#water dispenser features

[paladincecil]

So in the end my nephew didn't show up because he was sleeping. I got my day back \o/

My kettle wouldn't turn on this morning so I've been looking at new ones. My old one was just a basic plastic £15 one I've had for 8 years so I'm getting myself a nice stainless steel one that has a few different features with stuff like variable temperature and one cup fast boil. Cost me £80 but after researching for multiple hours I think I've picked one that should last for a good long while.

The place I ordered it from even has it in stock at the local store so I'm gonna go walk down there to pick it up to save myself a couple quid from not having it delivered xD

[ilovetoxicfictionalmen]

NO MORE TEASING

Pairing : Cillian Murphy x fem! reader

Summary : You’re Cillian’s make up artist and set a ‘professional boundary’. Cillian decides to take what’s his when production is wrapped.

Warnings : Dubcon, fingering, blow job, dominating,

Word count : 1.9k

“You’re staring again” he grinned at you, those ocean blue eyes eating you whole. Indeed you were. The vanity’s lights illuminated your soft features, your focused expression and most importantly your plump lips which made Cillian’s blood flow like a river.

“I have to stare” you sighed with a blank expression. Your snarky response made him pull a face and you could feel him tugging at the hem of your top, his fingertips slipping underneath to brush against your skin.

“Ouch” he murmured as you continued fanning the brush over his cheeks.

Sighing to yourself, you continued your work. The silence was poetic. Cillian loved just watching you do what you do most passionately. The way your eyebrows scrunched together, how you bit your lower lip and the slight squint of your eyes. Most importantly he loved how you were staring so intensely at him, your undefying attention was stuck on him.

Finishing with one last sigh, you dropped your materials on the desk behind him and took a step back to imply that you were done, your hip poking out to the side a little. Cillian sighed and grabbed onto your hands softly, pulling you back towards him.

“I can’t wait to take you out after production is wrapped” he admitted, a gleeful smile on his lips.

“You say that with so much confidence” you scoffed slightly, pulling your hands free of his grasp after one tug. Cillian pouted as you walked across the room and poured yourself a cup of water from the dispenser.

Context, he asked you out at every chance he got, and a few more times in between that. For some insane reason you declined every time he practically begged you to treat you like a goddess. It was still undecided, if you wanted to go out on a date or whatever it may be with him. Maybe it was the age difference, or maybe it was because you just felt too insecure that he’d let you go mid production. How could you face him after that?

But Cillian was a catch, a charming gentleman who’s succession went miles. He was kind, gentle, passionate, emotional and intelligent. Everyone on set would kill to have a shot with the Irish bachelor. Yet, he was determined to have you, and only you.

People would be able to mistake your cheeks to have red paint on them by the way you would blush crazily every time someone would comment on the way that he looked at you. All of the women were jealous of you, the small town girl that managed to whip an A-list actor with the grace of your smile. Little did they know you were whipped just as hard for the dreamy stag.

“Come here” Cillian whispered, curling his finger towards him to summon you. As you approached him, he pulled your forearms closer to him.

Almost naturally, you straddled him and he stroked your cheek as he hummed. Neither of you could resist having another sneaky made out session. It almost felt like destiny with how you two had an empty trailer together. Tugging on each other's hair and rocking your hips over his, your tongues were fighting for dominance. Cillian won, effortlessly. These risky moments were fun, but the finest moments were when you talked emotionally and intimately to one another, discovering each other’s souls, developing a strong spiritual relationship with one another.

Suddenly, there was a bang on the door and a production worker called Cillian to set. You pulled away from him, he sighed and rolled his eyes. “You should go” you mumbled, brushing his hair back and wiping his lips with the back of your thumb.

“You’re such a little tease, you know that right?” Cillian chuckled as you slid off of him.

“Guilty” you smirked and opened the door before he could try to make another sneaky move on you. Cillian sighed heavily and stood up, he stood before the open door and looked you up and down slowly, his hand brushing yours that rested on the door before leaving without another word.

Then just like that, the production was wrapped. Your work with Cillian was done, but you were still trying to figure out if your little affair with him was over as well. Liking Cillian was an understatement, you were passionate about him but the ideas of the media as well as your personal relationships frightened you. You wished you could just run away together, be free from the world, have peace with him. But that would never be an option.

There was a celebratory party with the cast and other production workers. Cillian urged you to go with him, but you declined his offer multiple times. He even offered to skip the party and take you out instead. But you forced him to enjoy himself with his friends. The idea of being with him, intoxicated, intimidated you. What if he just took advantage of you and left you without another word. No, he wouldn’t do that.

Here you were instead, comfy on your couch with an empty bottle of wine and a second half full, as you watched your favorite sitcom. Your head rested on your propped arm on the couch’s arm.

You couldn’t help but to miss Cillian despite it only being a few days. The two of you were still messaging, but he has to get ready to move to a different production set. You missed the way he’d admire you, that thick enchanting Irish accent of his, looking into his mesmerizing blue eyes. Perhaps you did want to give it a shot, give him a shot, even though you weren’t exactly sure what he wanted to offer you. But hey, when else will you get an opportunity like this?

Occasionally you’d look down to your phone and read the messages Cillian was constantly sending. About how boring it was and how he just wanted to be with you. The wine made you feel a bit cheeky.

You just want to fuck me.

The seen mark appeared immediately. But the typing box didn’t appear, you watched the screen until it turned dark. You couldn’t help but to feel anxious, and a bit hurt over being left on read. Tempted to message him again, you chose not to and turned off your phone, trying to focus on the show instead.

Almost an hour later, you were dozing off to sleep when there was a knock on the front door. Your eyebrows furrowed as you looked over to the door, who was here at this hour? But then your heart raced with excitement and suspense that it could be him.

You got up, brushed your hair back and waddled over to the door. Opening it slowly, your suspicions were confirmed.

“Hi” Cillian whispered, gently swaying by the door, he leaned against the frame as he smirked to you.

“Cillian” you gasped lightly, looking him up and down. He did look charming, the way his trousers snatched his waist and how his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

“I couldn’t stop thinking of you” he confessed, looking at your body slowly down.

“Cillian” you repeat yourself, in a warning tone this time as he stepped inside your flat. “How did you even know where I lived?”

“I have my ways” he shrugged his shoulders, his hands caressing your hips, a gentle moan escaping his lips.

“You’re drunk” you said sternly, but he didn’t care.

“So are you” he countered, his eyes quickly darting over to the bottles of wine on the coffee table.

Exhaling, you took a few steps back but Cillian took as many forward twice as quick. Before you know it, you’re pressed up against the wall with Cillian breathing by your ear. The scent of Guinness heavy on his breath as his hands slowly but firmly run up and down your torso.

“Cillian” you whispered, slowly looking up to him.

“I like the way you say my name, but I think I’d like the way you scream it more” he groaned, a wide grin on his lips.

The passion sparked off each other as you crashed your lips together. His cold hands excited your nerves as he ran them up and down your skin underneath your top. Lightly moaning into his mouth, Cillian’s groin pressed against your abdomen, slowly humping against you. His erection was tenting in his jeans already. His hands grabbed the sides of your face as he began rubbing his groin against yours. You moaned out, eyes slowly rolling back.

“Get on your knees, love” his tone was quiet yet stern.

You fell to your knees quicker than you thought you would. Naturally, you obeyed your sexual desires and ran your palms down his crotch. He gave a gentle nod of approval as you unbuckled his belt. Assisting you to tug his jeans down enough to free his member, you gulped at his size. The room was dimmed but you could feel the veins that wrapped up his length.

“Come on, be a good girl” he encouraged you, stroking your cheeks.

Doing as he said, your lips wrapped around his size. A slow hiss echoed through the hallway as you took him inside your mouth, more and more. With your tongue wagging around underneath his cock, his hands slipped into your hair, guiding you to go at a quicker pace. You opened your eyes and he was staring right at you, his mouth ajar open as his fingers gently massaged your scalp.

“That’s right, taking my cock like a good little whore” he spoke in a slow low tone.

His words shocked you. You would have never guessed him to say such a vulgar thing so openly. Your eyes widened with uneasiness as he patted your cheek. Attempted you pulled your head back, you were stopped by his hands, holding you in place with a wicked grin on his lips.

“Always getting me all hot and bothered right before shooting. Such a fucking minx, torturing my fucking cock” Cillian growled, picking up the pace so his cock was hitting the back of your throat. It was impossible not to gag on his size, your jaw beginning to act at his thrusts.

“Almost there” Cillian mumbled. Shortly after that, he fulfilled his promise and shot his ropes of white right down your throat. You didn’t like semen, it tasted foul, so you whined at the taste as he held your head down on his size until you struggled to swallow it all.

Cillian pulled you back up and pinned you against the wall once more. A harsh kiss was planted onto your lips. “I won’t fuck you, not yet. I’m a gentleman, I want to make it romantic for you. But I do need to feel you, right now” he hissed, his hand slipping into your bottoms.

The sudden touch to your clit shocked your nerves and you moaned. There was this animalistic sound that came from him as he felt how soaked your cunt was. Easily, his digits slipped deep into your canal.

“Cillian” you moaned out his name over and over again.

“You like my fingers eh?” Cillian smirked, his thumb circling over your clit.

Biting the inside of your lower lip, you were trying hard not to come undone right there and then. But the both of you knew how quickly he was pushing you over the edge. Sucking onto the side of your neck, your thighs squeezed his hand as you screamed out his name. Your orgasm was a tsunami, you struggled to stand straight, but Cillian made sure to hold you up.

With a huff, Cillian slipped out his wet hand and grabbed onto your cheek with the same hand, making you look at him.

“You’re mine alright? No more silly games, no more teasing, no more denying me. You’re going to submit to me, you got it?” Cillian ordered.

[ventique18]

Papa 🐉 with triplets HCs

When going overseas for official duties, he prefers not to be cooped up in that weird iron bird creature (it's an airplane, hun). So he instead flies to the country in his dragon form. Imagine people's awe when this gigantic, magnificent creature lands gracefully, lowers his head down carefully, and out of his mouth hops not one, not two, but three little dragons. They're so tiny you could swear they're cute little dogs.

He always goes to meetings clad in heavy robes. More often than not though, his mysterious cloak has a peculiar feature: it produces three sets of giggling voices every once in a while, especially when the room goes deadly silent.

Once an hour passes though, three little tykes get magicked out of the cloak like how a bunny hops out of a magician's hat. The wyrmlings like to climb on and off papa's back and munch on his horns. Everyone could only glance in amazement at how strong their Majesty's neck muscles must be to withstand the weight.

The three siblings still have very small wings but would always attempt to fly. 🌸 always almost has a heart attack when they inevitably come crashing down from their disproportionate weight, but 🐉 would save them the last second with his magic. He'd laugh loudly and hug 🌸 to reassure them none of their babies would get into accidents while he's alive.

I say accident because the three would frequently get hurt on purpose anyway. Their parents don't understand why, but one of their hobbies seem to be beating each other up in any way they could think of. 🐉🌸 would often wake up in the dead of the night because one sibling hurled another off the bed, simply because he/she was hogging 🌸's chest apparently. 🌸's chest is their favorite snuggle spot.

While 🐉 frankly doesn't have all the time in the world, he strictly employs a 8-5 work hour like a regular person. He doesn't really mind working but ever since he's started a family, he believes this is finally his god-given grace so he'll do it properly. His spouse is very capable in assisting him so they never really had problems with this arrangement.

So he likes to be closer to his babies and feeds them personally while it's still normal. He kinda just force-feeds them mashed food with a spoon in a row though. "Can't you make it more fun? Like, open wide, here comes the flying broom!" "I am simply not a sappy person." "You feed me while saying cheesy shit though..." "I cannot very well say those kinds of things to my children."

When he bathes them, he makes them line up and dunks them into a pool one by one. When they're in their dragon form, he scrubs them with a brush like he's doing laundry.

He hangs them on a clothesline to dry them on a sunny day lmao. "What are you doing to our babies??" "What? They enjoy it." Fair enough, the little gremlins are giggling.

When 🐉🌸 gets one those snazzy refrigerators with a water faucet and ice dispenser in front, the siblings like to sit on top of each other's shoulders so they could steal ice cubes for themselves. Or lap at the running water like thirsty dogs.

Grim has dedicated water bowls all over the place because he finds it hard to pour from a pitcher, and the feral siblings actually prefer lapping from those than go to the refreshments table to fetch a drink. The first time 🐉🌸 saw this, they were so shocked they kinda just stared blankly.

"Are... Are they actually dogs..." "I do not know, at this point." "Did you do this too when you were little?" "We did not have any semblance of a pet so I do not think so." Lilia reveals later though, that 🐉 drank from the damn toilet once.

He likes teaching them all manners of things. He gets a bit too intense sometimes though, what with them failing over and over again on what he thinks to be simple tasks, so 🌸 has to remind him gently that they are not him and shouldn't ever be him. He lets up and smiles. Yes, this is what children are supposed to be.

He legitimately doesn't have any ounce of experience with fatherhood and was suddenly thrust with three, so 🌸 honestly thinks he's a bit clumsy when it comes to taking care of them. Really clumsy and callous, actually.

But when 🌸 chances upon their three babies curled up against him, with him napping soundly and still holding an illustrated book on gargoyles and their history (goodness, he never changes), they thought he wasn't so bad after all.

Thinking harder about it though, what with him carrying the weight of the country while carrying the weight of three chubby babies and a feral cat, he might be the best father ever, after all.

[quirkwizard]

What do you think Class 1-A's action figures would look like in universe?

Non-quirk related question haha. What do you think class 1A's barbie-ken taglines would be? Not sure how to frame the question but for example for Tokoyami it could be, "This Ken is gothic" or for Ochako it could be, "This Barbie is on cloud nine" (due to her quirk)

I mean, I'm not sure if there is much to say on that. I feel like any taglines for actions figures would just be pretty generic, but I can talk about action figures.

Sato: Comes with a series of small snacks that you can feed him to cause him to bulk up and you pop open the stomach to get them back.

Koda: Just a simple figurine of him with a bunch of small animal models that you can play with as well. Comes with a button to play animal sounds.

Mineta: Orbs on the head are removable and the toy comes with arms that catapult the orbs forward. Possibly with a pointless target pad that no kid will use.

Sero: His tape dispensers can be pulled out like a rip cord, letting the action figure pull itself to whatever you put the doll on. Filling them with regular tape did not work well with test audiences.

Aoyama: Armor is made of a super reflective material that shimmers and has a flashlight in the belt to replicate his beam. Also comes with a lot of costume variants and accessories at Aoyama's instance.

Hakagure: Like Aoyama, her toy is very reflective, almost like a giant prism that gives off colorful lights when put up to any light. A stocking issue made it a hard to find collector's item for a time.

Ojiro: The tail can be curled up and then released, causing the action figure to fling forward. This curling can be used to make it hang on stuff as well. His tail also comes with "kung fu action grip", because of course it does.

Denki: Comes with a bunch of flashing lights and sounds for his electrical attacks. Has a swithcable head for his regular face and his low power face, much to Denki's chagrin. Batteries are not included for some reason.

Jiro: Definitely has some music aspect for it's main gimmick, like being able to use her jacks to plug your MP3 player into it to play music on it or having recordings of her songs on it when you press a button on it.

Kirsihima: Either has a bunch of plates on it that you can put on him to harden him up or you push a button to pop them out of the toy. Had issues in production because of how dangerous the hair spike was for kids.

Mina: Has an action figure with a lot articulation. It's main feature is a goo that comes with it that kids are suppose to put in and fire out of the toy. They fill it up by removing head and pouring the goo in, much to Mina's horror.

Shoji: The main feature would obviously be his arms. They'd either work like super stretchy arms or have a much of attachments that a kid could connect and stack on top of each other to add on whatever organs they want.

Iida: This figure with a set up buttons that can kick the legs forward, able to demolish any stack of cups that you happen to set up. He happens to be bundled a lot with overly complex, Ingeium themed cars, much to Iida's confusion.

Tsuyu: Has a lot of suckers on the hands and feet so you can stick it to surfaces. The tongue can be shoot out as well to grab onto stuff, kind of like those sticky hand toys. Yes, it is water proof and a popular bath toy for young children.

Tokoyami: Probabley has a standard figure with Dark Shadow with larger versions of it being sold separately. The parts of Dark Shadow can be removed and put onto Tokoyami for his armored form. It has a glow in the dark feature, without a doubt.

Shoto: Comes with fire and ice attachment to simulate shooting it out of his hands and feet. The scar was on the wrong side of a better part of it's run and it's occasionally bundled with Endeavor toys to help increase Enji's poor sales.

Momo: Her costume had to be changed on the figurine in order to be sold in stores. She comes with a massive amount of accessories to have her wield, along with little facts and tidbits about them. Momo demanded that her toy had some educational merits.

Katsuki: Probably has some spring power launcher in his arms that you can use to fire out plastic darts. Definitely has something that screams out catchphrases like "Die!" and "I'll kill you!" that would have to be rewrite and recorded several times to get them published.

Uraraka: Has a button that makes her hands glow like she does when she uses her powers along with has wench systems like Sero for her grapple hooks. Probably has a weird spin off line based around it, like Uraravity's Space Adventures featuring the Alien Queen Pinky.

Izuku: The most popular and with the most variations, though the standard ones glows with a button press, has spring shoots for the boots, and an spring in the hand to fire plastic air blasts. Sometimes comes out with special versions that come with other Quirks he had.

[gaypleasantview]

Day 4: Blood Sweat & Tears // Object Set #1

Set includes:

⋆ Sulainey's Period Supply Stuff Pack, converted from TS4

⋆ ATS2 Cold Misery Hot Water Bottle, recolored in Poppet's Back to Basics palette

Link, swatch and more info under the cut ♡

Hey! The song name I picked for this today is a typical period situation. But worry not, your sims can now have some comfort with this set of handy thingies! They're all purely decorative, though, but it's the thought that counts.

I've been feeling like there's not nearly enough menstrual products for simmies in TS2 so I kept thinking that I should learn to make objects and convert something. Wasn't until ages after that I randomly stumbled upon Sulainey's set and fell in love. It's really cute! That's how I converted my first object ever - a box. And a bunch of other stuff afterwards.

I thought that it would be a good addition to the set to make some hot water bottle recolors, because I'd never seen any at all and I think this is a very cool thing to own. Don't use a Pepsi bottle filled with hot water like I used to and let your sims get the real thing and live happily. Especially since it comes in cute Poppet colors (as well as a couple accidental new shades made with the same actions).

Everything is compressed and comes with descriptions. I also made a tiny edit to the ATS2 mesh, making the thumbnail appear slightly bigger than the original so that it's easier to pick a color. Hope everything works well in your game and you enjoy it!

Credits: Sulainey and Around The Sims 2 for their creations, JinxxSims for the amazing object conversion tutorial, PineappleForest for the thumbnail tutorial and many other incredibly useful tips, Poppet for the color actions.

☁ Object list

Menstrual cup - 1067 poly (lowered from 6386), 256x256 textures, 5 colors

Menstrual cup box - 12 poly, 512x512 textures, 2 colors

Pad - 884 poly (lowered from 8657), 128x128 textures, 5 colors

Pad box - 12 poly, 512x512 textures, 6 colors

Pad dispenser - 12 poly, 1024x1024 textures, 5 colors x 2 versions; wall object

Simdol (painkiller box) - 12 poly, 512x512, 2 colors

Tampon - 560 poly (lowered from 7094), 128x128 textures, 4 colors

Tampon box - 12 poly, 512x512 textures, 5 colors

Tampon (wrapped) - 407 poly (lowered from 9726), 256x256 textures, 5 colors

All objects are decorative and can be found under Plumbing/Miscellaneous.

Also included:

Collection file for the Sulainey Period Supply Stuff Pack

Mesh edit of ATS2 Hot Water Bottle + 22 recolors in 256x256 textures, found under Decorative/Miscellaneous

☁ Download

SFS | Mediafire

☁ Swatch

⋆ Sulainey Period Supply Stuff Pack: Individual items. Pictured: pads, tampons (wrapped & unwrapped), menstrual cups

⋆ Sulainey Period Supply Stuff Pack: Boxes. Pictured: pad boxes (back left), menstrual cup boxes (back right), tampon boxes (front left), Simdol (front right)

⋆ Sulainey Period Supply Stuff Pack: Pad dispenser. Comes in 5 colors (as seen below), with Simlish text or with no text.

⋆ ATS2 Hot Water Bottle. You can easily pick any color you like by the file name. This swatch features all of the colors in the alphabetical order (left to right, top to bottom).

[honourablejester]

Random half-baked 5e thought, but as the spooky month approaches, I’m reminded that I really, really want to play a Stars Druid for horror. Just. A lot.

It’s just the imagery of stars and omens that permeates the subclass. Starry Form, you become a piece of the night sky, your body a dark canvas on which glowing constellations paint themselves. Omens, weal or woe. Constellations, to dispense healing or radiant judgement. If you like cosmic horror, and I quite like cosmic horror, there’s such a temptation there.

And. There’s a background in Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, called the Haunted One, which is that your entire character history is dominated by a dark event or secret that, well, haunts you. You get a feature, Heart of Darkness, which is just that people looking at you can tell that you have seen some shit and will try to help you out if you haven’t pissed them off, and you also get a ‘Harrowing Event’. Which is that dark event that dogs your footsteps. And one of them is the following:

“You were born under a dark star. You can feel it watching you, coldly and distantly. Sometimes it beckons you in the dead of night.”

And sometimes, if you’re a Stars Druid, it beckons you from within your body. Every time you invoke Starry Form. There’s a constellation on your body, a dragon or a chalice or an archer, but there’s also, every time, somewhere on your skin, in your bones, shining from your flesh, another, darker, more distant star. Maybe you can’t see it yourself, in that form, not always, but you can feel it.

You’re a child of omen. You were born under a dark star. A watching star. And you like to think you could have run from it, but instead you carry it with you. Within your skin. Within your magic.

Was it on purpose? Your birth? The difference between ‘circle’ and ‘cult’ is sometimes rather academic, after all. Or were you an infection, a curse? Were you driven out, a cursed omen to wander the land, and that’s why you’re here now? Or were you taught instead. Trained to embrace it. Perhaps your circle were a circle of ill omen, believers of an apocalyptic destiny. That dark star is distant now, but it won’t always be. And you, you are a harbinger of that fate.

I do like the Star Map as well, on this character. Any of the suggested forms, but in particular the ‘collection of maps bound in an ebony cover’. Your star map is your own creation. Perhaps you’ve been tracking your star’s approach. Maps of the night sky, and maps of your skin. Maybe every time you invoke Starry Form, you ask those around you afterwards where it was. That other star. Where has it moved, and does it mean anything? What happens when that dark star reaches your heart? Or your brow? Does the movement across your skin match the movements across the skies? Or is it a more personal, intimate motion, a signifier of a smaller and more personal apocalypse?

There is a temptation to flavour some of the druid spells to reflect the dark star’s influence, Entangle most easily, but that might be a trap. The druid list doesn’t lend particularly well to that. Maybe keep the horror for starry form, and have your magic be your attempt to ground yourself back down. Ground yourself in the world, in the dirt and the soil and the water, to stave off that darker influence. But maybe it creeps in anyway. Maybe you find yourself favouring spells like Moonbeam and Heat Metal, like Maelstrom and Cone of Cold. Divinations, like Augury, Divination, Scrying. Seeking omens.

Druids don’t, generally, have the spell list for cosmic horror, not like an aberrant sorcerer or a goolock, but just from Starry Form. Just from that. And the divination, omen, weal or woe aspect. Your omen is written in your flesh. And every time, to empower yourself, you invoke it. You pull it closer. Wear it inside your skin. Shine its light out into the world through the vessel of your own form. A harbinger, a walking omen of a distant malice.

A child of omen. A daughter of a dark star. Clinging to earth, to stone, to the magic of this world, but forever bearing witness to something more distant and more alien. And drawing it, by your own actions, ever closer to all that you protect.

Oh, I do, I really do, want to play Stars Druid for horror. So very much. Heh.

[desognthinking]

the pier. 9.3k. (or, more from the haunted house designers au.)

ava & (her new) co. have one and a half years to construct three groundbreaking, mindblowing, prestige haunted houses around the country, all in time for halloween. this is scouting/teambuilding trip numero uno. it's not going well so far.

---

Ava sees her at the end of the pier, a dark figure in the already-dark; a smudge of barely-moving ink on the line between wind and water. Barely, indeed – wavering less than the yearning swallow and swoop of the waves interrupted by pillars of wood, and, further back, stone. 

At night, after everything’s shut, this place is quiet until the fishermen get out in the early morning. In the off-season, even more so. Rain slings down frequently, and it’s not warm enough for balmy walks by the rocks. Not many come out, if any. Ava’s one.

She calls out as she walks down the planks, only thinking belatedly that perhaps she might not want to be disturbed. Out here behind the motel, unmoving under the preliminary drizzle of rain, embraced and cocooned by temperamentally warping air. It is, after all, that tremulous transitory phase between spring and summer that borrows its faces from both, and switches its masks sharply in the slit-time of blinks.

Bian lian, Beatrice had murmured, not even looking up from her laptop. Face-changing, literally, in Sichuan opera. A flick of a wrist, a deft flourish, and an elaborate face falls and reforms in the fraction of a second. 

This was in the motel’s breakfast room, the one with the dubiously cleaned burgundy felt chairs where they served a  modest continental breakfast. Mostly cleared out after said breakfast, the air was stained with lingering cigarette smoke from the lounge next door, and the smell of cheap canned ham. The plastic display vases on each table had been stowed away, and in their meager place someone – probably Beatrice – had stuck a crinkly, disposable plastic bottle containing a bunch of freshly picked yellow flowers.

It was not an especially private space, what with the pale pink bellies sunning themselves right outside the glass panels, but it wasn’t as if the conversation had progressed to anything especially private. Legally speaking. Or productive, for that matter.

For the fast forty-five minutes Ava and Lilith had been busy prodding, pacing, and sending small metaphorical pockets of firework powder across the room to burst and splatter all over each others’ skin. Skating them like over wet ice so they would knock against each others’ ankles and bruise upon detonation. Camila, who’d been trying, at least, to keep the situation under control, had gone to pick out some maps and free guides, leaving them simmering in the quickly-warming confines of the space.

A lot of trivial inconsequential things, and a lot of hard, serrated words. First it was an argument of how transformative a depiction of folklore ought to be, theoretically, to balance originality and faithfulness. Then they’d snapped at each other over their personal choices of A24 horror, and Ava’s awfully ignorant lack of exposure to some obscure ‘60s Romanian indie production that Lilith really liked.

And in the corner Beatrice was curled up into a chair, laptop sitting on the flat plane formed by the side of her folded knees. 

She was strangely quiet, considering the poorly-veiled spats being undertaken just a couple feet away. By Beatrice Standards, however, this was possibly normal, as Ava was learning. When, riled up, she’d gone around to get a glass of water from the lightly stained dispenser, she’d found her watching an unlisted YouTube video from a couple years ago featuring an in-house presentation Ava had given at Disney. It was about scary rides and storytelling; translating horror into immersive park experiences. A singular earbud was stuffed into her left ear. 

She didn’t make any attempt to minimize or pause the video as Ava went by. 

“What are you doing?” she blurted, interrupting Lilith going on and on about something or another.

Beatrice hummed. “Camila sent it to me.”

Ava waited, but that seemed to be the end of Beatrice’s explanation. Pixelated tiny Ava on the laptop screen sputtered and spread her arms out as the powerpoint slide behind her belly-rolled to its successor in a kitschy transition.

“Wait,” Beatrice said, before Ava could awkwardly walk the rest of the way to the dispenser. She bent down to scoop something up. “Here.” She held up a can of Pepsi to Ava, still cold enough that the scant condensation on it had not yet beaded up into little pearls. Ava saw that underneath her chair she had stowed a rectangular cooler box of canned drinks, with two or three more cans left in it. 

Ava took the can with a soft thanks. 

Beatrice quirked her head and murmured something that sounded like you’re welcome.

Beatrice said the damnedest things sometimes, amidst her quiet. Appropriate, sure, but unexpected unless you were looking out closely for the tell-tale flicker at the corner of her eyes, a horizontal dart-to and sometimes a shutter-quick sly twitch of her mouth that indicated she was preparing for an interjection.

Amused, if hardly full-blown entertained. Sharp, but never cruel. Indirect, and three layers deep. Oftentimes three planets away. Ava found it less than scrutable, and more than fascinating.

Bian lian, when they were talking about transitions between spaces and narrative divisions within Houses, which was a convoluted way to say that Lilith was getting evasive over the psychology and philosophy of putting fucking walls and doors in a haunted house. Just when the pressure was about to burst, Beatrice had piped up, and Lilith had turned around, her fists gradually unclenching. 

Later, Ava repeatedly scrubbed back and forth through the timeline of a video, mesmerized and marveling by the Chinese art. A minor flourish, or a glance of a cheek and – thwp – an entranced audience guided to look wherever the artist led.

The changing of faces. The fuzzy in-between of seasons. Here on the coast it is even more stark, this time of year. 

She calls out to Beatrice as she walks down the planks, and Beatrice turns around. Her hair is bunned up loosely, low and unresistant to ocean-blown stragglers

Ava walks closer when Beatrice turns around, calmly, and hovers a distance away so that Beatrice can keep a cushion of space between them, if she likes.

“It’s drizzling.”

“I know.” Beatrice doesn’t take Ava up on the offer to –leave? To chase Ava back in and away? To reassure Ava that she’d prefer to stay out here, alone? She pauses, though. Looks up, as if there was anything to see up in the sky, too dark for the clouds to distinguish themselves in plumes or pillows. Ava looks up too, just in case, but it’s a mess of splotched black-gray. 

Over their heads the apertures in the sky are widening into gulfs, and the dribble of water turns into sheets. 

Like the crepe streamers they used to hang up on the doorways in St Michael’s, fluttering maddeningly out of reach. The nuns had thought it was some kind of sick kindness to drape them from low enough beams that their papery ends would lap at and blow into Ava’s face as they wheeled her back and forth down the corridor like the monotone automation of a fucking metronome. Each blue and yellow and pink streamer touched her cheeks like a slap. Ava’d wanted to grip them with her teeth and pull them down. 

The rain, Ava reminds herself, is cold and uncaring and holds no such malice. 

Beatrice keeps staring into the ocean. “It’s beautiful out here.”

There’s words on the tip of Ava’s tongue but she holds them there and thinks; considers for once, before replying. Something about Beatrice, without saying anything aloud, asks this of her. If she recites a pun it must be good.

“It is.”

Beatrice hums. She turns her head back and inclines her head slightly as she regards Ava. Ava holds her breath. 

It occurs to her faintly that she’s never spoken one-on-one with Beatrice, ever. Of her three new coworkers, Beatrice feels the most faraway. She refolds Ava’s strewn, barbeque sauce-stained maps while Ava’s in the restroom, and plugs her wired earphones into a Spotify daylist full of musicians Ava’s never heard of. She has a phone widget on her homescreen tracking migratory birds,  and she goes out to the pier alone under ten-thirty p.m. rain. 

Ava studied Beatrice’s folders – all their folders – back at the office, once this whole thing was confirmed. Before even they’d found out. It felt almost prying, in a way, even if Suzanne herself had invited her to sit at the desk and passed her the papers. Sure, the Houses they detailed were long public; analyzed and reviewed to death, but this was different. This seemed private. Creativity and creation, to Ava at least, were wild creatures; bounding and bold on the outside, raw and sensitive and prone to clawing themselves apart on the inside.

She switched on the reading light and thumbed through the dossiers. Lilith’s had pen gashes through each iteration, angry and decisive, her documentation otherwise sparse and terse. Camila’s included scrapbooks of fabric and postcard-sized paintings, image references taped on each page.

The shells that Beatrice left behind were schematics and scripts in perfect order and format. Comments typed out formally along margins left deliberately blank, and mechanics illustrated in labeled figures, which were different from tables and clarified as such in the appendix. Without effusion or exaggeration, and with only harshly limited information to be gleaned from a couple of drily humorous notes thrown unexpectedly into the handwritten rightmost column of her change logs.

Amendment for review: section 7d entryway from section 7c now to be approached from visitors’ 9 o’clock, she’d written. Do remind reviewer S. Masters to be awake for it.

Said jester herself stands with her back still facing Ava, just out of reach, on the pier. Her hands dig into the pockets of her oversized windbreaker as her feet dig into the wood under them. Rogue strands and locks of dark hair follow the course of the wind. It’s beautiful out here, she says, just loud enough over the waves for Ava to catch.

Beatrice takes one and a half steps, precisely, so that she’s partially, intentionally, facing Ava. She says something, blown to the wind – about the facts of this place, maybe. Ava hears the name of the town crunched around the round Rs of Beatrice’s accent, and feels her feet willed, as if by that same wind, to step closer. 

Closer, closer, until she’s but an arm’s length from Beatrice, close enough she could reach out and adjust on her shoulder the crooked hood of her windbreaker, long blown off the top of her head. 

Then Beatrice turns back to face the pier, and she cranes her neck to look at Ava wordlessly, and Ava finally, finally, steps up beside her.

They got to town by car yesterday afternoon, a coastal place long salted by tourism when the tides were right, and only recently rejuvenated very slightly in biology circles when a couple of the further-flung waters got identified as hotspots for particularly unique marine ecosystems. 

Beatrice tells her there’s a small new outpost set up from newly-won grant money, although it’s far away from where they’re staying. She glances at Ava. There was a book at the information center, she quickly explains.

Ava knows what she’s talking about – said information center is a ten-minute walk inland, in the town center, and it’s more of a weatherbeaten cubicle with yellowed pamphlets and dusty books than a living, breathing tourist pitstop. It’s battered on all sides by the elements and seems to be standing only because it’s too difficult to dislodge from where it’s wedged between an ice cream shop and a postbox. Beatrice, all the same, peered through every peeling poster on the wall. 

They’d gone there yesterday after picking up some groceries while exploring the little town. Ava reached for an easy word to describe the town and found ‘fatigued’, and then she thought some more and concluded that it was drowned in a weird heavy-light emptiness. 

The time of the year did it no favors. Nobody goes island hopping in the rain, and it’s not dive season at the reefs. The fishing spots are browbeaten for everyone but the seasoned local fishermen, so the commercial tourist pontoons are netted up and fenced off. 

As a matter of fact, it had been so hard to get a ride to the caves, Ava had had to pay extra out of her own pocket. Lilith, of course, had nonetheless taken offense at her ‘poor planning’. Whatever. They have a ride. It leaves before dawn.

Now, side by side, Ava can’t tell if Beatrice is swaying lightly or rocking to the rhythm of the waves, or if it's just an illusion of movement on the pier.

“Sadly a lot of places are shut,” Ava states the obvious, “but at least the rooms were cheap.”

Beatrice tips her weight onto her heels, and this time Ava’s sure of it. It’s easy and balanced. 

“No,” she says, after some thought. “I didn’t know much about this town before, but it was a good choice to come here. Especially now during the offseason, when it’s quieter.” 

She skews her head oceanward as if trying to listen for something, and Ava follows suit, engrossed to the point of almost being bowled over by the jar of a wave hitting the wooden poles of the pier with a crunching thud. 

“It’s strange,” Beatrice says very seriously, “to be congested in so much stillness and silence.” 

There is nothing still or silent about the roar of the waves and the rain.

Beatrice’s work, Ava knows, has been increasingly skewing towards exploring a sort of apprehension and anxiety generated by the opposite of a traditionally suffocating enclosed-space experience. It’s strongest in her recent projects; Ava can spot it immediately – bleakly open space, elements of naturalism and realism manipulated with great technical care to subvert expectations and stir up something deeply uncomfortable and primal. 

Three years ago, Supermarket Massacre had had her fingerprints all over it. The year after that, the award-winning Aquarium, with Lilith and Camila and that one guy Vincent who’d apparently slacked off then ran off. Last year she took point on her own set for the first time. And in all three, like a bloody fingerprint, the opening scenes – the first sets located immediately past the entrances –  were all so characteristically, deceptively normal. Regular, in an unsettling, skin-crawling way. This was only the prelude, of course. Slowly the knife would be driven in and twisted unforgivingly.

It’s funny, because Beatrice insists, time and time again, that she doesn’t see herself as an artist or a creator. She wrote a guest article on a blog describing herself as merely an engineer organizing a space and Ava wryly thought the prose itself, elegant and clear, had given away the lie. What does a haunted house mean? How do we execute a nightmare into something feasible and tangible? Questions that had a myriad of answers and I do not believe we have yet exhausted them. There are many themes and concepts I’d like to reinvigorate beyond their traditional face value.

Subtlety, Ava sees, in last year’s factory-set After Hours. Movement, in increasingly sophisticated ways, beyond simple towering puppetry or rattling machinery or killer clowns scaring people into scurrying down claustrophobic pre-marked corridors. Soundscapes and landscapes that teeter on the brink of too-real, sped up or slowed down or taken one inch rightwards. Of course, unsettlingly unassuming opening scenes. Fear, Beatrice wrote, must be given time and space to breathe and self-propagate.

In a way, if this weekend getaway is a scouting trip less concerned with laying down concrete narrative groundwork and cultural research, and more concerned with opening a door into how each of Beatrice, Lilith and Camila see the world creatively, this bare coastal town is right up Beatrice’s alley. 

The least supernatural place in the world. And yet in Beatrice’s eyes it is a town that has dotted perforation lines across its torso tempting her endlessly to tear it open to unearth something deeper and darker that adheres to the inner surfaces of its pleura.

She speaks too-softly but almost excitedly against the thunder. Underneath the reserved, controlled demeanor there’s a glint of a thirst and challenge hidden underneath her tongue. 

“The park in the middle of town,” she says, “desire paths all through the long grass and not a footfall on the real ones. There’s a tape that stretches across the pavement with a warning sign dated two months ago.”  Her hands have crept up their sides to prod out at waist level, tangling and twirling in the air like dancing with the rain. Or making the rain dance and twist around them. 

They freeze in awareness, and the rain slaps down on them. 

“Go on”, says Ava. It comes out like a request, coiled up at the end and disappearing into the air.

She thinks Beatrice smiles a tiny bit at that, her eyes unreadable, but she doesn’t go on, and Ava is disappointed. 

“Well,” Beatrice’s tone is steady and tells Ava that the door is shut for now, “perhaps we’ll speak more about it after the caves.”

She says this matter-of-factly as if they’re all going to come back on that boat after sunset, sit down cross-legged in a circle with notepads and laptops, and excitedly paint a mural across the ceiling with lime-sharp ideas and skin-crawling narratives. This isn’t going to happen. Lilith nearly put a fist through the glass panels of a cabinet mere hours earlier. 

Beatrice is usually the most brutally pragmatic and unsentimental of the four, and here she is talking about the future like the present is a bubble that will undoubtedly pop and reveal a rose-tinted world. Ava doesn’t know what to think of it.

The coldness of the rain is starting to gnaw at and numb her fingertips. She breathes, strange and short. The words come out too easily: “You were watching my presentation from two years ago.”

Beatrice nods. “I was, yes. I finished it over afternoon break.”

“Can I ask why?” 

When Beatrice turns, Ava can’t see her face all that clearly. “Well, I wanted to know your principles and approach to designing fear experiences.” In the first flutter-crack of her composure Beatrice coughs twice. “It seemed, at least, something productive to do. And it’s important if we are to work closely together.”

The wind, walloped and fickle so that the rain beating down on Ava’s face seems to change its direction of attack every ten seconds or so, does not seem to pull them closer together, like in fanciful, romantic stories. It just tugs Ava about at her shoulders and knees like a ragdoll and makes her dizzy.

Beatrice pulls her jacket close. She gestures for Ava, shivering harder, to pull her sleeves down her elbows. Ava hadn’t even noticed, and does so now, but she’s still cold – damp-cold then air-frozen from salty windspray. She puts her hands as far as they can go in her pockets. Shifts her weight.

Beatrice’s face twists with – perplexion? Concern? 

In the meager light Ava sees her glance back behind them and cock her head towards the light from which they came, questioning. 

Ava shakes her head, and Beatrice doesn’t push. She doesn’t sigh out loud but her shoulders follow the trajectory of its motion as she peels off her outer layer, quickly and without fanfare. Underneath she is wearing a thick hoodie that only now begins to darken everywhere except for its already-exposed hood. Clearly, she’d planned to come out to walk, unlike Ava. 

Who’d stumbled out late after dinner, full of thoughts that had nowhere to stew and nowhere to run.

They’d had a big fight over the dinner table, boiled over from where it had been bubbling the last two days. There was a slamming of fists on the table, and Ava had torn her napkin from the tablecloth and went to sit alone at the bartop. 

What exactly do you want? What’s your structure? Churning in her head like an infinitely turning contraption, mixed fiercely over the anger of being asked to prove it and being goaded harder and harder towards standards that Camila and Beatrice never seemed to be asked to meet.

Full of feelings and other weird, warped rumblings that were difficult to thoroughly unpick as usual. And the messy sensation of all the air in her chest compressed from pushing frustratedly and hopelessly against a wall. Hoping the nebulous concept of Outside might put it into place or at least shove it all into boxes for her to sort out later. Ava, head hot and too-bright, lightheaded and needing to have it tamped down by the physical weight of darkness, had stumbled out into the night. She’d thought only of draining off the alcohol slightly and having it evaporate, along with everything else, from her scalp into the cool air.

It has, now, in any case. 

Burned out rapidly from the initial buzz, and then she’d seen Beatrice at the edge of the ocean. 

Beatrice holds her windbreaker out,  pinched between her fingers. Her hands curl neatly on both sides over the shoulders, and she brushes it once, twice, to chase away the little droplets accumulating on the water resistant surface. They smooth away into a flat of smaller droplets, and she offers it up to Ava.

“Here,” she says softly, “I have a few layers on already.” 

Ava hesitates, but Beatrice simply dusts off some water again and turns it with the change in the direction of the wind so that the rain doesn’t get inside. “Before the lining becomes soaked,” she urges in a whisper. 

The windbreaker is soft and lined with fleece, and it slips from Beatrice’s hands as Ava takes it and turns away to shrug it on. Beatrice watches her as she pulls her hands out of the sleeves; it is large already on Beatrice’s frame, and on Ava it is almost swallowing, like a ghost encumbered by its drapes. She fumbles with the zipper,  pulling it up to her neck eventually before straightening the collar and turning it up. 

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Beatrice says. She puts her own hands into her hoodie and looks very warm. Wet strands of hair drip down now and cling to her face, but she looks settled. 

“So, why did you come to the OCS?” she asks. It doesn’t sound cutting. 

Ava pouts and takes the bait. She deliberately shifts backwards onto a foot and crosses her arms so that her sleeves meet and zip with a rubbery drag.

“And what did you learn from my presentation?” Please don’t let this come off as rude please don’t let her take this the wrong way please don’t let her take offense–

“--Guilty,” Beatrice shrugs, a motion that looks almost foreign on her. “But I asked first.” She takes her hands out of her hoodie pocket and wrings them together absently, then lets them fall back down and tucks them back, relaxed, snugly into the pouch. 

She looks younger, like this, with her hair mussed by the weather and comfy in her hoodie. Like the windbreaker it is oversized and of indiscernible color. Ava can almost convince herself that it’s bruised lilac or dark blue. More likely it is some shade of plain gray.

Ava exhales, and feels more than hears the wood creak beneath her feet. The water is opening up and closing shut endlessly and Beatrice is looking at her, waiting, watching, and suddenly Ava needs to move; needs to curl her toes and stretch her fingers and get somewhere else. Move somewhere. 

And somehow, somewhere inside, needs also –hopes also, for Beatrice to move with her. 

Ava nods quickly. The wind changes yet again and her throat is dry. Instinctively she licks her lip and finds it salty. 

“How about the path behind the airstrip?”

Beatrice smiles tentatively. “Okay.”

They retreat from the water to concrete. The motel is built on part of an old private airstrip. There’s no longer sand here, just rocks and gravel petering out into the water. Behind the airstrip, though, there is a path that inclines upwards, lit by lamps until it reaches a boarded-up platform that drops harshly down into foam. 

Hands in windbreaker pockets, Ava leads them farther from shore. She doesn’t know if it’s the temperament of the sky or an illusion of distraction but the drizzle is slowing down now until it is in comparison barely noticeable as they head up the slope by the lamplight.

“So, why I joined this place,” Ava huffs. Beatrice hums in acknowledgement.

“A few things, I guess. You’ve watched the video,” Ava goes on, and Beatrice nods. “It was about storytelling, and scares, and honestly there’s some truth to how much you can do behind squeaky clean Disney barricades. I said it the first day – I love horror and what the OCS has done with it.”

She tells Beatrice about the first time she went to an OCS House, years ago; they must both have been in college at the time. University, she rolls her eyes, as the corners of Beatrice’s mouth dance upwards, whatever. She’d taken two days off class with a bunch of friends just to travel, because it was the only major independent place that had good wheelchair access back then.

Ava’s not using a cane now but she’d had it with her yesterday after getting out stiff and sore after the long car ride. Beatrice doesn’t ask. 

“That halloween, with all the houses – it blew me away. God. No kitschy carnival music, no colorful performers prancing around giving candy out to children at the doors. The food stands?” she gestures, “All outside the gates. No fucking carousels in the scare zones.”

Back then there were fewer Houses, and the compound was significantly smaller. Already it was a carefully calibrated maze, ready to scare in every weather contingency, with traps that would move and performers that would sit very still on steel chairs and, back then, the services of expensive external contractors to beef up the outdoor scenic design. 

“But d’you know what’s scary?” Ava turns to Beatrice and stops. Beatrice doesn’t startle, like Ava had feared in the split second after she’d spun around. “Traditionally, you don’t talk about a House, right? It’s rude to put spoilers in reviews or whatever. I loved that. I thought it made it fun, like a secret you’re all in on.”

“Then the OCS comes along and says: No, actually it’s important that people have access to our Houses, and the full extent of that means discreetly available trigger warnings and official spoilers, anytime.  We’ll make it a keystone of our design that every House has easy Outs in every section, and advertise it front and center.”

Ava knows Beatrice knows this, of course. 

“Which people thought was stupid, right? A terrible business move at best, if not a betrayal of the values of the art.”

Everyone knows what happened next. The move turned out wildly successful: a careless, confident vaunt that the OCS could afford to go to such daring lengths and still terrify people.  Daring would-be visitors, almost, to try and stay unaffected. We’re different, it said. Fucking try us then. They were free then, too, to do the worst possible things, in the safest possible environment. And nobody who didn’t need to have a look at the trigger warnings did so, while the number of first-time haunted house visitors shot up.

“Psychology,” Ava nods fiercely, “which is, as everyone knows, at the heart of manipulating fear.”

She leans forward, finally, looks Beatrice in the eye. It’s honest, and it’s terrifying. “I want that – to break the rules. All of them.”

Is that a controversial thing to say? To someone whose modus operandi famously is carefully twisted and controlled restraint, compared to the overflow and excess of most Houses. Who calculates, psychologically, the impact and ideal-slash-worst-case reactions to each moment in the House cascade, as if the mind is a kind of a machine and the House is a code passed through its system. Ava’s read what her critics say of her – that she’s cerebral to a fault. Technically masterful and horrifying; nauseating, in that cold, disturbing way, but that sometimes she fails to recognize that bombast is not a bad thing. That some excess does not the route suboptimize, or that instinct can give rise to flair and not undercooked loose ends.

Frigid, aloof. Beatrice tugs her from where she was headed towards a dead end off the slope, and nudges her up towards where the gradient beneath their feet tapers off. The back of her hand, where it brushes accidentally along Ava’s wrist, is warm.

They’re standing on an outcropping now. The rain has stopped fully and the path is more clearly illuminated by the higher density of lamps on the ground. They’re paid for by the motel, presumably, and somehow dug into the earth. There’s a bench here, too, and in sync Ava and Beatrice wordlessly sit down. The stone surface is wet, the kind that will soak into their dark jeans and leave the seats damp. 

They sit, anyway, the bushes crudely truncated so that the view looks out to dark water. 

Ava is one of them, now, no matter how much it doesn’t feel like it. Yet, a telltale voice quietly hopes. 

The business of haunted houses is a cyclical thing, isn’t it? Unlike working in the park year-round. Sure, there are two permanent fixtures that run through the year and get refreshed every year or so to keep the base revenue going and the OCS name in people’s mouths, but ultimately that’s the side show. It’s a seasonal business and so now the main seasonal campus is dark, strewn with work lights and scaffolding and blueprints.

But even if the OCS as the upcoming season’s visitors will know it is primordial now, with nothing even to show for it yet, she’s one of them. Even if she feels out of place, knee deep in viscous fluid. 

In Disney they’d hardly ever travel, because the rides she worked on were drawn from existing fictional worlds and their stories. Perhaps if she was lucky they would visit the place from which the fictional world was mined. Many other haunted house production companies, too, mostly drew inspiration from local or regional folklore or culture. Currently, the trend was, in fact, to camouflage the House itself into the very environment and location on which it stood.

Not many production companies would have her here, in a scraggly nowhere town of her own choosing, filmy with rain-gunk and algae, roofs discolored by harsh caustic cleaning sprays. Dipping her toes into somewhere unknown and parsing out something to bring back to the city and its bad 24-hour coffee vending machines and paint spills on uneven concrete and rough graffitied walls. There is, ironically, something fresh, new and strange about it all. 

And it’s why Ava’s here, really. To eat food from different places. Run her toes through grass in every country. Put her tongue out to the breeze and bring it back in the form of twisting walls that cave down around the people within. To behold nothing the same way twice, and to insist on nothing as sacred. Break all the rules. 

The waves are distant but the sound carries up and towards them.

“That’s what I gathered,” Beatrice says, wistfully, or thoughtfully, “from the presentation.” She sits a little way away on the bench, her hands crossed at her wrists and fingers peeking out from the thick sleeves. Under Ava’s hands, pressed down on either side, the seat is rough. And Beatrice, back straight and so calm, is soft. Like her eyes.

Beatrice looks down and runs her fingers over the grain of the bench too, coarse and stuck together, although smoothened with time. She seems to sigh, soak the air around her into her pores, and relax. Rise, like foam in a glass. 

“In the beginning of the video,” she starts, “You compare a good ride to a good haunted house.” She puts up three fingers and duly counts them off. “Both tell an immersive story. Both twist away from what the audience knows to be reality. Both break convention to surprise.” 

Her voice, Ava finds, is endlessly different from the only times she’s heard it at length, over a stuttering video call. Far away from the stricturing of bad connection and Zoom audio, it sounds different – just as modulated and thoughtful, but full of something, contained, yet to overflow. Ava thinks of a pot with a lid with hot, rich soup in it, sizzling lightly with a fragrance that perfuses the whole kitchen.

She talks through the presentation – Beatrice, that is, in her own words, and Ava’s maybe-kind of-perhaps bewitched. It’s the way she fits Ava’s points gently into a structure and perspective that even Ava hadn’t thought of; the way she spins Ava’s hamfisted tangent on dueling flight-or-hug-tight instincts into a dizzying fifteen-second suckerpunch insight into isolation versus community in group horror experiences. Or the way she recites her favorite of Ava’s bad jokes, word-for-word, from memory, and looks genuinely pleased by it too.

Ava doesn’t know for sure. She’s still reeling when Beatrice simply pauses and settles. She bobs her head, a tiny, barely-there smile on her face. “So yes,” she says, “that’s what I’ve learned about your design outlook.” 

Her expression changes in hints and tiptoes to something more considering. “But about you, and how we – I,  will work with you – that’s not so easily gleaned from one video.”

Ava laughs at that, almost speechless. Still breathless and oddly naked, in a way she’s not used to feeling. “No, no it isn’t.” 

She looks up and away, registering suddenly and overwhelmingly the indistinct shapes of trees. Grass. Path markers. 

It’s true. They don’t know her, and she doesn’t know the three of them. Not like they know each other, twisting like moss and creepers around each others’ spines. There is something there that’s old and impenetrable and bound in the covers of a book in a different language she doesn’t speak. And she speaks a whole bunch of languages, yes, but none like this one.

“We need to learn how to work together,” she admits. This is an understatement, Ava knows, and grossly so. She thinks about Lilith, but also about Camila and her expansive imagination, its rhythm slightly out of sync from the drumbeat of Ava’s mind, and her easy physical affection that masks an unspoken space between them. She thinks about Beatrice and her uncanny wordlessness and then her uncanny wordfulness that Ava hasn’t had the chance to learn how to anticipate. To everyone that’s not her closest circle Ava thinks she must seem like a pendulum that’s always being chased, and never getting caught, her thoughts running and pivoting a hundred miles ahead. 

And together they are musical lines in a contrapuntal piece, and hell, Ava knows only four chords on a guitar.

“We will,” Beatrice decides, suddenly. Ava’s mind has slipped from the conversation, but the bite of it snaps her to alert.

“What will we– what?” 

In her alarm their eyes meet. She watches Beatrice’s fingers stretch out towards her on the bench instinctively, and then quickly retract into a half-fist, drumming once, twice on the seat before slotting into her pocket to slide her phone out to sit loosely in her palm. 

She wrinkles her nose apologetically. A hairball of worry in Ava’s chest untangles itself.

“I.. just know that you’ve googled us like we’ve googled you.”

As Beatrice talks she turns over her phone slowly, hypnotically. Long fingers press and flip it in a well-worn sequence: the screen forwards and over twice, then clockwise along its side, before repeating in the opposite direction.  

“Earlier on you said that Lilith locks herself in a room to brainstorm.” 

Huh? Oh yeah, she did. When they were arguing over timeline flexibility for their project and the frequency of check-ins. Lilith said she was flighty and ill-disciplined. Ava told her she was out of her mind and a cold-blooded reptile who’d lost touch with all shreds of human needs and interactions. She’d made a snarky joke about Lilith’s grotesquely fancy ensuite bathroom and finding someone else to try and shit on.

“Well, that piece of trivia is only found in an interview from two years back that’s out of print. You can only find its scans on some niche member-only forums.” 

Ava shrugs – this is what you do with new co-workers, is it not? You do your part. And Ava is doing the best she can.

“Yeah, sure,” she concedes, “but that’s not – it’s not–” plainly, it’s not the same. What can Ava do except shrug again?

Beatrice makes a small noise. 

“I know,” she reiterates, and the deep furrows of her forehead release and smoothen, like she seems to have come to a realization. 

She offers cautiously, hesitantly, “the article does say that. But it’s not true.” She inhales sharply.

“Lilith appreciates her independence, yes, but she knows better than to entirely isolate herself anymore.” Clearly, there’s a story in that. “But the deadline was at midnight, and the editor wanted to add something else in the copy they sent. Lilith was grouchy, we were drunk, and Camila made it up in the return email without telling her.”

Beatrice pauses and tilts her head. Up the curve of her chin to her cheeks, dimples reveal themselves shyly and momentarily.

“Lilith was furious. She only found out when the article was released. The only reason she grudgingly refrained from further action was because, I believe, the falsified information fit into the image of how she wanted to present herself to the world.” 

She gazes straight at Ava then, curious and the most open that Ava’s ever seen her. “Nobody’s ever brought it up again,” she remarks, searching Ava. “Well. Not until you.”

Beatrice’s hands still; she wipes her phone against her shirt, and looks carefully at Ava. Ava’s intelligent; far more than people give her credit for. She knows what Beatrice is doing – trying to do, in her own way. 

After a long pause, during which the drone of the waves becomes deafening and then recedes, “I won’t pretend that Lilith is merely aloof, or that the things she has said are not unkind or unfair. She’s treated you poorly.”

Ava resists a scoff, and scrambles instead to clear her throat noisily. She doesn’t bring up again the simple fact that, foremost amongst a host of reasons, Lilith is why they’re here. The last straw. The final trigger.

Beatrice regards her like she isn’t fooled.

“She is less coarse to those she’s close to, but has been known on occasion to be rather prickly, even then.” Beatrice, as if remembering something then, chuckles lowly. Gorgeously. “She’s very particular about safety standards and protocols, for example.”

“Once, she yelled at me in front of the whole crew for taking a nap on the floor of  an unfinished room in a maze in the dark during lunch. She was angry, and worried, but still. I needed to get away from everyone for a break, and as you might expect, it backfired.”

“I’ll try not to do that,” Ava offers. “I’ll break into her trailer and sleep on her desk instead.”

“Oh dear,” There’s palpable mirth in it. Ava’s poker face shatters into a beam.

Beatrice probably can’t see it. It’s dark. 

“Ava?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to be alright with any of it.”

Ava breathes. 

“Okay,” she replies, finally. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

She lifts the palms from where they’ve been pressed tightly to old, uneven rock. The soft flesh of the heel is kissed with the pattern of the grain.

So Ava turns, on the bench, and her feet squelch most uncomfortably in the wet shoes as she adjusts herself to face Beatrice – not directly,  but at the slight angle from which the light of the moon and the light at their feet call out to each other and meet on the tip of her nose.

Beatrice tucks her phone carefully in her lap and turns to Ava too.

And slowly, in dribs and drabs that spill out like the corners of dough sheets cut out from metal molds, Ava introduces herself to Beatrice. 

No, not the dramatic, tragic moments – the accident, the orphanage, all that. The night is transient and thinning fast into its wee hours, and it’s the little things first, you know? 

The one-coffee-one-energy-drink-one-juice combo routine that gets Ava through long days and overtime hours. The overnight movie marathon treat she grants herself at the culmination of each project. The lucky Super Mario Bros. spoon and bowl set that she’s got to eat out from the day before a big pitch. 

Her hiring, Ava thinks, is still a dry and excoriated topic, and so she tries to skim over it. She tries to avoid going into detail on how she got poached, and then how she’s painstakingly combed through all their archival documents and notes, so as to understand. She doesn’t mention the fan content and critic reviews she’s pored over, the world beyond OCS doors she’s tried to immerse herself in to grasp the scale of the project and the context of her addition.

Beatrice narrows in on it, anyway. It looms, Ava supposes, far too large to avoid.

It’s sometime after one A.M. when she puts her head down slightly, and Ava feels the shift. 

“You know, I’ve seen some of the forums,” Beatrice strokes down the damp strands of hair that have come loose over her ears.  “They’re – not entirely true. I don’t dislike working with others.”

Ava had seen the forums too, and the flint-tipped speculation that slithered about the different pages. Usernames pockmarked with numbers, an argot of acronyms and the slang of self-proclaimed megafans. Posts that didn’t have Beatrice’s name in them but that were transparently about her, describing with vulgar flippance a cool, isolated oddness that locked crew members out from the indecipherable machinations of her mind. 

Beatrice’s hands tighten over her phone. “It just takes me some time –” she forces out, and then bites her lip.

Ava thinks about Camila in the corridor this afternoon, after Beatrice had wordlessly entered her own room and shut the door – now, she knows, to watch the video. Ava had stopped for a second too long, looking puzzled after her, when Camila had brushed breezily past.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she’d laughed, “she’s like this. Once she opens up, she’s a completely different little beast.”

Ava hadn’t doubted that – there was evidently a Beatrice that bantered with Lilith and Camila in branching links of long chains that she couldn’t understand; a Beatrice that must have climbed up the towering tree at the back early in the morning to pluck yellow flowers from its crown. 

This Beatrice had been ready to go ahead to the counter before Camila and Lilith had even sat down at yesterday’s lunch to place their orders on their behalf.

She hadn’t even needed to check in with them, but came over to Ava’s seat and looked over her shoulder. “What would you like?” she’d asked, and Ava rushed, panickedly, to look over the menu. She traced each line with her index finger, and looked up to find Beatrice, eyes wide and patient.

“This one, please, the burger,” she’d jabbed the flimsy laminated paper, “and a Pepsi.” Beatrice had strode off before a waiter could come over. She’d refused to let any of them pay her back, and when Ava had tried to send her money on her phone she raised her eyebrows very questioningly and Ava melted back into the plastic-backed seat.

In the end, Ava can only personally vouch for the epipelagic – the shallowest fraction of ocean pierced by sunlight. The parts of the person allowed tentatively to surface in every halting, hesitant attempt forward as a quartet. As of now, too, in the drizzly shadows of tonight. 

Perhaps the light can reach only fingertip-deep, but Ava wagers there has to be water all the way down. The rest is gut feeling and instinct; slowly glowing embers like a fist in her chest.

“Beatrice,” Ava says, once it’s clear she’s still working her way out of a labyrinth of word finding, “Listen. I believe you.”

Tense shoulders quieten and flatten into a horizontal plane. Ava feels Beatrice’s eyes scan her face, go past her ears and her messy hair and the tip of her nose and then settle, finally, with a helpless little smile. 

Ava calls out on the boardwalk. She listens to Beatrice whisper on this stone, and Beatrice listens back. There’s sunlight, hours away, on the horizon but at this moment there’s only secret shades of moonbeam, and those shades are all for them. It’s not enough, still. It’s not enough. Ava wants more.

She wants, she finds with some desperation, to be inside of the invisible circle. There is nothing worse than dragging her feet outside, half a step offbeat, unable to reach in and with nobody reaching out. A ghost, intangible and aware of it, when all she wants is to feel the hot flames of real life – to have Lilith’s sharp tongue lash out and scald her in the way it does Camila or Beatrice – with blunt honesty and easy comfort instead of probing malice. To have Camila’s name light up on strings of text notifications as it buzzes constantly on Beatrice and Lilith’s phones almost the moment they are apart. Beloved, joyful, alight. To have Beatrice… to have Beatrice —

The phone in Beatrice’s hands lights up, too bright, and it makes her squint. A flash of numbers – time – sears itself into Ava’s eyes before Beatrice frowns and puts it away into her hoodie. It’s late, Ava thinks, considering the boat is coming by early to bring them out for sunrise. But Beatrice doesn’t move to go back, and neither does Ava. 

Of all the things Beatrice finds terrifying – enough, she’s always been quoted, to transplant them into the nightmare fuel of haunted houses – the dark now doesn’t seem to be one of them. Ava agrees, she thinks: there is no place safer now than where they are, on a rock one measly wooden fence away from a dizzying drop into rock and rushing depths. It feels, for once, and for maybe the first time –

(since the start, after that final infuriating video call when she screamed into her duvet and yelled into her shower and limped to the computer where she bit her lips raw and booked the tickets here and told a trio of uneasy still-strangers that she might struggle to pull them out their homes with her own hands and nails but they would be getting out and traveling to a coastal nowhere-town and fucking sitting down to get this partnership going –)

–it feels like she’s making headway. 

Not on the Houses, not on the inspiration for them or the mechanisms and processes with which to put them together, no, although all those, too, in their own ways.

Here, far off from home, next to choppy waters, shorn into grass and trees readying themselves to be busted up by summer storms, amongst flowers somehow poking up through the salt and sand, a breath away from the touch of waves and the tiny crawling organisms that besiege it, (beside an odd girl in the giddy, open air,) – here.

Solid ground.

And maybe Beatrice is right, you know? Maybe life is more similar to the business of soul-sucking fear-buildings than people believe. 

Ava’s always had, she thinks, an incredibly lucid understanding on what makes good haunted houses tick. It’s trust, essentially, and safety. How do you enter a situation that frightens more viscerally and wholly than a movie or even a 3D dark ride – and then keep walking? 

Headway. The only thing that gets you out of a haunted house is burrowing deeper within.

Arms outstretched, palms open, into its guts and chest. There’s extensive academia on thrill rides: on how much of the atmospheric and storytelling work goes into the sections of the experience that precede the ride, because once the carriage croaks to life, it’s easy to close one’s eyes and lose all clarity.

Haunted houses aren’t like this.

Since she got out of St Michael’s, Ava’s gotten by on a brand of fearlessness, a reputation built on a willingness to try almost anything. But fearless perhaps isn’t the word. She’s scared, still, with every step forward. Worried out of her mind of having to work from scratch all over again. Terrified of going back to before. But this, unfortunately, or blessedly so, is life: the only way out, Ava’s found, is further in.

She doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be there, already there.

Ava wants so badly to be elbow deep in the mud and wires of bringing stories to life far more fully and physically than in almost any other medium. She wants it so bad and so bare that she doesn’t even really know how to spell it out on a cloudy spring-summer night in a way that won’t chase Beatrice away with the breathless depth of her desperation to make people feel in a way they will never forget. Or frighten her with the too-much, too-fast of it all. 

She wants to flood people’s imaginations and send adrenaline through their arteries; have them wrap themselves around each other until the impression of lovers’ arms are engraved around the frame of each other’s bodies, shared warmth and solidity the only things keeping them upright through the maze. 

And Ava doesn’t need someone to hold her through a haunted house – god, she’s the one with her fingers tugging the strings that shift and twist its spine in circles around its terrified visitors – but it would be nice for once to stand in the control tower, eyes alight, heart racing, with hands as bloodstained as her own. 

To run through second-by-second early test run footage and data with another pair of eyes over early morning coffee and buns, discussing furiously the corners where the tourniquet can be tightened or loosened. To have conversations over the mixing console worth muting the scream track for. Even if – no, especially if they have nothing to do with work; conversations past awful awkward shop talk and instead all-in on the minutiae of home furnishings and dream pets and eschatology.

There was an impermanence to the constant shuffling of working groups, the fast paced turnarounds at Disney, but truthfully, she hadn’t been unhappy there. But then the email came through to her inbox on the rare once-fortnightly day that she would sit in her office, cartoonish vampire mug in hand, daydreaming with her laptop open, and that was it.

She flew down to headquarters to meet Suzanne in December. It was quiet in the office, with everyone off on final scouting trips and finalizing plans and sourcing materials and manpower. Suzanne had therefore been able to give her a private tour, and Ava did everything to pretend her mind hadn’t been made up long before.

First there was her personal office, which was the downright coolest room Ava’d been in for a while, forest green and quietly centered around the unassuming framed family picture on the desk. Cabinets of fossils with extra labels in a child’s scrawled handwriting: Terry the trilobite :D and spoonface and illustrated stickmen with swords. Delicate, beautiful, floral watercolor diagrams mounted on the wall and a soft, thick rug with complicated, beautiful depictions of scenes from the Tempest. 

Suzanne showed her the generous pantry, which would have sealed the deal if it hadn’t already been set in stone, and then they passed the meeting rooms into the archive gallery. 

This was, essentially, a museum of past mazes. A large, dark place of glass and thin, sharp panes of burnished golden light. Suzanne brought her, wide-eyed, through its displays of early Houses. 

“You’ve been visiting our Houses, on and off, over the last few years, correct?”

Ava nodded. Since that college trip, really, and whenever she could spare the time and the money.

“Good,” Suzanne said. “If you accept this offer, you will be joining a team of some of our best young designers, so you may be familiar with some of their work.”

Indeed, within the glass cases sat Camila’s famed dioramas, fixed in place now but ready to stir to life once hooked up to a battery. Detailed, hand-painted and assembled, its parts sliding apart into modular sections that could be split open and shifted around.

Lilith’s meticulous blueprints too, and ruthless postmortems and analyses she’d done of her own work, although those were sealed away. “I had to demand that she hand them over and not keep them pinned up at her desk hanging over her head,” Suzanne remarked beside Ava, looking up into the glass at the nondescript manila folder. 

“If not you, it would have been her.”

Unsurprising. Disney had used Lilith Villaumbrosia-masterminded sections of mazes in case studies for scene-setting and scare actor interactions. And Ava had entered her House two years ago. She knew.

“I will be honest with you, Miss Silva.”

“Ava.”

“Ava. Lilith is not what you may be expecting, and it may be difficult to get across to her at first. She is as acerbic as she is brilliant.”

That was the twist that was coming, of course: that they were all good friends. That the three designers that Suzanne had long had in mind to join Ava already knew each others’ minds and neural pathways so keenly that they could probably unzip the gyri of each others’ brains like a ribbon and then put them back together. 

“They don’t know it yet,” Suzanne warned, “and they will not like it at first, but I see it.” She opened up one of the cases with a key to remove a polaroid of three grinning faces, arms looped together. She held it to the light. “You’re the missing piece to the puzzle.” 

But what about everything she’s still missing?

The gravelly ground is solid beneath their feet, and Ava doesn’t feel the vibrations of the waves. The world appears still and frozen even as everything is changing and morphing and blooming, and gaping thirstily for something more she can’t put a finger to. 

The water could flood and Ava’s eyes might smart with exhaustion in the morning, or she might try to get two or three hours of sleep and wake up after one anyway, screaming as usual, and all the same Ava thinks she would still be chasing. Running. 

There is nothing in her mind resembling gory sets and the creak of animatronics, then, as she looks to her right at a girl she can scarcely even see in the dark, yet that she finds she cannot look away from. Ava can see why the magazines call her a mystery: Beatrice says she’s always on heightened alert, and yet – and yet –

She’s gazing back at Ava in a blanket of complete calm.

The wind from the ocean is blowing, the darkness feels safe. Ava and Beatrice, on a stone bench, talking, close. Easy steps, Ava thinks. Small steps, small questions. Maybe this is how it starts.

She takes a chance. Asks.

Beatrice closes her eyes, exhales, and begins to answer.

(Here are some requirements for a successful haunted house, or a horror film, or a heart-pounding roller coaster: it must evoke emotion that travels in icy ringlets down your spine, and it must stay indelibly in your mind.)

[justagamerandaweeb]

TLC (Tender, Loving Care) - Modern AU! Senjuro x Reader

I'm in a fluffy mood at the moment, so why not make a story featuring a sick (Y/N), and a caring Senjuro Rengoku? My friend on Discord suggested that I should go with him, and this dude is severely underrated, so it works. He's a really caring guy, why wouldn't this suit him? Also, he's gonna be older in this, like early 20s or so, just like his brother :)

Be forewarned, there is vomiting included in this story. So if you're squeamish about someone blowing chunks, highly suggest you leave.

Gif by @mizurei and border by @mikeykuns

You vomited at the trashcan that was next to your bed, blowing out chunks of what you ate yesterday. Once you finished throwing up, you plopped right back onto the pillow. Fuck... out of all times to be sick, why now? My nose is so stuffed that it feels like I can't breathe. This sucks. You thought as you did a soft sniff.

She then heard the sound of someone knocking on her door, and she shouted out, her voice sounding hoarse and scratchy, "Come in." The door opens and the person behind the door is revealed to be a man with fire-like hair, yellow eyes, red irises, and white pupils, and black forked eyebrows. Along with a face mask to protect himself from getting sick. "H-Hey, (Y/N). How are you feeling today?" The young Rengoku asked her.

She sighed as she responded to him, "Like crap. My nose feels so stuffed, that I can't breathe, my lungs feel like they're on fire, and my throat hurts because I keep throwing up. Long story short, I feel like hell right now." She summarized as she softly sniffed again. "Oh... Well, sorry to hear about that. Do you want me to make you anything?" (Y/N) violently coughs as she says, "Yeah... Sorry. Can you make me some soup? I think that would make me a little better."

The young Rengoku nods as he says, "I'll see what I can do." He saw her smiling as she softly spoke, "Thank you." and closed the door. Senjuro briefly exhaled as he thought to himself, Okay Senjuro, time to do your duty as a brother-in-law, and take care of your sister! And so he marched to the kitchen to fix (Y/N) a chicken noodle soup.

He opened one of the cabinets and took out a white plastic bowl, and rinsed it out with the sink. Once that was done, he puts the bowl on the counter and trotted to the pantry and turned on the light. He analyzed the rows of food that were filling the shelves, until his eyes caught a glance of cans of chicken noodle soup.

Once he grabbed it, he popped the top off and poured the soup into the bowl. He threw the can away, and grabbed the bowl and put it in the microwave for three minutes, and 30 seconds. As the timer was going down, he walked back to (Y/N)'s door, and knocked on it again.

(Y/N) shouts out again, "Come in." And Senjuro opens the door, peeking his head out. "I'm making the soup, is there anything you want me to do for you?" (Y/N) softly coughed as she looked to the right and grabbed a blue cup, and said, "Could you fill this up with ice and water, please?" She said in a way it sounded like she was losing her voice.

Senjuro nodded as he walked in, grabbed the cup, and said, "Anything else?" And she shook her head. "Thank you." He smiled under the mask from her saying thanks to him as he responded, "You're welcome." And cracks the door. (Y/N) lets out a wheezing laugh as she thinks to herself, He's such a good boy. I'm glad Kyojuro taught him right. She thought, sounding like a wholesome grandma.

Senjuro scoops ice up from the freezer and dumps it in the cup, and once it is halfway, he puts it under the water dispenser and waits for the cup to fill. He stood where for a prolonged moment until the cup was filled to the brim with water.

He puts the cup on the island as he stands in front of the microwave, waiting for it to beep. He softly clapped his hands together, and got on his toes as the timer on the microwave decreased. Once it beeped, he opened the microwave and took the bowl of hot soup out. He then grabs a plastic spoon, and slowly stirs the bowl, and softly fans it to make sure it isn't too hot for (Y/N).

He then picked the bowl, and your cup up as he strolled back to your door, and softly pushed the door open. He put her cup right next to her on the mini table, as he grabbed the chair next to him, and sat down in front of her. He scooped up the soup and said, "Open wide." and she opened her mouth for him to pour the soup into her mouth.

She chews the noodles and swallows them, softly coughing once she finishes it. Senjuro asked her, "How is it?" and (Y/N) glanced at him and responded, "In the words of Kyojuro, tasty. I would scream it out, but my throat hurts too much." She said as she softly laughed, and so did Senjuro. He continued to feed (Y/N) more of the soup, until she told him to stop. He puts the bowl on the mini table, and grabs the cup as he says, "Are you thirsty? If so, sit up for me, please."

She sits up from the bed, and was about to give her a waterfall but she grabbed the cup from his hands. "I may be sick, but I can do this on my own." She said as she took a sip of the cup. "But, thank you. You're doing a good job taking care of me." Senjuro smiled under the mask as he bowed down to her and said, "Anything for my brother's wife."

(Y/N) then pats his hair as she says, "You'd make a great husband, you know that, right?" Senjuro blushes at the thought of it. But in hindsight, she was right. His brother taught him how to treat others with respect, and how to treat others when they direly need them. Feats like that are what make a great friend, and a spectacular significant other.

She put the cup back on the mini table as she laid back down on the pillow and said, "Thank you for feeding me that soup. It feels like I can breathe through my nose again. My stomach and throat still hurt, but it's something." She said, smirking at him.

Senjuro smiled as he said, "Is there anything I can do for you?" (Y/N) looked at the flat screen in front of her, hanging on the wall as she said, "Can you turn on the TV? the remotes on the stand." And he nods. He stood up off the chair, and grabbed the remote. He sat back down on the chair and turned the TV on with the remote.

"What do you want to watch?" Senjuro asked (Y/N) as she responded, "I'll watch whatever you wanna watch. I'm not too picky about what I watch so long as it keeps me entertained." Senjuro as nods as he elicits a, "Hm." from his vocal cords.

A show popped up in his head, and he thought both of them would love it. He pressed the search bar on the remote, and slowly typed in The Spectacular Spider-Man in the search bar. Senjuro heard (Y/N) gasp as she said, "You like this show too?" He nods as he responds, "My brother showed me this when he was in his Spider-Man phase when we were both little. I liked the show, and the characters, the villains too." He said as he scrolled through until he stops at the 10th episode titled, "Persona".

He presses play and puts the remote down on the bed as she asks him, "Is this the episode where he gets the black suit?" "Symbiote, and yes it is. Sorry for my correction." Senjuro said as his eyes were glued to the TV. (Y/N) chuckled as she said, "You're such a nerd." making Senjuro elicit a nose laugh.

An hour and 32 minutes passed by as both of you watched the 13th episode, where Venom tried to attack Spider-Man's loved ones, them being Gwen Stacy and Aunt May. As they were watching the TV, Senjuro felt his stomach growl and stood up as he said, "I'm gonna get something to eat. Are you feeling any better to eat anything else?"

"If I'm going to be honest, probably not. Just go ahead and eat, I'll be okay." You said as Senjuro nodded and left the room. Such a good boy. You thought as you continued to watch the TV. However, you started to retch as you felt something in your stomach slowly coming back up. Oh no... you turned your body to the right, and left your head hanging on the side of the bed, and hovering above the trash can as you elicted a few retches before a wave of vomit launched out of your mouth.

The force of vomiting made your already sore throat made it hurt even more. The sloshy, mushy sound of the vomit going in the trash bag sounded so grotesque, it was something that would make anyone upchuck. You spit out a big wad of saliva as you look at the aftermath of you spewing out your stomach's content. The vomit was a golden yellow, along with a few bits and pieces of the chicken.

You spat out more saliva before you felt a second round quickly arriving, and you vomited again. Thankfully, it wasn't much, but it still hurt like hell. Senjuro barged right in to see you hanging your head above the trash can as you looked at him with tears in your eyes. "S-Senjuro... Help me..."

Senjuro quickly scurried to you as he lifted you back up to the bed, and put your head on the pillow. "I'll go get a towel, and some medicine! J-Just, hang on okay!?" Senjuro said as it sounded like he was panicking as he ran back out of the room. Your entire body was shaking as you were lying down, waiting for Senjuro to come back.

Someone up above... please help me gain the strength I need to overcome this... (Y/N) thought as tears started to down both sides of her face. Please... Senjuro came back with a wet small towel, and a bottle of pills. He puts the wet cold towel onto (Y/N)'s head, and opened the cap of the bottle. He pours one tablet out as he says, "Open your mouth." and she obeys him.

He puts the tablet in her mouth and grabs the cup of water and pours a appropriate amount in her mouth, and she closes it as they both hear the sound of her swallowing it. "The effects might take a minute to kick in. I-I think it's best if you sleep for the time being." (Y/N) nods as she says in a feeble, hoarse tone, "Okay..."

Senjuro puts his hand on (Y/N)'s covered body, and pets her as he reassures her, "It's gonna be alright. You can get through this. I know you will." smiling under the mask. (Y/N) looked at him as she moved her arm, and grabbed his hand. "Th-Thank you... for taking care of me..." her eyes began to close as she repeated the words, "Thank you... thank... you... that..." and then she passed out asleep.

A couple of hours went by, and it was now dark outside. Senjuro yawned as he started to get sleepy, but he didn't want to leave (Y/N)'s side. He wiped his eyes with his free hand. He already finished the entire second season of The Spectacular Spider-Man, and now he was watching Adventure Time. He checked his phone and read a text from his brother that he was coming, 30 minutes ago.

Where are you, brother? I can only stay up for so long... Senjuro thought as he wiped his eyes with his free hand. He yawns as he started to fade in and out of sleep. His eyes and neck were getting heavier as he lowers his head, and slowly closed his eyes.

That is, until someone knocked on the door. He lifts his head back up as he stood up, and slowly let go of (Y/N)'s hand. He leaves the room, and unlocks the front door to see that it was his younger brother, Kyojuro. "Big brother! I'm so glad you're here!" and hugged him. Kyojuro laughed as he says, "Nice to see you, too, little brother." And pats his back.

They both walk in as Kyojuro asked Senjuro, "Where's (Y/N)? Is she still sick?" Senjuro pointed at the cracked door and said, "She's in there. And yeah, she's still sick. But I've been taking care of her while you we're gone." Kyojuro pat his back as he said, "Thanks, man."

Senjuro smiles under the mask as he says, "Anything... For my older sister-in-law. Excuse me." He said as he yawned mid-sentence. "Oof, sounds like she took a toll on you." Senjuro rebutted, "No, I've just been staying up for too long, that's all." Kyojuro hummed as he said, "Either way, you sound tired. Go upstairs and get some sleep. I'll take care of her for tonight." He said, scruffing up his hair.

Senjuro softly laughed as he said, "Okay, okay. You don't gotta mess up my hair for it." And started to go upstairs. As he was going up, Kyojuro said, "Hey." making Senjuro turn around. "Yes?" Kyojuro walked up to him, and wrapped his arm around his neck as he laid his head on his shoulder and said, "Thanks for taking care of my wife. I was kind of disappointed in myself for not being here. But, I'm glad she was being taken care of by someone like you." He said, with a smile on his face.

Senjuro pats his back as he said, "Anytime." They both stopped hugging Kyojuro said, "Now go upstairs and get some sleep." Senjuro chuckled as he gave him a two finger salute as he went upstairs to his room. Kyojuro then looks at the door of the room you were in, and peeks out to see you asleep with a towel on her forehead.

Kyojuro stepped back as he went to the kitchen and went into one of the lower cabinets to get a face mask. He puts it on, closes the cabinet, and softly opens the door as he sees Adventure Time playing on the TV. My brother still has taste... He then sits down on the chair next to her.

He heard her groaning as her hand started to move around, as if she was trying to grab something. He reaches his hand out to her, and she grabs it, forming a smile on her sleeping face. Kyojuro looked at her as he thought, You did good Senjuro... you did good. And started to watch the TV.

If you gagged while reading this, I sincerely apologize. But, that's all I have for you today. Until next time.

❤️👋✌️.

[karaloza]

Legend of Zelda Theme Park - Complete Map 2.0

Now with extra sand! And an official logo! (And I guess an official name, though I will likely continue called it the Zelda Theme Park.)

Besides the addition of the Gerudo Desert, there are some details that have changed. I added icons marking the location of Zonai Device Dispensers in the Skyward Realm, and a new small water feature right outside Lovely Scales in Zora's Domain shows where you can see, and hear, and play with Don Gero's Frog Chorus! However, I have not (yet) edited the individual writeups to match, so mind that the following links are a little out of date:

Overview

Welcome Plaza

Castle Town

Lost Woods

Epona Ranch

Death Mountain

Skyward Realm

Zora's Domain

Dark World

Gerudo Desert (NEW!)

[overgrownmoon]

ok i wanna talk about “fixing minecraft” in the same way the post i just reblogged did but in a different way so i’m making my own post instead

things i agree with: yes minecraft is a sandbox!!! there is no one right or wrong way to play and enjoy it!! the beauty of how and why it’s still so popular is bc of that freedom! if ur bored after speedrunning netherite and the end man that’s ur problem go find more stuff to do, get mods, etc. it’s not the games purpose to give you goals, you have to make them for yourself.

however

my personal frustration with the game is how disconnected the new features feel from the rest of the game. i feel like mojang has been putting all of their effort into making NEW mechanics with NEW mobs and NEW items and have completely ignored the possibility of returning to old items and mechanics and giving them a chance to shine again. horses are fun and whimsical, but they haven’t been touched in ages; furnace minecarts are still functionally useless; and glow squids don’t do jack shit, man, i legit don’t see the appeal of making your item frame shiner?

what i want is for mojang to go back to these old features and give them some new life. it’s impossible to keep every feature relevant, but it is possible to take some of these old features and connect them to new updates or just give them more stuff they can do. i’m pissed that chains don’t connect minecarts together into trains! i would love to see buggies that you could stick onto your horse or llama pack to haul your stuff for you! what if putting glowberries and glowsacks in a crafting table made glowsticks? what about dying redstone lamps different colors? put a dispenser on a boat to make a cannon? copper pipes to transport water or copper wires that let redstone signals travel vertically or underwater?

it’s these kinds of ideas i want - just some way to show us that they haven’t forgotten about these old features and are interested in doing something with them instead of just letting them fall to the wayside and rot. there is so much potential being wasted here. it makes me sad. not every feature has to cater to every player, but i miss the older minecraft design of finding something new and wondering “wow, what can i do with this?” and messing around, combining it with different things in different ways until it works. nowadays i feel like i need a field guide for everything. maybe it’s because i’ve been playing the game for so many years… but i miss that feeling of discovery.

[gwen-writes]

so... i couldn't stop thinking about how hilarious it would be if Astarion planar travelled to my roommate and i's dorm room accidentally (thanks Gale), and i wrote it. forgive any formatting errors, this is my first time posting fic-type writing to tumblr!

totally self-indulgent, silly fun. enjoy if you want!

(1357 words) and shoutout to my bestie "isolde" :) love u

IF YOU WANT MORE OF THIS, check it out on my ao3! gwen_writes

A Vampire in New England

With a quick huff toward her candlewick, the smell of “warm luxe cashmere” was replaced with the pungent sting of smoke. Two clicks and the lamp was out, the two women crawling into bed and whispering among themselves. Sleep ached behind Isolde’s eyes, only allowing her a few more blinks before she was lulled into a dream. Fiora stretched and groaned in her cot, wishing she could sleep as easily as her roommate.

Fiora’s brows softened as she soothed herself with deep breaths, waiting for rest to overcome her. An incomprehensible roar shattered her resolve, glares of purple beaming in a flash of swirling magic. Her eyes couldn’t adjust to the light - she squinted and desperately tried to comprehend what was before her. The beacon dispelled just as soon as it had appeared, and Fiora willed against her paranoia to not panic at the sight of a figure in her room.

“I will never trust Gale again,” A smarmy voice hissed. The shadows allowed no outline of the thing on the floor, but she could see that it was sprawled out on her patterned rug. She was stunned into silence, glued to her sheets in place. Every nerve in her body was screaming for her to alert Isolde - who was remarkably still asleep next to her - to alert anyone. But who, exactly, are you supposed to call when a glowing force materializes in your room and dispenses a person in its wake?

Fiora turned her head to look at Isolde, telepathically pleading for her to stir. That was a mistake, notably, because she had caught the guest’s attention.

“Oh, hells,” Something glinted in the dim light, and she realized this visitor had weapons. “Am I going to have to kill you, or are you going to be ever so intelligent and let me walk free?”

Isolde shifted in her blankets. Fiora’s wide eyes darted between her roommate, then the unwelcome presence. Moments passed, and Fiora couldn’t manage any words out of her mouth.

“An answer would be helpful, truly,” Their voice was smooth and fulsome.

“Don’t kill me, please,” She blustered, more pathetic than she wanted it to be. “Just get the fuck out of my room - it’s fine.”

“Wonderful,” They said in a singsong voice. As her eyes adjusted, Fiora was able to make out more features now. White hair, distinctive red eyes. Not intimidatingly tall - they couldn’t be much taller than her. The figure turned sharply, but it suddenly went aflame with a string of profanity. 

“What the fuck!” Fiora jumped out of bed. If the sprinklers went off or something went wrong, she assumed this person wouldn’t hesitate to stab her. Isolde finally awoke, rushing out of bed in a frenzy.

“What! What? What!” She yelped, first giving a worried look to her friend and then looking at the blurry mass of fire. “Oh my god!” Isolde pushed her glasses onto her nose, trying to grapple with her surroundings.

Fiora was scrambling to unscrew her water bottle and douse the open flame, and in its light she could finally see the person. A man with sharp features, extravagant leathers, thick boots. He looked like he had just come from a Ren Faire. 

“What the fuck is going on!” Isolde started opening her water bottle to contribute. “Why is the room on fire!” “It’s a person!” Fiora unhelpfully explained, thoughts racing. She pushed past the flaming body, the fire licking her cotton pajamas, and opened the door. There was one open square on the man’s back, and with the miniscule amount of force in her body, she pressed both of her palms to him, and shoved.

He writhed on the ground, sparks finally deteriorating.

“Don’t even ask me anything, because I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” Fiora said to Isolde, exasperated. A laugh threatened to escape her lips, adrenaline coursing through her.

“I slept through a man appearing in our room?” Isolde replied, and the two women were transfixed by the charred man on their dorm hall floor, despite their better judgment. 

“My stomach hurts. I’m sweating,” Fiora hissed. “You should’ve seen it - it doesn’t make any sense. I was trying to fall asleep and this huge light showed up, and it was the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in my life, I swear to god. And then, he was just there! He was just… on our floor!”

“What do we do with him?” Isolde asked.

Fiora eyed her wildly, “What do you mean ‘what do we do with him?”

“He sounds like he’s magic, or something,” Isolde shrugged.

“He threatened to stab me before you woke up,” Fiora emphasized.

“But what if he’s a wizard?” Isolde whined.

“Oh my god, I can’t,” Fiora started laughing. 

“Nothing cool ever happens, this could be, like, something crazy that we might miss out on!” She bargained.

“Okay, so what do you suggest we do with him?” Fiora crossed her arms. The cold air from outside of their dorm was tickling her bare arms.

“We should help him! He’s burned to a crisp!” Isolde gestured to the limp man, who was still groaning on the floor.

“If he’s a wizard, he can heal himself,” She narrowed her eyes.

“You’re telling me that a wizard just showed up on our doorstep from a portal and you don’t want to know where he came from, who he is, every single thing he’s ever done in his life?” Isolde tempted.

Fiora gave her a long look, “You’re so right.”

“Do you think he’s knocked out?” Isolde looked upon the man.

“I doubt he would survive that,” Fiora reasoned.

“Okay, each of us takes an arm, and then we pull him back into our room. University Police will nab him if they find a sleeping man outside our door.”

As they kneeled down, hands going under the man’s shoulders, his eyes cracked open and he cut through their plans.

“Lay one more finger on me and I will have your head on a stake,” He threatened. Isolde was faster to jump away than Fiora, like a rabbit in the grass with a snake.

“I told you he was violent!” Fiora hissed.

“He’s a wizard!” Isolde defended.

He pushed himself onto his elbows, scowling, “That is insulting. I am not a wizard.”

“What are you, then?” Isolde’s eyes widened with alarm.

“If you must know,” He smiled easily, as if he hadn’t just been scorched moments prior, “I am a magistrate from Baldur’s Gate.”

“Where the fuck is Baldur’s Gate?” Fiora frowned.

“Faerûn,” He threw up a hand like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Uncultured little thing, you are.”

“Why would a magistrate show up in my room from a magic portal?” Isolde’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just a civilian officer. You can’t be that important.”

“Yeah,” Fiora dogpiled, “And why did you catch on fire?”

He chuckled, rising to his feet. Fiora was right, he was barely taller than her. The cracks on his skin from the burns were slowly fading, but bruises peppered his face. A handsome face, Fiora thought.

“Both of you are very inquisitive,” He complimented, which made Fiora’s stomach curdle. He suddenly seemed much less helpless, and much more like a sneering wolf.

“If you answer our questions, we can help you get back to.. Baldur’s Gate, or whatever it was,” Isolde was uncharacteristically bold. The man raised a brow, considering the offer.

“And where are we now, exactly?” He surveyed their surroundings, and it was clear that despite his blind confidence, this man was very, very lost.

“The United States. New England. Our college dorm,” Fiora offered simply. The man rolled his eyes, not to them but almost to someone in the sky.

“Gods, Gale, I’m going to fucking kill you,” He cursed in a sing-song voice under his breath. He blinked a few times, looked to the ground, and then met their gaze again.

“I’m Astarion,” He raised out a pale hand, “you are?”

“I’m Fiora,” She didn’t take his hand, anxiety still going rampant in her veins.

“Isolde,” The red-haired woman smiled and took his hand, shaking it gently.

[shithowdy]

Hi I saw your post about having 12 species of birds in your backyard so now I’m genuinely asking: what’s your advice for bird watching? And getting those birds into my backyard?

so i'm not what anyone would call a comprehensive resource but i can offer a few tips, yeah!

for making your yard attractive to birds:

birds do not like open space, as it makes them vulnerable to predators. they need lots of foliage to hide, so place any feeders or other features in places that aren't wide open. if you do not have a lot of plants in your yard, change that if you can!

diverse plants will also attract nectar-feeding birds and insect-eating birds, and are sort of your "natural" feeder setup. you can check if your area offers grants for pollinator gardens.

a non-stagnant or regularly-changed water feature (fountain, bird bath) is also very attractive to birds. in hotter climates, i would say it's an essential addition.

different types of feeders and food attract different types of birds. you can draw hummingbirds with nectar and bright flowers (they love fuchsia), most songbirds with black oil sunflower and safflower seeds, a whole variety with different suet, corvids with peanuts; doves and juncos and corvids prefer tray or ground feeding, little songbirds like something they can cling to, etc. research what kind attracts what you want to see, or make a diverse setup if you have the space. you can usually avoid feed that has millet, most birds will just hurl it everywhere.

don't feed birds bread; it's empty fluff and just fills them up. seed is boring but fine, they don't really have a concept of food being "boring"

clean your feeders every time you refill them (and change hummingbird feeders every few days regardless); there are several contagious avian diseases and you want to avoid outbreaks. your feeders will become known as foul and the uninfected will move on.

if you live in an area that has them, figure out a way to rodent-proof your feeders, like squirrel baffles. they'll destroy your whole setup and scare away all the birds (you can try to set up a special squirrel feeder, but they do not respect borders).

consider nest boxes! make sure they can be opened for cleaning, and don't have any harmful materials in their construction.

check if your town has a backyard birding store, like wild birds unlimited or a locally-owned equivalent. there will almost always be an old woman who may or may not work there willing to dispense advice about your local birds.

keep your cats indoors

for watchin them birds:

get the merlin app on your phone; it's kind of like Bird Shazam and can help you ID based on its song

if you want to get more serious, you can also get eBird and report your findings/keep a checklist

if you don't have a fancy zoom lens camera, get a pair of binoculars! they're good to have even if you do. you can even take pics through them with your phone.

the best time to watch birds is from about sunrise to late morning

don't interact with the birds, save for outlier circumstances (rescue, one lands on you, etc)

yard-watching and trail-watching are pretty different when it comes to ethics and how much humans and birds should be interacting. in general it's frowned upon to feed birds in wilderness areas to attract them, whereas urban birds are already accustomed to human presence. it's also frowned upon to play mating songs to attract birds.

don't go off-trail trying to find birds you can hear. it's dangerous for you and upsetting to them.

your area might have local birding meetups, or online groups where people report sightings and good spots.

there's uhhh probably a lot more i'm forgetting to add but i think this covers the basics!

[kaaaaaaarf]

1, 42 and 48 🌊

My wife, my life. 😎

1. What was the first piece of furniture you bought?

We haven't actually bought any in a while, but we're saving up for both a new bed and a new couch.

42. What's an unjustifiably expensive appliance that you really want?

Oh my god. There is this coffee machine that has a timer so it's brewed when you wake up, and it makes all different sizes, hot AND cold, and grinds the coffee!!! I also would love an espresso maker. fuck, can you imagine? Actually you know what I want!!! One of those huge fridges with the double doors that has a built in water/ice dispenser. That's my fucking DREAM. Also, I don't bake but I really want one of those fancy kitchenaid mixers. Or, God, a SMEG anything. Anything!!! Give me a $500 SMEG toaster I need it. Or! Or! You know, I would kill for an at home fountain pop machine. Fuck. Crispy coke all day longggg. Not expensive, but if counter space weren't an issue I'd get an air fryer.

48. If you could build your home from scratch, what outrageous feature would you want to build into it?

I would want floor to ceiling book shelves in a library, and one of them is actually a secret door to a little nook room for me to nest in. I would also love a giant kitchen. Huge. With a centre island and everything.

asks for people in their 30s