#partial writing

[theitalianscribe]

WTDW-Tober Day 3: Founders

Before we start, I want to give the heads up that part of this will be a bullet point fic. Some parts are written out, and others are summaries of or just the gist of what would happen. I am already running behind on these, so this seemed like the best way to catch up.

(Also, also: Reminder that tomorrow is Loud Noise Wednesday October 4. Americans, there will be a nationwide alarm test, at least that's what I've heard. Here is an article with more info.)

-Sara is in some elective on storytelling or performing. The class is doing presentations where they tell a story that has specific elements their teacher put on the rubric. (This is based on a class I had in junior high but that was a really long time ago so all I remember is this assignment and us watching the show Get Smart)

"And that is the story of how I earned this shiny rock at summer camp," The brunette took a bow. The class applauded, then began scratching at the peer review cards they were handed for the assignment. 

"Right. Excellent work, Lewis. Though be sure to move around more. You are telling a story with your movements as well as your words."

Sara frowned at that. The boy was doing a lot of gesticulating, definitely more than Marco before him and Nancy before him. In fact, most of the students stood stiffly and forgot how to  move their bodies.

"Do my notes of stage directions in the script I wrote mean Nothing, Mr. Edricson?" the boy grumbled under his breath as he passed Sara on his way to his seat. 

Sara agreed. Mr Edricson was kind of a tool. Most of the class was either watching clips from tv shows or having the students do the work for him. With a click of her tongue, Sara began the most thorough review card she had ever written in the whole trimester. Under the section for special compliments, she wrote, “I like how he had a gesture for each action in his story. He acted out what he was doing as well as using his narration for emphasis. This guy is the best performer in class, let alone public speaker. And that includes the teacher. Do better, Charles.

Later, when they got their grades back, she saw the boy sigh in defeat, then flip through the peer review pages. Eventually he let out a snort of laughter, which he attempted to disguise with a cough. He looked around the class and met eyes with Sara. “Charles Edricson is a tool,” She tried to mouth. The boy titled his head in confusion. Right. Her grade said she needed to work on annunciation. Charles could be right about this one thing.

“Thank you,” the boy mouthed. Sara grinned at him and gave him a thumbs up.

The boy hung back after class and introduced himself as Lewis Bright. Sara gave her own name in return, surprised that anyone would want to talk to her. She was even further baffled when he asked where she usually sat at lunch. That afternoon, they exchanged snacks and ideas. Through the story they weaved together between bites of carrots, a long-lasting friendship was forged.

-They are paired with Oliver for a physics project. Sara is setting up a Rube Goldberg machine while Lewis draws a diagram of it. They are used to doing most of the work on the project and with how scarce Oliver is, they figure this is no different. Then they see him at lunch fleshing out their powerpoint presentation. 

-He asks to see Lewis’s drawings

-Oliver then scans the drawings and they are amazed like “You know how to do that?”

-He is able to get them into the mechanical engineering class. Is that a class? Whatever class Eric teaches alongside the class he teaches them in their last year. He gets a cameo in the fic and the trio are able to spend a lunch period setting up the Rube Goldberg machine and recording it.

-Eric makes a comment about the twins being welcome to stay with him and Carly after school so he can go straight to his job.

-At this point, Oliver explains a bit of his home life and how he has a job (or jobs) to support himself and his siblings and that is why he has been so scarce.

-They get a good grade on the project and they get slushies or ice cream to celebrate. While there, they run into some old bullies of Sara’s. One calls her the Happy-Hollow-Pockets Arsonist, another possibly calls her Flare-a Covet-Our-Money-Man. I was not happy with how this scene turned out, but they verbally bully Sara while Lewis is getting their ice cream.

The bullies maybe try to tell Oliver about Sara’s past. Also at some point in this conversation, it is established that Oliver has a reputation about being a soft spoken sweetheart. I only bring this up for this next part.

"I have heard enough. All I can gather from this interaction is that you two are pathetic enough to make yourselves feel better by dragging others down with misdeeds from their past. I don't know what she did to gain your ire and I don't care what it is. 

"Do you know what I do think is interesting? How much of our lives is online. We are so well-documented now-a-days that it is difficult to bury your own pasts. 

"Did you know that schools can search through your electronic footprint? That if they find something they don't like, that can influence their decision to admit you or not?"

Oliver took a step closer

"Did you know how poorly defended the highschool's records are? It would be so easy to change someone's grades, remove their ability to participate in extracurriculars, to make you look like a terrible choice for the college you are aiming for. Your behavior, your attendance? They are so poorly protected."

“Are you threatening us?”

“Am I? It’s hard to say. Besides,” Oliver leaned in close and whispered into their ears, “N O  O N E  W O U L D  E V E R  B E L I E V E  Y O U .”

Oliver walked backward to be back at Sara’s side. “I would be careful about tarnishing my friend’s reputation. Think about how it would feel if someone ruined yours.” With that, Oliver smiled and dragged a shellshocked Sara into the restaurant where Lewis was waiting.

“What’s got you in such a good mood, Darling?” Lewis asked.

“I ran into some old classmates and I am just really happy to have you two as my friends instead. If, if you guys want to call me your friend, of course! You don’t have to! I didn’t mean to assume!”

A hand landed on his shoulder and Oliver turned to see Sara giving him a watery smile, “You have no idea how much your friendship would mean to me.”

—-

I think that is a good stopping point, but there were other scenes I had wanted to write:

-Them having a sleepover and painting each other’s nails. Lewis has a collection of holographic nail polishes. There is a dark plumb one that makes him powerful.

-Them talking about project ideas for the competition. They chose to make a miniature moving figurine of a character they make up for the contest. It is Starlight. They include ideas for other characters in the report.

-Them waiting for the results and getting an envelope with tickets to a fair inside. They buy ice cream to celebrate. Sara treats them and the others assure that she doesn’t owe them anything. 

-Sara having imposter syndrome because Star Light is mostly Lewis’s idea and Oliver did the programing and 3d printing.

-They point out that the actual physics and movement logistics of the project was all Sara.

-At the awards ceremony, the director of this competition is looking at Sara in a way that makes her shiver, but she shakes it off. (This is my hint to a conspiracy that Litho possessed someone to make this competition happen and he wanted the trio, especially Sara, to win from the start.)

-The trio arriving at the space that will become Dreamworld. They are so excited.

-Oliver recruits Pen and Eric to help him set up the speakers throughout the facility. He then gets to pick the music to test the speakers. He plays some songs that he just likes, with some meme songs and especially Siivagunner rips peppered in. He watches as everyone catches on. Lewis is the first of his best friends to notice. The Flintstones jingle gives it away. He remembers Wiatt infodumping about this particular game called 7 Grand Dad and how the channel will sneak the Flintstones theme into their songs as one of their more recurring jokes. Sara is the last to notice. She has been getting phone calls more frequently ever since the reward ceremony. This particular one must have taken a long time and captured all her attention. Once she does notice, she has this look on her face that is both fond and exasperated and cry of, “Oliverrrrr,” that devolves into giggles is music to his ears.

[demaparbat-hp]

The Perfect Prince

[inkskinned]

you have to be sexy but you have to be sexy in a way that's kind of bloody. you learn this early because you are wearing a ruffled skirt and the snow around your ankles kicks little sand particles against your calves. baby's first catcall. welcome to sexiness! welcome to the eyesore of your own body!

you have to be sexy like high heels. like sculpted eyebrows. like lean stomach and highly treated hair. you have to be sexy like youth is sexy, which means you have to be sexy like boxtox and plastic. a 30 year old can be sexy but she's not going to be bloody, and they like the bloodiness of it. a 30 year old is sexy when she is a whiskey glass and a wooden desk.

but you need to be sexy like an open mouth. you need to be sexy like a bitten apple. like plucked skin and white-knuckling the waxing kit.

so sex is a performance, not an enjoyment. for a while, you just assumed everyone else was also in on the joke - nobody actually likes sex that much, right? like, some men probably do, but why would you? it is like a gender - your gender is sexy. your gender is the performance of sex. you are thigh highs and garter belts. which, to be fair, do make you feel sexy.

part of what does make sex good is that you can tell that other people want you, which means the performance of sexiness is both bloody and wanted, which is good, which means you are winning at having a body. being wanted is the prize. being wanted is the thing you are searching for, not hope. you think you are looking for a soft grave in easy loam, but that is bloody but not sexy. to be sexy you must be bloody like a red open sign. bloody like a handprint. this will make you wanted.

any wanted or unwanted body is subject to supply and demand, which is to say that the more demand, the better you are valued. you must be highly demanded to be valued. this is stated in matter-of-fact by some men. sometimes it is a priest that says it, and sometimes it is a podcaster, and sometimes it is the 45th president of the united states of america.

(if you do not have any experience with being told your value, i want you to grab the nearest bird to you and i want you to crush it into a thin paste in your hand. spit into the center, and then hold your fingers closed tight around it for days and days, long after the rot has set in. feel bones itch inside of your fist. this is only a fraction of what it actually feels like, but it will suffice for a moment.)

good sex feels like you have earned their desperation. you have earned your own value. for a while you operated under the understanding that everyone knew about the power structure, even him. that their desire to take you - the violence of it - means that you must desire to be caught. little prince, guardian fox - you would rather have cut your own arm off. you liked the secret, cunning little voice you keep tucked into a box. you think you are fucking me. i am not even here right now. you are fucking what i conned you into perceiving. this is a painting, not a person. dominion over the body before all things.

so you bend your body like a wheat shaft and learn the steps so perfectly that it almost seems graceful. (if you do not have experience faking your own connection to your body and sexuality, cut each of your articles of clothing just a little bit incorrectly. pour fishbones into each of your meals. this way, you will experience the average noon on a tuesday.)

you have to be sexy like light spilled over a desk, but not desperate. not a noose. you can't be sexy like an electric guitar, you are the acoustic. you have to be on top of the bull but you can't have control over the animal.

okay, okay. the little rabbit of your heart went to sleep so long ago that winter has ravaged your concept of the human soul. there's something very-bad inside you, something that has taken over, a little fetid and rabid animal, angry and hurting and willing to bite first.

oh but even that's a pain that's sexy. open your mouth. be careful not to let the canines show.

[thresholdbb]

what's the threshold theory

There was a post about how Tom is the only crew member who isn't really affected by the Borg, and there's a theory that he has so much luck because he saw the past and the future when he crossed the transwarp threshold. He saw the past and the future, all of time and space. There's some subconscious part of him that remembers that experience. In fact, Tom refused to play a part in Chakotay indulging Annorax's temporal incursions, probably because a part of him knew nothing good could come of it.

If we extend that same theory to Janeway, some of her wild luck with time travel and other crack plans starts to make sense. She doesn't verbally hate time travel until after the events of Threshold, since it happens in Time and Again without complaint. Janeway has an uncanny knack for time travel, as evidenced every time she deals with it. She hates time travel, but it might be because part of her knows exactly how to manipulate the timeline. She manages to avoid the "inevitable" temporal explosion in Future's End, saving both Voyager and Braxton. She resets the entire timeline in Year of Hell, and no one else followed her reasoning. She pulled it off flawlessly. In Relativity, she senses the incidents are all related, despite it being just one reading that connects them. By the time she's involved, she has a temporal incursion factor of .0036 and a time travel protocol named after her, even if that may just be Braxton's personal grudge. Then there's Endgame, where she intentionally changes the timeline. Up until this point, she has been dragged into time travel, but for the first time, she jumps in on purpose. How does Admiral Janeway know how to get them home sooner in a way that completely avoids the Temporal Integrity Commission? It's because she has seen all of time, and part of her knows exactly what needs to happen so she can get Voyager home and do it in a way that becomes baked into the prime timeline. Maybe she doesn't consciously remember what happened during her transformation, but the experience lives in her mind somewhere, guiding her decisions.

[tcfactory]

Since my brain has been full of SVSSS brainrot lately:

I want a fic where the transmigration mostly fails and Shen Jiu wakes up from his qi deviation as User002 with the goddamn System treating him like he is Shen Yuan. Trashy yellow book what??? No, he doesn't need stats on his fellow peak lords, if he is supposed to follow a plot then he wants to see the script! You wretched floating rectangle, how is he supposed to play along if he doesn't know the source material?!

The stress of having what feels like a very pushy curse or an insanely weird demon inflicted upon him makes him deviate from some minor plot points and he gets punished for being OOC a couple of times until the System takes pity on him and directs him to Airplane bro, with the very clear suggestion that if he can't remember the early arcs of the story - System understands, User! It's very long after all. UwU - he should go and discuss it with the author.

He basically kicks down Shang Qinghua's door in desperation for some clarity and maybe an explanation, right now before he works himself into a stress-induced qi deviation, Shang-shidi. Shang hamster looks at his miserable scum villain, takes a deep breath, brings out all of Shen Qingqiu's favorite snacks that nobody should know about, makes a pot of calming tea and tells him everything.

Shang Qinghua expects Shen Qingqiu to be angry, to rip into him for writing him into this wretched life. And Shen Jiu is angry, but not at Qinghua. His anxious, mousy little shidi who lives his entire life under the looming threat of a horrible, seemingly unchangeable future doesn't look like a god. Shang Qinghua, who does his best to run his peak well and look out for his disciples despite his admittance that in the story the original Qinghua did a shoddy job - he doesn't look like someone who would have put pen to paper and written a tragedy if he knew it would become someone's reality.

And how could Shen Jiu, who has seen people sell their bodies and their very dignity for a cup of stale water, judge someone for writing a very bad yellow book so he can eat? Please. Peak Lord Shen might have developed a very discerning taste in literature over the years, but you can't fill your stomach with artistic integrity, Shang-shidi. Shen Jiu understands.

So they sit and for that first evening, Shen Qingqiu listens to all the differences creeping into the story, Shang Qinghua's retelling of the drafts he abandoned due to peer pressure, the long rambling tangents of the research he's done, even if they never made it into the story. Qinghua is so caught up in having someone to talk to that he doesn't realize that Shen Qingqiu put everything that happened to Qi-ge together, somewhere between the musings about how a sword inspired by kintsugi would be so cool looking, shame that nobody ever sees the thing, and the griping about how much one of his patrons complained about Yue Qingyuan dying without ever drawing his sword.

Later, when the snacks are gone and the tea is replaced with something stronger, he tells Shen Qingqiu about the stories he really wanted to write. About how he shamefully sneaked his dream man into PIDW, just so he could have some small part to himself, and oh, Shen Qingqiu will have to remind him about demon courting practices when they are both sober again, because it sounds like that Mobei prince is down bad for him.

He leaves that night with a newfound determination. Shang Qinghua might be resigned to the whims of his System and the shackles of the Plot, but Shen Jiu didn't burn the Qiu manor down and break his chains to give up so easily. This is his world, his sect, his Qi-ge on the line, and he would sooner wrest control from the System and become custodian of the world himself than let something take away and ruin what is his. He is the strategist of Cang Qiong Sect, there is no situation he can't think a way out of and he has had enough of tragedies.

Before any of that, however, he needs to go and have a good yell at his Qi-ge, smack his stupid face and then curl up in his arms for a good night's sleep. It's long overdue.

[rondoel]

Looked into my folder and there was so much of them! 😭

[slavhew]

Posting my thoughts here too.

PPS; there is something about BGD still looking the same while jake has so clearly changed in appearance. I don't have anything clever to add, except that that stupid fingerless-gloved hand is so quintessentially Dirk, it looks like an aesthetic choice that belongs to a man much younger than Jake. Because it does. Because Dirk stopped, while Jake had to keep going.

[hardly-an-escape]

I'm thinking about a version of the story where Hob doesn't fall in love-at-first-sight with Dream. I'm thinking about a version of the story where love doesn't even really germinate until after Dream's return – and grows slowly even then.

I'm thinking about how distant Dream must have seemed for so long. how mysterious, how unknowable. about how so often, love can only take root when familiarity and friendship have already been established, when you do know a person.

and I'm thinking about how strange it must have been, in a way, for Hob to actually get to know his Stranger – to put a name to the face, to see him more than once a century, to have a more equitable exchange of their selves than had ever existed between them before. how uncertain he must have felt, at first, wondering if it's okay to seek out that friendship, that closeness, trying to figure out what's changed. about the joy he'd feel when he realizes it's not just allowed, but welcomed.

I'm thinking about a version of the story where Hob and Dream fall in love in much the same way that any two old friends might fall in love: slowly, affectionately, and based on a true and deep regard for one another. a genuine enjoyment of each other's company, rather than the excitement of mystery or the power of lust.

where they only gradually look across the table and imagine something more.

[saetoru]

something that’s always been funny to me is that long fics with smut tend to do better than long fics without but it’s like. if you write a longggg 10k+ word fic with a build up and plot and sprinkle in smut at the end, people will read that long build up and pay attention to the plot in order to get to the smut. and 99% of the time the tags and comments will talk about the plot itself and the way it was written as opposed to the sex and they will ask for more or for part 2’s and as annoying as the part 2 comments can be sometimes, it also means that they focused on the plot and not the smut. but if you post that fic without the smut—as in same fic and same build up and everything, but the smuts not there, a lot of those same people will simply not give the fic a chance. it’s just funny to me bc yes, a part of it is just horniness, but also i think it’s partly that there is also some conditioning to believe that a “perfect romance” or a “perfect story” of a romance is sealed with intimacy that’s more often than not sexual in order to actually be valid. and yeah. idk. it’s an interesting thing to see from a writers perspective

[tblsomedoodles]

The Preferable Alternative - part 13

Start - previous - next

Alt-Don has no immunity to Mikey's puppy eyes stare : )

[trans-axolotl]

content note: discussion of suicide.

this next monday will be the six year anniversary of losing one of my friends to suicide.

when he died, my high school barely mentioned his death, even though for other students who died by things like car crashes or illness, there were so many public expressions of grief. they believed that having any memorials for a student who died by suicide would encourage other people to die the same way. in their rush to erase the circumstances of his death, they erased the memory of his life.

there are so many things i am angry at that high school about in terms of how they treated mental health (mandatory reporting and collaborating with cops, their refusal to recognize the ways in which that system led to peer-to-peer crisis support, their refusal to recognize the ways that trying to keep each other alive through trial and error was scary and exhausting, carceral disciplinary policies, etc etc etc). but i think one of the things i am still angriest about is the way they enforced shame around his death. it felt like they were retroactively blaming him for the constellation of circumstances that made suicide an option in his life. it felt like they were blaming those of us who missed him and cared about him and wanted to grieve him. it made those of us still there who were actively suicidal feel even more scared about the reaction if we did reach out for help from one of those mythical safe adults.

as an adult now involved in psych abolition/mad liberation work, it makes me so fucking mad to see the ways in which he was discarded by people in authority positions. and the older i get, the more options i have found in my life for making sense of the world and finding healing and community and support which were never available to him because he died when he was 16 and the only things offered to him were a carceral psychiatric system that blamed him for his own fucking death. it feels so incredibly unfair.

i miss him and i think i always will; i can't remember his laugh or the sound of his voice or his favorite color any more and that aches. this grief is so heavy and it feels harder in a new way each year, when i become older than he will ever be. sometimes meeting new comrades or seeing new anticarceral suicide support models hurts because i wish so fucking bad that we had that back then. i remember how close we came to losing even more people that year and i know it is simple fucking luck that i'm still here when he's not.

i remember another letter (never sent) that i wrote to a friend while they were in an ICU bed after a suicide attempt when i didn't know if they would live or not. i have spent so much time in the past 10 years begging for anything to keep me and my friends alive, but even in that letter i knew that there is so much fucking violence that is hidden beneath psychiatric logics of cure and safety that promise a "solution" to suicide. I knew that institutionalization, coercion, and shame would not have helped build a life more liveable for him or **** or any of the people i've loved and lost since.

there needs to be more fucking options for care and support that aren't so incredibly cruel to suicidal people. i know so many people doing incredible work in alternatives, peer respite, a million different frameworks for healing and liberation. but it makes me so mad every day i have to live in a world where there are still people restrained, locked up in psych wards, having all autonomy and personhood taken away from them. knowing there are dozens of people every day getting blamed for their deaths the same way he was blamed for his.

i miss him. i cared so fucking much for him. and he died by suicide, and all of those things are true. he has been dead for 6 years and he lived before that and the people who loved him want to remember all of him; our celebrations of his life should not require hiding the way that he died.

Image description: [1000 origami cranes in all different colors and patterns that are tied together in strings of 25]

(these were the 1000 cranes we made to give to his parents, in memorial and recognition of how much he meant to us.)

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I think what particularly annoys me with the "zelda was always gameplay before story" is that... it's not true? At least I don't think it's true in the way people mean it.

Zelda games were always kind of integrating story based on the standards of the time. When game stories were in game pamphlets, Zelda's stories was in the pamphlets. ALTTP tried to tell a pretty complicated stories with the limitations of the time. OoT was actively trying to tell an epic, cinematic tale packed with ambiance and expand what 3D could offer that 2D games struggled with. Majora's Mask is deeply character-driven in many, many ways. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are both pretty concerned about their stories, down to the point that some people were bored by TP's cutscenes in particular. Skyward Sword, from what little I have played it, is very very invested in its characters and their journey (and 2D Zeldas have Link's Awakening, Minish Cap... None of them are visual novels, but they are concerned with emotional journeys, character arcs, mysteries about their own world...)

What is true is that the narrative wraps around the mechanics, and not the other way around. The mechanics drive themes, aesthetics, emotional beats and character journeys; and that's great. The world is a puzzle, and the world is delightfully absurd when it needs to be, full of heart when it calls for it, dark and oppressive when it suits the player experience.

That does not mean the games aren't invested in their stories. Even BotW has a pretty complicated story to tell about an entire world rather than one specific tale or legend --all of it at the service of the gameplay, which is exploration and mastery of your environment.

So. Yes, none of the Zelda games are million-words long visual novels that care deeply about consistency and nuance; but stories don't need consistency or deep lore to be meaningful and serve an emotional journey. Again: gameplay is story. The two cannot be so easily parsed from each other.

And Zelda as a franchise obviously care deeply about story, characters and setting (and still does right now --otherwise there wouldn't be a movie), even if it doesn't try to imitate prestige narrative-driven games, which is great and part of why I love this series so much. Doesn't mean it couldn't have done better in the past, it obviously could have, but I feel like pretending that nobody ever cared about story or character is just... false? It's a huge disservice to the devs too. Some of them obviously cared immensely.

The "gameplay above story", at least in the extent to which it is paraded today to defend TotK, mostly, is a really recent development. And I think it's one that deserves to receive some pushback.

[static-radio-ao3]

@jegulus-microfic // february 6 // prompt: murder // words: 1,172 // cw: implied/referenced sexual content // part 2 + part 3

“You’re so fucking infuriating!” James calls out as Regulus makes his way out of the bathroom. He runs a frustrated hand through is hair and tries to slam the door behind him, but James catches it before he can.

“Oh, I’m infuriating?” Regulus asks over his shoulder. “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

“Baby, we both know you do enough looking for the both of us.” Regulus doesn’t need to look at James now to know he has a cocky smirk tugging at his lips, voice smug and pleased.

“Don’t call me baby. And don’t think I like what I see when I look at you.” Regulus rounds another corner, moving further away from the party as he heads toward the stairs. He hates that he still know the house like the back of his hand, even though it’s been months since he’s been here.

He knew he shouldn’t have come but Sirius had asked and Regulus bends easy if his brother is the one pushing.

“Ah, you wound me.” James comes to a stop right in front of him, a hand pressed to his chest in mock hurt. “Besides, I find that a little hard to believe when I only had to smile for you to drop to your knees in the bathroom.”

“A moment of weakness, clearly,” Regulus says as he pushes past James and makes his way up the staircase. He’s not sure where he’s trying to go except away from James. James and his pretty smile and messy hair and hazy eyes that track his movements with a hunger.

And it had been a moment of weakness. A party and one drink too many and James’ eyes lingering on the strip of skin between the hem of Regulus’ shirt and his belt. At the ink peeking out above his jeans, a pattern James was all too familiar with. A brush of fingers against his lower back that had Regulus shivering even in the sultry heat of the room. All it took was a tilt of his head and a smile and Regulus was following James down the hall.

James snorts, short and derivative. “Clearly.”

It does nothing to make him less attractive.

“Like I said, infuriating!” Regulus yells as he stomps up the stairs. He’s not even aware that he is walking toward James’ bedroom. “You and your— your—”

“Me and my?”

Regulus comes to a stop in front of James’ bedroom door. He turns to face him and ignores the thrill in his stomach when he realizes how close they’re standing. He has to tilt his face up just the tiniest bit to make eye contact. Tries to force himself to do it, but his eyes drop down to James’ lips unintentionally.

“You and your Jamesness!”

“Good one,” James huffs. He takes another half-step closer, crowding Regulus against the door. “You really got me there.”

“Oh, I am going to murder you,” Regulus hisses between his teeth. He tries to take another step back, but the door handle digs into his lower back. Cornered. James' hand comes up to rest beside his head and Regulus has nowhere to go when James leans down to murmur into his ear.

“Please make it romantic, at least.” James' breath rustles his curls and Regulus fights not to shiver. There is a hint of beer on his breath and usually, Regulus hates it. But he has learned that he can’t quite manage to hate anything that comes from James Potter.

Instead of doing something embarrassing like leaning up and crushing their mouths together, he grits his teeth and jabs a finger into James’ chest. Desperate to put some distance between them but even more desperate to keep him close.

“I am going to throttle you—” he grounds out, jabbing James’ chest again for emphasis.

“I always did love your hands around my throat.”

“—and I am going to draw and quarter you—” Jab.

“Yeah? You gonna tie me up real nice?”

“—and I am going to set your remains on fucking fire.” Jab.

“No need, you get me hot all on your own.”

James’ free hand comes up to cover Regulus’ before he has the chance to withdraw. He presses it flat against his chest before lifting his hand to Regulus’ face.

“I swear, James Potter, if you put that hand on me, I'm going to get violent."

But the threat is empty. They always are. Because James’ knuckles caress Regulus’ cheek and it takes all his strength to not lean into the touch. James knows it too.

"Oh love,” he murmurs, voice low and a little rough. Something Regulus recognizes but refuses to name. “You usually like it when I put my hands on you.”

And at this point, all bets are off because James is looking at him like he knows.

Like he knows that Regulus spends long nights staring at his ceiling because sleep doesn’t come easy if he’s not in James’ arms. Like he knows that Regulus still buys the coffee James prefers because the smell lingers in the apartment and makes it feel a little less like a haunted house. Like he knows that Regulus hasn’t been on a single date in the months since their break up. Like he knows that Regulus never finished that show they started watching together. Like he knows that regret coats the back of Regulus' throat like bile every time he talks about it.

Like he knows that Regulus is still in love.

Like maybe he feels the same way.

Regulus shifts the hand that’s still resting on James’ chest to the back of his neck and yanks him down, pressing their lips together in a kiss. It’s wet and messy and desperate from the beginning, a moan spilling between when James realizes he can still taste himself on Regulus’ tongue.

James moves impossibly closer, both hands moving to cup Regulus’ face. Regulus wishes they were closer still, wishes he could stay like this forever, because he thinks it’s where he belongs; with James. Always with James.

Lips slick and eyes lidded when they pull apart to breathe, Regulus faintly registers that party is still going on downstairs. Music playing in the distance, a cheer erupting at an unknown achievement, but neither of them feel inclined to return. Regulus tilts his head back for better access when James starts trailing wet a path down the column of his throat, humming at the taste.

“This is probably a bad idea,” Regulus manages between ragged breaths. The last thing he wants to do is stop, but plausible deniability and all that.

“I think you’re a little too faded to drive,” James says, punched out and breathless, the words pressed into the line of Regulus’ jaw as he works his way back up to his mouth. Regulus’ hands clench in James’ hair, earning him a hiss. “Maybe you should stay the night.”

Regulus doesn’t get the chance to agree, too busy stumbling through the now-open door all the way into James’ bed.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I know this is just a silly bad quality random screencap of a screencap that I found on facebook lol, BUT it's a succinct enough image to easily describe the concept in a quick/accessible way hopefully :

-

(and of course, feel free to elaborate in tags, etc.! (especially elaborating about other senses as well.. can you "hear" in your mind just as well as you can "see"? taste? etc.) It's an interesting topic to me, as someone who's like a 4.5 at MOST lol. I'm curious what option will be the most common :0c )

[possamble]

farcille postcanon characterization warmup that got way out of hand. beware, here be spoilers, dragoncock, and bottoming as an extreme sport.

~~~

Marcille has always loved Falin’s voice. Soft, high, airy and girlish—it was always as gentle as the rest of her, even in the midst of pitched combat. When things went to hell in a handbasket, it was always Falin’s whispery incantations that kept Marcille grounded as blood and monster guts sailed through the air. 

And that hasn’t changed. No amount of dragon could really change that, Marcille thinks. Yes, she she has moments when her voice becomes rough and ragged and guttural, mostly when she’s swinging her mace or her fists, or gritting her teeth through a monster claw stuck into her side. But maybe that urge to growl was always there, and she’s just finally able to voice it now. Marcille finds that she’s loud at times she would have been silent before—grunting with exertion when she would have grimaced quietly, singing some nonsense melody over a mundane task when she would have hummed it under her breath—and that’s a good thing.

But otherwise, nothing has changed. Falin’s voice is as delicate as ever, chiming in a lilting giggle behind a dainty gesture of her hand. Rustling like pages of well-loved books as she casts her protective wards, or ponders over how to cook a new monster, or murmurs right into Marcille’s ear while she…

Well. While she’s got Marcille bent over her own desk with her nightgown pooled at her ankles. Marcille’s not sure if it’s rude or considerate that she didn’t get a chance to dress herself before she had a girthy cock shoved up her cunt first thing in the morning. 

“Marcille,” Falin whispers, unfairly shaky as if she’s the one getting fucked within an inch of her life. She’s mouthing at Marcille’s neck, draped over her and pressing as close as possible in every way, gripping Marcille’s hands tight and keening like she’s found heaven between her legs. “Marcille, Marcille…” 

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that she gets to do that, that she gets to sound like that—with that sweet voice she’s always had, now making obscene little noises that are still whispery fine and almost ethereal coming from her mouth. These quiet, barely voiced sighs that puff against Marcille’s ear, the dulcet moans that thrum against her skin, and that demure little gasp when she thrusts a little harder and somehow finds even more space inside Marcille to bottom out in—

“Marcille…” she whimpers like she’s in pain, on the verge of tears, fingers tight between Marcille’s as they grip the edge of the rattling desk together. “You feel—so good, oh… You’re”—another moan buried just behind her ear—"so wet, so good…” 

It’s not like Marcille got the chance to be anything else right now, did she? Not when Falin fell upon her just as she was sorting through her documents, pressed against her back and already unfastening the clasps of her gown and slipping it off her shoulders. She was fully naked before she even got a playful good morning whispered into her ear—it’s a miracle she had the forethought to push her papers out of the way just before Falin had her wrapped around her finger in the most literal sense. 

Well. Fingers in the plural, really, since she always starts with two. Usually while pawing at Marcille’s tit with her other hand until her stupid knees give out and she ends up buckling over whatever surface is nearby—in this case, her desk, mercifully free of any uncapped inkwells at the moment. Now slathered with sweat that makes her tits slip and slide along the wooden varnish, of course, but otherwise non-disastrous. 

Hopefully her nightgown is catching most of the mess running down her thighs, or she’s going to have to make the most humiliating request to the castle staff about her carpets for the third time this month—

“Yes…!” Falin digs her heels in and fucks her even harder, taken with some kind of mindless momentum all of a sudden. “I love you,” she pants in that stupid—feathery, daisy-light tone that has no business being this sweet while she’s ravaging Marcille like this— “you’re perfect, you’re perfect—” 

Marcille’s going to die like this. This is how she’s going to go: Bleating like an animal with her cheek stuck to her desk with drool, eyes just permanently rolled back in her head, toes barely touching the floor as Falin keeps fucking her further onto the desk. She hasn’t said a single coherent word since her second orgasm however many minutes ago, just broken into an endless stream of guttural noises as her cunt slobbers and squelches around Falin’s cock almost as loudly as she’s wailing. 

“Marcille,” Falin keens, sounding like a bashful princess ravished to breathlessness—just something straight out of a high-minded erotica novel—all while hammering Marcille into the desk at a shallow, breakneck pace. “You feel—feel s–o good, you’re perfect, oh—oh, you’re perfect, you’re beautiful, I love you, I love you—” 

For the love of—fuck. Marcille can distantly hear herself scream, can feel the desk digging into her as she flails, her grasp on sanity getting thinner and thinner with each word that tumbles out of Falin’s mouth and shoots straight through her nerves. She’s—good god, she’s not usually this talkative. It’s almost always Marcille begging and blabbering about how much she wants Falin’s cock, how good it feels, how she wants it harder and faster and more, screaming and crying Falin’s name over and over—

But now, in the absence of Marcille’s pathetic yapping—after she’s already fucked the words out of Marcille so thoroughly—Falin’s taken it upon herself to murmur a stream of honeyed nonsense into her ear, her frail and gentle voice breaking with desperation—and fuck, it’s not fair.

“Yes, yes, oh—” Falin sobs into her neck. “I love it—I love it when you sound like this, I love you—you’re so good, so good for me, my Marcille—” 

No, no, no, she can’t do that, she can’t do that—she can’t say that, in that voice, while her cock is so deep in Marcille there’s hardly room for anything else, battering all her nerve endings and rearranging her so that there’s nothing left but her, Falin, Falin—

“Ah!” Falin cries out, like she’s the one getting reamed against her stupid fucking desk so hard she can barely breathe— “Yes, please, please—please say my name again!” 

Well. She can beg all she fucking wants, but it’s not going to be pretty and she has no one to blame but herself—it’s her fault Marcille can hardly speak, it’s her fault her name is only coming in rough wails with both syllables separated with heaving, crying breaths. Marcille gives it her all, scrapes whatever intelligence she has left to speak, and sounds like a dying animal in a way that can’t possibly be anything but hideous to listen to—

And still, Falin sobs, as if in utter ecstasy as she fucks Marcille so hard the desk starts scraping along the floor in harsh jumps. 

“Yes, yes—ah—” Her voice, not so whispery gentle now but still so melodious and clear, sounding out from deep in her chest— “I—love—you—” she weeps, punctuated by the hard slams of the desk against the floor as she drops the rapid pace in favor of mercilessly hard thrusts— “Beautiful—perfect—mine!” 

Then she finally, finally comes—not that it stops her, not with how she thrusts with every spurt. Like she’s not just satisfied with letting it spill out, like she needs to fuck it into Marcille with all her strength, once, twice, then one last time, stuffing her cunt absolutely full with searing heat—

And Marcille doesn’t even realize she’s coming until she’s unceremoniously ejected out the other side of the high, that telltale swoop of vertigo rushing through her veins. The orgasm doesn't even have the grace to let her go limp with afterglow, of course, and she’s left there convulsing and twitching like a drowning fish. With her jaw pressed to the desk, she can actually hear her teeth chatter from how hard she’s shaking, Falin’s warm weight on her be damned. 

(One day. One day, she’ll stop embarrassing herself like this—one day she’ll finish like a normal person during sex, instead of going off like a cheap firework every half hour and wringing an orgasm out of herself as soon as she feels Falin finish inside her, whether or not she even had one left in her to begin with.) 

“M-Marcille,” Falin stammers, her voice breathless but now shy and girlish again as she slowly untangles their hands. “Are you—are you okay?” 

The gall. To ask her that, when she’s nothing but a sweaty carcass slung over her desk, still twitching erratically. To be so gentle as she straightens up and kisses the back of her neck, tenderly brushing her hair to the side as she pulls out ever so slowly—

And still. Not. Slowly. Enough—apparently! Not with the sparks that explode in Marcille’s eyes again, utterly unclear if this is another orgasm or just a particularly brutal aftershock! She just goes squeaking and shaking and sliding off the desk onto her knees, hands clapped over her cunt like they’re going to protect her from the lightning racing up and down her spine. She doesn’t even know where she landed, really, convulsing and closing her thighs around her hand as cum and slick drools into her palms, falling forward and— and smacking her head against the edge of her desk.

“Oh!” Feathered arms clasp around her before she can slide past the wood with her sweaty forehead and land on her face. “Careful—are you okay?” 

The gall. The audacity. The—something, or whatever, fuck, Marcille doesn’t even care anymore. Her head throbs with an oncoming bruise, she can’t feel her legs, she can feel her pussy way too much, and it’s a wonder she hasn’t fallen apart on the spot—

“Okay… let’s…” There’s some maneuvering going on, but hell if Marcille can actually tell what Falin’s doing. “Here, let’s take a bath—I’ll go draw some water.” 

Marcille whines, because no—she doesn’t know where she is, she just twists until her face finds feathers and buries herself there. She even manages to bring one cum-covered hand to grip at the quils, because this mess is Falin’s fault and if she doesn't like it then she can wash it off herself—but she’s not allowed to leave. 

A little chuckle under her breath—and it’s so fucking cute and girlish like she hasn’t just demolished a full grown woman to the brink of unconsciousness, but Marcille can’t even find it in herself to be mad. Falin can ask her whatever the hell she wants, do whatever the hell she wants, so long as she doesn’t let go. 

“I’m bringing you with me, I promise,” Falin whispers so tenderly, pressing a kiss to Marcille’s head. There’s arms tightening around her back and under her knees, and she feels herself being lifted. “I wouldn’t leave you like that…” 

Better not, Marcille grumbles to herself. Not sure if it made it past her mouth, but it doesn’t matter. Falin’s going to take responsibility for turning her morning into—into this, even if it means having to draw some bathwater with an elf clinging to her the entire time. She’s going to be the one to wash her off, bring her their missed breakfast, and tell everyone why she wasn’t there at the morning meeting—

Maybe not that last part. 

“I’m sorry,” she hears, in that soft and whispery tone she’s loved for so many years. That voice that didn’t change, even with everything that happened—everything that Marcille did to her, and it’s—

It would be so, incredibly stupid if she started crying out of nowhere. 

“Liar,” she whines, digging the indignant annoyance back up to pout like a spoiled brat. “You liked… every second…” 

Another giggle that so infuriatingly lovely. “I did.” The sound of a squeaky valve turning, then rushing water that slaps against stone. “Did you?” 

Marcille just grumbles again and clings even tighter. Falin just laughs a little louder and strokes her hair, too kind to demand an answer in so many words—or, perhaps, impishly content to let Marcille incriminate herself with her silence, as she so often does.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

Once I was scrolling thru naruto fics and saw the tag "buisnessman!Kakashi" and all I could think about was Kakashi being a child businessman, owning all the konoha adults at doing business while wearing an oversized suit and tie. That idea is so fucking funny to me.