adrianne giggled as she ushered you inside, and to your relief, you found there were only two other people inside instead of a shop full of strangers. An array of bikes for sale was lined up around the right hand side of the space, and against the back wall there was a wooden counter almost like a bar, where the vintage till and a few key chains were displayed, while the left side of the space appeared to be a more general spot for tinkering and hanging out. Even with the light flooding in through the two huge, picture windows on either side of the door, the lighting was soft, and the polished concrete floor created a mellow atmosphere. The scent of coffee and motor oil hung heavy in the air, and you found it oddly comforting as you soaked it all up.  

Behind the counter, a stocky man with greying, wavy hair that wasn’t quite long enough to tie back but was too long to look tidy smiled you and raised a meaty hand. His blue tartan shirt stretched precariously over a hearty paunch, and he exuded a jovial kind of warmth as his honey-brown eyes crinkled. “Hey there,” he said. “I’m Hank, though most people round here just call me Dad —”

“— he adopts literally everyone who walks through that door, so congrats on joining the family,” Adi laughed.

“Take your pick on names,” Hank chortled. “I understand you’re a writer…” He seemed interested and a little impressed, which was a bit of a confidence boost.

“Yeah,” you croaked and cleared your throat. “Yeah… uh… thank you for letting me hang out here for a bit. I don’t know anything about bikes… I’m just looking to learn a bit so it makes sense for my novel, you know? I’m not going to get in anyone’s way.”

“Oh, you’re fine,” he smiled, gesturing dismissively with his massive paw of a hand. “You just ask what you like and we’ll do our best to help you out. You must know Țepeș already if you’re Adi’s friend?”

You shook your head and Hank looked across the room to where the other person was lurking at the back of the space. You hadn’t noticed Adi leaving your side, but when you turned around, you found her standing with both hands pressed fondly against the chest of the tall, imposing biker dressed all in black and wearing his helmet too, which you thought was an odd choice. But what did you know about the habits of bikers? You were there to learn after all; learn and observe.

Adi waved you over, and you swallowed your nerves and cast Hank a farewell glance before approaching. When Adi stepped back, Țepeș pushed himself off the wall and held out his hand to you to shake. It, like the rest of him, was covered in leather or padded gear. There wasn’t a scrap of skin showing on him anywhere, and with your own face reflected in his black visor, it was impossible to get a read on him.

As if she’d read your mind, Adi smacked Țepeș in the chest with the back of her hand and said, “At least put your visor up, you big, intimidating doofus.”

He snorted a silent laugh and lifted the catch on his visor to reveal a sliver of pale skin and irises as black as the rest of his leather gear. Like Hank’s though, his eyes were kindly, and he closed them briefly as he inclined his head in a kind of apologetic bow. You shrugged, and he laughed breathily.

Hank chose that moment to come over, and you jumped as he clapped you on the shoulders. How a man built like a grizzly in autumn had moved so quietly was a mystery. “Come on, Țepeș, why don’t we give our new friend a demonstration of how a bike works? Since your Ducati is in, why don’t we use that?”

Țepeș gave a quick nod, and ducked away through the door that stood in the centre of the back wall, and a moment later, he pushed an absolute monster of a bike out into the empty space. He jutted his chin towards the front door, and Adi nipped over to open it for him, and when you frowned, she laughed. “That Streetfighter is so fucking loud,” she snorted. “You do not want him starting it up in here.”

“And nor do I!” Hank called, now mysteriously back behind the till though you hadn’t heard him leave. You made a mental note to weave something like that into your story for the supernatural biker characters, and then nodded, feeling sheepish, and followed the two of them out of the shop and onto the quiet side-street outside.

Until six months ago, Adi hadn’t known anything about bikes either, so she used your introductory tutorial as a kind of test for herself, interspersed with little glances up at Țepeș to check that she’d got it right. He either nodded or pointed to correct her, but he didn’t speak. She hadn’t been kidding about him being mostly non-verbal.

After Adi had shown you the basics of the bike’s anatomy, Țepeș patted the seat of the bike and gestured to her to get on it, but she laughed and shook her head. “No way, babe. I’m way too short.”

He put his fists comically on his hips and shook his head, then patted the seat again like he was trying to get a wilful cat up onto a chair.

She made a noise of protest, but did swing a leg over and then hoisted herself evenly into the seat, both legs dangling freely a good way off the ground.

“Happy now?” she shot at him and he nodded emphatically, bringing both hands to the sides of his helmet in a way that mimicked a person losing their mind over a cute kitten. “You’re lucky I love you, you overgrown dork,” she muttered. “Anyway,” she said, turning back to you. “Since this beast has made me get up here, I’m going to start his bike. Not so funny now that I could actually fuck it up, is it?” she grinned.

Țepeș remained perfectly still, and you got the impression it was a comical warning.

“I can’t flat-foot it,” she said to you, “So I’m gonna rest my left foot on the curb after I’ve flicked the kickstand up,” she said. “You can’t start most bikes with the kickstand still down.”

You noted that down, and let her get on with the rest of the sequence uninterrupted, which seemed a lot more complicated than you’d imagined.

Near the end of your tutorial on how to start a bike and the basics of clutch control, and the apparent struggle to find neutral, the sound of a number of approaching engines tore through the quiet afternoon. You looked back over your shoulder to see three sports bikes round the corner and make their way towards you.

The three riders couldn’t have been more different. The one you noticed first was riding a big, brash, bright orange bike that reminded you a bit of a sporty looking dirt bike, and he was wearing, of all things, a black and white cow onesie, with a cow helmet cover complete with fabric horns and ears.

“Fucking Pumpkin,” Adi laughed. “Honestly. I think you’ll love him.”

“Pumpkin?” you asked, wondering how on earth he’d got that name. Then again, Țepeș was a pretty unusual nickname. Perhaps he was a vampire under all that leather, shielding himself from the fury of the sun with his biker gear just so he could spend more time with his human lover during the day… You yanked your over-active imagination back into the present and out of your fantasy novel, and watched the trio of bikers approach down the quiet side street.

“Yeah, Pumpkin’s his name. It’s because he’s a —” Țepeș elbowed Adi in the ribs sharply enough that she had to grab the handlebars to stop herself toppling off his bike. Her eyes went wide and she instantly clicked her jaw shut.

As an author, you were used to watching and studying people, and noting your observations for later. Another writer you knew online had called it ‘cataloguing the everyday’, and it was an apt description. Adi had very nearly given away something huge about Pumpkin, and Țepeș had given her a silent but stern warning.

“Because he loves pranks, like on Halloween?” she finished a little too quickly. “He dresses up with silly helmet covers all the time and he likes to play jokes on people.”

Maybe he wasn’t your kind of person at all. The very idea of having a practical joke pulled on you was enough to make you feel sick and shaky all over. You'd always hated them, and they’d always left you feeling devastated and on-edge if they happened to you. The more you trusted the person, the worse it felt afterwards.

Țepeș’ huge hand landed carefully on your shoulder joint and you looked up to find him smiling reassuringly at you. At least, you thought he was smiling reassuringly. All you could see were his glinting black eyes that were creased at the corners, and the way the apples of his pale cheeks were slightly more squished than usual behind the padding in his helmet.

You tried out a smile of your own, and then realised that Adi was talking again.

“He’s such a goofball, but that’s got to be his craziest outfit yet! You should see his other helmet covers; they’re all bonkers. My favourite is the pink rabbit one.”

Țepeș nodded once in agreement and let go of your shoulder. You swayed a little at the loss, feeling untethered.

“The guy on the red Ducati is Demon, and the short one on the Ninja in the middle is Pickle.”

When the newcomers spotted the three of you standing around Țepeș’ bike, Pumpkin revved raucously, almost seeming to make his bike laugh with joy at the sight of you. Then he hauled it up into a massive wheelie, only dropping back down once he’d torn past you in a near-vertical pose. Your heart was in your mouth the whole time, but he looked relaxed and even amused behind that absurd costume as he landed it and swerved the bike around to make his way back towards you while the other two came over in a more sedate fashion. In fact, they were so sedate it reminded you of two sharks approaching, and your mouth went dry. Adi had said they were cool with you being there and asking questions, but just then, it didn’t really feel like it.

The one riding the lurid, neon green bike was so short that you wondered for a crazy second if maybe they were a child. The owner of the red bike revved his something wicked as he cruised to a stop, and you had to fight the urge to step back. It felt like being roared at full in the face by a lion, and it didn’t help at all that the guy had curling ram’s horns adorning his black helmet. Even though it was a nippy autumn day, he was wearing a white t-shirt that showed off a golden tan and a truly impressive physique, and his black jeans had a rip in the knee that added to his tough-guy appearance.

Standing beside his own bike, Țepeș folded his arms and jutted his chin in a warning. Demon revved his deafening bike once more though, and the back wheel skimmed from side to side on the tarmac as blue smoke churned up into the air.

Țepeș shook his head and a few seconds later, Demon stopped his mini burnout, and instead leaned forwards on the bike, resting one arm casually on the tank. His whole attention was fixed on you and you tried hard not to regret all of this. It was research. You were here for your story. It was fine. His visor was tinted like Țepeș’ was, but you could feel the intensity of his gaze through the plastic just as clearly as if there had been nothing blocking his eyes from yours.

“Just giving a welcome to your new friend, Țepeș,” the guy purred in a silky baritone that made you think of teeth in the dark.

As the brief puff of acrid smoke from his tyres cleared, the short rider flipped their visor up and regarded you with beady, golden eyes that had to be contacts, surely? Even the pupils were slitted like a cat’s. 

“Who’s this?” came a reedy, tenor voice from under the helmet. Definitely not a child after all, and their skin had a strange, greenish tinge to it that you initially took to be makeup until you realised it went all the way down their cheeks as well. Tattoos? Some kind of condition? You tried not to stare.

Before either you or Adi could respond to their question, the cow onesie rider screeched to a comical halt beside the other two, locking up the front wheel and making the rear of his bike kick up like a bronco, and Adi shook her head. “Pumpkin, honestly. What are you like?”

“I’m Legen-dairy!” he grinned, gesturing wide with both hands. “Oh, hey! New friend?!” he exclaimed, waving enthusiastically when he saw you standing awkwardly beside Țepeș’ bike. He had a lilting Irish accent and a playful intonation that warmed you to him immediately, despite knowing about his penchant for practical jokes.

“Don’t mind Pumpkin,” Adi smiled at you. “He’s… something else.”

“I’m highly a-moo-sing, is what I am,” the guy chuckled. His words sounded clearer than the others behind their helmets, and you wondered if it was something about the design that made it easier to hear him.

“Oh god, please stop with the cow puns,” Pickle groaned, casting him a withering look with those unusual eyes.

“But Pickle, I’m udderly fantastic!”

“Stop.”

“This is just plain bull-ying!” Pumpkin whined, and then he started to bop up and down on his bike as he sang, “My milkshake brings—”

“If you howl one more out of tune word, Demon will eat you for breakfast, and not in a fun way,” Pickle said, casting a glance at the biker with the horns on his helmet.

For answer, the biker in question cocked his head just a little to one side, and Pumpkin slumped in his seat, arms and legs dangling comically, head lolling forwards so that the soft horns on his helmet cover flopped. He let out a long, sad mooing noise sound that dissolved into giggles at the end, and Pickle punched him on the arm.

“Loser,” Pickle snorted with obvious fondness.

“Anyway, I want you to meet my friend,” Adi cut in, turning to you. “I’m sorry you had to meet Pumpkin when he’s in this mood, but —”

“Moo-d!” Pumpkin interrupted triumphantly and immediately burst out laughing. He almost tipped backwards off his big, orange bike. Even you managed to crack a shy smile at that one. It was infectious.

“I give up,” Pickle said, and hopped down off his green Kawasaki, disappearing into the shop without a backward glance just as Hank stepped out.

“How’s that lesson going?” he asked you.

“I’m not planning on riding solo any time soon,” you smiled, “But I’ve got enough of an idea of how things work to start writing, I think.”

Hank nodded and, glancing around at Pumpkin who was still bouncing up and down and making his suspension creak a little, said, “Ah, they’re all idiots, but they’re kind, and they’re my idiots.”

He introduced you by name, and told Pumpkin and Demon why you were there. Pumpkin seemed intrigued, tilting his head to one side and calming his crazy energy a little as he regarded you through the tinted visor, but Demon growled softly as he pushed himself upright again and folded his arms across his ripped chest, muttering something about letting their guard down again.

Țepeș moved away from his bike, petting the back of Adi’s blonde head in a fond, distracted gesture, and then signalled for Demon to follow him inside, which, to your surprise, the big guy did. He walked like a Greek god — like he owned the place and not Hank — but it was clear that he had respect for Țepeș.

Pumpkin took advantage of their absence and leaned a little way off his bike towards you. “So, you’re a writer? That’s pretty cool. And you’re writing a… a book? A story? About bikers?”

You nodded. “Yeah. It’s not the main focus, but it’s a big part of it.” If you hadn’t wanted to open up to Adi about it being a supernatural fantasy story, you sure as heck weren’t going to admit it to a bunch of intimidating, high-octane bikers. “It was Adi who suggested I come and learn a bit more about it all from you guys though…” you said, not wanting them to think you’d just inserted yourself into their group without invitation. Especially given Demon’s weird reaction.

“Awesome,” Pumpkin said, fist-bumping Adi then turning back to you. “You gonna ride with us? We’re all heading out in a bit so you should come too!”

“I… maybe?” you faltered. That had not been on the cards for the day, but the more you thought about it, the more your heart began to race.

“The KTM has a passenger seat,” Pumpkin said, gesturing behind him and patting his pillion seat. “You can be my backpack if you like! I promise I won’t wheelie. I’m not taking the onesie off though,” he added, mooing and shaking his head so that the fabric horns waggled comically.

His energy and enthusiasm really were infectious. He bounced up and down again like an excitable, cow-print puppy, and you bit your lip. The idea of holding onto him, of being perched on the back of his mad, orange bike, was oddly… enticing. Even with his embarrassing costume.

“Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun! It’s only a short ride because Coco’s Honda’s playing up for some reason,” he added. “Is she here yet? I don’t see her little bumblebee…”

“Bumblebee?” you asked.

“Coco’s bike is a Honda Hornet,” Adi supplied. “She’s got these little antennae for her helmet too. It’s so cute. And no,” she added to Pumpkin. “You guys are the first.”

It didn’t take long for the rest of the day’s riders to arrive, and soon you watched a screaming pink bike roll up, with its rider wearing baby pink leathers and a pink helmet. Her name was Barbie, appropriately enough, and a few minutes later, a skinny guy in all black leathers with a black helmet bearing a decal like a maw full of teeth pulled up, alongside Coco on her black and yellow Honda Hornet that looked very much like the Transformer.

“I see why you call it Bumblebee,” you said to Adi, who was standing on the pavement with you, chatting and slipping you random bits of information about both the bikes and the bikers. The others had all gone inside, leaving you with Adi still casually sitting astride her boyfriend’s enormous, black Ducati Streetfighter outside in the sunshine, and honestly it was nice to catch your breath and let your heart rate settle again.

Pumpkin, apparently, was only a few years older than you, and he had moved to the city to get away from his family and their career expectations for him. His name was actually Callahan, or Cal, but literally everyone called him Pumpkin.

Pickle was non-binary and surprisingly a full decade older than you. They lived with their mother, who needed a bit of extra care these days, and had taken up riding only a year or so ago. Demon, Adi didn’t discuss at all, and she said little about Barbie other than that she kept herself to herself a lot and was pretty shy.

Coco came out to soak up some autumn sunshine a while later, and was one of the only bikers who actually took off her helmet. Beneath it, she had thick, wavy, chocolate brown hair and brown eyes that made you want to drown in them, and a smile so pretty it made your heart skip several beats. She gave off the kind of energy that made you feel safe and relaxed, and you let out a long, slow exhale, feeling the sun wash up over your skin.

That peace lasted until Demon stormed out of the shop, followed by Pumpkin, Țepeș, and Pickle.

“Everything ok?” Adi whispered to Țepeș when he came over and hugged her tightly from behind before passing her a spare helmet. He nodded and jerked his thumb towards his bike. “Yeah, I’m good to go. You coming?” she asked you, and you found yourself nodding before you’d even realised.

“Yes!” Pumpkin bayed in triumph and you startled, not having heard him return to his bike. “You’re mine! I claim you. You’re my backpack!”

“Like anyone else wants a human for baggage,” Demon muttered so quietly you weren’t sure you were supposed to have heard it. As he passed, he slammed his visor back down and you could have sworn that he’d had completely scarlet eyes. You wondered if you were losing your mind a little bit, or if the fantasy of your novel was beginning to bleed into the real world through your over-active imagination.  

Pumpkin practically vaulted back up onto his orange bike and he held out his hand to you. “Alright! My precious and beautiful backpack,” he said, “Hop on!”

Easier said than done, you thought, ignoring the compliment. You watched your reflection distort in his visor as he turned his head when you faltered anxiously.

“I’ll look after you, I promise. But I’m gonna rely on you to tell me if Pickle’s coming for my killswitch, ok?”

Recalling your brief lesson with Țepeș, you eyed the red switch on his right handlebar and said, “That?”

“Yeah, that. Protect it at all costs,” he giggled. “I mean, not all costs, obviously but… Actually, scratch that. It’s Ninja you wanna watch out for. He’s a sneaky, sneaky boy. He blends in so no one sees him coming…” A few of them laughed in a way that made you feel like there was more to it than just an inside joke, and your stomach churned.

A glance back at the skinny guy on the black bike behind you revealed Ninja tilting his hands outwards in a ‘who, me?’ kind of gesture. Hank came over and gave you a helmet, taking your messenger bag from you and promising to keep it safe behind the counter. You slid the helmet on and buckled it up, trying not to feel like an impostor.

Getting aboard wasn’t as hard as you’d thought it was going to be, with brief instruction from Adi and Pumpkin on how to put your feet on the pegs, though you did clunk your helmet against Pumpkin’s when you leaned too far forward, but he made things easier by telling you to hold him round the waist. He turned back over one shoulder and said, “It’s kinda forward, but I don’t mind. You’re cute and I don’t want you falling off.” He had such a lovely voice — warm and rich and reassuring — and you found yourself laughing softly.

“If you say so.”

Pumpkin talked a mile a minute and you really had to work to process everything he was saying as it tumbled out of him in a wild, happy torrent. “You are cute! You’re gonna have a blast today. I can’t believe I’m your first! Oh, and watch out for silly string too. I don’t think Pickle has any in their pocket today, but last time they got me good and it was all over my helmet and my orange baby,” he added petting the tank of his bike.

Your heart lurched at the idea of these pranks maybe escalating, and you tried to swallow down the nausea; you did not want to be sick in a motorcycle helmet. The cold sweat took a while to evaporate and you were sure Pumpkin would feel your heartbeat as you clung onto him before he’d even started the bike. The cow onesie did add a little levity though, and you tried not to feel too silly.

When Adi was safely aboard Țepeș’ bike, Țepeș revved his readiness a few times from the rear of the group, and Pumpkin nodded. “Forward!” he yelled, pointing like he was leading a cavalry charge as he nudged up his kickstand and prepared to draw away.

Adi had been right.

The ride was amazing.

Terrifying, exhilarating, wonderful, and, in the strangest way possible, it made you forget everything.

All you could focus on was the way Pumpkin moved with the bike like it was a part of him — almost like a rider and his horse — and on trying to move with him as he leaned into the corners. He was slim and fit beneath your grip, and he didn’t seem to be wearing any kind of padding under the onesie, but he was wearing biker boots instead of ordinary shoes. There was something alluring about the fact you’d not seen his face and he’d not taken his helmet off. Țepeș had a similar vibe, but it was Pumpkin and his wild, silly energy you found yourself drawn to. It was almost euphoric to be able to press the front of your body against this kind, funny stranger’s back and let him sweep you along the roads.

Of course, there were shenanigans at the first red light you came to.

Pickle came for Pumpkin’s killswitch immediately — almost like they were testing you — but you tapped Pumpkin on the shoulder when you saw Pickle stalking up the line of bikes. Ninja covered his killswitch and waggled a finger at Pickle, and when Pumpkin saw who was coming, he patted your thigh a few times. “Nice one,” he said with a grin evident in his voice. “Best early warning system and best backpack ever! You can ride with me every time!”

You glowed with pride, even though you knew it was probably only fun and games, and when Pickle failed to catch Pumpkin’s killswitch and the lights changed, you laughed with the rest of them as Pickle bolted back to their Ninja and hopped comically onto it at the very last second while Pumpkin sped away fast enough to make you yelp and grip him hard around the middle. You felt him laugh and held him tighter.

He petted your hands where they were laced securely in front of him, and even though you didn’t have comms in your helmet, you got the message: ‘I’ve got you’. You did feel safe with him despite his love of pranks, and you were literally trusting him with your life as you rode behind him.

When the ride came to an end about an hour later, and the group drew to a halt at Full Moon Motorcycles again, you were shaky with the aftereffects of adrenaline and from simply holding on, but beneath your helmet, you were grinning wildly. Secretly, you already couldn’t wait for the next ride and prayed he would ask you again.

Pickle pulled their bike up on your right, the green Ninja 400 idling gently, and when they killswitched Pumpkin’s bike at last, Pumpkin guffawed, but without missing a beat he extended his right leg and tapped the gear lever down to put Pickle’s bike into first, making the bike stall and lurch forwards.

“Gotcha!” he crowed, and then helped you off the back by letting you steady yourself on his shoulders. “And for the pièce de résistance,” he said, fishing in the pouch of his onesie, and he turned something cylindrical in your direction. “I was saving this for Pickle, but since it’s your first ride, you deserve a decent celebration!”

With a loud bang and a flurry of coloured squares of paper, a confetti cannon went off in your face and you screeched in shock, tripping over your heels and landing hard on the pavement behind you. The pieces of paper fluttered down around you while panic and fear and everything you hated about being pranked exploded out of you. Your heartbeat went through the roof. You just glimpsed the horns of Demon’s helmet in the doorway to the shop, and your heart dropped when you saw he was laughing.

Pumpkin was laughing too, and pointing, and beside him Pickle clapped their gloved hands and crooned, “Oh man, he got you good!”

He had got you good, and you hated it.

You hated that it was just a silly, harmless prank, but you were reacting like he’d done something serious. You hated that you couldn’t just laugh it off the way they all did. You hated that you took it so seriously; that it felt like the worst kind of betrayal of that fragile trust you’d started to put in a stranger. And then, behind the visor of your helmet, the tears began to flow uncontrollably.

A huge figure appeared in your blurred vision and you looked up to find Țepeș kneeling down beside you. He blocked the others from your sight with his massive body, and he lifted his visor to show his black eyes full of concern.

You nodded, trying to pull yourself together and grateful beyond belief that the helmet was still covering your face, even though it felt like you were running out of oxygen in there. Pulling yourself together was like trying to hold a bag full of sand with fraying seams. You were seeping and spilling out all over the place and you couldn’t stop. You tried to tell yourself it was just a confetti cannon. You tried to tell yourself it was just a bit of fun.

You tried, and failed.

“I’m… I’m ok… I’m…” you gulped, aware of how choked your voice sounded.

Țepeș stood and held out a hand, pulling you to your feet and ushering you carefully inside. You didn’t miss the way he put himself between you and Demon, who was still snickering in the doorway, and you let him lead you into the shop and into the back room.

He snagged a box of tissues from under the shop’s counter in passing and guided you into a chair. He signalled for you to undo your helmet, which you did with shaking fingers. “I’m sorry,” you gulped as you drew it off over your head and set it on the floor. “I’m sorry I’m overreacting.”

Țepeș shook his head and squeezed your shoulder, offering you a tissue.

“It’s just a prank, I know that, but…”

Again, he squeezed your shoulder, and you took a deeper, steadier breath.

“I hate pranks. Even the harmless ones. I always overreact like this. I’m sorry. It’s not his fault, but… I thought… I thought maybe he… he wouldn’t…”

A knock on the door made you jump, and Țepeș made a ‘stay there’ gesture with his hand and ducked out of the room. A short, seemingly one-sided conversation passed outside while you fought to control yourself again, and then Pumpkin ducked inside.

“Hey,” he said, and your heart broke a little at the change in his energy. It was like he’d completely deflated. He was still wearing the cow onesie though, which brought a slightly hysterical chuckle to your lips before you could stop it. “I’m so sorry,” he said, dropping to one knee in front of your chair. “I… I didn’t think you’d react like that.”

“It’s not you,” you said, sniffling and turning away, cuffing at your eyes. “I just overreacted.”

“You didn’t overreact,” he said, and your brain screeched to a halt.

“What?”

“I shouldn’t have done it to you. I didn’t know if you were cool with it, and I just assumed that… that because everyone else likes my pranks… that you’d be ok with it too, and I shouldn’t have done that. I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll never ever pull anything like that on you again. Ever.” He crossed his thumb across his heart. “I swear on my True Name.”

The wording was odd, but the air seemed to crystallise around you for a second, and your breath caught. “Like a Fae,” you mumbled without thinking.

He tilted his helmeted head a little. “Yeah,” he said and his voice had an odd ring to it. “You… You know about… about the Fae?”

“I’m writing a book…” you croaked, not really thinking about what you were saying. “Supernatural theme… I’ve always written fantasy stuff… Look, I’m sorry. I’m over-sharing about stuff that isn’t even real. I’m good,” you said, and stood up abruptly, setting your borrowed helmet down on the chair and turning to look at him. He was on his feet again, but he was just standing there.

You walked out into the main shop but he called your name and you halted and turned back around. “Yeah?”

“Are… Are you gonna come back?”

You bit your lip. You probably had enough to write the book now — the biker part of it wasn’t even the main focus after all — but until the prank, you’d felt included and welcomed, and, as you thought about it, the prank had also been meant to welcome you into the fold. It wasn’t Pumpkin’s fault that you had reacted the way you did.

“You want me to?” you asked.

“Please,” he said. “Please, I’d love it. I’ve… I’ve never had anyone I’ve wanted to be my backpack before, and you rode like a natural today,” he added, taking a step towards you. “Please. I promise no one will do any pranks when you’re with us. No silly string, no confetti cannons.”

“I don’t mind it… With the others, I mean,” you said, the words grinding out of you like a boulder uphill. “I mean… So long as it’s not me.”

“Ok, we’ll dial it back,” he compromised. “I’ll even give you one of my little stretchy sticky hands if you like so you can team up on Pickle with me. We duel at the lights sometimes. Does that count as a prank?”

You shook your head, fighting back a resurgence of emotions, mostly good this time.

“Ok. I’m really sorry,” he said again.

“I believe you,” you said.

“Thank you,” Pumpkin replied, his whole body looking relieved. It was amazing how expressive someone could be, even without being able to see their face. “Let me give you my number and I’ll text you when we’re going out next. Or… Or maybe we could go out just the two of us?”

That seemed like way more pressure than you’d been expecting, but you nodded all the same when you realised you weren’t put off by it at all.

As you left the shop not long afterwards, having recovered enough to let the red fade from your eyes, Demon looked you up and down and then approached Pumpkin. You glanced back over your shoulder to see him looming down over Pumpkin, and you just caught him growling, “What happens when you need to take that helmet off eh, Dullahan? You think that cute accent is going to be enough to hide the fact you don’t have a fucking head under there?”

Your breath caught and you tripped, turning away before either of them could notice your reaction.

For a moment, when Demon had spat the word ‘Dullahan’ you’d thought he’d said ‘Callahan’ — Pumpkin’s real name — but the instant he’d said Pumpkin didn’t have a head, your mind made the connection.

Dullahan.

A Fae without a head, traditionally a headless horseman.

The way Pumpkin had moved with his bike, like it was a living creature, had reminded you of a horse and its rider, and you had to wonder if the nickname ‘Pumpkin’ had come from the cartoonish depictions of Dullahans on Halloween with a pumpkin for a head instead of their real one. They did have a head, you knew from research for your writing, but they tended to keep it hidden since that was where their power resided. They could only be harmed if you hurt their head, or if they were wearing it when you attacked them.

But that was all fantasy, right?

Then Demon’s red eyes flickered across your memory, and the weird emphasis he’d put on the word ‘human’ in his snide remarks, and the way you’d thought maybe Țepeș was a vampire because he kept his skin covered up, and the fact that Pickle’s skin was entirely green and they had gold eyes with cat’s pupils… it was all way too much of a coincidence. Right?

You walked home in a daze, not even saying goodbye to Adi who was talking quietly with Țepeș in the long, late afternoon shadows cast by the bike shop’s wall.

Over the next few rides with Pumpkin, you tried to figure out a way to broach the topic. If you just blurted it out, you had no idea how the others would react, so you dropped little hints to Pumpkin that you were writing a supernatural story and that you’d been researching the supernatural for a while, and how you’d always hoped there was more out there than met the eye. You even mentioned it a couple of times on group rides to see how the others reacted, and predictably, it was Demon who bristled, and Pumpkin who looked uncomfortable. Like he had a secret he wanted to tell you.

Each time you did it, he looked torn, like he was right on the cusp of telling you the truth.

It finally came to an ugly head one afternoon as the riding season drew to a close in late October and you all came back from a huge group ride that had included a few more riders whom you’d not met before, but who evidently knew the rest of the group.

As you went inside to return the helmet that Hank always lent you, you caught the sound of an argument and hung back in the small storage room behind the main shop to avoid it, heart in your throat and the helmet forgotten in one hand.

Pickle was standing in the main area of the shop with their helmet dangling from their hand this time, and you gasped when you saw sharply-tapered ears and a row of pointed teeth in their mouth, and green skin that went all the way down below their collar. Definitely not a tattoo. They looked sharp, their features inhuman; like one of the goblins in your novel. If you’d needed confirmation that they weren’t human, this had to be it.

Pickle was  arguing with Adi and Demon, and Pumpkin was there too, looking helplessly from one to the other of them.

Demon was shouting, and he didn’t have his helmet on either. Perhaps they’d thought you’d already left. The horns that adorned his helmet were… actually attached to his head, not his helmet. He had horns. They obviously grew from his hairline, his black hair waving around them like a river of oil that had a rainbow sheen on it, and his eyes were a luminous, blood-red with slit pupils too. He rounded on Pumpkin like a Wolf on a rabbit. “You think just because we let Țepeș’ little human blood-bag in, we can risk exposing us all to just anyone?” Demon snarled. “I thought you wanted to keep our kind a secret? Now you’re siding with him?”

“Hey!” Adi exclaimed, but Pickle’s lip curled and they turned to her.

“He has got a point, Adi, though the blood-bag comment was way out of line,” Pickle said. “We have to be careful, but —”

“This is different,” Pumpkin interjected. “Ok? I’ve never been in love before, and I love —”

“No. It’s not fucking ok! This is the one place we get to be who we are,” Demon countered, his deep voice cracking as he clearly fought off tears. He sounded afraid and upset in a way that went right to your heart. “This is the one place where we can be safe, Cal, and you’re jeopardising it for all of us. And if we start letting humans in, if our secret gets out —”

“I think it’s a little late for that,” Pickle said faintly, staring straight at you watching the argument unfold, stunned. They were arguing because of you. Because Pumpkin had taken a liking to you — in fact, he’d just said he loved you…

A pair of gold eyes and a pair of scarlet eyes stared at you, while Adi stood there hugging herself and looking hurt and unsure, and Pumpkin was standing stock still with his black helmet still on but you knew he was looking at you too. Was he going to defend you, or discard you and stick with his friends? They weren’t human. None of them was human. Demon’s eyes were blaring a violent red and he had horns growing out of his black hairline and curling back over his head, and there was a watercolour patch of red creeping over his golden tan as if he was losing control of his form. And Pickle was apparently some kind of goblin?

“You’re a Dullahan,” you said quietly, looking at Pumpkin. “A Fae.”

“You know?” Demon hissed, taking half a step towards you. “How the fuck do you know?” and then he shoved Pumpkin back with a hand at each shoulder. “You’ve taken your helmet off already? Did you disclose your head’s location while you were at it?”

Pumpkin shook his head vehemently but then he lifted his shiny, black helmet off in what looked like an act of defiance to Demon.

In the void where his head should have been there was a swirl of bluish-green smoke emanating from the stump of his neck, like the aurora in the night sky, and his skin was a dark, slate-blue colour. Your mind struggled to accept what you were seeing, but with the additional evidence of Pickle’s green skin and Demon’s horns, you knew it all had to be true.

Walking closer, as if moving through a dream, you ignored Demon’s constant, caged-animal growl, but you did jump when the door flew open and Țepeș burst in. He strode straight over to Adi and wrapped his arm protectively around her shoulders, tugging her close and putting himself between her and the others. He cocked his head in an impatiently curious manner and Adi answered his silent demand.

“Demon’s laying into Pumpkin about flirting with a human while hiding what he is,” Adrianne said, glaring flatly at Demon. “And he called me your blood-bag,” she added.

Țepeș’ fists curled, leather creaking, and he took a long, slow inhale, as though he was trying very hard not to lose control and launch himself at Demon.

Before anything else could happen, someone clapped their hands abruptly from the side of the shop where the till and the bikes were arrayed, and you all jumped.

Hank was standing there and his eyes were glowing golden. “This family is built on trust,” he said in a low, gravelly bass, and you saw that his canines were chunkier and longer than they usually were, and his hair seemed thicker and fuller, his beard a little bushier around the chops. “And if we welcome each other into it, we must be prepared to trust each other’s judgement.”

“We’re just a little research project!” Demon said, rounding on you. “Adi told you what we are, didn’t she, so you thought you’d come and study us like a science experiment?”

You were still staring at Pumpkin’s empty collar and wondering in an odd, detached kind of way where it would be considered polite for you to look now — did you look at the point where his eyes would be if he had a head, or did you look at his chest? Only a second or two later did Demon’s words filter through and you blinked. “What?”

“You’re writing a fucking book about us! How does that count as trustworthy?”

“I’m not — It’s not about you,” you shot back. “The book isn’t about you. The protagonist is dating a vampire who’s in a biker gang, but… Adi didn’t tell me anything at all about you. I didn’t know you weren’t human until… until I overheard you accusing Pumpkin a few weeks ago. You said something about not having a head under his helmet, and you called him a Dullahan.” You swallowed thickly and watched the shock filter through everyone’s expressions at your words. “At first I thought you were saying his name, but then I realised you said ‘Dullahan’, not ‘Callahan’, and because I’ve looked into supernatural stuff, I put two and two together. I’ve known for weeks,” you said, chest heaving as you fought to maintain some semblance of composure while you finished your defence. “I could have said something, or I could have just not come back, but I trusted you guys.” Tears finally blurred your vision. “You treated me like family. Why would I betray you?”

Pumpkin moved first.

He strode across he space, dropping his helmet on the floor with a loud crack that would have made anyone who needed a helmet to protect their head wince, but you figured his was purely for decoration and disguise anyway. He wrapped you up in his arms and pulled you close to his body. His arms almost lifted you off the ground and he cradled your head in one hand while his left arm curled around your waist and squeezed you so tight you gave a little wheeze.

His voice came from nowhere in particular, just like it did when he had the helmet on, and he said, “You are family. And I love you. If I have to leave this one to be with you, I will.”

Your heart stopped for a moment before you hugged him back, desperately. “Don’t. Not for me.”

He only hugged you harder.

From somewhere off to your left, Hank gave a low, rumbling growl and then muttered, “Kids. Honestly.” Then a little louder, he said, “Demon, go and cool off somewhere. Țepeș, for God’s sake, stand down, and Pickle, go and put the fucking kettle on. I need a cup of tea with half a bottle of whisky in it after all this drama.”

Pumpkin drew back at last, and you looked up at the haze of blue-green smoke that seemed to swirl upwards in a constant stream, like a recently extinguished candle. “How can you see me?” you asked. And then, with a little more alarm in your tone, you yelped, “Wait, how can you see where you’re driving?”

He laughed and leaned in close enough that the aurora-light swirled across your vision and caressed your face with a feather light breath, and you shivered. “Magic,” he whispered.

Demon hadn’t gone anywhere, and was regarding you with a more level gaze. His eyes were still red though. “You knew?” he said. “All this time?”

“Yeah,” you croaked as you refocused your eyes from the magic of the Dullahan’s body to Demon’s very much corporeal body. “I mean, I suspected.”

He sighed, still staring you down. Pumpkin stepped a little in front of you, much as Țepeș had for Adi, but Demon shook his head. He worked his jaw for a second and then slowly held out his right hand. His skin was red instead of the golden tan it had been, and his nails were black and claw-like, but the gesture was one of reconciliation all the same. “Welcome to the family, I guess,” he muttered hoarsely.

You smiled faintly, and Pumpkin took your left hand in a show of solidarity, sliding his gloved fingers around yours while you briefly shook Demon’s hand. “I really didn’t know what you guys were when you said I could come and hang out with you, I swear.”

“I know,” Demon bit out. “I can taste a lie, and you’re telling the truth.”

With that, he stalked away and carefully slotted his helmet on over his horns. You realised that there were specially-tailored holes in the crown of it for the horns to fit through, but when it was on, some kind of glamour made it look like the horns were just attached to the surface of the helmet. Outside, he swung a leg over his Ducati and started it up, revving it and launching away amid a scream of tyres and over-worked engine.

“Give him time,” Pumpkin said as he looked down at you. In the swirl of the smoke at his neck you thought you could make out the features of a face for a moment, but you blinked and it vanished. “You’re family now though, so he won’t give you any more trouble.”

“He did just insult Adi pretty spectacularly,” you pointed out.

“And he’ll apologise to her,” Pumpkin said. Țepeș loomed threateningly beside Adi in silent agreement. “For now, you want to come for a ride with just me? Come back to my place maybe?”

You nodded. “Yeah.”

“Bet you have questions too…”

“You going to fact-check my novel for me?” you asked with a playful smile, and Pumpkin laughed. It felt right to hear his loud, giggly laughter filling the space again.

“You’d actually have to let me read it for that, love, and you said you didn’t like showing your work to anyone until it was done.”

“I could make an exception for you, I guess,” you admitted with a bashful smile.

With Pumpkin still holding your hand, you paused on your way out to check on Adi, who looked a little hurt but otherwise alright, and you promised to check in with her later. Țepeș handed Pumpkin his helmet, and you let yourself be led from the shop. Your helmet was still in your slightly numb fingers, never having put it down, so you slid it back on with shaky hands.

After climbing with familiar ease back up onto the pillion seat of Pumpkin’s orange KTM, you snaked your arms around his middle and squeezed.

“I’m sorry it all came out this way,” Pumpkin said before he started up his bike. “This was not how I planned to tell you. I had no idea how I was going to break it to you, but that… that wasn’t it. I know you hate surprises, and that was a big one.”

“Not all surprises are bad,” you admitted. “And this one turned out ok in the end. Come on. I want to find out how much I’ve got wrong about the Fae.”

Pumpkin guffawed, his laughter audible even after he’d started up his bike and pulled away.

Turns out, you’d quite a lot wrong about the Fae after all, but Pumpkin was only too happy to put you right over pizza and a movie on his sofa that evening.

I really hope you folks enjoyed this one. If you did, please consider reblogging to show your support as well as leaving a like and/or a comment.

Do you want to see the other members of the group? Remember you can find out more about them here in this early post if you're curious. Tepes already has a love interest, and Ninja the mimic is claimed too, but if you're curious, lemme know!

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[3terna15unshin3]

Touch

Who will be the first to break?

2704 words

warnings: !! 18+ !! smut, mutual masturbation, unprotected sex, very minimal editing (sorry)

—

a/n: Not requested but last time i posted smut y’all really liked it lmfao😭😭 I also felt sufficiently inspired to write a mutual masturbation tbsg blurb bc of tdab pt 2 by the iconic @lottiecrabie and also this fic that i love by @wrongendofurcigarette <33333 thank u for the inspo besties ok anyway hope u enjoy love u bye xo

(I wrote an entire 15 chapter fic of this universe! Read it here)

—

Matty was supposed to touch down on the tarmac around half nine. But as a symbol of his amazing luck, weather delays held him back and Este sat at home, impatiently waiting and jittering with anticipation. It was almost eleven in the evening and he still hadn’t arrived.

The months he’d been gone inched slowly by, and she only felt herself missing him more the closer his return date approached. Este started to feel like the floors of their home were colder in his absence. Like the lights were either too dim that she had to squint or too bright that it made her head throb. But sulking about it didn’t help—so she busied herself to make time go by faster.

She went on runs with Keiko. Wrote her weekly pieces twice as fast. Read double the amount of novels. Dipped her right hand into her knickers and thought about Matty. Sometimes alone, and sometimes with his virtual company; always hearing him whine about how much better Este felt around him in comparison to his fist. 

There was usually food ready to satisfy his hungry post-flight state, but because of the late hour, he insisted that Este shouldn’t bother. He didn’t want to waste time eating. If I get hungry then I’ll just eat her, thought Matty during his Uber home.

She was on the brink of falling asleep when Matty sent her a message to let her know that he would pull up at any second. Her body sprung up and ran to wait in the doorway before she could even process the words. There were butterflies pounding at her chest purely at the way the approaching headlights hit the pavement. She leaned on the doorframe and attempted to appear cool and collected. Then, an idea came to mind.

He pretty much tackled Este into an embrace when he finally walked up. They waddled into the house and breathed in each other’s scents. “Hi baby,” Matty whispered, pulling his face away to bring her lips to his. 

But, only millimetres before they could graze, Este inched away. She had on a mischievous smirk instead, letting Matty feel her hot breath on his skin as she exhaled.

Worry grew in his mind. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing at all, love,” Este shook her head, backing away even more to grab the bags his hands gripped to bring them to their bedroom. A smirk still sat on her lips as he cluelessly followed behind her confident steps. “I was just thinking about how long it’s been since you’ve touched me.”

His throat immediately dried up as he caught on to what she was doing. Este knew they were both desperate for one thing—but wanted him to prove how bad he wanted it.

“Yeah, fuck. It’s been ages. So let me,” Matty begged, reaching to caress her jaw. She was quick to dodge.

“But don’t you ever wonder how long we can make it? Before we break?” 

Este’s hips swayed back and forth purposefully as she took the claw clip that sat on her bedside table. In a few swift manoeuvres, she threw her dark hair up and secured it there. He watched her hands work meticulously and adored the way the shorter wavy pieces fell out of the clip and dangled next to her face. What he didn’t adore was that he could now see so much of her neck, and that she surely wouldn’t let him kiss it. 

“What are you doing?” He asked gingerly.

It was a rhetorical question. You know exactly what I’m doing, thought Este.

“Posing a question, ‘s all.” She answered, walking back around the bed to exit their room and head to the kitchen. Matty followed, of course.

Their feet padded down the stairs. “Don’t do this to me, E. Please,” he finally vocalised. 

It took everything in her to leave him hanging for the couple of seconds it took to fetch the bottle of red she’d been saving. She uncorked it and took a swig, repressing the want (more like need) to pounce onto him like a cat. 

“First one to touch loses.”

"Fine. Game on."

—

They brought the bottle of wine over to the sofa and took turns sipping it. To not be as tempted, they even sat on opposite ends. Out of reach. 

It wasn’t until then that Matty realised she was wearing a pair of his boxers as shorts. She had to roll over the waistband a couple of times to stop them from falling off her hips, but they still fit loosely. The way Este was scrunched up—clearly trying to make herself comfortable within the couch cushions—made the boxers tug lower. Matty peered at the skin low on her hips and made the assumption that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. God. If he yanked them down her thighs there would be nothing between him and her cunt.

He adjusted his pants, growing hard at the thought. Not a great way to play if he wanted to win.

Este was just as hot and bothered as him, but was just a bit better at hiding it. She stared at his hand that gripped the remote, flicking through the options on Netflix mindlessly (though he couldn’t care less about what was on the telly). The veins on the back of his hand flexed, and Este’s eyes watched. She then trailed them upwards on his arm and took note of how sculpted they were. Had they always been that big? she thought. Bloody hell. 

As if on perfect cue, Matty scooched himself lower, now almost fully on his back to relax. He threw an arm up and behind his head, hand cradling the back of his neck. The action flicked the bottom hem of his t-shirt upwards, forcing the ink on his skin to be exposed to the air. His hips rose and wiggled back and forth before he sealed the comfy action with a quick yawn. Of course he chose to do it while he saw Este’s head turned to him instead of the television, feeling the burn of her gaze. Any other day, she’d be on his lap in seconds.

Her breathing quickened. It was a bit embarrassing that something so simple could drive her insane—so she briefly used her hands to cover her reddening face. Holding out as a strategy clearly wasn’t going well. So, Este thought of what might speed things up.

“Gonna go for a wee. You know what wine does to me,” she suddenly announced, getting up and running to the toilet. Sure, she really did have to go. But once she finished, she decided to leave the boxers on the bathroom floor instead of pulling them back on.

Walking back into Matty’s line of sight, now only clothed with a black baby tee that hugged her torso and nothing on her bottom half, Este stopped in front of him to bend down and grab the bottle of wine that sat on the coffee table. She turned around to face him and locked her eyes with his as she took a swig. 

His mouth fell open for the few seconds he maintained the eye contact, but soon let his focus fall down her body, ultimately stopping at her bare pussy. He watched the space below her belly button expand and contract as she slowly breathed in and out. He even saw her thighs clench together. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, he thought. This is torture. 

“My eyes are up here,” commented Este playfully, breaking the trance he was clearly stuck in, and then returning to her corner of the sofa. 

“Fuck off,” Matty confidently responded with a scoff, though she could tell from the small smile of defeat on his face that she’d caught him off guard. “Didn’t have the balls to leave the shirt behind too, huh? Only my boxers?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, do you want it gone? In that case—”

Matty then watched the small black article of clothing hit the floor, leaving Este completely nude & no more than a metre out of his reach. The same Este he hadn’t touched in nine weeks.

A smug look stared back at him as he thought of ways to one-up her. He couldn’t just copy and strip, like her. It had to be something more. So, he reached into his pants—still looking at her in the eye—pulling his cock out. Why beat around the bush? It was already red and hard, begging to be touched. And since he couldn’t touch her, he touched himself instead.

Este refused to look away. She couldn’t. Her brown eyes were locked onto his fist that tugged slowly up and down his length. Subconsciously, she swiped her bottom lip with her tongue. 

“Look at you, licking your lips. Wishing it was your mouth,” taunted Matty, “You don’t even want me to touch you. You want to touch me, baby. You love it when I fuck your face.”

He watched her writhe and sigh in dissatisfaction, seeing that Este knew he was right. Her hand inched down to her throbbing and exposed clit, finally daring to apply some pressure and whining in relief. 

“You’ve got quite the ego on yourself, Healy,” she squeaked, trying not to moan at her fingers circling her clit with haste. “You’ll be begging to cum in my mouth. Touch me first and maybe I’ll let you.”

Matty’s hips bucked upwards as he matched the speed of his pumps to that of Este’s hand against herself. “Fuck, you’re killing me,” he moaned, closing his eyes in pleasure and fantasy. 

Waiting until she saw his stare reconnect with hers, Este teased her fingertips south to her entrance. It was slick with wetness and desperate to be filled. Siding two fingers in, her jaw dropped open, and her hips rocked upwards to feel them deeper. A gasp escaped her lips. She let out a shaky groan when they bottomed out and yearned for them to be Matty’s instead.

“Mine don’t fill me up the way yours do.”

The sounds of both her fingers moving in and out of her cunt and him fucking his fist radiated throughout the room, overtaking whatever Netflix show Matty settled on. Both moving in sync.

“Come over here and sit on me, then. I can fuck you better than that,” he coerced.

Watching through his half-shut eyelids, he thought, I bet her wrist is tired. She’ll give in soon. But by then it was less of a thought and more of a prayer. 

“But that would mean you’d win,” Este pointed out the obvious. “And I can’t let that happen.” 

He rolled his eyes. “Turn to me, E. I need to see more of you,” commanded Matty. 

She listened and pivoted, spreading her thighs even further. She arched her back off of the sofa when her fingers grazed a certain spot, making her hold back what she knew would have been Matty’s name slipping past her lips. Her thumb rubbed furiously at her clit simultaneously. Surely he’ll touch me if I come, considered Este, chasing her high.

His lip was pinned between his teeth as he continued watching her. Her sopping pussy was in full view, making Matty think of what it felt like around him. The way she’d clench her walls just before he was about to cum and how it would always get him there faster. How easily he could make that familiar sensation a reality if he’d just give in.

Studying Este’s chest, where her other hand sat and fiddled with her hard nipples, Matty saw how quickly it heaved up and down. Her breaths were laboured. A layer of sweat glistened on her forehead and her gaze struggled to pin onto him. She’s close, he discovered.

“You’re almost there, darling. I know that arm of yours is tired. I’d have you cumming in seconds if you just come over and let me win,” he whispered desperately.

Este moaned at his words, speeding up her fingers. “So are you,” she pointed out, “and if you cum in your—fuck, Matty—if you cum in your hand, you won’t get to cum inside me.”

She made a good point. He sped up to match her, thrusting his hips up to meet his hand faster.

“Then come here and sit on me,” whined Matty, still not giving in, frustrating Este. Resentment for her silly game grew. If he wouldn’t let her win now, she had to do more. The visual wasn’t enough. She had to beg for it. Literally.

“Please, baby! I feel so fucking empty. I need you to fuck me now. Riding you won’t be enough. I need you to come over here and hold me down and fuck me—shit! Rail me so hard that we forget our own names. Need to feel you deeper than I ever have. Do whatever you want to me, please, Matty. I’ll do anything—”

Her voice pushed him over the edge. He didn't care about the stupid game anymore.

He wasn’t sure if he’d ever moved so fast in his life; climbing over to Este’s side of the sofa. She gasped when she felt Matty’s hands grip her hips to pull her closer, not giving her any time to adjust before sinking himself into her cunt.

They groaned in unison, the feeling they were chasing hit them even harder after the painstaking period of forbidden touch. She felt every inch of him against her walls, pressing a hand into her lower stomach to feel him there too.

“Is this what you wanted?” he intensely spat at her, beginning to pound into her with no avail.

Matty’s hips slammed together with hers over and over, lighting the fire in Este’s core. Her mind went hazy with pleasure and she struggled to even answer him. Her jaw was stuck agape and the only things he could hear out of her were frenzied and pornographic moans.

“Yes, fuck, yes. Don’t stop, I’m gonna cum,” she cried.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut as he felt his climax approach too. But he couldn’t keep them shut for long, as he craved the sight of her beneath him, still tirelessly swiping at her clit. Her breasts bounced up and down at the force of Matty’s hips, which now buckled with a messy rhythm. The hair that stuck to her wet forehead was swiped away by a finger of his, getting it out of the way, needing the full view of Este’s face. 

“Cum for me, E. I thought about this every night when I was gone. Couldn’t hold back any longer—fuck—you win. This pussy is mine. So perfect for me,” Matty egged. 

Este let go and the notorious clench of her walls pushed him to do the same. The warmth deep inside her signalled that Matty had shot his hot seed into her, groaning and worshipping her name as he did. She reached up to yank on his curls and saw stars for a moment, the pure euphoria carrying her high in pleasure like she’d never seen before. He gave her exactly what she’d been needing, those nights alone. Nobody could fuck her like him.

Her stomach immediately felt like jello in the aftershock of her orgasm. They both panted into each other's mouths, slick with sweat, giddy smiles on their faces. Matty’s arms gave out, laying on top of her gently, still twitching inside of her. He didn’t have an ounce of extra energy to pull out. Not that he really wanted to, anyway.

“What’s my prize?” Este asked, throat rough from the screaming she’d just done. 

Matty glanced at the TV, where the time was displayed. 00:28. They hadn’t even lasted half an hour at her ‘game’.

“I reckon I can make you cum three more times before we fall asleep?” he suggested.

“Deal,” she agreed, “Or you can fuck my face like you mentioned. Up to you,” finished Este with a giggle.

His eyes widened in shock, hiding his face in her neck as they both laughed.

“Might need a bit of time to, you know, recharge before we get to that. But I am not passing up on that offer.”

[sophiaatwdluver]

flowers?

summary: Carl sees you reading on your porch, he asks you what your reading and you say a book about flowers, you tell him your favorite flower and he gets it for you! :)

warnings: nothing really bad, no smut or angst, just fluff, use of Y/N, kiss on cheek, blushing

——————————————————————————

Im sitting on your porch steps, reading a book while eating breakfast, Carl was walking Judith, when he sees me he stops in his tracks, he stares for a second, wondering if he should approach me or not. He finally decides to approach me, he turns Judith’s stroller in my direction, he walks over to me, I look up at him with a smile, Carl feels a warm, jittery feeling in his stomach. butterflies. “Good morning….” He says nervously “uh…. Can I sit?” I nod smiling at him, he sits next to me, he peeks over my book “whatcha reading?” He says. “Oh, just some book about flowers. it says stuff like the ones you could eat, or make medicine and other things out of…. It’s pretty interesting, and useful” I say, kinda fast.

Carl nods, “you like flowers?” Carl says slightly excited, he’s always wanting to get you flowers, but he was always worried you would think it’s stupid. I smile and nod. “Do you have a favorite flower?” Carl asks tone filled with excitement and curiosity. I smile and nod, excited to be able to talk to someone about this. “The rose…. It’s so beautiful, and you can make medicine, skin care, tea-“ I start to babble about how much I love the rose, Carl smiles, finding my babbling adorable. He wants to find roses for me. He needs to find roses for me. I look up at him embarrassed that I was rambling “s-sorry” I say looking away, shy. Carl smiles “I think it’s adorable how you’re so fascinated by flowers” he says with a smile, I look up at him, slight blush creeping up my cheek, Carl realizes what he said. That he called me adorable to my face.

he also blushes, he looks away “I…” he looks down at Judith “Judith’s hungry…. See you later…” Carl rushes away, he finds Olivia, “hey, Olivia, can you watch Judith for a little?” Carl asks Olivia “sure” she says with a smile while grabbing Judith. Carl hurry’s away to find flowers for me. He’s really wants to. He needs to.

——————————————————————————

I’m sitting in the library, reading a novel, Carl nervously walks into the library with his hands behind his back, hiding the roses he got for me. He had spent all his afternoon going out the gates to hand pick them, then go back to his room to pick all the thorns out so they won’t hurt me. Carl approaches me, his hands still behind his back, I look up and smile. “Hey Carl” I say with a wide smile, clearly happy to see him. “Hey Y/N….. I uh….. got you something” Carl says awkwardly, his cheeks a deep shade of red. I smile even wider “thank you Carl, you didn’t have to” Carl pulls out the roses, showing me. My face lights up with pure happiness and excitement, I get up and hug Carl tightly, his blush creeping all alone his face. I kiss him on the cheek, his eyes widen. His whole face goes dark red. Blushing furiously.

I smile at him “thank you Carl” I say. Carl smiles also “I’d do it again in a heartbeat, all for you” he says while holding me close. He never. Ever. Wants this moment to end.

——————————————————————————

@carlsangel @rarllover3753 @txrasbae @carls

HIIIIII!!!!! OK IK RANDOM DROP😭 BUT I JUST HAD TO LET YALL KNOW IM BACKKKKKK, IM SORRY IF I TAGGED YOU AND YOU DONT CARE😭 IMA POST MORE SO LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANNA GET TAGGED THE NEXT TIME I WRITE (even if I tagged you for this, and if I tagged you here and you don’t want me to tags you, just tell me) ILY SM ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT❤️

[gold-rhine]

Inazuma Rewrite Act 3

Please start reading from part one before reading this. It will make no sense otherwise.

Act 3 pays off for Acts 1 and 2, and I made some major changes in them, such as change to reasons of vision hunt\Raiden motivations, Ayaka arc, entire resistance storyline, Transience setup, Yoimiya arc setup, so without reading them first, this part will not make sense.

In this installment:

Transcience pay off

Yoimiya arc

Kazuha conflict

Raiden confrontation

Kujou Sara arc

and more

All disclaimers from part one also apply, I’m not gonna copy paste them.

Yae Miko \ Raiden Preparation Training

ok, let’s start with the fact that current “raiden fight training” sucks. Like I get what they’re going for, and training episode idea is very anime, but like. Running in circles around a trashcan that hits you with boss moves is not fun. it is, in fact, super annoying. 

i want to keep the training angle, but make it more... spiritual. and thematic.

so, yae miko is like blah blah, you need to prepare to face Raiden, and I will train you, as the person who knows her the best.

Paimon is like wow, you’re gonna teach us to fight??

Yae Miko is like haha you’re so stupid, no, of course not. Your goal is to change raiden’s mind. For that, you need to know and understand her and where she’s coming from.

We will know you’re ready, when you can pass the Sacred Sakura trial

she leads traveler to the sacred sakura. there are like stone plates with symbols at the base, you know, the puzzle ones.

Yae goes like, do you know what Transience means? Transience is the dream of the nation of thunder. We find the greatest joys in mortal life in fleeting dreams, for is life itself not like the shadow of the thunder? Pursue your dreams into the clouds if you wish, and enjoy the unexpected silence of the dim lamp-lit nights.

traveler and paimon is like yeah wait, we saw smth like that in inazuma shrines and ruins

yae is like great, then show me the symbol of Transience. traveler looks at the puzzle stones, but there weren’t really anything like this in the prev locations which mentioned transience

player can fiddle with puzzle stones, but whatever combination they try, it doesn’t work

after a couple of tries, yae is like okay, it seems you still have much to learn! lets go, i’ll teach you

you go through the inazuma city with her, but seemingly only do bullshit. like, eating ramen, shopping, doing some light novels bs, and like traveler is paying for everything. not too long, like just few minutes, with a couple phrases per activity and fading to black, kinda montage of more and more exasperated and confused traveler and paimon until they’re like wait what the fuck is this. how is supposed to teach us anything??

yae does her signature bullshit smirks like hehe you’re too close-minded, you clearly haven’t understood ~Transience~, so buy me more stuff

paimon does her Angry Stomp, you know the one, like ugh! you’re just fucking with us to get us to pay for stuff, we’re done!

yae narrows her eyes menacingly with a smile like haha is this how u wanna talk to me you little flying shit, paimon hides behind traveler like oops sorry i didn’t say that, but then like, resistance messenger runs up to the traveler and traveler and paimon use this us an excuse to fuck off

Kazuha conflict\ Reveal of the true reasons for Raiden Gokaden fall

turns out messenger is from Kazuha. we meet up with him. he’s in the city despite being fugitive bc he’s heard some maniac is killing ppl, searching for the last scion of the Isshin school bloodline

listen, i love kazuha and i overall like his story quest, but it ends up being more character development for the cursed sword, not kazuha. and like i get it, it’s hard to write conflict for Kazuha bc he’s already escaped samsara, he’s the sole receiver of all therapy in genshin, he rolls 20 on every Wisdom roll, etc etc. 

but that doesn’t mean we can’t explore his character more in depth and give him a conflict, even if his beliefs do not change as the result, but just better articulated.

We’re keeping the quest mostly same, as I said, I like it fine, it’s still about kazuha going on a therapy tour with the cursed sword, but with like. actual stakes

because in canon, when the sword says like oh, together we will have power to defeat raiden, its obviously not really a temptation for kazuha. bc like. the war is already over! kazuha has already won! AND he personally blocked legendary ublockable move that his friend dreamed of doing. why would he go back and fight raiden again?? it makes no sense

so it ends up being just like. kazuha psychoanalyzing cursed sword the entire time. which cool and all, but i want to play quest about kazuha and not the sword??

but, if it happens DURING the war, it’s much more impactful. this is not just revenge, there are lives on the line and no way to fight raiden. so when the sword is like I will give you power to stand up to raiden, then its not only in memory of his friend, but to protect the resistance. It is now a believable choice that can give Kazuha a pause, because situation is dire and they need every advantage they can get

this is also to rhyme with the Delusions motif, the “my own strength is not enough, so I must turn to the corrupted source of power for which i know i will pay”

of course, in the end kazuha decides to not give in to the cursed sword, bc he sees through its facade that the sword is actually weakening and falling apart, but also because he is narrative foil to both scara (scara believes in doing anything to gain power to pursue his obsession, even at great pain to himself, this is why he’s tied with delusions, and then in sumeru quest gets into dotorre’s torture mecha) AND raiden, which i think fandom largely misses. 

both Kazuha and Ei had friends and loving, supporting family, but were kinda sheltered and isolated from people. Ei because she was Makoto’s shadow and didn’t really interact with public, and Kazuha because he was an heir of a falling noble house and he was feeling trapped and focused on trying to live up to his own expectations and anxieties (this btw was beautifully dramatized in his domain in prev summer’s golden archipelago) 

both of them were quiet and kinda introverted, Ei allowing her sister take a central stage and Kazuha admitting that ppl with grand aspirations always captivated him, which obv references his friend. then, they lost everything in one fell swoop. 

Ei lost her friends in the cataclysm and then, her sister. Kazuha’s family died, and later he had to flee his estate, becoming fugitive and then his friend was killed in a duel with Raiden. they both had their small-ish isolated worlds and lost them violently 

and Raiden tried to catch the shards of her falling world and keep them in place, cover them in stasis, as if it could restore what was broken. She saw eternity as the lack of change and decided to never change herself. She closed off from the world, literally destroyed her physical body and isolated her mind in a little locked world, focused solely on “preserving” herself.

in contrast, Kazuha opened up to the world. He didn’t try to stop the winds of change, he followed them. One of this themes is being a part of the world, “One with wind and clouds”, “One with the nature”, “Life has just begun and maybe, the whole world can be my home,” this is why his kit heavily features element absorption and his character stories emphasize how he’s sharp, notices little details in surroundings, even has sharp sense of smell. 

He reached out to people instead of isolating himself, and so he found new friends, he saw the endless beauty in the bigger world even after his own cozy snowglobe was shattered. 

His theme is not only about being open to the world, but also bringing different elements together, and he’s the one who brings people in inazuma arc together. He brings traveler to Thoma, then through him Gorou reaches Beidou and the mercs, etc. this is why he is the one who blocks raiden. 

he is her foil precisely because he can let go and doesn’t let his grief blind him, he will fight her because she needs to be stopped, but not because he wants to take revenge or fore her to suffer. He is the breaker of cycles of pain, not perpetuator

so kazuha refuses, like in original, sword deteriorates more and more, and in the end, becomes weak, but regains memories about his creator in exile in snezhnaya. 

but, with the added twist to the scene where kazuha sees memories of the sword. In our version, Shogun instituted vision hunt decree because vision holding blade smith collaborated with fatui and led to the fall of Raiden Gokaden, 5 sword art schools. 

But now we learn that Kazuha’s ancestor who made this cursed sword, was this very vision-holding blade smith, and he never betrayed Inazuma, instead, he was slandered by Fatui and it was all Scara’s plan on his misguided revenge against Raiden Gokaden.

as in canon, Kazuha reforges the sword with the last shreds of its power. It does not hold its previous cursed strength anymore, but it is a last sword made in lost technique of Kazuha’s family tradition and he swears to restore it, just as he does in canon

Vision Loss exploration\ Yoimiya was always relevant

after this, paimon and traveler are like ugh, we don’t want to go back to yae, we don’t know the answer to symbol of transience puzzle and she will just mock us more. Lets go see how Yoimiya is doing instead!

ok so, I want to address what I see as a problem in how genshin handled vision loss. like obviously, vision loss stands for trauma. and “wow after their vision was taken, they turned into a completely different person” works as initial impression, bc often when someone you know changes drastically, it can feel this way

where this narrative fails is that it never explores further, bc all characters we meet with vision loss are random NPCs we see for 15 minutes, so it ends up being shallow “this guy was very kind and selfless before, but after losing vision he completely ignores ppl he helped with “new number who dis” response”, which like???

framing ppl who are already going through inner turmoil and struggle as like, complete strangers who are not themselves anymore and also completely lose positive qualities tied to their visions, is so tactless and wrong. It’s still the same person, no matter how drastically changed, and they need support, not demonization like “inherently incapable of caring about people after losing vision”.

this is why i think its better to focus on one character players know and care about instead of several NPCs no one gives a fuck about

so we go visit Yoi and meet her with her dad during discussion. it’s festival time and their family always made fireworks for it, they have several orders now too. But, due to Yoi being caught as part of resistance, her family was blacklisted and they can’t get necessary supplies to create fireworks, specifically like special chemical powder. 

so now, Yoi needs to go to all the clients and tell them there will be no fireworks for them for this festival.

Yoi’s dad is very supportive and doesn’t blame Yoi, but she still feels its her fault. She’s not a firecracker she was before, now quieter and harsher, and it does feel like she’s someone new, who traveler and paimon do not know.

we go to the clients to inform them with Yoi, and while doing so learn what fireworks meant for each of them. for some, it was friendship, how now matter how different their lives were, they would get together and celebrate with fireworks. for old couple, its ritual to celebrate their marriage and so on.

they are all sad, but understanding, and supportive and concerned about Yoi. she puts on brave face, but its obvious for the traveler that its hard for her to pretend to be fine.

on the way back, they have a convo about how its tacking a toll on Yoi, and how she feels bad, but also hopeless, and it also feels like something as joyous and frivolous as fireworks is meaningless in the middle of the war and vision hunt

we get back and find Yoi’s dad talking to customers. Its a refugee family, they explain that they live on another island, but once in a few years would visit Narukami for the festival and buy fireworks. They were forced to go to Narukami right now bc of the war, but since they are here already, they want at least something good to come out of it. And they have a cute little girl who is too young and never before saw fireworks and she’s sooooo excited, and the whole time they were running from their home they were consoling her by saying they go to Narukami to see the festival and the fireworks 

Yoi’s dad starts defeatedly explaining that unfortunately they cannot make fireworks right now, but Yoi interrupts him, and for a moment she’s her old self, bright and joyful, she reassures the little girl that its okay, they will have fireworks for sure, and these will be the prettiest fireworks ever!

family leaves, excited, and Yoi drops the facade. she wasn’t “cured” in a moment, but she is determined 

traveler and paimon are like - oh but how will we get fireworks??

Yoi is like “tenryo commission has this confiscated powder in their warehouse and we are raiding it, bc this little girl is getting her family fireworks if its the last fucking thing i do”

bc she realized, viscerally, that actually, fireworks will be more meaningful now BECAUSE of the dark and uncertain times, not despite of them, and whether its someone childhood OR last years of life, time is fleeting and impossible to get back, so giving people joy and hope is more important than ever

she’s not “healed”, she’s not back to her old self yet, but we see that there’s still spark in her and hope for recovery, even if she struggles, and deep down she is still same kind and caring Yoi we’ve met at the start

we do the warehouse domain, fight, do puzzles, get powder, Yoi and her dad make fireworks, we watch basically same cutscene as of the end of Yoi’s first quest now, with ppl looking up at the sky and seeing fireworks and Yoi and traveler watching from the hill.

at which point i want to mention that like, despite some part of fandom calling canon Yoi irrelevant, she always supported inazuma themes, which i will illustrate by using the dialogue from the quest verbatim and showing how i don’t even need to rewrite it to make it fit

Yoimiya: It was by chance that I happened to be born into the Naganohara family, so it was by chance that I ended up learning this craft from my pops.

Yoimiya: It's also by chance that I've met so many people, learned so many things, and discovered that people associate watching fireworks with the things that are most precious to them. 

Yoimiya: Fireworks that disappear in a flash of light are probably the furthest thing away from the eternity that our Shogun desires. 

Yoimiya: But people's feelings don't just disappear, and it's those feelings that give fireworks their purpose. If nobody wanted to watch fireworks, then they wouldn't exist.

Traveler: That's another kind of eternity.

boom! Yoimiya was always a representation of transience philosophy, hoyo just didn’t dramatize it properly and without transience explored during main quest, she felt like she doesn’t belong, while she was an actual Inazuma spiritual end game goal all along.

Makoto Reveal

anyway. traveler, pauses, repeats themselves. “Another kind of eternity... Eternity in fleeting things, because people’s dreams give them meaning...”

they get up and run to yae, looking determined, confused paimon following behind

“i know the answer,“ traveler tells to yae and she smirks, leads them to the puzzle stones near Sakura

“So, show me the symbol of transience“

but instead of fiddling with the stones, traveler gestures at the sakura petals, gliding on the wind and people watching theim

“This is the eternity in transience“

yae chuckles in delight “oh, finally, i thought you’ll never get it. How could be fleeting dreams be captured in stone puzzles?”

paimon is like ooooh is this why you led us around eating ramen and shopping? you were not just fucking around on our money, you wanted to make us think about enjoying momentary fleeting things?

yae gives her signature facetious response like oh of course how could you think i was scamming, how ungrateful of you etc etc, but its clear that she both actually was trying to give a hint AND enjoyed scamming them for free stuff

then she gets quieter, says pensively “but it seems the company of your friends was better help with figuring it out... She always did say that we immortals cannot understand beauty of transience the way humans do...”

paimon and traveler are like “She???”

thats when the cutscene revealing that there were two shoguns and that raiden’s sister died at the cataclysm plays. nothing much to add here, i think the existing cutscene works well, but because in canon it’s played AFTER raiden’s defeated, it feels a bit weird, like post-factum excuse.

like raiden goes oh well ok, i’ll get rid of vision hunt decree, by the way i had a twin sister who died, like?? i think pacing-wise its better to learn why raiden is Like That before “punch her until she changes her mind” fight than after she had already changed her mind

so, paimon is like ooooh, so this is why it seemed that raiden changed so much! she didn’t change, we just saw the ideas of the first shogun

yae is like yes, ei’s grief for her sister and differences in their views is important for you to understand for when you will try to change her mind in her hikikomori mind palace

Storming the palace\ Signora interlude

then yae does the ok lets get Kojou Sara quests, which I don’t really feel like changing, bc like. it does its job fine enough. we need to establish that tenryou commission was corrupted and working with fatui AND that kujou sara will go against her only family for justice

the ayato infiltrating like 5 rebellion guys with gorou and kazuha to take the palace is kinda dumb logistically, but tbh this is not game of thrones. genshin works mostly on anime logic where things happen bc its cool and fitting for the character\narrative beats. making actually realistic attack plan i feel like would be too long, complex and derail from the storyline, so i’d say lets keep it roughly same

What I’m gonna change is Signora cameo. And by change I mean remove it completely. I spent a lot of time trying to make her death work, but it just doesn’t. She has nothing to do with Inazuma story or themes, shows up for 2 seconds and dies immediately. This is a shitshow, like, we’d need to derail whole archon quest to insert her and it still wouldn’t be good. 

if Signora has to be dead for like, the strategic plot reasons, here is my version of how it should go down

ok but we need an opportunity for raiden to do her one hit boob kill move, and how are we gonna do this if we remove Signora?

easy, sara confronts her tenryuo adoptive dad in front of raiden. like, rn she runs to him, he has a speech about how he basically doesn’t care about raiden herself, but really only worships the Boob Nuke. he gets defeated and then sara runs off to raiden and gets knocked out off-screen, like??? this is so awkward. what the fuck is the point

instead, sara is like right now is the time when Tenryuo chief is reporting to raiden, we need to tell her he’s lying to her!

we follow sara to the palace and confront tenryuo dude in front of raiden. he’s like you have no proof u insolent girl and this is after everything i’ve done for u! 

sara challenges him to a duel before the throne and raiden agrees. 

we fight the dude and defeat him. he launches into basically same unhinged speech, but now raiden is here to hear it. 

She realizes that even those who she considered the most loyal of her servants worship not her, but her power, because she removed herself from inazuma and all people know of her is to fear the Boob Nuke. this is a important step in her development that we will explore a bit later

then she annihilates him which i think is much more thematically relevant bc he died from the same blade he worshipped

then, raiden is like well, i’ve dealt with a traitor, but don’t think that it gets YOU off the hook, a criminal is a criminal and I’ll destroy you

then we duel, bc like. her using boob sword at the start of battle is thematically wrong. its a finisher, a kill move. in the first duel she used it at the end. she needs to charge her burst first, you know

so, we go to the plane of euthemiya and fight. it basically goes the same, first traveler has elements disabled, then wishes of inazuma people awaken and empower them.

raiden is shaken, but not convinced. bc this is the Gives a Fuck raiden, it’s not that she didn’t know her people had ambitions, tho she could underestimate them, its that she thought these ambitions can only lead them to ruin and she, as an arbiter of eternity who sacrificed her body to lock her mind in a sword and evade “corruption“, is the one who knows best.

she rallies up and counter-attacks. similar scene as in the first duel happens, she throws traveler to the real world and follows, readying the kill move

and thats when kazuha blocks her 

i think in canon this isn’t given appropriate weight for raiden. bc like. that was her legendary UNBLOCKABLE strike. she one-shot gods and monsters with it. this was her personal proof of perfection, she knows she might not be a philosopher and leader like her sister, but she is The best warrior. like if you want to change her mind, you have to fight her in a duel, her mastery of sword is how she justifies that she’s right to herself

and now a mortal blocked her most perfect move

and not just any mortal! She recognizes the style of the blade he wields. Isshin blade, even though Isshin art died as Raiden Gokaden schools fell

she asks him how did he get this blade and he tells her the truth he learned from the cursed sword

her people never betrayed her. instead, she was mislead by the fatui and pushed her own subjects into running away to the enemies because they didn’t believe she would listen and be merciful to them

the worst thing is that she knows they were right. she would not have been merciful.

and now she watches the bitter irony of how her eternity crumbles.

tenryuo commission, who she thought of her most loyal and closest servants, upholding laws and traditions, in truth were corrupted from the inside, tradition nothing but a hollow form, a fake shape kept just to appease her, with no true soul or meaning, lusting only after power

but the last scion of the clan she though betrayed her, an exile and criminal, a vagabond and pirate, is the one who embodied isshin art she thought lost wholeheartedly, the one who preserved the last true blade of his school. the one who blocked her strike that she thought of as the truest.

and with the vision of a man she had once already defeated in a duel

with all of that, with countless visions rallying up to support an outlander against their own god, with the proof that even killing rebels would be useless because ambitions of the dead will be picked up and reignited again by the living, with proof of the corruption rotting in her government, she cannot see herself in the right anymore

this is why she lifts the vision hunt decree

Raiden’s First Story Quest 

I think there’s general agreement in fandom, even among raiden fans, that her first story quest is one of the worst in game. its so boring and pointless. you go on a date with raiden and then she fights some nerd in a duel. who gives a fuck.

it also takes for granted that all players even WANT to hang out with raiden, which like, at this point she was only a giant dick to everyone around and not everyone is a boob worshipper. for people who already disliked her, being forced to babysit her around and take her photos only feels more annoying and antagonizing

Again, our main change in characterization for raiden is that she actually gives a fuck. like, in canon her country is on the brink of complete collapse after civil war and fatui schemes, 2 out of 3 commissions are barely functional, her robot-sona is malfunctioning the storm, and she not only does not give a fuck, but traveler has to jump through hoops to get to her. and she just goes on a date, trying sweets and light novels. like. guuuuurl. come on, get a grip for 5 fucking minutes and do your damn job. we had to randomly stumble into tenryuo nerd being bullied for her to take ANY part in inazuma’s politics

so, logical thing to do for Raiden Who Gives a Fuck is to go out and try to sort out mess she’s now learnt her country was turned into. 

like, she summons traveler and goes hey, i know we’re not exactly on bestest terms, but I need to root out corruption and fatui’s shit specifically, and i don’t trust my government officials right now, so i need your help in being a guide bc i haven’t left the room in 500 years. 

kujou sara is also there since raiden deemed her trustworthy bc sara was the one who exposed tenryuo corruption to her

i got an ask about how canonically Kanjou commission was in a vulnerable state due to commerce falling with sakoku decree,  and so they could be an easy first foothold for fatui to get themselves into the country, and i think raiden quest would be a good place to explore it, while she’s investigation corruption.

i’m not gonna write the whole plot, it doesn’t really matter, the main points is that raiden sees isolation actually doesn’t protect her ppl, but harms them, that when ppl are not allowed to do smth that they want, they will turn to illegal and much more harmful ways instead, for which delusions are an allegory.

raiden can still do fluffy stuff like trying mango milkshakes or whatever, but while going from one commission to another instead of just wandering around on a date

tenruyo nerd can also be there if hoyo wants to include him for some reason. they can even have same useless duel with raiden at the end that makes her appoint him head of commission

Kujou Sara

as I said, Sara is also there, going with raiden on investigation, showing her competence, until its clear that she’s the sole hinge on which entire tenryuo commission depends.

raiden praises her for her loyalty, and Sara, incredibly earnest and grateful, explains her backstory, how she was a kid falling to her death from a mountain while enemies were storming it, and how she received vision during the fall and thus survived, so she now not only owes her life to raiden, but can’t imagine better cause to serve, as clearly, raiden is omnipotent and all knowing and caring enough to save an insignificant tengu child like her

raiden frowns. she does not grant visions herself, in fact, she is not even aware when electro visions are granted - this is canon btw, it’s from raiden’s own voicelines.

tenryuo nerd sees that raiden is about to speak up, and even though he obv doesn’t know vision secrets, he realizes from her expression alone that she’s about to contradict sara’s story

he interrupts her, apologizes profusely, but takes her aside and begs her to not say to sara anything that can shake her loyalty, because again, this commission is going to crumble without her. These are temoulteous times and they need sara the most, raiden can tell her whatever she wants after inazuma is stabilized

but the thing is that being truly honorable is supposed to be raiden’s redeeming grace. she might be stubborn and inflexible, ruthless and inept, but she is straightforward and honorable, she cannot accept loyalty given on false premises, and we need to show that in action

raiden tells sara bluntly that she did not give her a vision, that she was not aware that sara was in risk of death at all

sara is shaken. her world crumbles before her. this is not just bc of her own vision and life that she thought she owed, but in fact, did not. no, much more it’s about vision hunt decree. its about all the people she was sent after, talked to them and their crying families for hours, telling them that this is for their own good, that shogun knows better, sara herself is an example, is a proof. it’s about all the people she didn’t convince and had to take their visions by force, comforting herself in the knowledge that she personally might not understand shogun’s plan, but what she knows is that is infallible.

and now it turns out it’s not true at all.

this, she cannot take. she asks raiden to free her from service. and bc again, raiden is honorable, even knowing the damage it will do, she lets sara go.

after that, she shows up in events and side quests, showing her on a journey to find herself.

we see her in yae miko’s story quest, protecting ppl from the guy who was possessed by the oni spirit, and later, watching yokai spirits dance in the skies and yearning

we see her in an event with a ghost umbrella, being strict and cross with yokai kids for causing so much ruckus, but secretly fond and protective of them, and playing off her funny rivalry with itto

we see her in itto’s quest, in a part where traveler asks ppl about itto’s character, and she’s being fair, says that he might be an idiot and hooligan, but he would never harm or kidnap innocent ppl

we see her in irodori festival, organizing the community, bc she knows how to do it and she’s good at it and *someone* has to (and bc she cares about ppl without any order telling her to)

then, she’s in kokomi quest, bc kokomi asks her to be present at negotiations, bc she’s the only one from tenryuo in whose honor kokomi can really trust. sara tells her that she has no official standing anymore, but kokomi asks her to be there anyway. later, when dishonesty from tenryuo side is revealed and sara helps to stop the ppl who are trying to sabotage negotiations, kokomi asks sara to vouch for what happened in report to raiden, so that this is not blamed on watatsumi and fair deal can be cut

sara says again that raiden has no reason to listen to her and take the worse deal just on her word. and yet, after a couple of days, report comes back. raiden listens to sara’s word and does not force watatsumi to accept the bad conditions. we can see this affecting sara, her being conflicted

sara\kokomi shippers, ur welcome btw

then, raiden’s second story quest. it starts as of now. we accept commission to deal with abyss wolves spawning, go to the mountain of sacred sakura. but instead of just meeting raiden, we first see kujou sara.

she’s there to protect people because this is who she is, this is the ambition that summoned her vision to begin with, and no lies and manipulations can change that.

like at the beginning of her story, she’s on the mountain, protecting her home from the enemies

like at the beginning, she falls and survives the fall, but she’s too injured and about to be killed by the wolves

but this time, inazuma’s archon has not locked herself in a room.

raiden appears, destroying the wolves and saving sara. this time, she is not just an idea based on false belief of a child. she is there in flesh to finally take action that sara believed she was doing so many years ago.

as in canon, raiden says that she will fight the monsters alone, bc its her duty to protect inazuma.

and this is when sara pledges her allegiance to raiden again.

raiden tells her that her saving sara’s life does not mean that sara now owes that life to her, as raiden’s duty is to protect all of her people

but this is not why sara wants to follow her now. finally, she sees real raiden and not childish illusion of an omnipotent goddess who always knows better. but real raiden is honest, honorable, and despite being strongheaded and often misguided, someone who cares deeply for her ppl and is driven by the same goal to protect as sara

sara tells this to her, asserting that she will not serve her out of obligation or with blind loyalty like before, that she will now think critically and question and tell raiden if she believes she;s wrong, but she will believe in her nonetheless as long as raiden cares about inazuma over herself

raiden says that then they will share an eternity in service of inazuma people, as they should

as sara is injured, raiden sends her to organize evacuation instead of fighting, and quest goes on as in canon

sara\raiden shippers, ur welcome btw

Ancient Sakura Blooms Again

I don’t want to change much else about raiden’s second quest, bc its already pretty fucking good and manages to speedrun raiden’s character development in 45 minutes.

instead, all of my rewrite is meant to be a setup to establish both raiden’s conflict and makoto’s personality and philosophy beforehand, instead of getting infodump from old man ghost in 1.5 scenes

this way, raiden coming to accept the eternity as transience is natural progression instead of speedrun and makoto’s appearance has bigger impact, since she was haunting the narrative from the start and we came to know about her gradually

also, irodori festival can go pretty much the same. scara being behind raiden gokaden fall is now more significant, bc for our version it was inazuma’s inciting incident, and now just like. random lore bit.

also, both raiden and yae miko show up in comedic cameos during festival, but after they learn it was scara, there is a brief serious scene as raiden realizes that while she was blaming fatui for corrupting inazuma, it was only possible bc she neglected her own creation, which is a metaphor for inazuma’s isolation as a whole. she doesn’t explain that ofc, just looks striken

“i thought i’m giving him peace...“

“i’ve told you we should’ve destroyed that puppet“, yae miko spits out (she did canonically wanted to off scara after raiden decided he’s not fit for gnosis bc he cried)

ofc, we won’t give proper backstory before sumeru, but it would be a nice tease that will get deeper meaning once we do know, and also illustrate that both raiden’s solipsistic abandonment and yae miko burning bridges instead of dealing with ppl is not great governing strategies

also, irodori has additional ayaka storyline about how she got involved in all this investigation stuff as a distraction to get away from the house bc ayato asked her to wear family jewels for the festival finale and she sold them in act 2, but she’s too afraid to tell it to ayato

finally, after learning of kazuha’s family keeping secrets from each other that hurt them in the long run, she finally gets brave enough to tell ayato what she did

he stops her mid-sentence and tells her to go check the chests

she’s confused, but obeys. she runs back holding the jewelry, being like oh my god what?? how is that back?? did u buy it back??? did u know the entire time???

of course he knew the entire time. he’s proud of her. he only wished she trusted him enough to ask for his help directly.

you didn’t use the commission funds for this, right? ayaka hesitates for a second and ayato laugh.

of course not. why would he need to steal from commission when there are so many fatui assassins to loot

oh, i always knew you wouldn’t. wait what....

ayato’s quest i’d rewrite completely. he’s still manipulate mansplain manslut, but in better political machinations then sabotaging a wedding of npcs and giving hannibal lector speeches to random goons

we’ve scorched out inazuma’s corruption in raiden first quest, now is the time to restructure and modernize commissions which were gutted by said corruption, for which raiden assembles yae, sara, traveler and ayato, who is the head of only commission that did not sell out to fatui

ayato and yae miko are incredibly petty cunts to each other in a very smiley passive aggressive manner, but they team up to come up with devious machinations for the greater good

sara is there not only for military expert role, but also to speak up for the common ppl which she is finally closer to, and to ground the schemers

raiden sometimes thoughtfully says “why don’t we duel them to death?“ as solution to many problems, and when everyone yells no, shrugs

overall, its kinda rough going and obvious that there are a lot of problems ahead, but also clear that inazuma did change and grew, raiden is no longer a solipsistic tyrant and she has a diverse council she listens to and actively engages with her country’s problems

btw, in ayato vs yae miko schemes off he gets to win and be smug bc its his birthday story quest

Yoimiya’s second story quest

Yoi’s second quest is already v good and obv has a lot of soul in it, i wouldn’t change too much, except for the premise

bc this quest is the reason i decided to make vision loss plotline at all. bc this quest is already perfectly written to be culmination of that plot line, and frankly, gets a lot of ??? without it

like, it starts bc yoi just randomly decides to go on vacation to wish on falling stars. like ok i guess. and she’s like i didnt really care but the whole village really got into it and want me to see it, so i’m doing it for them. like?? why would they be invested in random vacation like that?? mb ok they just love yoi

but then traveler goes to nahida and she’s like sorry, meteor showers happen like once in 200 years. but traveler and paimon are very insistent that they have have to do it for you, they can’t disappoint her. when like. its a random vacation! and yoi is not a type of person to be like ugh i didn’t get to see falling stars, my trip is RUINED

but no, they beg nahida to help like its big deal, and nahida agrees to involve aranara, despite no adult being able to see aranara is a big deal in lore. and then they have a whole conversation about is it ethical to trick yoi into believing this meteor shower is real if it’s just a dream, even if she’ll learn truth later, when like.... it’s a vacation????? she’s just there to have fun???? why are you all so serious

basically, beginning of this quest makes little sense, bc it has no actual stakes until girl in a wheelchair shows up, but narrative treats it very seriously when like “yoi has fun on vacation“ is the only stated goal for the start

BUT, if taken as part of vision loss story, everything snaps into place.

after vision hunt ended, visions were returned to their owners. but not all of them reignited on the spot, and Yoimiya is one of the people whose vision did not activate

and is it any surprise? after all she’s seen in a war, all she’s been through, how could she go back to believing that the world is a good and happy place, in the inherent wonder and joy of it?

her vision stayed grey and silent in her hands. she feels bad and guilty that she can’t be happy go lucky as before, when her father and all of the villagers care so much about her

they nudge her to go on a trip to see the falling stars, inspiration for fireworks, in hopes it will remind her of why she loved them so much before

this is the stakes, this is why inazuma ppl care, why traveler cares enough to ask nahida and why nahida would be moved to break tradition and let yoi interact with aranara, why they have this long convo about if it’s right to trick yoi. bc f it’s about reigniting her belief in world’s miracles, then yeah, it makes a lot more sense to worry about truth of it

not only this, but the disabled girl turns from just random npc to a mirror parallel to yoi. both of them were harshly and suddenly hurt by the world, both lost will to live. and the kicker is that yoi is going along bc she feels bad and bc her family and friends are worrying about her, but she only *really* get into this when she meets this girl

because this is what she was always about, not just happy go lucky girl, but a gold koi, a light of happiness and luck talisman for other people, especially for kids. for this girl, she will believe is the wishing stars

of course, her vision reignites when in aranara dreamland she takes girl’s hand and jumps onto the falling stars to fly across the sky. because it’s not about how the world is cruel. its about how good we can be to each other. what if it’s just a shared dream? We find the greatest joys in mortal life in fleeting dreams, for is life itself not like the shadow of the thunder? Pursue your dreams into the clouds if you wish

[cardcaptorsakura96]

A Pleasant Ruse

Fandom: Supergirl

Characters: Kara Danvers, Lena Luthor, Andrea Rojas, Alex Danvers, Winn Schott

Summary: Lena runs into her ex-Andrea who wants her back. Lena panics and tells her that Kara is her girlfriend. Will Kara be willing to help Lena keep up the ruse?

Lena looked at her phone and sighed as she walked down the street. L-Corp stock was down again after Lex’s latest stunt against Superman. The Board was at each other’s throats about what to do. Normally, these things didn’t get to her, but today she just felt like curling into a little ball and hiding in the middle of nowhere.

“Sometimes I wish I could go somewhere where no one knew my name,” muttered Lena. 

Normally, she would wallow in her apartment and drink the night away, but she knew she didn’t have to do that anymore, especially with Kara and her friends. She blushed when she thought of Kara. Every time she smiled, it would light up the room. She was hoping a little of that light would rub off on her today. When she called Kara an hour ago, she was happy that she was available to talk but was wondering if Lena would be able to do so at Noonan’s. She was saving seats for some of the others in their friend group. Lena would rather they be alone, but she realized that she did call Kara out of the blue without necessarily considering her current plans. Also, her curiosity was piqued. Noonan’s wasn’t normally opened passed 10 p.m. during the week. However, it was currently 10:39 p.m.

After five more minutes, she began to see the outline of Noonan’s but was surprised to see not only was the place lit up, but there were multiple cars parked down the block. As she got closer, she noticed that the place was packed. It was more crowded than the morning rush. When she got inside, Lena looked around the crowded room and smiled when she saw Kara hopping up and down waving at her from the back. She shook her head and tried to maneuver her way towards Kara. 

As she got closer, she nearly stopped and blushed. Lena didn’t notice before because she could only see Kara’s face and arms when she was at the front of the restaurant, but now that she was in front of the blonde, she was surprised at what she was wearing. She had on a green short-sleeved crop top, black short shorts, and brown hiking shoes. Her hair was flowing down her back. The entire outfit highlighted Kara’s muscular form. Kara usually wore things that covered her fully. She didn’t realize that Kara had a hardcore twelve-pack abs, and toned legs and arms. She gulped when Kara hugged her tightly. She could feel the heat in her face growing. Lena had to fight to keep her arms next to her instead of caressing her abs. 

“Lena, I am glad that you were able to come out!” exclaimed Kara excitedly. 

“Me too,” squeaked Lena. 

As they went to sit down, Kara stared at her with a frown. 

“Are you ok? Your face looks a little flushed and you are panting.”

Lena tried to seem unfazed but felt like her brain was in overdrive. 

She started fanning herself and shakily said, “I’m, um, fine. Yes, I am fine.”

Kara stared at her hesitantly and said, “You don’t seem so sure.”

Lena let out a nervous laugh and said, “Don’t worry. I just got winded trying to get back here. I don’t think I have ever seen this place so packed before, even during their morning rushes.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that they are having an event here tonight. You know the author Helena Bromfield?”

Lena nodded and said, “Ah, yes! She has a bunch of popular action books.”

“Yup! That is the one. Well, she is having a book reading for her latest novel: Alana and the Lost Civilization of Atlantis at midnight tonight. She will then host a Q&A followed by a book signing. That is why a lot of the people here are in costume.”

Lena looked around and felt a little foolish. She had been so focused on seeing Kara that she didn’t notice the outfits everyone was wearing. They all looked like they were out of some archeological action movie. Lena shook her head and stared back at Kara. 

“I never took you as one that was into cosplaying. You look very good as Alana.”

Lena felt her face flushed again and looked down. 

Good doesn’t begin to describe it. She looks sexy as hell.

Lena had to slowly breathe in and out to try to control her racing heart. Lena had secretly been a fan of Bromfield’s work. Her mother always disapproved of sci-fi and fantasy. Her thoughts were living in reality was more important than make-believe. However, the books offered her a brief escape from all the trauma of that household, mostly done by Lex. She would imagine going on an adventure with the Great Alana as she explored distant worlds and planets. She recently had been fantasizing about Kara as Alana and whisking her off on an amazing adventure. The thought caused her to blush harder. 

Can’t believe I get to live out part of my fantasy!

Kara chuckled while rubbing the back of her neck and said, “Thanks! I wasn’t sure if I could pull this off.”

Lena stared at her dumbfounded. 

She thinks she couldn’t pull it off! She looks ten times better than the initial character description for Alana. I am surprised that guys and girls aren’t flocking to her now!

Lena cleared her throat and said, “You pull off the look amazingly. I’m surprised the other people cosplaying as Alana don’t look at you with envy.”

Kara blushed while laughing. 

“You are too kind.” 

They looked at each other shyly for a moment before Lena asked, “If the book reading doesn’t start until midnight, why are people here so early?”

“Good seating. Alex made me promise to get here at 9 to save seating for her and Winn since they wouldn’t be able to get here until after 11. I got here at 10, and I had to fight people in order to get this booth since it was so packed.”

Lena chuckled which caused Kara to frown.

“What’s so funny?” pouted Kara.

“I didn’t mean to laugh. It is just that I wished I had gotten here sooner to see you try to defend your territory.”

Kara chuckled and said, “It didn’t get nearly as dramatic as that. I just gave a very stern look until they backed off.”

Lena raised an eyebrow and said coyly, “Really? A stern look?”

Read the rest on AO3

[trapped-inside-the-vortex]

My problem with Owen Harper

TW - SA and just straight up creepiness

Owen is a character who has always rubbed me the wrong way and I want to go into why because I see a surprising amount of people defending him. For a character who’s second scene (I think)

was fucking SA, I’m not surprised by how great Owen was at making Gwen uncomfortable. I started to read Slow Decay, which is set pre cyberwoman and pre Gwen/Owen. Owen basically invites himself out with Gwen after she said she wanted to go alone, squeezed up next to her on the invisible lift where Gwen tensed up to avoid him touching her and his response to this is him thinking “if that’s how she wants to play this” and acknowledging how uncomfortable she feels. I felt so bad for Gwen reading as the novels tend to paint her in a bad light; I had a feeling that they’d attempt to pin the situation on her. He’s used alien pheromones to make people shag him and this scene is simply seen as “woah look bi moment” by a bunch of Owen defenders and it fucking infuriates me. He’s also horrible to Tosh (and Gwen) in other ways. Every moment feels like he’s trying to get in their pants and he only started improving as a person when he died and lost the ability to get it up. Someone give me a redeeming quality about Owen please I need to understand his fans.

And I’m going to say this now because it is the only argument I see to try and excuse Owen’s behaviour, his shitty childhood does not make his behaviour ok!

[akiranzee]

🌠 • ° ` — “WISHING FOR YOU”

-> PAIRINGS: Alhaitham x gn!Y/n -> SUMMARY: Alhaitham and Y/n L/n, from 2 different universes, suddenly encounter by a miracle. -> WORD COUNT: 2.2k+ -> CONTAINS: fluff, cliffhanger at end (imsry), swearing, KINDA CONFUSING PLOT?? (idk) & alhaitham is 25 while reader is 22. -> A/N: KINDA INSPIRED BY “Your Name”?? IDK I HAVEN’T RLLY FINISHED WATCHING IT LOL. C/n is “cat’s name” :)).

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-------------Complete!-----------

“Ok I give up. How come all of you has him when I don't have him.” You gave your friends a deadpanned look, setting your tablet down.

“It’s called luck darling.” One of your friends replied, sending you a playful wink.

“Well my luck is seriously dead. Anyway, I’m going home. I need to feed my cat.” You said, getting your shoulder bag and leaving your friend’s house.

“Aw, I thought you were gonna stay.. Anyway, say hi to C/n for me!” One of your friends yelled back, waving at you, and you also did, but your back was faced to them.

~~~~~

Reaching your home after a few more steps, your cat greeted you happily.

“Aw, you’re a cute little thing, aren’t you, C/n?” You petted them and led them inside the house, “come, let's get you food, hmm?”

After giving your cat their food, you hummed as you cooked your own dinner. You tasted the curry you were cooking, and it tastes delicious. You were delighted by the result as this was the first time you’re cooking curry.

You took a plate and served the curry on the table, but as you did, suddenly, the lights went out. The only thing visible to you now was the scorching, running light outside.

You peeked through your window, and saw a meteor shower outside, as your cat followed you.

You’ve heard that wishing on a meteor shower will make your wish come true.

You don’t believe it, but you instead find it quite childish. But trying it out right now doesn’t sound bad, does it? Especially when you’ll lose nothing if you try.

You closed your eyes and wished.

And as you opened your eyes, the meteor shower has ended and the lights went back on.

It was peculiar, but your stomach was demanding for food, so you never really gave it any thought.

~~~~~

But as the next day started, you went inside the library you’re working at, and all your fellow librarians were whispering and gushing on about something, or someone.

You walked over to them and asked, “hey, what’s up you guys?”

“Eee! Y/n, you’re here! See that man with gray hair and green eyes? He’s so handsome!” Your close co-worker squealed as she pointed at him, which you followed, revealing a gorgeous man reading a book.

Just like the meteor shower last night, you were mesmerized by the sight in front of you. And you feel like the emptiness of your whole world was suddenly filled just by staring at him.

But soon, it was cut off as the woman’s hand appeared in your sight, forcing you to stop staring and come back to earth.

“Ah… sorry. Let’s get to work, guys.” You changed the subject and immediately went to your post, serving as the cashier.

Apparently, the library you’re working at has millions and millions of books, that nobody dared count it. It had all the books people would want; romance, novel, documentaries, horror, adult, and more.

But only rich people would dare buy a book from here, considering the prices of each book being $5,000+.

That’s why you were shocked when the gray-haired man literally carried 10 books and put them in front of you, handing you his credit card.

“Umm… Are you sure you’re gonna buy all of this?” You asked him once again to make him rethink his decision. But fortunately, he bought it all.

“Yes. They sound very interesting. They deserve to be added to my collection.” He said bluntly, and whispered a thanks as you handed him the box full of books he just bought.

And to put it short, he does kind of remind you of someone.

Remember that guy from Sumeru who really loves reading books? Yeah, him — Alhaitham.

Even him and the guy looks alike. Mentioning the hair and eyes, the skin tone, the height, and his voice.

He really does look like Alhaitham.

You gasp softly at the sudden thought; that what if your wishes came true, but the only difference is that you didn’t get him in game, but in real life…?

For the whole duration of your working hours, your brainstorming of theories about this and thats has officially driven you crazy, just looking at one spot for 10 minutes, and then looking somewhere else for 10 minutes again.

Even your fellow librarians were getting scared about your peculiar acting that they’re starting to think you’re being possessed or something.

But at the end of the day, you knew you had to snap out of it and come back to earth once again; and head home.

Reaching your home, your cat greeted you once again, and everyday life went on and on as it usually does.

But the unusual part of it is; you and the man that looks like Alhaitham keeps crossing paths — as if fate desperately wants the two of you for each other.

But you only took it as mere coincidences, but as the saying goes; One means nothing, two means coincidence, and three means something. Which the encounter of the both of you have literally been 5+ times, and that is not considered as a coincidence anymore.

And you swore to yourself; one more encounter, you were gonna lock yourself up inside your house.

And so you did. A fellow co-worker you’re close with came and visited you as they didn’t take your “I’m sick” excuse, banging on your door as if it was gonna break any second now.

“Urgh. Okay, okay, coming!” You rushed to your door, hoping to save it from the hellish knocks it was suffering.

“Oh my god, took you forever!” The shorter lady then tiptoed and placed the back of her palm on your forehead and said, “see? Sick my ass! You look perfectly fine!” And she practically dragged you out of your apartment, but finally convinced her to let you change into something nice.

By the time you entered the library, the man that looked like Alhaitham was there, and the both of you made eye contact which made you quite embarrassed when he looked away and towards his book.

So you did the same; walking away and going to your post in the cashier.

Normally, it would be a boring day, but today, the library offered a 50% discount to the top hit sales today; mangas. So to cut it short, a lot of people bought mangas and yes, unusual and surprising, but the library was full of people that the staffs were also confused where to go or what to do.

You sighed as you finally sat down, you definitely couldn’t wait to get your well deserved meal and bath, along with a goodnight’s sleep later.

As you began to close your eyes, you felt the sleep coming to you.

“Shouldn’t you be doing your job instead of dozing off?” A voice asked, and that instantly made you jolt awake.

“Huh? What?” You looked around as if looking for something, only to see the owner of the voice; the man that looks like Alhaitham.

“I’ve been looking for this book”, he says as he swipes through his phone and shows the picture to you, “do you happen to see it or have some stock left?” He questioned, and you slowly stood up, taking a closer look at the picture.

“Oh, yeah, we have that on stock. But are you sure? It's for $10,000.” You said as you rubbed your eyes, as the man took his phone away from you and put it back into his pocket.

“I remember buying 10 books that costs $50,000+. Surely, $10,000 on 1 book doesn’t sound impossible now, does it?” His choice of words and the way he says it really sounds like the Alhaitham from the game you’re playing.

You stayed silent and bowed, then went inside the storage room to look for that book, not knowing what else to reply to his sarcasm.

After a few minutes, you came back with the book in hand, and then the man paid for it.

Before you allowed him to leave, you knew you had to ask him one question; “What’s your name?”

“Al Haitham” Your eyes widened at that. Not only does he look and act like him, but they also have the same name too? This is not a coincidence anymore, is it?

“Why?” He asked, raising one of his eyebrows.

“Um… nothing, it's just that you remind me of a game character.” You scratched the side of your face, looking down, feeling embarrassed and you don’t know why.

“Who?” He asked again, this time, he was more curious than the last question.

“Um.. here, let me show you.” You opened your phone and showed him a picture of Alhaitham, the game character.

He showed a look of surprise, but quickly changed back to his usual stoic face.

“Huh… is his name also Al Haitham?” He asked, leaning in the counter, seemingly interested as to why he was there.

You said a simple “yeah”, and Al Haitham simply shaked his head and replied, “the creator of the game must’ve known me” which you took it as; “the creator of the game must’ve found me hot enough to put me in game” which you could just strongly agree.

And with that, by whatever miracle is out there, the both of you surprisingly got along. And you also got to know that his first name is Al, and his last name is Haitham.

You guys usually hang out at a cafe or at a park, with you and him usually playing Genshin Impact.

After knowing that he was a character in game, his curiosity peeked in and tried it out.

And when he did try to pull for Alhaitham, it didn’t even take 69 tries for him to get him, unlike you.

And you found that very unfair. Because — Al is new to the game but gets Alhaitham for like only 3-5 tries. While you, this might be the 100th try or more, but you still can’t get him.

You sighed in defeat as you were still unlucky. Al only chuckled and continue playing the game. He didn’t try to comfort you, but his chuckle did, which made your heart race because of it.

Oh dear, not only were you a simp for Alhaitham, but you were also falling for Al.

I mean, it’s what they say, right? If you can’t get the fictional character, then go for the cosplayer — which in your case, Al’s just like the real human version of Alhaitham.

But no, you didn’t try that out. You were happy with the way things were right now, happy with you and Al being close friends. Sure, you wanted to be more than that, but being Al’s friend was more than enough than to be a stranger to him.

Little by little, you fell in love with him. And it was hard to make it not-so-obvious, as every single moment you guys spend together, you find out more new things about him. And that just makes you fall for him more and more.

Until one evening, Al told you there would be a meteor shower, and his house had the best view. So you went to his house and waited.

Just like what happened when the meteor shower has arrived, the lights went out, and a series of meteor came rushing in and pass through the both of you.

It was a magnificent sight, and the both of you came rushing out of his balcony, dazed by the beauty the meteor shower held.

You remembered that wishing in a meteor shower will make your wishes come true. And so you did again, wished for a miracle.

~~~~~

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

You groaned, seemingly awakened by your noisy alarm clock, and suddenly stood up.

Suddenly standing up made your head ache and dizzy though, slowly walking down to the bathroom to wash your face.

You looked at the calendar; May 02, 2019. Ugh, Tuesday. You were hoping for a weekend, but I guess that miracle ain’t gonna happen.

Getting ready for work, you took a bath, brushed your teeth, changed into your work clothes, then finally, packing your bags and wearing your shoes.

You didn’t bother for breakfast, it was your co-worker’s birthday today anyway. Surely, they’d prepare and treat the whole library to food, right?

As you walked out the door, and walked down the street, you suddenly bumped into a stranger, with a grunt coming out from the both of you.

Miracles do happen, but the God sometimes just doesn’t allow that. But on that night, when the both of you wished, you both wished for a miracle to happen.

You wished to stay together, and for Al to like you back. You didn’t see it, but Al also wished. Knowing what would happen to him after that night, he wished for the greatest miracle. It was to stay forever by your side, to stay here forever.

“Ugh- sorry, I wasn’t looking-” As you turned around, you saw a handsome man with gray hair, and green eyes.

Without knowing, the both of you speaked together, as if in sync,

“What’s… your name?”

[ejzah]

A/N: After an extremely long break, I’ve returned with this story after someone on ff.net requested an update.

***

There’s Nothing Friendly About It, Part 4

“Hm, maybe I should have picked a different book,” Kensi mused, flipping to the next page of a worn copy of “Jane Eyre”. She’d just finished narrating a heartbroken Jane leaving Mr. Rochester. “I remember it being less…depressing last time I read it,” Kensi continued to Deeks, even though she knew he wouldn’t respond.

From everything she’d read, reading was supposed to stimulate brain activity, and Kensi would do anything that might help Deeks regain consciousness. It had the added benefit of filling the silence and keeping her mind occupied. Nell had dropped off a small stack of books, including a couple Harry Potters, a terrible looking romance, and a couple of fantasy novels the other day.

“Why were crazy wives in old books always from tropics? Maybe we should switch to Harry Potter. Right now He Who Must Not He Named seems a little less dark. What do you think?”

“Not the fifth one.”

Kensi’s head snapped up at Deeks’ croaked request. His eyes were slightly cracked, his head turned towards her.

“Deeks,” she whispered, all but falling out the chair in her desperation to be at his side.

“Mm,” he grunted.

“Oh my god, you’re awake!” She cupped his cheek, needing to confirm what her eyes were telling him. His skin was just as pale and cool as before, but she saw the spark of light in his eyes.

“I’m guessing it would be in poor taste to joke right now?” Deeks said, pausing every few words to catch his breath. When he was done, he cleared his throat.

“You’ve been unconscious for six days,” Kensi told him carefully. “Do you remember what happened.

“Something not good.” He coughed a couple times and winced. “I remember something about mechanic and fraud, but nothing else. Did I get shot or stabbed this time?”

“How about we talk about that after I get a nurse?”

Deeks narrowed his eyes at her, but it didn’t have its usual affect since he blinked halfway through.

“I’ll be right back.” She hurried off, grabbing the first nurse she found (they all new her at this point), who immediately grabbed a car and accompanied Kensi back to Deeks’ room.

The nurse performed the usual checks and asked Deeks a series of orientation questions. For once, he wasn’t actively flirting, but Kensi could tell the nurse was charmed by all the same. Especially when he recalled her name.

“Well, your blood pressure, oxygen, and heart rate are in a good range,” she said. “I’ll ask the speech pathologist come around to assess you and

let your doctor know you’re awake.”

“Thank you, Renee.”

“Oh, you’re going to be trouble.” Smiling at Deeks, she patted his arm, then added to Kensi. “Don’t give him anything to drink or eat until the speech pathologist is by. Ok?”

Any worry Kensi had about Deeks insisting she answer his questions turned out to be unnecessary since his eyes started slipping closed again shortly after Nurse Renee left. He slept restlessly until the speech pathologist came.

She brought in a tray of various liquids and foods, giving Deeks a little of each to try. After that, she asked him a variety of questions and story problems. Even with his energy clearly waning again, Deeks answered them with little difficulty.

In the end, she determined that Deeks didn’t have any trouble with swallowing and aside from some confusion with the date and time, his cognition appeared to be unaffected. Kensi quietly sighed in relief.

Once the room was empty again, Deeks patted the side of his bed, waiting until Kensi gingerly scooted in beside him. He looked thoroughly exhausted and in pain, but determined.

She curled around him as best she could, automatically threading a hand through his hair.

“Ok, what happened?” Deeks asked.

“We went to the mechanics garage, just like you remembered and it turned into a shootout,” Kensi started. “You were hit.” She paused, needing to steel herself against the pain of remembering him laying on the ground, trying to stop his bleeding, and then watching him lose consciousness.

“Hey, it’s ok. I’m here,” Deeks murmured, shaking her free of the memories.

“The doctors said the bullet hit a small artery. You nearly bled out.” She shuddered, and Deeks kissed her temple.

“I guess that explains why it feels like several elephants walked over me.”

“Deeks.”

“I’m sorry.” He tried to slide his arm around her, but gave up when he couldn’t figure out the tangle of IVs. “Did we catch the guys who did it?”

“Um, yeah, they’re either dead or under arrest,” Kensi said. She knew what he was asking, and that she was lying by omission. She also knew she couldn’t tell him the truth. She hadn’t even come to terms with the reality that he’d been shot by a teammate.

“Good,” Deeks sighed. He closed his eyes, then squinted one back open almost immediately. “You’ll stay here?”

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving.”

Closing his eyes again, he settled into the pillow. Kensi ran her fingers through his hair, relief overshadowing every other emotion.

The truth could wait until later.

[literaryoblivion]

Abandoned WIP-Sterek

As stated before, this is an abandoned WIP snippet. I’ll tag them with #my abandoned WIPs to organize it. If you see any and are so inspired by any of these to either create your own or finish, PLEASE tag me! I’d love to see if someone was able to take it and run with it since it stalled out for me.

Stiles had assured his dad he would be perfectly fine. So what if he was going to a cabin he rented out in the woods far removed from wi-fi and probably cell towers alone for the weekend? He was bringing his dog, Tiger, with him! He’d be fine! And if something happened, Tiger would totally protect him!

“He’s a terrier mix. He’s barely thirty pounds. There are plenty of animals in the woods bigger than him,” his dad had said, un-amused and face deadpan.

“But he’s fierce and protective! I gave him his name for a reason, Dad. He’s growled at plenty of ne’er-do-wells for me. I just held him back from attacking.”

His dad had lifted an eyebrow. “Uh huh. Well, you call if you need something. I don’t like it, but you’re an adult, and I very well can’t tell you that you can’t go.”

“Damn right! I mean, I’ll be fine, but if not I’ll call. But, I won’t ‘cause I’ll be fine.”

It was about 4 hours away from home, so it’s not like he was going to be super far anyway. He needed to get away though. He liked home, don’t get him wrong, but having moved back to his hometown after he graduated college and working a regular 9-to-5 job drained on him after awhile. He was trying to save up for a big trip, maybe Hawaii or New York, but it’d be a long time before he had enough money to do that. SO cabin in the woods for the weekend it was.

It would be great, he’d hike around with Tiger, who Stiles was positive would love being out in nature and be able to run around more than the small fenced in dog park would allow. And Stiles could take it easy, get some reading done, maybe write that great American novel he always fantasized about writing. It was going to be awesome.

“Is your car going to make it? Didn’t you just have to get a bunch of repairs done?” his dad had asked.

“How dare you talk about Roscoe like that, and yes, she’ll be fine. All the repairs were in preparation for this trip, okay? She’s trustworthy and loyal, and she won’t let me down.”

His dad had sighed. “Fine, but when you have a cell signal, you let me know where you are and if you made it okay and when you’re leaving to come back. I’m sure this place isn’t as remote as you like to think it is.”

“Okay, Dad, I will. I promise.”

And true to his word, he texted his dad when Tiger and he left his apartment, sent a selfie when they stopped for a pee break and for gas. And he lucked out and had one bar right outside the park where the cabin was to text his dad that he had made his destination.

He grabbed the key and the map to his cabin from the lockbox outside the closed office and found it rather easily. He unloaded the groceries and settled into the cozy cabin. It was small, but for just him and Tiger, it was perfect. Tiger sniffed around like crazy, distracted every once in awhile by the fly buzzing around the cabin.

“This is going to be great, huh boy?” Stiles said to Tiger who was clearly not paying attention.

It was still light enough out that Stiles decided to take Tiger exploring around the grounds. Once they were outside, Tiger was having a field day, exploring and sniffing at all the plants and dirt piles they passed.

The cabin was within walking distance of a lake, and it was rather pretty with the sun setting. Stiles took a few pictures of it, trying to get Tiger within the frame, but the dog was moving too much for any of them to be good.

***This was based on a personal experience and I was trying to make it a Sterek meet-cute: Basically my dog and I went to a cabin in the woods in OK for the weekend and my car battery died. I had someone in the cabin next to ours jump start my car and then drove to a "car mechanic" place I found on Google in the middle of nowhere that ended up being some guy's personal garage. He was SUPER nice and basically gerry-rigged my car so I could make it back to TX. Plus, when I didn't have cash to pay him, his wife drove me to an ATM and they gave me food.***

[cheesysoup-arlo]

Library

Janis x reader Fluff

You and Janis have been hanging out a lot more. Texting each other every day. You have a huge crush on her but your friendship was way more important to you so you couldn’t make a move.

(Y/N): hey J wanna go to the library? My mom is spending the weekend with her friends so I’m lonely and bored :(

J💕: yeah I’ll be at your house in like an hour? I gotta clean my room or my mom’s gonna lose her shit lmao

(Y/N): yayyy see you soon

J💕: see you soon <3

You quickly start getting ready, it’s finally spring so you put on something warm weather friendly with a little light jacket for the breeze. You’re excited to see Janis you love hanging out with her. You finish fixing your hair when you get a text.

J💕: hey I’m outside

(Y/N): ok I’ll be right out

You went outside with your bag slung on your shoulder. “Hey J” “hi (Y/N), get in you’re in charge of aux this time” “ooo ok” you say picking a song, you see her outfit it was green pants she had painted and a shirt she definitely pieced together herself it was off the shoulder and had long loose sleeves, she looked so cute. “Missed you (Y/N)” “Janis we literally saw each other yesterday at school” “oh am I not allowed to miss you” she joked making you laugh “I missed you too Jan” “uh huh sure” she said playfully rolling her eyes making you laugh more. You two got to the library and went straight to the cafe to get some coffee and pastries. You two headed up to the 7th floor of the library because you wanted to look at the queer romance novels. If you can’t experience it you might as well read it, right? You had been looking at books for like 20 minutes or so and found like two you liked. Janis had been a little off the whole day like she was always about to say something but didn’t. You also felt like she was looking at you a lot (that might sound weird) every time you would look at her she would pretend to be looking at something else and you finally got tired of it. “Janis?” “Yeah?” “You ok?” “Pssh me? yeah I’m ok, why wouldn’t I be ok? I’m super good” she said very awkwardly and gave a very dorky awkward thumbs up. You tried to hold in your laugh unsuccessfully. “Uh huh sure” you said through your laugh. “You know what fine, this has been on my mind for a while and I know we’re friends, good friends, some might even say best friends and I really like that but I think I like you?” “I like you too?” you say a little confused, not catching the hint “no (Y/N) I like like you” “oh? Really?” “Um yeah…” there was a little bit of hair in her face so you decided to push it behind her ear to see more of her beautiful face “I think I like like you too…can I kiss you?” She nods and blushes. You pull her in for a kiss, it’s gentle and her lips are so soft, you feel her arms wrap around your waist. You both pulled away but not completely your noses still touching “wow” you said “um you’re really um good at that, can we do that again” she said shyly, blushing a lot “oh absolutely” you said pulling her in for another kiss. You pulled away completely this time “I’ve been waiting to do that for a while” “me too…so does this mean that we’re…you know…?” “If you’re asking if this makes you my girlfriend then yes…Janis will you be my girlfriend?” you say smiling hopefully. “Yes absolutely yes” she said enthusiastically pulling you in for another kiss. “So girlfriend can I hold your hand?” “Of course you can” you two held hands while continuing to look at books for a little longer till you two headed to her house to hang out and watch movies. You ended up falling asleep on her cuddling.

A/N: Sorry if this is short i hope y’all like it <3

[the1975attheirverybest]

Ok so I've never enjoyed reading and find it hard to even fathom how people can CHOOSE to pick up a book and read it because I'm severely dyslexic and the last time I read a book was when I was forced to in school.

But... this is giving me ideas, maybe Matty keeps suggesting books for you to read because he thinks that you just hate reading, and you don't want to tell him that you actually find it difficult. Maybe he's saying "come on you must have a favourite, what kind of genre do you read the most?" And you're trying to edge around the topic. Imagine Matty turning up to your house with some books to lend you and you end up sat drinking wine together and he asks which one you're going to read first and you drunkenly ask him to read one to you, at this point it clicks in his head that maybe there's a reason you've been avoiding 'book talk'. So he pats his chest and you shuffle on the sofa so you're lying back against him, in-between his legs, and he picks his favourite book and starts reading to you.

🌷🌷

OH MY GOSH THATS SO SWEETTT 🥺🥺🥺

Like, maybe you were planning to hang out that night or something, and he went to his home library/books case/ shelves etc and put together a good mix of things in a nice tote bag to bring over to you.

You open the door, and he’s instantly like “okay, I know, I know. You said it’s not your hobby of choice. And I understand that. There are other hobbies! BUT, stay with me, alright? Ovid’s Metamorphosis! Huh? Maybe some Homer? What do ya say? C’mon! It’s got…. Ancient mythology, love, sex, violence, immortality.”

You chuckle and shake your head.

“No, no! Before you say anything, I’ve also brought Madeline Miller! See, that’s clever cuz her novels are, like, modern re-tellings of mythology…okay, okay, we’re not into the whole pagan thing. I get it. There’s a collection of essays in there that I think is really funny. I mean, it’s quite dark, but- with your sense of humor, I’m not too worried.”

You take the heavy tote bag from him and let him in. “I made some light snacks. Care for a drink?”

He’s immediately lighting a cigarette and sitting on the floor, nibbling on some food. You open a bottle of wine, maybe turn the TV on in the background but you just end up chatting mostly.

After you’ve had a tad too much to drink, and he’s like, refilling his own glass and making his way through his cigarette pack his eye wanders over to the tote bag full of books and he’s like “so, which one are you gonna pick up first. Want my vote?”

And you try to shrug it off and jokingly tell him to mind his own business. You’ll make up your own mind when you feel like it. But he won’t let it go, so finally you’re just like. “If you want me to read one so bad, you read it to me then!”

Then it hits him that maybe the actual experience of physically reading the book has been the issue all along. He doesn’t wanna push you on it, but he actually thinks the notion of reading to you is quite nice. So, he indulges. Picking up a book from the bag, and clearing his throat dramatically, making you giggle as you cuddle into his chest. He even tries to do different voices and mannerisms for different characters and acts like he’s in an audio book. You tell him that if this whole singing thing doesn’t work out, maybe he could try voice acting…

[nadekosnake]

neglected manuscript - Do you have a favorite novel?

from this ancient ask meme

LMAO NO!!! PICKING THE ONE I WAS AFRAID OF 💀 I could make it easy and lie but y’know what? We’re gonna be honest about this 🫡 Gonna be LONG bc I have 1) not talked with about this in any capacity with another human being before and 2) a pretty complicated relationship with this book 🤕

Content warning for CSA 👇

This is difficult partly bc I do love a lot of books but partly bc I don’t like to reveal my actual favorite book… I genuinely worry people will perceive me in a very negative way LMAO. My favorite of all time is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 😶 It’s the book I’ve reread the most in my life so far and it is genuinely one of the best written books I have read 🤧 I think generally people are like 😰🤢 when you drop a bomb like that what’s typically supposed to be a light-hearted convo so I usually will say something else! Typically my safe answer is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (which genuinely was my favorite book at some point in time, we are not going to dive into this right now).

(A disclaimer as I talked about Lolita fashion before, I am aware that the fashion gets its name from the novel but that’s where the relation ends. I like Lolita fashion because I’m a loser that likes subculture fashion and not because it has the same name or any other connection to the book. That happens to be coincidental. I am staunchly against fetishization of the fashion ok thanks! 🙂‍↕️ back to the program!)

Brief summary for those who need it: Humbert (the narrator) is a scholar and a secret pedophile, who one day meets the Haze family for a home stay. He obsesses over the daughter, a 12 year-old girl named Dolores Haze, who he personally calls Lolita. Humbert marries Ms. Haze to be around the real object of his obsession. Through unfortunate events, he ends up Dolores’s sole caretaker. She lives with Humbert’s constant sexual abuse that spans a cross-country roadtrip, but eventually she runs away with the help of another pedophile. Unfortunately it is not a happy ending. Despite Dolores’s escape from both pedophiles, she dies before she can rebuild a normal life with her future family.

The first time I tried to read it, I was too young (around Dolores’s own age 🫥). It was recommended to me by another middle school girl! God knows what the fuck we were doing back then LMAO but the girl who recommended it to me said it was a love story. Older man girl our age whatever. Tbh when I started it I understood that it wasn’t a love story… and I couldn’t finish it because of how uncomfortable it made me. I reread it a handful of times between middle school and uni with varying degrees of success, and I only really started to grasp it when I reached uni. I do think I was entirely too young to read the book or even understand it, and thankfully it was not used as a tool to manipulate me. It was a dicey time tbh. When I was growing up, there weren’t communities of young women that centered around accepting Dolores Haze as a victim.

I think there’s a disclaimer for those you haven’t read it and think it glorifies CSA and pedophilia. It really does not. Nabokov himself was a victim of CSA and did not condone it. I think that the #1 thing that movie adaptations and pop culture struggle with is that people believe the narrator point blank. So the adaptations all have this horrible romanticization of the story at their cores. People even struggle with understanding the book because the narrator is an Educated & Scholarly Man who is like ✨I’m a poet I’m a sensitive soul and we poets just believe in love✨ like NO!!! The whole point of the story is that he is an unreliable narrator!!! The narrator is a murderer, rapist, kidnapper, and if you’re actually paying attention you see it all with your own damn eyes! And of course nobody really does pay attention! 😭

So like, why is this my favorite? This is also complicated LOL, but I think that there’s a couple of main reasons.

Ultimately, to me, the novel is a puzzle that Nabokov invites you to solve. You have an unreliable narrator, but he’s an excellent manipulator. I think a lot of people lose “the game,” so to speak, the first time they read the book because the narrator is so good at making you see only what he wants you to see (he loves her, he’s just a nice sensitive guy who lost his first love too early, he’s doesn’t mean to hurt “his” “Lolita,” she “seduced” him, she “makes” him do horrible things to her, etc). It is written so well, and since the character himself is a professor and an intellectual, I think it’s easier for folks to let their guard down and to literally be tricked. Genuinely speaking I struggled with what to believe too, especially as a child. The only reason I didn’t buy into the “love story” bit was because by some intuition, I was aware that something Bad was happening despite the narrator’s insistence that it was all good. Tho I could not pinpoint what it was at the time.

But once you break past the facade and you’re fully paying attention the novel, it is like two stories in one. One hand, poets romantics in the name of love blah blah blah, but on the other hand? Dolores is a girl from a broken home, who’s mother is murdered by a man that wants to rape her. She’s kidnapped and shows clear signs of abuse (triggered by paternal affection, cried herself to sleep every night since the abuse started, bouts of disassociation, extreme rebellion towards Humbert, etc). Some of this stuff is actually glossed over by the narrator, but signs of a whole other part of the story are literally right in front of you if you’re paying attention.

For example, there’s a single line about Dolores’s mother, Charlotte, where she reveals in a letter to Humber that both her first husband and her youngest child (Dolores’s baby brother) died. And the narrator does NOT give a rat’s ass about this woman or her woes so it’s never talked about again. It’s whittled down to one single dismissive sentence, and I missed it tons of times. But knowing that, it makes sense why Charlotte acts as she does, why Charlotte and Dolores’s relationship is fraught. And why Dolores acts as she does at the beginning of the novel. Literally the Haze family is going through extreme grief with barely the emotional resources to process a double death in their immediate family. Without that context though, you’re just going along with whatever Humbert wants you to believe. You don’t see who Charlotte or Dolores are as individuals. You miss a chunk of the truth. And that’s literally just one of the smallest instances I can think of. There’s so much to dig through both directly and in between the lines. Nabokov is so deliberate with his writing and so extremely detailed that there’s a LOT of things that are easily missed unless you read it multiple times. This shit is so detailed, there’s scholars dedicated both to Nabokov and to Lolita the novel.

I think the last big reason I keep coming back to it is because I think it’s something so deeply rooted in society, you never really live without Lolita. The book has been bastardized to hell and back because most people, especially those in power once again, Do Not Understand how to read this book. So we’re left with not necessarily Dolores Haze, but this enigmatic “Lolita” the abstract figure of Humbert’s delusions. She is so influential, we all live our lives with her whether or not we’re aware of it. Coquette aesthetic? Lolita. Lana Del Rey? Katy Perry? The Police? Lolita. Marc Jacobs? Carven? Lolita. Vladimir? Excavation? My Dark Vanessa? Lolita. Heart-shaped sunglasses? Lolita. Butterflies??? Yes, Lolita. You can even go so wild with the connections to the point of bringing up the goddamn Lion King (animated 1994 version, Scar is voiced by Jeremy Irons who played Humbert Humbert in Adrian Lyne’s 1997 adaptation).

And it’s this constant reminder, every day. You pass by her on the Internet or in an ad while you’re out and about. She lives in the shadow of your acquaintance or your loved one. She haunts everything in a very real and literal sense. I think that’s what keeps me coming back to the book… even if I wanted to forget about her, I don’t think I ever really could.

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Ok cue my memory loss moment part 5 I can’t tell if I sent this reply in or not before so if this is a dupe I SINCERELY APOLOGIZE hsvshshs but anyways

OMG EVERYONE CHEER!!! Guys the moment is finally upon us…another mira banger about to drop….

LMAOO fwtkac was the gateway…once you start you can’t stop its just how the Karasu rabbit hole works! Bro hollyhock is actually so good…I can’t even put it into words properly but just the whole setting giving a new depth to a diff side of otoyas characters ugh so good

True!!! I’m ngl I’m a little surprised that for marketing sake they didn’t try to throw in some like popular character bait…maybe it’s because most of the actually popular bllkers are already out and as opposed to merch I guess book sales would be a bit diff? Like fans would buy to read even if their absolute faves aren’t in but yeah…the stories were fire though LMAO new appreciation for Barou fr

And IM ON IT o7 very happy to serve the miraverse and honestly it’s good for me too because if I wanna reference something quickly I can just go command f it or if I wanna read something fast I can just read my tl LMAO I also just like having my own TL/interpretations written down just for my reference too…which is part of the reason why I also ended up TLing Hioris too even though there was a TL already out! I remember reading the TLd version that got posted and some wording kinda threw me off so I was like let me just look at this myself…LOL Also I’m kinda a lore nerd so I wanna make sure I get to see any intricacies or in between the line messages that can get lost in translation! So yeah TLDR I will most definitely be here for tabieita LNs!!!

IM CRYING they’re gonna have to scroll through our manifestations and convos just to get to the chapter like imagine the link gets passed around and the first thing people read is us screaming about mariokart in yuki’s novel or anri getting done dirty (I clicked on the links just to see what they’d have to go through and oh my god chapter 2 LMFAOOO there’s like a whole minute of scrolling worth of convo before you even reach the LN part it’s so funny)

We’re truly just built different sorry this is exclusive content gatekept by the insanely long convos we have

-Karasu anon

HAHAH this time you did in fact send this in already 😭 but it’s okay i will delete the copy!! but no worries 😋

FINISHED ROUND ONE OF PROOFREADING!! heading to monaco for my mother’s birthday dinner soon hehe but once i’m back tn i will get on round two and hopefully i’ll be able to post it by tmrw!! lowkey idk how i feel about it but at least it’ll be out in the world after i’ve been talking abt it sm 😭

you came to my inbox and showed me the ways of karasuism and i’ve never looked back since 🙏🏻 jkjk but fr though i love writing him sm now he’s so good at the one sided pining thing which i loveee in a male lead 🤩 like YESSS be absolutely sick over this girl who doesn’t even know she likes you yet YESSS 🤤💖

hollyhock otoya is so fun i love him and i cannot WAIT to write more of him and y/n…idk if you’ve heard that one tik tok sound that’s like “you belong with me” from taylor swift and then it transitions into “you belong to me” from house of balloons / glass table girls from the weeknd but that’s literally hollyhock y/n + karasu’s dynamic vs her dynamic with otoya 😭😭😭 like with karasu it’s all sweet innocent besties (they are platonic soulmates coded eventually like they end up loving each other SOO MUCH but not romantically??) vs with otoya she’s literally like “i want you to belong to me” (exact quote from chapter 2: “you wanted this ninja to belong to you”) FHDKSJSJ man atp free otoya 😰🙏🏻 but he matches y/n’s freak so well he probably doesn’t even WANT to be freed

i feel like the people who would buy light novels would buy them no matter what + they probably thought barou would be popular enough to carry it?? who knows…agreed though the stories were all rlly good (well aryu’s was a little goofy but wtvr)

LMAOOO THAT’S WHAT I WAS THINKING people will be like “why are they freaking out over mario kart??” FJSJDJS but ykw if you want to read you have to go through the trials and tribulations of our massive convos 🤩 we are elite though…carrying the bllk fandom with our translations + fics 😋

[kquil]

Hello sweetie ! Congratulations for your 1k, you totally deserve it, your writing is so soft and, how could I say it, light? I mean it's always so sweet to read and I'm always in a good mood after ❤️

If I dare ask for a little cupcake🧁 (but really if you don't feel it or don't have time it's ok ^^, I'm just really curious 🫣)

About me: I'm a short woman (157,5cm) but I'm kinda okay with it. True Hufflepuff, I have only a few friends but they mean the world to me. I love reading (fantasy or swashbuckling novel kind), my puzzles and just enjoying my time quietly or with some music. I'm shy at first but when I'm at ease, I laugh at good jokes and can't stop talking, mostly when the subject is interesting. I love when I can have a real talk with people, not just small talk, I can't stand hypocrisy.

I think that's it. Thank you for taking time to read this at the very least and really, don't feel presure ❤️

Have a lovely day and again, congratulations 🌸🌸🌸

Val 🌸

hi val! thank you so much for the congratulations! I’ve never had someone describe my writing as ‘light’ before so i’m quite happy that you did and even more happy to know that you feel better afterwards! thank you also for wanting to celebrate my milestone with me through a cupcake! I’m sorry i took so long, darling and i hope you enjoy! 

from what you’ve told me, i ship you with Remus Lupin! 

i. you two are a match made in heaven! Such a true pair, in fact, many people speculated you were dating before you two even spoke a word to each other, they just found so many similarities between you. The rumours grew so much that it eventually reached the two of you and made your first encounters rather awkward. there was a lot of teasing from the marauders on remus’s end whereas your friends also teased you on your side of things so it took a little longer for the two of you to properly get acquainted outside the rumours people had built up around you

ii. deep down, you didn’t want to succumb to their fantasies of what your relationship with remus should be, platonic or romantic, but you couldn’t help but be drawn to him and him, you. even though it made it hard to spot you in a crowd, remus adored your shorter size compared to him, it was a charming size difference to him. people often see him looming over you with a soft and tender aura, his gaze gentle on your adorable form doing mundane things before him. you, however, found a lot of comfort in his towering height, it was very helpful having him around to get books from higher shelves in the library or have him easily cast his cloak over you if it ever started raining. since his presence was largely comforting compared to his size, you’ve grown a particular fondness for his loftiness. 

iii. the two of you have this thing where you’d exchange some books for the summer and return to provide your reviews in person. remus quickly grew to know which genres and tropes you liked in a book and often searched for them, even pushing himself to read them quickly before summer so that he could lend them to you and the two of you can have fun going through the story together. people would usually find you both pressed close together on a library or common room sofa sharing a book with you leaning in close as remus hovers from above your height, his gaze regularly drifting to stare at you 

iv. you introduce him to puzzles and he introduces you to chess. he teaches you well and soon enough you’re beating him at almost every game of chess he challenges you for. it hurts his pride to have you overtake him so quickly in terms of skill but he doesn’t know that it’s only because you worked so hard in order to impress him. your efforts weren’t in vein either, because he really was impressed and, over time, grew to accept the challenge and looked forward to every chess match with you.

v. for puzzles, you got him a huge elaborate one as a present and the two of you worked through it together over the christmas holidays when he - and the rest of the marauders - decided to stay at hogwarts for sirius. the boys can’t count how many hours you and remus spent by the common room fire going over the puzzle together as you softly humm christmas jingles under your breath. The boys would have complained more about you stealing ‘their remus’ despite not being official if you didn’t bribe them with snacks and treats from the kitchens. — ‘she’s a keeper remus!’ peter cheers around a mouthful of pastries before chugging some of his hot chocolate along with sirius and james who fought over the chocolate chip cookies.  

vi. another favourite activity you and remus liked to do together was reading in bed together as soft melodies played from an enchanted lyre you were gifted by your aunt who adored music. He’d have one of his long arms stretched out across your shoulders as he read his book in one hand while you rested your head against his chest and flipped through the pages in front of you. whenever the marauders would see you too cuddled up and comfy together, they would pucker their lips in mock kisses and dramatically flutter their lashes until remus threw a spare pillow at them and you became a giggling mess.  

vii. remus could listen to you talk all day long, adding in his own thoughts and theories here and there but not often. you’d be sat next to him as he rested his chin against his palm, propped up by his elbow on the desk. it was when you two were mid sentence that you finally saw the adoring look in his eyes and stuttered to a stop. remus saw no fault in your flustered appearance and simply tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear before uttering “go on…”. after this moment, a flip switched between you two and it wasn’t long before you made it official with a bashful but sweet kiss between the bookshelves of the hogwarts library. 

viii. like a true hufflepuff you were loyal to him, you didn’t care of his scars or his ‘furry little problem’ when he finally confided in you his struggles, especially when the boys urged him to be more open as his secrecy put a noticeable strain in your relationship. you were there for every full moon no matter if your role wasn’t like the boys, in fact, you took care of all the boys before and after a full moon to show your support and willingness to help — a demonstration of true love that remus wouldn’t ever dare breaking or take for granted

ix. honourable mention, i also, lowkey ship you with, james potter! He’s a sweetheart but a little intense and you’re someone who grounds him gently, your presence calms him and makes him feel like everything is going to be okay, which is especially good whenever he has pre-game jitters for quidditch matches - you’re like his lucky charm. He’s just as talkative as you are so the conversations the two of you share are always so engaging that other surrounding people feel compelled to listen in. sucks for them, however, because you two make up a lot of code names and shortcut phrases that only you two know the meaning of to be able to understand. you’re the first person to call james out on his hypocrisy when it comes to the treatment of slytherins as some aren’t as bad as the louder, more evil ones tend to be. you made him see through his own prejudices and fixed up his act as soon as you said ‘i hate hypocrites, james,’. you made him a better person and he loves you for that.