#ship: a strong case of fight or flight

[nidstiniens]

hey sorry I just need to talk about this for a hot second because I’m working on the rough outline for a fic and I can’t get this moment out of my head. this is the moment where, after the eons of plotting, watching his comrades fail over and over, watching every single plan he’s come up with get thwarted time and time again — at the end of all things, emet-selch, so overwrought with grief that he reconstructs amaurot, so desperate for an end to the insanity of it all takes the tiniest, smallest, briefest of moments to put a hand to the mortal wound you’ve given him before he fades away. it’s the “oh” moment, the moment of reprieve, of relief; the moment he realizes it’s over and he can finally rest after what doesn’t just feel like but has been thousands and thousands of years. at the end of everything, he’s not upset you won, he’s relieved his fight is finally over, and all he wants is for you to remember him. to remember amaurot. to remember his people and all that he fought for. just remember that it wasn’t all for nothing, that he wasn’t a villain for the cruelty of it, that it all meant something to him — and when you nod your head, he just smiles and then fades away. I will never be okay.

[phoenixcatch7]

Okay so I saw this post about dark percy (really him reaching his Limit and fighting full strength with everything he had) and I was imagining the potential fallout of that. Pretty bad, as you can guess.

The thing is a lot of percys strongest moments happen out of view of the olympians, especially in hoo. The hurricane atop the glacier in alaska, the poison scene in tartarus, bending the depression river and the one in the palace of nyx.

Stuff like the St Helens eruption got him washed up on an inescapable island literally removed from reality until calypso gave him the OK, the achillies curse he got tricked into losing by hera. Smaller moments, the minotaur, fighting ares, the stolen pirate ship, walking on water vs hyperion, freshwater sources, him knowing both Latin and Greek, they're more easily brushed off or at least mostly due to cunning, sword skills and sheer luck and grit.

But basically the olympians don't actually know the full extent of percys strength and divine power. They have hints - percy standing on the throne, winning against ares, his many victories - but what they aren't willing to brush aside in the heat of (an important) battle there have been pretty strong consequences for.

Heck, just look at Frank, he's no prodigy with weapons, he's polite and respectful, but his distant relation to two olympians letting him inherit shapeshifting earned him direct divine meddling and his life force tied to a hunk of half toasted firewood. Man is a honey bear with lactose intolerance and he was punished with a mythical death curse for being too strong.

If Percy's true strength came out, he would risk losing everything. His freedom, most certainly. If he wasn't straight up executed he might wind up in a Greek myth style imprisonment, the way of atlas, prometheus, calypso, or something like the myriad of ways Greek heroes met their end. Good scenario he survives a dozen curses and gets on with life with a dozen new disabilities, best case scenario he's stripped of every inch of divine power and dropped back to the mortal world, not even clear sighted. Total separation from the Greeks and Romans. Oh, annabeth would marry him either way, and his friends would hardly abandon him despite the gods wishes, but they'd hardly be able to see him, and no long range contact without the ability to IM him or vice versa.

All of that to say Percy is hiding his true strength from the gods themselves - maybe not consciously, and it's not even power he particularly wants - but if they ever find out?

It's game over.

But why is he so strong? I don't know. What I do know is that the half bloods of the books are so much stronger than the ones of myth. Used to be that divine blood would get you divine favour and a great fate whether you liked it or not. Maybe some cunning and bow skills. A spot of spell casting if you were really lucky. Achillies got his curse after he was born, Perseus had a dozen magic artifacts, orpheus had something going on but hercules is to my knowledge an outlier. Now? Everyone in camp has some special power. Flight, fire, necromancy, hypnotism, dream walking etc. However it's happening, half bloods are slowly but surely getting a lot, lot stronger every century that passes. Meta? I mean I guess. But.

What no one has done before is something that their godly parent couldn't.

Except.

Except Percy.

Except Percy, in tartarus, at his mental, emotional and physical limit, controlling poison with his mind, overpowering the goddess of poison in her home, making misery choke on misery. Feeling something in his chest crack. Doing something poseidon could not, and doing it better than the person who could.

Down there, hidden away from the gods, he evolved. For that brief moment, he did something, was something new.

And that was how the gods overthrew the titans.

And that's why they must never find out.

[monstersdownthepath]

Monster Spotlight: Cetus

CR 13

Chaotic Neutral Colossal Dragon

Bestiary 5, pg. 54

Among the cruelest creatures a DM could send after their players, the Cetus (I prefer to think it’s a singular, legendary creature rather than a species) makes for an excellent quest objective or even BBEG for a seaside campaign, its impossible power making it essentially unassailable by sea and capable of harassing an entire city on its own, and its only weakness difficult for some parties to take advantage of (or even know about, if treated as a singular legendary creature). Players may have to go on an entire separate quest to gain a weapon capable of harming the Cetus, and all the while the dim-witted but demanding dragon is free to take tithes from terrified townsfolk in the form of food, gold, or even sacrifices if it’s feeling particularly peckish or lazy.

But so long as the people within its territory keep up their side of the lopsided bargain, they see some benefit, however indirect. With Control Weather available to it 1/day, the divine serpent may gift its chosen beneficial and beautiful weather, free of storms or chaos. Cities protected/tyrannized by the Cetus is also all but invincible from the ocean, because the serpent has Quickened Control Water at will, letting it create an endless number of ship-swallowing whirlpools and destructive water spouts of truly tremendous size. If that weren’t enough, then an at-will Control Winds allows the beast to create cyclones 600ft wide to obliterate entire fleets at once and render it all but immune to ranged attacks, even those launched from cannons. With a caster level of 15, that gives the serpent just enough juice to raise the winds from Strong to Tornado-Force (or lower them by the same amount in case it wishes to protect its home from a storm), the 200 MPH winds reducing all but the largest of ships to toothpicks impaling screaming sailors. Or, should the beast be offended, wiping entire sections of its chosen city off the map. 

The “protection” offered by the Cetus is ephemeral at best, granted only to those who show it utter supplication, and its rage is downright apocalyptic. Thankfully, the creature’s gravely low Intelligence (7) and lack of any ranks in Sense Motive make it incredibly easy to trick and mislead, one of the few means a clever party (or desperate NPC) will have of defying the beasts and giving them time enough to find a way to beat it. This creates a tense time limit to gather the materials needed to combat it, because a straight-up brute force fight with the Cetus is nearly impossible.

The oceanic tyrant is practically built to thwart just about everything players can do. Its total control of wind and water makes assaults with war machines and heavy ships useless. It has Deflect Arrows for whatever reason, just in case something manages to sneak through its walls of wind. Its 30ft space and 30ft reach combine with its 120ft swim speed to give it a tremendous threat radius, nearly unmatched in the underwater combat the party will have to grapple with if they want to fight it toe to toe. And if you try to come at it from above? It has a unique ability called Impossible Leap, allowing it to use a full-round action to stretch its body to 1200ft and make a bite attack against any creature within that radius before returning to its former space. Yes, this creature can go from sea level to kissing the top of the Empire State Building in six seconds!

I hope whatever means you were using to stay aloft weren’t magical, either, because the Cetus is hard-coded to disrespect every method of flight and freedom. Its Dispelling Bite automatically targets any effect which would allow a creature to avoid being grappled or which would allow them to fly or hover. While this, thankfully, doesn’t strip creatures of their ability to swim, breathe underwater, or walk on water, that’s of little comfort to the unfortunate creature that just plummeted 100+ feet straight into the ocean.

But I’ve spoken of its ability to bite and what happens if it bites you without describing the bite itself! What does that look like? 6d6+27 plus Grab. That’s only when it’s swatting flies with Impossible Leap and striking fleeing foes with its Combat Reflexes, though; on its turn, its bite damage is actually 24d6+27 because it has Greater Vital Strike and literally no reason not to use it, so its average damage per round is hovering around 105, which is eyebrow-raising on its own even if it DIDN’T have extra bells and whistles. At the level a party can combat the tyrant serpent, that’s typically enough to knock a d8 Hit Dice haver from full to 0 unless they have some level of protection. Though it has 24 Spell Resistance, it has no status immunities aside from paralysis and sleep, so slapping it with as many debuffs as one can to drag down its otherwise monstrous +28 to attack rolls is one perfectly viable way to cut down its extreme DPS. With only one attack each round, if it misses that intimidating pile of d6s goes to waste.

if it hits, though? Whoof. Not only are victims potentially grappled, but the Cetus can Constrict such poor souls for 6d6+27 damage each round, and if that wasn’t enough? It can Rake grappled victims as a free action with its little arms for a not-so-little 4d6+18 damage. This is, of course, if it doesn’t simply Fast Swallow them into its gullet for 8d6+24 damage. Greater Vital Strike into a Grab to trigger Constrict, then Rake to follow up... Well that’s uh... That’s a very demoralizing number.

38d6+90 damage, or 230 on average, well over enough for a Cetus to kill even d12 Hit Dice owners.

It would be fine if the Cetus were a glass cannon, but it’s not. It has insurmountable DR 5, 28 AC, high saves for its level, and everyone within its 30ft reach is subject to Mariner’s Misfortune, a terrifying and terrifically powerful aura that forces every non-aquatic creature inside it to make a DC 26 Will save every round... which they must roll twice and take the lower result on. If they succeed, they cannot be afflicted by the aura for a full day, but if they fail? Oh god, if they fail? That’s disadvantage on ALL d20 rolls. Attacks, saves, skill checks, all of them. And this effect lasts for a full minute! And rounding off its defenses? Regeneration 10 that cannot be suppressed by any form of damage, making it unkillable even if the party managed to fight through its aura.

Thankfully, its Regeneration has a very specific weakness. Remember what I said about having to go on another quest to defeat this creature? I meant it. Much like its mythical namesake, the easiest way to beat the Cetus isn’t to fight it, but to kill it instantly. It has no resistance to instant-death effects or Polymorph effects, but more importantly it’s Vulnerable to Petrification. It takes a -4 penalty to any save to avoid being petrified, and even if it succeeds its saving throw it takes 1d4 Dexterity damage. What’s more, whether it passes or fails its save, it Regeneration shuts off for a full minute, allowing a party with the means to fight it on even terms and survive its damage 

Though its CR is low in comparison to heavy shakers like the demigods, the Kaiju, the Spawn of Rovagug, and others, it nonetheless shares the same role as an almost epic, ‘setpiece’ style monster one must go on special quest to find a means of defeating. Discovering the weakness is extremely hard on its own (especially, again, if you play the Cetus as a unique creature), likely requiring some form of divination or bargaining with a knowledgeable force, but then there’s finding the right weapon! Preferably one which can bypass its SR to assure there’s no room for failure. The head (or cooperation) of a Medusa, a tamed Gorgon, the gaze of a Basilisk, scrolls or other means to cast Flesh to Stone if desperate... or perhaps supplications to the extremely powerful Euryale are all means a DM could have players face off against the Cetus, possibly after the party found out the hard way just how hard it is to harm the thing in the first place, let alone kill it.

It is, however, endlessly amusing to me that this great and powerful serpent, blessed and protected by the ocean itself, can either be a nightmarish, down-to-the-wire DPS race against a foe that counters every reliable player tactic... or have the epic fight end in a single round, if the party caster guesses correctly with Flesh to Stone.

You can read more about it here.

[ahintofblue]

To New Beginnings

Ship: Antares/Sung Jin-Woo Rating: T Chapter: 3/? Summary: Jin-Woo is thrown into a timeline where he is bound to the Monarch of Destruction as his husband and an army of dragons are now his to care for. Antares has no memories of their previous fights, the desire to destroy and ruin is entirely gone, so a new challenge awaits for Jin-Woo instead.

It is not what Jin-Woo expects his new life to be.

Perhaps a change of heart is required?

Tags: Alternate Timeline, Fluff, Romance, Family, Bond, Interspecies Relationship, No Beta We Die Like Antares Notes: Chapter 3 is up with only 3 short parts for today! AO3!

Bellion is the first to ask Jin-Woo what he plans on doing next. He suggests he should leave Antares’ side and find a way to communicate to the Rulers, to which Jin-Woo takes a minute to consider his options but he’s certain Antares isn’t so easily tricked especially by the unfamiliarity of this timeline. As much as Jin-Woo finds it oddly pleasant to spend time with Antares on some domestic level, he knows some part of this isn’t real. 

Antares must know this as well. Husband or not. If so, then what is the old man waiting for? “Should you choose to battle him or not, we will abide by your orders.” Then again, Jin-Woo wishes it doesn’t have to come to that and looks at Bellion with a defeated sigh, the mere thought of fighting Antares again is a tiring notion. He’s done enough to protect those he cares about. Deep inside, he thinks it’s time to give himself a decent rest and this world offers it. Just not in the case he expects.

“I will think about this.” Then, Jin-Woo waves his hand dismissing Bellion. With a bow, Bellion disappears into the pool of shadows, and Beru watches with almost teary eyes, worrying about his liege’s turmoil he faces. 

“Don’t cry.” Jin-Woo looks at the radiant sea of stars. “At least the view is beautiful here.”  

/

Jin-Woo knows the castle is a home to the dragons, no longer a haven for humans who built it originally. Sections of the fortification already toppled over, giving new paths for the youngins to venture in and play a game of hide and seek. The larger drakes rest inside in the upper parts of the ruins and others enjoy the outside walls, even one sleeps on top of a pointed tower, wings covering its body and a long tail sways back and forth. 

The building is bigger than he realizes when Antares lets him ride on top of him in his full form, revealing a larger scale of the territory that goes beyond the human’s creation. Compared to the cottage Jin-Woo lives in, it is but a small dot on the map and with this discovery of a lake behind their home, he asks Antares to tell him a story about this land as he enjoys the wind in his hair.

/

The smallest of the dragonets is by the name of Rukie. Her white scales remind Jin-Woo of a pristine winter while her underside is the color of ashen gray. She greets her master with a tittering of screes, her wings taking her atop of Antares’ right shoulder. Jin-Woo discovers it is her favorite place and finds Antares’ hair is a chew toy for her to nibble on. It seems Antares doesn’t mind and with a gentlest of touches, his fingers rub Rukie’s head in circles and down her neck.

“She was the weakest out of her brothers and sisters,” Antares says, watching her like a proud father. “Even the mother did not hope for her survival but she came out strong. Refusing to let fate dictate her end.” Antares speaks in a foreign language to her next. 

Jin-Woo doesn’t recognize it but it sparks an instant joy in Rukie’s amber eyes as she lets go of her treat and takes flight towards Jin-Woo at an unexpected speed.

“I will give her to you,” Antares states.

“Huh—Whoa! Oh you’re a fast one.” Jin-Woo catches the bullet in his arms. Rukie is the size of a pigeon but a fiery one wrapped up in scales. She is adorable, no doubt melting his heart in seconds and one can tell Beru is already captivated in his head. Certainly, Jin-Woo can’t say no when she starts making her way on top of his left shoulder and proudly stays in her spot, looking at Antares with a good huff through her nostrils. “Do I take it that she accepts?” Repeating what Antares did prior, Jin-Woo strokes her head and receives a lick over his thumb. Distracted by Rukie’s happiness, Jin-Woo misses Antares closing the distance and stealing a kiss from him, giving him a firm acknowledgement and his turn for Jin-Woo’s attention, something Jin-Woo also learns, while Rukie watches them with curiosity before a soft growl comes out. 

Antares pulls away first, while Jin-Woo hides his face in Antares’ shirt. “Little one, you must learn to be patient.”

[just-eyris-things]

ALL ABOARD BECAUSE I HAVE THOUGHTS (SOTO STORY + SORROW LOST ACHIEVEMENT SPOILERS) (super long) this image literally me right now btw

In Sorrow Lost achievement, you collect Oracle Cards and after you gather them all you get a reading from Dagda.

Here it comes!

In case the image isn't loading, it's a chat window screen of Dagda and I's conversation:

Dagda: I was never as adept as she with these magics, but if you'd allow it… I could give you a reading? Eyrhys: I'd be honoured. Dagda: Four - five cards are whispering. The Satchel of Fate. The Stag and the Fiend. The Mirror. Dagda: And... The Convoy. Dagda: The Convoy enters while the Mirror reaches into the Satchel of Fate... Dagda: The Stag faces a severe choice. Eyrhys: The Convoy card is blank...? Who is it? Dagda: I think it might be...? No, take a look again.

And here are the cards she's talking about. I am putting them in an order Dagda is reading them.

The Convoy:

The Convoy The Nameless Convoy The page swirls with all of the names you've been called before. Wayfinder, Commander, Champion... They all sting your eyes.

The Mirror:

IV: The Mirror Isgarren, the Wizard of the Tower The sting of a strong gust; the distance he will fall. It is not as he remembered, being alive.

The Satchel of Fate:

X: Satchel of Fate Wizard's Ascent A collection of ideas, spread across the table. Between wars and lovers, they almost always choose war.

The Stag:

IX: The Stag Zojja, the Elementalist of the Ward The words of this card swirl about, unsure what it should tell you. The only words you can make out are "empty," "flight," and "slumber."

And finally, the Fiend:

XV: The Fiend Arina, the Outrider of the Ward The Lady would look upon the other world and see opportunity.

OKAY NOW THAT WE HAVE THE CARDS OUT OF THE WAY. MY VERY MESSY ANALYSIS HERE WE GOOOO

The Commander (the Convoy), the protector of Tyria, has arrived to the wizarding world and joined the battle. Meanwhile, Isgarren (the Mirror) faces choices (Satchel of Fate). Pretty obvious so far. The Satchel card points out the choice between war and love and that the wizard chooses war almost all the time.

This makes me think of the "bigger picture" kind of dialogue when the Commander is asked if they would save the village or slay the dragon. They would save the village. The wizards would slay the dragon. I think here the village could symbolise love - love for all that's alive, love for the 'smaller picture' that makes the bigger picture full. The dragon could be war - by slaying a dragon one leaves a trail of bodies behind. I feel like here the cards are telling us that Isgarren has lost the sight of the "small picture" because he is too focused on the famous bigger picture, he doesn't look at the small details. Perhaps that is because he has lost a piece of himself by living among the wizards, so far from mortals (I mean it is pointed out that nobody has seen Isgarren for generations...), he doesn't remember how it is to care for those little villages that could suffer from the dragon war. And from how I am reading The Mirror - he won't like remembering.

OKAY BUT LET'S GO BACK TO WAR AND LOVE BECAUSE I HAVE THOUGHTS and yes this is messy because the more I write the more thoughts I have, sorry!

So, War and Love. I'd like you to remember the last SotO instance as of the first SotO patch on 22.08.23.

Could it be that "war" here refers to Isgarren's "let's watch Eparch eat his own army" and perhaps "love" means "let's help demons in need"?

Now, I am not a native speaker. So just to make sure, I checked the meaning of convoy to see if I remembered it correctly. The Convoy means a protector of someone important (eg. guards escorting diplomats) or that important someone being protected (eg. trading ships being escorted by warships). So I think we could say that the Commander is both the Protector and, for the sake of my analysis, the Diplomat. Did we not rally all the Tyrian Orders (diplomacy)? Did we not fight Dragons (protector)? and those are only two examples from PERSONAL STORY SO THEY ARE LIKE WHAT, 12 YEARS OLD? There were multiple occassions where we needed to talk to people, there were days where we had to rely on our brute force. The Commander, is more than just a fighter. At least that's my idea of them. But, let's go back to SotO.

So we are both acknowledged fighter and a diplomat. Isgarren does, after all, ask us for our opinion about Peitha, does he not? If we said we're fighting, he would not stop us. If we said we're going to talk - we'd talk. But let's look at what actually happens.

In the story, Isgarren, who initially wants to go for "war", turns to us and asks us if we trust peitha. Regardless of our answer, we end up choosing "love". It feels to me like it's somehow us who influences Isgarren, even if indirectly, to choose the latter option.

So there's that. NOW ONTO ZOJJA and the Fiend, I guess.

Zojja, as the stag, is facing a choice. My question is, does this refer to her considering becoming a wizard, or perhaps it is a choice that is yet to be revealed? Personally I think it might be the latter simply because I got an impression that Zojja has already made up her mind on this one, HOWEVER, the words "empty" "flight" and "slumber" make me think "is this about her emptying her memories, putting her sense of self to sleep so she could spread her metaphorical wings in the wizard department?"

The Fiend Card does not do much in Dagda's reading, she only mentions it. The Card refers to Arina, Frode's daughter. She was sucked in by the rift into the demon realm and from what I see on the card, I think she might be recruited by the demons? Perhaps she might become corrupted and she might be our enemy?

So... yeah. there's that. Thanks for reading and sorry if this is very chaotic to read. My thoughts are racing and I'm bet that if I think about it some more I will have even MORE thoughts. Again, thanks for reading and see you around on this helled website (affectionate).

[sulli-villain]

new OC's list!

I will keep this post up-to-date-ish.... with my ocs! an icon, a mini bio, and eventually tag hotlinks! in case anyone grows interested in them! for a comprehensive list see "old ocs page" on my side bar. To search a character, type "character:charactername" into tags. example, tagged "character:Rem". current exceptions are sam=samantha

jack and sam go together and are separate universe from other ocs.

Samantha Winters, human women. age 35. Occupation: human rights advocate. Stubbon and fiesty, she encounters alot of dangerous situations and many people wish to harm her. Acts tough but is in constant fight or flight just trying to survive. Past attempts at hiring guards went poorly, but...

Jackie Sullivan, human man. Age 44. Occupation:AWOL rogue of a military hate cult. He killed the rest of the cult and faded into obscurity. A drunken shell of a man with bad opinions, a bad smoking habit, and an uncontrollable urge to solve most problems with violence. Sam hired him as her bodyguard for some reason...

Devon and Mikhail

Mikhail Allen. human man, age: 25(i think?) Occupattion: cryptid and supernatural hunter and protector. He's a bit dense and can be a dumbass, but he's actually very good at his job, surviving it, and taking notes on the actions of his foes. Found someone he was supposed to protect, but then.....

Devon Freyr. Appears as a middle aged human male. An eldritch horror of some unknown alternate dimension. Occupation: currently.....he is mikhails "assistant" of varying amounts of use. He likes to withhold information or just seem uninterested in what's going on. He does like Mikhail tho......They are inseparable. He's weak to sweets and can potentially be bribed.

Krow. A man in his 30's who got sent to hell for conning and then conned his way out. He's cursed now and changes forms at night. Also attracted some annoying ghost who won't stop telling him to be a good person. It's effevtive and it makes him angry.

Yumi. a ghost of unknown age. She doesn't know how she died or who she was, but has come to accept it and likes to just have fun. She's sweet and a bit of a ditz, and is obsessed with Klow because he can see her, unlike normal humans who can't. Wants to fix him.

Myuur. A deep sea mermaid woman. age 34. She is a carnivore and has lure-like tentacle objects that glow in the darkness. She can take human form but is very bad at it. Likes humans and is curious about their culture.

Rem. A shallow water mermaid man. age 73. unlike Myuur he is generally hostile if bothered, or if he's just in a bad mood. Hunts poachers and disrespectful tourists for fun. He can take human form for much longer than Myuur, and somewhat blend in to get things he wants from land.

Pyo. A bunny girl. age 22. She's tiny and cute, but stands out from her kin by being unhinged and very able and willing to kill to defend herself. Her favorite weapon is a shotgun.

Ged. A wolf man. Age 21. Pyo's emo wolf BF, he looks edgy and cool but he's actually a coward and his family disowned him. He likes to wear tight leather clothing and hide behind his tiny bunny gf. Technically strong but would only fight if cornered.

"snowberry" Definitely not her real name. Age 24. Bitchy catgirl who is better than you, cute and knows it. Will exploit her looks to get what she wants. Has alot of piercings. in alot of places. Absolutely no shame with this one.

Ramona. age 32. Gender is fuck around and find out. Mommy Dommy vibe gamer dog. They are chaotic, unpredicable, and can be a bit of a troll. But also the mom friend that will listen to your problems and support you.

Azure, age:21 at time of death. He is a gay angel, doesn't remember his human life. Peppy, optimistic, kind of an idiot. wears exlusivly skin tight clothing and tight white pants. nickname "bubblegum" for his hair color.

Chase, age: ??? human form appears to be around 20. A phantom demon dog from hell, He is given an intelligence boosting collar and shipped off to the human realm to observe spy on humans. Enrolled in a magic knight school to steal information and blend in. Acts like a conceited playboy to cope with his incoming existential crisis from becoming sentient.

Madeline Ellis

Lycah N Wareth

Scarlet.

"Nox" Noah e. Xavier

[foxilayde]

Sansana Part 1/2[Poe Dameron x Fem!Reader]

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. Drugs, illegal activity, slavery, non-explicit sex, cursing, denial of feelings.

THIS IS PART ONE, PART TWO WILL BE OUT NEXT WEEK!

Summary: You’re a spice runner with your partner in crime Poe Dameron. The Pkye Syndicate has entrusted you with a special mission and Poe is making things interesting...

Word Count: 5k

A/N: This is a gift to my dear friend Alex @blackberries45 it’s her birthday today, so show her some LOVE. The reader character is going to be called ‘Lex’ for obvious reasons.

Spice. Not ryll, not polstine, and certainly not fucking gliterstim. Sansana Spice to be more accurate. Highly prized, highly expensive, and highly illegal. A useful crime world currency. Crime. Ha! The word has no meaning to you in a galaxy where planets are being vaporized and the war doesn’t seem to have a single thing worth fighting for. The so called republic, who would gladly toss you in a cell for the rest of your life for finding a dusting of Sansana on your flight suit, doesn’t do shit about the slavery and sentient beings abuse that’s been taking place on Kessel for the past 500 standard years. Wonder why that could be. Couldn’t be because the planet-vaporizers and generals of the planet defenders alike are hooked on the stuff. Not hooked, like, medically. Well, sometimes that’s the case. But they’re hooked on the money. Every currency has gotta be backed by something, and credit where credits are due… you can find the Fort Knox of the galaxy on the northern hemisphere of Kessell; with the droids and the slaves with their vibropicks and short life expectancies. 

You’ve seen them. The slaves. Droids and mammalians nearly indistinguishable from each other- cloaked in the red dust of the deep mines. Children. Of every species. Probably born into the shit. You can’t care, you can’t afford to, so you turn a blind eye like everyone else in the galaxy, you get your shipment and get the hell out. You fucking hate Kessel and you’re glad to be on the ship leaving the ugly bubbling rock. You’ve heard the southern hemisphere is nicer. Plantations inhabited by the most intolerable people you could imagine. It does turn your stomach to think about it too much, hence the getting the fuck out of dodge, but even if you stopped, even if you quit, it wouldn’t matter. The boring and drilling won’t end on your account and there’d be a new runner to replace you. So it goes. It’s the lifeblood of the galaxy, Sansana. A tidal force. And some folks want to virtue signal and talk down to you just because you’re riding the wave instead of getting dashed on the rocks. Whatever. They can drown if they like, not your problem.

In short, it doesn’t matter what you do. Bakers, gunmen, artists, and thieves. If you’ve got credits in your pocket- then baby you’ve got blood on your hands. So what? You’ve cut out the middle-man. You’re closer to the root, to the seam; you’re a spice runner. Hell, spending most of your life in a tanker ship dodging the Reps is probably a helluva lot safer than building a life on a planet somewhere, waiting for the day Kylo fucking Ren has another tantrum and decides he wants to blow up a planet because his daddy left him or whatever the hell that little fucker’s problem is. 

You’re bitter, bitter about Alderaan and the bitterness has manifested itself in this hard exterior that works well as a shield in your line of work. Don’t get close, don’t get attached. Because one day, quick as light-speed, it could all disappear. So you do your thing, you band with whomever the Pyke Syndicate teams you up with, and you make your runs from Kessel to Correlia to Oba Diah to Nevaro. You send your bloody credits to your family, whatever you don’t spend yourself, and you keep your shell strong. 

That is until you met Poe. 

Poe is the best fucking pilot you’ve ever flown with. Maker, to watch him light-hop, to run and outgun the Reps, it’s like a dance. He’s smooth too, not just his attitude, but for a runner like yourself to see the way his hands have a mind of their own at the control panel, flicking the correct of the 52 switches outside his line of vision while not breaking a sweat despite the fact he’s got three Reps on his tail… maker, it’s something to witness. Familiar with the model of ship or not, he’s got a steady hand at the helm; his competence is like the executive function of the ship itself. He’s incredible.

He doesn’t stress you out like Zorii does, cursing up a storm, barking orders at you. Poe is encouraging, Poe gives high fives, Poe claps you on the shoulder and says shit like “nice work”. And being touched isn’t really your thing. Not in any fucking capacity. Crowds freak you out with the possibility of rubbing shoulders with someone, and not just because you’re wary of pickpockets. There’s a thing about proximity that you can’t handle, alright. So far Poe seems to be the only exception to the rule, his touches don’t make you cringe or flinch. They’re tolerable. You don’t like a lot of people. And that is to say, you don’t like people in great quantities and you don’t usually meet someone you can tolerate. It’s not rocket science to figure out why you find yourself in the middle of hyperspace with relative strangers, bouncing from planet to planet, often not stopping long enough to take a full deep breath of the native air. 

The sterile recycled oxygen on the ship is the smell of home. Crisp and dry like plastic, resiny like fuel, and of course; aromatic like spice. The shit is so pure and potent that no amount of packaging can contain the pungent fragrance of the drug. You don’t even bother to hide it in the gunnels on long trips because if a Rep boards the ship, there’s not going to be any mystery as to what you’re hauling. 

What is a mystery is what the hell Poe Dameron is doing running spice when he so clearly likes people and craves stability. He itches to get on-planet on your off-days, to go to markets and chat with strangers, to try new food, to see live music. He’s warm and kind in a way that no-one in this business is. And he is often convincing enough that you let him drag you by the hand to these frivolous excursions. And every time, every new treat he sticks in your mouth, every live song he twirls your clumsy teetering feet to, you can feel the way he presses on your barriers gently like thumbs on an eggshell, fracturing you beautifully and plucking off one fragment of your exterior at a time. As if there’s something worth seeing in the yolk of you. 

And, well. You fucked him. 

It was unexpected and hot and quick and in the dark, neither of you even fully undressed. 

You— the person who cringes about sitting next to a stranger at a bar, fucked Poe. 

You blame it on the chemicals, the adrenaline. You’d nearly been caught by a Rep, dirty orange-suited fuck had you on the ground, pinned, hands behind your back and you nearly blacked out from panic. Poe was wild, shouting at the Rep detaining you to “get the fuck off of her, don’t touch her!” and headbutting the Rep cuffing him, it was all such a blur, but when you came to, Poe was wild eyed, hands hovering over you, holding back from checking your injuries, frantically asking if you were okay. You couldn’t help it. The fucking cortisol or whatever, the fight or flight— it made you jump into his arms. He tentatively held you and rocked you while you cried into his shirt. Reassuring you that it was all okay. The reps were gone, you were safe and “no one’s gunna lay a finger on you on my watch.” So… you crawled into his bunk that night. Fucking chemicals. In total darkness, kissing him with unsure lips, rocking yourself on his willing hardness to your simultaneous release, and climbing shamefully out of his bunk before you gave into the chance to fall asleep in his wide warm arms. 

You were so fucking nervous the next day he would say something. And he’d be well within his rights too. You essentially used him. It took all your courage to sit next to him— in the co-pilot chair of the ship, hard to look at him, heart racing, guilty at how vulnerable you’d been the night before. Ashamed of how much of him you laid up bare against in the total darkness. You were sure that he wouldn’t ever take you seriously as a fellow runner after that. Not just the fucking, but the needing to be saved by him from the Reps, and the crying into his shirt. 

Poe cleared his throat and started with a tentative, “so about last night—“

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You dismissed him with a curt response, busying yourself with the control panel, rechecking the calibrations. From the corner of your eye you could see him nod once and give a simple, “ok.” And he dropped it. He didn’t assume to get too friendly after that, didn’t intrude on your space beyond the usual tiny touches; fingers grazing over cups of caf, a light touch on your shoulder if he needed to get into the supply closet while you’re crouched over the boxes of spare parts, determining your shopping list for the next supply run. 

And it became a bit of a routine. On tough days… and on days that weren’t tough at all- climbing into his bunk in the swirling darkness of hyperspace, grabbing at each other quick and filthy, always leaving before sleep overtook you.

He always asks to taste you. He can’t shut up about it. You don’t even like kissing so much but you do it to keep his mouth busy, so he doesn’t get any ideas. Even kissing doesn’t stop his requests, He begs around your lips and into your mouth while you pump him with your hand, “Please, baby. Let me, let me taste you.” You shake your head even though you know he can’t see it in the perfect black of the hull.

You choose instead to line him up with you and sink down onto him in a now-practiced routine. His hands, so gentle and warm on your bare hips, not pressing you an inch further than you’d allow. 

Being with Poe like this is like the way he dances with you; to live music on Nevaro- so aware of your body, aware of your comfort level. Only ever asking for permission, and only bowing back easily without it.

And maker is he consistent. Fuck. You’ve never cum so hard with anyone else or even by yourself. Which is… pretty incredible because you’d been absolutely convinced, before Poe, that by yourself was the best you’d ever have… he proves you wrong every time. 

“Why do you leave right after? No pressure. Just curious.” He pants after your perfect release, kissing softly below your jaw, knowing that your mind is already out of the bunk. 

You didn’t tell him it’s because if you leave before you fall asleep, you can pretend it’s all a dream. You can wake up and be the person you know yourself to be. And, maker, they way he lets you keep up the ruse in the waking hours, never forcing you talk about it or making dirty jokes or wiggling his eyebrows at you; It’s enough to endear you to him enough to keep coming back, night after pitch dark night, crawling to him like a phantom, taking exactly what you need and leaving without a trace.  

It doesn’t feel real in hyperspace. Cutting through the fabric of space and time like that, leaping from one end of the galaxy to the other… if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you make love to Poe in a place that neither exists in the fabric of space nor time, did it ever really happen?

You don’t tell him that, you pat his stubbly cheek and crawl back into your chilly bunk. Alone. 

He never comes to you, putting the burden of ‘when’ on you always. It’s not exactly a burden though, and every time he feels the dip of the mattress under your knee when you hoist yourself into his bunk he lets out a pleased little “mmmm, baby”. 

There’s no foreplay… sometimes you let him kiss your tits if he needs to get hard. But you’re mostly ready and raring and… it’s not passion, it’s not. Its just a release. It can’t be passion, it’s hardly even real.

He’s a good guy, he’s someone you can trust. And that shit is rare out here in the slug fields, the outer rim, and even rarer in your trade. It’s not typical for teams to last as long as yours has. But you can’t seem to shake him. The Pyke’s are pleased with your consistency- you figure that’s why they keep assigning you together and you’re so grateful Zorii isn’t on this run with you because she is… stressful. The only thing you miss about her is her willingness to be the emissary to Kessel when you land for the spice pickup. Because Poe refuses. You’ve never pressed him, never demanded that he should take his fucking turn to pick up the supply. And it’s not like he’s ever told you that he won’t do it. He is just always seemingly busy with internal repairs every time you land on the fucking torture rock. You don’t call him out on it. Because he doesn’t call you out on your proclivities, your needs. He accepts them and you accept his. If this is his line, if he cant step on Kessel, then you’ll do it for him. It’s a small price to pay for the safe feeling you get with him at the control panel… and the safe feeling you pull from him in hyperspace. 

The droids have finished loading the supply by the time you buckle in next to Poe. A rusted S1-D6 in a burlap cloth, tapping the side of the ship and giving you a broken and rusted thumbs up from the viewing port. Maker this place is fucking depressing. Your lips form a tight line and you nod at the droid.

Poe’s face is grim as he types in the coordinates for-

“Tattooine?”

Poe doesn’t look at you while he fires up the engines and destabilizes the compressor. 

“Yeah. We’re skipping the usual. This batch is going straight to the Daimyo.”

To the Daimyo? Not the Pykes. What the hell? 

“And are we the one’s expected to make the trade?” 

You’re not used to this, you’re used to dropping the shit to the syndicate’s establishments. You’re suppliers, not fucking drug dealers. Maker. You can’t even fucking speak Huttese! 

Poe flips the internal power mode controls to manual and tells you simply, “yes.”

“I’ve never done that before. Made the trade. It’s not my thing.”

Poe sequences the auto-lift and gives you a reassuring smile, “I know. No one’s expecting you to do it. The Pyke’s gave it to me. Just let me do the talking Lex.”

“You speak Huttese?”

“Are you surprised?” He gives you a cocky smile and a wink. Ugh. No. You’e not surprised. He’s good at everything. It’s mildly irritating. Whatever. He’s probably not fluent. 

You confirm the all systems command on your side of the pit and the ship rises easily. Leaving Kessel and all its fucking misery, maker you love to watch that planet get smaller and smaller until it’s a pinprick. Until Poe engages hyperspace and you’re in swirling blue. Neither here nor there. 

“Is this some kind of promotion for you?” You’re suddenly struck by the idea that Poe might be promoted to something more stable. Maybe running a branch of the syndicate of his own. He could do it. He’d be perfect at it. You can see him now, with a team in a Cantina. Regulars, subjects, a unit to protect him… somewhere warm and bright. With all the teeming life a planet has to offer. You’d heard they’ve been looking for a Head on Nevaroo. And you know how much Poe likes their five-blossom bread and the band that plays at Greef’s most nights. Whatever. People come and people go. You get a new partner every few runs. And that’s the way you like it. 

It’s honestly stupid he’s stayed a runner this long. Runner’s get paid flat shit for the most part. The Syndicate expects the runner’s to scrape a little spice off the top, you assume that’s why the pay is so bad. But a dealer… a dealer can set their own cuts. And the better they are at talking, the better cut they can get for themselves. 

“A promotion? Don’t know.” Poe shrugs and unbuckles himself, he heads over to the radio transceiver, sits down on the floor beside it, and begins untangling the mess of wires you can only assume was done by an Anzellan with how tiny and convoluted the knots are. “Would be nice though, wouldn’t it? Be a dealer?” Poe smiles up at you and you don’t know how he’s able to make being a dealer sound like the most optimistic thing in the galaxy. 

You unbuckle yourself and make your way over to the little stack of wires across from Poe, lowering yourself on crossed legs, you take a bundle of blue into your lap and begin to look for a place to begin. Maker, it’s impossible. 

“What’s so great about being a dealer?” You mutter, finding the end of a wire and tugging hard till the threads all bunch up and you sigh in frustration. 

“More money, for one. My dad could really use it.” Poe has mentioned Kes before. How badly the war affected everything in the Dameron household made you feel guilty for being so bitter. Poe lost his mother to the war, and his father has been trying to maintain their family aggregate business on Yavin with dwindling supplies and one bum leg. Poe had been there, helping him and then decided it would be more effective to send him money. Kes didn’t need labor, he needed parts. Parts for irrigation and tilling. And parts in this economy, when every scrap of metal is worth it’s weight in spice… well. There aren’t many entry level positions in the slug fields besides runner and miner. 

“You’d be a good dealer.” You choose another wire to tug and the bundle seems to get more bunched with every pull you make. 

“Careful, Lex. That sounded like a compliment.” He smiles at you and you note the way he untangles. He grabs the whole bundle in both hands and gently pulls from the center, stretching the cloud of string larger and larger, creating open pockets and widening the surface area of the previously balled clump. Loose wires fall out the edges of the mass and he rests it gently in his lap while he feeds the wire through the widened loops. You continue to tug and pull, getting into the tight knots with your fingernails and swearing every time you drop your bundle. 

“Well, where are we going after Tatooine, then?” You ask, still concentrating on the bundle. 

“Oba Diah.” 

You scrunch your eyes closed and shake your head. “How was I kept out of the loop on this?”

“Well, I know how much you love talking to Crodit.”

“Ew.”

“Exactly. Love of your life. I talked to him before we left for Kessel. Orders came from Lom himself.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. They’ve got faith in us, Lex.”

“Faith in you, you mean.”

“Us.” Poe says seriously. “You know how rare it is to find someone as devoted to Keeping It Business as you, Lex?” Poe insists. 

You don’t know how to take the compliment coming from him so you just look back to your bundle and pick at a particularly aggressive loop.

“I think it’s you they’re impressed with. Your— people skills.” 

“We make one hell of a duo. You have to admit.” He taps your shoe with his. Tiny touches. 

You can’t help the smile that burns your cheeks when you try to fight it. He’s right. He’s too generous with his compliments, but he’s right. Its why they team you up. You work well together.

“And neither one of us is scraping spice.”

Poe goes uncharacteristically silent.

“Right?” You question, letting your hands fall into your lap. The only sound is the buzzing of the fluorescents above you and the swirling hum of hyperspace.

Poe gives you a mischievous grin and shrugs his shoulders.

“Poe! You haven’t been scraping have you?” Fuck. That would be an unmitigated disater. God if the Pykes ever find out, you’re going to get more than canned.

“Not yet!”

“What do you mean, not yet?” 

“Little Lex, do you know why we are going straight to the Daimyo?”

“Yeah, you just said- because Crodit-“

“Did you not get a good whiff of the shipment? Get a look at the color?”

“No. Not really” You busy yourself with the wire, unwilling to say you’ve never inspected it AT Kessel before, always waiting for after you boarded. Because you’re a fucking runner. If there’s something dodgy with the product, or there’s not enough, that shit is between Kessel and Lom… but, well fuck, if you had known you’d be dealing you would have taken a closer look. 

“Fuck? Really?” Poe drops his half done bundle, (maker he’s so fast at that) and gets to his feet, slamming his hand to the port door and disappearing suddenly. You don’t have time to get anxious about the state of the product before he’s back and leaning on the far wall of the cockpit with a hand over his chest. 

“Dammit, Lex. You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“What do you mean?” 

“What do I-? Get up.” He snaps his fingers at you and holds out a hand for you to take. You toss your wire bundle to the side, barely a dent in progress, you take his warm hand and he hoists you up, still holding your hand- he leads you to the loading trunk. One of the cases is cracked open and you can smell the fucking thing from the other side of the hull. 

“Shit that is strong!” You remark, the odor overtaking you. It’s a good smell. A great smell. You’re used to the permeation of spice but this smells different. Stronger. Better. And when you get closer you note the redness is unlike any Spice you’d seen before.

“Gorgeous, right?” Poe smiles and nods his head at the cracked case, “Go on, take a look. I know you didn’t do it at Kessel.” 

You roll your eyes. If he’s going to give you shit for Kessel, he can pick up the next shipment himself. 

You kneel down over the trunk and rub your finger instinctively over the deep blood red of the dust. The spice. It looks like extrait or something. Unreal.

“You know what that is?”

You shake your head, mesmerized by the color, the smell, the texture of it as you glide your fingertips over the fine, powdery surface. Regular spice is more of a dull orange and has a note of dust in the scent. But not this. It’s pure, whatever it is.

“Sansana.”

Your eyes widen, “All of it?” You indicate to all of the cases and Poe nods his head with a huge smile.  

“All of it. And we,” he kneels down next to you and shakes your shoulder, “get to keep the dealer’s cut… if we talk it up with the Daimyo.”

Holy shit. A dealer’s cut on Sansana. Your family is going to be set for a while. Kes is going to be set too. Why you’re thinking about a man with a bum leg you’ve never met, who lives on a planet you’ve never been to, you’re not sure. … You might even be able to take a fucking vacation. To where, you don’t know, or really care. 

Finally, that magic mouth of Dameron’s is going to do you some good. If he can get you 60%, maker, you’ll be happy as a clam on Mon Cala. 

“I wanna try it though,” says Poe.

“What?! Try Sansana? Are you nuts?”

“What? When else am I going to get this opportunity? I gotta be able to assure the Daimyo he’s getting a quality product… plus Crodit kind of, well, it’s part of our deal. He said he couldn’t get me the dealer gig without dosing on Sansana. I gotta do it in front of the Daimyo too. As a cultural show of good faith.”

A cultural show of good faith?

“Crodit’s using you as a test-porg?!”

“Lex, it isn’t like that. I’m a big boy, I know what I signed up for.”

“So, let me get this straight… You’re going to the Daimyo, then you’re going to snort up Sansana, and then negotiate a deal? That sounds like a kriffing bad idea if you ask me.”

“No, Lex. WE are going to the Daimyo, I will negotiate, and THEN I will snort up Sansana…. In celebration of making a good deal.”

“I- Okay then. If that’s what Crodit says, if that’s what you say, I’m staying out of it. In fact, this is a much better idea than what I thought you were doing— scraping. Maker, that would have meant both of our heads.”

“I’ve got a proposition for you though, Lex.” 

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, I want you to do it with me.”

“Do what?”

“Sansana.”

“In front of the Daimyo?”

“No, not in front of anybody but me. Back on the ship. In Hyperdrive. Nice and safe on our way to Oba Diah.”

“I’m not just going to do Sansana because you asked me to, Dameron.”

Poe inhales as if he’s about to say something and then pauses and nods. “That’s fair.”

“I’d consider doing it for credits.”

“Straightforward. I like that about you, Lex.” 

You tip your forehead to him. 

“What if we make it interesting? A bet.” He offers.

“I’m listening.”

“If I can get us an 80% dealer cut with the Daimyo… then you have to do Sansana with me.”

80 percent? That’s a no-fucking brainer. You could take a month long break on a fucking deserted island, soaking up sun and surf without a care in the galaxy. All for one hit of the most coveted Spice in the fucking galaxy. Duh. “Deal!”

“Wait wait wait, not so fast, little Lex.” 

You prop your hands on your hips, “Of course there’s a catch.”

“You have to do Sansana with me, and… you have to let me eat you out.”

He’s never talked about it before, never brought it up. Only ever when you’re both naked in the dark with the only thing illuminating you being the swirling blue of space-travel. Never like this though: staring at each other face-on with the fluorescents overhead. He must see the way you gulp.

“We can do it in the dark if you want. I’ll even close the port-shade so there’s no light at all… I just want to taste you.”

You gulp again and stare at his mouth then. Would it really be so bad to… let him…. Lick you? I mean, maker he’s obviously hard up for it, including it on his end of the bargain. Everything about it is win-win-win all around as far as you’re concerned.

Maker, just looking at him is making your kriffing head spin. What are the terms of the bet exactly? If he gets more than 80 percent: you get money, a possible vacation, a dose of sansana, and Poe’s face between your legs; and thats all if HE wins the bet. 

If you win, and he doesn’t get over 80% you get… a regular dealer cut and life as usual, plus soberly babysitting a spiced-out Poe on your way to Oba Diah. God it seems like an easy yes, so why the fuck is it so hard to say it?

Poe, noting your continued silence puts a hand on your shoulder. 

“Lex, you don’t have to. I’m going to try to get us that 80% cut no matter what. I just thought I’d…”

“Spice things up?” You offer with a smile.

Poe laughs. “Yes. So, what’s the verdict?”

You purse your lips and nod. “I’m in.”

“Attagirl!” 

“But only one hit!”

“Hey, I won’t force you! You do as much— or as little as you want.”

Poe scoops a small palmful into a leather pouch and sets it on the shelf next to the cracked case. 

“You sure they won’t notice a scrape?”

“This much?” Poe holds up the pouch with laughter in his eyes. “Honey, a calibrator droid wouldn’t know this much was missing.”

“Just trying not to die, Dameron, that’s all.”

“I respect that, Lex. I really do.”

Poe closes and secures the cracked case and offers his hand to you, helping you up. Both of your palms are dusted in enough red to land you in Rep prison for life and when you rise up on your feet your face is nearly close enough to kiss him. He lets go of your hand, slowly dragging the red grit between your fingers and he turns to step back into the cockpit. His palm leaves a print on the white keypad and the earthy-red tone of the smudge doesn’t match the ship at all. It's glaringly natural among the sterility. You find a spare rag to wipe it clean. Maker what have you signed up for?

END

~~~

only tagging those who interacted with my asking post because Poe being a spice runner is a very sensitive topic.

@paper-n-ashes @ozarkthedog @samsspade @itsmypersonalagenda @lovers-liability @littlemousedroid @tasmdd @d1rtysna1l @takenbyheartstrings @ophelialoveshandsomemen @silkzomi @spider-starry @cottagebunny9 @rosie-jane @enichole445 @maskjunkie @pri00r @randomcuboidshape @mstgsmy @strxwberrymoonstar @mysweetandsaucy @obiwanshusband @lily-lilli @lemongingerart @3-14123 @stormkobra-5 @laters-gators

[nidstiniens]

⤞ FFXIV Write 2024 Masterpost | ardberts @ ao3 [ day ∙ prompt ∙ ship ]

day 01 ∙ steer ∙ estinien/wol It was his fault, again, as it always was, despite what she'd tell him. He wondered if he'd ever be able to get this right, if he was cut out for it at all. Perhaps he'd have been better off never trying

day 02 ∙ horizon ∙ emet/wol Her lips twist with the melancholy thought that, in all universes, regardless, he would remain alone in his lofty intentions, some burden only he could shoulder. The reality sits bittersweet on her tongue.

day 03 ∙ tempest ∙ emet/wol And soon enough, tomorrow or a day from now, the end will come, and what will be left when Emet-Selch breaks her for the last time is an understanding that no one else will be willing to hear.

day 04 ∙ reticent ∙ estinien/wol Estinien marvels, for a moment, at just how much of himself is already hers.

day 05 ∙ stamp ∙ estinien/wol She'd known the topic of her love life would come up eventually but, in truth, she hadn't expected it so soon. For a relationship that had been kept so long in the dark, the news of it coming to light had spread like wildfire.

⤞ Read More

[just-here-for-the-moment]

CONGRATULATIONS ON 300 LOVE💚💚💚 You deserve it and more because you are TALENTED and SO SWEET and everything you do is just 👨‍🍳🤌

I took the chance to spin your wheel… and first spin I got was Mando with a lactation kink… I KNOW this man loves kids and wants a big family so I can’t wait to see what you come up with!!!! All the love!

Woooo!!! This broke me. I was really going for XTRA FILTHY SMUT but that did not happen. This one surprised me when I wrote it by sneaking up all soft and sweet, and then ending that way too. That's okay, though, I like a good soft smut.

Hope you enjoy!!! :D

Word Count: 2030+

Rating: Explicit/mature, 18+ only

Outline: Din Djarin x “You”/Din’s wife (cis/het female reader; “blank canvas”/no physical description/no name/no use of “Y/N”)

Warnings: starts soft, ends soft; Din has a filthy mouth; praise kink (use of “good girl”); lactation kink; unprotected P/V sex in the context of marriage; sprinkling of breeding kink

Evenings and nights were always your favorite with your husband. It was the best time of the day, everyone settled down and quiet, the ship docked for the night wherever you were visiting or set to autopilot to the next destination. You knew your husband’s moods, the slight slump of his shoulders telling you that he was getting drowsy, ready to head below decks and rest, curled up in your arms.

You nursed your son, putting him down before heading up to the cockpit to knit for a bit and watch the stars race by. After an hour of that, you saw the telltale signs and knew that Din was done for the day, even if he didn’t know it himself. He pushed himself too hard, always believing that there was more of him to go around than there was.

Now that the baby was here, growing healthy and strong, Din had resumed his habit of staying up too late, tweaking just one more thing in the cockpit or looking over the available jobs just one more time. He had spent too many nights slumped sleeping in that pilot’s chair, and you had finally started being gently pushy, in the hopes of getting the man to just stop and rest.

You waited until you saw the helmet keel an inch too far to the right, knowing how heavy it felt on his head, his old habit of wearing full armor at all times in the cockpit in case things went sideways and he had to spring into action. You didn’t push him to relax or remove it, you knew how much he needed that feeling of being in control. But you could be sweet and soft, remind him how much you needed him at the end of the day, how good it would feel to finally remove the Beskar and curl up against you, skin to skin for the night.

“Din,” you made your voice soft. “It’s bedtime.”

His helmet tilted back to center and you heard him clear his throat. “Just one more thing, mesh’la.”

You smiled to yourself and finished off your row of stitches, giving him a few more minutes, tweaking knobs and fiddling with buttons. You got up and stretched, then came around to his side, placing one hand on the back of his neck with a gentle squeeze.

“Let’s go. You need your rest, or you’ll be no good to anyone tomorrow.”

Din lifted one hand to grip your waist affectionately. You could visualize the fight happening on his face, the urge to take care of just one more item battling against the pull of your soft curves in the dark. You leaned in, letting his helmet come to rest against your side.

“Let me take you to bed, you big, strong man.” Your voice was soft, your nails softer as you slipped them just under the cowl and dragged them across the back of his neck.

Din sighed and then set the ship to autopilot before he removed his helmet. His eyes were rimmed with hints of red, the circles underneath deeper than they had been yesterday. Your heart squeezed, and you immediately took the helmet to set it gently on the floor. You kneeled in front of his chair and didn’t say a word as you started to help him remove his gloves, then all of the parts of his armor that you could reach. For his part, Din let you worry your fingers over him. Then he stood up and took off his back plates and cape, piling everything neatly on the ground.

“Sit.” You left no room for argument, and Din complied. You muttered gently to yourself as you reached down to help him remove his boots, “Kriffing crazy man, pushing yourself so hard…”

Din let you undress him, let you massage your fingers up his calves and across his quads, and that told you more than anything how tired he really was. Normally he would at least protest, say that he didn’t need the help, but this quiet acquiescence was worrisome. Still, though, you knew how to relax him, get him to stop. You weren’t above using your feminine wiles to bend him to your will, all in the service of getting him to rest.

When he was finally down to his flight suit, you opened the front of it and peeled it down and off his shoulders, and then straddled his lap in the pilot’s chair. You started by skating your nails over his shoulders. Din closed his eyes as a shiver ran through his body. He nearly moaned, a soft “Ohhh…” floating out into the quiet of the cockpit.

You gently pushed his forehead so that he could lean his head back on the headrest, and increased the pressure of your fingers as you rubbed circles into the knots of his biceps and trapezius muscles. Din let his hands rest on your thighs as you worked him over, and by the end of it, he was putty in your hands. You finished by laying a soft kiss to his velvet lips, and you were surprised when he kissed back and wrapped his arms around your waist, holding you tight.

“Sweet man, I thought you were tired?” You smiled as he brought his eyes to rest on your face.

“No, mesh’la. I think I just got a second wind.” Din raised an eyebrow at you, and you giggled as you felt him twitch hard underneath your crotch.

“No, you need to rest, my husband. You’re awfully tired.”

Din groaned as he buried his face against your sternum, grinding up against your through your clothing. You threaded your fingers through his curls and scraped your nails from his ears down to his neck, pulling a moan from deep in his throat.

“But I need to have you, just like this.” Din brought his hands up to untie the laces of your wrap dress, sliding his thick fingers under the fabric as it fell open. “Please? Can I taste your milk? You know I love to taste you, mesh’la.” He placed hot, open-mouthed kisses to the swell of your breasts. You felt a thrill run through your body, finding it harder and harder to be stern with him.

“No, Din, you really need-” You gasped as he cupped your breast with one big hand and brought his mouth to the nipple. “You need…” But for the life of you, you couldn’t remember the next part of your orders. You let your dress slide down your arms and off your shoulders, pooling on the floor of the cockpit. Your panties were damp, and Din’s strong arm wrapped around you, holding you firmly in place.

“I know what I need, my sweet wife. I need you.” Din dove back to your breast with his hungry mouth, swirling the nipple with his tongue as his erection grew and pressed harder against your clothed cunt. You felt your milk prickling behind your areolas, knowing that if Din applied any suction, you would start leaking from both breasts, and then you would entirely lose control of this mission to get him to bed.

“No, Din, bed-” but he cut you off with a growl, something primal and low that rumbled from deep in his chest and took your breath away as he gripped you closer, teeth scraping against your budded nipple.

Din began to suckle, and you threw your head back with a gasp, clinging tightly to his shoulders as the muscles flexed under your touch. He was quiet but greedy, sucking at one side before moving to the other. The feel of your milk letting down made you moan, and giving in was just too easy, too sweet to resist. You let your husband take what he wanted, what he needed from you. There would be plenty for the baby still.

“You taste like the stars, sweet girl.” Din’s voice was a hoarse whisper in between his lapping, and his praises made you wetter. “You taste like honey and sunshine like this.”

“Diiinn…” Your head was fuzzy, wiped clean of everything except desire. “Din, please…”

You weren’t even sure what you were asking for, but Din took charge, lifting you half out of his lap so that he could free his cock, before hooking one thick finger and pulling your panties to the side. He swept the head of his penis back and forth against your slick folds and then thrust up inside, settling you back on his lap with his arm wrapped tight around your lower back.

“My wife, my girl,” he growled into your mouth as he worked you against him. You braced your feet as best you could, but Din was determined to do things his way. You let him pull and release you with that iron grip, canting your hips back and forth as he rocked you on his length. He ducked his head back down and lapped at you again and again.

All you could manage was a breathy, “Ohhh,” as he kept thrusting up into you at a steady pace. You grasped at his shoulders, his hair, anywhere you could find a purchase to steady yourself.

“My wife has the sweetest tits in the whole galaxy. Such a good girl, letting me fuck her like this.” Din’s eyes sparkled as he looked up at you. “Want me to fuck another warrior into you, mesh’la? Another baby?”

“Yes, oh!” You felt your climax start to unfurl, every nerve tingling as his cock rubbed against your clit from this angle.

Din suckled you again and again, pausing only to growl praises and promises up into your mouth.

“You’d like that? You want me to fill you up again? I’ll keep you pregnant all the time, full of milk for me and our babies.” His arm wrapped tighter around your waist as he fucked up inside of you harder. “Keep your tits full? Keep you dripping sweet milk, all for me?”

You nodded and kissed him. “Yes, please- yes, yes. Fill me up, Din. I want you to.”

“Come for me first, sweet girl.” Din cupped his free hand under your knee and lifted your leg high and open. “Touch yourself. I want my wife to come around my cock.”

Your hand flew down inside your panties to touch your clit, rubbing and pressing it in circles, trying desperately to follow his wishes. Finally you felt the finish coming. You gasped out to him as you came and Din kept his eyes pinned on your face as you cried out. Your cunt squeezed and milked his cock as he began to spurt his own release deep inside. Din let go of your leg, and both arms wrapped your waist in a vise grip as he ground himself into you and climaxed.

When you were both spent, Din brought both hands to cup your breasts, licking the last of your milk from the swollen nipples.

Din’s “Hmmmm…” reverberated through his lips, the deepest and most satisfied sound you could imagine. You felt him hot inside of you, and you were reluctant to lift yourself off his lap. He softened inside of you bit by bit as he licked your nipples, squeezing both breasts until he was satisfied that he had gotten every last drop.

You draped your arms around the back of Din’s neck and let his cheek rest against your breast, curling your fingers gently in the back of his hair and feeling him finally soften fully.

“Will you sleep well, my husband?” You gently teased him, a soft smile on your lips as you looked down at him and stroked his face.

Din looked up at you from under his lashes, and your heart ached at how peaceful his big brown eyes were, how comforted he looked there in your arms. You wanted him to look like that forever. You wished you could somehow wipe all worry and strain from his life. But maybe this was the best you could do for your husband, just comfort him and give him solace when he needed it most.

Din closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and you let him rest there a while longer.

---

Din Djarin/Mando character masterlist

Main masterlist

“Everything bagel” tag list: @quica-quica-quica @anaaaispunk @justanotherblonde23 @gracie7209 @nicolethered @honestly-shite @driedgreentomatoes @dihra-vesa @1800-fight-me @the-queen-of-fools @juletheghoul @kesskirata @honeymandos @silverwolf319 @mourningbirds1 @greeneyedblondie44 @spacedilf @maxwell–lord @anxiousandboujee @cevvie @sherala007 @writeforfandoms @libellule2001 @deadhumourist @mandoalorian @javierpinme @eri16 @mandocrasis @pilothusband @bastillealmighty @eri16 @jitterbugs927 @babiiface95 @toomanystoriessolittletime @yespolkadotkitty @fisforfulcrum @prettylilhalforc @mswarriorbabe80 @littlemisspascal @wildemaven @coreychick @castleamc @coreychick @astoryisaloveaffair

[no-droids]

Rumors, Freebies, and a Race for Last Place

Part Two of The Bet series

Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 22.5K DONT say shit alright just don’t

Warnings: Okay. There is degradation in this, some name calling and heated interactions. There is a LOT of smut, dirty talk and rough sex. If these things offend you, please do not continue reading.

***

It’s recommended to read part one first.

***

Getting into the x-wings is always fun.

It actually might be your favorite part.  Granted, alarm bells ringing and thousands of jumpsuits scrambling in all directions is never typically a good thing, but there’s also an inherent rush about it, a thrill in launching up the metal paneling as quick as you can and suiting up to provide aid.  It’s a side-effect of camaraderie, of being surrounded by like-minded individuals willing to do everything they can to help.  You never feel like you’re going to your death, even though that’s often the grim reality for at least one of you on a good day.  There’s always a roaring in your ears while you do it, adrenaline sharpening your senses and preparing yourself for conflict, not thinking anything beyond gogogogogo—

But getting out of the x-wing is… not great.  At least for you.  It’s sluggish.  Your body is always completely drained and you never come out of it feeling the same way you went in.  Even in times of victory, there’s a somberness inside you after battle.  As much as you tell yourself you’re fighting for good, for prosperity against an evil machine hellbent on enslaving the galaxy, there’s only so many explosions lighting up in front of your eyes and screams cutting out through your comms you can take before winning just doesn’t really feel like winning anymore.  Most pilots are able to handle it better than you are, but since you joined the Resistance, you’ve never truly felt the desire to celebrate.  Not even when you serve a massive, glaring defeat to the other side.  There’ll always be at least one missing x-wing, one empty seat at the table, one person not here to celebrate with you.

You came back in one piece this time.  Barely.

The whole mission went sideways—literally.  You’d purposefully stationed the tandem just outside the coordinates you were meant to be surveilling so that you’d be hidden from sight and dead to the scanners should the fleet arrive, but something must’ve happened.  You must’ve powered down a few seconds too early after he turned the thrusters off, because apparently the ship drifted in dead space for close to eight hours without either of you noticing, having no working computers to actively read your location and correct it.  You were sitting ducks right in the hyperspace drop zone by the time the First Order showed up, and by that point you had no choice but to engage.

“Gold-Ten,” a voice murmurs from behind you, and you blink, suddenly seeing the base landing platform stretching out long in front of you, hundreds of docking ships and boisterous pilots scrambling out of them to hug their comrades and congratulate them even as medics rush past with white coats and gurneys.  They’re never for the pilots, but they dispatch healers anyways whenever a convoy returns in case a straggler gets picked up.  There’s an unspoken understanding in space battle—pilots never get injured.  They either come back unharmed, or they don’t come back at all.

Dameron.

You turn around and watch him slowly approach you with an unreadable expression, his jumpsuit still bunched halfway down his torso.  The once bright white sleeveless undershirt is now greasy and damp with sweat,  his dark curls sticking to his forehead.  He winces with every bow-legged step—you know the feeling—before he’s standing directly in front of you and something is carefully being pulled out of your hands.  You didn’t even realize you were holding onto anything.

Your helmet.  You forgot to leave it in the x-wing, and you’ve been carrying it around under your arm aimlessly while mentally checking off the squadrons as they return, counting the numbers you lost today while everybody else hugs and whoops and claps each other on the back.

It’s not as bad as you were expecting it was going to be, not as bad as it seemed just an hour earlier when you were listening to Dameron bellow out evasive flight maneuvers a millisecond before he enacted them and you adjusted your firing at the TIEs accordingly.  You used to think you were quick with how rapidly you could suit up and fly out, drop in to assist and engage, but on the other side, it felt like your reinforcements lollygagged for ages before arriving.  You were left to defend against an entire fleet in one stupid ship, more lines of TIEs sinking like flies from launch decks every second.

“Gold-Ten,” you hear again, and you blink a few times, needing to focus your vision before you can find his gaze.

Dameron’s palm, previously hovering a few inches above your shoulder, suddenly drops to spread along the curve of it and you take a deep breath, almost wanting to shudder at the feeling of something touching you.  You channel all your focus into it, feel his fingers branch out strong along the tight muscles in your neck, giving you an anchor you automatically lean into.

You and him are no strangers to touching.  Before today it was mostly reserved to poking and prodding and flicking and light slapping in an effort to piss each other off, but now… you can’t even think about it right now, your body will just fucking glitch out on you.  After everything that just happened, you cannot think about where else that hand has been recently, not right now.

“You did… you did really fucking good today,” he tells you quietly, slowly trailing his hand down the length of your entire arm until he catches your wrist and a few of your fingers in his loose grip.  “Seriously.  That was… we were…”

His touch is so present, so reassuring.  Grounding, when all your mind wants is to just float away.  You glance down at where his fingers are gently tangled with yours and you feel your hand tighten just slightly, the smallest squeeze while he blinks down at you.

“We almost died, like… every single second,” you barely manage to croak, not really having the words to express it right now.  You always need at least an hour or two after missions like this to just sit in one place and regroup.  Usually you find yourself wandering back to your room to lay on the bed and stare up at the ceiling while you consider your own mortality, but Dameron interrupted you this time before you could process it by yourself.  “We…”  Your voice sounds absolutely shredded.  “W-We shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

“I know,” he nods in soft agreement, taking a small step closer to you.  “But we are alive.  Hey.”  He dips his head as soon as your gaze starts to drift, catching your eyes once more and drawing your attention back to the present with a squeeze of your hand.  “We’re alive, right?  Be alive with me.”

You take a big breath in and close your eyes, feeling the oxygen fill your lungs once more, but this time, it’s… restorative.  A wonderful, beautiful reminder of your existence.  You’re alive.  Usually the word just feels like a synonym for persevering.  Pushing onwards despite trials and tribulations, not looking back.  But the way he says it, especially with his hand in yours and a quiet invitation to tag along, it sounds… breathtaking.  Full of light, and hope.  It suddenly leaves the dim shadows and slides into a completely different category of feelings, feelings you’d never imagine being able to conjure so quickly after such a close brush with death.  Alive—it slots right in next to words like colorful, radiant, sunshine, and butterflies.  Enchanting words, ones you’d like to hear again and again.

Your eyes slowly open and there he is, the man you were sure was going to accompany you to the afterlife.  You were stuck with Poe Dameron in one of the closest calls you can remember, and strangely, his presence was nothing if not… a comfort.  For the first time in your life, you were grateful he was there.

You open your mouth, suddenly feeling the needy, unfounded urge to tell him that.  “I’m gla—”

“Dameron!”  You hear a series of voices call from somewhere to your left, and he immediately drops your hand to whip his body around and place himself directly between you and the approaching onlookers, using his large frame to hide you from their sight.

“What’s up, Briggs?”  Dameron projects to one pilot in particular that seems to be leading the group, his back oddly close to you in this position.  Your fingers still feel tingly from where he was holding onto them.

A chorus of congratulatory, “Nice flying, Captain!” and the like can be heard floating through the air from beyond his shoulders, before the leader speaks loudly over them.  “Hey—me, Seven, Six, and Twelve were gonna grab some drinks in the mess hall with a few of the Blue girls,” he tells Dameron, slowing to a stop as soon as he sees you standing awkwardly behind him.  “Oh hey, Goldie.”

You lift a hand and clear the remainder of the dissociation from your throat, not knowing him well enough beyond the squadron he and his group fly with.  “Greenies.”

“Anyways, I guess they wanted to know if you’d come too.  These idiots are convinced they’re never gonna give us the time of day unless you—”

“Uh—fine, whatever, just give me a few minutes alright?”  Dameron quickly assures him with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “I’ll meet up with you guys later.”

A few of them take turns giving him heavy claps on the shoulder and acclamatory words before the group eventually disperses, and he waits a few more seconds for their attention to fully scatter in another direction before turning back to you.

Shit, he’s standing really close.  Why is he so close to you?  You take a step back and blink up at him, the noises of the landing deck gradually amplifying back up to normal volume as you retreat back into your own space.  Since when did he have that effect on you?  You suddenly feel wide awake, and the chorus of happy chaos surrounding you is something you’re finally able to take in.  You knew it was happening before, but it was like it just existed outside of the creeping numbness.  Now, the knot of internal turmoil has untied itself a bit and you feel your surroundings start to fight for your direct attention.

Dameron continues to look at you the same exact way, though.  Like you’re still the only one here.

You look down at his half-suited figure and blink at the helmet loosely held in one of his hands.  Hey.  Hey, that’s yours—

“Give me that,” you hiss, suddenly snatching it from his fingertips.  “You have people waiting.”

The cutting words serve to snap him out of whatever spell he’s under.  Dameron quickly lifts his head and looks around a few times with sharp eyes, before hooking your elbow and twisting you into a complete 180 until your back faces most of the excitement.  You resist, immediately trying to push him off you and worried he’s going to confront you about… things, but he’s determined.

He doesn’t say anything to you at all, though.  His fingers quickly grasp the baggy fabric of your jumpsuit even as you sputter and start to ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, and you glance down just in time to see him yanking the gaping velcro closed at your crotch.

Your cheeks instantly start burning as he tugs and smooths the fabric down until it’s seamless once more, especially when his eyes flick up to yours without moving his head.  Fuck, you’re instantly hot with some wicked emotion, a mixture of embarrassment and outrage and… something else.  Maker, you almost wish you were numb and disoriented again, if only so you could avoid feeling whatever the fuck this is.

You quite suddenly shove your helmet back into his stomach with an infuriated sound even as he doubles over with a shocked whoosh of air, changing your mind about returning it to the ship yourself before storming off without another word.

*** 

Okay, so you’ve done some thinking, and.  Well.  Fuck him, that’s what you’ve decided.

No—not… fuck him.  But like, fuck him.  You know.  In the negative sense of the word.  The bad fuck.

There’s a full tray of food sitting in front of you but you’ve so far been unable to touch it.  Mostly you’re just wondering why the fuck you’re even here.  Well, you know why you’re here—you should eat, it’s dinnertime and this is the mess hall.  You’ve been known to skip out on meals after heavy missions, secluding yourself away and just wallowing for a bit, but you… strangely didn’t feel like doing that today.  You don’t want to self-isolate when you feel okay enough to avoid it, not again.  So you’re here, because the clock says your tummy should want food, but you can’t bring yourself to even look at it.

No, you’re looking at him.  Glaring, actually.

Across the mess hall and beyond the transparisteel divider that separates the cafeteria from the bar area, Dameron is all eyebrows and smiles and side nudges and winks right now.  You can’t hear him—the sound won’t travel this far, but you can see him situated in the middle of a rowdy group of pilots.  He laughs in that disgustingly charming way of his, where his stupidly cute nose scrunches up all cute and stupid and you want to just ask the Maker why he’s doing this shit to you.  What have you done to deserve this torture?  Sure, you may have willingly agreed to it, even… conceived and propositioned the idea, and sure, absolutely nothing is stopping you from forfeiting and walking away at this exact second, but does that make it okay?  No, you��ve decided.  It’s not okay.  He’s not allowed to… to make you feel like this, so fuck him.  In the bad way.

“Just fuck him already,” a voice suddenly grumbles as someone plops down into the seat to your right, plastic trays of food clattering loudly on the table and snapping you out of your reverie.  Gold-Sixteen blocks your view as he silently drops into the seat in front of you and wraps his green lekku around his neck a few times before immediately beginning to shovel food into his mouth, while Gold-Three opens her box of blue milk next to you and continues.  “The Blues never fucking shut up about it, it’s getting annoying.”

“Don’t listen to her, Dime,” Gold-Eleven tells you, quickly occupying the seat on your left and biting into a crunchy piece of fruit, talking loudly over the chatter even as he chomps.  “Rossi just knows her pool is up tomorrow, she doesn’t want to lose any of her precious credits.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Gold-Three immediately snaps, leaning forward and around you to point the prongs of her fork at Eleven threateningly.  “Zhang’s pool starts on Sunday.”

“Oh fuck off, you guys are betting on this now?”  You groan, shoving your plate away with a flick of your fingers now that you’re certain you’ve completely lost your appetite.  Sixteen immediately snatches up one of your bread rolls while Zhang swipes your juice and Rossi goes for a packet of glockaw sauce.

“You’re the one who announced it in front of everybody, we’re just being active spectators,” Rossi returns, ripping the packet and pouring the sauce on her vegetables with a shrug.  “How the fuck do you bet against fucking each other though, that’s my question?  It’s a paradox, wouldn’t you both just lose at the same time?”

“Dameron and I aren’t going to fuck,” you tell her very slowly and clearly, starting to get a headache.  Why is it impossible to avoid this conversation topic, even with an entire Resistance base to roam around in?  “Ever.  The bet never had anything to do with fucking each other, it’s about not fucking other people.”

“Literally what is the difference?”  You hear Rossi ask with her mouth full, but Zhang speaks over her.

“Somebody should probably tell Nine that, she’s the bookie,” he tosses out carelessly, dropping the core of his piece of fruit to his tray before wiping his hands on his jumpsuit.  You bury your face in your hands and let out a loud, exhausted sound into your palms, not knowing which response serves to aggravate your already emotionally overloaded ass even more.  Nine is the bookie, of fucking course she is.  “But hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think any of it actually goes outside of Gold, so.”

“I’ve heard the Blues talking about it, but that’s it,” Rossi chimes in while chewing some of her veggies.  “Maybe some Reds.  Point is everybody else thinks it’s already happening, honestly.”

“What the fuck,” you whisper, using your knuckles to rub at the backs of your eyes until bright spots appear.  Where are stress headaches localized?  Are those the ones right under your brow bone?  Because stars, you feel it.  “Fucking… why?  Why do people think that me and Dameron are…?”

Nobody at the table immediately responds, and you drop your hands after a moment to look at each of their astounded faces in turn.

“You fucking serious, bitch?”  Rossi blurts first, her voice completely deadpan, and you growl in vexation.

“Have I not been vocal enough about my severe dislik—”

“And yet you kicked Nine out of your room to let him bunk with you,” Zhang immediately suggests.

“You request mission assignments together,” Rossi adds.

“Spend your off-days together,” Zhang continues.

“You’re both really weird about how long it takes the other person to shower,” Rossi tacks onto the list Zhang is now making on his fingers and you shake your head frantically.

“No—no, that’s so that we know neither one of us is cheating,” you try to explain, and you already know it sounds unconvincing without needing the two quick, lofty and sarcastic nods on either side of you.  “Showers and off-days are prime masturb—no, you know what?  No.  I’m tired of the assumptions, I don’t owe anyone shit.  This is super fucking uncool of you guys, you know that?  It’s insane that this is what counts as gossip in the Resistance nowada—”

“There’s only so much bad news people can take, Ten,” Gold-Sixteen grunts down at his almost finished plate, and all three of you snap your gazes across the table at him.  The forest-tinted twi’lek doesn’t speak much, it’s uncommon to hear his voice without distortion over the comms, but you blink as his sharp teeth continue to form words without looking at you.  “Quit being so sensitive.  Rather bet on this shit than which system is getting demolished next.”

And with that, Sixteen excuses himself with a silent nod, having gobbled down his full plate while you, Three, and Eleven were bickering.  You feel your cheeks flare with anger and shame—you didn’t deserve that, you immediately reassure yourself, but the hidden self-doubt the comment sows just further contributes to your upset.  You want to call out to his back that just because the First Order exists doesn’t mean you have to put up with your own fucking squadron turning you and your mortal enemy into glorified race fathiers, but he’s already leaving the mess hall while Rossi and Zhang have moved on to other topics, both of them continuing to grab more food from your tray as they talk.

You have a tough shell.  But today was… a lot.  You bite your lip down at the table against the sudden wave of emotion, blinking quickly to clear the weakness watering your vision.

See, this—this right here is why you use last names.  These people aren’t your friends.  Betting on who you fuck for laughs, using you as a source of entertainment without your consent just because they’re in the middle of a war, and then guilting you into feeling like you’re the one acting like a stuck up bitch about it?  You’re fighting in the same fucking war—you’re on the front lines just like everybody else and nobody gets to lecture you on the devastation of battle.  You almost died today.  You fought tooth and fucking nail to stay alive and by all accounts, you shouldn’t even be sitting here right now, much less dealing with this childish shit.  This is your squadron.  These people are supposed to be the ones closest to you out of everyone, the ones you’ve been flying into chaos in formation with for years, and yet not a single damn person has even mentioned your performance to you today, all anyone can ever seem to talk about is—ugh.

Unfortunately, your unobstructed view also allows you to look at the source of your bad mood once more, immediately noticing the way more people have crowded around him now, and the headache continues to throb painfully behind your eyeballs.  You were in the same ship, does nobody realize that?  You were gunning, he was flying—you were offense, he was defense—that’s the only fucking difference, and yet, it’s like that side of the mess hall is just completely lit up with hearty laughter and music playing from someone’s holopad and congratulatory drinks being passed around, while yours is… well.

You continue to fume inwardly, struggling somewhere between bitter and hurt, and you can see your reflection through the transparisteel giving him a death glare, wondering how many of the people surrounding him have made bets with Nine.  How many of his little entourage have their money wagered on Dameron getting in your pants by a specific dat—

You stop short while staring at his handsome face, an infuriating, horrifying thought suddenly striking you.  No… no, he wouldn’t…

“Does he know?”  You immediately interrupt the chitchat between Three and Eleven to ask with a deadly edge in your voice, tipping your forehead at pretty boy.  Ooh, you can already feel it burning.  It would be so fucking typical.  Oooooh, Maker, if he’s heard even a fucking whisper about this outside wagering going on amongst the pilots, you will fucking smother his ass in his sleep tonight.  How could he not know?  With as many friends as he has?  If you’re just being made aware of it, then it’s a given that somebody has to have told him by now, which just means that it’s all the more possible—shit, even more likely—that he’s… participating, too.  You do your best to keep your voice even, but you can hear the quiet fury shaking in it.  “The bet about when me and him are gonna fuck, does he know about it?”

“Who—Dameron?”  Zhang turns his head.  “No, I don’t think s—”

“Yeah,” Rossi says at the exact same time, and your blood instantly turns ice cold as Zhang leans around you to blink at her stupidly.

“No.  Yeah?  What?”  He says, sounding genuinely confused.

“Yeah, remember?”  Rossi confirms with a shrug.  “Nine was mad as all shit, came at me in the rec room a few weeks ag—fucking Maker, Eleven, you were there.”

“Oh,” Zhang suddenly exhales, “yeah, that’s right.  Oh, yeah, Dime, he knows.”

You’re—fuck, you’re about to rampage.  You’re burning a fucking hole through Dameron while he converses animatedly with his numerous buddies, waving an open hand and shaking his head at someone with a smile and then gesturing broadly to this side of the transparisteel.  His pool is probably up soon, you figure.  That’s why he came onto you so strong earlier today.  He was going to get two weeks of your pay, plus whatever he must’ve offered up to Nine that says he’d get it to happen within a certain amount of time.  Perfect, your old roomie and the arch nemesis you stupidly agreed to trade her for, two asshole peas in an asshole pod.

“—she thought I was the one who told him—”  You know Rossi is still talking but you’re not actually hearing any of it.  Nobody has any fucking idea.  Nobody has any idea what he did to you today, how unbelievably close you were to… to actually…  “—was all just for fun, but then he had a few choice words for her and told his squad that if any of them had made a—”  You don’t know why you’re so surprised honestly, you should’ve expected…

Wait.

“Wait,” you suddenly blurt, and while she shuts up immediately, your mind starts whirling even faster.  Dameron had some… what?  “Wait.  Explain.  You’re saying he didn’t…”  You slowly shake your head, furrowing your eyebrows and trying to piece it together.  “He didn’t… place a bet with her, or anything?”

“What?  No,” Rossi shakes her head a lot more forcefully than you, getting frustrated.  “No, fucking—didn’t you hear anything I just said, Ten?  He got all high and mighty for some stupid reason, totally reamed her ass out for it.”

“But…”  You blink, stunned.  “But… why?  Why would he…?”

Rossi shrugs.  “Fuck if I know.  All she said was that he ordered Black not to throw in, made her lose a fuckton of money from it.  Had no idea Dameron would be so touchy about his sex life, honestly.”

He… he isn’t.  He isn’t touchy about his sex life—you feel like he never shuts up about it.

Rossi continues talking, but you’re not listening again.  You stare stupidly at yourself in the clear transparisteel as Dameron’s voice comes back to you, repeating something you specifically remember him saying earlier today.  Something you thought was just a careless jab at the time, aimed blindly at one of your comrades with nothing more than the intent to piss you off.

…I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half… 

You blink beyond your own reflection to focus on him once more, still lost in his own little world, not paying a single lick of attention to you while you’re essentially having a fucking crisis over here.  You didn’t think the insult had any real substance to it at all.  You just naturally assumed that was the result of him wanting to lash out at anything or anyone remotely close to you, if only to get a reaction, so you never gave him one or paid it any mind.  

This is why he said that about Nine?  Because he knew she had organized this fucked up betting pool behind your back?

Stars, you need to get out of here, all these rumors are fucking with your head.  Your assumptions and the hairpin turnarounds are giving you worse whiplash than Dameron’s… well, admittedly spectacular flying today.  You were wrong about wanting to avoid isolating—in fact, that suddenly sounds like a phenomenal idea.

So, you just get up and leave right in the middle of Rossi’s sentence, needing some time alone.  Neither of them call out to you as you quickly walk around the table and through the barrier towards the exit, thank the Maker, and you’re just about to retreat with no interruptions until suddenly two Greenies step in front of you and block your path.

You halt immediately, looking up at them with a furrowed brow.  “What now?”  You grunt, not having the patience to even wait for a response before attempting to squeeze around them.

“Hey, so you really saved our asses out there today, Goldie,” the one on the left quickly sidesteps in front of you and rushes to say, and you settle your weight back on your heels with a huff.

“What are you talking about?”  You glance back and forth between them, not recalling a time you’ve ever spoken to either one, before jerking your head to gesture over your shoulder.  “Go congratulate trophy boy over there, he was the one flying.”

“We did,” the one on the right tips sideways to look at Dameron behind your shoulder, likely still laughing and joking with someone about something, something super fucking dumb probably.  “Well, uh.  We tried.”

“What?”  You let out a heavy sigh and rub your temples.  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?  I don’t have the time.”

“He won’t take any credit, just keeps saying that all he did was steer you around,” the other one shrugs as his companion straightens and looks down at you once more.  “Wouldn’t accept any drinks we offer him, nothing.  So we thought we’d buy you one instead.  Unless you’re… leaving?”

It takes you a few seconds to process that, even as he allows the open invitation to hang in the air.  You can’t stop the way your torso automatically twists around to study your copilot from across the mess hall in baffled silence, suddenly realizing that they’re… they’re right.  Dameron has no congratulatory drinks sitting in front of him even though more and more people have made their way into the bar.  He’s just sitting there grinning and nodding along to something someone else is saying, completely and blissfully unaware of the extent to which he’s fucked with you in the past twenty minutes.  The past… whole day.  Month and a half.  Or… fuck, how long have you known him?  Two years?

But then Dameron’s gaze gradually drifts this way, before suddenly locking with yours.  His eyes flick behind you to look at the two Greenies blocking your exit, and then back to the way you’re staring at him, wide-eyed and startled.

He suddenly stands up and starts to take a few steps towards you, and the sheer abruptness of the movement causes you to react immediately.  You stumble your way backwards through the two pilots, feeling a few hands reach out to steady you through the awkward fumbling, but you slap them away and announce loud enough for Dameron to hear beyond them that you’re taking a shower, and you don’t give a fuck how long it’s gonna be this time.

***

The knob squeaks as you turn the water on.  Usually you’d step back and wait the grueling five minutes or longer it takes for it to heat up with your arms crossed over your naked chest, but this time you move directly under the freezing spray, hoping to use the ice cold to shock your system.

You're finally alone.

Technically solitude doesn’t really exist within this base.  You’ve heard of others that are a little nicer, having a little more room for the ranks, but not here.  Housing assignments, showers and restrooms, mess and recreation halls—they’re all communal.  Everyone is given rotating shifts, so while that means there’s never any true quiet to be found, it also means that showers are spread out well throughout the day and night.

But, at least for this moment, there’s nobody else around.  At least in here, in the tiled chamber with multiple shower heads stationed around you—you’re sure there are a few girls lingering in the locker room and the entry area beyond it, but for right now, you’re blissfully by yourself.

And yet, you can’t seem to enjoy it.

You know you should be basking in the isolation.  You should be thrilled at the rarity of only hearing your own flipflops slap against the floor as you turn around and drench your hair with the icy spray, but the lack of an immediate distraction for your focus allows it to wander to things you don’t want it to.

Explosions, mostly.  Lighting up like fireworks in front of your eyes even as they flutter closed and let water drip down them.  Constant, never-ending.  Some of them small—TIEs you shot down, allies drawing fire away from you and then subsequently getting overwhelmed, zipping through dense debris from deadly collisions so quick that you had trouble distinguishing friend from foe.  Some of them were massive—star destroyers splitting apart, warp drives overloading, enormous casualty counts.  You don’t know how many lives you took today, not directly.

The beginning was the worst—when you were still slightly disoriented, when you were panicked and screaming into the comms for assistance.  Then the closest stationed tandem showed up first—Red-Two and Eight, you think it was.  Doesn’t matter now.  They took some heat off you before the cavalry arrived, but you remember Dameron barking out your name the second their left thruster got nicked and they started spiraling, a ferociously deep, “With me!” cutting through the white noise.  It was enough to snap you back, forcing you to instantly flick your eyes away and focus dead ahead without witnessing their demise.

It wouldn’t have normally been necessary.  You’ve been flying with the Resistance for years, you’ve seen way too much bloodshed by now.  But you’ve never been the catalyst of it—you’ve always been able to confront threats accompanied by your squadron, right between Nine and Eleven, the flight controls rumbling steady under your palms.  You’ve never faced down an entire fleet in one single ship.  You’ve never had to rely so directly on the skills of another pilot in order to stay alive.

The water slowly heats to a lukewarm while you reach for the shampoo.

Surprisingly, for as much as the two of you clash in normal interactions, it was like everything eventually became… synchronized.  Spectacularly so.  Dameron started off the enemy confrontation by calling out his flight patterns to give you a chance to adjust your firing in real time, but then at some point, it just stopped being necessary.  There was a moment where you both were able to suddenly… get it.  Get each other.  He didn’t have to say anything after that—you could predict each other without second guessing, react instantaneously, and work your way through the littered battlefield accordingly.  You never thought it would be possible to collaborate so well with someone you’ve spent ages despising.  Sure, you’d both die if you didn’t—shit, you’d probably still both die regardless—but this kind of teamwork extended beyond the need to survive.  It doesn’t matter how much you want to stay alive when reading someone else’s mind is physically impossible, but for some reason…  You have no idea why, but it apparently came naturally between you.  It fell to pure instinct, pure reaction, and remarkably, his would somehow match yours perfectly, every single time.

You lather the shampoo in your hair, remembering how his voice changed over the course of the mission.  How it gradually shifted from panicked roars and barked orders into ecstatic cheers and genuine praise after landing a difficult shot, how he just couldn’t seem to stop whooping.  

You smile softly as the tepid water rinses away the dirt and sweat from your body, until the temperature is brought up to a gentle, comfortable warmth raining down you and echoing in the empty shower room.

And, your first name.  Dameron kept calling you that, the whole time.  The one you’re now absolutely certain you’ve never personally given to him.  The one he would’ve had to have listened for specifically.  Remembered, or at least asked the right person about.  But why?  It’s not… it makes no sense, he doesn’t give a shit.  He’s notorious for not giving a shit.  He can’t even be bothered to remember the names of the girls he’s actually with—so why did he go to the trouble to figure out yours?  You’ve been nothing but a thorn in his side the same way he is to you, right?

Right?

Your mind starts recollecting more recent events, trying to work through and process it by yourself.  He was… singing your praises today.  He was openly giving you credit for the win while you pouted in the corner and assumed the absolute worst of him.  As much as you’re frustrated that nobody else seemed to give voice to your contributions, you’re even more surprised that he was the one who did.

And then even earlier.  Gold-Nine, holding wagers with members of your squad (and others, apparently) about when you’re going to fuck him.  Dameron, tearing her a new one for it, forbidding Black Squadron from throwing in and not attempting to hide his disdain for her from you.  He… he defended you.  Stood up for you when your own squad was being a bunch of dicks behind your back.  And nobody ever fucking mentioned it to you.  What did Rossi say—a few weeks ago?  He’s known all this time and only today, only after you… openly showed more interest in him than you ever have, after you worked up enough nerve to try in your own little way to flirt back this time instead of responding to his casual comments with contempt and disgust, only today is when he decided to make a real move on you.

…Your mind is completely blank and yet you still feel yourself start to heat up just a bit at even alluding to the events that took place earlier.  The way his fingers felt—

Steam begins to fill the open concept chamber while you shake your head against the train of thought and reach for the soap, beginning to circle the bar along your arms and shoulders with a sigh.  This is already the longest shower you’ve taken in almost two months, and your body slowly relaxes under the mist and heat as you take forever cleaning yourself, slowly and hypnotically rubbing the soap along your skin.

The second you let your eyelids dip shut at the feeling, you immediately shiver at a flash of Dameron dragging his finger out of his mouth and blinking dark eyes at you through the transparisteel.

Fuck.  The soap slips from your hand and you quickly catch it against your body before it falls to the ground completely, suddenly feeling the need to breathe in the misty air a bit harder.  Shower, you’re in the shower.  Come on.

The dirt and grime is scrubbed from your face and you tilt your head to move the bar of soap across your neck.  As it lathers, you can’t help but remember the way his lips felt against the skin right there, the scratch of his beard.  You keep working the soap against that same spot for a while, not knowing if you’re trying to wash away the sensation or simulate it, until you gradually slow and make it lighter, softer—yes, that’s closer to how it felt, that’s—

Soon the water is boiling hot and you’re trying not to boil along with it, remembering everything he said against this spot, the filth he whispered to you here.  Your pussy starts to throb between your legs as the memories play out in your mind, how close he got you to shattering bliss without even really working for it.  If you put it all together collectively, you don’t think he actually touched you for more than a minute or two total today.  Mostly he just talked to you, but stars, he hit buttons you didn’t even think you had, had you a split second away from cumming harder than Maker knows while his finger rested just above your clit and provided no stimulation whatsoever.

Fuck, you enjoyed it.  You did, you’ll admit it when there’s no one else here but you.  You enjoyed the fuck out of it.  You wish he’d do it again.  Force you to lose, force you to cum so you can at least blame him for it, remove your responsibility from the equation and allow you to put just one more thing on his shoulders, to taste ecstacy instead of expecting you to bear the weight of pretending you don’t need it any longer.  He was doing you a favor, you realize that now.  Your body is staging a fucking coup and you wish you could’ve called mercy before it got to this agonizing point.  He turns you on, you fucking admit it.  He inspires violent emotions in you—jealousy, arousal, anger, temptation—thoughts you don’t want to have and consolidating it all into various forms of hatred makes the finer details easier to ignore.  Your perception of him has always been skewed by your iron will, but he all but took a fucking sledgehammer to it today, dented it beyond all recognition.  You want him, you want to him to take it all away, you want him to fuck you—in the… fuck, in the good way.

You don’t have a thought beyond that.  Your hand quickly falls down the length of your body to wash your private parts, biting your lip as your hips slowly start to rock into it.  You’re getting clean, you’re getting clean, this is how you clean yourself, this is… yes, as long as you keep the bar of soap pressed between your palm and the top of your curls like this, you’re cleaning yourself and you can just… ease your finger down just a little bit and—

Flipflops suddenly echo from the twisting hallway leading to the tiled freshers, and you immediately snatch your hand back up again, not needing to turn around to know another girl is walking into the room.  A knob somewhere to your right eventually makes a dull squeak as you quickly finish washing up and turn your showerhead off, grabbing your towel and wrapping it around yourself.

Maker, you feel like your pussy is plotting your demise.  Fuck, you can’t believe you almost cheated in the fucking showers just now where literally anyone could walk in, you thought you would’ve had more self-control than that.  You make your way into the changing rooms and grab your pajamas, starting to tug them on without fully drying your body and having only one thought in mind.  

Dameron will probably be celebrating late tonight.  You can tuck in early, scurry back to your room and cheat there.

Well, no, not cheating, because you clearly remember making a very compelling argument about wet dreams earlier today.  Maker, a freebie, the word has never sounded so enticing.  What you’d say amounts to a… bye-week orgasm basically, since you know he’s already lost at least one match against his own body and you’re meant to be competing on the same level.  It’s only fair to let you persevere through the toughest part of the challenge if he was allowed to throw a game early on and still stay in the competition.  Maybe he threw multiple games, you never got a straight answer concerning that, so it’s still under review.  He could’ve thrown… three games, even.  Or four.

You dress as quickly as possible and then nearly bolt through the entrance area to the restrooms with all the sinks and stalls.  The balled up dirty clothes and wet towel in your arms allow you to hide the way your nipples are stiff and tender against your thin pajamas, and you can’t wait to climb into your bunk and take everything off under the covers.  You’ll be able to cum, at least once.  It’ll relieve so much stress, get rid of this nightmare headache, rip through your body like lightning and paralyze it until you can start over from square one and think like yourself again.

And, you’re just about to power walk your ass back to your quarters when a body nearly slams into yours as soon as you step foot outside the door, your shoulder jerking back just in time to avoid a collision.

A mechanic, you think.  You’re not exactly sure, you don’t hang out with too many of them—he’s Chiss and his glowing red eyes don’t even land on you as you gasp and sidestep him at the last second, but it’s not him that catches the majority of your attention.  He just exited the men’s room at the same time you left the women’s, and the door takes a moment to swing shut behind him.

You freeze.  It can’t be more than a few seconds—but it feels like everything slows down and it lasts a fucking eternity.

Dameron is standing at a sink in the far corner of the room, naked except for a towel identical to the one in your arms wrapped loosely around his waist.  He cradles the base of his own throat with one hand and gently drags a razor down the smooth contour of it with the other, his chin tilted up high and regal while his eyelids dip low to concentrate on his movements.  He glances down and holds the foamy blade under the running faucet, tapping it twice against porcelain before the door slides him out of frame.

I can shave, a low, silky murmur slowly fills your ears, heat swelling low and hot in your tummy.  Tonight, I’ll shave it off.  Make it nice and smooth for you.

You feel like your body is just a collection of rigid knots all tied together, and the one between your legs is the tightest it’s ever been.  Stars, on another day you’d say it feels like a bad cramp, even though you know your injection makes your period rare and like clockwork.  Regardless, the split second image makes you shudder and clamp up painfully, and you just stand there and stare at the closed door for a second, trying not to shake.

Fuck, this is so fucking… presumptuous of him.

Realistically, you know it could have absolutely nothing to do with you.  It’s his face—you’re not self-centered enough to have completely lost your concept of autonomy.  He can do whatever he wants to his body, and that includes facial hair, full stop.  You also know that he’s not being… obvious about it, no matter how much it feels that way to you.  He’s using the sink and mirror at the very end of the room, not any of the ones nearest to the door—but even if he was, it’s not like he could’ve planned for you to walk out at the exact moment the metal hinge was angled wide open.  He couldn’t possibly have intended for this, for you to see him doing this.  He wasn’t making a show, didn’t even notice you standing there.  You blame literally everything on him, or at least you always try your absolute best to—but this one…

It sends a hard shudder down your spine and you clutch the fabric in your arms tighter, trying not to drop it.  Fuck.  This is torture.  Fuck him.  Good and bad—both ways, all the ways he can be fucked, fuck him.  Your head is spinning, you’re sweating fresh out of the shower, you need to cum.  Maybe if you hurry, you can get that precious orgasm before he’s finished, because if Dameron is able to intercept you before you can tend to this, you’re… you’re not sure how you’re going to say no to him.

You don’t even think you want to anymore.  

You feel like you’re just… holding onto it on principle now.  Too stubborn and hardheaded to want change.  Too stuck in your own ways to recognize how much everything already has changed.

Somehow, you end up making your way back to your room, but the whole thing is a blur.  Your flipflops plap against your heels as you navigate through hallways as quick as you can, emptier than you’ve seen them in months.  You know most of the pilots are probably out celebrating in either the mess hall or rec room, but the thought doesn’t really presently register.  Almost nothing registers besides your continuous forward motion and the way you feel yourself throb with every step, aching for something you are going to get tonight.  Fuck, you are so attached to this orgasm now, it’s not going anywhere and neither are you.  You deserve this, you deserve some relief.  Come hell or highwater, it’s happening tonight.

As soon as you step into your room and slap your hand blindly against the wall panel to close the door behind you, you’re carelessly dropping the bundle of fabric to the floor and then shrugging out of your pajamas in the cool pitch darkness, having exactly one mission in mind.  You don’t bother with lights, with brushing your hair, with literally anything besides clamoring up the ladder to your top bunk and wiggling under the thin bedsheet, making sure to pull it up to your chin before your legs butterfly open.  The tip of your finger wets itself on your tongue and then you’re dropping it down and sliding it against your poor clit, the pleasure arcing and flaring so sharp and sensitive even from your touch that you have to give it just a second.

…No, no you don’t.  You don’t have to give it fucking anything.  You keep moving your finger hard and quick even as your hips naturally want to jerk away from it, shoving yourself through the sensitivity with gritted teeth and a ferocious will.

Fuck, how long do you think you have?  Was Dameron shaving pre or post-shower?  You can’t remember, all you know is he had a towel around his waist.  And that thin gold chain hanging down his neck.  Was his hair wet?  Fuck, why can’t you remember?  His chin and jaw were smooth as silk, you know that much.  Post-shower, then.  Probably.  Probably?

His chin and jaw were smooth as silk.  You keep getting stuck on that no matter how chaotically your thoughts whirl; they fling out in different directions at different velocities but all somehow manage to go in a perfect circle and end up at the same place you started.  His chin, his jaw, his mouth, his neck, his chin, his mouth, his jaw, his mouth, his mouth, his mouth—

You feel yourself start to clamp down and you speed up, chasing it.  The pleasure starts burning deep inside you, the fire slowly licking down your thighs and rising up into your abdomen, and then—

And then a series of quiet beeps from the hallway practically blare like alarm bells to your frantic mind.

You immediately stop moving your finger, snapping your legs tight together and flat to the mattress as soon as the door to your room shifts open and fluorescent light spills inside, and you feel like you could actually fucking cry right now.

All this edging is just a form of self-flagellation at this point.  You lay there and try not to make a sound, try not to tremble hard enough to shake the whole bunk with it, but even your breathing feels like it’s going to give you away.  Dameron, shirtless with his towel draped over his shoulder, slowly steps into the room and then pauses almost immediately, making your heart stutter for a second at what so blatantly caught his attention.

One quick glance down towards his feet confirms the simultaneous hope and fear—you left everything on the floor.  The towel, the dirty clothes, and your pajamas are strewn about haphazardly right where he needs to walk.

You know what it must look like to him.  A trail of clothes leading directly to an occupied bed isn’t exactly subtle, even though you didn’t necessarily intend it that way.  Still, what can you say?  Your hand is shoved in between your legs right now and you’re in your birthday suit under this thin sheet, what the fuck can you say to him?  Sorry Dameron, got too caught up with how stupid wet you get me that I left those there on accident on my way to cheat, but totally not because I lowkey want your help doing it.  Convincing, that’ll go over great.

Dameron slowly lifts his head to look at you.  Or, at least you think he does—the light from the open door behind him casts his body in a dark silhouette, but you know your face is perfectly illuminated for him right now.  Blinking down at him from the top bunk with your brows pulled up in the middle, wide-eyed and desperate and caught red-handed.  Fuck, you don’t know if he can see the way your knees are clamped tight together and your hand rests perfectly still against your pussy like this from the angle he’s at, but you know it has to be super fucking obvious either way.  You’re breaking the rules, you’re touching yourself, and you both know it.  You can’t lie, you can’t even sit up without confirming his very valid suspicion.  He can call the game at any point, but…

You watch his head fall back down to study the mess you left for him once more.  Fuck, are you positive that was an accident?  Normally you wouldn’t second guess anything about your own understanding of the interactions that occur between you and him, but—you’ve never done that before.  You’ve lived with roommates on this base for years, you don’t just… get naked before getting into bed, that’s bad form.  How are you going to get up in the morning without having your pajamas shoved near your feet while you sleep?  Wrap this thin bedsheet around yourself and scamper down the ladder until you can snatch them up from the floor, and then what?  Climb all the way back up just to wiggle the clothes on underneath the blanket before going back down again?  Maker, you fucked up, your pussy is plotting your fucking demise.

But then everything inside you pulls taut as Dameron suddenly decides to move.  Slowly, he leans down to catch your orange jumpsuit closest to his feet with a few fingers, before he stands upright and carefully begins folding the fabric without saying a single word to you.  Electricity buzzes through you as he very obviously takes his time with it, using nearly his whole armspan to lengthen and fold the sleeves while his chest and chin meet for support.  When he’s eventually satisfied with it, he takes a few steps toward the empty desk on your side of the room and then sets the neat rectangle of fabric atop it where you usually keep it.

You bite your lip and you can’t help it—you start to move your finger as he goes back to sort the pajamas you wore for barely two seconds from your dirty clothes, folding and putting away whatever is clean and then tossing the rest into the shared laundry basket that gets collected every week.  Somehow it makes you feel even more naked, seeing all your clothes be returned to their proper places, realizing that this is your base state now, this is what you’re going to wear tonight.  Nothing.  You left everything on the floor and trapped yourself up here, he’s simply shifting a pawn forward two spaces in kind now that you’ve made your first move.

You can feel yourself pulse threateningly against your own fingertip while he collects your wet towel and drapes it over your closet door to dry, and your breath comes louder through your nose while you bite back the noises you want to make, the way your movements so desperately want to speed up.  Your hand working the way you want it to under the white sheets would be too much, too revealing, but you don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to care.

But then of course, the asshole has to go and put away his towel and clothes, and you endure through the whole thing while pressing back and forth against your clit so hard and slow that your toes curl and pull the sheet tucked under your chin taut.  After that’s done, he makes his way over to the portshade above his desk and slowly slides it open a few inches, the light of three moons outside gradually filling the room.  However, when Dameron goes back to press a button on the wall panel and close the door to the hallway, you immediately see how much softer it is in here, how the artificial fluorescents have thankfully disappeared and the room illuminates more than it blinds, glows more than it beams.  He presses one more button as the lock inside the paneling slides into place.

You bite your bottom lip and try your best to hide the pleasure you’re building for yourself while he makes his way back to his desk, quietly swiping the radio off it and lowering the volume knob completely before he flips it on.  The noise slowly amplifies until you’re able to catch two distinct voices conversing in Huttese—it’s the only lingua franca that still broadcasts on this old technology in this part of the galaxy, but he’s already flipping through the stations in search of something specific.

If you were thinking straight, you may have actually recognized this for what it is, but you’re having trouble even processing the details of your general surroundings right now, your mind is lagging and too slow at reading between the lines.  Dameron’s doing exactly what he said he would do.  He laid it all out earlier for you in the x-wing, telling you exactly what he wanted plain as day, and now he’s checking the whole list off one by one.  The shade is open and the room is lit just enough to make him out, the door is locked, and he’s finding something to listen to.  Something quiet, and easy.

If you were thinking straight, you’d realize that there’s a much more obvious reason why he shaved his beard—you never told him the truth about how much you liked it.  You never tell him the truth.  You allow—even encourage him to think the sharp things you say to him are exactly how you feel.  He did it because he believed you.

Oh, but you’re not thinking straight.  Your thoughts are scattered and the only thing they can agree upon is how good this feels, even as your breathing starts to grow heavier, grow louder underneath the sound of the radio.  The thought stays right beneath your consciousness, tugging at your preoccupied mind.  You work your finger with just a little more verve now that he’s flipping through the stations, knowing he’s distracted by spinning the dial through intermittent white noise while different voices and songs fill the room for just a second at a time.

Your bed, his voice suddenly echoes through your thoughts, originating from your subconscious but almost sounding like it’s coming from the radio in your delirious mind.  I want you comfortable.

Fuck, the understanding finally clicks the second he flips to a slower song and you start to burn at the thought of what’s next.  The silent promise that his actions allude to.  You have the realization way too late but at least it still comes at all with the state you’re in.  Your hand slows down immediately, not even needing to consciously consider the choice between achieving orgasm through your finger or his mouth.  Still, it’s hard to stop touching yourself completely when it feels so fucking good to your deprived body.

Fuck, it’s barely been a few seconds since your realization and yet you immediately bristle in distress at how fucking long he’s taking.

So you open your mouth.  You’re desperate and needy and on the verge of something, and it comes out without thought.  You don’t think it’s loud enough for him to hear, but his head immediately lifts and looks unseeingly at the wall in front of him for a second, as if he’s questioning if he imagined it.  A soft melody plays on a bluesy guitar while you hiccup and wait, but he doesn’t move.

And then you say it again, higher and tighter in your throat, pitched up to an impatient, girlish whine.  “Poe…”

The radio is tossed onto the bottom bunk as soon as he spins around and walks towards the ladder, but it’s like your finger has a mind of its own the moment he disappears underneath your line of sight.  Your legs spasm against the mattress and you bite your lip, not caring about the frantic way your hand begins moving under the sheet as his muted footsteps climb up the rungs.

Your eyes snap to his as soon as you can see him beyond the railing at your feet, heaving himself up until everything above his waist is above you, too.  His pauses there and his lashes quickly dip to the shameless movements between your legs as you work yourself towards that approaching bliss, and then flick back to the way you’re biting your lip and looking at him so torn, wanting so badly to wait for it but not being able to right now.

Slowly, he begins to move forward, crawling his way up the mattress and over your body, noticeably careful with where he places his limbs.  You’re not hard to dodge, though—you’re like a rigid stick of desperation under him, knees and ankles still clamped tight together and your arms streamlined as close to your body as possible with tension as you keep rubbing your clit.  Not to mention the sheet is thin and shows your figure almost perfectly with how tight you’ve hooked it under your chin, only leaving the finest details to the imagination.

But then there starts to be a little strain against the fabric, an unspoken question he’s still bothering to ask even though you could’ve told him to fuck off ages ago.  Poe could yank the sheet down and flip your shit over and destroy you right now if he wanted—fuck, like you want him to do—but his face slowly appears in front of yours instead and his dark eyes search your features for answers.  The length of his chain dangles from his muscular neck and glows against his golden skin, his whole upper body stretched long and bare over you.

From the gradually increasing tightness pulling on the fabric, you expect the sheet to rip down your body as soon as you lift your chin and let that resistance go, but instead… stars, it’s slow.  Why is he going so fucking slow??  The bedsheet barely flutters down to your collarbone before he’s able to stop tugging on it so hard, and then he just gently inches the hem down from that point on.

Fuck—your eyes drop to his lips as he eventually reveals your shoulders and sternum to the room, and then lower to your cleavage while you let out a hushed whimper, praying he understands the extent of how vulnerable you’re allowing yourself to be.  You don’t do this often—and you definitely don’t do it with someone like him.  He’s the one who said you needed this, isn't he?  So why the fuck is he dragging out the anticipation?  Pretending like he doesn’t see the way you’re begging for help in the middle of another warzone that’s breaking out for the second time today?

Poe’s head drops down to give the contour of your neck a long drag of his tongue, slow and hot and wet, the sheet eventually dropping beneath your nipples and exposing them to the cool air.  You bite your lip and keep working yourself under the fabric even as it’s led down the length of your tummy, and you just get wetter and wetter feeling him mouth at your skin as the radio continues to play soft from the bottom bunk.  He follows the skin as it’s revealed, licking down from your collarbone and working with the increasing rate of your breathing.  His lips never feel like they vary in pressure, even as your chest heaves up and down and your lungs work hard for air.

His open mouth slowly drags down the curve of your breast and it makes your blood burn fire through your veins.  You nearly choke when your nipple is enveloped in soft heat, his tongue quickly fluttering up under the stiff peak and giving it to you so gently, contrasting so light and vernal with how brilliant and neon bright the need between your legs is.  Your hand starts to work quicker, and fuck—you can hear it now, your desperate movements audible over the shallow breaths and the sound of one song gradually fading into another below you.  You’re just too fucking wet and your pussy is smushed with how tight your legs are pressed together—the noise is unavoidable, and Poe’s knees are planted too close to either side of your thighs to spread them really at all.

Fuck, you knock against the resistance regardless to let him know what you want, but he doesn’t budge and it makes you just about lose your damn mind.  Does he have to make everything so fucking difficult?  You couldn’t close your legs earlier and now you can’t open them, and it’s like he’s able to take perfect advantage of each opposing position to prolong your torture.

But then his tongue leaves you even as his jaw opens just slightly, and that’s the only warning you get before his teeth graze your nipple with a sudden arc of sensation and you flare up all at once.

It’s a miracle and a curse that you’re able to stop at the very last second, your hand jerking away from your pussy and flexing into a fucking death claw on your thigh at how close you were, and you don’t know why.  Why did the fuck did you stop?  There’s nothing standing in your way right now, you’ve consciously given yourself express permission to cum, but still.  It must just be learned instinct at this point—hammered into your muscle memory for weeks on end to not allow the pleasure no matter what, especially when you’re this fucking close to it.

Nonetheless you garble out nonsense and cinch inwards on yourself to fight it off now that you’ve apparently decided against it.  There’s nothing worse than a half-assed orgasm, and you have to quickly summon the conviction behind your split second reaction before it’s too late and your body takes the pleasure any way it can get it.

Poe’s mouth releases your nipple at the way your whole spine suddenly hunches in and he drops his forehead to your chest, breathing heavy down the slope of your breast as you tremble and grapple for your sanity.

“Did you just cum?”  Is the first thing he says to you, his voice is so ragged and stony it’s practically gravel crunching as he speaks.

“N-n-no,” you quickly stammer at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe correctly.  Inhale, exhale—fuck, which one is inhale again, which one comes first?  Maker, does he need to call a fucking medic?  “Huhhhhalmost?”

Poe takes a deep breath and slowly releases it with a bassy and warm mmmm rumbling against your skin, so coarse but pleased enough to sound like melted chocolate dripping down your body.  The noise sends a violent shudder through you and it’s almost enough to knock you back to that edge again, even without your fingers assisting it.  

His head dips and the sheet pulls down even more, just below your belly button now, and you let out a quiet gasp in anticipation, nearly on the verge of begging him to keep moving downwards.  But when Poe’s eyes close and his mouth suddenly moves back up to open over your other nipple instead, your patience snaps.  

Fuck him, bad way.  This is your orgasm, you’re done waiting.

“I’m gonna cum,” you snarl furiously down at him, shoving your hand between your legs even as Poe’s lips quirk against your skin.  It’s not a warning, it’s a threat.  If he’s gonna be like this, he doesn’t get to share it with you.  It’s your orgasm, you’ll give it to yourself if he doesn’t give a shit about it.  “Thought you wanted it, guess not.”

You immediately feel his teeth again in response to your admittedly slightly bitchy comment and this time he lets your nipple roll just a bit between them, making you jerk at the sensation and quickly find your clit again.  Oh, you’re soaking fucking wet, you’re wet everywhere.  Slick and swollen and burning, and it’s not going to take much at all.  The sheet sticks to your overheated body and you can’t tell the difference between your sweat, his saliva, or wetness from between your legs—it all just feels damp and slippery as you gradually lose your bearings under his mouth.

“Fuck this, I’m gonna cum,” you breathe once more, possibly nothing more than a mindless reiteration but most likely just one last veiled plea for him to give you what you both want.  As if he can tell, Poe quickly lifts his mouth and suddenly the sheet is ripped the rest of the way down your naked body completely, sharp and frustrated, and then his lips brush against your elbow as it twitches, nipping the sensitive skin there.

“Brat,” he growls quietly against your forearm as he keeps dragging his lips down further, following the path it makes along your tummy.  “Just likes making shit difficult.”

“You’re the one—” you hiccup, trying to sound angry but just melting into a puddle at the tip of his tongue slowly trailing down your frantically moving wrist, “—you’re the… the o-one who… who…?”

But you’re already sprinting towards that edge, feeling him drop even lower and his hot breath fan against your fingers, and at this point you’re too far gone.  Poe gently kisses at your closed thighs, in perfect position and ready for you, but you can’t stop yourself anymore unless he makes you stop, and the longer he waits down there without grabbing your hand to replace it with something better the more you don’t give a shit about whether or not it’s going to happen.  You can feel the orgasm rising, you can feel your toes flex and everything start to lock down for the approaching tsunami.  You’re going to get it this time, you’re going to cum, you’re going to—

“This is—” you rasp, “—this is a f-free, a fffff-ffreeeeb—”

His tongue softly grazes your knuckle as it works.

And then there’s a moment.  A suspended moment that seems to go on forever, where you’re launched directly over that cliff and yet you still seem to be gaining altitude.  Where’s the drop?  You’re already cumming—you can feel it, there’s absolutely no fucking going back now, but it’s like your sheer desperation has so much momentum that your body tricks itself into believing there’s nothing to land on, no gravity to immediately rip you straight down to your demise.

You choke out his name and your back arches with it and that must be the signal, because Poe finally pulls your hand away and lets his chin dip, and then his jaw falls open and allows you just enough time to catch the glimmer of his pink tongue before it slides wet and slow through your swollen folds.

Heat.  It sears through your whole body with a wracked shudder, the slick glide over your clit as his eyes flutter closed, and within the very first second of feeling his mouth on you, you’re instantly cumming inside it.

There.  There’s the drop.

The burning erupts into molten chaos, crumpling your whole body on impact like an accordion, but he sinks all his weight down on your legs and forces you to endure it with everything below your waist pinned to the mattress.  It’s fucking mayhem.  You feel like your voice actually rips itself in half with the ragged cry of blinding relief, so enormous and soul wrenching in power that you couldn’t even hope to muffle it.  You can’t move your hips through it, you can’t stutter up to ride it out—you have to experience the whole thing with your lower body completely still while his tongue takes slow, gentle licks at your throbbing clit, only able to sit your shoulders up and slam them back down and grab his head as you endure.

You cum hard.  Fucking hard.  It’s daunting and explosive and utterly devastating in the havoc it wreaks, and just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it, it’s just so slow.  Creeping along and obliterating everything in its path, taking an eternity to pass because of how fucking big it is.

When you’re finally able to float back down into your own body again, the first thing you notice is how tight his hold is.  Poe’s arms are wrapped around your thighs to keep them pressed tight together and you can feel the wetness all the way down to your fucking knees as they tremble against each other.  Stars, what did he do to you?  You feel like you actually wet yourself, there’s way too much dampness on the mattress underneath you to feel anywhere close to normal for you.

His mouth eventually leaves you but his head doesn’t move, nothing else moves.  Even his hot breath feels like rough stimulation to your throbbing pussy.

And then Poe shifts and adjusts his body just enough, catching the backs of your knees and slowly spreading your legs up and apart like you wanted to do ages ago.  They feel like jelly, wobbly and unsteady even as his thumbs hook right under your knees and easily support most of their weight.  Your pussy is soon exposed completely, and his shoulders move down just before his head drops to lick the collection of wetness right from your entrance.  Fuck, he couldn’t get it from the previous angle your legs were at, just your clit at the very top—but this is deep and personal and you know he’s probably getting mouthfuls of how hard he just made you cum, using the tip of his tongue to scoop your arousal up and swallowing it quietly before going back for more.

“Poe,” you whisper, and he rumbles low in his throat in response without stopping.  This isn’t for you, this isn’t for your benefit right now.  Your pleasure receptors aren’t concentrated right here, just the physical evidence of them being overloaded just a few moments ago, but he stays for longer than necessary.  He keeps his mouth here far longer than you need to push past the throbbing sensitivity and start to crave the sensation again, forcing you to bite your lip to stop yourself from telling him to move back up just a couple inches.

So you seek it out instead, the lower part of your body clearly not listening to a damn thing your mind tells it right now.  Your hips drop and his velvet tongue catches your clit at the apex of its repetitive motion, and you gasp and rock upwards again as Poe groans and immediately rises with you to chase it.  He attaches to the swollen flesh and sucks at it gently for you, following your lead, letting your wet fingers comb his hair back from his face and clutch a good fistful of it as you plant your feet and slowly grind up into his mouth.

Fuck.  He was right.  You needed this.  Everything about it is heaven—endorphins pour off you in waves as you roll your hips against his face, and he lets you do it.  He’s not just pliant, he’s willing.  His tongue works diligently, his eyes close and he moans into your pussy, allowing you to tug his hair and fit to his mouth exactly how you want.

Oh, everything burns.  Everything smolders and sparks, because he’s always been so withholding and now he’s just going for it.  He’s reading your mind better than he did during the battle today, not necessarily submissive in his approach but… servicing.  Accommodating.  Finally giving in and putting real effort into helping you chase after another shot of ecstasy without being so stingy about it like before.

As soon as you feel another familiar swell of something deep down, your mouth is suddenly dropping open.

“How many—” your ragged voice comes out without thinking, and it takes so fucking long to actually attach the train of thought to its conduit of translation.  You swallow thickly and flex your fingers in his hair, tugging at him to ground yourself, trying to anchor yourself to the very thing that’s about to fling you into oblivion again.  “—fuck, how many times did you… how many fr-freebies do I—do I…”

Poe eases his chin back just enough to respond, and the slick sound his tongue makes leaving your clit makes you shudder and miss the wretched words at first.  “Mm.  Just the one.”

And then his tongue is already sliding back through your pussy by the time your eyes pop open in immediate panic, and your clit is in his mouth again as soon as yours drops to frantically contest.

But the words aren’t coming, it feels too fucking amazing.  Your jaw goes slack and your fingers tighten in his hair.  Maker almighty, the orgasm swells up so sharp and quick that you have to fucking kick him at the very last second to get away from it.  Thankfully Poe’s mouth abruptly leaves you with his oof of shock at your audacity, lifting his head as you snap your legs together and grit your teeth through your miserable retreat from ecstasy.  You don’t even notice the way your knee almost knocks into his jaw with it—you just focus on shamefully easing your way back down again from the platform overlooking bliss like you’re too afraid of the high-dive.  After a second, you actually have to turn on your side and rock yourself like a child as Poe slowly sits up with a grimace, lifting his arm to rub at his ribcage where your heel slammed into him.

You peek an eye open to watch him do it and oh no, it’s not a good plan.  He’s so… fucking hot.  Fuck.  He’s unbelievably good-looking—his hair curls and frames such handsome features, his body is lovely and warm and seeing his chest bare and up close like this makes you want to reach out and slowly drag your hand down the smooth curve of his side.  But then your gaze catches on the dark sweatpants tented shamelessly between his legs and how he’s glistening with perspiration, too, and how he tugs at the fabric covering his crotch and sighs softly, blinking down at you slow and intoxicated with lust.

You have to close your eyes and bury your face into the pillow because your body is latching onto anything to keep you within inches of that edge.  The mere sight of him is enough to make you worry for yourself.  You take deep breaths and do your best to tune his existence out entirely.  Just you, just you in your bed, trying desperately not to cum without even touching yourself.  You’re naked and curled up and there's no one here to look down at you with deep brown eyes, no one else breathing and especially not equally as loud as you are.  Just you, just you.

And, just when you think you might finally get to the point where you’re not teetering anymore, where you’re at least mostly certain that moving around and looking at things and just existing in general isn’t going to make you completely unravel hands-free at any moment, he has to fucking… go and be himself.

You peek up to see him staring down at you, dark and intimate and devouring, before his hand gently brushes down the curve of your hip.  “Maker, you are so fucking hot right now.  Was that a close one, pretty baby?”

Your hand snaps out to grab his wrist with a whimper and you don’t know if your intent is to stop him or just hang on for dear life, but your grip is weak and you shake and Poe takes the opportunity to grab a handful of your ass while you do absolutely fuck all to stop him.

“Mmmm.  Open your legs,” he murmurs, releasing your flesh just to give it a soft smack.  “You’re only making it worse like this.”

“What?  W-What do you—” you stammer, but Poe drags his hand down your thigh to catch one of your knees and pull it up without waiting for your babbled reply.  Both knees go with him, your pelvis wound too tight and frozen to do anything but rotate your whole entire body on your tailbone.

“You’re just adding more pressure by keeping them closed,” he explains, wiggling his fingers in between your knees to try and get enough of a grip to pry them apart.  “C’mon—open your legs, let yourself breathe.”

“Nnnnnnstop talking,” you groan, trying to slap at him, but he’s strong enough to force the movement regardless, levering your knees apart and then pushing them tight to the mattress.  And, though he would normally be right about it, you’re fighting your mind to get away from the orgasm just as much as you are your body.  The sudden exposure and the positioning and the way he automatically drops his gaze down at your needy pussy with his cock still hidden in his pants like that only serves to displace the cause instead of eliminating the effect.  Closing the door and opening a window, shifting the stimulation somewhere else but allowing it to throb steady and aching regardless.

“Much better,” he sighs lowly, digging his fingers into the sore muscles inside your thighs and you just keep your hands loosely attached to his wrists as he works.  “Fuck me, baby’s got such a pretty pussy doesn’t she?”

“Poe,” you wheeze up at him, hearing him rumble at the sight of your cunt contracting around nothing, probably shining and glistening with your desperation for him.  By this point, you’re worrying again.  You have no doubt whatsoever that he could talk you into cumming just like this, with your hands trembling and clutching at his wrists.  If he keeps murmuring filth while holding your legs open and staring at your pussy like this, you have no doubt you’ll find a way to get there somehow.

Thankfully, he seems to understand.  He goes quiet and just keeps massaging your sore muscles while you try not to writhe underneath him.  Stars, it’s like he’s genuinely doing what he can to take it easy on you and you’re still all kinds of fucked up about it, still frantic and desperate while all he’s doing is just squeezing your legs.

“Calm down,” he gruffs, but you can’t.  “You’re working yourself up, don’t—”

“Stop talki—” your ragged growl is cut off by your own hiccup as you quickly find the strength to shove at his hands, knowing they’re at least mostly to blame for your prolonged tightrope walk.  You can’t fucking think when he’s touching you, you become too hyper-aware of your own body, it feels too good in a way that’s hard to describe and impossible to explain.  Poe’s palms immediately listen and raise in front of him in surrender, his back lifting to give you space while you hide your face from him with shaky hands and gasp.  It’s pathetic and your legs are still held wide open and your fingers tremble hard enough to resemble a malfunction.

You just.  You need a hard reset.  You need that thirty seconds of complete idle, of figuring shit out on your own without an electric current running through you before you can start working properly again.  It can’t be rushed, it’s necessary when most people just want to power down and then right back up again.  The wires connecting your parts are all criss-crossed and tangled and sparks are lighting up at the slightest stimulus, you just need to experience absolutely nothing for thir—

“I’m sorry,” Poe murmurs, still staying in his own space but the gravelly voice shooting a bolt of lightning down your spine.  Thirty seconds, of course he couldn’t give you thirty fucking seconds.  “Fuck, you’re so hot, I’m sorry—”

“Please stop talking,” you beg him, your fingers curling against your face, “Maker, I—I don’t want to cum—”

“Fuck, I know, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucki—”

You go to kick him again and even though it collides wrong and does nothing more than get your message across, the jostle is enough to knock you back from the approaching oblivion just slightly.  It serves to wake you up way more than it remotely hurts him, the equivalent of someone just smacking a piece of machinery and fixing the problem temporarily.

You heave an enormous breath and blink your eyes open behind your fingers, immediately locking with his.  Poe’s teeth are digging into his bottom lip but he’s mercifully silent, even when you drop your shaky hands down to your spread thighs and stay equally silent another full minute while you make the effort to right yourself.  After awhile though, you realize he must be taking cues from you, waiting for you to speak.

Only, you suddenly don’t know what to say.  You’re at a complete loss, looking up at him through your eyelashes in uncertainty now.  Something you’ve never been around him, even as your pussy is wide open for him to look at.  He hasn’t recently, though, you don’t think.  He’s just keeping his eyes on your face, watching you bite your lip and blink up at him while your mind whirls, the only sound that can be heard is the radio continuing to lull from the bottom bunk.

You wish he’d say something.  How come he’s choosing right now to listen to what you tell him to do?  You don’t… you don’t know what to say to him.  Why can’t you figure out something?  You fidget but then suddenly feel your expression lose all its struggle and just look… innocent.  Needing his help.

“Do you want me to leave?”  Poe eventually asks after another moment, tentative of breaking the silence, and you frantically shake your head before he’s even finished speaking.  Fuck, something drops in your stomach at how desperate you’re probably coming off right now, but you’re so lost and you know that’s at least one question you know the immediate answer to.

Poe tilts his head thoughtfully, slowly reaching a hand towards your thigh without removing his eyes from yours.  “Want me to make you cum again?”

You shake your head again, wide-eyed and worried.  He immediately pulls his hand back and blinks slowly at you.

“You want to be edged more?”  He asks lowly, and you shake your head vehemently for the third time.  Poe sighs and sits back, planting his palms to his thighs and pulling at the fabric of his pants in budding frustration, clearly tired of playing twenty questions.  “Well what do you want, baby?  You wanna just hang out?  That’s fine, I don’t care, but you gotta tell me.”

Fuck, he’s right, what do you want?  The only thing that’s standing in your way of feeling better, you soon realize.

“Want you to cum first,” you mumble, cheeks warming at how childish you sound.

“Not a fucking chance,” Poe immediately scoffs, crossing his arms over his bare chest.  “And pouting at me isn’t gonna help.”

“Why not?”  You breathe, dipping your gaze down his body.  “I can use my mouth.”

“I don’t—” he stops short, suddenly registering what you said and switching gears.  “You can—?”  Poe narrows his eyebrows and looks suspicious.  “You’ll let me… cum in it?”

“Okay,” you whisper in breathless agreement, sitting up and reaching for him, but Poe groans and pushes you back down on the mattress with a flattened palm against your shoulder like you just aced a test he was hoping you’d fail.

“Fuck whoever’s idea this was,” he grits darkly to himself while you arch up against his hold, wanting him to grab your tits but knowing it’s not a good idea right now.  “Maker, I’m so fucking hard—fuck whoever’s idea this was, making me turn that down—”

“You said,” you pant, licking your dry lips and blinking up at the ceiling, trying to control yourself, “before, you said that you’re… you’re not doing this for a bet, right?  So why not?”  Your voice goes softer when you flutter your gaze back at him, even though the accusation feels like it should be sharper if anything, since it comes from a very real place of distrust.  “Were you just… lying to me about that?”

“Fuck, come on,” Poe groans, his voice starting to waver as he shakes his head and squints one eye at you, exasperated.  “You don’t get it.  You can’t think of a single fucking reason I don’t wanna blow my load just yet?  Really?”

The sentence coupled with his rock solid hold on you skitters a thrill through your body and you automatically reach up to run your hand along his forearm.  He looks down at the caress and then back to your face and fuck, even you feel like you’re sending mixed signals right now.

“You could… fuck me,” you whisper, and Poe’s dark eyebrows pull up as his gaze falls down your naked body, nodding and digging his teeth into his bottom lip.  An agreement backed by so much unspoken desire that it looks like it almost hurts him just to hear you say it out loud.  “And we can just… see who cums first.”

“Yeah?”  He croaks, his eyes pinned between your open legs.  “Just say fuck it all and race for last place?  Okay.”

Your heart pounds, having just enough wherewithal to preemptively establish a safety net for yourself.  “And—and we can’t finish at the same time or we both lose.”

“Fuck,” Poe groans, reaching down to catch the hem of his sweatpants with his thumb and lifting his hips until his cock is exposed to the dim room.  “We can’t stop once we start, then, we’ll have to see it through.”

Except you don’t catch any of the last part because, uh.  Well, to sum up.  May the Maker have mercy on you all.

Just like that, the only thought in your mind is… you get it.  Okay, you get it.  He told you before that girls were only interested in him for his cock, and it actually… stars, it makes so much fucking sense now, you totally get it.  You thought maybe he was just boasting as a form of overcompensation at first—or, to put it another way you’ve probably used in conversation with him before, talking big talk but walking small walk.  Only now, you’re… humbled.  By a fucking dick, you’re humbled.

You haven’t seen more than a few of them in this context, so you know you’re not necessarily qualified to give an informed opinion, but heavens it’s a sight.  It’s thick and swollen and just a shade darker than his complexion and everything inside you rockets to attention as soon as he wraps his hand around it.  It’s big.  It fills his whole palm without much room to spare.  Far larger than what you’re used to, and you know that no matter how he fucks you with it, you’re gonna feel it tomorrow.  Next weekend, probably.

Your eyes must betray you, because Poe suddenly loosens his grip and breathes your name softly, causing you to flick your eyes back up to his.  You didn’t realize you were staring so openly.

“I’ll go slow,” he reassures you quietly, voice gentle and knowing.  The complete lack of sarcasm or aggression in his tone is enough to snap you back to yourself, knowing that can’t possibly be right.  He’s talking to you like he did when you stumbled your ass out of the x-wing today, when you were barely responsive and lost in dumb shock.  He doesn’t have to… be nice to you right now, like you’re still only moments away from losing it.  It’s offensive.

“I can handle it,” you harumph, widening your legs while Poe immediately suppresses a grin.

“'Course you can,” he sighs with the slightest note of fondness creeping into his voice, dropping his hips as he lines up at your entrance.  “And I’ll go slow anyways.”

You open your mouth to respond but at the first push of his head inside, you inhale sharply and your palm immediately shoots out to press against his chest on complete instinct.  The stab of pain is impossible to mask from your features and Poe instantly stops with a shaky breath, watching how your jaw drops at the intrusion and your face contorts.

“Ahh.  Shit…” he whispers as his head tips down, dark eyes clamping shut and his hold on you tightening.  “What—shit, what the fuck…”

“Keep going,” you growl out, even though you know you’re just making it more difficult on yourself.  You can take Poe’s cock, you can take it, he has absolutely nothing to brag about, it’s completely normal-sized—

His hips inch forwards and you gasp at the excruciating arc of sensation, slapping at him harder.

“Keep going,” you babble while locking your elbows and shoving him back, “fuck, keep going, keep going—”

“Baby,” Poe groans, wrenching one of your hands from his chest and bringing your wrist up to his mouth to kiss and breathe hot air on it, “baby, you gotta let me—”

He moves a little more and you cry out, jerking your hand back from his lips and knocking it hard against his chest before you even realize it.  Oh shit, you can’t handle it, you haven’t been fucked in so long—

“I’m sorry,” you choke out, trying to be nicer by flattening your palm but then immediately digging your nails in, “fuck, I’m sorry, it’s just—it’s been awhile since I—”

“Shit, I can tell,” he pants brokenly, his fingers dropping back down to flex hard on your hip.  “Hoooolyfuck, I can te—ah, fuck, it’s alright, it’s alright, just—nnnnnnshit, okay, just relax, don’t tense up too muuuh… much—”

His cock pushes deeper even as he keeps rambling through it and you feel yourself being rearranged to make room for the slow movement, giving way to a rich pleasure even as the discomfort increases.

Poe stops once more when your hands shove up against him, somehow simultaneously shakier and firmer than all the other times put together and a little more than half of him inside you at this point.  You’re so slick and hot between your legs that there’s no resistance besides the stretch, nothing to stop him from slamming home besides your weak hands trembling at his collarbone, but everything about the way he stays completely frozen for ages says he’s controlled and patient.

Everything except his face, you soon realize.

When your body is finally able to come to terms with the sensation and you blink up at him, Poe isn’t looking at you anymore.  He’s staring directly over your head at the wall, tangible regret manifesting itself in seething frustration marring his expression.  His eyebrows furrow and he scowls but all of it is silent and directed at himself, as if he’s asking why the fuck he actually agreed to do this.  You know then that it must be really fucking wet.  You know then that you must be just blazing hot and tighter than sin and as if in rhythmic agreement, his cock jumps inside you with each pounding rush of blood through it.  You can see the sweat beading at his hairline as he continues to ignore you for the moment, choosing instead to silently lament at the wall like it did something to mortally betray him.

You could… make this a sprint, something devious suddenly whispers to you.  He’s struggling through the pleasure and you can outlast.  From the severity of that look alone, you can put an end to it before it even starts.

Admittedly, you don’t even let the devil finish his damn sentence before you decide to take your own initiative.  You clamp down around him as hard as you can and Poe whips his attention down to you and punches out a curse that sounds like you wrenched the word from his throat before he was anywhere near ready for it.  It comes from somewhere high and defenseless in register and then quickly falls down into a growly pit as his hips automatically lurch forwards the rest of the way inside, hard, smacking into yours as you squeeze wickedly around him.

You keep squeezing through the sudden upward shove of bliss, you keep tightening up even though you’re making agonizing noises and your eyes clamp shut and it hurts.  But stars, it feels good, why does it feel so good when it hurts so bad?  It makes your throat scrape and your face twist up, but you can hear his cursing getting louder and more desperate so you still don’t relax your viselike hold around him.

“Stop it—” he snarls down at you rabidly, “—oh fuck, stop or you’ll make us both cu—”

Shit, he’s right.  You know he’s never been more right about anything as soon as his hips stutter and kick up to a full blown gallop in the middle of his furious scolding, and the sudden build of ecstasy is so fast and intense that you sob his name, not being able to loosen your muscles anymore as soon as it overtakes you.  But it’s like a closed circuit, you’re both recycling the same pleasure without knowing how to shut it off.  The harder you bear down on him, the faster his hips work, the vicious cycle compounding and circling and manifesting in the perfect typhoon within just a few tumultuous seconds.

But then suddenly he rips himself out of you with a gasp and it’s not a moment too soon, because both of you have to scramble and grab onto things to brace yourselves through the worst of it.  You choose the mattress and he chooses the railing, and through the searing discomfort and settling of the chaos that’s becoming more and more familiar to you as this exhausting day passes, you know you fucked up.  You underestimate his self control, time and time again.  But, exactly like earlier today, you feel a thrill skitter up your spine at how he’s going to respond to your brazen treachery in the face of a newly established truce.

“Fuck,” he jerks his head to spit the obscenity at you, sounding more pissed off than you’ve ever heard him, the shredded anger in his voice starting to burn through you.  “Fuckfuckfuuuuck—you make me so mad.  You make me so mad.  I wish I could fuck you right now, on Maker, I’d ruin you.  I’d wreck your shit until you learn and you’d deserve every single fucking second of it, you—”

He stops short and growls jagged sharp in frustration, but you can’t help yourself.

“Say it,” you whimper on a dare, feeling your heart pound.  The words quiver with an inexplicable sort of excitement as you dig your fingers into the mattress, wanting to hear his voice snarl the mysterious profanity.  “Say it.  ‘You…’—what?  Say it.”

Shock suddenly paints his previously tense expression blank, even though his pupils blow out and his chest heaves.  Your voice is too breathless, it’s too needy to sound nearly as antagonistic as you want.  

And then Maker, it’s as if the sheer control he’s clinging to serves to spark his vexation even more.  Mad that you would ask for something so enticing at a moment like this.  Your heart thunders as Poe nearly flashes up close to you and points a threatening finger at you.

“You’re not going to get what you want from me,” he snaps, quiet and furious.  “Not tonight.  I don’t give a shit, I told you I’d slow fuck you and now I’m gonna do it until you act right.”

“You’re an asshole—” you move to lift up onto your elbows, but his hand suddenly plants against your clavicle and shoves you back down flat on the mattress.

“Not even ten minutes after I make you cum and you’ve already got a fucking attitude problem again,” he shoots back, positioning his cock at your entrance with his other hand once more, and Maker you’re drowning between your legs.  His sharp rebuttal and the firm hold on the upper part of your chest makes it that much wetter, knowing you can’t do much more than lift your legs the way you need when he eases his way back inside.  

“P-Poe—” you gasp breathlessly, but it's like he doesn’t hear you.

His expression tenses and he shudders out a low growl.  “Fuck.  Tight little baby.  Rude little baby, just wants everything her way but doesn’t know how to behave herself.”

You have to bite your lip hard to hold back a whine when he’s completely sheathed and his hips connect to yours, and… shit.  You already feel it.  You already feel that simmering starting to take hold deep down once more, that monstrous second orgasm you’ve been fighting now digging its claws into you and licking the base of your spine with fire.  And, as if he can tell, his demeanor instantly changes.

“Uh, oh,” Poe murmurs quietly, equal parts lilting and baiting, slowly dragging his cock out and then starting up the laziest pace you’ve ever experienced with his hand still planted high on your sternum right below your collarbone.  “Can you feel it coming?  Fuck, I can,” he shudders.  “Already.  Fuck, you’re so wet, you’re so wet—wish you had let me eat you out mor—”

“You can’t c—umm,” you hiccup, grasping his wrist and writhing through the building ecstasy, and you don’t know who you’re talking to at this point.  Your other palm slaps at his shoulder with increasing urgency—fuck, he’s been fucking you for barely ten seconds and you’re already struggling to hold everything back.  Only, his hand quickly grabs yours and pins it to the mattress, his face dropping closer as he rolls his hips achingly slow.  You feel his back working with the steady pace, you see his neck flex as his cock drags so thick inside you, and then your gaze starts to lose focus a bit.  It slides up his throat as lazily as he’s augmenting your pleasure, following the contour of his smooth skin until it reaches his face.

And mercy, Poe’s tongue comes out to wet his lips and a dark curl hangs down his forehead, concentrating hard on fucking you steadily without giving into the same creeping euphoria you’re feeling, and you have to turn away and bite back a whimper at the metal railing when the image starts to burn you alive.

“No,” Poe gruffs and his hand slides up a few inches to frame your jaw, twisting until you face him directly once more.  “Right here, you stay right here with me.”

Your eyebrows pull up weakly and your eyes flick across his stunning features, the way he’s so present, so focused and determined while you’re starting to drift.  His skin is so smooth, so golden when his jawline used to be dark, and—

“I—” you choke, starting to lose it, “—I-I…”

“What is it, baby?”  Poe growls, staring down at you with unwavering, intense concentration.  “Tell me.  You gonna cum?”

“I…” you whimper, blinking at him slowly, “I… liked your… b-beard…”

Poe’s eyes, previously hardened and steadfast, suddenly go a bit dumb, a bit dazed.  After a second, his eyebrows lose all strain, his gaze turns warmer and he rolls his hips deeper—

But the swell begins to become the only thing you can comprehend—that and the fact that you should be fighting it.  You should be revolting against it, but now he’s looking so softly down at you and you can’t remember what could possibly be so bad about letting him take away all this ache and desperation again.  Let him continue to take it away, over and over and over until it’s nowhere to be found at all.

And then Poe leans down and kisses you.  And it’s… nothing like you’d expect.

It’s gentle.  It’s tender.  It goes on forever while he rocks into your soaking wet cunt, easing his throbbing cock in and out of you with such a smooth, repetitive motion that sends sparks of ecstasy down your spine at the apex of each thrust.  

You handle it silently.  At first.  You don’t audibly react to any of it, you force your voice to at least keep quiet if you can’t hide the pleasure from your face or body, but then true to fucking form, he has to go and ruin it all.  Poe uses his knees to scoot up just the slightest bit, and then his moan breaks through the absence of the desperate sounds you’ve been holding back as his tongue slowly slides into your mouth.

Your pussy flares, contracting painfully around his cock as it hits a spot that makes your legs shake against his sides.  Your eyes roll back as his soft tongue dips into your mouth and everything just gets tighter, and tighter.  Poe moans again and his hips push a little bit harder into yours on the next thrust, and it’s almost like a domino effect, except that doesn’t do it justice.  It doesn’t topple one by one, it doesn’t take any time at all for the beginning to reach the finish—it’s a house of cards, the whole thing collapses and crashes down in on itself all at once.

You cum.

You lose.  Fair and square.

You make a long, anguished whine into his mouth as you just start spasming, clutching hard at his shoulders and drenching his cock with it, your eyes squeezing shut as you cum so slow and fucking helpless around him.  Oh Maker, it’s fucking devastating, it feels even more destructive and powerful than the first one.  You pull and shove and claw at him equally, mouth slack as Poe tightens his hold and keeps tasting your whimpering cries, fitting his hips snug to yours as he slowly pushes you down through the debilitating ecstasy.  You sob in euphoric defeat and a low, bone-shattering groan of satisfaction rumbles through his chest in response, grinding his cock into you and holding it deep as your pussy convulses.

All those weeks of holding out, just to lose.  You had a freebie, he gave you an orgasm already and it was like a massive dose of spice to your deprived system—all it did was make your body want it more.  Even worse, your orgasm doesn’t immediately inspire one in Poe like a part of you hoped it would, if only so you could reasonably contest the validity of the outcome.  He’s able to ride out every twitch and flex as you shudder your way through it, continuing to lazily slide his tongue into your mouth while it’s held open and slack.  He tastes like you.  He tastes hot and slick and everything about your body feels the same way, damp and unbearably warm from your nape to your elbows to your cunt to the backs of your knees.

You lay there for what feels like a lifetime afterwards, powerless to the way your thighs tremble violently against his hips and letting the tip of his tongue slowly trace the bottom edge of your teeth while he firmly keeps his cock buried inside you.  It pulses thickly and you know he wants to cum, you can feel the tension pulling at his shoulders as he keeps perfectly still.  But then Poe shuffles his arms up until they’re braced around your head, using himself to box you in completely without moving his lips from yours.  His teeth close on your bottom lip as he inches his hard cock out long and aching from your sensitive channel, and then groans and goes back to the same exact dragging pace from before.

Your expression furrows, even as he keeps kissing you and the movement lights up your oversensitive nerves.  Fuck, you want him to speed up, it’s all the more shattering and viseral when he takes his time.  What is he doing?  What is he waiting for?

“Fuck me,” you whine against his lips, demanding a quicker pace.  You don’t know why he isn’t just letting loose on you now, giving into his body’s need to cum.  He’s aching for it, still rock hard inside of you.  “Come on, I already l-lost, just fuck m—”

“Told you before,” Poe whispers back, refusing to speed up.  He keeps his pace dragging and steadfast, no matter how much you work to entice him.  “Never… fuck.  Never gave a fuck about that stupid bet.  Suffer though.”

The complete lack of harshness in his tone sears through your nerve endings even though what he said wasn’t exactly nice.  You never thought hearing him tell you to suck it up could be delivered in a way that inspires so much arousal in you, but then his tongue is in your mouth again as his hips work slow and easy, and your eyes roll back at how… overwhelming it feels.  So intimate.  You’re completely surrounded by him, his forearms propped next to your head and his mouth on yours, and… Maker, there it is again.  Your body is so deprived that it’s already gearing up to go again.  He’s being lazy and you can’t fucking stand how it’s breaking you down.  Gradually, with incredible stamina and a patience you never expected from him.  When you first feel that pull, part of you still wants to pick up the other end and start a tug-of-war with the sensation.  You’ve been fighting for so long that your body almost doesn’t know any different, its automatic reaction is to resist.

A distraction, that’s what you need.  That’s what guys do to stop themselves from cumming too soon, right?  Fuck, think of something, think of…

—Poe, you can't think of anything but Poe.  Fuck.  His cock sinking deep, the way he tastes, how his fingers thread into the damp hair at your crown so you can feel him that much more, how you can hook his biceps with both hands and swirl your tongue around his while he fucks you open.  Your hips roll up with the pace and almost immediately stutter back down again, not sure if you can handle the wicked shot of oversensitivity—but then Poe groans and shifts up until his thighs are under your ass and he can curl you in more, lift your feet a bit more and make you feel smaller.  And—stars, the next thrust in is enough to nearly make you bite him on complete accident, an unexpected sound ripped from your throat as he keeps that specific angle.

Poe keeps going.  He keeps kissing you, keeps rocking into you.  He lets you claw at him, lets you grapple helplessly while his cock shreds molten hot euphoria deep inside you, and then everything tightens up again.

“Ah, fuck,” Poe breaks away and curses a whole few seconds before you descend into mindless chaos once more, garbling out broken syllables with the absense of his mouth keeping yours occupied.  Your voice crescendos and breaks at the same time you do, the pleasure arcing through you over and over and wringing you out repeatedly around his throbbing cock.  Poe’s lips quickly move forward and give your whole cheek an open kiss while your expression crumples with it.  Teeth drag down your skin as he moans hot air across your skin, his hips slowing to a complete stop with an obscenely slick sound.

You throb and clench around him and his lips are suddenly on yours again, his tongue sinking deep and dominating.  Your mouth is slack and all you can do is squeeze him through the bliss, scrape your fingernails down his back and hope it leaves a mark.

Eventually the tremors pass and you’re dead in the aftermath, you don’t have energy.  Your body is starting to acclimate to the slow orgasms and just let them steamroll you flat, fully accepting now that you can cum but still putting everything you have into it like every single one might be your last for a while.  You come back to yourself enough to feel Poe’s cock solid and achingly hard inside you, and your bottom lip is being tugged between his teeth.

And then he eases out and goes back to fucking you.  Same speed, same control.  

Your eyes nearly fucking cross.  “P-Poe—”

He immediately makes a noise of disapproval with his mouth closed, a nuh-uh but kept tight in his throat.  He doesn’t want to hear it, he’s not even letting you finish your thought.

You can’t take it, though, you didn’t think he was capable of this.  This is torturous in an entirely different way, overstimulating and shattering you with every thrust.

So, you think back to the one thing that got him to nearly snap earlier, the one time you really got to see that fire you love playing with.  Only now, you need that fire, you need him to take everything out on you.  Your floor muscles clamp down without warning and squeeze him as tight as possible, squeeze squeeze squeeze until you feel his hips stutter to a halt once more.  Your breath catches—fuck, is this gonna work?—but then Poe breaks away from your lips to drop his head and sink his teeth into your neck.

You nearly squeal at how careless he is about it—an animal that bites you lazily even though it sends sharp agony rocketing through you.  Again, your attempt at sabotage backfires spectacularly as a subsequent flare of pleasure swells up, and oh, that’s what you want, you want him to be mean—

“Please,” you whimper, hooking your ankles behind his back and locking down hard enough to make your toes curl.  Poe groans as you grab a fistful of his hair and tug at the way your skin pinches between his teeth—you know you’re gonna have a bite mark for a few days and it thrills you.  “Fuck, please, Poe—please just fuck me, please, I want you to fuck me until it hurts, fuck me the way we both nee—”

“You and me almost died today,” Poe grits into your neck, cutting off your desperate whimpers with a short growl.  “Maker, it was so close, I don’t think anybody has any f-fucking…”  His hips pull out and then spear deep and you choke, tightening and tightening.  “But—shit, we didn’t, we lived and now—oh fuck, now baby’s finally letting me fuck her and I’m not cutting it short, no matter how pretty she sounds asking.”

His words sound slurred against your neck and you can’t tell if it’s his delivery or your perception that’s lagging.  But when you feel Poe inch his cock out and start to slowly fuck you through the tightness, you let out a weak little whine and feel yourself drifting… somewhere else.  

Things subtly lose their clarity, your eyelashes dip and you stop talking because words won’t come.  You can’t tell if you’re staring at the ceiling or your eyelids or the back of your head, but Poe’s voice abruptly breaking through the silence makes you realize you don’t have a concept for time anymore.  You couldn’t tell him how long you’ve been floating, but you almost don’t understand what he’s saying at all and it takes you a remarkable delay to fully comprehend.  But judging from what he says, it sounds like it hasn’t been long.

“Shit, are you cumming again?”  He suddenly gasps into the crook of your neck and grinds his hips achingly hard into yours,  “O-Oh—fuck yeah, you are—baby’s cumming again—”

“P-Poe?”  You stutter and smack your hand against something, him maybe, not knowing literally anything else.  Not knowing what he’s talking about, not knowing where you are, not knowing your own name, “Poe—oh m-my… God—”

“Whhh—W-What—?”  You hear him breathe a split second before everything compresses down tight, and then it all shoves forward at once.  All of the buildup makes itself known the very moment it becomes too much to control, like a flash flood but the downpour happened miles away.  You think you might actually squeak this time, helplessly cry out like it hurts because stars, it does.  It hurts so fucking good, it spiders pure plasma through your entire body with rhythmic jolts and wipes your mind completely vacant.  Your shoulders shoot you up and knock your chin into something and you think you might be crying?  You don’t know anymore.  Your spine comes back down to the mattress like the damp fitted sheet covering it is made of pure ice—your body is overheated and you keep tensing and jerking back up until Poe forcefully pins you tight against it, growling filth under his breath as he slow fucks you through it.

You feel his hand dropping down between your bodies and you sob pitifully at the ceiling when the tip of his calloused finger brushes your clit.

***

You lose count.

It’s just… constant, there isn’t a point in keeping track anymore even if there happened to be the ability—which, nope.  Not even close.

He ruins you slowly.  Meticulously, with nothing more than steady, unwavering determination.  Every structure you built, he takes apart by hand instead of bulldozing it the way you beg him to when you find the words.  You’re certain you find them—you must find them at some point, but they’re interspaced between babbled gibberish and breathy whispers of his name.

Even though it’s slow—Maker, it’s so slow—you’ve never been so fucking exhausted.  He makes you give him everything and then he drains the reserves, the hidden ones you weren’t even aware existed.  He never goes fast enough; in fact, you think he’s actually slowed down over the unknown amount of time it’s been since you first called out his name and asked for this.  If you were in a frame of mind to notice, you’d probably realize he’s trying harder and harder to not cum, but in your wild headspace, it just feels like a prolonged punishment for you.  It still feels like he’s depriving you for his own pleasure, even though he’s actually depriving himself for yours.  But you always do manage to find some way to read things wrong with him.

Eventually, he begins to waver.  He stops talking so much, stops chastising you when you plead with him.  He hasn’t looked at you since he first kissed you—he’s either hidden his face in your neck or closed his eyes as his soft tongue slides across your bottom lip before dipping inside.

But then there comes a point where even you realize he’s struggling not to let go now, and in your faded traces of sanity, you hear your broken voice cut through the sounds of the soft radio.

“Y-Y-You—” you gasp, trembling under him, “—youneedtocum.  You need to—”

“No,” Poe grits against your chin, sounding shaky and weak no matter how sharp he makes his consonants.  “Fuck, not yet, I—I-I don’t want to yet.”

“Oh no,” you wheeze out, feeling the swell begin again, the familiar flicker of warning you get as his cock slowly rocks into you.  Maker, the pleasure is getting raw and painful even as your pussy is drowning his cock with it, allowing him to glide slow and deep into your sensitive channel and letting the sheer tightness of it be the only resistance your body puts up.  You can feel the wetness on your cheeks though, the tears of frustration gathering as your body prepares itself for yet another wave of attack.  “Oh no, ohhhhhnononononono—”

“I don’t want—” Poe gasps, his hips stuttering just a bit and one of his hands coming down to smack the pillow next to your head as he chokes, “—don’t want this to… e-end yet, I—”

Your next orgasm suddenly slams through you and Poe immediately rips himself out of you before it’s too late.  He shushes you frantically while you sob in distress and writhe side to side through the contractions solo this time, having nothing to clamp down on, not even able to grind up into him because he keeps his leaking cock elevated far beyond your reach.

Oh, that’s it.  That is it.

“Fuck me!”  You wail up at him, water blurring your vision and tears streaming down your cheeks, “Stop fucking around and just fuck me, you asshole!  Fuck me and fuck me hard Dameron or I swear to every fucking star in the sk—”

You don’t get too far.  He’s immediately scrambling over top of you and a strong hand is clamping down tight over your mouth, muffling your high-pitched cries against his palm.  Your legs are shoved apart and one is caught under his arm and wedged back as far as it can go.  His head drops to your neck, and then he snarls a ragged, “Brat—“ under your ear before ramming his cock back inside you.

Stars.  Stars light up, it’s so much—the angle, the force, the speed, the sound his hips make as they start ruthlessly colliding with yours.  Your eyes screw shut and you dig your nails into the meat of his back, but he doesn’t slow down—he speeds up—

“Fuck, you still think that throwing your little fucking fits works on me?”  He hisses, drilling into your g-spot with such blinding hard precision that you can’t do anything more than just claw at his chest, gasping for air that just won’t come into your lungs.  “Huh?  Think you can just be a little bitch to me about it and it’s gonna change anything?  You still don’t have any fucking idea, do you?  Look at me—” he snarls, grabbing your face and shaking it to get you to respond, “—look at what you fucking do to me—”

But you can’t.  You already came countless times and he’s lurching you up the bed with every single rabid thrust into your blindingly sensitive cunt, fucking you into the railing and then the wall behind it.  You still feel his fingers grasping at your jaw, forcing you to address him, to look at him, and you can’t seem to focus your vision on his blurry features even when your eyes flutter open.  You’re too dumb with grinding pleasure to see anything besides blurs and stars, to say literally anything back to him.  But that’s not what he cares about.

“Oh fuck yes, there it is,” his voice whines, pitching up something vulnerable as his hips ram you into the corner hard and unyielding, “fuck, there’s those pretty eyes, that’s what I wanted, baby, that’s all I wanted—th-that’s—fuck, that’s—”

They must cross, or roll back, or something, because suddenly you can’t see him at all anymore.  You don’t know what happens—but you know it’s wet.  You know it bursts forth something fierce and you shriek his name with a hoarse and shredded voice like he steals the last part of your whole fucking soul with it.  Fuck, you’re not even there for most of it, you might actually black out.  

In your conscious moments, you can feel his whole body flexing over and over again on top of you.  He empties his load deep inside you and takes a fucking eternity doing it, so many breathless praises leaving his mouth so quickly that they slur together and you can’t understand any of it even if you could hear him.  All you can do is feel your cunt tighten and convulse in tandem with the throbbing of his cock, rhythmically working the cum out of him until Poe stops stuttering his hips, until he finally trails off into nothing but labored gasps and slumps down on top of you in exhaustion.

You both lay there for a while, dead weight breathing.

You want to hold him, your cum-struck mind quietly provides in the comedown.  You want to feel his body now that you can finally think straight and take a moment to enjoy this blissful relief.  He fucked you so good and you want to touch him, you want to run your fingers through his hair and massage the tight muscles at the base of his neck.

But then you just start giggling.

It’s stupid.  It’s so fucking stupid.  You smack your hand over your mouth but the garbled noise easily floats beyond it, completely elated and having absolutely no explanation at all.

Poe quickly pulls his head back to look at you and you try to twist sideways under him to hide it, but you can’t stop—like a complete loon, you snort and start to laugh harder at the ridiculous sound.  Oh, you don’t just float, you’re the air itself, so light with endorphins that you close your eyes and get lost in the fit until water wets the outside corners.

After a moment, a hand gently grasps your wrist and slowly pulls it down until he can see the way your mouth opens as you giggle, hear it unobstructed and let the sound bubble up at him and fill the room.  And you blink your eyes open just in time to see him slowly break into the most dazzling smile you’ve ever seen him bestow a person.

And… you’ve seen him grin a million times.  He’s almost always smiling, as long as you’re not right in front of him.  He smiles at his squadmates, he smiles at girls, he smiles at complete strangers, and you always thought it was pretty.  Always knew that he could light up a room with it, you always knew he could get anything he wanted with it, but this… this isn’t that kind of smile.  That one is practiced and alluring.  It wasn’t fake, necessarily, but that smile’s purpose always had more to do with making anyone who happens to witness it feel a certain way than it did about signifying his own emotional state.

This one is… goofy.  Amazed, and uncoordinated.  Thunderstruck in a way, except the clouds all part at the same time and let you see a rainbow.  It makes you feel… alive.  Colorful.  Radiant.  Sunshine.  Butterflies.

Poe quickly drops his lips to catch yours and you moan happily, sliding your tongue into his mouth this time.  You both adjust, you arch into him as he pushes your damp hair back and makes a deep noise of satisfaction, letting you explore while he wraps his arms around you and finds a way to make this atrocious position comfortable.  Every part of you is smushed up against him and there’s absolutely no space to be found, and you’ve never been happier.

“We made a mess,” he groans against your lips, rocking his hips into you with a disgustingly slick sound as if to illustrate, and his cock is soft but it’s still so thick that it stays buried inside your sloppy entrance.  “Shit, I—I think I might be bleeding.”

“What?”  You ask breathily, and he heaves himself up with his elbows just enough to reveal his chest.  You both tuck your chins unattractively to look and you don’t immediately see any blood, but your claw marks are clearly red and visible scraping down his pectorals.  “Oh.  Pfft.  You’re fine.”

He drops back down with a huff and your head is tilted at the perfect angle catch on the tiny droplets of blood decorating the marks criss-crossing his shoulder blades.  Oops.

But he’s already kissing up your neck and over the curve of your jaw and making out with you again like he can’t get enough of it, and you forget.  You forget everything.  You forget every disagreement, every gripe with him you’ve ever had.  It’s all wiped away and replaced with giddy, childish adoration.  Resetting completely and starting off on the rightest foot imaginable.

“Let’s go to my bed,” he murmurs, and you make a tight noise of disapproval.  No.  This is good, this is how you want to stay.  The railing is digging into your lower back and he’s heavy but you’re perfect like this, this is perfect.  “Baby,” Poe pants against your lips in exasperation when you quickly clutch the back of his neck and keep him glued to you, “mmph—you got everything all wet—”

This time you make a low hum of agreement and drag your hand down the bare curve of his spine to his ass to give it a squeeze.  A testament to how hard and raw he fucked you.  Poe shudders hard enough for you to feel his body tremble but you just kiss him harder, pulling him down onto you more.

“You’re gonna have to give me, just like—I don’t know, at least an hour or two,” he chuckles, grabbing your hands to make it easier to peel himself from your body and groaning when his cock finally slips out.  “Come on, let’s hang out in my bed.”

You’re so boneless when he pulls you to sit upright, you roll a little bit and Poe has to catch you, and you laugh again.  Maker, you’re a complete mess and absolutely delighted about it.  Your attempts at grumbling and complaining don’t hold any sway when you’re still trying not to giggle, and Poe is able to pull you to the top of the ladder and make his way down first.

As soon as he’s out of sight and calling up to you, you weakly slide into position with a groan and feel yourself leaking at the movement.  “Gah—look what you did.  I’m all… gooey.”

“I know, s’the hottest fucking thing,” he says under his breath from the floor, before beckoning you by tapping on the closest rung a few times.  “Come on, be careful.”

You do as he says, easing your naked body down one step at a time with wobbly legs.  It’s clumsy and you whine the whole way through, wordlessly grousing and mumbling.

“Oh, I just know it,” he comments on the sound, “nice clean sheets, I’ll get the violin.”

Normally, you probably would’ve snarked something back down at him, but you’re still so loopy and shaky-legged that you just start laughing again.  The fact that he’s absolutely right and you’re being ridiculous about something like moving beds suddenly strikes you as incredibly fucking funny for some reason.  You don’t realize his hands are hovering inches away from your hips until your legs buckle and Poe quickly supports your weight.

“Maker,” Poe chuckles before giving you a firm yank, and then catching you before you can tumble down the ladder in your naked, teary-eyed mania, “let’s go, giggles.”

He carries you a few steps to the mattress and plops you down on top of the comforter, letting you take up the whole bed while he sits on the end and puts your feet on his lap.  Poe grimaces for a second and then shuffles until the radio is pulled out from under him, and you can hear the soft sound of it playing once again.  You bury your face into his pillow, inhaling the warm scent lingering there while he tosses it carelessly to the side and rubs your shins for a little bit, watching you stretch out naked on his mattress.  

“I’m not giving you two weeks of pay,” you suddenly grunt, and he just grins down at you, not arguing.  Not saying anything.  Sitting in comfortable silence with you when you’re expecting him to bicker.  So you stay like that for a long time, breathing deep and relaxing, until Poe’s hands leave you for a second…

… to pull a bag of chips out.

Maker, at the first squeaky sound of the wrapping assaulting your eardrums, you want to roll your eyes.  You want to tease him about how fucking typical it is.  Like clockwork, you could probably set your watch to his middle of the night cravings.  You don’t know why you thought fucking him would change any of that.

You want to give him shit for it.  You even open your mouth, the snark on the very tip of your tongue.  But then your stomach growls as soon as he rips the thin plastic apart.

Poe’s eyes shoot to yours and neither one of you move, but apparently your tummy doesn’t get the memo.  It takes forever to trail off into silence again, and he blinks.  Fuck, you know you should’ve forced yourself to eat at least something earlier.  Warmth floods your cheeks and you scramble for something to say, but there’s no way to play it off.

“Would you like some chips?”  Poe suddenly asks with a boyish grin, raising his eyebrows and tipping the open bag freely in your direction.

The corners of your mouth pull downwards even as the inside of it waters.  You wouldn’t call it stubbornness necessarily as much as it is a… a desire to stick to consistency.  After the unbelievably hard time you always give him about midnight snacking, you’re hesitant to partake.

Though, the chips rustle against each other and sound absolutely fucking delicious as Poe shakes the bag and bounces his eyebrows, and you know what?  Fuck it.

You snatch it without thinking, cradling the precious food to your chest as you dig your whole hand in and shove a bunch into your mouth at once.  You catch him smiling again, but he doesn’t comment.

You both take turns, and by take turns you obviously mean you take turns stealing the bag from each other instead of just setting it equidistant between you and openly agreeing to share it, but it works for you.  It seems appropriate.  And then it’s quiet again, just munching and crinkling, except for the radio continuing to play from its place in his lap.  You have to work to listen over the loud crunching vibrating through your skull, but when you finally manage to stop chewing and catch a few bars, you suddenly find yourself trying not to smile again.  Fuck, it’s been years since you’ve heard this song, you love this s—

“Fuck, I love this song,” Poe promptly exclaims with his mouth full, licking the tips of his fingers before scrambling to pick the radio up and twist the volume knob without using his wet fingertips.  He starts humming over the melody, loud enough to almost drown it out completely, because of course he does.  The one damn time you actually want to listen to his radio and he still finds some way to mildly irritate you.

But this irritation is almost… fun.  You want to laugh just as much as you want to yell at him.

“Hey, who sings this song?”  You immediately ask over the sound of him clearly not knowing the lyrics, already ready with it.  Oh, the round is in the chamber, your finger is on the trigger, you are ready, and Poe’s eyes sparkle as he seems to stop and think about it.

“Mm, not sure,” he eventually shrugs, just before you rush, “Let’s keep it that—”

And then he’s slapping a hand on your leg and belting out the chorus while you scoff, giggling.  He ruined the punchline on purpose and is now getting chip dust all over you, but you know any complaint you make will be drowned out by his suspended notes and backing track, so you just roll your eyes and swipe the bag of chips from him while he continues to serenade you.

“My ears are bleeding,” you mutter under your breath.

He has a nice voice, you think.

[aquaquadrant]

nature’s productions - chapter seven

Rated T for: Strong language, ableism, violence, implied/referenced torture, blood/injury, death

Summary: Three years after the disaster at Jurassic World, Claire Dearing and Owen Grady are contracted for a mission to save as many dinosaurs as possible from the impending eruption on Isla Nublar. But when they arrive, they experience an unexpected complication; six teenagers who were left stranded on the island when the park closed.

Surviving has left the campers scarred in more ways than one, and they’re pretty sure that their would-be rescuers have less than good intentions. But with a volcanic eruption at their heels, they’ll do whatever it takes to get a ride home- and save the dinosaurs while they’re at it, because that’s kind of their thing.

A/N: OK so obviously s5 is out, if you wanna know my thoughts on it then read this post here. As for the fic, we’re still chugging along and getting into the thick of it! Hope you enjoy, please reblog/comment if you do! And as always, read on A03 for full tags and previous chapters. - Aqua

~*~

chapter seven - hybridism

~*~

Brooklynn listens for another few seconds before changing her hand signal from ‘Wait’ to ‘All clear.’

Kenji and Yaz are right behind her as she finally rounds the corner, darting down the hallway on quick but quiet feet. Dim fluorescent lighting flickers above them, throwing their shadows into disarray against the narrow metal walls.

In Brooklynn’s (admittedly brief) experience, a ship’s engine room is located towards the back, on the bottom level. That bodes well for them, because they can avoid the upper levels of the ship that are- according to Darius- more populated than the hold. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t being cautious.

It’s stranger than she thought it’d be, not having Ben beside her. And it’s not that she doesn’t trust Kenji or Yaz to look after her, not at all. She trusts her entire herd with her life. But after working so closely with Ben for so long, she feels his absence like she’s missing a limb.

Or rather, it’s like those first few weeks after she lost her eye. All of a sudden, she’s clumsy and uncertain again. Yaz’s presence in her blind spot is the only thing keeping her from bumping into the wall at this point. She’s navigating solely by her faint knowledge of boats and the hum of the engines, so most of her focus is going towards her hearing, listening for the subtle changes in volume that can lead them towards the engine room.

If she hadn’t spent the last few years of her life relying on her hearing so much, this would be an impossible task. In a way, it’s almost as if she’s been preparing for this moment all along. Like there might’ve been some sort of meaning behind the loss of her eye.

… well, it’s a nice thought, at least.

Brooklynn leads them around another turn and down a short flight of stairs- and then a sound pricks her ears. Eyes widening, she holds up her hand for them to stop, glancing around for an escape route or hiding place.

But there’s nothing. No side doors for them to duck into, no convenient piles of cargo for them to hide behind. Just a tight, empty hallway between them and the approaching footsteps.

‘Ready,’ Brooklynn signs, nodding at Kenji.

Kenji’s expression hardens and he nods, creeping forward a couple steps. His machete stays sheathed along his back because, much like Brooklynn’s baseball bat, it’s a bit too long to use efficiently in such tight quarters. Yaz, however, has drawn her knife- just in case she has to intervene.

They’re all hoping she won’t have to.

Their intruder comes around the corner. Brooklynn’s hunch was right; it’s another man, and as such, Kenji is the one best equipped for this fight.

He moves fast, before the man can even process what’s happening. A swift punch to the stomach knocks the man off balance with an aborted shout, allowing Kenji to slip behind him and wrap his arms around his throat- something he can only do because of his height.

The man chokes for a few moments, his eyes bugging out before slipping closed.

Once the man goes limp, Kenji releases him immediately. He slumps to the floor, and Kenji kneels beside him to check that he’s started breathing again because- well. He’s still a human being, isn’t he? They don’t want to kill anyone unless they absolutely have to. Even if he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them.

Kenji straightens up and signs, ‘Okay.’ Brooklynn nods, and they move on.

Under different circumstances, they might’ve taken the time to try and hide the man. But their cover is about to be blown, anyways, and all that matters right now is stopping the boat in a timely manner. The rest of the herd is counting on them to do their part, and Brooklynn won’t let them down.

Around the corner and at the end of the hall, they pass through a doorway that opens up into a massive room. The engine itself is enormous, taking up most of the floorspace and almost standing taller than two grown men. Even so, she knows most of it lies beneath their feet; this is only the topmost access deck of the several floors that the engine pokes through.

Brooklynn quickly studies the engine, her mind racing. There are two main ways to stop a diesel engine; cut off the fuel supply, or cut off the air supply. Air is the safer option- less chance of highly flammable oil spilling everywhere. They don’t have any special tools at their disposal, just a couple of sharp blades, but it’ll have to do.

Brooklynn signs for Kenji and Yaz to follow her towards the engine. A row of six tall cylinders stretches before them, with several pipes and tubes jutting out and diving beneath the floor. Brooklynn examines them carefully, tracing the faint mental blueprint she has in her memories. There’s a lot riding on this; one wrong move could spell disaster.

She steps up to the nearest cylinder and grabs the thinner of the two pipes feeding into it. It’s not a traditional pipe made of solid metal or PVC, but rather a braided mesh wrapped around thick rubber. Sort of like those flexible tubes used in plumbing, but much bigger. She takes a second to feel the vibrations running through the pipe and put her ear to it, until she’s reasonably certain that it’s air- and not oil- running through it.

“These tubes are how the air gets delivered into the cylinders for combustion,” she says quietly, just in case anyone’s lingering near the service decks below them. “Cut through these, and we cut off the air supply. No combustion, no power.”

“And you’re sure nothing’s gonna explode?” Yaz asks, her tone apprehensive.

Brooklynn makes a noncommittal noise. “Pretty sure.”

Kenji shrugs, drawing his machete. “Good enough for me.”

A machete isn’t the best tool for the job, and it takes a bit of effort for him to saw through the steel mesh. As soon as his blade punctures the rubber hosing underneath, air starts to whistle through the cut. Brooklynn breathes a sigh of relief; she’d chosen correctly, after all.

Reassured, she stands guard while the two of them set to their task. It’s slow going, especially after their blades start to get dulled against the metal. But soon enough, all six tubes have been cut completely through- which means a quick repair will be almost impossible. Before anyone has a chance to fix it, Darius and Sammy should have taken control of the bridge and will be able to stop the engines from there.

Yaz sheathes her knife, glancing around tersely. “I don’t think we’ve stopped moving,” she murmurs.

Brooklynn shakes her head. “Inertia will carry the ship forward for a bit longer,” she explains. Beneath the sound of air whooshing through the severed tubes, she can tell the engine’s stopped firing. “We should go now.”

“Lead the way,” Kenji says with a grin, sheathing his machete. “We’ve got a mutiny to attend.”

Brooklynn cracks a smile at that as she turns back towards the hallway. “Definitely don’t wanna be late for that.”

But even though her tone is light, she’s sending up a silent prayer that their sabotage will work. It’d be terribly awkward if the boat never stopped, and others were stuck waiting for a signal that never arrived. For the first time in a long time, Brooklynn wishes they had phones, so they could communicate with each other more directly. Though of course, if they had phones, they wouldn’t be in this position in the first place.

She supposes she’ll just have to have faith. 

They’ve made it this far, haven’t they?

~*~

Darius listens for a few more seconds, his ear pressed to the door.

He’s nowhere near as good at this as Brooklynn is, but he’s relatively confident there’s no one nearby. Sitting back, he turns to Sammy and signs, ‘All clear.’

After doing a quick sweep of the upper levels, they’ve found a small utility closet down the hall from the bridge that has vent access. Fortunately, they managed not to cross paths with any of the crew members. They probably would’ve been able to avoid raising suspicion, but he doesn’t want to risk them losing the element of surprise.

Sammy’s discarded her tree bark armor and is wearing Darius’s borrowed jacket, which helps her blend in a little more. It’s not the best disguise, especially since Darius has yet to see a single woman on this mission besides Claire and Zia. But all it has to do is get the captain to open the door for Sammy, and she’s tall enough that she could be mistaken for an adult at a glance.

They’ve salvaged the vines from Sammy’s armor to use as rope, currently looped around Darius’s shoulder so he can keep his hands free. Which he’s definitely going to need, since his route of entry into the bridge will be the ventilation shaft.

‘Plan?’ Darius prompts, wanting to make sure Sammy is clear on the details they discussed earlier in the truck.

“I’m gonna hide in here ‘til I hear Wheatley leave the bridge,” Sammy recites quietly. “Then I’ll wait thirty seconds before knockin’ on the door. The captain will open up, then you’ll drop down from the vent and we’ll take him out. Tie him up with the vines, take control of the ship, and use the radio to call for help.” She breaks into a grin. “And just like that, the day is saved, thanks to the MVC!”

Though her voice is scarcely above a whisper, it’s full of nervous excitement. Due to the enclosed space, she’s unable to be as physically expressive as she normally is, nearly trembling with restrained energy.

Darius can feel it, too. That anticipation before a dangerous mission. He gives her an amused, but fond, smile and puts a hand on her shoulder.

‘Careful,’ he signs with his other hand. ‘Fast, quiet.’

Sammy nods emphatically. “You too,” she whispers.

Reassured, Darius straightens up and starts prying the vent off the wall. He makes sure to set it down gently, so as not to make a racket and get them caught. Any little sound will echo greatly through the ventilation system, and could alert the entire ship to their presence.

Darius takes a moment to visualize his path to the bridge- it should be two right turns, not very far- before Sammy helps him climb in.

She doesn’t say anything out of an abundance of caution, but Darius can tell that the look she gives him means, ‘Good luck.’ He gives her a two-fingered salute before heading on his way.

Crawling through the shaft at a snail’s pace, Darius has never moved quite so slowly and silently before. He’s careful to raise his limbs in a way that doesn’t result in scuffing, and place them down so gingerly that he doesn’t thud or echo. The feat isn’t made any easier by the ship’s constant rocking; by the time Darius reaches the vent, every muscle in his body is screaming from the effort of holding himself so still, his forehead beaded with sweat.

Absently, he realizes this would have been impossible if he hadn’t spent the last three years learning how to be stealthy to avoid dinosaurs. Small blessings, he supposes.

Carefully, carefully, Darius lowers himself enough to peer through the slats in the vent.

His navigation was correct; the bridge lies below him.

Oh, thank god. With a nearly non-existent breath of relief, Darius lowers himself onto his stomach and settles in to wait. It seems like their luck is holding out a bit longer- the bridge is still occupied solely by Wheatley and the captain. So, once they draw Wheatley away, there’ll be just one man standing between them and the end of this nightmare.

Darius uses this time to properly examine the captain, something he hadn’t been able to do during his earlier visit. The captain seems a bit older than Wheatley, with a grizzled white beard, and speaks some kind of European accent that Darius can’t place.

“- gonna do with the raptor?” he’s asking Wheatley, though he remains facing the stretch of ocean visible through the front windows.

Wheatley snorts. “Why, interested in taking it home? Bit out of your price range, I’m afraid.”

“Not after this job,” the captain chuckles. “But no, you couldn’t pay me enough to keep one of those monsters. I just wonder if it’s worth all this trouble, with the angry vet and the strange little boy.”

The captain’s talking about him, Darius realizes. He’s not quite sure how to feel about that description. Strange, he can admit, but little? He’s barely shorter than Ben! And he has a sort-of-mustache now, doesn’t that count for anything?

“Oh, don’t you worry about them,” Wheatley says dismissively. “They’ll be dealt with soon enough.”

Well, that’d be a lot more ominous if Darius hadn’t already known Wheatley’s intentions from the start. It really is a reflection of Wheatley’s overconfidence, for him to be so certain that he’s successfully playing Darius for a fool when in reality, the opposite is occuring. Darius gives him points for effort, though.

The two lapse into silence, nothing but the ambient sounds of the ship to fill the air. Darius’s thoughts stray inevitably to the rest of the herd, trying to figure out what stage of the plan they might be in. Brooklynn and the A-List have a farther distance to travel, and the sabotage itself could take some time. But Ben won’t have to go far to find Bumpy; it’s just a matter of locating the right transport. He should be ready to go once the boat stops-

“Hey, sir?”

The silence is abruptly interrupted by a voice from Wheatley’s radio, sounding breathless and concerned. Alarm shoots through Darius- from what he can tell, the ship is still moving. Something must be wrong.

Wheatley unclips his radio from his belt. “Go ahead.”

“There’s a weird fucking kid here, trying to get into one of the containers.”

Darius’s stomach drops.

They caught Ben. He knows it with sudden certainty, dread settling over him like a fog. It had to have just been the worst timing, for someone to come across Ben right as he attempted to free Bumpy. Darius knows Ben was careful- he promised he would be- so they must’ve snuck up on him.

The thought makes Darius’s heart ache; he can’t imagine how guilty Ben must be feeling. Ever since he started losing his hearing, he’s been terrified of something exactly like this happening. Darius knows how important it is for Ben to feel capable and independent, so a setback like this must be devastating.

Wheatley exhales heavily through his nose. “Let me guess,” he says, sounding tired. “The blue Ankylosaurus?”

The response sounds taken aback. “Uh, yeah.”

“Bring him to me,” Wheatley orders, before clipping the radio back on his belt. He folds his arms with a sigh, shaking his head. “Don’t know how many times I have to tell that boy to stay put. They weren’t kidding when they said he had brain damage.”

Then it hits Darius; Wheatley thinks it was him trying to break Bumpy out.

And why wouldn’t he? Of course Wheatley wouldn’t automatically assume that the other kids he met on the island had somehow miraculously survived the eruption and stowed away. Of course he wouldn’t assume there was a plot against him- nothing more than one of the aforementioned kids getting into trouble. Of course he’d have them just bring the kid to him; it’s not something that would require his immediate presence, not like an escaped dinosaur would.

Oh, this is bad.

The captain clicks his tongue. “Should’ve thrown him overboard.”

“After this, I just might,” Wheatley huffs.

Darius’s mind races. Their plan has taken a complete one-eighty. Wheatley isn’t leaving the bridge; instead, Ben is being brought here. And for Ben to get captured in the first place, there must be two mercenaries at the very least. Likely three. So once they arrive, there will still be more bad guys than campers.

Darius didn’t want to take over the bridge with an outright brawl, but it’s looking more and more likely. If a fight breaks out when Ben arrives, will Sammy come help or stay hidden? Would it be better if she stays hidden, and they try to stick to the original plan? Is that even an option anymore? What’ll Wheatley do after he sees it’s Ben who tried to free Bumpy, and not Darius? Is there any scenario in which he still sees a reason to leave the bridge? And how is Ben going to get free? What if he’s injured?

There are so many variables, Darius has no idea how this is going to play out. This is his fault, he never should’ve let Ben go alone-

“Wonder what he was tryin’ to do,” Wheatley muses. “That Ankylosaurus of theirs was pretty tame, like they could control it. But it’s not like he’s got anywhere to run.”

The captain makes a noncommittal noise. “Who knows why kids do what they do, eh?”

Wheatley tsks and starts to pace the room impatiently- a sentiment that Darius shares. His stomach is in knots as worst case scenarios flash through his mind, unbidden. The next couple minutes pass in nerve-wracking silence until there’s a sudden pounding on the door.

“Hey sir,” a lofty voice calls, “got someone here to see you.”

Wheatley sighs, moving towards the door. “Right, let’s get this over with…”

Darius’s heart starts to pound. He peers through the vent slats as closely as he dares, wanting to be ready to move if needed.

The door swings open to reveal three mercenaries, two of whom are restraining Ben by the arms. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to have sustained any injuries and is standing on his own two feet, his body rife with tension.

“What the- it’s you!” From this angle, Darius can’t see Wheately’s expression, but he can hear the pure shock in his voice. “I thought you stayed on the island!”

Ben glares up at him and says nothing.

“How did you get on this ship?” Wheatley demands, his shock quickly giving way to indignation.

Still, Ben says nothing.

“He hasn’t been very cooperative,” one of the mercenaries pipes up. It’s hard to tell from Darius’s vantage point, but it looks like his sleeve is stained with blood. Pride flickers in his chest; he hopes Ben gave them hell.

Wheatley scratches his chin, humming thoughtfully. “Oh, yeah?”

But before he can say anything else, the ship lurches beneath them. Darius braces himself against the walls of the shaft, but any noise from him is masked by the captain letting out a loud and surprised curse.

“What’s going on?” Wheatley shouts.

“We’ve stopped moving,” the captain reports, sounding suitably alarmed.

Darius could weep; Brooklynn and the A-List came through. He never doubted they would, but it’s a relief all the same.

“What?” Wheatley stalks over to the control panel, looming over the captain. “Why?”

“I’m not sure,” the captain says frantically, “it’s nothing on my end.”

Wheatley whirls back around and points at the mercenary who isn’t holding Ben. “You, get to the engine room pronto. Keep your radio hot.”

The mercenary nods and takes off, his footsteps quickly fading.

Darius is disappointed, but not surprised, that Wheatley isn’t going to go investigate this himself. Maybe he would’ve, if Ben hadn’t been caught. But if Ben hadn’t been caught, Wheatley would probably be out dealing with him and Bumpy at this very moment, so it’s a moot point.

One of the remaining mercenaries clears his throat. “What should we do with him?” he asks, jerking his head at Ben.

Wheatley considers Ben for a moment. “I’ve got questions for this one,” he says lowly. “Go find an empty room and tie him up, I’ll be there shortly.”

“Yes, sir,” the mercenaries reply, and then they’re dragging Ben out of the bridge and out of view.

Darius swallows the lump in his throat. Alright, so silver lining; Ben has successfully drawn Wheatley away from the bridge. Once he leaves, Darius and Sammy can carry out their plan and take control. But that still leaves Ben in a precarious situation. They’ll have to figure out a way to help him- because escaping from three armed men is a tall order, even if it’s Ben.

Wheatley exhales heavily, running a hand over his head before grabbing his radio. “Are you at the engine room yet?” he demands.

“No, sir. I found a man down. He doesn’t seem injured, but he’s unconscious.”

The herd’s doing, Darius presumes.

Wheatley swears under his breath. “Alright, get him to the medbay-”

“Sir,” a new voice suddenly calls through the radio, “this is Patrol 5 reporting from the engine room. It’s the air intake pipes, they’ve been cut clean through!”

Wheatley is silent for a moment, as if stunned, before he marches over to the control panel. Slamming his hand down, he leans forward and announces, “I need all maintenance crew to report to the engine room immediately.”

His voice echoes through the intercom system, making Darius wince. But even so, he’s in higher spirits than before. This act of sabotage will take considerable attention away from other parts of the ship, just as intended. They might just pull this off, after all.

Wheatley turns to the captain. “If that other kid, Darius, shows up while I’m gone, don’t let him in. Radio me, got it?” At the captain’s nod, he turns away. “Got a feeling there’s something big going on here…”

The captain locks the door after Wheatley leaves before returning to the control panel.

Darius starts counting in his head. At the same time, he’s thinking about what he’ll do if Sammy doesn’t show, and how long he should wait. With so many people coming and going, she might’ve gotten confused about the status of the plan. Maybe he should backtrack and meet up with her to discuss these recent developments and come up with a new plan-

There’s a knock at the door, right when Darius reaches thirty. Adrenaline shoots through him as he steels himself for what’s to come; it looks like they’re sticking to the original plan, after all.

“Yeah?” the captain calls over his shoulder.

“Maintenance,” Sammy calls from outside. It’s muffled, but she seems to be making an effort to deepen her voice and sound older. “I’m comin’ from the engine room, got to troubleshoot a few things.”

The captain pauses. Darius holds his breath.

“Hang on,” the captain says, moving to the door. He peers through the window and, seemingly satisfied that it’s not Darius, steps back to undo the lock.

As he unlocks and swings open the heavy metal door, Darius pries the vent out of its frame. By the time the sound reaches the captain’s ears, Darius has dropped down onto the floor, landing in a crouch.

The captain whirls around in surprise, and Sammy takes the opportunity to shove him, hard. He hits the ground at Darius’s feet with a pained grunt. Sammy quickly slips into the room and slams the door shut behind her, locking it.

In the meantime, Darius has tackled the captain in an effort to keep him on the floor.

“Help!” the captain hollers, trying in vain to swing a fist at Darius’s face. It’s clear that he’s well past his prime, so although Darius is smaller, he’s stronger by far. “Mutiny!”

Sammy races over and dives onto the captain’s legs, helping Darius hold him down. Between the two of them, they manage to tie the vines around his hands and feet- aided by Sammy’s experience with wrangling rodeo calves, no doubt. The last length of vine is tied around his mouth to gag him, though it’s only somewhat successful in muffling his furious cries. It doesn’t matter much, in any case; their mutiny is bound to be discovered soon.

Darius double checks that both doors are locked while Sammy drags the captain over to a corner, out of the way. “Sorry ‘bout this,” she says with a rueful smile. “We don’t wanna hurt anyone if we can help it, so just sit tight, an’ we’ll get along just fine.” She punctuates her sentence by pulling back her jacket to reveal the knife strapped to her hip.

The captain falls silent at that. It’s kinder on their ears, at the very least.

Sammy straightens up, glancing over at Darius. “What’re we gonna do about Ben?” she asks anxiously.

“I’m g- g- going aft- ter him,” Darius tells her decisively, nodding back up at the vent. “St- stay here. R- radio for uh, h- help.”

As nice as it would be to have backup, they really need someone to stay and keep control over the ship. If the crew actually manages to fix the engine and take back the bridge, then there’s a chance that they’d be able to escape even after the authorities are called. Plus, this is the herd’s rendezvous point, and the safest place on the ship to hole up in.

Above all else, Darius needs them to be safe.

Sammy puts a hand on his shoulder, giving him a searching look. “Are you sure?”

“Promise,” Darius says. “J- just keep th- the uh, the doors l- locked, a- and don’t t- turn your b- back on… on the c- captain. I’ll t- t- take care of… of Ben.”

All Darius has to do is crawl in the direction they dragged Ben off in, and he’s bound to find a vent that connects. Of course, he has to do this while going insanely slow, so as not to get caught by anyone or alert them of his approach. And also hope that they didn’t go very far or take many turns, or else he might have to explore the entire system to find them. Assuming that there actually is vent access to whatever room they’re in.

… hold on, Ben.

“Alright,” Sammy relents, giving him a quick hug. “Be careful, you hear?”

Darius nods, giving her a smile with confidence he doesn’t feel. If she stays locked inside the bridge, then at least one of them might make it home safely.

Sammy drops into a crouch and locks her fingers together to form a sling. Putting a hand on her shoulder for balance, Darius places his foot into her cupped hands, and she boosts him up enough for him to grab the lip of the vent.

Darius pulls himself up and climbs in. He takes a moment to get his bearings, and decide which direction he thinks they took Ben in.

“B- back soon,” he calls down before heading off down the ventilation shaft.

And as he leaves, he desperately hopes he won’t be made a liar.

~*~

Ben’s never been interrogated before, but he can already tell this is off to a poor start.

The chair they’ve tied him to isn’t in great condition. It’s a metal folding chair that’s badly rusted around the joints, probably because it wasn’t being properly maintained and the salty air got to it. He can feel the chair sway beneath him as the boat rocks and his weight shifts; one well-placed blow would likely be enough to take the whole thing apart.

And the tying up isn’t great, either. They’ve just tied some rope around his arms and chest, securing him to the back of the chair. The whole length of it can just be slipped off over his head, once he has the chance to wiggle out of it. If they were smart, they would’ve tied his legs, too.

Ben’s glad for their sloppiness, of course, because that’ll make his escape easier. It’s just a little insulting, is all.

After restraining him, the two mercenaries have backed off to flank the door, leaving Wheatley alone before him. Instead of pulling up another chair, the man has opted to remain standing- probably because he knows that looming over Ben makes him more intimidating. Ben hates that it’s working; he doesn’t like feeling cornered like this.

“So. Ben, was it?” Wheatley asks, his voice slightly too pointed to be completely conversational.

Ben doesn’t reply, simply quirking a brow. He’s not in the mood to exchange pleasantries. Especially not with Wheatley. He’d gotten a bad feeling about the man from the start, but now that all pretenses have been dropped, he just doesn’t have the patience for it.

Wheatley folds his arms, inclining his head. “You wanna tell me how you managed to stow away? Did you have help?”

Ben stares at him impassively. He doesn’t intend to give anything away, and the longer he can keep Wheatley preoccupied, the better the chances of their plan succeeding.

“Well?” Wheatley prompts. “I’m gonna find out sooner or later, so you might as well save yourself the trouble and tell me now.”

Ben barely manages not to roll his eyes, instead taking the chance to look around the room. It’s quite small and sparsely decorated; the simple cabin bed shoved against one wall is the only indication that this is someone’s personal quarters. The captain’s, perhaps. There’s just one door, the one guarded by the mercenaries, and no windows. The only features on the plaster ceiling are fluorescent lights, the security camera in the corner, and a ventilation shaft. It’s a bit too tall for him to reach, but he might be able to push the bed over as soon as he’s left alone and can escape his shoddy restraints-

“Hey!” Wheatley snaps his fingers in Ben’s face to get his attention. “Maybe you didn’t hear me.”

A sharp backhand makes Ben’s head snap to the side. 

“How did you get onto this boat?” Wheatley demands, raising his voice. “Your little friend help you?”

Ben’s cheek is stinging, but the pain is small and easily ignored. He remains silent.

This time, Wheatley punches him- a quick jab to the side of his face. “Which one of you sabotaged the engine room, huh? Six pipes were cut, that’s no accident.”

Despite the throbbing pain at his temple, Ben’s quite pleased. He knew the sabotage was successful the moment the ship stopped moving, but it pissed Wheatley off more than he’d thought.

Meeting Wheately’s gaze again, he lifts his chin defiantly. This is a battle of wills, now, and he doesn’t intend to lose. Wheatley can do what he likes; Ben is going to do everything he can to make sure their plan is successful, and his herd can go home.

Wheatley eyes him for a moment before glancing over his shoulder to address one of the mercenaries. “Go find that kid, Darius, and bring him to me,” he orders. “Little guy, talks with a stutter. Should find him in the raptor’s trailer. And while you’re at it, see if there are any more stowaways.”

“Yes, sir,” the thug says, slipping out of the room.

Wheatley turns back to Ben with a grin. “Maybe you’ll feel more talkative with your friend here.”

The hollow threat does nothing to Ben’s resolve. Darius is nowhere near the trailer- none of the herd is. A small part of him worries for Claire’s group, though. But it’ll be one versus four, and Owen might be able to talk his way out of a fight entirely with his disguise.

In any case, Ben can’t help them. They’re on their own.

“You know,” Wheatley drawls, “you really had me going for a while there. Pretending to be poor, clueless kids. Acting like you’re just innocent victims.” He gives Ben a calculating look. “But I know there’s something else going on, here.”

Well, now Ben’s curious. Might as well keep Wheately talking. “Oh, really?” he asks flatly. “If that’s the case, this is the first I’ve heard of it. Care to enlighten me?”

Wheatley snorts, putting his hands on his hips. “You seriously expect me to believe that six random teenagers were able to undermine my whole operation?”

“I mean, it wasn’t hard.” Ben shrugs. “A dog could do it. Or a particularly dedicated duck. Or a slight wind-”

Wheatley slaps him again. “Cut the bullshit, son,” he hisses. “You weren’t stranded on that island, you were planted there so you could intercept this mission. And you’re gonna tell me why.”

“You’re delusional,” Ben says, with dawning realization. “You can’t accept that you got outsmarted by a bunch of teenagers, so you’ve invented a whole conspiracy theory.” He tilts his head. “You know, insecurities like that often stem from childhood feelings of inadequacy. Is it daddy issues? You can tell me if it’s daddy issues-”

That one earns him a punch to the stomach, unsurprisingly. Ben holds back his cry of pain, not wanting to give Wheatley the satisfaction. Good thing he hasn’t eaten since this morning, cause it’d be embarrassing to throw up.

“Who do you work for?” Wheatley shouts, clearly losing his temper. “BioSyn? Mantah Corp?”

Mantah Corp. Ben’s heart jolts, but he doesn’t let his surprise show. “Hey, this is your crazy theory,” he deadpans, “you tell me. Whoever’s more likely to take a bunch of stranded campers and turn them into super spies, I guess.”

Ironically, part of him realizes that Mantah Corp isn’t above using children to do their corporate espionage. After all, that’s what brought Sammy to Camp Cretaceous in the first place. But Wheatley doesn’t know that; he’s making assumptions fueled solely by his stubborn denial.

“You weren’t stranded,” Wheatley insists angrily. “There’s no way you kids survived on that island for three years.”

“Is that what this is about?” Ben asks mildly, raising his eyebrows. “I really don’t know why it’s so hard to believe.”

There’s a bit of pride in that, he supposes. The fact that this man, who clearly has some sort of military background, can’t seem to fathom how they’ve managed to survive as long as they have… that’s an achievement as far as Ben’s concerned.

Wheatley’s jaw clenches, but before he can reply, there’s a sudden crackle from the radio clipped to his belt.

“Sir, come in!”

Wheatley scowls, snatching his radio and backing up a few steps. “This’d better be important,” he growls into the radio. Ben can’t make out the response, too garbled with static, but Wheatley blinks in surprise. “A containment breach? You don’t say.” He looks at Ben out of the corner of his eye. “Let me guess. An Ankylosaurus?”

Ben has to stop himself from grinning. Of course Bumpy managed to free herself- he’s never been so proud in all his life.

“I’m busy,” Wheatley says dismissively, “handle it yourself.” He listens for another moment before sighing. “Fine, I’ll send help. But I want that animal taken alive, understand? It’s just one herbivore, for god’s sake.”

He hangs up his radio and turns to the mercenary at the door. “Go get a team together and report to the hold,” he orders, waving a hand. “Bring tranqs, nets, whatever you need, just get it done.”

The mercenary puffs his chest out self-importantly. “Yes, sir!” he replies, ducking out of the room.

Ben keeps his expression carefully neutral, lest Wheatley realize the mistake he’s just made. It’s just the two of them, now. Ben’s no longer outnumbered. Even though his part of the plan has gone a bit off course, the distraction ended up helping after all.

“Now,” Wheatley says, turning back to Ben with a knowing look. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would ya?”

Ben remains silent.

“That’s a special creature you’ve got, you know,” Wheatley continues, his tone musing. “Unique coloring, well-mannered. Almost like it was specifically trained for this.”

This time, Ben can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes. Wheatley’s theory about them being spies is getting more and more ridiculous. If a rival genetics company had the technology to create weaponized dinosaurs all on their own, they wouldn’t be bothering with this little smuggling operation in the first place!

“Should fetch a hefty price on the black market.” Wheatley reaches into his pocket, pulling out a bundle of cloth. “Course, I had to keep a little souvenir.”

He unfolds the cloth, holding it close enough for Ben to see, and Ben’s stomach drops.

Nestled in the cloth are teeth. Dinosaur teeth, of all shapes and sizes. But one of them in particular stands out- one that’s still got fresh blood stains on it, and is immediately recognizable as belonging to an Ankylosaurus.

Ben sees red.

“Son of a bitch!” he snarls, surging against his restraints.

Wheatley backs out of reach, a malicious grin splitting his mouth. “There we go,” he chuckles, tucking the pouch of teeth back into his pocket. “Knew something would get to you. Now, you’re gonna start answering my questions, or else…” He withdraws a pair of pliers from the same pocket, eyes glinting with malice. “I’ll have another one for my collection.”

Ben is too angry to fully comprehend the threat, barely hearing Wheatley over the blood rushing in his ears. “Go to hell!” he roars.

Wheatley huffs a laugh. With the pliers in one hand, he advances, shooting his other hand out to grab Ben’s jaw. “Have it your way-”

Without thinking, Ben twists his head and sinks his teeth into Wheatley’s hand. He bites down hard, blood filling his mouth as his teeth scrape against bone.

The pliers clatter to the ground as Wheatley screams. He rips his hand away, staggering backwards against the wall. Blood drips down his arm in rivulets, and he gapes at Ben, wide-eyed and red-faced.

“You fucking animal,” he spits, almost sounding incredulous.

Ben spits his mouthful of blood at Wheatley’s feet in response.

“Fine,” Wheatley grits out, his expression murderous. Cradling his injured hand to his chest, he uses his other hand to draw his gun. “If you’re gonna act like a mad animal, I’ll put you down like one.”

Suddenly, Ben finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

Then Darius drops down from the ceiling vent, and all hell breaks loose.

~*~

Owen strokes Blue’s head absentmindedly, watching with bated breath.

When they’d returned with the blood, Zia wasted no time hooking it up to Blue. The raptor hadn’t appreciated the additional needle stick, but settled back down soon enough. Zia has said very little during the transfusion. Her sharp gaze is constantly sweeping over Blue as she performs frequent assessments, checking and rechecking Blue’s pulse.

Owen’s no expert when it comes to this kind of thing, but it seems to him like Blue is doing better than she was. She’s more relaxed and her breathing is less labored. Hopefully that counts for something.

The tension in the air is palpable. Claire is pacing the length of the trailer, chewing on her fingernails, while Franklin watches anxiously from the corner. Part of Owen knows they should be strategizing, figuring out their next course of action. But he can’t focus on anything else until he knows Blue is going to pull through.

After what feels like a lifetime, Zia finally sets her stethoscope down. “It’s still early, but she’s responding well.” She looks up at them, offering a smile. “I think she’s gonna be okay.”

A weight falls off Owen’s shoulders. He knows they’re far from being out of the woods, but if they’d lost Blue, he never would’ve forgiven himself. Despite his best efforts, he’d gotten quite attached to his raptors. More than he’d realized. It was hard enough losing Delta, Charlie, and Echo, but this would’ve been a direct result of his actions, and that would’ve stuck with him forever.

“Thank you,” he tells Zia.

Zia shrugs a shoulder, but he sees his happiness and relief mirrored in her eyes. “Hey, couldn’t have done it without you guys.”

Claire smiles even as she wipes away a tear. “All we did was get some blood.”

“Hey,” Owen huffs with amusement, “I was almost crushed while getting that blood.”

Zia snorts, starting to clean up. “Put it on your resume.”

Suddenly, the floor jolts beneath them. Owen throws a hand against the wall to brace himself, the fluorescent light swinging wildly above them. It passes just as quickly as it had come, the trailer now abruptly still.

“What was that?” Franklin cries, looking around frantically.

Owen blinks. “I think the ship’s stopped moving,” he says. He’s spent enough time on ships like this to know the difference between riding with waves and riding on them.

Claire’s eyes widen. “You don’t think…?”

“That those kids had something to do with this?” Owen finishes. “Absolutely.”

Zia raises her eyebrows. “Damn. They aren’t playing around.”

“So uh,” Franklin chimes in nervously, “what do we do now?”

Owen exchanges a glance with Claire. “I think the kids might need our help,” he says. “On our way back, we saw Ben. He’s been captured.”

“What?” Zia demands, rounding on Owen. “Why didn’t you help him?”

Owen holds his hands up. “Hey, I wanted to, but Claire wouldn’t let me!”

“Because I didn’t want to accidentally ruin their plan!” Claire says pointedly. “They made it pretty clear they don’t want us getting involved. Plus, we had Blue to think about, and there wasn’t anything we could’ve done.” She folds her arms, glancing away. “There were three of them, all armed. They had a gun to his back.”

“Oh god,” Franklin breathes, his face paling.

Zia exhales slowly, running her hands through her hair. “Okay, okay… but what if it wasn’t part of their plan?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Owen says, throwing his hands up.

Claire shoots him a look before turning to Zia. “What do you suggest we do?” she asks, sounding a little exasperated.

Zia makes a noncommittal noise. “Hey, I’m not the plan guy here!” she defends, returning her focus to Blue. She closes the fluid line and slips the needle out of Blue’s skin. “This one’s all you, Owen.”

Owen pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to think through their options. There’s not a lot of them, considering they don’t even know what the kids’ plan is- aside from cutting the ship’s engines, apparently. It’s a tricky position to be in, because if they take action on their own they might get in the way. But at the same time, Owen can’t just sit here and let them do it all on their own.

“Look,” he says, “I’ve got this disguise, right? Maybe I could go do a little recon, see where they’ve taken Ben?”

Claire nods hesitantly. “Alright, and then what?”

“Well…” Owen scratches the back of his head. “That depends on what I find, doesn’t it?”

“Improvising isn’t a plan!” Franklin protests.

“Have to agree with him on that one,” Zia says, taping a bit of gauze over Blue’s needle prick.

Owen sighs. “C’mon, guys, we don’t have a lot of options here. We’re unarmed, outnumbered-”

“And busted,” a new voice announces.

Owen whirls around to see a man standing in the trailer’s doorway, having pushed aside the flap with the barrel of the rifle he’s aiming at them. He’s clearly a mercenary- and potentially one of the men who they saw with Ben, if his bloodstained arm is any indication.

“... hey there.” Owen tries for a smile. “What brings you to-”

“Hands up,” the man snaps.

Owen puts his hands up, quickly followed by the others. Blue snarls from her place on the table, thrashing against her restraints. The mercenary eyes her warily before his gaze drifts over the rest of them, finally landing on Franklin.

“What’s your name?” he demands.

Franklin jolts in alarm. “Uh, Franklin?”

The mercenary squints at him. “Huh. You don’t look like a kid.”

Owen catches Claire’s eye. He doesn’t know which kid this man was sent to find, but clearly, Wheatley is onto them. Does that mean Darius’s plan failed?

“Um.” Franklin blinks, taken aback. “I’m twenty-two.”

The mercenary scowls. “Shut up!”

Blue hisses from behind her muzzle, her tail lashing from side to side. Owen can tell she’s highly agitated by the mercenary’s presence- which makes sense, considering she was shot by another man wearing the same gear. She’s displaying signs of aggression that she hasn’t displayed this entire time in the trailer, even when she was in pain. Owen knows how smart she is; it’s not completely impossible to think that she might recognize when people are trying to help her, and when they’re trying to hurt her.

Something akin to a plan starts to take root in Owen’s mind.

“I heard you talking,” the mercenary continues, stepping fully into the trailer despite Blue’s warning growl. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re coming with me.”

“Okay,” Owen says calmly, “you got us. We’re not part of the crew. But Zia here, she has to take care of Blue.” He puts the slightest bit of emphasis on his words, hoping Zia will catch his meaning as his eyes dart to Blue’s restraints.

Zia follows his gaze. Her eyes widen.

“Blue?” The mercenary frowns. “You mean the raptor?”

“Yeah,” Owen says. “The raptor.”

Zia nods. “Right. I actually need to check her bleeding, so if you guys could just take this outside, that’d be great.” As she speaks, she kneels next to Blue, moving her hands over to the bandage- which happens to be right next to the strap’s buckle.

“Fine.” The mercenary jerks his head at exit. “The rest of you, come with me. And keep your hands up.”

But before they can move, a roar sounds from elsewhere in the hold. Right away Owen can tell it’s some kind of herbivore, but the roar is far louder and angrier than any sedated dinosaur should be able to make. More concerning are the shouts of alarm that follow- as well as the unmistakable sound of crashing metal. Either a dinosaur has gotten loose, or it’s about to be.

The mercenary glances over his shoulder, and Owen takes his chance.

Lunging forward, he grabs the barrel of the rifle and points it up, towards the ceiling. At the same moment, Zia yanks the straps through their buckles, undoing Blue’s restraints. The instant her claws are free, Blue tears away her muzzle before Zia can do it for her. 

The raptor, now freed, springs to her feet and lets out a furious shriek.

The mercenary stops struggling against Owen, horror flashing across his face. He opens his mouth to shout, but Blue tackles him, knocking him backwards and out of the trailer. The canvas flaps fall shut behind them, obscuring the spray of blood as the screaming starts.

Owen turns and motions for everyone to back up. They press themselves against the back of the trailer, Owen standing in front in case Blue comes back inside. Heart pounding, he waits with bated breath as the reality of the situation catches up to him.

They just set a raptor free on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

… not his best idea, admittedly.

The screaming stops as a final, sickening crunch rings out. Owen can hear Blue panting, right outside the trailer. None of them dare to move or speak.

Another roar echoes through the ship. Blue rumbles an inquisitive noise and then darts off, her footsteps quickly fading. The shouting in the distance starts anew, quickly morphing from surprise to bloodcurdling terror. Blue’s roars join the mix, along with more crashing and screeching metal.

They stand there for a moment in stunned silence.

“… I need to go find a tranq gun,” Owen realizes.

Claire jerks her head in a nod. “Yep,” she says faintly.

God help them.

~*~

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

On Fingon rescuing Maedhros and why it’s so touching 

Long before, in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros; and though he knew not yet that Maedhros had not forgotten him at the burning of the ships, the thought of their ancient friendship stung his heart.

I cannot stop thinking about this scene even though I read it for the first time about 15 years ago. It’s one of the most moving scenes in the Silmarillion, and that’s saying a lot. I know it’s been talked to death, but there’s a reason for that; I think it stands out among other similar stories in the history of Middle-earth. There are many rescues in Tolkien’s works, and all of them are examples of selflessness and bravery, but there are key differences that make Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros unlike anything else.

Most of the time, when one character rescues another, it’s because their relationship is already strong, and the goodness of the person being saved is not in question: Finrod fighting the werewolf to save Beren, and Lúthien freeing Beren from Tol-in-Gaurhoth; Beleg rescuing Túrin from the Orcs; Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli setting out to save Merry and Pippin from the Uruk-hai; Sam rescuing Frodo from the tower of Cirith Ungol; Gandalf and Pippin saving Faramir from Denethor; Gandalf and the Eagles rescuing Frodo and Sam from Mount Doom. Of course, I’m sure that Gandalf would have saved Sméagol too, had he lived—which is important. There are probably other examples I’m not thinking of.

In other cases, such as Glorfindel saving Frodo, the characters don’t know each other before the rescue, but there is no doubt of the goodness of the person being saved and the necessity of saving them. 

Fingon and Maedhros are different. 

“The thought of their ancient friendship” implies that Fingon’s friendship with Maedhros is a thing of the past when he sets out to rescue him from Thangorodrim. Fingon almost certainly believes that Maedhros deserted him and his family, forcing them to either turn back to Valinor (to beg the Valar to pardon them despite the Doom of Mandos), or cross the seemingly impassable Helcaraxë—and cross it they do, with many deaths. Just the memory of their friendship hurt because Fingon believed that Maedhros betrayed him. But what does he do as soon as he finds out Maedhros has been captured? He goes to rescue him, alone. “Justly renowned” indeed.

Even before the burning of the ships, Fingon’s friendship with Maedhros was strained by the rift between their fathers, and “lies came between them.” Fëanor drew his sword and threatened Fingolfin, and then Maedhros sided with him by following him into exile, which must have hurt Fingon. It’s not clear if they had a chance to speak to each other face to face until after the Darkening of Valinor. They were both present in Tirion during the Oath and the debate that followed, but I think there was too much happening for them to resolve anything, if they spoke at all. And then the Kinslaying was unfolding, and Fëanor deserted Fingolfin’s host in Araman. So, even if Fingon and Maedhros had a chance to speak during Fëanor’s exile or the flight of the Noldor, there were years of estrangement that they did not have a chance to fully heal before the burning of the ships.

After all of this, the rescue really says something about both their characters: Fingon’s selflessness, steadfastness, bravery, and refusal to condemn others, and Maedhros’ ability to inspire that loyalty, even when their friendship was at the breaking point. Maedhros had more in common with Nerdanel than with Fëanor, more of her gentleness and patience, and I think Fingon knew him for who he really was. He saw the good in Maedhros when Maedhros probably didn’t even see it himself. Despite everything that had happened, despite their estrangement, Fingon decided without a moment’s hesitation that Maedhros was worth risking his own life for. And it’s impossible to overstate the sheer bravery of going to Angband alone to rescue someone.

From Maedhros’ perspective, everything has been going from bad to worse. There is a seemingly unsolvable rift among his family, he becomes estranged from his best friend (partly due to his own actions), the Two Trees are killed, Finwë is murdered (both a personal loss and a major complication for the political situation), the Silmarils are stolen (symbolizing everything the Noldor have lost), he swears the Oath—believing it is righteous—and then he sees how destructive and wrong the path is that Fëanor is leading him down, both through the Kinslaying and the burning of the ships. I think that by the time Maedhros is watching the ships burn he regrets many of his actions, but it’s too late. And then it gets worse: he loses his father (complicated though their relationship must be at this point, I don’t think Maedhros wanted Fëanor to die), and then he is captured and tortured. How did Maedhros feel, when he heard Fingon’s song? Because after such terrible things had happened, in which he himself took part, the fact that a former friend came to his rescue had to seem nearly unbelievable.

But Fingon is also a Kinslayer; he joined the battle without knowing how it started, but he still has innocent blood on his hands. That Fingon, a Kinslayer, begs for mercy for another Kinslayer, is just another thing that makes the rescue so touching. Fingon doesn’t pray to Manwë to save Maedhros: he prays to Manwë to give Maedhros a painless death. And the result is eucatastrophe: the rescue is possible after all.

And Fingon’s refusal to condemn Maedhros—instead, his decision to march into Morgoth’s domain to rescue him—allows for things still greater to unfold, like the healing of the strife among the Noldor. It’s significant that Fingon’s rescue—and Maedhros’ abdication of the crown to Fingolfin—heals the rift between their houses, and that would not have happened if Fingon had not cared about his former friend so much. It says that when you show others mercy, whether they deserve it or not, good things will come of it. And ultimately, it’s not just the people who are unequivocally good who deserve saving. 

I’ve encountered a point of view (which I consider both abhorrent and antithetical to the themes of Tolkien’s writing) that Fingon should have killed Maedhros to somehow prevent the Second and Third Kinslayings. It’s true that Maedhros went on to do truly terrible deeds. But Fingon could not have foreseen them, and it’s not right to punish someone for something they have not yet done. Maedhros, as a result of being saved, did many good deeds as well: relinquishing the crown to Fingolfin, holding and defending one of the most dangerous areas in Eastern Beleriand, and creating the Union of Maedhros, among other things. I think Gandalf’s words about Sméagol are relevant:

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. 

Like Frodo’s mercy towards Sméagol, I think that Fingon’s mercy towards Maedhros was the right thing. Frodo’s pity towards Sméagol probably came, in part, from his ability to see how much they had in common as Ringbearers. And likewise I think that Fingon, regretting his actions at Alqualondë, still felt pity for Maedhros because he understood that they were not so different.

[weirdmageddon]

five years too late let’s analyze this. the commentary has gotten me back into gravity falls reigniting thoughts and insights i came to years ago

i love everything about this commentary in general it hits the points of humor, genuine analysis of the characters, but most of all im so glad hirsch addressed that the droid not detecting any fear from dipper here doesnt make any scientific sense because that was a massive CinemaSins moment for me

IDK the fact that dipper can fucking stand after an airship crash because theres a bigger threat at hand is literally one of the defining capabilities owed to adrenaline lol...... IM SORRY im a biopsychology student if i dont point that out iwill seethe and die because that was just . its a grudge ive held for a long time about this episode but didnt rant about because it was something so minor and i’m sure nobody would care.

i was 13 when this episode came out and i’m almost 19 now, i had a special interest in biology and i still do but now i’m actually having college classes in biopsychology so i can give my arguments more oomph now. and i have to say, now that i know more about the brain and autonomic nervous system the more this scene bugs me, if that was even possible. and it says a lot of dipper and ford’s relationship.

if dipper clearly wasnt calm before, why would he be now just because he’s put up an outwardly confident facade? before he was in the flight but now hes in the fight. my boy just rode on top of a spaceship by nothing but a magnet gun that could detach at any time if it failed and then the ship crashed, he sustained injuries, is in emotional turmoil because he thinks his uncle is Fucking Dead and the threat of a security droid that detects adrenaline is on his tail and produces a Big Fucking Gun in response to dipper saying “i hAvE a MaGNeT gUn” and hes screaming and has his teeth clenched but sure there’s no adrenaline coursing through his body in that moment i can totally believe that

when dipper asks what happened, ford says “the orb didn’t detect any chemical signs of fear, it assumed the threat was neutralized and self-disassembled” but i don’t think measuring someone’s heartbeat alone is particularly relevant in detecting ... chemical signs of fear?? they dont really tell you this shit but noradrenaline (and maybe adrenaline too if the acetylcholine from sympathetic outflow always activates the adrenal medulla??, theres two pathways) is always active in small quantities to make sure your parasympathetic nervous system doesnt slow your heart to dangerous levels on its own, regardless of your emotions. it’s just a homeostatic mechanism. your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are CONSTANTLY modulating control of your organs on a see-saw, literally with every breath you take. simply standing upright causes specialized mechanoreceptor neurons in blood vessels to signal your brain to project signals to release catecholamines via the sympathetic nervous system to constrict your blood vessels so that blood is able to reach your brain and not pool in your legs. i have a deficiency in my body’s ability to adapt to this which is why i know so much about it. if i stand up my heart races to compensate. i’m not feeling fear, my body is just adjusting—albeit grossly and incompetently lol.

but what im saying here is that the security system is flawed. it’s a cool idea to have security droids detect fear, but in practice by detecting adrenaline, and not even directly by detecting the molecule itself—it’s done in a roundabout way by reading the heartbeat, could be a recipe for false alarms. like what if someone’s on beta-blockers. that’s not really an adequate way to measure “fear”; there’s so many variables that could interfere with the measurement the farther you abstract from what you’re really trying to detect. and besides, adrenaline is NOT just a sign of fear, it’s just for preparing the body for action. i know the sympathetic nervous system and adrenaline is constantly linked with the “fight-or-flight” reaponse to a stressor, but 99.9% of the time the sympathetic nervous system is used in your life is to balance out your parasympathetic nervous system to maintain homeostatic equilibrium for mundane things.

i think detecting amygdalar activation would be more efficient in detecting fear. the amygdala sends projections to the hypothalamus which then in turn modulates the autonomic nervous systems. but the amygdala is intensely activated specifically in response to a fear-inducing stimulus (it does activate in response to other emotions but they’re mostly negative and is most activated by startle and fear), and wouldnt be highly activated by many other confounding variables like measurement of the heartbeat could be. the amygala is one of the first stops directly from external stimuli.

to show you how integrated the amygdala is as the first step in registering fear after receiving input from sensory stimuli let’s look at the auditory-amygdala connection for example

see how the auditory thalamus projects to the primary auditory cortex and auditory association cortex? the cortex is where conscious awareness of what the stimuli is comes from. this is the “high road”. it goes sensing -> perception -> emotional response. but sometimes you can be startled without even processing what it is you’re sensing, like the startle response of an alarm or a phone ringing in a quiet house before you even register what it is. this goes sensing -> emotional response, without perception happening until after you’ve already felt the startle. that’s when it takes the “low road”. here’s a simplified version:

even if that were the case with these droids though it’s obvious dipper is still fearful on some level here. his body language, voice, expressions all give it away. for the amygdala, aggression isnt too off from fear so it would be detected equally.

the reason this is so important is because ford uses this as evidence for why dipper is special, “i did it?” “you did it. this is what i was talking about, how many 12 year olds do you think are capable of doing what you’ve just done?”

but like....did he really? i’m not saying this to shoot dipper down or make him out to be more of a wuss, he was incredibly strong-willed here and i dont want to take that away from him because it WAS growth on his part. but the underlying psychophysiological reactions of aggression and fear shouldn’t be that different and this was a total asspull. maybe the droid was so old that it fucked up. maybe dipper being covered in grime and dirt made it harder for the droid to measure the correct heart rate through photoplethysmography (im assuming since they use a camera and are non-contact).

and in all honesty everything i just said brings into question the interpersonal healthiness of ford’s judgements, what he thinks, his expectations, and how he communicates that. in this video alex already talks about how ford is projecting onto dipper. and i think ford may be projecting his expectations for himself onto people who are not him, and the fact that it’s on dipper here makes it far more unfortunate. you realize how much this boy idolizes ford, right? how much impressions matter? dipper even tells himself before he leaves in this same episode, “all right dipper, this is your first big mission with great uncle ford. don’t mess this up.”

even though it’s unstated, the implicit message dipper is perceiving from ford based on their dynamic is: “do you have what it takes for me to be proud of you?” and to accomplish this he must be like ford, even though he’s clearly not and he knows this. he says “i don’t think have what it takes. i was tricked by bill, i was wrong about stan’s portal, heck, i can’t even operate this magnet gun right.” then, by simple chance without even knowing what he did, he activates the magnet gun and pulls out the adhesive, which immediately takes the focus away from what dipper was telling ford about his feelings of inadequacy to ford saying, “yes! dipper, you found the adhesive!”

these thoughts of dipper’s hang in the air without resolve or comment from ford. we don’t know what ford would have said. but it then becomes painfully self-evident in the scene immediately after when the droids emerge and ford tells dipper, “they’re security droids and they detect adrenaline. you simply have to not feel any fear and they won’t see you”, to which dipper replies with an exasperated (and rightful) “WHAT?”

dipper goes in a panic trying to indirectly tell his uncle that this isn’t something he can do. and he is completely right and valid to be freaked out by that full stop. that IS crazy. you can’t control your fear. you can control how you interpret that fear in your higher brain regions but the physiological changes will stick around for longer than it takes to cognitively calm down. it’s easy for me to detach from my emotions to analyze them, but being able to do this does not come naturally for everyone. even i have an irrational fear of wasps and i can’t control it by detaching myself, my body is just automatically primed to get the fuck out of there. i know it’s stupid and i know it’s irrational and isn’t helpful to get myself worked up but i literally can’t stop how my body reacts no matter how i cognitively think about it. expecting composure from dipper in a situation like this when he’s being made to consciously be aware of his anxiety is absolutely fucking insane. look what you did, placing these cruel expectations on him, now he’s afraid of being afraid! this isn’t a case where two wrongs cancel out, they just stack on top of each other.

there’s a good reason these scenes were put side by side but it seems up until now it had remained unanalyzed.

what dipper fears from ford is disappointment. not living up to his uncle’s (quite frankly badly placed) expectations for a twelve year old with anxiety. not once did ford say or subliminally communicate “i don’t expect you to be able to do what i can since you are not as experienced as i am and that’s perfectly okay, no judgements”. you don’t put a child on bike before training wheels. you don’t throw a kid into a swimming pool without giving them swimming lessons. the way ford is doing it, there’s no room for trial and error or mistakes that are an opportunity to grow and learn; instead, it’s life or death. he only seems to pride dipper on what he can do while ignoring the underlying struggles that plague him and never making it known it’s okay for dipper to fail in front of his hero and that he won’t think anything less of him for it.

and that’s why i found the ending scene for dipper and ford’s adventure in this episode to feel so.. wrong. on a scientific and social level. because by the sound of it ford focused more on what dipper had done to dismantle the droid (the droid not detecting any fear) instead of how dipper displayed love and protection for him even if he was truly afraid. what if the science was accurate and the droid detected adrenaline while dipper was confidently standing up for his uncle. would ford still be proud of him regardless?

[untouchabyeolman]

DFTF & the gist of everything; a theory

(warning: long post, no cut)

*cracks knuckles* OKAY. so i’m about to give my two cents on the theories surrounding the comeback but this is gonna be a long one so strap in and enjoy the ride i guess??

but before i get started on the DFTF stuff i just want to do a bit of recap on the members’ powers and their counterparts back in mama era (yes i’m going all the way back bear with me). from the beginning, we are shown that each member has a special power and those from exo-k have a counterpart in exo-m and the pairings went like this:

xiumin (frost) - suho (water manipulation)

luhan (telekinesis) - kai (teleportation)

kris (dragon’s flight) - chanyeol (phoenix’s fire)

lay (healing) - baekhyun (light)

chen (lightning) - kyungsoo (enhanced strength/earth?)

tao (time control) - sehun (wind manipulation)

i think these parings are fine but for me a couple of changes could have been made to make more sense to their powers. in my opinion, i think it should be:

xiumin - suho

luhan - sehun

kris - chanyeol

lay - baekhyun

chen - kyungsoo

tao - kai

obviously, xiumin/suho make sense bc their powers are related to each other where suho’s is the foundation of xiumin’s more refined control of the element. kris/chanyeol also makes sense for the same reason. for lay/baekhyun, healing powers can reconstruct damages from wounds and even bring dying flowers (maybe even people) back to their full health. basically, lay restores a living thing’s energy. but light is a form of energy too. flowers need light to survive and so does the rest of the planet for that matter. but i think baekhyun uses that light to be able to concentrate the energy into his hands to form a beam powerful enough to blast anything in its path (who are u? tony stark??). 

tbh, i’m still kind of unclear about ksoo’s power on whether he can actually manipulate earth (like an earthbender) or if he has enhanced strength. either way, he can shake the earth and obviously he’s more powerful on the ground. with lightning, it can travel three ways: cloud to cloud, cloud to air, and cloud to the ground. you can think of their powers as being related by how the fissures in earthquakes are similar to the patterns of lightning. kyungsoo causes the rumbling in the earth, while chen causes rumbling (thunder) in the sky (hence why they are parallels of each other in mama mv)

for those i think should be switched, we’ll start with luhan/sehun. sehun has the power of wind but throughout the history of their powers i don’t think we’ve actually seen him have full control of his ability? in mama, he’s in the desert (this is gonna come up again later!!) with a raging tornado behind him. i mean, i guess he could be doing that intentionally but for the sake of this entry i’m going to assume he can summon the wind but he can’t fully control it. meanwhile, luhan can easily manipulate objects and we could think of this as him just actually manipulating the air around that object. luhan’s control of the air is more stable whilst sehun’s is the opposite. 

for tao/kai i think it makes more sense for them to be counterparts since kai travels through space and while tao’s power is to stop/start time, he has the to potential to travel through time as well. these two go hand in hand because if they’re together, they’d be even stronger as traveling through time could be faulty since the time you might want to go back or forward to isn’t going to be in the same exact location as you are now. 

BUT WAIT! we’re left with 9 members so what happens now?? 

i actually made a “theory” about exo having new counterparts back in 2016 but i’m scrapping the main idea from it and will just be referring to particular points going forward. so for now, let’s go with the assumption that their counterparts are as they are in my version. this means that sehun, chanyeol, and kai no longer have their counterparts. now what?

let’s first make two assumptions: 

their powers become stronger when they are with their counterparts: like i’ve mentioned above, they’re stronger together than they are apart. but additionally, it’s a bit safer for them to be separated since they are much more easily located by the red force if they are all in one place.

if one loses their counterpart (i mean for good and not just separated by distance) then eventually, the power of the one who was lost will manifest itself in the one who is left

for (2), it would make sense then as to why in sehun’s pathcode teaser, he finds the toys floating in mid-air. at this point, he’s unaware that he’s actually the one doing this. (@raven-rin​ points out the similarities between luhan’s scene in mama with the orbs and sehun’s “planet” in the DFTF teaser photo which supports my theory that they are connected in this way). 

in chanyeol’s pathcode teaser, he seems to have lost some control of his power whereas in mama mv, he was able to keep a small flame in his hand under control. 

for kai, we’ve mainly see him teleporting on earth and he’s had quite a good control on his power since the beginning. but i think now, with tao’s power manifesting itself in him, he’s now able to teleport beyond just earth. we can take his mmmh mv for example too where he’s teleporting between worlds and currently, his power symbol is that of a hexagon with a keyhole in the center; he is the door between worlds and the main connection between the others. 

SO THE POINT TO ALL THIS IS there was a theory posted by @vampwrrr​ and pointed out by @loeyarc on twitter about how the members are not in their own planets but they actually landed in someone else’s. i think this could be true since xiumin is in a planet with aurora’s (baekhyun’s planet), kyungsoo is in a red planet that could possibly be chanyeol’s. kai’s might be in kyungsoo’s and baekhyun’s in a planet where there’s ice which could mean he’s in xiumin’s planet. i’m not sure about the power swapping (tho i absolutely love the idea) but i think they might have just landed in planets they were closest to. 

but i want to point out how chanyeol is in a planet that looks like a desert 

now, this could actually be sehun’s planet in parallel to where he was in mama. sehun, on the other hand, is actually in luhan’s planet (going back to the reference @raven-rin​ made). 

i think here, he’ll finally realize why his powers have been glitching (from pathcode) and how he now has the ability to move objects like luhan did (disclaimer 1: since not all members are present for this comeback, who’s to say they can only land in the planets of the active members’ planets??. disclaimer 2: not saying luhan is still member, he clearly isn’t. i meant for members who are enl*sted. for all we know, one or two of those planets could be chen’s or lay’s, etc.)

idk if DFTF is a pre-quel to power or a follow up but *if* the latter was the case, then the end of power makes sense. throughout the mv, we see suho, xiumin, kai, chen, chanyeol, sehun, and kyungsoo fighting the giant red force robot in possibly a different planet (i’m thinking the exos actually banded together to track down the red force themselves to get their powers back and in every planet they encounter these RF bots who keep destroying the planets they occupy) but for most it, baekhyun isn’t there fighting with them. he does show up near the end which confirms that he’s in the same place as the others but why isn’t he fighting?

let’s recall that their powers are stronger when they’re with their counterparts. if we go by the theory from lucky one that some members lost their powers, then it makes sense why none of them were able to fight off the bot with their powers alone (which they regained by defeating it in the end). i do think they are still strong at this point but their powers are weak. as for baekhyun, his counterpart is far away. lay hasn’t really been with them since monster era so he was probably playing it safe by not actively fighting alongside the others. (if he’s powerless and separated from lay then he’s the most vulnerable compared to the others)

at the end of power, we see baekhyun falling into the water/ocean. how did this happen? if exo left the planet they were in in power, it’s possible that after defeating the bot, it triggered the red force of their location. the red force then proceeds to destroy that planet in an attempt to kill exo once and for all

(disclaimer 3: screencap is meant to show an example, not that this is exactly in the same timeline as power)

but the exos manage to escape in their ship in time but their ship malfunctions (could be hit by debris from the planet’s explosion) and they have no choice but to leave the ship. i think their ship has “escape pods” meant for each one of them as a way to escape safely in case of an emergency. but let’s say these pods will immediately head for the planet they were set to (again, kind of like a safety protocol type thing where they get sent to different locations to avoid detection from the red force). to add, say that in the chaos, the exos just went into whatever pod they got to first which is how they end up landing in different planets. 

maybe something happens to baekhyun’s pod and he has to manually eject himself from it. but we see he lands in the middle of an ocean 

and in his DFTF photo teaser, we see he’s in a planet with ice caps and water

you still with me? i’m about to tie everything together and finish i promise!

remember the second assumption we made? “the power of the one who was lost will manifest itself in the one who is left”. what if the red force know this? what if the reason they’ve been after exo is because of this fact? but if that were the case, where would the powers manifest in if the exos are gone? i know the lot of us skip the intro of mama but it states that an eye of red force “coveted the heart of the tree of life and the heart slowly grew dry” which meant that the tree of life is the source of the twelve force’s powers. 

everything started with the tree of life and in an attempt to save its remaining powers, they split it in half and hid the halves from the red force. the power of the tree of life is what connects exo. but as mentioned, if one is lost, the power will continue to live inside another. if the red force destroys all of exo, the powers they possess will be returned to the tree of life and if the tree of life is whole again, the red force will in no doubt abuse its power and continue their plans from the very beginning. 

then we can say that in lucky one, it was another tactic used by the red force to extract their powers. those extracted powers were then used to create x-exo. since x-exo are under the red force’s orders, if they manage to destroy exo, their powers will undoubtedly go to their x-counterparts. but as the red force control’s x-exo they still have the upper hand once this plan is set in stone. i mention this to get us back on the current timeline seeing as DFTF may be strongly connected to power which precedes obsession. but then again, i’m not even sure about the exact order of the timeline but this is just my theory so it’s just for fun!

/end. 

[sheyshocked]

Can You Deviate Twice?

Summary: Some people never wisen. Unfortunately, Simon seems to be one of them. But who knew you could deviate for love twice? First day of Simarkus Week 2022, prompt Deviation day.

Ship: Simon/Markus (Detroit: Become Human)

Warnings: Implied/Referenced Past Sexual Abuse

Tags: Fluff, Getting Together, First Kiss, Gay Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Simon (Detroit: Become Human) Backstory, Soft Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Markus Loves Simon (Detroit: Become Human), Set Before Stratford Tower, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Wordcount: 1,006

A/N: I've probably told you all of this before, but back when Simarkus Week started in 2020, I didn't get to participate, so hosting it now is my dream come true. You won't believe how excited I'm to see other people's contributions!

Btw, I love the popular theory that Simon deviated for love. It’s pretty interesting headcanon, although I don’t use it in most of my fics. It fit this one though, so... here we are.  

You can also read it on ao3!

“And what’s your story, Simon? What led you to Jericho?” Markus asked one day, during one of their precious few moments of respite, his head slightly tilted to the side like a curious puppy. It was such an interesting contrast with his otherwise strong, leader personality it made Simon smile despite the panic that took hold of him inside.

It all started so nice and optimistic. They’ve just returned after yet another successful mission, so a small celebration was in order. But before they could even start, Markus disappeared without a trace. No one knew where he went, not even North or Josh.

Some people started to worry and wanted to go search for him, in case he ran into some trouble, but Simon calmed them down, saying he probably wanted to plan their next move somewhere in peace. He also preferred silence to this overwhelming bustle of the slowly rejuvenating Jericho, even though it was good to see it transform from a graveyard into... something else entirely. Regardless, he wasn’t concerned about something happening to their beloved leader.

It was when the growing buzz of Jericho started slowly getting to him (it was never so crowded or noisy before – all Markus’ doing, and Simon couldn’t help but admire him for uniting their people in such a short time notice), that he decided to go to his favorite spot on the roof. Most of them sometimes sought refuge under the sky away from prying eyes. But he certainly didn’t expect to find Markus there, sitting with his legs thrown over the edge, nursing a bottle of thirium.

He froze on the spot. Markus probably didn’t want to be disturbed, so he slowly turned around and started to leave, only to be stopped by Markus’ velvety voice, calling his name. When he turned back, he saw Markus waving at him to join with a small tired smile.

That’s how he found himself here, just hanging out with their admired leader, enjoying the calm and silence or swapping stories. Simon felt a small jolt of electricity run up his wires whenever their legs brushed against one another. It was ridiculous, honestly. How long was this bright, wonderful man with them? A few days at most? And he already held so much power over Jericho... and over Simon as well, probably without him even realizing it.

But then he asked that question, and the charm of the situation disappeared. Simon’s fight or flight reflex immediately started to kick in, and he gave him a tight-lipped smile, hoping that it would hide the anxiety he felt.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he shook his head and thought it to be over. But oh boy, how wrong he was.

“It matters to me. I won��t force you if you don’t want to tell me, of course, but I would like to get to know you. If you would only let me,” Markus replied in the most honest tone possible and was met with a surprised glance. Oh no. Simon was already feeling the telltale tickling inside his chassis as if bugs got stuck in his chest cavity during routine maintenance (no matter how ridiculous and also kind of disturbing that thought was). All he could think of was...

Not again.

“I trust you. But it’s...” He heaved a sigh and took another long sip of the thirium to calm himself down. All right. He could do this. After all, he trusted Markus with his life. “Well, the truth is that I fell in love with my owner. He was a very kind person but never felt the same way about me. When he found out, he dumped me by the docks to rot.”

Markus listened intently, and when he fell silent again, a shadow of genuine disconcertment crossed his handsome features. “Oh, Simon, that’s horrible. I’m so sorry you had to endure something like this.”

For someone as good at public speeches as he was, he really was terrible at this. One would say clumsy as a newborn foal (which made Simon question for how long was he even deviant in the first place). But for some reason, it only made Simon fall for him more.

On the spur of the moment, he gave him a soft smile and squeezed his elbow to let him know that he appreciated the thought. It was meant to be a normal touch between two close friends. Or at least look like it. Nothing more. Simon didn’t mean to let his skin recede, and for Markus’ as well, mingling their minds together for a few short moments before they both jolted away from each other, gasping and trying to take in what they just saw.

“I... those were your memories. The night when you found us, you had to drag yourself from a junkyard, after being gunned down without even being questioned.”

“I saw yours as well. That man, he used you in every way, then threw you away like you meant nothing to him. And... also the way you look at me when I’m not watching...” Markus had to blink to get rid of all the images he just witnessed, and Simon’s heart sank. He never wanted to show him this, and now he knew and would abandon him, just like Jason did. But before he could say anything to save the situation, he felt a pair of warm lips touch his. It was a fleeting, delicate meeting, but Simon dived into it like a man drowning, despite himself and all he ever promised.

When they parted, Markus still held his face in his hands, their foreheads touching, reluctant to let go. It was so tender Simon might cry. And then Markus breathed out between their lips: “For what it’s worth, I will never leave you behind, as he did.”

Simon suddenly couldn’t tell the floor from the open sky. Everything felt so... surreal and wonderful, once he silenced that voice that kept telling him that this wouldn’t last.

Was it possible to deviate twice?

[midnight-in-town]

Ever heard of “Tsui no Taimashi: Ender (aller) Geister” a.k.a The Last Exorcist?

You probably haven’t, so this post is here to change that. :)) It’s a relatively “new” manga (two years old) that’s probably weekly and that I too discovered randomly.

PLOT

Ten years before the story, a special German force was sent to Johannesburg, South Africa, to retrieve some very ancient relics. They obviously failed, leading to one of them being sacrificed for demonic possession. 

The now freed demon went on a rampage through South Africa, only to be stopped by a woman who sealed him and offered him to choose between dying on the spot or becoming her subordinate Exorcist. 

Back to the present, a German Exorcist is sent to Japan, to investigate “the Black Pillar”, a weird occult phenomenon that occurred a few months ago. 

THE CHARACTERS

They all have cool designs ok

AKIRA (aka Michael, aka Dominic, aka “Black Shooter”)

the main guy (OBVIOUSLY)

German but with a Japanese mom,

is good with weapons, but also a krav-maga master

seems cold but isn’t??? in fact, he’s rather chill about his pretty weird and unusual backstory,

just doesn’t want to be a burden 

has very cool shades and earrings

CHIKAGE

warning: i love her

kinda ‘miss fan service’ but honestly i can’t even complain bc she’s spectacular

Akira’s work partner in Japan, but they already are living together

the tech girl : she builds her own relics and is a fan of knowing how stuff works (even built a cool car once but it didn’t live long :( )

is more mysterious than Akira and obviously hides a dark path

has a cool punk master tho’

HIGASHIMORI

technically the one in charge but doesn’t act like it, bc he prefers to cosplay as a fishman

is not actually Clint Eastwood, even if some people believes he is 

specializes in seals and is supposedly ultra strong

pulled a Nick Fury from the Avengers movie very early in the story and I’m grateful for it

SUZU (& JIN)

is also in charge, like Higashimori, but is better at it

runs a candy shop as a side business

always looks super fancy (for real, i dig her clothes)

deals in info and battle supervision

has a partner called Jin

is actually the boss of another character staring in a prequel called “VS Evil” 

KIBA

the substitute guy in case Akira needs someone to show him around

or if they need someone to drive a car

has an airplane fetish (slightly disturbing, not gonna lie) and is super good at flight simulators

ends up dating a hot stewardess and i think it’s cool

really wants to be useful

THE VILLAINS (so far)

cool designs as well

interesting backstory for some

hella crazy in general

one example:

Also since it’s a story about Exorcists, obviously there are monsters and stuff (such as a witch flying away on an ogre’s head instead of a broom, it was pretty funny to read).

THE PROS

great art style

interesting plot

interesting characters

good shipping potential

girl characters+++ (be it main cast, villains, boss, mentor, etc)

THE CONS

nudity, aka fan service: it doesn’t have to be a flaw, but i know it can bother some people. The author tries to show male nudity as well tho’.

TW: violence (there are monsters, remember?)

they’re often kinda fighting so the first time reading it can be a little confusing (we shall see if it ends up becoming boring or not)

So far so good, I’m hooked. :)) 

Let me know if you try it!