#tag me in anything y’all see related to him please

[anxiousghostea]

The adventure time fandom needs more appreciation for the life giving magus. Like, he’s such a little goober. I know he was only in a handful of episodes but those episodes mean the world to me. Justice for my boy, give me more life giving magus content

[roseykat]

TITLE: How they are when they eat you out

SUMMARY: OT8 blurb version of the title.

MASTERLIST

WARNING: minors DNI with this post or my blog. I create NSFW SKZ related content and I know I won't be able to regulate/monitor every single potential interaction with these posts so please do not engage with my work and page whatsoever.

TAGS: mentions of orgasms, sex positions, again nothing too major.

TAGLIST: @xhakumeix

A/N: here is another spicy blurb/work of mine! Thank you everyone for engaging with my posts, messaging and following! I really appreciate y’all 😭💗 also side note again, I’ll spellcheck this when I get home!

BANG CHAN

Deliberately goes slow. He likes foreplay but also teasing you. Thrives off of feeling your legs shake around his head as he goes down on you. If you can’t handle the overbearing intensity of pleasure, he’ll snake his arms around your thighs, gripping and holding you there to ensure that you will take everything he gives you.

However, Chan is a firm reinforcer of edging and uses his mouth to achieve that. He’ll have you squirming and trembling every single time he brings you to the edge. Whenever you try and inch closer towards his tongue, he’ll pull away, leaving you frustrated and angry. But edging has a high purpose, and that’s to make you cum ten times harder than you usually would.

“I know how much you want to cum right now,” Chan says. “So lie back and let me get you there.”

-

MINHO

Eats pussy for sport and will make you cum as hard and as fast as possible and as many times as you’ll let him. He’ll tease when he wants but for the most part, he wants to watch you writhe and shake. Hearing you scream out his name is a phenomenon that he can never get over. Minho also likes eating you out in positions that will have you screaming and where you’re bound to cum - literally.

He will have your legs bent at your sides, tied up so you can’t move, and will eat you out for an hour or two, otherwise until you’re crying from how much pleasure you’re in. In those positions, there’s nowhere for you to go or move other than the surface of his hot tongue.

“Like cumming on my mouth don’t you?” Minho asks. “I’ll make you cum again, and again, and again - until you start to forget your name.”

-

CHANGBIN

Eats it like he means it. Will make you cum more than once with his mouth and won’t settle for anything less. He will have you in tears from how intense the orgasms are that he gives you. It’s a real contrast to how tender and nurturing he is when it comes to taking care of you afterwards. Nonetheless, Changbin will eat you out like it’s the last thing he’ll do.

He doesn’t stop unless you want him to. Sometimes you give him free rein which, in all honesty, is a terrible idea sometimes because Changbin will cease at nothing to make you cum so hard that you start seeing stars. What’s even better is because of his strength, it’s near to impossible to squirm away from his mouth, rendering you to cum hard regardless.

“Look how pretty you are when you cum,” Changbin sigh’s exasperatedly.

-

HYUNJIN

Is very attentive. Studies every reaction that he brings out of you as soon as his mouth is buried in between your legs. Hyunjin also has the tendency to overstimulate the shit out of you. Half of the time he doesn’t actually mean to. He just gets off on the change in pitch of your moans, how you sometimes go silent when you cum, or when you grip onto his hair as tight as you can.

His method of making you orgasm multiple times ensures that your legs will be shaking and your moans will fill the space around him. The only unfortunate thing for him when it comes to eating you out is that he can’t see your entire body, especially when you cum.

“You’re shaking baby,” Hyunjin points out. “Feels that good, huh?”

-

JISUNG

Is sloppy, but in the best way possible. He’s unfazed about how wet you are, how much of it gets on his face, if it’s on the bed, the floor, the kitchen counter - whatever. That’s applicable to every situation where he’s eating you out, even when Jisung feels lazy. In saying that, there are two sides to him, and he can go either way; he’ll either eat you out like he’s been deprived of it for months, or if he’s feeling lazy but still wants to go down on you, he’ll eat slowly.

If that’s the case, he will ask you to just sit on his face. It’s convenient for him to lie back and eat you out that way. Hell - he’ll even let you use his face to make yourself cum however many times you want. Jisung will say it so casually that it sometimes turns you on more. Despite him feeling lazy, that doesn’t mean to say that he isn’t into it - he is definitely into it.

“I’m horny as fuck,” Jisung says before smiling. “Sit on my face?”

-

FELIX

Going down on you is already a task that’s intimate enough as it is, but Felix’s entire aura seems to enhance that even further, to the point where you feel so good that it’s emotional. Almost every time - guaranteed - Felix will interlock his fingers with yours when his head is buried between your legs. He’ll kiss your inner thighs, softly on your clit, delicately sucking and licking to slowly build you up to a peak.

He analyses what you like so well that every time he goes down on you, he makes sure to follow that routine to achieve the same results if not better. It’s almost like one of his games to him, except the rewards are better in every aspect. Lix just wants to make sure you feel good.

“Can never get enough of you,” Felix says. “Wanna make you cum as much as you’ll let me.”

-

SEUNGMIN

Is a tease. Even during foreplay he’ll edge you with his mouth. He’ll never give you exactly what you want when you want it. If he’s going down on you, and you’re ready to cum, Seungmin will stop right before you start tipping over the edge just so he can fuck you in order to make you cum on his cock instead. Then again, if he feels generous, it’ll be his mouth that makes you cum, especially as a form of reward if you can go a day or two without being an absolute brat.

But that’s the side of Seungmin who likes to be dominant. There’s the other face of the coin where he can be very tender. In those instances when he is going down on you, expect to see a lot more affection from him. He won’t just focus solely on your clit, he’ll go slow, check in on you, and make you cum more than once because he’s also a gentleman.

“I’m the only one who can make you feel this good,” says Seungmin. “Nobody else can make you cum the way I do.”

-

JEONGIN

Knows exactly what he’s doing when it comes to eating you out. Jeongin chooses to go slow whenever he does because of how attentive he is. He wants to make sure that each second his face is buried in between your legs that your body feels good. Every now and then it’s a bit frustrating because all you want to do is just cum as quickly as you can, so as you squirm or grip his hair to try and make him go faster, that’s when he’ll decide to intentionally tease you and go slow.

He likes to hold around your thighs, gently squeezing them to hold you firm around his head. The struggles you have when it comes to putting up with his tongue is next level. He has the technique to make you cum in under a minute minimum. He’s unassuming but he’s just that good at it.

“Can feel your legs shaking,” Jeongin says. “I want to feel them shake even more.”

[r0llerblad3]

UPDATED/REQUESTS/INTRO

Now…sorry for not posting lately! I have had writers block for some time now but I am no longer effected by it! I have so many story’s I wanna write 2 feed y’all so yea! Here’s a updated request bored and intro!

INTRO!

My name is Millo! I go by any pronouns but prefer she/her or he/him!

Not all posts I make are safe for minors and majority of them involve NSFW content!

That being said anything labeled with “ MINORS DNI “ means if you are under the age of 18 please do not interact with that post! But any other posts without it are suitable for all people! Do understand if you see a post not laced with the minors DNI, that doesn’t mean blood or other things aren’t in the post! !READ THE TAGS AND WARNINGS!

Heads up! I have dyslexia so if words aren’t spelled correctly PLEASE DONT BASH ME FOR IT! I prefer to wright for female readers but if requested I will to trans/male readers! I mostly write cannon!Male x reader because that’s what I’m better at!

WHAT I WILL DO!

Smut

Fluffy

Angst

Any really anything else that isn’t in my no’s list!

WHAT I WILL NOT DO!

Any sort of toilet kink!

Pedophilia

Anything incest related! (I’m looking at some of THOSES resident evil fans and TMNT fans)

Anything zoophilia related! ANIMALS CANNOT CONSENT!!! (THIS DOSENT INCUDE TMNT BOYS! THEY ARE MUTANTS THAT CAN THINK AND SPEAK!)

And anything related in the necro areas!(THIS DOSE NOT INCLUDE ZOMBIE GHOST!)

CHARACTER LIST!

TMNT! (Nour please don’t bash me for this)

REMEMBER ANYTHING SMUT RELATED TO THESE CHARACTERS WILL BE AGED UP!

Any of the bayvurs boys!

ROTTMNT boys!

2012 boys!

1987 boys!

2003 boys!

2007 boys!

COD

Simon “ghost” Riley

Captain John Price

John “Soap” McTavish

Kyle “Gaz” Garrick

Keegan

Roach (I can’t remember his real name)

König

STARDEW VALLY!

Shane

Alex

Elliott

Harvey

Sebation

Sam

RESIDENT EVIL

Chris R.

Leon S. Kennedy

Albert Wesker

Jill V.

Rebeca C.

[moodymelanist]

nessian furniture shopping but instead of actually doing anything shopping they just measure things and see if they're the perfect size and fit for them to have seggs on lmao

this prompt is glorious and I’m so sorry it was sitting in my asks for so long!! I kinda miss doing drabbles so I hope y’all enjoy this short one while I was on my lunch break 💕

@duskandstarlight also had the amazing idea of having them shopping for wedding registry stuff and adding it to the list if they could figure out a sex-related use for it, so I’m gonna throw that in too 😂

“Not secure enough,” Nesta said without looking up from her phone.

“Sweetheart, you’re not even looking at it,” Cassian huffed, motioning to the dresser they’d stopped in front of.

His fiancée looked up, pointedly swept her eyes over him, and then returned to scrolling. “I was looking at the materials online, dumbass. Particleboard would barely support you, let alone both of us.”

The two of them were out shopping for their wedding registry, and it had rapidly devolved into finding furniture aesthetically pleasing enough for Nesta’s tastes while being sturdy enough to support their… activities.

Some days, Cassian still couldn’t believe that Nesta Archeron loved him enough to want to spend the rest of her life with him, but when she was looking up materials to support their healthy sex life — well. He supposed he could believe it for now.

“Keep it moving,” Nesta demanded, poking him in the side before she started walking.

Cassian trailed after her as they investigated another dresser, this one appearing more solid than the previous contender. He wouldn’t go far as to say it was completely made of wood, but he at least liked the multiple stain options.

“The weight limit is higher than the last one,” she replied, tilting her head in consideration. “See if it’s not too low for you?”

“Gladly.” He looked around quickly to make sure there weren’t any kids in the area before leaning against the dresser, pleasantly surprised when it was a good height for him to put his weight against. “It’s fine for me, but I’m not going to be the one really gripping it.”

Cassian turned to see Nesta had cocked an eyebrow at his comment. He couldn’t help but grin back, especially when he could tell she really wanted to say something to get him going but was at least trying to be on good behavior.

“Get out of the way, then,” she told him.

He let go of the dresser and moved so she could lean against it, her smaller hands pressing down on the top of it as she considered the dresser for herself. He couldn’t help but smile as her engagement ring caught the light, but he didn’t dwell on it for too long in favor of taking the golden opportunity to get her hot and bothered.

Cassian slid behind Nesta and practically plastered himself to her back. She melted back into him, some flyaways from her braided coronet tickling him as he leaned down to speak directly into her ear the way he knew she loved. “What do you think, Nes?”

“I…” Nesta trailed off and inhaled sharply as Cassian thrusted his hips just gently enough for her to feel it, but not hard enough to inadvertently put on a show for any other shoppers. “I think it can go on the list.”

“That’s all you think?” he asked. He earned a little gasp as he brought his hand to her hip and slipped a few of his fingers underneath her shirt. “No other opinions?”

“I think if you’re going to keep that up, we should get out of here,” she replied, grinding into him.

Cassian just laughed quietly into her ear before pulling away. “We have too much to do to get distracted. Come on, sweetheart.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Nesta said, turning around to fix him with a scowl.

It didn’t stop her from taking his hand as they continued through the rest of the showroom, but Cassian knew he’d probably be in for it when they got home.

Later, when they were laying in a heap of limbs, Cassian could confirm it had been worth it. It always was, when Nesta was involved.

tag list: @tangledinmysoul | @perseusannabeth | @bookstantrash | @nestaspegasus | @a-court-of-valkyries | @rowaelinismyotp | @live-the-fangirl-life | @sv0430 | @brieq | @positivewitch | @sayosdreams | @nesquik-arccheron | @talkfantasytome | @simpingfornestaarcheron | @vidalinav | @swankii-art-teacher | @still-looking-for-wonderland | @that-little-red-head | @secretlovelybeauty | @starksravings | @dustjacketmusings | @katekatpattywack | @claralady | @gwynethhberdara | @duskandstarlight | @arinbelle | @gwynberdara | @mrs-shadowsinger04 | @houseofcalores | @imsointobooks | @silvernesta | @planet-faerie | @teagoddess99 | @champanheandluxxury | @catplayinvioline | @flora-shadowshine | @nerdperson524 | @story-scribbler | @vasudharaghavan | @dealfea | @snickerdoodlechittybangbang | @charming-butt-insane | @highqueenofelfhame | @julemmaes | @oversizedbats | @readingismyonlyhobby | @milkkand-honey | @wildlyglittering | @thewayshedreamed

[docholligay]

Episode 2.1: Shauna

Hello! This is about up to Season 2, Episode 1 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY that of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond this spot, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

First off, this is a crackerjack episode in so many ways, but ESPECIALLY for Shauna. 

For once, i am dumbstruck. Shauna is such a delightfully fucked up little creature, both in the past and current day. 

So Jackie is haunting Shauna, but of course that’s ot true at all, Shauna is haunting Shauna. The Jackie in Shauna’s, we’ll call them hallucinations for lack of a really appropriate word in the English language, isn’t the real Jackie, the Jackie who lived and who we saw in the show. I think I pointed this out in the jackie’s birthday episode, when she appears to Shauna in her old bedroom. This is Shauna’s idea of what Jackie would say to her if she could. This Jackie in Shauna’s mind, if we look at the real Jackie we meet, is so much meaner, but particularly in a ore clever, more cutting, plain SMARTER way, because she’s actually Shauna. She’s an externalized view of Shauna’s guilt. 

Even the game, ‘Oh great, I’m my mother” but without a million dollars. She did become her mother, but without a million dollars! Shauna is nothing but self-fullfilling prophecy, she’s defeatist and resigned and this, I think is a problem that can’t be blamed on the crash. I think she might have ended up going to Jackie’s college and living in her pink and green dorm room and telling herself it just happened to her, it wasn’t really her fault. Maybe not. But Shauna was already inclined that way long before their plane fucking dropped out of the sky. But here, she has Jackie telling her, in a playful game way sure, but telling her, that all she can be is the sad mother she subtly resents. And Shauna will bind herself to that! She has to be what Jackie said she would be, she has to be what Jackie might have been, except of course…Jackie might have been happy having a husband and daughter and staying at home. She has to have jackie tell her what she thinks, in a way, she might deserve. 

Does Shauna know she’s doing this? I don’t think so. I think for all of her writing about herself, for all the ways that she documents, she’s not very fucking introspective. Even if she does have an inkling, she could never allow herself to admit it. Why did I run around with a younger man? Why did I stab him? Why did I sleep with Jeff in the first place? Why do I try to force the hand of everyone I love into hating me? Why did I EAT MY BEST FRIEND’S EAR? 

I think you could ask her all these questions, and she would just do that Shauna shaking her head throwing her hands up, “It just--just happened!” thing because I think she has no clue why she’s like this, and I think that bothers her, and I think her need to both write her life, and to keep it as a catalog, is an attempt to try and explain herself. But it doesn’t work. For all her efforts to remember and understand what happens to her in her life, she is so disconnected from her own mind, that she sees everything as happening to her rather than anything that she had even the smallest hand in. I hate it, it’s perfect, I want to beat the shit out of Shauna all the time. 

“But Doc, Doc what about Shauna’s homoerotic fixation with Jackie? What about her literally consuming her in order to ensure Jackie remains a part of her?” This is going to sound strange but it’s the sort of thing that’s so obvious to me that it barely feels worth mentioning, it feels worth mentioning in the same way that a human being would mention that A Christmas Carol has English people in it. Thank you for your incredibly obvious contribution. 

But I think my favorite thing about her eating the ear is that while it is, of course grotesque, and takes you aback, it doesn’t feel SHOCKING. Like, while I was looking at Shauna with my eyes wide, the words, ‘I can’t believe she fucking did that” never crossed my lips, because of COURSE she would do that. It makes complete sense. What the fuck else was she ever going to do? It was a scream of realization, not surprise. 

What did surprise me, in a positive way, is that we’ve focused a lot, or at least that’s been a lot of my focus, on cannibalism as predation, and as becoming the hunter. BUt here we have this really interesting space for this idea of cannibalism as devotion, and as desire, and I’m not sure if they are intending to go anywhere with that, but in the framing of this action, it is so obvious that Shauna is not acting out of hunger, but out of emotion. And I’m not sure I expected that. Really like it. 

But it’s so much the same with Adam as it is with Jackie, as it is with everything. She can’t let go of him, she is holding on to these things that are not only unhelpful to her, but actively harmful. She is hurting herself by the way she chains herself to her past, to remind herself of not only that it was real, but in the sort of way where she needs to see a listing of her sins. To remind herself of why she’s being punished, and every bad thing that has ever happened to her. 

Speaking of externalizations of Shauna’s judgment, Callie sure is a piece of work, huh? She’ll never ever be satisfied with anything her mother does. Not that I think she should back the play of her mother killing her lover, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she told Jeff about the affair or not, it would have been wrong in any case. Callie is the second coming of jackie, but with all of Shauna’s cruelty. 

Neither Callie nor Shauna actually deserve Jeff, just as an aside. The whole scene with Jeff fucking Shauna on the drawings Adam did of her, of him staring at that art while he’s having sex with this woman he loves. And she tells him she always thought the idea of him with someone else was a little hot, but he, I don’t think, thinks that. He doesn’t think the idea of Shauna with someone else is hot. His fantasy was of someone returning and armoire and finding that fucking hot. He is so vanilla and straight-up, and Shauna is not. And, by the way, Shauna’s fucking lying here, she was never turned on by this idea. She’s playacting out as per her therapist, because she has to rescue this moment, she has to keep jeff near her. This is why while it’s happening she is staring at a picture of herself with her face half eaten away. When she brushes away the painting Adam made with turpentine, she’s scrubbing away the first time she felt seen as herself, seen as a woman, not seen as Shauna the victim, Shauna the wife, Shauna the mother.

[averagedualies]

hey!

Finally getting around to updating this

But, yea. My name is Dualie, I'm an Inkling just trying to not get killed. I’m 19 years old and my pronouns are he/him. I got partially sanitized a while back and now I share a body with the biggest nerd ever.

. . . I will choose to ignore that.

Hello. I am Sage. I am an artificial intelligence who is at the present moment, sharing a body and mind with Dualie. I have been informed that I “have a Tetris addiction” although I disagree. Addiction would imply that there is a problem.

Mhm, sure buddy.

Anyways! If you see a weird looking guy wearing a torn lab-coat and broken glasses wandering around Unova, please let us know.

Also, here are our Pokemon!

—

Frye - Fletchling, my first pokemon. Best girl

Rustle - Shiny Rowlet, was sent to me by someone? Silly dude

Porygon - Found him in a cave. They live in my phone! [Hii!! :>]

Icarus - Type:null that fell out of the sky. Grumpy but friendly fellow.

Mimikyu - a good friend. He understands me

—

I should probably also introduce my roommates, since I talk about them enough that they might as well be on the blog.

—

Byte: My partner!! Also the captain of our inksports team. Also the hottest drummer ever. He/him Inktoling

Ebb: Really cool guy. Definitely the smartest of the group. Mechanic. They/them octoling

Tide: Silliest guy ever. Acts like my brother. Really talented artist. He/they inkling.

—

Thanks to their help, I'm back in splatsville! But they also have their own blog @inkteamatlas!

Anyways, anyone’s welcome to interact. Only rule is don’t be gross.

//Current Arc: Denial of Self (warnings here)

//OOC below cut. Pelliper mail, musharna mail/malice and Magic anons are on

Updated the ic intro. Also I do blog promos! Just shoot me an ask and I’ll gladly give you a shout :D

But yeah, this is my splatoon faller. Don’t ask what’s going on with the plot because I don’t honestly know either.

Trigger warnings are gonna be tagged in the format ��tw (triggering thing here)”. This blog will include some violence, injury, and occasional ic transphobia (towards him, Dualie is not transphobic y’all)

High stakes stuff will happen. If you wanna plan out anything plot related, feel free to dm me! Any art on this blog will be mine unless stated otherwise.

I’m currently working on a plot summary which will be linked here once I’m done.

Also, Mod is a minor. Just keep that in mind when interacting. Don't be weird

Splatoon faller sever can be found here

[ciaossu-imagines]

Omg hiii lovely! Hearing about your dream wedding with Skull just warmed my heart so much omg 🥹 I would be bawling with happiness seeing y’all get matching wedding bands tattooed together 😭🤍 your unconscious mind was onto something with that one :’)

I just thought I’d drop in to share that my villain origin story was ~10 years ago I had this wild dream that I rigged a beauty pageant and stole the crown just to go rob a giant department store after 💀 and.. Squalo was there, he was my husband? and he asked me to steal pick him up a new coat while I was at the shops and then basically went “k congrats on the trophy b see ya later”

he’s revisited me a few times in my dreams since, but my favourite had to be this one dream where he was wearing the new fur coat and we were attending a ball 😅 and it was fine until the whole building started kabooming (I could go into detail about how but it would be like a poorly described director’s cut inception-esque shitty action movie)

My dreams tend to be really entertaining and ridiculous whenever I remember them, and I love when my brain just sprinkles in the squalo husband subplot 🤤 another really cute moment was when he was sooo annoyed about me taking my hoodie off to check the tag, because I only had a sports bra or something underneath and he was so grumbly and standing in front of me to cover my shameless ass from the view of the public 🧍🏻‍♂️ SO CLEARLY my subconscious mind is not letting me cease my simping for this fictional character I hope my husband visits me again soon🫡

Aaanyway, thank you for opening up a space for me to blab, please take care of yourself amidst the busy work schedule! All my best wishes xoxo🫀🖤🩸🤍

Admin Says: Okay, first off, noooo thank you for coming into the space and sharing this because it is wild, hilarious, amazing, and cute all at the same time and I loved it so, so much! And thank you for the well wishes for work. It's hectic - the walk-in clinic operates out of the same building our pharmacy does and they just extended their hours, and where it's nearly impossible to get a family doctor around here, a lot of people use it and then come get their scripts filled with us and of course nobody wants to come back to pick up and they won't understand why we can't just do their prescriptions right away…anyway, nope, no venting about work! Not when we can talk about this submission because oh my god. I thought my dreams were crazy and vivid and wonderful at times!

I have just so many questions on this and I feel it could legit be made into a movie and audiences would flock to watch it. Though this…this is a villain origin story I could get behind. One, beauty pageant crowns deserve to be stolen and that whole system is already rigged beyond belief so I fully support dream you in getting in there and making mischief! Was the crown necessary to rob the bank? Or was it just a case of…well, I committed this crime, let's see what other ones I can pull off? I love husband Squalo just being chill about it too and just being like 'need a new coat, can you grab me one with all that stolen cash, oh and your crown is fucking minty and you look good, babe'. Also, totally agree with your mind on the fact that Squalo definitely seems like the fur coat kind of person.

Also….I love the dream about the ball and you and Squalo attending it when shit just starts to blow up. Begs the question why everything started to go kaboom? Was it random or were you guys behind it? Did the pagentry theivery and robbing a bank kick off a grand run of you and Squalo going Bonnie and Clyde on everyone?? The world needs to know hahaha!!!

But seriously, you and Squalo are so cute in all your dreams and I love it so much. Fun fact, but your dream husband is my fictional found family in KHR and the one who walks me down the aisle in anything wedding related in my mind so like…I just support that man having an amazing spouse like you!!

[mtkyllene]

Hello! And welcome to the chaos!

DNI

Terfs/radfems

Bigotry of any kind, including but not limited to: ableism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Pro-ed blogs

SH/traumacore/vent blogs

Right-wing/alt-right/maga/anti-blm

Pro-lifers that push their ideals and opinions on others

Lgbtq+ exclusionists, including panphobes, aro/acephobes, biphobes, anti xenogenders, anti neo/xenopronouns.

Anti sfw agere/petre

Additionally, nsfw agere

MAPs, Pedos, and whatever other acronyms y’all are using to ID yourselves. We don’t support pedos here.

Western Medicine/Medication deniers (if it’s not for you, that’s fine, but if you think no one should be on medications, esp for mental illnesses or disorders, get out)

White supremacy/n*zis/n*zi sympathizers

Sandy Hook deniers

Religious/conspiracy extremists of any kind.

Fascist rhetorics, ideologies, and organizations

Now that all that’s out of the way let’s

MEET THE MODS!!!!!

Mod Reg

Hello I’m Regulus or Reg. I use they/them and hy/hym pronouns.

I’ve been a practicing pagan since 2018ish. I began working with Hermes in late 2021 when I was traveling both by myself for the first time, and for the first time since COVID lockdown. I was insanely nervous and began to pray to Hermes before, during, and after my trip. As I began to do more research about Hermes I began to slowly realize that he has been present in my life for most of it, and I started to officially work with Hermes in early 2022. As of right now (June 2023) he is currently my primary deity and the only one I’m working with, however in the past I have worked with other deities including Loki, Apollo, and Aphrodite, and I will probably work with other deities in the future as I continue to grow and explore my path.

Fun facts about me: Audhd babie! My current hyperfixations/special interests include Critical Role Campaign 2, autism (lol), Hozier, and Languages/linguistics. I also have POTS and a handful of mental illnesses/disorders that I’m untangling. I write my own music and Poetry (which you may or may not see on here if I write anything related to Hermes/witchcraft). :D

Mod Fern

hello! i'm fern and i mainly go by he/him pronouns :>

i've been worshipping hermes since january 2022, which kickstarted my ACTIVE hellenic polytheist practice, although arguably i've been practicing since 2016. like reg, i started praying to him when my family was stuck at a hotel and unable to get home for the foreseeable future, and when i finally got home and set up what was supposed to be a temporary altar, he didn't want me to take it down! i have since realised he's my patron (with a mix of the neopagan and ancient greek definition of that word) as i'm a cross-culture kid in ib, a writer, a huge language fan, currently working to become a guardian of the dead, and much more.

i also have been practicing witchcraft since early 2020 and am an omnist with agnostic tendencies (but "hellenic polytheist" works just fine too) as well as an animist with a very eclectic folk-based practice

if you'd like to speak to me outside of this, you can find me as @rainbluealoekitten on tumblr, and i'm occasionally but rarely also active on @hellenic-worship, and i'm @/ferns_n_ravens on insta!!

Mod Lav

Hi!! I'm Lav and my pronouns are she/they.

I'm 19, and I got into witchcraft when I was 12. I'm what my friends call a "creature of chaos". Hermes is my patron god and has worked with me for more years than I can recall. He was the first deity to ever reach out to me (it took years to recognise it was him, though). I'm hypersocial and love talking, so please feel free to strike up a conversation!! Feel free to DM my main @vushadoration

Join us on discord! https://discord.gg/ZhtmfqakUq

tags we use:

WITCHCRAFT: 🕯🔮🌒

#witchcraft, #witchy tips, #spells, #divination, #elements, #cleansing, #neurodivergent witchcraft

HERMES AND HELLENIC POLYTHEISM: 🏛⚱︎☤

#hermes, #general helpol, #hermes epithets, #hermes devotion

OTHER:

#art, #goose moment (<— to clarify this is for non-serious/funny posts), #resources, #spoonie, #poetry, #greek

[crowlore]

lucian’s comfort character compilation (i will be cheating)

i have been instructed by @huginsmemory​ to “List Five Comfort Characters And Tag Five People”. helpfully, i was already recently provided with a handy list of characters perceived to be Mine™, seen here:

what can i say. i have a brand to maintain and apparently it’s deeply mentally ill characters that spark needless discourse on twitter. i own this. i will be cheating by pairing characters together per listing. order doesn’t particularly reflect anything. i don’t typically tag specific people for these things so consider this post an open invitation to anyone reading to overshare about your favs. GO FORTH

nicholas d. wolfwood. my fucking god. to lead with him feels the most transparent i can stand to be. what is there to even say. he has everything. he's the foil. he's the love interest. he's introduced with one foot in the grave and the other in the church. he's a hitman. he's a priest. he's a bodyguard. kids and single mothers love him. he's an orphan. he's a chain smoker. he shoots first asks questions never. he's screaming and covered in his own blood and hunting you down with a concussion and temporary blindness. he was drowning in foot deep water with seven broken ribs three minutes ago but he's fine now. as a man who once fractured his spine on a rock because of a comical tightrope walking incident and was walking it off two hours later, i relate. something something i could fix him but whatever is wrong with him is way more interesting

minato arisato and ryoji mochizuki (do not separate). uhhhhh persona 3 remake when? please? the earliest installments of this series may have been a bit before my time (not that i even got to play 3 when it was fresh since i didn’t really get a lot of freedom with video games until 2012) so i understand my bias but p3 is still my favorite main series entry to date. and you get TWO depressed moon themed bitches for the price of one with this game? one of them is death. the other becomes an interstellar gateway. i’m a sucker for characters who know each other for a tiny fraction of the larger story but instantly connect like they’ve been waiting lifetimes to meet again. characters whose presence in the narrative is brief but infinitely impactful. one is literally made from the other. what can i say.

goro akechi. while we’re on persona. sorry, we have to get into my Problematic Fav. let me tell you. i’ve been in the fucking trenches. this character is easily 50% of the reason i don’t engage in persona fandom spaces (wrt 5 especially). i love crazy bitches. personally, i love and encourage his violent mania and psychotic tendencies. can’t help being a gemini. can’t help being a foil. he didn’t stop at biting the hand that feeds him; he wanted to chew the whole thing off the arm regardless of who else he had to sink his teeth into on the way. y’all are just still mad that part of that means he can be a pretty unlikable person. at least he was honest with his motivations when you caught him. i get him though. goro’s role in the third act of royal saved the game because you and i both know that new story content wasn’t any good otherwise. he’s there to be a BITCH and keep things REAL. shout out to goro akechi for helping me identify my own dissociative disorder. thanks king

uldren sov and crow. this is a different people, same character sort of situation. sometimes you die and come back with no memories and get to be the same person at heart but placed into a life of extremely altered circumstances and see where that takes you. now i’m aware these characters are kind of divisive in destiny circles (mostly for the wrong reasons). i’ll give it to the people who think he’s being pushed waaaaay too hard into the narrative spotlight in a lot of seasons; that’s totally fair. but he’s had a lot of super compelling arcs surrounding his trauma across two lifetimes. his grief really becomes him. i’m also sincerely just so weak to stories centered around siblings, especially ones dealing with the really harsh and ugly truths regarding emotional abuse in the family and the complexity of familial love.

dimitri alexandre blaiddyd and the blue lions. SORRY. CONTRACTUAL FIRE EMBLEM MENTION. fe16 is the reason i completely left the fire emblem fandom space, even though it’s been a toxic cesspool for the entire decade i’ve been in any way involved with it. dimitri’s another of my twitter assigned problematic favs (the fandom faction wars surrounding this game were insane) and the reason i’m not even on the platform anymore. i have miles wide weak spot for the blue lions’ found family dynamic and was instantly in love with the way these characters played off of each other in established relationships right from the start of the game. their route tells a very complete, grounded character driven story that hit all the right emotional story beats to make the ending really feel rewarding. it was often times uncomfortable, but it was done well in a way that didn’t shy away from a lot of the ugly parts of mental illness that allowed me to feel very seen. i think it held truest to the standard formula of the fire emblem story structure and did so very well, even if silver snow was written first as the intended canonical story route. still my favorite after four years. classic.

[sukunasbabymama]

When someone tries to make them jealous.

⌗ Pairing: Rindou Haitani, Ran Haitani, Kakucho.

⌗ Warnings: Cursing, probably fighting, the boys themselves, suggestive(?, probably some touching in public because there are some chaotic characters in this one. Nothing extreme tho.

⌗ A/N: I always see the reader getting jealous or the character getting jealous and that ending up in a fight or some kind of hurtful comments. But LISTEN- someone trying to make them jealous but they’re sure of what they have or, you make them know.

Rindou Haitani.

The younger menace, ah, how sweet.

You were hanging out with him since his brother made both of you get dressed and going on a date. Y'all didn't complain tho, because it's more time to spend with the other and less gang shit for Rindou since Ran goes through all the trouble to give him a day free and everything.

You were at his side clutching on his jacket softly while he was leaning, elbows on the counter, ordering for both of you, but apparently, the cashier knew who he was and was somehow connected to the gang world.

"And for the little one here, you want me to add a dessert, hm? Don’t worry, I’ll pay for yours” He says with a flirty tone, confident in the fact that rumors were that the Haitani come in a combo and this one is alone. Rindou was about to jump over the counter when you talked.

“Yes, I would like that very much so I could sit in my man’s lap and feed him with it,” You say in a bored tone, then you move in front of your boyfriend, hugging him and giving your back to the rude cashier, Rindou’s hand flying to your ass, he squeezed it and smile to the guy.

“Don’t forget to add the dessert in the order, don’t worry, I’ll pay for them” He says, cocky as hell.

When y’all were going to sit, he pulled you to his lap and you sat there comfortably and not minding the weird stares from the cashier. As if he can get to your man’s level. Please.

“How many limbs do you want me to break?” Rindou murmurs in your ear, he’s not jealous after what you pulled earlier but still gonna beat that fucker’s ass for thinking he’s weak and for having the nerve to think he’s on your same level to even look your way, but the latter is something he is not gonna tell you.

“Two, I want to come here tomorrow again so break his arms, and that way we don’t have to see him,” You say distracted because you were excitedly seeing the food he ordered for you in front of you.

This gorgeous is trouble, Rindou thinks, and it’s all mine.

Ran Haitani.

Now, why would someone try this psycho?

You were at a festival with him and his brother, fortunately, it was being held in Roppongi so he was relaxed about you running from one place to another, if y’all were in another district he would have made you walk in the middle of them.

They were so relaxed that they weren’t even wearing anything gang-related, they were just letting you have your fun while tagging along in anything you ask them.

That is, until two guys, almost as tall as your boyfriend approached you. It was obvious that they were from another gang in another district and were just looking for problems.

“sup pretty, want to have fun with us? Ditch those gangsters wanna be in exchange for a good time?” One of them said and even though Ran didn’t bring his baton, he was already preparing himself to fight, but what you say next stops him.

“Don’t you see my man’s arm behind my back? You wanna know what that hand is touching right now? I’m having enough fun, thank you” Ran was in shock, he knows more than anybody that you have an attitude for days, but this? Fucking amazing. Oh, and you keep going. “Even if I wasn’t head over heels for him, I look too good to entertain your broke looking ass”

While you were saying this you were looking for something in your purse. The brothers were more surprised when you pull out a baton, similar to Ran’s one but in a different color, you pass it to him.

“Be my guest” It’s all you say.

I thought I was already in love but this is something else, Ran thinks with a smile while walking to the fuckers.

Kakucho Hitto.

This kinggggg, where do I even start.

You both were sitting at a cafe, not too far away from where his gang holds meetings because that’s where y’all going to go after this quick break. You weren’t related to the gang or anything, but he takes you with him from time to time after finding out Izana didn’t hate you like he hates everybody. He even starts conversations with you all the time and Kakucho couldn’t like you more for that.

You were sitting in a comfortable silence looking at each other with little smiles, flirting with the eyes.

“Can you stop?” You say with a giggle, he raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t look at you?” You roll your eyes because the smile he has while saying that is dangerous.

“Yes baby, you can do whatever you want to me” You murmur and he bites his lower lip satisfied but then frowns because suddenly your happy face drop.

Your ex was entering the cafe with a couple of friends. Now, you don’t feel anything about him or care about him at all, but the reason he was ex is that he’s unbearable to the point that he made you feel so much second-hand embarrassment that you had to end things.

“My ex just got in here and I don’t want him to ruin—”

“You look really good today,” Kakucho says, and you roll your eyes again, letting him distracted you because yes, your hot ass man praising you was enough to forget about everything.

“Thanks, Kaku”

“That’s not my name” He doesn’t stop smiling even when your ex stops at your side with his lil weak ass friends behind him.

“Thanks, baby,” You say and he nods, satisfied with that answer.

“So this is? This is the poor dog you’re using to forget about me?—” Your loud laugh didn’t even give Kakucho time to react as he was shocked, you were genuinely laughing.

“When did you become so funny? You should’ve told me!!” Kakucho was looking at you with a small smile and it grew when you suddenly got serious and look at your ex with a disgusted face. “Take a look at yourself real quick and take a look at the man in front of me. I know you like to embarrass yourself but this one is too much even for you.”

“Bitc—”

“Now it’s not the time to start projecting either, just go and be a shame to society somewhere else since that’s the only thing you’re good at” You roll your eyes with a bored expression and put your attention on your man. “Can we order muffins?”

“Yes puppy, we can order whatever you want,” Kakucho says looking directly at your eyes with the same dangerous and flirty smile.

Your ex looked like a fish out of the water for a couple seconds but then started walking out of the cafe in silence, he knew you had a temper but your usually unbothered persona made him think you would never pull something like this in public. Oh, but you would, ain’t nobody gonna disrespect Kakucho in your presence even if you’re more than aware that he can defend himself.

You look at Kakucho and he was watching your cleavage but not in an intrusive or nasty way, his eyes were unfocused actually and you knew what that means.

You stand up and walk to his side, since he was already with his legs open you just took the opportunity to sit on them, his hand flying to your thighs to secure you, you put your finger in the collar of his gang jacket and pull him slowly till his lips crushed with yours. He sighs in content, loving your lips on him so much that he was starting to think it’s becoming an obsession.

It was a slow kiss, sensual even and when you bite his lower lip he grunts in your mouth, you smile.

“You want to break his nose, don’t you?” You whispered in his lips, he smiles a little and kisses you again, answering you with that. “Go ahead, knowing him, he’s out there waiting for us to go outside so he can keep up on his childishness. I’ll take a moment to order the muffins and some of those little cakes that Izana loves so much. I’ll wait for you here”

When you were in your seat again and he was standing up he bends down to give you another kiss just because he can, because you made more than clear that you were his without saying the phrase out loud. Because he was proud of being yours.

@milliumizoomi @saturnmitsuya sorry besties I’m just in love with these three heavy on Kakucho.😔

[starsinmylatte]

So I’m having a bad bout of insomnia tonight and I’m just thinking about Silco. Please enjoy some sleep related headcanons. If y’all like this style of post let me know and I’ll do more!

Silco x gender neutral reader and Silco, reader, and Jinx as a family

TW: mentions of PTSD, but this is mostly fluff/comfort 💕

All my work is 18+ MDNI

Join my tag list here

I absolutely think that Silco is either dead tired and falls asleep at his desk while working or has trouble sleeping. There is no in-between and it’s a toss-up each night to see what it’s going to be.

If he does fall asleep at his desk, he always appreciates it when his partner gently wakes him so he can move into the bedroom. Silco needs the nights he can sleep to make up for his lack of sleep on other nights, so good sleep in an actual bed is very important.

He would really benefit from a partner that is a night owl or has problems sleeping too. If they both can’t sleep, they spend the hours until they can just relaxing in any way. It’s not sleep, but it’s a relaxing break from stress.

There’s a lot of soft touches, cuddling, and loving reassurance. Silco actually almost looks forward to this because it’s one of the few times he can just truly be himself and stop being the kingpin of Zaun for a few hours. He gets to let down his emotional walls and just enjoy the moment.

Zaun never really sleeps, so something could always go wrong, but anyone with half of a braincell knows better than to bother him late at night unless it’s life or death. The last guy that woke him for a minor reason got to clean the bathrooms in The Last Drop for a whole month. By himself.

Silco does have PTSD nightmares about being drowned by Vander or some of the other horrible things he’s seen or experienced. He will wake up and nearly jump out of bed in panic because his nightmare is so intense that he relives the moment. Because of this, he’s reluctant to sleep through the night with his partner at first because he worries it will frighten them.

However, Silco realized that his love wants to be there for him and there was no better way to snap out of it than to see the person he loves beside him. It’s a way to remember that he is not in that moment of trauma anymore and it brings him back to the present.

If his love is still asleep, he can see how peaceful and content they look to be next to him. It’s a big source of confidence for Silco to know that his partner feels safe and loved with him. He’s fiercely protective, so he just likes seeing them in his bed in general.

If they do wake up, it’s a similar case. Just seeing them there will snap Silco back to the present, but his love will still offer whatever kind of reassurance and comfort he needs. I could see them making Silco a comforting mug of hot tea in the mug that Jinx decorated for him. It always makes him smile.

When they both go back to bed after a nightmare, Silco just wants to hold his partner. The feeling of their skin against his is one of the best feelings in the world and their scent feels like home.

He likes it when his partner just lightly runs their fingers through his hair while they cuddle. Silco is so touch-starved and this kind of affection absolutely makes him melt inside.

If his partner has nightmares, Silco is extremely understanding. He knows how bad they can be, so he is willing to do anything necessary to comfort them. Mug of tea? Already made. Want to talk through it? He’s right there. Need to cuddle? They never even had to ask.

Sometimes Jinx will have horrible nightmares like Silco’s. When she was young, she’d often show up at the door to Silco’s room for reassurance that he was still there and didn’t leave her.

The first time she did it, she was too scared to actually knock and ended up falling asleep outside his door. Silco found her in the morning and made sure that she never felt too scared to come see him again. They worked out a special knock so he’d always know it was her outside his door.

So after that night, young Jinx would come see Silco whenever she had a horrible nightmare and the two of them would talk through it. With his love there, absolutely nothing changed except Jinx now had two parental figures in her life who loved her dearly. On the worst nights, she would often sleep right between them for the rest of the night. She never had any nightmares when she did.

Taglist: @saradika @milf-obi-wan-kenobi @thefact0rygirl @hereforthesunrise @ashotofspotchka @thebeardedmoon @eriseffigy @dont-mess-with-my-fandom

[michiieewrites]

Bakugou - Alpha (headcanons)

A/N: First time writing anything A/B/O-related, so kinda nervous about this one. This has been plaguing my mind this week, so here y’all go, my loves! IF YOU UNDER THE AGE OF 18, STOP RIGHT HERE AND GET OFF MY BLOG!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

·         Like his quirk, his second gender is strong

·         Very potent Alpha, in every sense of the word

·         (In my omegaverse they present at 15, but start heats and ruts at 19)

·         Nobody was really surprised when he presented as an Alpha

·         He likes the fact that people fear and respect him for his Alpha status

·         However he doesn’t want that to be what makes him a hero

·         He doesn’t need to be an Alpha to be the no. 1 Hero, since All Might himself is an omega

·         (YOU’LL HAVE TO PRY OMEGA!ALL MIGHT FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS)

·         His explosive behavior also makes it harder for him to find an Omega suitable for him

·         Either they get intimidated or they push him on all his negative buttons

·         But you? You have done the unthinkable and tamed the Alpha inside him at first sight when he just 20 years old

·         You just started working as a waitress at his favorite diner and as an Omega you’re often the target of degrading behavior, to say the least

·         This particular shift however, you were done with it!

·         Bakugou  didn’t even have time to step in, or anyone for that matter before you went completely ham against this Alpha that started inappropriate touching you, beating their face with your notepad for taking orders

·         The moment Bakugou got a good look at your face for the first time he swears he found his reason for living

·         He had to rush out of the diner immediately (he left the money on the table) since his rut abruptly began

·         Every instinct inside him told him to turn back immediately mate you, mark you, bond with you for life

·         Barely made it back to his apartment before he ripped his pants off and just started fucking into his hand right in the hallway

·         It wasn’t even close enough to the real thing

·         Had to hump and grind on his bed to feel something, anything, just anything so he didn’t get to stop himself until he got exhausted

·         By far the most painful rut he ever had, since his knot would not deflate

·         After a couple of days he finally managed to get through it

·         Took him another week before he dared to go back to the diner and face you again

·         Eventually does court you, albeit it was the hardest thing he ever had to do

·         Definitely one to peacock around and show off his wonderful Omega

·         He found someone who can take him on, handle him with care, push him to do his best and provide for him just like he does for you

·         Wears his bond mark around like a damn prize

·         This man doesn’t do half-assed jobs, so get prepared for ruts and heats

·         During your heats he’s the most tentative Alpha

·         Teases you by telling you how lucky you are to have him as your Alpha, that you should take pride in one day carrying his pups

·         Then follows it with praise

·         “That’s it, Omega, only you know how to please your Alpha”, “So submissive, such a good girl”, “You are made to take my knot”

·         Will have you ride him reverse cowgirl style so he can see your ass bounce in his lap and his cock disappear in your greedy hole

·         For the last round of your heatwave he’ll turn you on all fours and drape himself over your body before completely fucking every thought out of your head

·         You got his full and undivided attention during your heat

·         Now his ruts are a dangerous situation for anyone who isn’t you

·         One time you weren’t allowed to leave work to help him through and he was just like: “Fuck social manners”

·         Went to your work and wasted no time in bending you over and fucking you in the staff room

·         Your colleague wanted to come in and almost had his head ripped off by the Alpha for interrupting your mating

·         Hell hath no fury like Katsuki in a rut

·         Needs serious affirmation that he’s a good Alpha while he’s losing himself to his Alpha-instincts

·         “Tell me how good I’m fucking you, Omega”, “Only I’m allowed to fill this womb, right Omega?”, “I swear I’ll do anything for you, Omega, just let me put my knot inside you”

·         Average length will be compensated for what he has in thickness

·         His knot…. His knot will fill up every crevice inside of you

·         As soon as it deflates, round two begins

·         “Please don’t ask me to stop, please Omega”, “Let me breed you again”, “I can’t stop, Omega, you feel too good around me, please let me mate you again”

·         Don’t make him stop, at least cock warm him, he won’t survive otherwise

·         Even soft he fills you up till he can’t fit anymore

·         Rut or heat doesn’t matter, your neck and collarbones will wear the physical proof of your mating with bruising hickeys and bites marks

·         Despite his strength, Katsuki reminds himself that you are his mate and no serious harm should ever come to you

·         His favorite place to mate you in is your nest

·         The intimacy of putting your trust in him and having him make love in your nest is like a drug to him

·         Even though you’re supposed to be the Omega, your proud Alpha will get down on his knees and let you do whatever you desire to him

·         Pat his head? He’ll purr for hours

·         Feel insecure about your body? He’ll kiss the ground you walk on, all the way up to your belly button while mumbling words of love and praise

·         Ride his face like your life depended on it? Your Alpha’s face will be the carriage to bring you to new heavens

·         This man is an ass-man, no doubt, just wiggle that cute butt of yours and he’ll be a horny puddle

·         He swears your lust filled scent will be the death of him and it’s the only he’ll allow himself to die

·         The barbs on his tongue will make you cry until your voice gives out

·         They’re just rough enough to make it hurt in a masochistic way

·         Go to his office party in a dress with his hero colors and he’ll bend over every surface he can in his office

·         His new mission in life is to fill you up with pups

·         He may be a strong Alpha, but don’t think for a second you don’t have him whipped

Tagged: @mrsreina / @reinawritesbnha @thots4daze / @kzombi3 @aizawascumslut @hipster-merchant-of-death @strawbirb @ravenfeet222 @probablydysfunctionalvindication / @league-of-villians-headcanons (sorry for tagging both of the blogs, everyone who has two, but I don’t know which one you wanna be tagged with ‘:D)

[gimme-mor]

ACOTAR THINK PIECE: ELAIN ARCHERON, UNTOUCHABLE

*DISCLAIMER*

This will be a long post.

Please take the time to read this post in its entirety and truly reflect on the message I am trying to send before commenting. My goal is to use my background in Gender and Women’s Studies to deconstruct the comments I have seen on Tumblr and Twitter and bring awareness to the ACOTAR fandom.

The reason I am tagging “Elriel” in this post is to call attention to the arguments in the Elriel fandom that: weaponize Elain’s femalehood to shame real life people for their opinions about Elain’s character and her relationship with Lucien; victimize Elain’s character in fandom discussions; and coddle Elain’s character, which limits fandom discussions about her narrative development and prevents the ACOTAR fandom from holding Elain accountable for her actions and inactions in the same way that the fandom holds other characters accountable for their actions and inactions. It is for these reasons that I WILL NOT remove the “Elriel” tag from this post because all of the above points contribute to the toxic discourse surrounding Elain’s character.

I urge those who use these arguments to understand their implications, why they are problematic, regardless of intent, and reexamine their contributions to the ACOTAR fandom. I WILL NOT tolerate anyone who tries to twist my words and say I am attacking people and their personal shipping preferences. In fact, I AM CRITIQUING THE ARGUMENTS THEMSELVES NOT THE PEOPLE USING THE ARGUMENTS.

Also, I highly encourage the Elriel fandom to read this post because it addresses how the concept of choice as an argument enables arguments to exploit social justice and feminist languge in order to vilify Elucien shippers, among other problematic things.

Elain Archeron is one of the most polarizing characters in the ACOTAR fandom. Though opinions about Elain vary, arguments in the Elriel fandom cite society’s perception of traditional female characters in comparison to non-traditional female characters as the reason behind the hate, and this belief is used to provide an explanation as to why other characters in the series are favored over her. In the series, Elain is portrayed in a wholly positive light and this image carries over into the Elriel fandom, painting her character as a good and kind female who has been unfairly wronged and a victim of circumstances that were out of her control. When arguments in the Elriel fandom oppose other viewpoints in the fandom, they fall into one of three categories:

Category 1: Weaponize Elain’s femalehood to shame real life people for their opinions

Maybe people who hate Elain are just jealous of her in a weird way similar to when someone hates the pretty, nice, and charming girl in school just because she is too perfect

Disliking Elain is misogynistic

What happened to feminism? What happened to women supporting women? What happened to she can say no? All of that disappears the second you force Elain to be with Lucien

Elain antis are misogynistic

All Eluciens are Elain antis

Antis claiming they’re feminists when in reality they hate on Elain and Feyre but love Nesta

Elain antis are such sore losers. Y’all were that bunch of people who could not get over being rejected from hanging out with the cool kids so y’all are projecting your hatred towards pretty people now to get validation

I don’t get how Elain’s love for gardening equals boring for some people. I’m sorry your misogyny finds traditionally feminine activities boring

Why are you attacking a female? What did Elain do? Where are your feminist voices?

The fandom is misogynistic towards Elain

If people loved Elain they would ship Elriel

If you hate Elain it says a lot about your feelings toward women

If you hate Elain because she has no “development” then you must hate Azriel because otherwise you’re misogynistic

Eluciens are turned off by the idea of a woman that has the autonomy to reject a man for the simple reason that it is her choice

Eluciens are all about feminism and “it’s HER choice” until it comes down to females not wanting a male

Eluciens don’t respect Elain’s feelings when they ship her with someone that was part of her trauma and makes her feel uncomfortable

The way some Elucien shippers completely disregard how uncomfortable Elain is around Lucien is so hilariously not funny. Prioritizing being mates over Elain’s feelings is just regressive

It’s hard as a fan of Elain to see someone ship her with a person who makes her physically uncomfortable to be around. Wouldn’t you want both characters to be happy to be around each other

Imagine if SJM saw all the awful things her “stans” had to say about Elain

It’s true that we know comparatively little about her, but is she really boring or do you just not value stereotypically feminine traits?

So y’all are just gonna tell me you prefer Elucien over Elriel? Even though Lucien treats Elain as if she’s something that belongs to him? The only reason he wants to be with her is because she’s his mate, he doesn’t respect her, doesn’t treat her as his equal, even though that’s what mates should be? He doesn’t bother to look past what’s on the outside to see her for who she is. And Elain is obviously repulsed by the idea that she should belong to anyone or have no choice in who she can be with. Azriel is her friend and the only person who sees her quiet strength. He has so much faith in her, in her abilities; he’s the one who kept her company when no one else did, he’s the only one who bothered to see her for more than her brokenness. You’re going to tell me you still prefer Elucien over Elriel?

The more I see Gwynriels that ship Elucien out of their hate for Elain, the less I can understand Elain stans that ship Elucien. Pls Elain has made it very clear that she doesn’t want Lucien, why would you ship her with him? Do you hate her too? Smh

The real question would be, if you care and understand Elain why would you ship her with Lucien (where she canonically shrinks when he is near)?

People crying over Helion and Lucien’s mom not getting to be with each other and her being forced into a relationship she didn’t want, but also ship Elucien? Just say you hate Elain

When Elain’s book is out, Gwyn stans will look like clowns and I will laugh because they set her up by shipping her with Azriel just because they hate Elain. Watch them play the victims now because Elriels are clapping back the hate they’ve sent towards Elain

As romantic as wanting girl who is visibly uncomfortable around a guy who caused her trauma to end up with the said guy. Guess their standards for romance are in hell

Category 2: Victimize Elain’s character

Gwynriels only want Gwyn with Azriel because they despise Elain

Gwyn stans and Gwynriels are Elain antis

No one in the books dislike Elain, so why are there so many people who do?

Elain hasn’t done anything wrong or questionable to warrant the hate she gets

Not having Elain’s POV makes it easy for people to be swayed a certain way about her character if you already don’t relate to her in some way

It’s been years since this series came out and we haven’t gotten a lick of an Elain POV, but people still hate her for what? We don’t know her thoughts, dreams, or aspirations

We haven’t even had Elain’s perspective yet and people are passing these judgments off on her

Elain antis who say she’s boring are just cruel when she has obvious symptoms of PTSD like Feyre and Nesta

Gwyn is one of the most overhyped characters and that’s only because most people hate Elain and they couldn’t wait to find a random girl to ship Azriel with

Nesta was abusive to her sisters but Elain (who has only ever been kind) is painted as the villain

From the text we know that Elain is the epitome of feminine stereotypes (gentle, gardening, baking, non confrontational for the most part). Yet people still call her boring or deny that she has any interesting character traits?

You can’t love Nesta and hate Elain

People hate Elain because of internalized misogyny and lack of taste. All the girl does is tend to her garden and mind her business and they treat her worse than Tamlin

Does Gwyn deserve all this support? Of course yes! She is amazing! But where’s that support when Elain was in the same situation as she? Where’s that support for her right now? Why do they idolize Gwyn for her interactions with Azriel and hate Elain for having any interaction with him?

It’s not even a ship war anymore, they just hate Elain

People hate Elain for no reason

Some of y’all don’t like feminine traits and it shows

We know less about Eris and Helion but people don’t call them boring. Why would rejecting femininity make Elain more interesting?

Elain has had a lot forced upon her

The main reason I believe most people love Gwyn so much is to get Azriel away from Elain. It’s not a secret that Elain has been a widely hated character for years so suddenly we get a new female who has a minimal amount of interactions with Azriel and BOOM. New ship that once again doesn’t make sense (just like Azriel x Emerie after ACOFAS)

Elain hasn’t done something so terrible for her to get this hate. At this point some of you are just being misogynistic and you don’t want to accept it. Don’t call yourselves feminists and then say bs like this, it’s embarrassing. She’s pretty and everyone agreed to hate on her

Just a personal feeling, but I feel like a lot of the Elain hate stems from internalized misogyny. That to be a strong female lead, you need to pick up a sword and fight. That to be strong, you need to adapt traditionally masculine traits

Elain is feminine. She is beautiful. She loves to bake and garden. She is docile, quiet, observant, and a people-pleaser. All traditionally feminine traits. Yet for some reason, she’s like the worst in these people’s eyes?

I think also maybe a lot of people can’t relate to her femininity? That her being so beautiful and quiet doesn’t allow for the people who dislike her not to self-insert? Most of the hate stems from people not wanting Elain to be with Azriel. It’s mean, but maybe the people who hate Elain literally just can’t self-insert if they have a story and that’s why they’re vehemently against it?

Poor Elain. The Cauldron dealt her a bad deal. Upon emerging as Fae, she is immediately declared by Lucien as his mate, never mind that she was already engaged to a prick. Her love life is not good

It blows my mind how they really think that they can compare all the shit that Elain gets with some dumb jokes about Gwyn on Twitter (and yes, the “hate” towards her started mostly because Elriels are clapping back, it was bound to happen)

I would think of it as anti-feminist with Elain and Lucien because she has consistently stated that she does not want him so if she was forced to embrace the bond that would be taking away her right to have a choice but with Az she feels comfortable around so if they were mates then Elain would be happy and feel safe which again should be the priority for women to feel safe in their relationships with anything and to not be forced into any type of situation aka the mating bond in this

Category 3: Coddle Elain’s character

Elain has value the way she is, in all her domestic girly glory. Not every character has to be badass

We don’t speak of Elain’s flaws frequently because everyone else already speaks badly of her, mainly in an unfair way

There is definitely something deeper going on with Elain but by no means will she ever be evil or any less feminine. That goes against everything we already know about her

It’s ok to critique Elain because she needs growth but y’all keep forgetting the shit her and her sisters went through

The last “bad” thing Elain did in ACOTAR was not help Feyre when they were impoverished and I’m tired of people acting like she’s a terrible character when it was their father’s responsibility. It happened 4 books ago and Feyre has forgiven both Nesta and Elain

Elain’s character and the evil Elain theory are a great example of the trend where people only consider female characters interesting if they reject femininity

We don’t know enough to hate Elain

Many people want Elain to turn evil (which in my opinion seems to come from a place of internalized misogyny)

However we don’t tend to talk about her faults, at least not publicly, as that has been, and still is, done to death, and I--personally, at least--find it much more fun to theorise about potentially interesting aspects of the overall plot, than dwell on negatives

And ultimately, I would be shocked if Elain has a more karmically-charged story than Nesta, considering that Elain’s “wrongs” are so much less severe and bad than Nesta’s, and Elain has already apologized for them (or paid the price in other ways, like through what Graysen did)

I guess I also think Elain has suffered and been punished enough. I hope her story is about finding hope in terrible situations, and learning to love her new life, and choosing her own path after everything that has been done to her. I don’t think she needs to be punished anymore or face any additional trauma

Also, why is she being judged on her decisions as a human at all? Fae are monsters to humans! They enslaved them for thousands of years, and the Wall was erected to keep them out

Like I’m sorry, but think Elain would want to leave her ONLY FAMILY AND FRIENDS for the Spring Court where she has no one because--oh look, lots of flowers!--is the craziest thing I have ever heard

Her sisters are in the Night Court. Her nephew is in the Night Court. Her closest friends (Nuala and Cerridwen) are in the Night Court. Her love interest is in the Night Court. Her extended family is in the Night Court. Her home is in the Night Court

SJM isn’t going to keep two sisters together and split up the third. Especially not keep Feyre and Nesta together and separate Elain. They were either all going to end up in separate places, or together. Not 2 here and 1 there

Compared to the other female characters in the series, Elain is the only character whose femalehood is at the center of conversations; this is because arguments in the Elriel fandom fixate on it when discussing her character. While Elain, Feyre, Nesta, and Mor are all representations of white womanhood and white beauty, Elain epitomizes the most fragile version of white womanhood. It’s easy to blame society’s perception of traditional female characters in comparison to non-traditional female characters when it comes to the discourse surrounding Elain’s character because it: falls in line with the fixation on Elain’s femalehood to silence opposing viewpoints; is a simplistic explanation that fails to tackle the underlying issues with Elain as a character, the same issues that are downplayed in-universe; absolves Elain of her wrongdoings; prevents the ACOTAR fandom from holding Elain accountable for her actions and inactions within the series; and diminishes the impact Elain’s actions and inactions have on those around her. It’s not that Elain is hated in the fandom because she’s a traditional female character; it’s the fact that arguments in the Elriel fandom deflect a critical analysis of Elain’s character because she’s a traditional female character who embodies the ideal white woman in need of protection. White fans and white-aligned fans of color, especially white women, have a tendency to vehemently defend, gatekeep, and coddle white female characters in fandom; this makes it difficult for other fans to engage in critical discussions about these white female characters because they’re viewed as flawless and all around perfect characters despite evidence to the contrary. Since Elain is viewed positively by the other characters in the series, it has rendered her character untouchable to any perceived slight or criticism in fandom discussions because those negative opinions challenge what has been said about her character thus far. And as a result, her character has been placed on a pedestal and implicitly hailed as the epitome of white womanhood; and when she’s criticized, it’s seen as a direct attack against white womanhood. Arguments in the Elriel fandom: exploit feminist language and perpetuate white feminist tactics under the guise of defending Elain’s character; center Elain in conversations about female oppression in the ACOTAR world and uphold white feminist ideologies in their critique of ACOTAR’s patriarchal society; and use the fragile white woman narrative to victimize Elain in Lucien’s presence, playing into racial biases that are associated with white supremacy’s defense of white womanhood.

Feminism is a social movement that seeks to promote equality and equity to all genders, and feminists work toward eradicating gender disparities on a macro-level, in addition to challenging gender biases on a micro-level. As feminism became more mainstream, a flat and oversimplified version of feminism emerged: mainstream feminism. The mainstream feminist movement is meant to represent all women, but rarely does it center conversations around issues that concern most women. The problem with mainstream feminism is that it’s just a popularized version of white feminism. White feminism has relied extensively on an individualized understanding of women’s oppression, exclusively from the lens of privileged white women. White feminism only focuses on the oppression experienced by white, able-bodied, affluent, educated, cishet women; and it views gender as the key mode of privileged white women’s oppression, isolated from the privileges granted by their other social identities. White women can be and are oppressed under the patriarchy but only because they are women; their identity as women does not exempt them from the privileges granted by their whiteness. The term white feminist does not mean any feminist who is white, but refers to feminists who prioritize the concerns of privileged white women as though they are representative of all women. However, the term is not exclusive to white people. Because white feminism is so pervasive, people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds often buy into white feminism, believing that if they work hard enough, they may be able to reap its rewards.

Just like white feminism, mainstream feminism only recognizes the identity of being a woman, assumes that all women share common experiences of gender oppression, fails to address other social identities in relation to overlapping systems of oppression, and disregards privilege in relation to various social identities. Just like white feminism, mainstream feminism is palatable because it doesn’t seek to challenge the systems in place, instead its goal is to succeed within them. Essentially, mainstream feminism and white feminism are extensions of performative feminism. Performative feminism is a type of performative activism that’s used to describe feminist views that are surface level and solely for the benefit of one type of person. It’s a pretense which often has nothing to do with genuine activism. Arguments in the Elriel fandom normalize and promote performative feminism because the topic of feminism is only referenced when discussing Elain. This indicates that these arguments are engaging in disingenuous discourse to push a personal agenda within the ACOTAR fandom, and it becomes more apparent when they use white feminist tactics to shut down opposing viewpoints:

White feminists weaponize and exploit feminist language to silence the opinions of other women, especially when they’re called out for their problematic behaviors

White feminists use the phrase “Women supporting women” to defend other white feminists who exhibit problematic behaviors instead of holding them accountable 

White feminists weaponize phrases like “Women supporting women” and “You just hate women” to attack other women who disagree with them on any given topic

White feminists use phrases like “All women face challenges” and “Stop pitting women against each other” to sidestep conversations about privilege

White feminists divert conversations away from privilege and towards the Trauma Olympics to equate their struggles to the oppression of marginalized people 

White feminists skirt around the realities of other forms of oppression and discrimination, downplaying the experiences of marginalized people

White feminists diminish or ignore the ways in which gender oppression affects other marginalized people

White feminists paint those they harmed as aggressive, mean, or divisive when confronted with the ways they have harmed a marginalized group

White feminists deflect criticism by focusing on the anger or emotions being expressed rather than the issue that is being discussed, invalidating the concerns of marginalized people

White feminists speak over marginalized voices in an attempt to sound “woke”

White feminists get defensive and insist there’s no way they could be a part of the problem because of what they’ve done to help marginalized groups already 

White feminists say they don’t see color in an attempt to obscure racial issues that need to be addressed

White feminists center and victimize themselves in conversations about racism, which derails necessary conversations from taking place

White feminists who are white weaponize the intersectionality of their race and gender to avoid accountability

Feminism is not meant to be approached from an individualistic perspective nor is it only about addressing the experiences of privileged white women, it involves addressing the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, and other social identities as well; and it involves addressing how these social identities relate to privilege. Moreover, feminism is not about women upholding complete loyalty to other women because of a shared gender identity, and to claim that it does implies that women should be held to different emotional standards than men. If men are able to dislike and criticize other individual men, real or fictional, without their characters being compromised, why aren’t women granted that same privilege?

It’s clear that SJM set up the ACOTAR world to mirror a patriarchal society, and that the imbalance of power between males and females stems from sexism. Arguments in the Elriel fandom analyze the ACOTAR world through a feminist lens to show how ACOTAR’s patriarchal society, to which the mating bond is innately tied, contributes to female oppression and limits their agency. When choice and free will are emphasized as part of Elain’s arc, they imply that Elain, through the mating bond, experiences female oppression under ACOTAR’s patriarchal society because of her identity as a female with that identity being the focal point of her oppression in the world. Elain is one of the most privileged characters in the ACOTAR world: she’s High Fae; she’s the sister of the High Lord and High Lady of the Night Court, which gives her access to wealth and political influence because of that connection; she’s able-bodied; she was magically blessed by the Cauldron; and she lives in Velaris, a place that grants females autonomy and power because of the beliefs of Rhysand and Feyre. Arguments in the Elriel fandom trivialize female oppression in the ACOTAR world because they disregard the fact that Elain’s privileges prevent her from experiencing female oppression in the same way that other marginalized females in the world do. The mating bond being one such example because those around Elain are not forcing the bond on her, instead they’re allowing Elain to reach a decision about the bond for herself; a privilege that other marginalized females in the world probably wouldn’t have. Just because Elain has endured hardships in her life and is a female in a patriarchal society, they do not erase the privileges she holds within the ACOTAR world. The failure to include Elain’s privileges in discussions about Elain being a female in a patriarchal society feeds into white feminist ideologies because white feminism operates from a very narrow perspective; it doesn’t take other intersecting identities into account when it examines gender oppression, leaving no room for discussions about privilege (or lack thereof) in relation to those intersecting identities. When discussing oppression in hierarchical societies, it’s imperative that privilege is also included in the conversation because privilege and oppression are not mutually exclusive; they equally affect the ways in which people navigate those societies through their social identities.

Rather than attributing Elain’s uncomfortability to her new life as a Fae female or the mating bond itself and her trauma to the Cauldron, the King of Hybern, or Ianthe, they’re placed on Lucien to cast his character in a negative light. Moreover, fandom discussions portray Lucien as a possessive character to further emphasize Elain’s discomfort despite the inaccuracy of this characterization in canon. Arguments in the Elriel fandom play into racial biases when it comes to Lucien (a male character of color) because they mischaracterize his character in order to victimize Elain (a white female character), placing her character in the role of the white damsel in distress. In Western society, the concept of womanhood has been conceptualized from a Eurocentric perspective with femininity and feminine attributes favoring white women. It’s the idea that a certain type of femininity is only inherent to white women as they are seen as the embodiment of an ideal womanhood. White womanhood has been a symbol of innocence and purity, and white women have been viewed as fragile beings in need of protection. The reason white womanhood functions within white supremacy is because it’s the same idea that has motivated white men to kill and beat black and brown men. The so-called protection of white women has been used as a justification for the horrific violence committed by white men because black and brown men were stereotyped as aggressive and seen as a threat to the virtue of white women. The white damsel in distress trope considered white women as worthy of protection because of their perceived innocence and purity; women of color were not granted that same treatment because they did not fit into the ideal image of womanhood. Over the years, this trope became a means for white women to exercise limited power in a patriarchal society with white women weaponizing their status as the damsel much to the detriment of black and brown men. It’s through the white damsel in distress trope that white supremacy sustains its dominance in Western society. The misrepresentation of characters of color in fandom, the dismissal of their importance to the overall story, and using them as tools in arguments centered around white characters are the foundation of fandom racism; they’re examples of how racism moves silently in fandom spaces. Instead of examining their behavior and taking constructive criticism from fans of color, white fans will often double down on their bigotry and center their uncomfortability in the conversation when confronted with their complicity in fandom racism. White fans expect fans of color to swallow fandom racism in its many forms in order to not ruin the experience of fandom, dismissing the fact that racism is prevalent in nearly every aspect of society. This mentality ensures that no one is held accountable for the harm they caused and alienates fans of color in fandom spaces.

To reiterate what I mentioned in my first think piece: terms like “oppression”, “the right to choose”, “feminist”, “feminism”, “anti-feminist”, “anti-feminism”, “internalized misogyny”, “misogyny”, “misogynist”, “sexist”, “sexism”, “racist”, “racism”, “classist”, “classism”, “discrimination”, and “patriarchy” are all used in specific ways to draw attention to the plight of marginalized people and challenge those who deny the existence of systems of oppression. Yet these words and their meanings can be twisted to attack, exclude, and invalidate people with differing opinions on any given topic. When social justice and feminist terms are thrown around antagonistically and carelessly to push a personal agenda, it becomes clear that these terms are being used to engage in disingenuous discourse and pursue personal validation rather than being used out of any deep-seated conviction to dismantle systemic oppression. Being an ally, activist, or feminist is not an identity, it’s a practice. It requires: ongoing self-reflection; holding ourselves accountable; listening to marginalized people; educating ourselves; dismantling implicit biases; challenging those around us who are exhibiting problematic behaviors; and action behind our words.

It’s important to be aware of the language that is used within the fandom when defending or critiquing characters and ships. It’s also important to question how an argument is framed and why it’s framed the way that it is to critically examine the intent behind that argument: is it used as a tool to push a personal agenda that reinforces problematic behaviors, or is it used as an opportunity to share, learn, enlighten, and educate?

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Tagging: @spell-cleavers @bookofmirth @m0bulidae @ilya-boltagon

[snackhobi]

what the water gave me ; chapter 1

chapter [1] / 2

you burn his shrines and strike down his followers, destroy those who lose themselves in manic worship of a nameless god. you won’t let yourself fall the way you’ve seen others fall, lose yourself to whale song and graveyard lullabies, pulled in by his siren’s call.

so when he holds out a hand and offers you his gift—powers and magic that almost no other humans possess—you deny him.

and he just replies: if you change your mind, all you have to do is reach out and receive it.

pairing: taehyung x f!reader / word count: 8k / genre + rating: NSFW (18+) (smut will be present in later chapters)

warnings/etc (some of these tags have spoilers): fantasy with steampunk-style elements (loose dishonored au). lovecraftian/cthonic god!taehyung. vigilante!reader. talk of death/violence/crimes (e.g. stealing) but nothing graphic. ableist language related to sanity (insane/manic etc). implied/referenced character death in flashbacks, but again, nothing graphic. [this is my first time writing anything like this, so please, please let me know if there is anything I’ve forgotten to tag or anything I’ve overlooked]

a/n: here it is! it’s going to be a long one, sorry y’all. happy one year fic anniversary to me! thank you to @hobi-gif​ and @morndas​ for being the best friends/betas a weenie like me could ask for 💕💕

He visits you in your dreams.

The echoes that whisper through the fog offshore; the seeping damp of seawater and salt that bites into the underbelly of ships; the shifting of the anchor’s chain as it falls to the seafloor; the blanched brittle bones of a dead sailor, body picked clean in the dark of the ocean, washed to shore—he’s all of these and more, the endless darkness of the sea and abyss, the unanswered call of lonely whale song that falls into that shimmering place of shadow and shade.

Each night he comes, silhouetted by the grey of the Void and the blackness of eternity, his eyes darker still. His eyes are dark, dark, dark, blacker than the moonless night, swallowing pupil and sclera. He watches you with those unblinking eyes. Sits atop the ever-shifting ground and stone that he builds, brings into existence without thought, god of this empty place. In the distance you can see the whales, those great and terrible leviathans that float through the Void like the sea, deep sea monsters that exist both Here and There, all at once.

Sand scratches the soles of your feet. You stand in the Void on this floating platform of rough-hewn stone, surrounded by the night and past and present and future, in a world that shapes and reshapes itself from moment to moment, both static and moving, dead and alive. The only light comes from far, far away, filtered through a nameless fog, shapeless and sickly—moonlight fighting to cut through storm clouds towards some lost ship, far from home and the shore. 

(Tossed about on a careless and monstrous and unceasingly hungry sea.) 

His feet never touch the ground. All the power of ocean and chaos and Void settle about his shoulders with the unflinching weight of all of existence; pitch black shadow creeps about him and would threaten to swallow him were he not their master. He seems to almost fade at the edges, jagged shards of obsidian and crystal spiralling the mist at his back in a quivering dance, like all his power could not be contained by the human visage he wears, but his eyes are unchanging—unblinking—as he stares at you.

(Those eyes. The darkest things you’ve seen, framed with tears of crystal, sparkling points of light on his face. Tears of the ocean; of moonlight, starlight.)

You have no power here. There’s nothing to ward away this darkness, this ceaseless chill; none of your weapons are at your side. You don’t think it would matter even if they were.

What’s a mortal against a god, after all?

(You burn another shrine.

It doesn’t take much. It never does. You lift the lanterns from the floor, snuff their flames and flick them open to spill whale oil over this hidden altar; it’s not the worst you’ve seen, a simple table of driftwood and wire and nails hidden under sumptuous purple cloth. You’ve seen twisted shrines anointed with hair and blood, fur and feather, teeth and flesh, dark echoes of the Void warping around the charms of whale bone placed so lovingly at their centre. Still, no matter their building blocks, they each represent the same thing: slavish worship of a hidden god.

You’ve held countless charms. Grasped countless runes. You've felt the throb of magic in your hands, etched into the surface of bleached bone and rough metal, shaped by fingers intimately acquainted with the forbidden arts. They call out, sing so sweet, so dark, and you’ve seen so many—too many—succumb to their siren’s call. Each enchantment grants its owner some measure of power, some echo of the Void. It’s not real magic, no, not granted by the Visitor, but instead is a piercing of the shroud that separates the physical world from the ethereal, shaped by those who pray and weep and wail for his favour, even if he ignores them all.

No matter the enchantment, bone always burns the same.

Flames hungrily burst to life under your fingers. So quick. So easy. It swallows the whale oil before licking out further and consuming it all, greedy. It always smells like the same, acrid and bitter as the Void’s power sizzles out of existence. You lift the rune you’d taken from your most recent hunt and cast that onto the flames, too, watch as reality seems to shimmer and warp around the heavy piece of carved whale bone; its sibilant hiss crescendos before all at once it goes silent.

They’ll find the ashes tomorrow. They’ll find the dead body of the priest—so respected in his community, so favoured, so stringent in his sermons against false gods and dark magics—where you’d left him, slumped over his desk, surrounded by his once-hidden ravings of supplication to the one being he’d so publicly condemned. The scattered papers of a decaying mind.

… Visitor, I pray, give me the strength to reach out for you, to see into the darkness and light you call home. Let me reach past the veil towards the secrets you hold and let me wield the power that sings to me, calls to me… 

Secret worship turned to obsession. If only people weren’t so weak, so ready to succumb to the undulating whispers of the Void. How many have let their quiet reverence turn into something darker, something twisted?

How many have you chosen to hunt, to stop?

No one sees you leave this quiet village behind, cloaked in the darkness of a cloud-filled night as you slip away.

Beneath your coat, a wreath of bone charms hangs about your hips, murmuring quiet whale song and whispers of the sea.)

A god. A nameless god. Lost to time, eons ago.

He has no name, but he does have a title: The Visitor.

He greets you with a lift to his brows that feels like he’s observing you like some intriguing curio. How many nights has it been, now, that you’ve dreamt of him? That you’ve looked into the abyss and seen it staring back, echoes of your world orbiting past like your mind and memory itself is fragmenting into existence in this place?

You’ve heard so many stories of him, whispers of this leviathan of the Void who twists his form into the shape of a man. You’ve seen the echoes of his power and the way those ripples cast forth and twist the waters of people's lives, seen how they fall to desire and want in the pursuit of magical power, but never seen him.

Until now.

He knows who you are, of course—you’ve been told he sees everything, the truth of time and space cast out in every direction, unspooling at one glance of those lampblack eyes—and speaks your name with a detached familiarity as he watches you stand on this floating platform of sand and stone, unmoored in this ever-shifting place of stillness.

(You’ve been destroying his shrines for years, now. You recognise every sign of hidden mania, listen to rumours and back alley whispers and parse their true meaning, in the same way soothsayers read for messages in the flight of birds; the way sailors read the motions of the tides and movements of the celestial bodies above.

Not every worshipper of the Visitor falls by your blade. Etchings in ivory, bone and tusk and teeth and claw, good luck charms that people carry with them; hastily whispered prayers to the Visitor before a make-or-break moment—no matter if he’s forbidden by the church, he’s woven into the fabric of society, and there’s no danger there. You only hunt the dangerous, the predatory, those so given over to their obsession with the occult that they threaten those around them; steal blood and bone for failed rituals, boil the fat from once-living things to anoint their pedestals for the profane ceremonies they perform.

(People who are willing to kill the innocent to get what they want.)

You would be a hypocrite to destroy all of those who carried signs of the Visitor, after all. You have your own collection of scrimshaw, magic thrumming through bone, cold and hot against your skin, softening your footsteps and bolstering your strength, helping you jump higher, run faster—there’s nothing inherently evil in magic, no matter what the church says. You know this intimately. But the moment you feel your spirit start to wane and give itself over to the silken call of the Void you’ll cast your garland of charms into the sea, and if necessary, follow soon after.)

(You’ve seen what ruin follows those who waver and fall into the arms of the Visitor. You won’t allow the same to happen to you.)

You wonder if he’s here to finally claim vengeance for all his followers that you’ve cut life away from. But when he finally speaks, you hear no anger or accusation there at all.

“You find yourself in interesting places, don’t you?”

His voice has a strange lilt, some inflection that’s so unfamiliar that it seems to twist words into riddles. He’s unearthly in every way, even his beauty; his face is all sharp edges, the emotionless line of his mouth, his pitch black eyes, reflecting nothing. Light falls over the both of you but not in those eyes, two limpid pools of sheer night that stare unwaveringly at you, caught instead in the shards of clear sea glass that fan out across his cheekbones.

“What is it you want from me?”

He tilts his head at your question, face as unchanging as the abyssal depths of the endless sea. You’re not sure if he was expecting you to react differently in his presence—confusion, maybe. Fear. Anger, perhaps.

“I’ve lived a long, long time.” He shifts in place and you witness how he comes apart, falls into nothingness like coal turned to ash that spirals away on some unseen wind, before those parts reform and he’s sitting atop a jagged outcrop of stone on a platform above your head. “You’ve come from nothing and still live as a shadow. And yet, you play such a role in the world, with no acknowledgement of the power you’ve chosen to wield.”

(It doesn’t matter to you if your chosen target is a fishmonger who lives down a quiet side street or if it’s a noble whose every decision turns the direction of high society. If they need to fall by your blade, they will. You leave ripples wherever you go. 

Death has a way of changing things, after all.)

“Most of you are so boring, letting your lives play out without ever reaching towards some greater goal—but here you are. People like you are the ones that fascinate me. You’ve walked the expanse of these isles and traversed places that others can only dream of and yet none of it gives you pause.” He shifts his shoulders, tilts his head once more; behind him, a buoy floats in the ripples of eternity, ropes crusted in salt, water cascading upwards instead of down. It makes you dizzy. “I wonder if you choose to go to new places and leave the old ones behind, or rather that you follow some irrepressible call?”

“You haven’t answered my question.” You’d given up on subtlety in words a long time ago, direct and to the point; not impatient, but unswerving from your mark once you’ve found it. The stark opposite to the man—the god—who looks at you.

There’s no tilt to the Visitor’s lips, no lift to his brows, but there’s something there. If you didn’t know better you’d think he was… amused. “You hunt down my shrines with the single-minded devotion of my greatest follower—and promptly set them ablaze. I find your actions fascinating. What is it I want? To watch your quest and see where it takes you, and where it ends. I see many potential futures laid out at your feet and there’s not a single one that isn’t intriguing.”

He turns a graceful hand palm up and gestures with the fluidity of an oil slick spreading over clear water. “And, with that, I’m here to offer you a gift, if you choose to receive it.”

The back of your hand flushes cold. You turn your attention to it, watch as a sigil traces itself over your skin in hues of shining gold and deep purple and pale blue: the Visitor’s mark, a carved V orbited by other runes in a language only those long dead can read. It’s a feather light touch, a shimmering potential, a promise of power.

Part of you wants to laugh, near disbelief. You’ve seen uncountable numbers hunger for this and never find it, while you’ve never felt a desire for it at all. 

But here you are: silhouetted by the Void and endless space, being offered the very thing you’ve killed others for wanting.

“You’re offering magic to someone who destroys it wherever she goes?”

Once more, the Visitor comes apart. Tendrils of darkness, like wisps of smoke from a snuffed candle, pinwheel away and together once more, just out of arm's reach, floating high enough that you have to lift your chin to look at him. “But you don’t destroy magic, do you? You protect it from those who would abuse it. I’ve watched you make your choices from the moment you decided to set fire to that first charm.”

The reminder of that—the thing that happened so long ago, that taught you what happens to those who would let desire and darkness corrupt them, that led to you learning exactly how bone burns—has you clenching your hand into a fist. 

“No.” Your voice is resolute. “No, I don’t want this.”

The mark slides away and sparks into nothingness.

The Visitor seems unmoved. Unsurprised. Just regards you steadily. But, for the first time since meeting, you watch as he blinks, long and slow, dappled light caught in the crystalline tears that linger at his lashline, his cheekbones.

“Once a gift is offered, it remains, accepted in the moment or not.” So calm and impassive. “If you change your mind, all you have to do is reach out and receive it.”

And with that, the Void dissipates. Reality bends on its axis and you watch as light and darkness warp around and away from you; the last thing you see are those two black eyes, surrounded by teardrops of light.

When you wake the next day and hold your hand up to dawn’s pale touch, your skin is unmarked and empty. 

(But still, you swear you feel some nameless weight that lingers, something pressing on your skin, like the brush of ocean chilled lips.)

You’re deep in a different city tonight. Mired in the muck and filth of the industrial district, surrounded by worn brick and rusting metal and weathered pipes that belch out steam and smoke, where the run-off of all the factories spins into the sewers and gutters and the long-sullied river; it stinks of blood and death here, so close to the tanneries, so close to the slaughterhouses.

So close to where they kill the whales.

They drain those great beasts dry for their precious oil but only see a fraction of its worth end up in their pockets. It might be forbidden, but you know the butchers pocket whale bone when the foremen aren’t watching, sell that precious cargo on the black market for more gold than they earn cutting through baleen and blubber and blood. You’re here to find where gold exchanges hands, to trace the course of those bones like the curves of a riverbed, to see where inlets open to the sea; to see whose hands that bone settles in, turned into doors to the Void.

(You’ve always been good at this: flying across rooftops, scaling walls and metal pipes, sliding from one shadow to the next. You find cover in the haze of smoke, the smog that fills the air, belched forth from those huge factories, soot and dirt settled across every inch of this place. It’s easy to avoid the eyes of the city guard, to duck out of sight of the whale oil lamps that cast their dusky light across cobbled streets. Even before taking up pistols and blades, you were good at this, learning how to pick your way silently through city streets to make a living. To pick pockets. To run. To survive.)

(This city is so similar to your city, the centre of the Isles, the one you were born into years ago; smaller than your home, yes, but port cities follow the same patterns, dockyards finding the same rhythm regardless of where they are. It sets something in you to aching, how this place is unfamiliar and yet familiar all at once.)

You’ve been finding blackened bone charms, twisted things that are layered in more power than you’ve ever seen—but they drain the wielder, suck them dry. More power demands more sacrifice, paid for in blood. These charms scream in the flames, hissing voices turned to drawn-out wails before turning to ash and forgotten memories. You know their creator is nearby, would detest being far from here, a place that gives them a constant stream of whale bone. You just need to find who it is and finish them.

It’s simple enough, once you find her. The lock takes almost no time to pick and the apartment is quiet; it’s easy to follow the mutters, the chanted mantras, to find her in the room that was once a study. The walls are covered in her sloping, manic scrawl, painted in shadow and flickering light from oil lamps, and she sits in the centre of it all. Surrounded by polished shards of bone, scraped clean, she whispers to herself as she fuses them together, glimmers of shadow and Void trembling in her hands.

She never sees your knife coming.

It’s too dangerous to set a fire here, lest the entire block of apartments catches ablaze and spreads throughout the district. You step over the pooling blood, gather the blackened fragments of bone, go towards the pedestal she’d made to lift up the largest rune of all, reach out to grasp it in your hands—

And it glows so brightly before it falls apart.

Bone shatters underneath your touch and falls away, spins up on a non-existent wind and coalesces to form a figure who floats atop the shrine. What little light is in this dark room curves towards the Visitor and outlines him without a single flicker, caught in the etched crystal that’s ever-present under his black eyes.

It’s been months since he’d stepped into your dreams, but at the occasional hidden shrine, he appears to you. He never lingers, never stays too long, but each time he’ll step out of the ether and speak, letting you know that he’s there—even if you’d spurned his boon.

You used to think it was paranoia. That your caution led your mind to imagine things that weren’t there, to feel like someone’s eyes were on you, watching, even if you know there weren’t. But feeling the full intensity of his gaze once more lets you know that it’s him, watching you still, and you have to wonder how you can feel it when he can see everything at once. You’re not the only one he watches. 

(So why does it haunt you so?)

“Another falls by your blade.” 

His voice is always the same, like the haunting wind that brushes through the jagged rocks at the ocean’s edge. The bone charms girded about your waist pulse in time with his words, shift against your clothes with a soft trembling, as if answering his call.

“Judge, jury, executioner.” He turns his head, shows you the sharp cut of his jaw, the slope of his nose. “You decide their fate and then deliver it to them.” 

“Someone has to do it,” you mutter, and reach down for a lantern so that you can search through the room.

The Visitor doesn’t even spare a glance for the dead woman that’s sprawled on the floor behind you, whose last words were the desperate call of her god’s name. His name. He just keeps his eyes fixed on you. 

“Always in motion, never stopping.” If he’s offended by the fact you’ve taken your eyes off him, he makes no mention of it, but the room starts to warp at the corners as the Void bleeds in, following its master, and you'd swear he's forcing your eyes towards him. The one unshifting part of the world. “You never rest.”

“I don’t have time to rest.” Bone dust is gritty underfoot, the tiniest parts left over from etching and creation, dried marrow turned to powder grinding further into stained floorboards as you shift on your feet and pull open drawers, finding half-finished charms and cracked runes everywhere you turn. You’re almost callous in the way you handle them, sweeping them into the bag you’d slung over your back for this very purpose.

“The black dogs of exhaustion and melancholy nip at your feet wherever you go. You gain no rewards for what you do. And yet you persist. There’s not a single future where you don’t continue forwards on your path, no matter how tired you are.” The words themselves could be ones of admiration,  but instead he just seems mildly surprised. Like he doesn’t understand exactly why it is that you do what you do and doesn’t expect you to keep your nose to the grindstone, to slave away at this for no apparent reward.

The wooden desk is water-warped and swollen and pulling the drawer open takes more force than it should. An abandoned ink pot, precariously placed, tilts onto its side; it would have spilled, had the ink inside not been long dried and forgotten. The Visitor is regarding you with a level gaze and unchanging eyes when you look up. 

“Is there a single future where, right now, I don’t ask you to leave me to my work?”

You respond to him without reverence, but you’re cautious, still. You won’t forget the monstrous depths of his power. He listens to a thousand selfish prayers and ignores them all, carries the heaviness and inky shadows of long forgotten civilisations and memories about his neck, as mysterious and nightmarish as the twisted things that linger at the deepest parts of the sea.

(Whenever you think this, there’s the tiniest curl to his surprisingly full lips that says that he's well aware of that fact. A predator’s smile.)

“No,” he answers.

“Good to know I’m consistent, then.” 

“You are utterly predictable and unpredictable all at once,” he says, but before you can ask him what he means by that, he’s gone.

It only takes moments for angles and lines to recentre, for the world to stop spinning on its tilt towards the Void and turn to something more material and physical. It’s easy to tear the fabric away from the altar, to toss it over the cooling body that’s still bleeding itself dry; rich purple turns black with thick blood as you lift that final rune up in your hands, heavier than the rest, girdled with weathered copper, staining your hands green.

(He’s stopped visiting you in your dreams, but the Void doesn’t let you go. Your nights are restless as you fall into the dark arms of sleep, pulling you into fog and shade, a world of nothingness where everything exists at once. 

In the distance, dripping blood in those cruel slaughterhouses that tear them apart and casting rivulets of oil into the expanse of the Void, the whales sing their lonely death songs—and then fall silent.)

“Use the brick on your right as a handhold. Not that one—your right. Over here, idiot!”

He looks up. Sees your hand held out to him, the exasperated but fond look on your face a familiar one as he curves his fingers into the ever-present support of your palm. 

You’ve always been better at this than him, better at climbing, scaling the impassable, making your way into forbidden places. He’s longer-limbed, heavy-footed. Better suited to the ground. Still, he trusts you, grits his teeth as you pull him up, ignores your familiar snickering as he so clumsily scrabbles to the top of the wall and crouches beside you. He’s not as graceful as you but he makes do. 

(Besides, he has you to pull him up no matter where he goes.)

“Come on.” You nudge him with your shoulder, eyes bright. “We have a little way to go yet.”

A ‘little way’ for you feels like a long way for him. He scrapes his knuckles open on the rough brick, finds spiderwebs knotted on his clothes as you skulk forwards, manages to whack his head against a pipe, a loud thunk that makes you grab him and pull him flush against the wall in case anyone overheard—but he trusts you. He knows this will be worth it, even if the two of you will be heavily punished if you’re found here. He doesn’t know how long it must have taken you to find this way in, to grow familiar with the timings and schedules to avoid any chance of someone stumbling across you, two interlopers in a place that should be barred to them.

(The building you’re pulling him up is so high it makes him dizzy.)

You hold a finger to your lips, shushing him even as you grin widely. He eyes the glass panels in this roof, tinted sea-green and sun-orange and blood-red, one of the long-forgotten windows wedged open, a thin line of rust on iron cracked open by your hands; he can see the class in this vaulting lecture hall far below, see the teacher that stands in front of the smartest young minds of the empire and gestures at the chalkboard on the wall, but best of all—even though he’s all the way up here, out of sight, nothing more than a dappled shadow on the riot of stained glass colour on the floor far below—he can hear.

The principles of alchemical interaction, chemical symbols; every word from the lecturer’s mouth, every dusty white word on the board behind them—it all goes over your head. Not his, though. His face lifts and his eyes light up and he looks at you as if you’d pulled all the stars from the sky and handed them to him on a silver platter, awestruck and humbled and disbelieving. And when you reach into the bag hidden under your coat, hand him a new journal and piece of charcoal, he doesn’t even ask where they’re from. He just grabs them from you and immediately starts to scribble notes, swallowing down information with the insatiable greed of a ceaselessly intelligent mind. 

The Academy of Sciences and Philosophy. Esteemed and exclusive, ancient and established, only for the best and brightest (and connected)—and there you are on one of its highest roofs. Two street rats. One listening and learning while the other basks in the afternoon sun. 

(You’ve never been as smart as your best friend, not as quick at parsing the meaning in the secret language of academia, but that’s okay. You have other skills, the dark side of his moon, better in the shadows when he shines.)

“Hey.”

Time has passed by as slick as treacle as the lecturer drones on. You blink awake from your half-doze, sun dazed, kept from falling over the edge of dreaming by the light that shines across your face and in the hollows of your eyelids. “Hm?”

His face is upside down from this angle but the smile on his face is unmistakable, dimples dug into the swell of his cheeks. “Thank you. Really. This is so much better than learning from a book.”

(It’s not just better. It’s everything. It’s an unimaginable offering, the opening of a door that should be far out of your reach. Two unknown kids, teenagers, born and raised and living in the poorest parts of the Empire's richest city, where you carry a knife wherever you go, all sharp eyes and sharper teeth—but he’s always been softer than you. Strong, but with a kindness that reaches his core no matter how harsh the world is. Sleight of hand and fleet of foot, you’re the cunning one of the two, doing what you need to do to survive.

He keeps you soft. You’re grateful for that.)

The smile you give him in return is a small, quiet thing, as gentle and warm as the sunlight that covers you both as your eyes slip shut again. 

“You’re welcome, Namjoon.”

The cry of gulls and crash of waves don't detract from the silence here. The solitude. The silhouette of the lighthouse looms in the distance, nestled amongst vicious rocks that threaten the ships, removed and separated from the dwindling fishing village further up the coast.

It’s not as dark as you’d like. You’re kept prisoner by the tides, high waters submerging the path most hours of the day—you work best when you can cling to the shadows, using surprise to make up for your lack of formal training with a blade and gun (you learned how to fight on the streets, vicious and dirty and underhanded, but you know your own strengths and they don’t lie in following correct forms). You’ve caught a glimpse of the lighthouse’s keeper in town, a tall and broad man under the thick weave of his clothes, and you know he can easily overpower you if he catches you. The light from the dying sun makes you wary of the threat he poses, if he spots you in its waning light.

(Even if he’d seemed so harmless, so mild, quiet and polite when he’d exchanged handfuls of coin for fresh fish and bread, simple fare for a simple man.)

Your bone charms shiver under the lining of your coat, pulsing in time with the crash of the waves. You grit your teeth against the wind chill and bite of salt in the air as you draw your blade. It’s shorter than a sword but just as sharp and deadly, the wooden hilt warming under your touch, a familiar and comforting weight. You trail up the steps that encircle the base of the building, each step measured and careful and silent, eyes constantly darting overhead to see if the lone lightkeeper has seen anything amiss.

Inside the building everything is deathly silent. Your grip tightens on your blade the higher you climb, your scrimshaw charms murmuring comforting litanies as you finally ease open the trapdoor of the highest room. Devoid of life, like the rest of them. 

Not empty though, no. The entire room is a temple for the unholy, not just whale bone and driftwood and dried kelp and lone feathers but more than that, sea-eaten bones and dried bird claws and nameless animal teeth and human skulls with jawless smiles grinning at you from the walls. Everything is singing, Void bleeding through in corrupted mutterings and whispers, a fugue of dead voices from the deep.

(The air tastes of burnt salt and blood.)

Light shines in from the open trapdoor overhead, leading to the lightroom above, the burning bright lamp that guides sailors to shore, encircled with a metal walkway. The last stop; a dead end. Your movements are fast and silent as you climb the ladder, ears straining to catch the sound of footsteps, of anything to let you know where the lightkeeper might be.

Like a lot of things in life, when things go wrong, they go bad very, very fast.

You were right about him being stronger than you. He knows you’re coming, catches you off guard instead of the other way around, lunges at you with wild eyes and clenched fists, knocks your blade to one side and your hastily grabbed pistol to the other as you try to keep ground. You’re fast but he’s taken you by surprise and now you’re fighting a losing battle, a struggling blur of motion as you find there’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

He’s so, so much stronger than you.

He grabs you by the collar of your coat, your throat, pulls you up almost effortlessly as he throttles the air out of your lungs. His eyes are so wide as he snarls at you, a cascade of accusations falling from his growling mouth, mine mine mine, the magic is mine, you can’t have it, you can’t, you can’t. Even as you writhe in his hold, claw at his hands and arms and stain your fingernails red with his blood as they bite into his skin, you know you’re dead. 

This is it. 

This is it.

The air stinks of burning whale oil and the light is so bright, so so bright, shining out over the lightkeeper’s shoulders and throwing every part of him into shadow as he backs you towards the edge. A lifeline for sailors that heralds a death for you, graceless and messy and anonymous. It’ll be a nasty death. Dashed on the rocks, swallowed by the sea. No one will notice you’re gone. No one will miss you.

He hoists you towards where the railing is missing, corroded beyond repair, and—without hesitation—lets go.

You’re weightless as the earth’s gravity pulls you down. Everything is moving faster than you can register as you stare up at the dark figure of the lightkeeper as he watches you fall and fall and fall—

You catch glimpse of a shadow behind him, silhouetted by oil light, half formed and grey but with a sparkle of sea glass that frames the shadow of its endlessly deep eyes—

The whale bones at your waist sing louder than the wind that rushes past you—

Once a gift is offered, it remains, accepted in the moment or not.

Your hand is lifted towards the heavens, arm outstretched—

If you change your mind, all you have to do is reach out and receive it.

Seconds away from death, no time to think, no time to argue, sheer instinct and adrenaline coursing through you as you strain with your fingers and gasp out a single wordless plea—

The back of your hand burns.

(All at once, you know what to do.)

The Void’s sibilant hymns crescendo into a chorus as you clench your fist and pull. 

The Visitor’s mark lights up, all roiling gold and silver and blue, new and unfamiliar as it blazes into existence across your skin in a burst of cold and heat. It feels like fishhooks in your belly, pulling you up, the wind at your back gone and instead tearing at your face as magic shudders through your bones and your direction reverses and you fly forwards. It’s a straight shot that defies natural law and gravity, the suddenly invisible blur of your body turning solid and you land back on metal with a resonating echo.

The lightkeeper is staring at you with some unnameable emotion uncoiling across his face, frozen in place as he takes in the mark that’s freshly branded onto the back of your hand, shock and awe and reverence and wild jealousy and disbelief—

You brace yourself and tense your muscles and lift your leg and use every iota of power in your body to slam your foot into his chest. 

It takes mere seconds for him to stumble, to fail at catching his balance, to reel as he steps back onto air instead of metal, and then he’s gone.

You don’t watch him fall. 

Instead, you collapse to your knees. You’re shaking, breath shuddering as you gasp in air; it feels like you’re trembling down to your very bones, lungs rattling in the cage of your ribs, so fucking close to death you could taste the Void, thick oil and blood coating your throat. The mark doesn’t burn any more, a quiet cold that breathes across your skin, but you can still feel the way it had sung to you when you’d touched the Void, summoned magic as easy as breathing. 

It’s terrifying and overwhelming and you feel dizzy with it all. Untethered.

You start laughing.

You don’t know how long you’re there, shivering from the come down of adrenaline and near-death fear as you laugh, almost hysterical, wild disbelief rolling through you. You should be dead. You should be dead and done and to the dust. You should be swallowed by the sea, picked clean by salt and water, gone and forgotten. But here you are, hiccupping laugh after laugh as your brain struggles to catch up with reality. You’re so fucking grateful to be alive, so glad you survived, surprised at how overwhelming that feeling is. 

A moment of weakness and gratitude has you holding the mark up to the burning white glare of the lighthouse and marvelling at how it seems to absorb that bright light, even darker than black, all clean and sharp edges; you press your trembling lips to it with a whispered benediction, a wordless prayer of thanks to the unfeeling being that had let you live. 

You hadn’t wanted it, but that close brush with death—the sensation of weightlessness as you’d plummeted towards earth and sea—the absolute fear and terror and horror that had filled you—

Fuck, you’re fucking drunk and giddy on the sensation of still living.

(The mark flares under that touch of your lips, burns blue and electric as its humming cuts through you right to your very bones.)

The sky grows dark and the tide grows high and it takes so long for the world to settle into place, for corners and lines to turn on their point and reposition themselves in ways that make sense as your laughter finally dies.

Eventually you rise. You always do. 

You’re sore and aching from the blows rained down on you by the lightkeeper’s brutal fists, flexing your fingers as you gather your blade and pistol and wince at the pain that movement brings, shivering against the chill of the wind before you descend the ladder, once more enveloped by the darkness of this unholy sanctum. You whisper condolences to the long dead as you cast their corrupted bones to the floor and crush them underfoot, take whale bone charms and crack them apart in your hands—there’s one that gives you pause, a crescent moon of worn bone encircled in metal that fits perfectly in your palm. When you touch this charm your mark ripples ice-blue and royal purple, humming a duet with the runes etched in this bone that sing their graveyard songs.

You keep hold of that charm. The rest are destroyed. You pull gold-trimmed velvet from the walls, tear everything down, ignore the sound of rain and thunder that gathers outside. Lightning tears apart the sky, the echoes of an empty church that splits the clouds and crashes to the earth, the sea. An endless roar of nature that watches the silence as you cast shards of whale bone back to the sea where they belong, swallowed down by hungry seawater hundreds of feet below you.

It’s still hammering with rain by low tide, so many hours later, and you make your escape under a blanket of heavy cloud and relentless storm. Only the sea watches you leave.

“Where did you get this?”

Namjoon’s never liked stealing things even if he accepts that it’s necessary. He’s always talking about when things will be better, when you won’t have to live lean and life will be comfortable, not a struggle. When you’ll have gold in hand to buy the things you want, rather than having to turn to theft for the things you need to survive. Idealistic to a fault, perhaps, starry-eyed and with the full belief in the goodness and fairness of life underneath all the dirt and muck. 

“I’ve been saving money from my translation work.” His eyes are shining and his smile is wide and he looks like everything that’s good in the world. “Do you like it?”

Whale bone charms aren’t easy to come by, forbidden by the church and expensive to buy. You’ve never even seen one, let alone touched it, and it’s… beautiful. It’s two pieces of bone, held together by a circle of iron, warm to the touch and soothing to hold. Its singing grows quiet against your skin, turning into a near silent hum that only you can feel. You’ve only heard stories. You never knew that the singing was real.

“It’s meant to bring you good luck,” he says, watching as you turn it over in your hands, eyes trailing over delicate etchings in an ancient language you can’t read, lullabies carved by long dead hands. “Good fortune. I had to pay you back for the Academy somehow, didn’t I?”

“Fortune means gold, I hope?” 

He makes a noise that’s a mix of a scoff and a snort, an ugly sound that fills you with so much fondness that it aches. “When I’ve made the greatest invention that the Isles have seen, you won’t need a good luck charm for money. It’s just a matter of time.”

He’s smart enough to do it, burns bright enough to outshine the sun, and now that he can get a real education—even if it’s a stolen thing, a shadow of what he deserves, it’s more than either of you have received in the past, and it’s not just a pipe dream, any more. It feels closer than that. Something that’s almost in reach.

(You’re stark opposites in so many ways, given to the whims of superstition rather than his staunch belief in science, the pessimist to his optimist. It’s hard to think that there are better things on the horizon, that you’ll lift yourselves above your station—but he gives you hope. You believe him when he says that the future is bright.)

Your teasing smile turns genuine and soft at the edges as you look away from the charm and up to his face. “This is beautiful. Thank you.”

“Keep it safe,” he says.

“Watch me fling it out the window,” you say, and he laughs.

(Of course you’ll keep it safe. You’ll keep it safe, keep it close and protect it, just like you do with all the things you care about.)

The Visitor’s voice is faraway, the faintest whisper in the wind.

“My gift is yours now.”

You catch a glimpse of the Void behind him, waves of dark and shimmering splendour as you slip from the waking world and past the realm of dreams into this immeasurable place.

The mark on your hand ripples colours like sunlit water. You feel electrified, blood singing in your veins and whale bone pulsing in time, his sigil wreathed in chilling sea mist as magic thrums through the air around your hand.

Time passes through your fingers faster than sand as the Visitor disappears in a shiver of whale song and ash, and the Void spirals and fragments into nonexistence before you can answer, gratefully slipping into the heavy arms of sleep.

(For the briefest of moments, just before he’d collapsed into nothingness and the Void had whisked him away, he’d smiled.)

You don’t know why, but Namjoon’s been acting strange lately.

At first you thought it was just that he was distracted with learning, squirrelling himself away in his room to presumably read over whatever notes he’d taken during the lecture he’d eavesdropped on earlier that day. And then you thought it was because he was angry at you. You’ve been getting involved with some shady work, sure, stuff that he’s never liked—he doesn’t like the work you do for Jackson when times are hard, how you help their gang rob rich houses using your talent with lockpicking and subterfuge, but you have to take gold when you can get it. Namjoon knows that and he’s never acted like this about it before, so why now?

When you see him there’s something in his eyes that doesn’t belong there. Some discordant note in a familiar melody, a lullaby turned unfamiliar from a shift from a major into a minor key. You don’t know how to describe it, how to explain how you know that something’s wrong, but you just know that it is.

But when it all comes to a head, when the truth comes tumbling out, it’s nothing you ever would have expected.

You don’t even know how you got here. He’s wild-eyed, stepping forward as you step back, and you’ve never seen him like this before; you usually forget how tall he is but right now you can’t think of anything else. He’s backing you into a corner and he’s talking so quickly, almost babbling, talking about whispers and bones and how it’s calling out to him, it’s his, not yours—the bone charm he’d given you, the one you’d sewn into the lining of your coat to rest above your heart.

Each night it sings to him, he says. Its singing drifts through the wind to him, a voice that says his name. 

Obsession turned to insanity.

And it gets physical. He lunges at you—you shout at him to stop, equal parts confused and afraid—and you’re terrified. You don’t know who’s in front of you right now; he might wear your best friend’s face but it’s not Namjoon. He would never tear at you, pull your hair and bare his teeth and bruise your skin. But you know he’ll kill you to get the scrimshaw you hold, lulled into mania by its sibilant whale song. You’re screaming and he’s screaming too, all you can hear is his rising voice and the mess of words he keeps chanting at you, and you’re so, so scared. He’s never been aggressive like this, never gotten physical with you, never torn at your hair and clothes and you know he’ll kill you to get what he wants, you know he will, you can read it in every inch of his wide eyes and snarling teeth and lashing fists—

Instinct takes over.

You scrabble for your belt and your fingers close around the hilt of your knife.

Your hands are still shaking, later. There’s blood on your fingers, splattered on your clothes. The knife had slipped between his ribs so easily, metal wickedly sharp, slicing through skin and muscle like butter; you want to throw up, thinking about it. Instinctive as it was, even if it was to save your own life, adrenaline and fear fueled, you’d stabbed your best friend.

You’d stabbed him, and you hadn’t even stayed to help as he’d bled out on your kitchen floor. You’d turned tail and fled, run faster than you’d ever run before, run away from it all.

You’d killed him.

You’d killed Namjoon.

You’d killed Namjoon, and you’d run. The instant you'd realised what you’d done, seen the blood seeping through his shirt, painting your blade red, red, red—you’d abandoned him. You have nothing but the clothes on your back, the old knife in your hands, the whale bone above your heart, humming and throbbing, and the knowledge settling deep in your chest—you’d killed the one person you cared about the most in this entire world.

You know this city inside and out. You know where to run, to set a fire in a forgotten side alley, to strip your blood stained coat off and burn it, to cover the evidence of your misdeeds. 

You have to leave. You can’t come back. No one would ever suspect you of killing Namjoon—best friends from childhood, partners through thick and thin—but you can’t stay here.

(You have to run.)

You hold the charm in your hands. Its song had been a comfort, a reminder of Namjoon’s concern and support even when he hadn’t physically been there. But it seems warped and twisted now. Like the hissing of a snake, venomous and treacherous, poisoning someone you love until they were willing to kill you just to—to what? To hold the slither of magic in this scrimshaw etching? 

(How had it corrupted Namjoon while you’d remained unaffected?)

You cast it onto the flames. 

You burn it, this evil thing, stare as white bone turns to black ash, listen as its singing grows quieter and quieter until it falls silent.

taglist: @augustbutwinter @beyoncesdragon @vensulove​

[docholligay]

Ep 7: Nat

Hello! This is about up to Episode 7 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 7 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the seventh episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me.  Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like  “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember  that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you  talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all  I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I  could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please  just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

Oh Nat, what the fuck can I say about you that I haven’t said a thousand times before? Actually, i will say that I love that they are really giving Nat a bit of a heel turn here, because I was so prepared to be like, “Ah yes, the disconnected,cynical alternative girl is the only real one. Groundbreaking.” and I think the show has taken pains to show that, no, Nat doesn’t know jack shit, and she is a codependent asshole who seems to care only about Travis and refuses to let herself stop being hung up on that. But no, even her involvement with the blackmail, trying to shoot a man, suggesting that she is going to be able to figure out who did this and save it all, it’s all about Travis, it’s always about Travis, and as long as nat is fixed to that spot, it doesn’t actually matter what she learns because it will never ever be enough. She cannot let herself see other worlds. 

It’s a great and fun development for me when we show Travis about to go with the other girls, out of a sense of chivalry or whatever, and Nat straight up asks him not to go. Now we can debate all day long and off into the night whether or not it would actually be helpful for Travis to go or stay, but none of that has anything to do with Nat’s calculation here. It has everything to do with the fact that she’s selfish, that she wants him, that she is pinning so much to the two of them. She’s like an extreme opposite of Taissa’s lack of emotional engagement with Van. Travis is the only part of her future she can see, and it’s equal parts compelling and pathetic.I suppose I will grudgingly admit that I like where she tries to generically sexy-talk, and Travis rejects it. He wants Nat to be Nat, even when they’re fucking. 

 I wasn’t sure where I wanted to put this, such things that straddle the girls are always difficult to handle, but when Tai talks about how they got home lives, and Nat got nothing, I want to point out that this was always Nat’s choice. I have my own feelings about Tai and Shauna’s marriages and children and why the exist, maybe for another time, but Nat literally just…opted out of all of that in order to bum around with Travis and get drunk and do drugs togerher, and even after he disappeared on her, perhaps sending a bit of a signal, she kept pursuing the same path. Nat is to blame for at least 75% of Nat’s problems. Ma’am you are in your 40s. 

I don’t disagree with Nat, really, when she says they are just as fucked up as she is, but where I do disagree with her is where she says they’re lying to themselves. I don’t think that being able to figure out how to behave in public and keep from setting yourself on fire for at least 20 years is lying. I think it’s choosing to move on despite it all. Nat is very much not doing that. And, don’t mistake me, I think Shauna does a pretty bad job of it, and Taissa certainly has the wolf coming to get her, but I think both of them have TRIED more than Nat, who it feels like very much decided the nightmare she was gong to live in and then made that her reality. But this is part of convincing herself that she’s ‘real’ while the others are not. That she alone has a clear eye. 

Even the momentary realization that Kevyn is nice to her, and that Kevyn is stable, and that maybe, with him, she could have some semblance a normal, together, reasonable life, does less than nothing for her. He is a means to an end: she found our about Travis, she got to use his gun, it wouldn’t matter how much she got away with, with him, she would always try take more because she doesn’t know how to be happy and she doesn’t trust it. She has be outrightly cruel to Kevyn because she has to fucking convince herself that this is somehow still all her idea, that her isolation is a function of desire, and not a function of something irrevocably broken in her, that she has never made a real effort to fix. 

I’m wondering if it was Natalie who came up with the whole pit idea, as Tai suggests they wouldn’t be here without her, and Shauna even directly references being dragged into her “pit” of guilt. Could this be part of why Nat is so fucked up, is she knows she was directly responsible for murder? Does she ever wish it was her?

[lemonpeter]

Time Will Tell

Chapter 2

Hi y’all 💕 sorry I’ve been pretty slow with content. So busy and tired with school and all. Not much energy/time for writing lol but I’m still here. Promise. I hope y’all enjoy this 💕

Warnings: d//s dynamics, natural d//s designation, recovering Bucky, past Bucky/Steve mentioned, background Tony/Steve, lemme know if I need to tag any more

Reminder for this au: avengers are a thing, Bucky was the Winter Soldier, all that stays. But Peter does not have powers.

Chapter 1 here

***

The drive to the compound was…different.

Bucky was too wrapped up in the worry of doing something wrong that he barely registered anything that Peter was saying. And the sub didn’t stop talking.

He really needed to take a look at his file when they got to their destination.

“- will there be a phone I can use? I need to call my aunt and tell her. I used to have my own phone but it broke and the last dom I was with wouldn’t get me a new one. Will I be able to get a new one maybe? Nah, I don’t wanna ask for too much. Never mind.”

Jesus, did this kid ever take a breath?

“Where are we going? I know this isn’t towards Brooklyn, mister-“

“Shh. Please. For thirty seconds.” Bucky took a deep breath. He didn’t want to be mean. But god, the talking.

Peter instantly deflated, cheeks flushing. “Sorry. I talk a lot when I’m nervous. Or excited. I’ll try to get it under control.”

The dom glanced at him. Guilt settled in his stomach as he caught the expression on the sub’s face. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just not used to…all this.”

The young man nodded, hands fidgeting in his lap. “You seem quiet. So I can see that.”

“Yeah. I guess I am.” He looked to the road again. “We’re not going home yet. We’re going to the Avenger’s compound.”

Peter sucked in a sharp, excited breath. “What-“

“I’m not finished yet. We’ll stay there for tonight and figure out how things will work at home. And yes, there will be a phone you can use. And we’ll see about getting you a new one.”

The submissive nearly purred with his excitement. “Thank you, sir.”

Bucky smiled a little. “No problem.”

***

They got out once they’d reached their destination and Peter was immediately hyper again.

“This is so cool! Wow, this place is big.” Peter gripped the straps of his backpack - all the things he had with him inside.

Bucky frowned a little at that. They’d have to go shopping for more as soon as possible. “Yeah, it’s big. Stark…likes to be dramatic.”

Peter opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by someone else.

“I resent that. And to think I was coming out to welcome you with open arms.” Tony stepped outside, eyes on Bucky.

“I thought the place would be empty when we came.” Bucky wasn’t thrilled to see the other dominant. Sure, Tony was a good guy. But there were some things that Bucky just couldn’t get over. Although he was sure there was some of that on both sides.

“Well, we decided that it could be nice to meet your new sub. Plus it’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

We. Bucky knew exactly what that meant. His stomach twisted as he thought about Peter meeting Steve. It was too soon, he didn’t have time to prepare.

Steve would know he was with someone. Or if he was there then he probably already knew. How would he react? Would things be weird? Would they change? Maybe all of it was just a bad idea-

Breathing felt nearly impossible as he ran through everything that could happen.

“Sir?” Peter made his way to Bucky’s side, staring up at his dom. “Breathe, it’s okay. I don’t mind that he’s here.”

Right, Peter wouldn’t think anything of it. His panic looked from the outside like it was directly related to Tony being there.

If only it was that easy.

The dom nodded a little, sliding his hand over the small of his sub’s back. It was such an unfamiliar motion, but it felt natural. He liked it. “I’m okay, I’m breathing. I’m glad you don’t mind.” He looked at Tony. “We don’t have anything to carry in. We’ll just settle into my room.”

“Alright, if you say so. I think Stevie was planning to fix dinner soon if you two haven’t eaten yet.”

Bucky’s stomach growled, betraying him. He hadn’t even thought to stop for food. Was Peter hungry too? He was so bad at this, he should have thought to ask. “Sure, maybe we can all eat together.”

Tony grinned. “Alright. We’ll be in the kitchen, just the little attached dining room. Feel free to join if you want.” He walked back inside after a lingering look at Peter.

The sub didn’t notice, eyes on Bucky. “Should we go in?” He could tell how tense the dominant was. Although he didn’t want to overstep, he had no idea what was okay for him to do. He’d never been with anyone like Bucky. And he didn’t really know what he was doing in general.

“Yeah, we should.” Bucky snapped himself out of it, smiling weakly. “I’ll show you to the room, you can change if you want. I can show you around.”

Peter nodded, eyes wide. “Okay! Lead the way.”

Bucky nodded, following through the same door that Tony had gone through. But he took a different route once inside, leading the sub to his room.

Peter followed right behind him, lips parted slightly as he looked around in amazement. Everything was so high tech and impressive and just- wow.

The dom looked back, smiling a little. “It’s a wonder, ain’t it. Yeah, Stark made sure to fit this place with all his newest stuff.” Even if he stole Bucky’s sub, he was still a genius. That couldn’t be denied.

“So cool,” the sub mumbled. “I’ve followed his work since I was little…but all this stuff that wasn’t seen by the public is…wow….”

“So you like science?”

Peter nodded, still taking in the sights around him. “Yeah, I do. Engineering, robotics, chem stuff, all that. Although I don’t have much…chance to do anything with it.” Things like that weren’t usually offered to submissives.

“That’s cool,” Bucky murmured. “We’ll have to see about classes or something.” Was that a thing? Could he do that?

“Thank you, uh…” he trailed off awkwardly. “I just realized I don’t know what to call you.” Peter’s cheeks colored. “I know whoever you were with called you James, but I wasn’t sure if you wanted anything specific. I know some doms are picky about not wanting their subs to call them by their names or anything.” He started rambling nervously, finally turning his eyes to the dominant.

Bucky smiled fondly at him. Then he realized that he didn’t really have an answer for him. “Uh, you can call me whatever. I really prefer Bucky over James, though. Or you could just address me as sir or something like that. Whatever you want.”

He was the worst dominant ever. He didn’t even know what he wanted to be called. He didn’t think most doms were okay with their subs calling them by name.

Oh well.

“Okay…Bucky,” Peter tried, testing it out. “Hey, where does that come from anyway? If your name is James.”

“My middle name,” Bucky supplied quickly, unlocking the door once they reached their destination.

Peter nodded. “Which is?”

“Don’t you dare laugh at me. It’s Buchanan.”

The submissive stared at him, lips pressed together as he clearly tried not to laugh. “Oh. Interesting.”

Bucky sighed. “Yeah. Well, it is what it is.” He snorted. “Anyways, here we are. You can change, look around. Whatever you want.”

Peter stepped inside hesitantly before setting his backpack on the bed. “Thank you.”

He unzipped it and frowned, looking inside. There was hardly anything, a few sets of clothes, hygiene items, and a single old star wars figure. He had more at May’s, but still not much.

He pulled out an old tee shirt and laid it out on the bed. He could keep on the same jeans that he was wearing but a change of top would be nice.

He pulled his top off, making an annoyed sound when his glasses got moved. He took them off and set them down to finish getting his shirt off. Then he remembered the dom behind him, smiling a little. “I, uh, I hope this is okay. If you wanted me to look nice I can wear something else.”

Bucky fought to keep his eyes up as he shook his head. “You can wear whatever you want. I don’t mind.”

Peter tried to fight down his smile. “Thank you. And you can look, it’s not a big deal. You’re my dom now, after all.” He shrugged, hands sliding over his sides gently.

He was thin. Probably too thin, but that would hopefully change with him being in Bucky’s care. Not much muscle to him, but that was okay. He was small and dainty and perfect.

Bucky could almost picture Steve as the one in front of him.

He knew that was probably really wrong. But he couldn’t help it.

Peter flushed slightly under his gaze, pulling his other shirt on. “Yeah. So, that’s my torso. Hope it’s okay, you didn’t look beforehand. Sorry if it’s disappointing.”

“What? No, it’s good. It’s a good…stomach.” Why was he so awkward?

The sub snorted. “Thanks. Well,” he held his hands out. “I hope this is okay. It’s definitely more comfortable.” He pulled at the tight collar that had been put on before he left. Bucky had already unclipped the leash in the car but left the collar on.

Bucky watched him. “Do you want to take that off?”

“Can I? I mean, I wasn’t sure if that would…be okay with you….”

The dom reached over, undoing the collar and tossing it onto the bed. Peter’s neck was rubbed raw in places and irritated nearly all the way around. If he’d known that then he would have taken it off much sooner. “We’ll need to get you one that actually fits.” He frowned. “And you look cute. Do you wanna look around the room some more? Or are you hungry?”

“Honestly…pretty hungry. I didn’t get to have breakfast. Or lunch. So….”

Bucky frowned. “Okay, food it is. Let’s see what Steve is cooking up.”

***

They could smell cooking dinner all the way down the hallway.

Bucky tried to ready himself. Steve was going to meet his submissive. He was officially off the market.

He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that yet.

They walked into the kitchen, Peter right behind Bucky.

Steve turned around, grinning when he saw the dom. “Hey, pal.”

The dominant waved slightly, not trusting himself to open his mouth. Steve should have been his sub. Things shouldn’t have changed.

They could have lived their lives together just like they’d talked about back in the day. And it was acceptable now, no one would even bat an eye.

Things could have been so perfect.

A small hand gripping at his jacket brought him back to the present. He wasn’t with Steve. He never would be. And he had a new submissive.

He turned to look at Peter. “Hey, doll. You okay?”

Peter scratched at his neck. “Yeah. Sorry, just didn’t want to get too far from you.”

Bucky nodded. “That’s okay. It’s good that you’re sticking close.” Positive reinforcement. Subs liked that, right? “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Steve watched them, an unimpressed look crossing his face. But he didn’t comment on it. “I’ve almost got dinner ready. Peter, can you help me set the table?”

The younger submissive frowned. He didn’t want to be treated like a housewife just because of his designation. “Um…”

He looked up at Bucky, unable to hide his feelings about the task.

The dom didn’t really catch on, however, giving him a gentle push. He figured maybe he just didn’t want to move away from him. “Help Stevie, doll. It’ll just take a second,” Bucky encouraged. Although he figured that he completely misread the situation when Peter left with a huff.

Steve rolled his eyes and set out the plates and silverware before moving back to the stove. Leave it to Bucky to pick the worst sub in existence.

Maybe that was just his own bias.

Bucky sat down at the table, Tony coming in and taking her seat across from him.

They watched the subs, Tony smiling when Peter set his plate in front of him. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that,” the sub mumbled under his breath.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Feisty, aren’t we? Alright, message received.” His eyes dropped to the fresh cut on the sub’s lip. “How’d you get that?”

Bucky cleared his throat uncomfortably. He didn’t see this going well. “Tony, stop. Peter-“

“You don’t have the authority to tell me to stop.” The other dom leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I asked him a question.”

Peter glared at him, stepping closer. “I punched a dom who disrespected my friend. He punched back.” He threw down Tony’s silverware. “And I’m not afraid to do it again, I don’t care who you are.”

Tony blinked, taken aback. “You little-“

“Peter, come here.” Bucky tried to sound stern, but it just came off embarrassed. “Now.”

The sub stood his ground for a moment, holding eye contact with the dom before going to him.

“You need to apologize.”

“No.” Peter crossed his arms. “I don’t want him to call me pet names. And I don’t want him to be nosy. I shouldn’t have to answer.”

Tony waved his hand, ignoring the sub. “It’s fine, he’s adjusting. Not a big deal.” He looked at Bucky. “But he needs some training. Not everyone will be as understanding as me.”

Bucky saw Peter stiffen and reached out to grab his arm. That way he couldn’t lunge at Tony or anything. “Okay. I’ll look into it.”

“Good.” Tony shook his head, sighing. He looked over at Steve. “Ready, honey?”

Steve nodded, bringing the food to the table. Once he was finished he sat down next to Tony, glancing at Bucky.

The other dom looked at Peter, letting go of him. “Okay, sit here.” He patted the seat next to him. It was the furthest place he could be from the other two.

Peter sat down, staring at his plate.

Bucky gave the other two a tense smile. “Everything smells really great. Good job, pal.”

Dinner was sure to be awkward.

***

Bucky learned quickly that Peter wasn’t like most subs.

He wouldn’t take being treated differently because of his designation. And he didn’t want to be patronized (although who did.)

He was quick to pick a fight over whatever he saw fit even though physically he was always going to lose. He held firm to what he believed.

But he began to soften when he saw that Bucky needed him.

Sure, Peter wasn’t like most subs. But he was so much like the one Bucky missed.

Maybe he should have thought it all through before getting a sub involved.

***

Something was bugging Steve about the other sub. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Laying in bed that night he kept going over it in his mind.

“Peter just seems really…familiar, that’s all.” Steve sighed, leaning into Tony’s touch. “Do you think they’ll last?”

Tony hummed. “I don’t know. Subs like that usually don’t find a permanent place. They need a serious firm hand and - no offense - but I don’t think your buddy knows what he’s getting into.”

The sub nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right. But hey, I turned out okay, right? And I was…just…like him….” He trailed off, eyes narrowed as it hit him.

“You did. But you weren’t that bad, honey.”

“No, I was. But not when you got me.” He was when Bucky had him.

That asshole was replacing him.