#you can see the bruises grow throughout the match it's great fun

[dilf-in-peril]

[solomonish]

Growing Pains (Lucifer & Mammon)

At first, Lucifer thought that to fall with those he loved more dearly than anyone was the final blessing the Celestial Realm would bestow upon him.

But Father did not intend to stop after taking Lilith from them. He just took her first - the brothers still had themselves and each other to lose.

ao3 link: here!

---

The office in the manor was slowly becoming more and more cluttered as Lucifer continued to drag stacks of paperwork and countless manuals on Devildom culture into the house when he returned from his meetings with Diavolo. The business he had been tasked to sort out for the rest of his existence needed to be started on right away, leaving Lucifer tied up with an amount of work fitting for the place he now had to learn to call home. Instead of navigating the new life with his brothers, he had to spend his time navigating the halls of the palace or bent over an old wooden desk. The impressive castle doors now instinctively sent a pit into his stomach and finding the Royal Butler Barbatos waiting for him to lead him so he wouldn't lose himself in the halls hurt Lucifer in a weird, bruising way he had never felt before.

By the time he got home, the house was normally quiet. It scared him, at first: after spending so long in battle, silence could only mean something bad. During the first days, he found his brothers huddled up in the same spot, unwilling to be alone. Beel and Belphie would be curled around each other in some way, inseparable as they had always been. Mammon could be found sprawled over the carpet,, one hand gripping Satan's ankle or wrist as if that'd be enough to stop one of his rampages. Perhaps it was; from what Lucifer heard, every day he was getting better, learning more. Mammon wasn't the only one gripping him; Asmodeus was often cuddled next to Satan, clinging tightly to his arm or sometimes even to him. He was getting awfully affectionate lately, but maybe it was doing Satan some good. Only Levi wasn't directly touching anyone, but even though his back was turned, his new tail would occasionally twitch and brush against one of his brothers.

These scenes gave Lucifer pause, the feeling he was learning to be pride swelling in his chest. Everything was alright. Mammon had kept things under control.

He left them alone, not wanting to disturb their peace, and continued his work, the task distracting his mind and the affection distracting his heart from the crippling grief that loomed above them all.

Eventually, though, the brothers disbanded. The quirks he had noticed growing in them soon became hallmarks of their new beings: Asmodeus' affections were becoming increasingly licentious, Belphegor could hardly be found awake regardless of the time, items turned up missing and wound up in Mammon’s possession...each of his brothers seemed to spiral further and further towards degeneracy, save for Satan, who was as sinful as it got and instead retreated into himself and forming a grudge against everyone for his status as what seemed like a half-baked replacement.

Ever the dependable brother - a thought that was now strangely accompanied by a twinge of something unpleasant instead of the warm, affectionate delight Lucifer was used to - Mammon still tried to keep everyone together.

At first, it seemed to work. Nobody seemed entirely willing or even purposely trying to avoid the others. However, it seemed that the sin they began to embody were too great an obstacle none of them knew how to hurdle. Any interruption infuriated Satan, and Asmo seemed offended at the concept of taking his own time away from himself to check in on his brothers. Beel and Belphie could never be taken away from easing the effects of their sins for long enough to hold a meaningful conversation, and Levi had already dug himself so deep in a self-deprecating hole he seemed convinced any efforts to connect were the beginning of an elaborate prank to make fun of him. When items turned up missing immediately after Mammon’s visits, doors started slamming if they even opened.

Still, his attempts to keep the camaraderie alive meant Lucifer had more time to spend on the paperwork. It was a good system - at least, that’s how he felt. Evidently, Mammon didn’t feel the same.

Normally, on the days where Mammon made a futile attempt at his rounds (days that were becoming more and more scarce throughout the week), Mammon passed by Lucifer’s door. This time, there was an angry knock on the door, more of an alert to Mammon’s presence than a request for permission. The door didn’t bang against the wall, but Mammon had twisted the doorknob rather ferociously and Lucifer almost flinched at the noise it made. Taken aback by his brother’s stormy entrance, he nearly watched him approach impassively. There hadn’t been any opportunity to discuss the proper, respectful way to enter his workspace - clearly, this needed to be remedied soon.

“What’re ya even doing in here?” Mammon bellowed, looking around. The shelves that had books in them were put together nicely, the sturdy wood packed with old books about a life they both used to find reprehensible. How cruel of their father to force them to live what He made them fear most.

“You can lower your voice,” Lucifer answered, dropping his pen on the desk. When he leaned back, ignoring the way his upper back twinged at the change from his previous slumped posture, he met Mammon’s eyes and was surprised to see genuine frustration behind them. “I’ve been working.”

A scoff had never sounded more irritating to Lucifer’s ears. “Is that what it is? Because to me, it seems like you’re avoiding us.”

Lucifer scrunched his eyebrows. “Where did you-”

“Is that it? What, we all lost so now we’re losers and you can’t stand to look at us?”

“I never-”

“Or you couldn’t fill the void left when you were thrown out as the world’s best lapdog, so you became Diavolo’s instead?”

“Stop right there, Mammon,” Lucifer commanded, standing from his seat. His voice had a steely chill to it that it never had before, one to match the resentment burning inside of him. Instinctively, Mammon backed off. They didn’t know much about their new predicament, but they knew how the seven of them ranked in power, and Lucifer would always come out on top. “I’m won’t concern myself with where you got these foolish thoughts from. Perhaps it would benefit you to spend less time with Levi-”

“Levi? How could you know if he even had anything to do with this? When’s the last time you saw him?” Mammon shot back. “Spending less time with anybody isn’t the answer to anything, though of course it’d be your answer to things.”

Lucifer sighed. “I’m working out the details of this situation so you don’t have to worry yourselves with it.”

Mammon didn’t have an immediate response to that, instead watching Lucifer with betrayed eyes. He seemed to deflate over time, a resignation falling over him that forced his fire out with a sigh. "We were a team, Lucifer. What the hell happened?"

There were obvious answers to that, and there were not so obvious answers. Faced with so many options, Lucifer found himself unable to choose between them, and instead stared blankly at Mammon. Slowly, Lucifer sat back in his seat without breaking eye contact.

We've been ripped away from everything and left to become scabs over the wounds we've been given. All I'm trying to do is give you the freedom to heal however you need to, to keep you from the chains that could have just as easily awaited us as this fate did.

I'm hiding from you a burden that is too heavy to pass on - if I move it from my shoulders, I fear my arms would be too weak to carry it to you.

There were so many ways to tell Mammon that Lucifer had to lock himself away, the door a heavy shield against his own grief and the ever-growing work that buried him and the secret he carried. Even if Lucifer didn’t trust his own mouth to only say what was necessary, he could just thank Mammon for his efforts, tell him that he trusted Mammon more than anybody to keep together the one thing that ought to stay intact after the holy hell they’d created. But something inside him bristled, swelling uncomfortably until he felt like a balloon ready to burst. Gulping down his thoughts, Lucifer resumed his writing, the pen scratching against the paper more ferociously than the claws of any creature by which they now found themselves surrounded.

"I don't need your help," Lucifer answered simply, with finality. Though the words rang true in his mind, they were leaden with the way they pulled on his heart and tasted like iron on his tongue.

Mammon scoffed again, narrowing his eyes so Lucifer wouldn't be able to notice the tears that began to gather within them. "Fine, then. I-I didn't wanna help ya out anymore anyway."

As Mammon stomped out the door of his office with a huff, Lucifer felt something snap inside him. It wasn't in the way pent up rage unleashed itself, apparently, somehow in the form of a sixth brother, but more in the way one holds on desperately to a branch too thin for the weight. Once it snaps, the plummet is rough, with stronger branches breaking up the fall and taunting tossing them around in a cruel ricochet. Outside of the thick wooden door, it was startlingly quiet, as if the house itself was forcing Lucifer to grapple with the final thread holding them together being cut with his own words.

The pain started in his chest, the way it always did, wrapping around his heart and lungs like thorny vines. The spot on his lower back, occasionally tickled by phantom feathers, throbbed as his entire brain seemed to weigh heavier in his head. After a near eternity surrounded by laughter and the beautiful, enchanting hum of Celestial life and a thundering of battle that would ring in his head for the rest of his existence, the silence seemed like a stifling blanket, the final lock on the cage they had been forced into.

When one opposed Father and lost, he truly did lose everything.

[mobagehelllocal]

"closer"

twst oc week - day five: unique magic or magicless

*special au where ai grew up in twst and develops a um!

"all that is near us we must know could disappear any day be careful the main key to finding happiness lies nowhere else but in our souls"

Octavinelle would have one prominent student amongst the first years. And this would be none other than—

“Raina.” Said girl snapped into attention at her dorm leader’s voice.

“Yes Azul-senpai?” Azul peered at her from the corner of his eyes. She stood slightly off to Jade’s other side. One hand curled at her chest and eyes attentively staring at him. She was their junior back in the Coral Sea, so imagine their surprise when they found that she had followed them all the way to Night Raven College.

“A client of mine... that is. Idia-san wishes to borrow your presence and Unique Magic once more.” He paused, “is your Unique Magic ready?”

She blinked and nodded cheerfully.

“Yup! I set another microwave on fire at the Mostro Lounge today! And I also tripped down the stairs this afternoon!” She gave him a wink. “My Unique Magic is probably charged to full again!”

At her words, Azul’s eyes twitched and Floyd let out a loud laugh. Jade peered at her, eyes scanning her head to toe for any visible injuries.

“Aaaah~! Ai’s accidents are way too funny! It’s always fun to see the things you accidentally get into..!”

“Thank the Sea Witch that Idia-san seems to believe so strongly in your abilities... He is paying us a high price. So make sure you don’t fail us tomorrow.”

“Of course senpai! Gotta pay back for that ruined microwave.” Azul grumbled at her words, before he turned to Jade with a deadpan expression.

“Of course. The damages have been calculated, and the loss of another microwave will barely make a dent in our finances.” Jade inclined his head. “I believe it was a great idea to sell Raina’s presence and the use of her Unique Magic. We are earning much from it.”

“Anything for my beloved seniors~!” Ai smiled, goofily. Truly uncaring—what mattered to her was that she was making her three seniors pleased with her contributions to Mostro Lounge... albeit the fact that her services weren’t really connected to the Lounge itself.

“There there.” Ai flushed happily as Jade reached out to pet his junior on the head. “You are doing such a good job for us, doll. We expect nothing but the best from the stubborn mermaid that seemed to have followed us to Night Raven College...fufufu.”

“Yes…! I’m happiest when fulfilling my seniors' wishes…!” They all shared an amused glance, what a frighteningly naive and absentminded girl… Not that it mattered—as long as she only showed such intense devotion to them.

“Jade will escort you tomorrow. (“Eeeeh? If you’re going to Ignihyde, then I’m coming too! There’s someone I wanna bother…!”) Don’t want you getting into any last minute accidents and never finding your way to Idia-san... he’s a very important client after all!” She nodded in excitement. “Well, I’ll dismiss you for now. Go get some rest. And try not to get into another accident before you get to your room!”

“I will try my best but I make no promises, senpai!” At that, Azul could only groan, Floyd laughed—and Jade’s smile… faltered.

—

Had it not been for Jade clutching her elbow throughout her entire trip to Ignihyde, Ai would've gotten into at least eight accidents (Floyd was, of course, content to watch and laugh). Luckily, Jade had been present to steer her away. He shook his head.

He truly had no idea why or how her magic worked—only that he had seen it first hand enough to say that the girl was capable of manipulating fate… in a manner of speaking. Her Unique Magic was, by all accounts, incredibly powerful. Azul didn’t really understand it and he had a difficult time believing in it but Jade—and his brother, Floyd—had found it to be an incredibly amusing power. At times, they would allow themselves to be subjected to it. It has always served to give them an incredibly enjoyable time.

The repercussions of it, however… He peered down at the girl. She was, like him, dressed in her school uniform. She wore the blouse, with her ribbon, the Octavinelle vest and her thick cardigan. Her bottoms on the other hand—she had switched and wore the pants version for today. As she did on days when the scraps and bruises on her legs were a bit too excessive and easier to cover with pants… Yes, the repercussions weren’t good. While the positive effects of her UM can be shared with other people (generous, this doll of his was—), the negative effects only affected her.

(It almost made him frown. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed the days when the backlash hit her harder than usual...)

(What? Jade Leech worried? Whatever gave you such an idea?)

“Jade Leech! Raina Sorte!” The little Ortho Shroud appeared in Ignihyde’s lounge. (Floyd had long since abandoned them once he caught sight of a certain classmate…”There you are!” “W-wah? Floyd, why are you here? I have to go meet C—” “Eh? Spend time with me instead!”) “My brother has been waiting!”

“Hey Ortho, hey.” Ai greeted as she hopped onto her feet, she stumbled briefly then blushed as Jade immediately placed a hand on the small of her back to steady her. Ortho peered at her with slightly worried eyes.

“Will you be okay, Raina Sorte?”

“Yes! Jade-senpai is with me after all!” She turned to him, eyes aglow with nothing but trust. He let out a soft laugh at that.

“I will certainly do my best to keep m—our doll safe… Or else we wouldn’t be able to fulfill our contracts now, would we? Fufufu.” he said, a pleasant smile on his lips. When they’re finally brought before Idia, whose expression brightened at the sight of Ai.

“Oh Best Girl is here. GG.” Jade followed close behind as Ai stood right next to Idia’s chair.

“Oooh, so what game is it this time, Idia-senpai?”

“Upright Underland!” He chirped up rather happily—Ai was one of the very few people he had opened up to about games because she had been genuinely interested, “I had to grind some gems because I just MLB’ed Flora-chan and Castle-chan from the Flower Day Event--but then they suddenly dropped Sterling-chan’s Birthday Banner and I really want her…!” He played around with the game’s interface and showed Ai, Sterling’s card art. “Look! Her baton matches her mom, Lilith-chan’s bat aesthetic…!”

“Oooh! Lilith’s the MILF character, wasn’t she?”

“Yes! I need to bring her daughter home…!”

“Aww!” Ai cooed as she peered at the screen. “I’ll do my best for you, Idia-senpai!” Idia clapped his hands and put his phone down in front of her. Jade and Ortho took this as their cue to step away. Her Unique Magic was the type to spread out and affect everyone around her—so they could only hope that stepping away, even a little, would help ensure that her magic would be focused. Ai closed her eyes and chanted:

“Lucky Ending..!”

--

“—Oof!” Ai tripped, again and even as Jade attempted to catch her, she still fell, hard—on the ground. “Owwie…” He sighed deeply and bent down slightly to pull her up again.

“My, I don’t quite understand why getting the same card five times in a row could use up so much of your Lucky Ending.”

“Well! It’s a gacha.” Ai winced as she stretched out her injured legs. “It’s technically gambling. And I got enough copies to MLB Sterling-chan in one ten roll. My luck was certainly at peak performan—woah!” She tripped again—she waved her hands frantically around before this time Jade was finally able to catch her. She looked at him, surprised.

“You know senpai. You don’t have to catch me when I fall. It’s better if my luck builds back up with small accidents like this.”

“You speak as if…” I don’t want to catch you when you fall. As if I don’t mind seeing you in pain. He held his tongue, and smirked instead.

“I was simply growing tired of you falling and making whiny noises.”

“Oh. That’s valid.” Ai hummed as Jade pulled her up, and tucked her into his side. At his actions, her face turned red. “Senpai—!? W—what?”

“We should go back to the Mostro Lounge quickly, doll.” Jade said smoothly, “I’m sure Azul will be pleased to hear that Idia-san was very happy with your services.”

“A—ah… of course.” Jade’s arm tightened and secured itself around her waist.

“Since when was it that I could no longer stand to see her like that…? My oh my, what have you done to me… little doll?”

--

"you know the closer you get to something the tougher it is to see it and I'll never take it for granted"

[mikaelsrose]

a great combination of fluff, smut, and angst: NSFW(ish) ABC

pairing: Tyril x human!MC (Selene)

word count: 4600

warnings: NSFW 

an: nsfw alphabet template by this lovely soul with the slightest change

tag list: @brycesgirl @tyrils-star @lxdy-starfury @rysdumortain ​

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)Except for being exhausted, Selene is vulnerable, on full display for Tyril (quite literally), and a bit emotional. That’s actually when Tyril and her have the most personal, heart-to-heart conversations.“I met with Deryth today.”Tyril propped his head on his hand while lying on his side and looked down at his lover, carefully covering her naked body with duvet. His hand then rested on Selene’s hip where his fingers stroked the delicate skin.

Several weeks earlier, during a family dinner, Tyril’s father pointed out that ever since Selene and Tyril came back from Whitetower, he could sense a powerful, ancient energy from her. Adrina immediately agreed and encouraged Selene to meet with Undermount’s walking encyclopaedia/prophet/generally the one with no official title but the go-to lady when there’s any kind of trouble. Although Tyril made no remarks that evening, he agreed with his family. Ever since Selene their battle with the Shadow Court, since she wielded the Blade of Light and was able to open portals, he felt that something... unlocked. Something clicked into place.

“What did she say?”

“A lot of unsettling things, actually,” Selene bit her lip gently and turned to lie on her back. With her eyes set on the dark ceiling, she continued. “But also... nothing concrete. She said she’s been expecting me since I set foot in Undermount because she could feel my magic. She also admitted the same thing your father said.”

Tyril’s hand slowly wandered up her body to eventually rest flat on the blonde’s stomach, his finger outlining a faint scar on her abdomen.

“She confirmed that a war is coming, and I’m going to play a pivotal part in it but this time I might not... make it through.”

The elf’s brows furrowed in confusion. “What ar-“

“But it’s not anything I wouldn’t know for a few weeks now,” she interrupted. “I think... she just confirmed my worries. I could still play dumb when those were just my dreams but now... I don’t know, Tyril. I don’t think I’m strong enough to go through something like this again.”

“We’ll be right by your side, Selene,” he responded immediately, his gaze burning a hole in her face.

“I know, love,” she cupped his cheek in her palm and smiled faintly. “That’s exactly what worries me the most.”

  B = Body part (their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Tyril’s an absolute boobies-guy. The amount of time this man has spent on one-on-one meetings with Selene’s cleavage would make him the greatest warrior in the history had he spent it on trainings. Even (or rather especially) when they’re already going to sleep, his hand finds its way under Selene’s shirt where it rests throughout the night.

As for Selene... she couldn’t have possibly picked her favourite part of him. She adores every. single. body part of this man.

Due to her constant reminders of how much she loves his body and all the differences between the two of them, Tyril’s outlook on himself changed. He didn’t exactly begin to look out for himself when there were blades involved as she asked him, but he did want to look good for her. And himself. But mostly for her, although she started working on improving his way of thinking.

However, she does have a soft spot for his muscular back covered with several very old scars. She loves giving him a proper massage after a long day and placing kisses from one shoulder blade to another. But what she loves the most is watching his back as it’s covered with long deep-blue, purple, half-noon shaped and sometimes bloody marks that her fingernails leave.

 C = Choking (basically an addition to Kink)

“I’m not sure about this, Selene,” he admitted, warring with himself whether to do what do asked and literally choke her or to simply refuse. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me. People do that, and they’re fine,” Tyril raised his brow, looking at her, all flushed, her hair a mess, a few finger-shaped bruises on her hips, and biting her kiss-swollen lips. “I’ve read that in a book.”

“Did you?”      

“Just trust me,” she chuckled, turning to lean against a drawer and swayed her hips invitingly against him, basically impaling herself with his cock for the fifth time this evening.

He still wasn’t sold on this idea but Selene was so sure this would work he was willing to give it a try. However, the second an obscene moan left her lips after a rather hard and smooth thrust, all his inhibitions were forgotten.

Selene guided his hand from her breast to her neck, forcing him to put some pressure there, and he happily obeyed. Selene was like clay in his hands, always happy to fulfil his every wish and always making sure he felt at least as good as her. That night, he wanted to fulfil one of her wishes, however strange it seemed to him.

He pinned her hips to the cold wood with his, fucking her mercilessly as his free hand worked on her bud, leaving her a moaning mess within seconds. Just as his lips busied themselves with her shoulder, guided by her reactions he put some real pressure on her throat, careful not to hurt her.

“This is the last time we are doing this,” he concluded a minute later, holding a panting and somewhat cheery Selene in his arms.

“You’re no fun.”

  D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Tyril would never admit this out loud, especially to Selene, who’s known as one of the biggest gossip in the whole Morella and an even bigger tease, but for a rather short amount of time he was very jealous of Mal (actually, scratch that, he sometime still is), his light approach to life and his relationship with Selene. The way he could joke about everything and tease the hell out of her while Tyril himself was overcome with guilt and anger. When his sole mission was destroying every single piece of the Shadow Court, Mal would still find the strength to raise the group's spirits, cheer up and motivate them. The way he would make Selene laugh.

  E = Experience (how experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Oh, Tyril absolutely knows what he’s doing. He often leaves Selene breathless, red, and speechless because he’s that good.

Selene on the other hand... well, she knows a thing or two. She’s a great observer and a quick learner, but she doesn’t exactly have much experience. She happily takes everything Tyril’s willing to show her, though.

“So... I’ve found a book,” Selene stated, blushing a little. Tyril watched her curiously as they sat in a secluded part of the House Starfury’s garden, basking in the early afternoon sun.

“What book?”

Biting her lower lip, Selene began untying her dress, wanting her body to catch as many sun rays as she could until the sunset. She tossed the material aside and rested her head on Tyril’s lap. “Remember the one Mal was so interested in?”

“You mean the one he stole?”

“The one he borrowed,” she chuckled, raising a hand to cover her eyes from the sun. “For an indefinite amount of time.”

“I remember.”

“Well, I found a similar one.”

“Somehow I had a feeling this would happen one day,” the elf concluded, eyeing Selene’s slowly raising chest. “What about it?”

“Oh, please. You know what I mean.”

Of course, he did. But he also so happened to love teasing her.

“We need to work on your communications skills,” he commented, with a barely contained smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she chuckled. “I just thought that we could give it a try. Also, I have a feeling I am really going to enjoy watching you as you read it.”

“I already did.”

“No way,” she grinned and sat up to look at Tyril’s sun-kissed face. “When?”

“I have spent a lot of time in the library and that is all I am going to say on this matter,” Tyril admitted, smirking as his hand rested on the small of her back, his fingers gently stroking the hot skin. “If you are so eager, I believe we can start our little experiment early.”

  F = Favourite position (this goes without saying)

Against the window. Against the drawer. Against the door if they’re feeling risky. Honestly, even a boulder in the middle of the woods would do if it was big enough to lean Selene against it and fuck her from behind.

 G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? Are they humorous?)

Due to Selene being a massive tease, they usually share a laugh or two during their bedroom playtime. Though there was also that one time...

“I am not ticklish,” Selene assured, sliding her hands up and down his muscular back. Tyril smirked, a devilish plan already forming in his mind, and

“I am afraid I will have to check that.”

“I see you have a death wish, Lord Tyril,” she teased, narrowing her eyes. “And since we both know I’m a much better warrior...”

The elf chuckled and raised his head from between her legs to admire the purple chain of love bites along her stomach. Set on not begging just yet, Selene bit her lower lip and watched her lover delightedly until she realized what he had planned.

“I’m willing to take my chances.”

 H = Hair (how well groomed are they? Does the carpet match the drapes?)

Honestly, I find it really hard to believe that the elves grow hair anywhere except for their heads.... I mean, they don’t even grow beards....... Therefore, elf boy is smooth as a baby. Not that Selene minds. Nothing obstructs the view, right?

 I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? The romantic aspect)

Tyril knows that one way to make Selene aroused is dancing. She takes full advantage of how incredible a dancer Tyril is. She adores the fact that he’s willing to patiently teach her everything about his culture, which includes dancing.

“I actually practised this one,” Selene admitted, looking deep into the elf’s blue eyes. Tyril’s left hand slipped down just above her butt, pushing her towards him, leaving absolutely no space between their bodies.

“You have?”

“With your father,” she giggled, seeing the shadow of jealousy on her lover’s face. “I wanted to surprise you.”

“Colour me surprised and impressed, then,” he smiled. The hand that’s been resting on Tyril’s back moved up to the side of his neck to pull his face closer.

“Since I’ve mastered this dance, I think we can already proceed with our activities,” she whispered against his lips. “I already got a head start.”

“I can see that,” Tyril smirked as he realized the only thing covering Selene’s body was a thin, white nightgown and definitely no underwear.

  J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

The first week without Selene by his side was tough but the second week? On the 9th day, Tyril seriously considered moving to Riverbend forever just so he wouldn’t have to wake up alone ever again. This being said, the vision of seeing her in a few months was... depressing.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you something to remember me by,” Selene smiled flirtatiously, making herself comfortable on his lap. Having freed his left hand of a book, she guided it to her waist and then higher, and higher until it reached his favourite plaything covered with a thin, lacy material.

Seeing that the strained smile fell of her face as she watched him carefully, Tyril sighed quietly. “I know.”

“No,” she protested immediately and brushed a strand of his hair behind his ear, stroking his cheek while doing so. “Quit glooming. This is supposed to be a good memory.”

He didn’t want her to leave. Not now. Not ever. But they’ve had that conversations many times now, and it wasn’t fair to try to change her mind again as she was clearly set on seeing her brother and taking a well-deserved break from Undermount. Not that he would be able to convince her to stay. She’s too damn stubborn.

“It’s our last night together for some time, love,” she whispered. “Take what you need. Remember me like this.”

Tyril’s hand slowly wandered up her thigh, trying to imprint the feeling of her soft skin in his memory. Trying to remember her taste, her scent, everything about her. Because when it came to Selene, he was greedy. He wanted to know everything about this woman, to know her every thought, every worry. He wanted to be the only who knows her taste and makes her make such sounds.

“Tell me you’re mine,” he begged in between kisses as his warm hands explored her body anew.

“I’m yours, Tyril. Always.”

Remembering how hot her skin felt under his palms, those sweet sounds she would make, and the way she called herself his over and over and over again with no hesitation, he would relieve himself to get himself through the day.

  K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Let’s be clear: Selene is the much more extreme one here. She has a choking kink which actually made Tyril consider a lifelong celibacy for a second just so he wouldn’t have to do it to her again. The fact that Tyril is much older also does the trick for her. And much taller.

 L = Location (favourite places to do the do)

Anywhere. Literally. Except for Tyril’s family’s private chambers, there hasn’t been a surface the two of them hadn’t christened when they were alone.

 M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Tyril would never admit it, but he finds it extremely hot when Selene turns into a sassy/bad-ass/protective mode. He’s caught himself on that the first time after she easily took out one of Imtura’s corrupted pirates. And then when she fought like a maniac with the corrupted Captain, already using magic as easily as she’d been doing that since the day she was born and swinging her sword like it was her hand.

Selene is actually a sucker for some romanticism.

She would usually come home much earlier than Tyril, which had its pros and cons. The good side was that she had time to think, to write to Kade, and to just unwind. One of the biggest cons was the fact that she had to wait many hours into the night waiting for her man after a long day and – let’s just say – she was very excited. She categorically refused to touch herself, therefore, she was sentenced for waiting, wriggling in a chair, doing some stupid breathing exercises.

It was a quarter after midnight when she felt his familiar hands embrace her from behind and his warm lips already leaving wet kisses on her bare shoulder up to her neck.

A gasp, followed by a surprised moan left her lips when Tyril’s lips started leaving red marks on its way and his hand quickly made it inside her panties. Scratch the romanticism. After a whole long day she didn’t actually need it.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Tyril would never do anything to physically hurt her even if she asked – the choking she once asked for was the only thing he agreed to do and he swore to never do it again.

  O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill)

To Selene’s delight, Tyril loves going down on her. For his own pleasure. He’s also become quite fond of getting quick blowjobs in the middle of the day. In the middle of the city. In a fairly secluded area. Or inconspicuous handjobs under the table during parties.  

Selene’s hand was stroking Tyril under the table, as they watched most of the guests dancing around the ballroom.

“Are you sure there’s no room that we could escape to for a minute?” Selene muttered, playfully stroking his tip with her thumb and watching him clench his jaw and take deep breaths.

“If there was such option, we would be there for the last few minutes already.”

She grinned hearing the struggle in his hushed voice and put more pressure on him, motivating him for a bit quicker finale this time as the song was slowly drawing to an end. The elf swallowed hard, watching as she reached for her champagne glass with her free hand. After she’s taken a small sip, she leaned over and kissed the red-cheeked man, drinking his quiet pants off his lips. Selene grinned through their kiss, feeling some wet, sticky substance in her palm.

“It’s a bit hot in here, isn’t it?”

Adrina smiled as she sat across her brother with an elegant elf by her side. Selene smiled back at the beautiful woman and took another sip of her champagne. “It is indeed.”

  P = Pace (are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual?)

Unless they’re short on time, they’re slow and sensual. Tyril takes his sweet time making sure not to skip any part of her body, driving her crazy at the same time. He pays special care to Selene’s scars, remembering how insecure they make her feel.

 Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often)

“We have about five minutes before Adrina comes in here,” Selene mumbled and bit her lip to muffle the moans that threatened to leave her mouth. Tyril’s lips worked tirelessly on her neck as his hips slammed into hers.

“That’s plenty of time,” he smirked, pulling her butt towards the edge of a counter he sat her on. Selene wrapped her legs tighter around his waist, making sure he stays right where he is. “Although if you’d like me to stop-“

“Don’t you dare.”

Tyril’s right hand slipped between her legs, his nimble fingers irritating her soft spot expertly, just as his lips caught hers to muffle her moans.

They froze immediately when a soft knocking on the door followed by Adrina’s sweet voice reverberated in the room. Panicked, Selene pushed Tyril and jumped off the furniture, hurriedly smoothing her hair and fixing her dress. Tyril did the same, but he couldn’t stop himself from laughing at the terrified look on her face.

“Imagine if she opened the door,” Selene whispered, helping Tyril smooth his dishevelled hair.

“We wouldn’t scare her for lifetime, if that’s what you worry about,” he chuckled.

“It’s not her I worry about, it’s me! I could never look her in the face again!”

Tyril snorted and leaned over the balcony door nonchalantly, amusedly observing Selene as she opened the door and greeted his sister.

  R = Risk (are they game to experiment? Do they take risks?)

Not at first, no. However, the farther they are in the relationship, the more Tyril begins to succumb to Selene’s ideas of quickies in public places and trying out some positions from the notorious book.

“It feels wrong, Selene.”

Selene looked up to see his flushed face, and took him out of her mouth for a second.

“Oh, so I can just walk out right now?”

The elf’s Adam apple moved slowly up and down as he swallowed and bit his lower lip. “I’d rather you don’t.”

“Then shut up.”

Tyril’s hand involuntarily slipped down to Selene’s hair, guiding her not-so-gently, and he quickly looked around the secluded library row to make sure they’re still alone.

He gripped the bookshelf with one hand just as he was almost there and glanced down on Selene who watched him intently with her beautiful blue eyes. With his chest heaving and tensed stomach muscles, Tyril grit his teeth not to make any noise when he came.

Selene grinned as she pulled his pants back up and stood up to place a tender kiss to the elf’s under jaw. “One could think you kind of liked it.”

Tyril brushed the loose strands of hair out of her face and stroked her cheek with his knuckles.

“I wouldn’t mind repeating this in the future.”

Chuckling, Selene stood on her tiptoes and kissed her man, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“No bodily fluids exchange in my library, kids.”

  S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? How long do they last?)

Tyril Starfury doesn’t go for rounds. Tyril Starfury goes for proper sessions, no matter the time of the day, although he has a soft spot for the morning shifts.

 T = Timid 

Tyril’s anything but timid. The fact that he was willing to fuck in front of the whole city of Whitetower? Yes, there we go. Over time, he doesn’t even pay much attention to hiding his feelings for Selene from his family. Or the elves of Undermount. *cough* handjobs during parties *cough*

Selene on the other hand learns to be more confident. Tyril quite quickly learned that the teasing is just... a ruse. But with time and endless assurance from her man of his love and devotion, she learns to ask for what she wants.

  U = Unfair (how much do they like to tease?)

Oh, Selene is the greatest teaser. There’s nothing in this world that makes her happier than watching Tyril flush because of her dirty comments, lose his composure, and get boners in the most inappropriate moments.  

She loves to distract him as he’s reading the council’s newest proposals by sitting half naked on his desk, sneakingly squeezing his butt as he’s talking with the heads of other houses during balls, and leaving juicy love bites on his neck before they go out to the town. In this way she gets to hear him moaning before noon, and she marks her territory, letting other women know he’s taken. Two birds, one stone, right?

 V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc)

Tyril makes it his priority to get Selene as loud as humanly possible when they’re alone. Unless they’re in a public place for a stealthy quickie, then he does just enough to make her almost-as-loud-as-possible. He loves seeing her struggling to stay quiet, he loves teasing her like that, fully knowing she would rather chew off her own tongue than to let a moan escape her lips when they’re in public.

However, it cuts both ways, right? Selene is a mistress of drawing incomprehensible moans from her man, especially in the most inappropriate moments – like during dinner in a bar or in a library. Especially in the library, where they’ve earned a few warnings already.

“Selene, I swear, if we get a permanent ban from the librarian, I will send you back to Riverbend.”

“Feisty,” she chuckled, stroking his calf with her foot under the library table. “Do it more often.”

 W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

“I’m starting to think you’re letting me win,” Selene panted, smirking at Tyril whom she had pressed against a wall, with the tip of her blade an inch away from his throat. Tyril raised his hands defiantly, smirking at her.

“I would never do such thing.”

“Then I believe I have surpassed my master.”

Selene lowered the blade slowly and let it fall to the ground when Tyril’s strong arms wrapped tightly around her and picked her up to slam her against the wall. “You did indeed. Therefore, I believe I deserve a consolation prize.”

“We wouldn’t want you to go into pieces, would we?” she chuckled, pulling him close to crash her lips against his. They still had a few alone minutes left and like always they were more than willing to spend it a bit nicer than on pointing blades at each other.

Selene was also more than happy to use the fact that their trainings excited him to her advantage. “Are you certain you want to stay here? Someone will come-”

“Too bad for them, then.”

“I’m really liking this side of you,” she grinned and tangled a hand in his long hair as his lips sucked hard at the skin on her collarbone.

  X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

A solid (and a bit scarred) six-pack and a thick, definitely-above-average package. If it was up the Selene, he would walk around Morella naked.

 “What about this one?” she asked, kissing a long, purplish scar under his ribcage.

“Kaya.”

“It’s been over a year,” her brows furrowed a bit. “It still hasn’t healed?”

“Magic wounds take longer to heal.”

Selene nodded, and watched his face while placing tiny, tender kisses along the scar. “You have quite the collection, I must admit.”

Tyril chuckled.

“This is the last one,” he pointed to a rather deep scar on his left hip. “No distressful story behind this one.”

“For once,” she grinned. “Is this the one Mal gave you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s my favourite one.”

“It better be, I have it because of you,” he smirked, brushing the hair out of her face.

“You have it because you love me, and you wanted to defend my honour. I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“Touche.”

Placing a series of wet kisses down his abdomen, Selene wrapped her hand around him, already hard and waiting for her touch, drawing a surprised gasp from the elf. “Though I believe you deserve some acknowledgement for your courageous defence of my honour.”

 Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Tyril is a young, handsome elf, who happens to be the love interest of many, and have a gorgeous woman by his side. Of course, he’s horny as hell. As much as he’s trying to hide it, Selene knows exactly what and how often he needs, as it happens to be her.

“Not again,” Selene giggled, feeling something hard on her thigh. She slid her thumb over Tyril’s kiss-swollen lips, admiring how soft they are. “I would like to come out of this room eventually.”

“I’m afraid this is not going to happen today,” he chuckled as Selene pushed him to lie on his back and straddled him, taking him all in.

The sun was slowly descending, and they haven’t left their bed ever since they woke up this morning.

Tyril marvelled at how the orange sun kissed her pale skin, how beautiful she looked blush-glazed cheeks, and even at how eager she was to go for another round even though the tiredness was evident on her face.

“Selene, no.”

“Come on,” she sighed as he took his hand away from her neck where she guided it. “We’ve talked about this.”

“And as far as I recall I told you I am not going to do this ever again.”

“Fine.”

  Z = Zzz (how quickly do they fall asleep afterwards?)

“I love you.”

A small smile crept up upon Tyril’s lips, and he subconsciously wrapped his arm around Selene’s body. He muttered something back, slowly drifting back to sleep. Knowing Tyril, Selene just assumed it was either “Love you too” or “I know.” A soft smile appeared on her lips as she felt his steady heartbeat on her back. Tyril would usually fall asleep first, hugging her so tight she sometimes had problems breathing.

Once she was certain Tyril had fallen asleep, she turned around to look at his peaceful face and was surprised to see a faint of a sleepy smile in the corners of his lips. “Don’t ever forget that,” she whispered, placing a featherlight kiss between his brows.

[duhliriouss]

Joker One - Shot

Grind on Me

Based on @jokerflecker’s anon ask rollplay that got a little too REAL , I’m sorry if this is a flop. I tried writing it as fast a possible for all you horny clowns and kinda went over board 🥺

A/N: plug in those headphones! I like to add music to fics a lot and find that listening with headphones on while reading really brings in the mood ❣️ well at least for me it does (I don’t do anything without music blaring in my ears) I’m sorry if I made it too musical :/

Summary: Joker has made you sexually frustrated so you end up grinding yourself on his thigh. That’s it really except for the insanely added random stuff😅🖤

Word Count: 3,625

Warnings: Swearing, SMUT

You’ve never committed a crime in your life. You can even say that now; as you waited in Joker and yours’ shared apartment for him to come home from his daily tasks of being his clown prince self.

You always had followed him blindly after his transformation. You’ve been together for so long now. And you were okay with his new-found confidence. You were okay with him switching the gears in your relationship; he was in charge now, and thank god for that...you were never good at taking the lead anyway. Now don’t get yourself all wrong, you loved Arthur dearly before he changed. It had always made sense when you soothed his laughing attacks before bed, when you gave him a warm soothing bath and kissed his bruises tenderly to make them feel better. You would do it all over again if you had to, even if it meant to go through mountains and valleys, hell and back just to protect him from the cruel world that had ambushed him vigorously day in and day out.

But you didn’t have to anymore. Instead, the tables had turned. It was Joker now that went though hell and back to protect you. Although this time it was to save you from the consequences of his own actions, the actions that you justified each time he added a number to his kill count. He never killed for the fun of it. It was for solid reasons; They deserved it, and he shows you just how much he appreciates you every day for staying by his side. He was only blossoming, and you will blossom with him in your very own way. You’ve become more loose, not caring what others think; Dancing in the rain with your beloved after he had just blown up the bank, splashing your feet in the wet remains and ash that sprinkled down with the cold water droplets that sent chills up your spine, mingling with the adrenaline you were both high on. And you have never felt more alive.

And that’s exactly what you did in this very moment..

( Listen To: Just the Two of Us - Grover Washington )

The radio trumpeted throughout the flat. Joker would be home soon and what better way to celebrate than lighting a cigarette and letting your head boom so loud you couldn’t even think straight? It sounded great to you, as it did everyday since it had become routine. You’ve grown bored most days since you liked to stay home all curled up in just your clown shaped slippers, one of Joker’s sweatshirts and your messy (y/h/c) hair, watching the news in anticipation to possibly see what your Joker has done now.

You smiled mischievously as you lit your cigarette, bobbing your head slightly to the vibrational thumps of melody that traveled from the floorboards up to your legs.

Just the two of us

Building castles in the sky

Just the two of us

The song certainly didn’t match the gracefulness of your sun dress you decided to wear today, but you danced anyway.

You lifted up your arms above your head with the cigarette in one hand, swaying your body back and forth and singing along, with your head held up high. The twilight sky seeped though the opened window, turning your living room into a lush blue hue, illuminating your already light blue floral adornment while darkening the rest of the flat into darker shades of purple contours.

You boogied and let yourself free, your body finding its way to each corner of the flat. You kept your eyes closed for the most part, letting yourself feel the strains and chords of the day, melting into a simple bliss of song. You moved your fragile, elegant body in ways that would be hard for anyone to keep their eyes off of; especially Joker, since he was already silently watching you from the doorway that led straight to the living area. You kept going, completely oblivious to his presence that had been muffled to the unnecessary loud music that seemed like it could shake the whole damn building.

He moved his forearm against the opened door frame, getting himself more comfortable as he watched you in complete amusement. This was clearly a routine for him too. He enjoyed nothing more than coming home and catching you in the act at your most tasteful state. He was infatuated by the way you’ve changed, with your afresh freedom that he created for you. For the both of you.

He started to tap his foot, his green oceans flicking back and forth as to follow your every move. His red painted lips turned upwards into a wicked smirk, nodding his head with chuckles escaping his throat.

“And darling when the morning comes

And I see the morning sun

I wanna be the one with you”

Joker sang out loud to you. You wiped your body around to find him leaned lazily against the door frame. Pure excitement boiled up your spine to the site of his return as you smiled broadly. Joker’s eyes twinkled to your contagious, beaming grin, causing his smile to grow even wider. You lifted your arms outward with your cigarettes still in your hand as you sung back:

“We can make it just the two of us!”

The saxophone that played in the song had begun as Joker swayed his way over to you, graceful in his bouncing steps, pulling his hands in front of his face in a silly attempt to fake-play the instrument. He kept going in a desperate plead to make you laugh until he was up close to you. And oh did it work. You couldn’t get enough of his absurdity. You laughed audibly over the fading out music, flicking your cigarette to the ash tray by the table that laid next to you so you could stretch out your open arms for a well needed embrace.

“There’s that laugh” Joker cracked out lovingly.

He reached in for your welcoming embrace and held you for what felt like forever. The only sounds now just being the radio talk show host:

“And there you have it folks. Our next song here will get that fog out of your brains. We are all disheartened from all the terrible riots that have been happening all over here in Gotham. So wind down, grab a glass of wine, and kick back to this one..”

(Listen To: Come and Get Your Love - Redbone)

“I’ve missed you” you breathed as you clung to his red suit.

“Shhh, I fucking love this song”

“Wha—“

“Shh” he hissed again “dance with me love”

You complied with a over dramatic eye roll along with a smirk as Joker grabbed your hips and gently started to move your body along with his own. He didn’t even give you any time to take in more of his scent or even be greeted with his usual array of kisses that he leaves all over your face and chest. Once there was music involved, no matter where or what time of day, Joker was clearly unable to contain himself from boogieing down and giving his full attention to anything else. You didn’t care however...actually, you fucking loved it. Nothing was hotter to you than watching him dance. Music or no music. It didn’t matter. His moves would never look as good on anyone else but himself. It sent you in a trance and always sent sparks of butterflies up your core. Actually, it was even more hot when he dances up against you; especially to music like this that forced the both of you to rub up against each other, other than the usual slow dancing and floor dips. Dancing to songs like this made you desire more of him. His confidence dripping off like pure honey, drizzling off the spoon.

Joker spun you around so your back was flush against his chest. He crossed your arms in front of your own chest and kept hold of your forearms as he moved his own hips back and forth, grinding against you. His unruly green locks bounced against the back of his shoulders enticingly. You followed along matching his rhythm, leaning your head back slightly so you can look up at his authentic, painted features. A smile plastered on your face as Joker leaned down and kissed the front of your exposed neck. You both continued to dance back and forth.

The bass that reverberated the entire building enveloped the moans that cracked out of your throat when he forced his tongue out to lap at the sensitive skin. Joker didn’t have to hear it to know what he was doing to you. He actually smirked against the pulsing point of your throat as it quickened. He could also feel the vibrations from your throat too as you whimpered.

“Heeyy“ He sung against your neck, you could feel his hot breath as his face nuzzled against you.

“Heeyy” you replied for the next verse. You both kept your eyes closed, both very aware of each other’s giddy, foolish smiles.

You gasped internally as Joker brought his mouth up to your ear, tucking a strand behind it as he spoke:

“I know what this does to you. I can feel your legs trembling”

“Then do something about it.” you teased back, making sure to keep the innocence in your voice as you spoke softly, though you couldn’t hide the shudder that ran through your body to his words.

Joker hummed in response. Your bodies just kept moving in a silent game of who can make the other give in first. It was Joker’s turn as he let go of your crossed arms and slid his rough hands down the seem of your dress, stopping at the front of your hips and grabbing down. Your breath hinged, cursing internally to yourself for telling him long ago that this was your sensitive spot.

Your heat was starting to drip to the inside of your thighs, you swallowed hard in anticipation of realizing it was now your turn. But before you could even think of what to do to get him going, the music ended.

“That’s alright” you thought to yourself. “I don’t need music to win”.

Apparently you did as you realized Joker had let go of you now. You stayed facing away from him for a few seconds as the talk show host invaded the silence that resided the room. You turned around to meet his gaze which you thought was right behind you, but instead watched as he was actually over in the kitchen area, pouring 2 glasses a wine for the both of you.

“Hey! That’s not fair! It was my turn!”

He seemed to ignore your clamor but held a small, smug grin which didn’t seem so small with that exaggerating, red stained smile. He made his way over with the 2 wine glasses, passing one over to you. You snatched it out of his hands, waiting for an explanation on leaving you this flustered.

“Your turn for what darling? I can’t dance all night. And besides..” he paused to reach down to the coffee table, grabbing his cigarette and lighting it. “That radio guy was really making me crave some wine”

Your lips parted slightly in bewilderment. Joker on the other hand took a long drag off his cigarette, looking deep into your dilated pupils. He was eating up all of your sweet reactions, it was such a drug to him, watching you be a writhing, flustered mess. You were completely unaware of the fact that this was still Joker’s turn. And he was winning. You never stood a chance and deep down you knew better.

You didn’t move and kept your eyes locked on him as he gave you a half chuckle. He held his cigarette with his mouth while he walked passed you to get to the tv, switching it on before making his way back to the couch. You turned to get out of his way but stayed standing still with the wine glass in your hand. You were feeling rather speechless on what to do or say next. Joker sat down gently on the couch as to not spill his brim-filled beverage. He kept his legs spread out and reached out his arms to the back of the couch lazily. He stared at you for a moment again, so you crossed your arms childishly and formed your lips into a pout.

“Yes?” You asked.

“I can’t see the T.V doll, could you move for me?”

His words stung straight to your chest. You were still completely unaware of his little game, prudishly under his control and he knew it. This was only making him radiate even more confidence. You stepped out of his way and stood to the side. You held your glass of wine with both hands, as if suddenly forgetting how to properly hold it due to how unnerved you were still feeling. You were extremely frustrated with the arousal you were still experiencing. It had all stopped so abruptly and all you craved in this moment was his hands on your soft skin again. Your skin tingled from being especially touch starved in this moment.

Your frustrations got the best of you as you failed to notice Joker’s enlarged pupils boaring into your innocent form. He was clearly satisfied with himself for thoroughly throwing you off. He was in control now. Your thoughts were finally interrupted as Joker cleared his throat. You snapped your head up to look him in the face, causing him to grin widely at seeing your flushed cheeks. You waited for him to speak but instead watched as he placed his already half drunken wine glass gently down on the side table, then using that now free hand to pat on his lap.

“Come”

He didn’t even need to say anything for you to know he wanted you to straddle him while he watched T.V. It had also become a routine for you and Joker’s down time. You sighed, ultimately giving up and walking over to him with a sheepish, tired smile painted on your lips. You sucked down most of your wine before taking your place on his lap. He didn’t move a muscle as you tried to get yourself comfortable, though it was hard seeing how, for some reason, he wasn’t closing his legs enough for you to be able to saddle him with one leg on each side of him. You didn’t think much of it though, you got comfy anyways by placing one leg on each side of just one of his legs, then lying down your head against his red suited chest to close your eyes and let the wine lull you into a dizzy nap.

You were struggling however, you couldn’t stop thinking about Joker’s hands on you just minutes ago. You felt slightly ashamed by how wet you were still getting underneath your sundress. You needed some friction more than ever right now. So you slowly started to move your hips against his thigh, oh so carefully as to not get him to notice. You acted it out as if you were just repositioning yourself.

Joker smirked wickedly as he kept his eyes to the T.V. , he had the news on which played a segment about himself. Though it wasn’t the purpose for his smug smirk - he knew exactly what you were doing. You had fell right into his trap, just how he wanted it..

“It’s okay darling, go ahead, rub yourself on me” his voice cracked a little

Blood rushed to your ears from his words. Your head snapped up drastically as you looked into his eyes, which flicked casually from the T.V to meet yours. You could see his dilated pupils now.

Was this his plan all along?

Joker watched as your rosy cheeks turned into a deeper red, flushing down all the way to your breasts. His gaze dipped down until stopping at your heaving chest. He swallowed trying to rewet his mouth, then licked the button of his lip before bringing his thigh up just gently enough to reach your heat, causing you to twitch slightly.

“Come on, don’t be shy now”

His words mixed with his relaxed posture was driving you crazy. Juices were soaking your panties at this point as butterflies continued to dance in your veins. You’ve never rubbed yourself against your Joker’s thigh before, so you complied timidly, steadying yourself first by placing your hands gently on his broad shoulders. You positioned and grounded your swollen bud on the right spot, instantly feeling the warmth that took shelter under his pant leg. You were a little too embarrassed to look him in the eyes yet, so you curled your back forwards slightly to give yourself room to rest your head into the crook of his neck. You could feel his pulse point quicken as you began to move yourself back and forth. Once you leaned down under his chin, Joker lifted his head slightly to give himself room to place his cigarette between his lips without interrupting you. His cigarette hung loosely from his mouth while his hands found their way back to the backs of the couch.

His eyes stayed locked to the T.V as you continued to grind on him; He wasn’t watching it however. His eyes stayed locked in on the reflection of the television, observing each and every motion of how you got off on him. How your (y/h/c) hair fell messily around your shoulders, down your back as you moved yourself on him.

Your breathe was getting more and more rigid as you continued. You were already feeling the tightness build up in your abdomen and your breath started to turn into whines that muffled themselves into his suit. You twisted your arm around the back of his neck more to get a better angle, you needed as much friction as possible. You were starting to get really close to your release. And Joker could tell because you finally brought your head up to face him. He his eyes caught yours in a heavy glare. Your flushed face watched him. He still acted almost careless but you could tell it was still his game since his eclipsed, barley visible green rings around the pupil of his eyes gave it away. His stare alone was enough for you to come undone.

Joker’s cigarette still stayed loosely between his thin red lips but his arms finally made their way off the couch and his hand traveled to your hips. Your maneuvers were becoming way out of sync so he gripped down hard with his calloused hands, moving you rapidly and roughly. His eyes flicked back and forth casually, multiple times until eventually resting where your blue floral trim met with your silky skin. The skirt of your dress had risen quite a bit from Joker’s hands. His head tilted just slightly enough to get a better look at how your juices were visible on this part of your thigh, shimmering from the dim light of the living room. You finally heard a low grumble accumulate in his throat. And your left knee could now feel the bulge that started to take over his pants.

This was enough for you now. You couldn’t take anymore as you threw your whole being into Joker’s loose embrace, sending out a loud cry as waves of your orgasm washed over your trembling frame. Joker let go of your hips, now just ghosting his hands over them to let you ride out your climax. You grabbed fistfuls of his red suit in your hands. Your legs shook violently around him until you could catch your breath. You were calming down but you were still a writhing mess. Joker didn’t move yet so you slowly brought your head up. His eyes looked at you for just a second before taking the last drag of the stub of a cigarette that still poked out of his mouth. He took one hand and discarding it in the ashtray next to him on the side table. He leaned his attention back to you, now looking straight down right on his suite to see all the drool you had left on it. His eyes then traveled to the bottom of your skirt again that displayed delicately to cover all your cum faultlessly. Your eyes darted all around him desperately waiting for any kind of reaction from him. Anything

“Lift up that pretty little dress of yours and show me the mess you’ve made” his voice came out hoarse and flat. Almost unamused

You obeyed, but you couldn’t tell what game he was playing now. Was he really unimpressed with you pleasing yourself on him for the first time ever? Did you really do that bad of a job? Was the way you did it unattractive? You internally nodded your head no, since you still could feel his hardened cock against your knee. He was obviously pleased.

With one last hesitating look, you slowly hiked up your skirt; you were wearing white panties but when Joker’s eyes fell on your mess, he saw how you have came so much that your thong was completely soaked, and see through. The white fabric clung to your pussy, defining your glistening folds. Joker swallowed hard and you could almost hear his heart beating faster in his chest. He let a few rigid breaths before letting out a small series of throaty chuckles. He lifted his head back up to you and you were caught off guard by a charming, wide smile:

“I win..”

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

Tagging everyone involved in ask post:. @ithinkimaperson @soulsdontbreaktheybeeend @jokerflecker @the-queen-of-things @arthur-flecks-lovely-smile @ohallthecrushes @lynnesm @into-crazy @obsessedandthirsty @mrsjokerphoenix @jokerownsmysoul @sweet-nothings04 @ajokeformur-ray

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[lovelylogans]

love light gleams

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part of the wyliwf verse.

the sideshire files | read my other fics | coffee?

warnings: food mentions, complicated parental relationships, teenage emancipation, emotional abuse, mentions of being disowned, mentions of transphobia and homophobia, classism, mentions of past underage drinking, crying, religious content (church, going to confession), remus cameo, mentions of choking/killing someone, something similar to the canon “have you thought about killing your brother?” monologue, please let me know if i’ve missed anything!

pairings: gen 

words: 57,686

"patton,” meredith says warmly, “and logan, too! come in, come in, let’s get you both out of the cold.”

“hi,” patton says, and shuffles into the diner. “um—sorry i’m late, but, you know. babies.”

“oh, they’ll need something right at the moment that’s most inconvenient, won’t they?” meredith says. “and no worries, the time’s really more a suggestion anyway—most of the rest of the kids aren’t here, but let me introduce you to my son, wyatt—”

mark, who’s sitting at the counter, looks like the man at the counter copy-pasted, except mark’s aged about twenty more years and is a bit softer around the belly. wyatt sets aside his fork and turns to more fully face him—the only difference, other than age, are the perfectly circular glasses that wyatt’s wearing, making his brown eyes overly large, like he’s looking through two magnifying glasses.

“hi,” patton says. “i’m patton, this is logan.”

“hello, patton,” he says, and, equally seriously, “hello, logan. may i hold him?”

“oh! sure,” patton says and passes him over. 

wyatt holds logan a little far away from his body, surveying him. logan surveys him back. wyatt tilts his head for a moment.

“he’ll suffice,” wyatt says decisively, hands logan back, and turns back to his breakfast.

“um,” patton says, juggling logan in his arms so that he’s comfortable. “thanks, i think?”

“you’re quite welcome,” wyatt says. he continues to eat his eggs.

“hey, patton,” virgil says. “merry christmas eve.”

“merry christmas eve,” patton says.

“can i get you anything?”

patton chews at his lip, and says, “hot cocoa/coffee?”

“you know the whole spiel, i’ll spare you,” virgil says.

“it’s a christmas miracle,” patton says.

“yeah, yeah,” virgil mutters, and pours him a mug.

“thanks,” patton says, accepting it. “is there a plan for the day?”

“cook a lot,” virgil says vaguely, “which we’ll eat throughout the day. um, christmas cookies, at some point.”

“oh, sugar, before i forget, you should bring in the movies from the car, so we can start the marathon,” meredith says. 

“after breakfast?” wyatt says.

meredith pauses, sighs, and says, “all right, after breakfast.”

mark says, “patton, would you like some pancakes? i’m thinking of making some and only meredith’s taken me up on it.”

“oh, i’ll eat anything,” patton says quickly. “pancakes sound great, thank you.”

“but, yeah,” virgil says and shrugs. “christmases are pretty relaxed, around here. we tend to work for half the day in the diner, but since the vast majority of my family are no longer child laborers—”

“hey,” meredith says, jokingly indignant.

“—it’s probably mostly going to be me, down here, but who knows,” virgil says. “maybe nostalgia will work in my favor, and i’ll get some unpaid laborers, and i will be shot when the revolution comes, rightfully destroyed under the hammer and sickle. anyway, we close after lunch so we can do a big dinner, we open one present of our choosing before bed. not much else goes on, for christmas eve.”

patton thinks of his past christmas eves, crammed with making appearances at holiday parties and going to church and sitting through teas and brunches and cocktail parties with business partners of his father’s, women in the same societies as his mother. 

you know what? he can take a lazy day and good food and christmas movies. that isn’t strenuous at all. he shouldn’t miss the rush of small talk that felt more like an invasive interview than anything—he’d hated it then, why is he missing it now?

“it’s the first christmas eve without a house here, though,” meredith says, cutting in, “so i’m afraid you’ll have to suffer through our various experiments on how to make all of us fit into virgil’s apartment with some degree of comfort.”

“oh, hey, speaking of comfort,” virgil says, and digs out the baby carrier, which meredith picks up before patton can even try to adjust logan to reach for it himself. 

“thanks,” patton says, and carefully settles logan into the carrier. logan babbles his thanks, and patton digs around for the new pacifier he’s just gotten him, one of logan’s admittedly few christmas gifts—logan’s old one met a bit of a dismal end in the inn’s garbage disposal—and pops it into logan’s mouth. 

for the first time since coming to sideshire, patton’s facing two days off work, and responsibilities, other than logan. it’s probably a good thing that he’s got built-in plans, because if he didn’t, he’d be sleeping for two straight days, only waking up for logan’s crying and maybe food, like, a hastily made peanut-butter-and-jelly or just whatever bag of junk food’s cheapest and closest. 

and now, he’s got a freshly-made stack of pancakes (from scratch, no less) and people to fawn over his baby and, apparently, christmas movies to watch. 

oh, huh. he hadn’t even thought about it just now—when was the last time he’d watched tv? when was the last time he’d lounged on the couch, and snacked on food, and watched tv? certainly not since logan was born. probably not even before that—patton had spent a lot of time in his room, during his pregnancy. it felt like whenever he ventured out to sit in the living room all he got were disappointed looks and irritated snaps.

months, patton decides. it had been months. maybe even a year.

so, with that strange feeling sitting heavy on his chest, he digs into his pancakes with maybe a bit more aggressive fervor than he usually does.

“thank you, mr. danes, this is delicious,” patton says, by rote, after he eats one bite. he’s still going to be polite, even if he feels funny about thinking about what he’s lost—even little things, like tv. 

losing bigger things, like his parents, potentially for forever, make him feel things a lot worse than funny.

but he’s not going to think about that today or tomorrow, he tells himself firmly. after christmas, he’ll have six days between christmas and the new year. he’ll think about it and make a decision then, even if the thought roils his stomach and makes the pancakes a little more difficult to swallow down than usual.

“mark, please,” mark says, looking pleased with himself.

“good luck with that,” virgil says dryly. “i think the only reason i’m not mr. danes is because you didn’t find out my last name until a couple weeks after we met.”

“it’s polite.”

“it’s not a sin to call people by their first names,” virgil counters.

“it’s a sign of respect to call people by their title,” patton counters. “you know, for my elders.”

“ elders!” virgil squawks indignantly. “i’m not an elder, i’m twenty-three!”

“and i’m sixteen! therefore, you’re an elder.”

virgil mutters something along the lines of when you’re twenty-three i’m reminding you of this conversation, which is an absolutely mind-boggling concept. twenty-three. that had never sounded like a year patton would make it to. even seventeen seems practically insurmountable.

patton manages to say something along the lines of “yeah and when i’m twenty-three, you’ll still be my elder,” even while he’s thinking about it. twenty-three. logan would be… six, seven . walking, talking, reading, writing. in school. he’d know what foods he’d like and hate and have favorite subjects and least favorite subjects and if he preferred math to english or science to history and he’d have friends and maybe even a crush.  

logan growing up— that’s what’s insurmountable. not this tiny little baby who, currently, seems to be estimating how far he can throw his pacifier and if papa will go and get it for him, pulling it up out of nowhere. patton would know if logan’s eyes, now that shade of brown that matches his, will have stuck around, if logan will favor him or christopher or both or maybe even neither. if he’ll be tall or short, athletic or academic. if he’ll grow up with or without grandparents.

logan can stay a baby for quite a while longer.

patton is saved from this particular line of thinking when freddie arrives and immediately pounces onto wyatt’s back with a holler of delight, which wyatt tolerates with what patton’s starting to think is his typical placidity. 

freddie then proceeds to pepper him with questions, hiking up the leg of her jeans to proudly display a massive bruise on her knee that her parents exclaim over. 

“can you check it?” she asks, but wyatt’s already patiently taking her knee between both hands, adjusting his glasses.

“does it hurt very badly when i do this?” wyatt says, pressing his fingers to it lightly.

“no.”

“how about now?”

“other than it just being more pressure? no.”

wyatt looks at her over his glasses, unamused. “you’re just doing this to see if, in my medical opinion, this might possibly be the biggest bruise i’ve ever seen, aren’t you.”

freddie grins at him beatifically.

“a choreographer wanted to do a number where i never touch the ground and they just hurl me in the air the whole time, from person to person,” freddie says. “i’ve got tons.”

wyatt sighs. “i anticipate more demonstrations forthwith.”

“no showing off battle wounds in my diner!” virgil shouts from the kitchen.

freddie pouts.

“my apartment,” virgil says, emerging, “is right there. do your weird world-record-seeking stuff away from the food.”

“world record?” patton asks.

“it’s freddie’s not-so-secret ambition to do a world record, of some kind,” virgil says. “i’m not even sure if she cares what it is.”

“preferably something with acrobatics, but i’m flexible—“

“no physical puns!”

“you never let me have fun!” freddie sulks, but she is lowering her arms from where she’d been about to interlock them behind her back, to do something incredibly weird with her body because her bones seem like they’re made of rubber, patton’s guessing.

“do you need ice?” mark asks freddie, frowning at her in concern and passing a hand over her hair. “you’ve been icing and bandaging everything properly, right?”

“...yep,” freddie says.

“winifred,” wyatt says, handily polishing off his eggs, “i will offer you an escape from parental smothering by means of asking if you would like to help me carry in christmas movies from my car.”

“oh, thank god,” freddie says.

“my name is wyatt,” he says. patton isn’t fully sure if he’s kidding.

“i know, big guy,” freddie says fondly, and meredith rolls her eyes even as her children both make their getaways.

“what on earth are we going to do with that girl,” she comments to mark.

“she’s run away to the circus, dear,” mark says, “i don’t think there’s much else for us to do.”

a pause.

“i’m going to send her back with a care package of ice packs and ace bandages, though,” mark decides. “just to be safe. it never hurts to have them.”

meredith smiles and rubs his arm. “that’s a good plan.”

parenting, patton thinks. just to be safe seems like a pretty integral part of parenting, planning too. it’s good advice, even if they didn’t mean for it to be advice. the danes’ seem like a good example to follow.

logan bops at his pacifier hard enough that it falls out of his mouth and onto the counter, with a delighted babble at the demonstration of gravity.

he guesses he’s got a while to go before he has to worry about all that, though.

  patton has never seen the diner so crowded.

he and annabelle have managed to lay claim to one of the tiny tables in the corner—well, “lay claim,” they were there before any of these people—and patton watches. 

they were going to watch a movie, but after all the siblings got there meredith ended up helping out a waitress who looked ready to tip over under the weight of all the plates she’d been carrying, and then one thing led to another, and now patton and annabelle were watching the danes family at work, like none of them had ever left.

meredith and freddie are a rapid-fire chatty team at the counter, with frequent gales of laughter from their customers.

essie and wyatt flit around the diner, taking orders and making well-timed quips (essie) or observations (wyatt.) wyatt doesn’t even need a pen—he just remembers everyone’s orders, down to the condiments.

silas, who is apparently much stronger than he looks, is toting the weight of two fully-loaded trays at any given time for the elder two siblings.

virgil and mark occasionally emerge from the kitchen, but patton can hear sizzling and knives chopping and the smell speaks for itself—spices and sugar and so much good food that patton’s considering—

“brunch?” annabelle asks.

“oh, thank god,” patton says, “it smells so good in here, i was getting hungry again.”

“do you wanna each get something and split it?” annabelle says. “just so we have some options.”

“that sounds great,” patton says. “um, is there any food you don’t want to get? like, allergies, personal preferences, that kind of thing? that seems like the easiest place to start.”

he and annabelle slowly whittle down the menu—it turns out annabelle’s very open to just about every food option—and annabelle waves enthusiastically to essie, who perks up and prances over to their table.

“hey,” she says brightly.

“hey,” annabelle says, smiling, and accepts the kiss that essie presses to her cheek. 

“you guys doing okay?” essie asks, sticking her pen into the knot of brown hair piled on top of her head. “i kind of got sucked back in, sorry.”

“i’ve got patton to keep me company, we’re okay,” annabelle says, smiling.

“oh, right, good,” essie says. “patton, this exact thing happened last year and i felt so bad, annabelle was just sitting alone in a corner for half the day, but—“

“hey, it’s cool,” annabelle says. “i had a book to read.”

essie frowns. “still—”

“you’re spending time with your family,” annabelle says. “go fetch us some french toast and waffles and caffeine, and i’ll consider forgiving you.”

she’s clearly joking, and essie smiles, relieved.

“love you,” essie says.

“i love you too, babe,” annabelle says, and essie’s smile widens before she practically floats back to the counter to turn in their order.

“how long have you two been together?” patton asks annabelle.

“oh, years,” annabelle says. “seven or eight, give or take.”

“wow,” patton says softly.

“yeah,” annabelle says, and a goofy kind of grin spreads across her face. “she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, i can handle a morning watching her have fun with her family, y’know? it makes her happy. plus, i’d be useless doing anything with... that.”

“me, too,” patton says.

“and, i mean, now you’re here,” annabelle says. “so i’ve got someone to chat with, which is good, because i forgot to pack a book this year.”

patton laughs, mostly to be polite, and says, “i guess that is good, yeah. um, so, how did you and essie meet?”

“college,” annabelle says. “we were roommates, and then, well. one thing led to another. best random assignment i could have gotten.”

“that’s really awesome,” patton says sincerely, and that sets annabelle off on a “I Love My Fiancée” tangent which patton is really happy to listen to. essie is, according to annabelle, the sweetest, most thoughtful, caring, wonderful person that she’s ever met, and she’s so excited to spend the rest of her life with her, and she can only hope that she will stack up so that she’ll be able to deserve her, and when essie is approaching to drop off their food, she’s blushing, so she must have overheard, and annabelle grins.

“you really don’t need to be so shy,” annabelle quips, and essie blushes a little more.

“well, you don’t have to be so loudly happy about it,” essie mumbles.

“of course i’m going to be happy about you, why wouldn’t i be happy about you?” annabelle counters. “you’re going to be my wife.”

essie beams at the very idea, and, with another kiss on the cheek, she floats back toward the counter, where freddie clearly begins teasing her, complete with heart-clutching and dramatic fake swooning.

“so,” annabelle says, after patton takes a forkful of french toast, “what’s your story? virgil hasn’t really told any of us much.”

patton slows his chewing as much as he can, trying to formulate an answer. well, see, i got pregnant and ran away from home and now i’m torn between breaking my parents’ hearts or mine, depending on the choice i make?

“well,” patton begins cautiously. “i’m, um, it’s—well, i, um. it’s.”

“complicated?” annabelle asks. “i mean, it’s—y’know. me too.”

patton blinks. 

“i’m from texas,” annabelle elaborates. “small-town texas. um. you can probably fill in the stereotypes from there. i fully cut off contact with my parents about four years ago.”

“oh,” patton says, and it’s like the word is punched out of him. “i—i’m really sorry.”

annabelle shrugs. “it is what it is,” she says. “anyway. the danes’ have been great. i’ve been coming to holidays with them since i graduated college and, you know. came out to my parents.”

patton chews his lip, and admits, “mine’s not quite the same situation, but—but close.”

“yeah?”

“yeah.”

he isn’t sure if he should say more—he has a vague feeling he should probably elaborate, but the idea of having a breakdown in the diner again is. not his idea of a fun christmas eve morning.

“that’s rough, dude,” annabelle says. “um, esther’s the emotionally capable one, so, sorry, but. you want some waffles?”

patton snorts.

“yeah,” he says. “okay, sure. i’ll have some waffles.”

⁂

"okay, so, you wanna pick, lo?” patton says to logan, holding up the cookie cutters in front of logan, but far enough away that he won’t grab at it. “stars or angels.”

logan considers his options. then, making a cooing noise, he very clearly reaches for the shiny silver star cookie-cutter.

“good choice!” patton cheers, and leans in to kiss logan on the forehead. “stars it is. it’s a shame you don’t have teeth to eat these with.”

he puts his finger in logan’s hand, so he has something to grab at, and sets the cookie cutter out of sight. logan then proceeds to drag patton’s finger toward his mouth, just to chew at it. as patton expected.

“oh, that’s a good idea,” meredith says, and then holds up a christmas tree and a reindeer cookie cutter in logan’s line of sight. with his free hand that isn’t currently holding patton’s finger to his mouth, he reaches for the tree.

and so begins a parade of people consulting the baby on cookie shape choices. granted, sometimes logan doesn’t always make a choice—at silas, logan makes a disdainful noise and starts chewing on patton’s finger with even more fervor, seeming to glower at him—but he does reach for quite a few choices, with no pattern that patton can decipher. 

at one point, he gets a bit frustrated that he can’t hold any of the things that are being held in front of him, so virgil digs up two blunt, plastic cookie cutters, which means patton is free to wash his hands as logan starts mouthing at a snowflake-shaped cookie cutter, the mitten-shaped one cast aside. 

now that the lunch rush is done, the diner’s officially closed for christmas eve and christmas, which means that it’s time for the danes’ to start making christmas cookies. they’re like a well-oiled machine—there’s tons of home-made sugar cookie and gingerbread dough, with essie and freddie making frosting together, freddie occasionally flicking dyed frosting toward her siblings, and essie would only sometimes catch her wrist with a kind of scolding laugh.

virgil, with a streak of purple across his cheek and a clump in his hair, helps patton and annabelle figure out how to best utilize the dough they have, so that they’ll have maximum cookie and minimum scraps. 

all the while, christmas music plays, filling up any noise that isn’t taken over by conversations amongst the danes’. and there are conversations. listen, patton’s used to a lot of conversations echoing around a room, but he’s used to people in his parents’ world with their quiet, politely pitched voices, so that their gossip and snide commentary wouldn’t carry to their targets.

the danes’ have no such concerns.

their loud, booming laughs and indignant squawks and clamorous chatter and roaring responses and impassioned, ranting interruptions could maybe be heard from outside, let alone within the same room. it’s cacophonous, rowdy chaos.

any unwritten, strict rules of conversation that patton’s been preached to have been cheerfully thrown out the window. he can jump from conversation to conversation as he pleases, and no one seems to mind that he does because everyone’s doing the same thing. he can join mark and meredith’s debate over what constitutes a good christmas cookie, then chime in on his opinion on a book that he, annabelle, and wyatt have all read, and back up virgil when freddie pokes fun at him.

even virgil and silas, whose argument patton remembers vividly, are bumping elbows, and silas tousles virgil’s hair as he traps him under his arm, but it’s less like a dangerous, harmful thing and more like sibling squabbling, especially considering freddie joins right in by leaping on silas and yelling “YOUNGEST SIBLINGS ALLIANCE!” and essie trying to yank her off while proclaiming about the twinly treaty, while wyatt watches calmly from the sidelines and mark and meredith break them up with the weary, well-meaning tones of parents who have done this a million times before.

patton’s never seen anything so different; he’s an only child, from such a different world, and chris, his closest friend, is an only child, too. siblings are so strange. there are no manners. there aren’t any lingering hurt feelings. it’s almost like family time out of a movie, except it’s so much more chaotic and messy.

patton loves it.

as the cookies bake, the entire family works together to start decorating the tree, placed proudly in the center of the diner. none of the matchy-matchy, expensive, fancy ornaments that patton was never allowed to touch. cardboard boxes full of past childhood ornaments made during school, which erupt into various stories and reminiscing about the sideshire schoolteachers, cheesy souvenir ornaments from the various travels of every danes, including some new ones that mean lots of questions about what they’d been doing there, a popcorn-and-cranberry garland that essie, annabelle, and silas are still making even as wyatt drapes it round and round the tree. 

somehow, the whole gaudy thing works; glinting with glittery ornaments and two strands of lights, it’s visible from the outside, when patton obligingly steps out to check and see. he helps everyone stack their presents under the tree—it turns out, the danes' have some color-coding going for their gifts. gold wrapping paper means they're presents for mrs. danes, silver for mr. danes, green for wyatt, red for essie, pink for annabelle, black for silas, yellow for freddie, purple for virgil. so patton ends up kind of organizing the presents so it's like a color wheel around the tree; everyone's presents, all together so they can just go to their color instead of hunt every present ringing the tree.

even as disorganized as they seem, it’s clear that the danes’ are a well-oiled machine, because by the time everyone decrees the tree satisfactory the cookies are cooled enough to decorate.

“i’ve never actually decorated cookies like this before,” patton says, as virgil passes him a piping bag full of icing—they’re splitting up all the icing into tiny bowls and piping bags, so everyone’s got their own little icing station. everyone's already wearing an old meredith's branded apron, from before virgil took over the diner.

“what, with a piping bag?” virgil asks. "it's pretty easy, once you get the hang of it, you can practice on some of that wax paper if you want—"

"no, i mean," patton says, "we usually order christmas cookies to send to people. like, caterers or bakeries usually take care of it. i've never actually gotten to make my own christmas cookies."

there is dead silence around the prepping station in the diner's kitchen. then:

" what," freddie breathes out, disbelievingly. "never? never ever?!"

"never ever," patton agrees. "i mean, maybe when i was really tiny, but—"

"you've never even made a ginger you?" essie says, incredulous. "or—a gingerbread house? not even one of the ones that come in kits?"

patton briefly imagines his mom's reaction if he brought in some cheap, pre-made gingerbread house to assemble. to make a mess, in her kitchen? even if she never actually used the kitchen, it’s still hers, and—

patton shakes his head, and there's an explosion of questions— have you never decorated a cookie EVER, do you even eat gingerbread, do you bake stuff usually—?

"well, i've baked stuff before, but," patton says, and swats at virgil when he snorts.

"you burned 'em, didn't you?"

patton huffs, but doesn't deny it. because, well. he did. it's really probably for the best that the professionals were in charge of these christmas cookies, because he definitely would have messed them up somehow.

"what do you eat on christmas?" silas demands.

"um," patton says, scratching at his temple, "whatever catering that people have got, on christmas eve, and my parents usually have a party on christmas that has these amazing apple tarts, i swear they're the best part of christmas—"

"well, at least there's some kind of traditional dessert," meredith says.

"not all families are so food-centric, dear," mark says.

"well, i know, but." meredith says. " still. no christmas cookies, ever?"

"well, that does it, then," freddie says decisively. "you get first pick."

there's a rush of agreement from everyone—well, silas is silent, but he doesn't disagree—and patton tilts his head quizzically.

"get a dozen of these, whichever ones you want," virgil says, gesturing to the huge amount of cookies on the cooling rack. 

"surely you're going to make a gingerbread self," wyatt says, and there's a burst of recommendations of what cookies he should get, pointing to the best specimens of each cookie shape, and patton just kind of ends up going for a little bit of everything—stars, trees, a reindeer, an angel, an ornament, a snowman, a bell, and yes, a gingerbread man—and stares, bemused, at the tools virgil sets in front of him.

"um," patton says, and virgil laughs—not in a mean way, but still enough to make patton flush a little. 

"okay," he says. "so, when you hold a piping bag, there are a couple grips you can go with, and it mostly depends on the kind of decoration you're doing... "

and so begins patton's lessons in frosting christmas cookies. 

mark shows him how to best ensure that there aren't any air bubbles in the icing.

meredith tells him about how to mix together icing on wax paper to get the exact color he wants, like he's a painter or something.

wyatt, with his steady surgeon's hands, shows him how to ice beautiful, delicate-looking flowers.

essie shows him how to best press down sprinkles without getting stray bits stuck where he doesn't want them.

annabelle, laughingly, demonstrates the best way to push his hair out of his eyes without accidentally smearing pastel blue frosting across his forehead.

freddie demonstrates how to throw cookies like ninja-style throwing stars, but that's less a decoration lesson and more of a way to directly target someone who teases her about her messy cookies.

even silas shows him how to use a toothpick to get even, straight lines.

and virgil helps him fix his mistakes, and helps him move things when his hands are too sticky to move anything without getting it messy too, and even helps break down a cookie so he can make a little gingerbread baby, for logan.

and even if patton's icing jobs look messy in comparison to mark's practiced work, or wyatt's even, steady lines, they fit right in with freddie's colorful, smudged ones, and annabelle's, which she mostly requests essie's help with.

"it's really more about the fun of the thing," meredith says, when she sees him looking between wyatt's and his own. "did you have fun?"

patton grins and nods, and she gives him a thumbs up.

"well then," she says decisively. "i mean, they're all going to have the same thing happen to them. and even if they're messy, i promise you they'll taste just as good. go on."

so patton picks up a star, the first one he'd iced—with shaky little blue swirls and silver glitter—and crunches into it.

it's just crisp enough on the outside and soft on the inside, with sugary, yummy icing, and, well. even if patton's icing might be a bit ugly, he can't deny that meredith's right.

so he picks up a blank star, and he starts icing again.

⁂

“logan,” patton says, around a mouthful of gingersnap cookie, “it seriously is a shame that you don’t have teeth to eat these.”

logan, who’s fixated on the television—virgil guesses all the colors and sounds must be super interesting, to a baby—doesn’t seem to care very much.

"these are the best christmas cookies i’ve ever had, ever,” patton says sincerely. “thank you.”

“you’ve said that a million times,” meredith says, amused. “you’re welcome.”

she passes him another as she speaks. honestly, virgil would kind of start interceding, but his mom has the same “must feed” gene that he does, except she doesn’t pay as much attention to things like nutritional value. he doesn’t blame her; patton’s wearing an old sweater that’s been handed down to him, and it's big enough that it makes him look pretty scrawny.

some danes’ (silas, mark, and wyatt) are in the kitchen, making an endless parade of appetizers and snacky-type things that are fighting for space on virgil's coffee table, shoved to the side of the room, whereas others (meredith, freddie, essie, and annabelle) are parked in virgil’s living room with him and patton to watch the collection of christmas movies wyatt had lugged in from his car.

currently, ralphie is fantasizing about going blind from soap poisoning as freddie mouths dramatically along with his parents’ wailing, she and virgil parked beside each other on the ground. freddie doesn’t move too much, though, because she’d loudly complained at essie until she’d started playing with her hair. so essie had obliged, one hand poking out from the blanket she's tangled under with annabelle, brushing her fingers absently through freddie’s hair.

his mom’s in an armchair, which leaves patton lying down on the loveseat so that logan can get some tummy time, heads turned so that they can watch tv. patton keeps absently running his hand up and down logan’s back—well, admittedly, there isn’t much to run his hand up and down, he’s a baby, and a somewhat small baby for his age, at that—and virgil can see logan’s eyes, reflecting the light of the tv.

virgil notices out of the corner of his eyes that he’s seeing less and less of patton’s eyes. they go half-lidded, then closing before occasionally opening, and then—

“patton,” he says softly, just as an experiment, and patton doesn’t so much as stir. it does, however, draw his mother’s attention.

“oh, poor thing’s all tuckered out, isn’t he?” his mom comments, in a suitable undertone.

“yeah, he’s been pretty strung-out lately,” virgil murmurs, and, hesitantly, gets to his feet, hunting for a blanket he’s got stashed somewhere. and then a little odd dance ensues; he puts the blanket over patton without covering logan up too much, and then, carefully, ever so carefully, he lifts logan from patton’s chest and secures him in his arms.

“i didn’t want him to fall,” he explains to his mom, as he tugs the blanket the rest of the way up, to cover patton.

“probably a smart choice,” his mom says. “i could take him, if—“

“no, that’s okay,” virgil says, looking down at logan as he adjusts his hold; logan seems to cuddle closer, and virgil stares as logan lets out a squeaky, strange little yawn. 

“you’re sleepy too, huh?” he asks, and logan’s tongue pokes out, just a little, just enough that something in virgil’s heart feels like it’s swelling from the sheer adorableness of it. 

so virgil settles on the ground in front of the loveseat, and keeps his hold on logan, watching as his eyes slide shut, too.

“strung out?” his mom asks, and virgil would shrug, if he wasn’t holding a baby that’s slowly falling asleep.

“logan’s got colic,” virgil explains in an undertone, “which we’ll probably hear, soon enough, and he’s been working a lot.” a beat, and then, “i think he’s having trouble sleeping too.”

honestly, virgil’s pretty relieved that he’s fallen asleep; the bags under his eyes have been growing deeper and deeper, and his requests for caffeine have started to slide from jokingly desperate to actually desperate.

his mother tsks and murmurs “poor thing” and virgil can practically see her plotting before his very eyes. you know what? not the worst thing in the world. patton could afford some motherly spoiling during his first christmas away from his family. 

hadn’t that kind of been the intention when he’d asked patton and logan to join the family christmas, anyway?

and so his mother plots, and logan snoozes, and essie and annabelle snuggle, and freddie acts along, and patton sleeps.

and keeps sleeping.

the fact that danes’ and colicky logan keep quiet for as long as they do is a miracle. they ensue in furiously silent rock-paper-scissors matches to see whose movie of choice is played next, and when they do speak, it’s in whispers. and logan—honestly, virgil’s not sure if he’s ever been so quiet for such a long stretch of time in his whole life. he’s quiet during the grinch that stole christmas, and love actually, and it happened on fifth avenue, and he fusses a little during the santa clause, but it’s easily enough fixed. well. with his dad’s help.

but patton’s nap is starting to move into full day’s sleep by the time his dad is loading in home alone, and logan lets out a piteous wail, and patton starts awake, hand going to where logan was lying on his chest, and virgil quickly turns so that patton can see logan in his arms.

“oh, hey,” patton mumbles, reaches for logan, and gets to his feet. “hey, hey, hey, you feeling okay?”

“we changed him, earlier,” virgil says, and then patton seems to notice that the sun has set, and he startles again.

“i,” he says, and shakes himself. “sorry, virgil, i can’t remember where your bathroom is—?”

virgil points, and patton goes. 

“after this one, i think it’ll be dinnertime,” his dad says thoughtfully.

“finally, i’m starving,” silas says. “did we have to delay it for so long?”

“don’t be mean, silas,” essie chides gently. “we’ve waited while you took naps.”

“yeah, when we were four,” silas says.

“silas matthew,” their father scolds wearily, and silas scowls, fixating his stare on the tv screen, effectively ignoring the rest of them. but he doesn’t shift away when essie nudges him, then puts a hand on his arm, as if to keep him on her left side, annabelle to her right.

well, essie’s always been able to get through to silas when none of them ever have. virgil guesses it’s the twin thing.

if silas stops being an asshole for one day, it’ll be a christmas miracle.

⁂

patton feels... fuzzy.

that’s the best way he knows how to put it, or, at least, it’s the best way he can come up with right now. he isn’t sure how long he’d slept—it had to have been hours—but such a huge amount of sleep at an unexpected time has patton feeling slow, and dazed, and stupid, but that that last bit isn’t too unusual.

the danes’ have kindly—what else is new, they’ve been nothing but kind—been politely quiet about how long it takes patton to catch up to their conversations, or understand their jokes, or tune in to their requests to pass coasters or if he wants a bite of the appetizers they’re snacking on as they wind down home alone.

patton’s claimed the floor. they’d tried to get him to stay on the loveseat, when he came back from feeding logan, but he’d refused. he’d monopolized it all day, and really, if he fell asleep again then patton would be kissing goodbye to any ragged semblance of a sleep schedule that he still had.

so patton’s on the floor, and mr. and mrs. danes have taken over the loveseat, with virgil beside him on the ground and annabelle in the armchair and wyatt examining freddie’s ankle flexibility, or something, on the couch, freddie peppering him with questions all the while.

essie and silas... huh. patton actually has no idea where essie and silas have got off to. last patton knew, essie had gone back to help silas make some adult-only drinks (”absolutely none for either of you!” meredith had said, clearly not aware of patton’s history with drinking adult drinks since he was about thirteen) about... well, half an hour ago, maybe, and they haven’t been back since.

it’s been easy to be distracted, though, because he’s pretty sure that mrs. danes’ favorite drink is apparently spiked eggnog, and she’s certainly had enough to show it, a pretty pink blush high in her pale cheeks. she’s leaning over, again, cooing softly at logan, who babbles gleefully and reaches for her understated, dully glinting jewelry.

“little hands,” she coos, poking him in the midst of his chubby little palms, and logan babbles, smiling, as she squishes her hands gently between her fingers. 

“little feets! itty bitty baby feets!”

logan squeals as she squishes his feet much in the same way, kicking, and patton doesn’t even realize he’s beaming wide until meredith reaches over to gently squish his cheek between her fingers, too, in a move that’s so thoughtlessly, habitually maternal, so casual in its kindness and affection, it strikes patton dumb.

affection’s been hard to come by, for a lot of his life. affection gives without expectation or later price to pay has been even rarer, maybe even nonexistent. even after his time in sideshire, where it seems to overflow, it overwhelms him.

“and,” she says, turning her attention back to the baby, “a... little... noooose!”

logan proceeds making delightful baby noises, and even tries for a few claps of his hands, the way patton’s been showing him, and patton leans in to gently clap above him again, just to show him.

“yay, logan!” he cheers quietly. “yay! can you say yay?”

he knows it’s too early to except logan to talk, but really, yay isn’t that complicated of a word. it’s just one syllable, and really, logan’s babbling in semi-recognizable syllables now anyway.  

“how about a laugh?” patton prods. “you’re so close, can i get a laugh?”

logan’s gotten so close to laughing, and he’s on track to laugh, even if it’d be early it’s not unheard of early, so maybe this’ll do it. he’d love it if he heard his son’s first laugh tonight.

he’s such a smart baby, patton thinks, swelling with pride. really, logan might just be the smartest baby that’s ever lived. he’s pretty sure that every parent thinks that, but really, patton’s pretty sure that he’s the right one here.

patton, so overcome by paternal happiness, sweeps logan up into his arms and waltzes his way to his feet, spinning, as he presses noisy kisses into logan’s cheeks, mwahmwahmwahmwahmwah! as logan shrieks and squeals and patton spins, so full of love for him, and—

and in the midst of his spin, he looks at just the right time, he glimpses a clear shot to virgil’s balcony.

well, it’s really too teeny to be a full balcony, like his balcony back at his parents’ house, so it’s really only enough space for two-ish people and a near-indestructible potted fern. it’s more of a mezzanine, or whatever the mini-version of a balcony is called.

and there are two people clustered together. silas, his arms wrapped around his stomach, and even in the low light and the distance patton can see that his face is achingly vulnerable, as he bows his head, and essie, equally obviously, empathetic, reaches out her hands to put on his shoulders, and patton just barely sees a snatch of essie pulling her brother into a hug, holding him tight, and that’s it, that’s all patton sees before he continues twirling with his son.

he doesn’t look again. it’s what he’d want, if he was silas. besides, that seems like a pretty private family thing.

⁂

patton’s sure he’s never had such a well-fed, delicious christmas eve in his life, and he hasn’t even eaten dinner yet .

everything looks absolutely mouthwatering—it’s the traditional kind of christmas day meal that he usually has at his parents’, turkey and mashed potatoes and rolls and that kind of thing, except the danes version has clear deviations: green bean casserole, which he’s never had, he doesn’t think, sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and pecans on top, fresh cranberry sauce instead of canned, homemade gravy instead of store-bought, corn made off the cob instead of canned. 

they’d dragged together some tables in the diner rather than attempt to engineer virgil’s tiny table to get nine people (plus a baby) to fit, so they're all seated beside the christmas tree. he’s got his back to the doorway leading to virgil’s apartment, so he’d be able to steal away and tend to logan faster without disturbing anyone, if logan needed it, and he probably would. he’d been so quiet when patton had napped, he’s sure that his schedule’s gotten pretty messed up, too. logan is parked in the carrier, on a booth table, clearly visible to everyone at the table.

well, really, it's mostly for patton's benefit, he's pretty sure, because once he looks away from his son to start paying attention to the conversations around him, he looks back right in time to see meredith looking at him knowingly.  

patton smiles, sheepishly, and she nods, as if to say i get it. well, she's had five kids. she probably gets it more than he does. actually, she definitely gets it more than he does. patton's absolutely clueless.

but before either of them can say anything, mark gently taps a spoon against his plastic cup—it doesn't provide as clear a ting-ting-ting as the crystal-cut glasses his parents would use—and everyone quiets down.

mark lifts his cup.

"another year gone," he says. "it's been wonderful to see you all in town again. now that we're all getting older, it hits me each and every year how precious this time is. of course, i'm proud of you— all of you—are going out there and making your own life, but i can't help but think about how bittersweet it is that family time is getting fewer and far between."

"aw, dad," freddie mumbles.

" but, " mark continues. "again. i am very proud. of all of you."

he meets eyes with everyone at the table, and, after he's inclined his head ever so slightly at patton, patton stares down at his empty plate.

not you, he scolds himself. of course he's not proud of you, he's barely known you for six days and honestly, what have you done to make anyone proud of you?

it doesn't stop the rebellious little flare of warmth that he feels, though.

"the past few days have been wonderful. i have cherished this time together. i love being your dad—" annabelle looks choked up—"whether you're with me or if you're out making your own life. so," he says, and lifts a glass. "i'll keep the sappy stuff short, as we have this fantastic meal laid out before us. so. merry christmas and a happy new year, everyone."

"merry christmas," everyone rumbles, lifting their glass, and patton belatedly does so too. mark lifts up the platter of cut turkey, and meredith helps herself, before doing the same for him, and the passing of food begins.

patton's plate just about overflows.

"you know you can get seconds," virgil says to him an undertone, amused, and patton flushes as he attempts to stack his rolls back from where they've toppled off his plate.

"everything looks so good," he says defensively. 

"again," virgil says, who really has no room to talk, his food's about to spill over the edges of his plate too, "seconds."

patton decides to do the mature thing: he sticks out his tongue at virgil, shoves one of his rolls into his mouth practically whole, and then tries not to choke on his overlarge mouthful.

virgil stifles his laughter into his glass of wine.

patton's right to have so much on his plate, because everything is amazing. patton's world full of fiddly food, more about the aesthetic and the finery than the actual taste, would have never dreamed of having food like this, but honestly, everyone might have been a bit more cheerful if they'd stooped to eating food that was prepared in a diner. 

if he'd had these warm, fluffy dinner rolls. if he'd had the fragrant, fruity, frankly yummy fresh cranberry sauce he gets to smear over his rolls. if he'd had these buttery, yummy mashed potatoes with a pool of gravy that he can soak up with his bread. if he'd had the opportunity to try green bean casserole with the crumbly little french onion bits on top. if he'd had sweet potato casserole, which patton goes back for seconds before he's even finished his first serving. if he'd had this moist, good turkey, rather than the tradition of his father having first carve and then it being ferried away for the servants to do the actual carving.

if he'd had people who, even as they gently teased him about taking more food, loaded more on his plate when he was looking away, if he'd had people who were earnest about wanting to know what he'd thought, if he'd had people who were as welcoming of him being the way he is, if he'd had people who were less critical and more accepting, then maybe he would...

patton firmly redirects his thoughts. i'm deciding after christmas. after christmas. pay attention to what's happening now. 

and, in what patton's starting to think is typical of danes style, there's a lot to pay attention to; granted, there aren't a ton of conversations happening because of the spectacular, delicious food, but there are still a couple peppering the table that jump freely from topic to topic. there's also a lot of wordless gestures for certain foods (the rolls make quite a few rotations around the table) and salt and pepper and so on, and every once in a while someone will get up to refill their drink and will be met with a flurry of requests, but for the most part, it's... quiet. easy.

warm, patton thinks. it's warm. not just temperature-wise—it is nice and toasty in the diner—but it's warm in the sense of how the danes' interact with each other. there are a lot of smiles and compliments on the food and conversation, and... and at this point on a typical holiday, patton's shoulders would be tensed up, waiting for some kind of comment, except he's never made it this far into the holiday without that kind of comment and stop stop stop.

there is one thing, without fail, that makes patton feel better. so patton gets to his feet and shuffles over to check on logan, who looks close to falling asleep, pacifier solidly in his mouth, and patton reaches out to run a thumb gently down his cheek.

"you okay?" he asks him softly, and logan blinks at him slowly once, twice, and patton feels the corner of his lip quirk up.

"yeah, you're okay," he says, in the same soft tone, relieved. and you will be okay, i promise. no matter what happens, i'll make sure you're okay.

"is he good?" comes from behind him, making patton jump. he turns back to virgil, who's looking at him quizzically, still seated at the table.

"yeah, he's good," patton says, and smiles wryly at him. "i mean, no telling how long it'll last, but—"

"yeah, he's good," virgil says, and cocks his head. "he looks ready to fall asleep, doesn't he?"

"yeah," patton says, and takes a breath. he'd been right, seeing logan does make him feel better. "i should probably leave him to it."

"he'll need you, soon enough," virgil says, so patton goes and sits back down at his spot at the table.

it has calmed him down—it's like just taking a second with logan has provided the same effect of a whole, calming day at his parents', not just a few seconds.

so patton throws himself back into the conversation, and keeps glancing over at logan, who even offers him a wave or a noise every once in a while, and it feels... right. it just feels right .

[earthrealmlesbian]

Cassie x Frost?

1) Who rocks the Ferris Wheel seat and who flips out and begs them to stop? Cassie makes the mistake of rocking the seats. She doesn't even go crazy but her fate is sealed. Frost gets startled by it then immediately seeks revenge by shaking them hard enough to make Cassie scream and hold on for dear life.

2) Who is always horny and will have sex at any time, at any place and at any time? Cassie has a pretty high sex drive! She's not really into sex in crazy places though so she'll wait till they're behind closed doors. She's down for making out in riskier places however.

3) Who is more into taking showers/baths together? Who tries to make it relaxing and who tries to make it sexy time? They.....don't shower together almost ever. Cassie likes scalding hot showers and Frost is a demon that likes hers cold. (it started as a training thing and now she's genuinely hooked) Sometimes they'll compromise and run the shower at a normal temp specifically so they can enjoy sexy times.

4) Who likes to walk around the house naked and who tells the other to go put some clothes on? Cassie likes to walk around in a training bra and boxer shorts pretty often or nude straight out of the shower until she's dry. Frost complains that she's not gonna be ready in an emergency or if they get attacked. Cassie laughs it off. She's ready to start swinging irregardless.

5) Who sleeps on the couch when they get into a fight? Cassie. Frost doesn't ask her to but she saw Johnny do it often enough growing up and thinks it's just the thing to do if you need space after an argument. It doesn't happen often since they're usually able to hash it out but if things get serious Cassie is on the couch until Frost calms down and asks her to come back to bed.

6) Who takes photos of the other while they sleep? Both though Frost is hesitant to admit it at first. Cassie takes pictures of everything but she's got a folder dedicated to pictures of Frost making cute sleeping faces.

7) Who said “I love you” first? and who ends their arguments in a fight with “Because I love you”? (This got long oops) Frost in both cases. Frost stewed in her feelings for Cassie for awhile. She was mad at herself for wanting her so bad when she was supposed to be concentrating on her training ( Kuai Liang please have a talk with your child) and refused to act on her feelings for a long time. Cassie was smitten too but respected that Frost seemed hesitant to act. They were sparring one day when the dam broke. Frost managed to pin Cassie who was laughing way too much for someone that just lost a match. Frost couldn't even be mad because she realized then just how much she wanted whatever they had to keep going. She admitted she loved Cassie before she could lose her nerve. Cassie jokes she should have let herself get manhandled sooner if she wanted to get Frost to make a move.

8) Who likes to wear the others sweatshirts? Cassie. She visits the Lin Kuei temple often enough and sweaters are a necessity so she'll steal one of Frost's. "You could just bring your own if you know you're visiting." Cassie says she (conveniently) forgot.

9) Who wakes the other up in the middle of the night to tell them a cool dream they had? Who has the most nightmares, and who sings them back to sleep after? Cassie won't wake Frost up from what little sleep she gets because she values her life. Frost has awful insomnia though so if Cassie wakes from a dream and finds her awake then she'll tell her about it. Frost rarely has nightmares because she rarely sleeps. Cassie unfortunately has nightmares often. Headcanon that Kuai Liang is a great singer and would sing to Frost in private to soothe the raw edges of her nerves when her temper flaired. (fuck you nrs, Kuai Liang cares) She picked up the habit and does the same for Cassie to get her back to sleep.

10) Who is more likely to cheat? (at games) Cassie and it drives Frost up the wall. Johnny taught Cassie how to be the most merciless cheater at every game he knows. Card games, board game, shitty playground games that kids go hogwild for. Doesn't matter. He taught her how to cheat her way to victory. Frost didn't even know you could cheat at monopoly and yet! Cassie manages.

11) Who makes fun of the other for having a crush on them, and who has to remind them that they are in a relationship? Cassie teases Frost all the time about it. She thinks it's especially funny considering how many months Frost pined after her. Frost gets flustered about it and grumbles how they've been together a long time and to quit being a brat.

12) Who starts a food fight in the kitchen? Cassie but Frost gets into it to since she's a sucker for competition. She starts freezing food into little bullets though and then all hell really breaks loose.

13) Who initiates duets? and who is the better singer? Cassie can't sing well but boy does she try. Sometimes she'll get lucky and Frost will join in but only in private and she grumbles about it. She's thankfully a better singer.

14) Who starts the hand holding? Who grabs the others butt? Who slides their arm around their waist? Who likes to put their fingers in the belt loops? Frost likes to look like a hardass but she actually enjoys physical affection. Cassie's more keen on initiating but Frost will usually oblige If they're not walking around the temple. If they're out shopping Frost will hook a thumb into Cassie's belt loop to keep her close. It's sort of a protective gesture. Neither do butt grabbing unless they're home alone.

15) Who writes the others name on their wrist? Neither though Cassie might doodle Frost's name during boring meetings.

16) Who is more seductive when they are drunk? and who is louder in bed? Neither. They're embarrassing. Just.....no. Cassie is louder in bed.

17) Who is more protective? Cassie. Her parents, Uncle Jax and Raiden* were all fiercely protective growing up. She learned to be the same. That's just what you do for your loved ones as far as she's concerned.

*Raiden has good uncle/grandpa energy and I'll die on that hill*

18) Who talks to the other while they are sleeping? Frost. She sits awake long after Cassie falls asleep most nights. She'll discuss Lin Kuei drama or upcoming missions.

19) Who drives and who has the window seat? Cassie drives! Not terribly surprisingly.

20) Who falls asleep in the others lap and who carries them to bed? Cassie is the one to fall asleep on Frost's lap more often than not. Frost might grumble a bit but she thinks it's endearing. She'll carry Cassie gently to bed when it happens. Frost will nap (don't tell the grandmaster) on Cassie's lap once in a blue moon.

21) Who cuts the others hair? Frost will trim Cassie's hair if she asks but Frost's haircut requires a bit more than Cassie knows how to do so she'll go to a barber.

22) Who is super bad at sexting? and who sends them encouraging messages throughout the day? Frost isn't awful at sexting but it's embarrassing for her to try so she generally doesn't. She prefers to dirty talk in person where she can actually do the things she's talking about. Cassie likes to send cute little messages throughout the day. Frost kinda likes that Cassie thinks about her often enough to send them.

23) Who thinks they are not good enough for the others love? and who’s more afraid of losing the other? Who thinks they keep messing up, only for the other to tell them they don’t need to worry? Both have struggled in the past with feelings of inadequacy. While they're confident women in their own right, they both have moments were insecurity bleeds through. Sometimes they'll look at each other and think "Damn, she's on a whole other level than me." They're quick to reassure each other in those momenta. Both deal with loss pretty well but Frost definitely loses more sleep thinking about Cassie dying on a mission.

24) Who starts random slow dancing with the other in the kitchen? Who holds the other just above the ground and kisses them? Cassie initiates dancing of any kind. Frost can dance but she's stiff so it's not something they do often. Frost always conveniently puts an end to it quick by picking Cassie up for kisses.

25) Who says shitty puns and sex jokes just to see the other giggle and blush? Frost, honey, I'm so sorry you're dating the daughter of Johnny Cage. Cassie learned from the master. Not the sex jokes, but the puns. God the puns. The internet taught her the sex jokes unfortunately. Frost's not known peace since that first god awful joke.

26) Who kissed first? Frost. Back to who said I love you first, Frost confessed right there in the training room and then kissed Cassie senseless while they laid there bruised and sweaty. Cassie thought it was pretty hot honestly.

27) Who orders take out at two in a morning? and who wakes the other up at three in the morning to go downstairs with them to get a glass of water because it’s too dark? Depending on where they're staying they might order a greasy ass pizza if they can't sleep OR sneak into the temple kitchen and make some horrific combination of barely edible food. Frost will glare daggers if Cassie whines for some water but she'll usually get it.

28) Who writes poems/stories and love songs about the other? Do they sing the songs the write for them? Neither write poems or love songs but Frost can be talked into singing some popular love songs in private.

29) Who does some crazy stunt to try and impress the other and who ends up driving them to the emergency room after it backfires? Listen...both. It's less about impressing one another though. They just get so competitive. Neither wants to admit that their pride can get the better if them, Frost especially, but :)

Cassie: Look at this sick flip I can do, babe.

Frost: Oh yeah? Watch me shoot ice out of my hands to fly like some fucked up version of iron man.

Cut to them both getting scolded by a medic.

30) Who is embarrassed when they have to wear their glasses and who thinks they look super cute? Cassie used to be a little embarrassed about her glasses but as she gets older she's more confident about it, especially when Frost tells her they suit her.

Thank you for sending this in! It was a lot of fun~

[scenariosofkonoha]

If you’re not busy, headcanons of bedtime, sleeping and morning routines of Kiba, Naruto, & Neji with their s/o?

Not busy! Well… *looks at the other asks that need to be posted* nope not at all!!😅 These were so much fun!Asks like these get my wheels turning. I really I hope I got Neji right though. That man is a quiet storm. Anyway…I hope you like it Anon! ~ Admin Little Lace 🎀

Kiba

Bedtime

Bedtime for them is a three part exercise. If they were all home for dinner first order of business is bathing. Not so much for the S/O, but their lover and his partner. Dynamic marking comes with a cost and it is a smell that can be distinctive. For the sake of their sheets, they have come to force the two to bathe.

Now they do it with no problem but when they had first moved in with Kiba and Akamaru, they chased them around the front yard with a hose.

Bathing is two parts, first Akamaru, who surprising likes baths and being washed. He prefers when Kiba’s lover does it. They are nicer and tell him how wonderful he is. While Kiba usually grumbles that he can’t smell anything and this is all stupid.

After Akamaru, it’s either Kiba or his S/O. Although, he would prefer it be him and his S/O, tonight he stinks and they would just fool around anyway. After his S/O is clean, they usually wear his shirt to bed. Tsume, as a gift buys the man matching pajama sets. This was to ward the boy from walking around the house naked, now it just gives his partner something to wear to bed, while he wears the bottoms.

Second part is turning down the bed. A bed that Kiba certainly had not made or will make in the morning. This when they talk about what they may have to do for the morning or show off new bruises or scrapes from training.

“Where’d you get that one?” they asked touching his chest, a rather large bruise could be seen cradling one of his ribs.“Over rotated, hit a tree.” he lamented, his lover smiled leaning to give the spot a soft kiss. Akamaru then began whimpering drawing their attention.“Aww, Akamaru do you need a kiss too?” they cooed going over and giving the dog’s head a kiss. Akamaru giving his friend a sly look. The ninken paying him back for the training accident. Kiba rolled his eyes grumbling.

The final step is pure chaos. The large mattress is great, it really is. But on one side there is a dip. Said dip is uncomfortable and none of them want to sleep on it. So they all wrestle to avoid sleeping on the side. His S/O plays dirty, tickling Kiba’s sides to get him to move. Kiba just manhandles them out of the good spot. And Akamaru, having a size advantage of all of them just crushes who ever is on that side until they move.

Tonight the canine has come out the victor thus putting the two lovers in the dipped end.

“We need to get a new mattress…” they groaned into Kiba’s side.“Yeah yeah,”

The truth is he will never get a new mattress. The joy he gets out of play fighting for the side makes sleeping on the crappy side of the bed all the more worth it.

Sleeping

Sleeping position are generally dictated on the winner of the side battle. So there can be numerous positions. However they end up, his S/O is always pushed against him in someway. While they are asleep it is usually his time to re-scent them. His sense of smell is senitive and the last thing he wants to smell in the middle of the night is another man. He once punched Naruto just on that principle alone.

He nuzzles their neck and lets his hands wonder, even leaving little nips on his mark on their neck, keeping it fresh. He’ll catch hell in the morning when they see it. In his mind it isn’t a problem. They knew what they were getting into when they agreed to go out with him.

Akamaru has a habit of kicking and running in his sleep. It was cute when he was a puppy but now that his legs are long and his feet the size of a preteen’s, it’s not cute anymore. Sometimes one of them will comfort him, sometimes they will laugh and give him his space. But there has been more than one occasion he has been sent to the couch.

Covers come as a little bit of a challenge. Kiba throughout the night cannot figure out if he does or does not want covers. If he doesn’t his lover might freeze thus cuddling farther into him. If he does, because of his high body temperature, they can get too warm and push him away.

Being a cuddler by nature, he will always seek them out and pull their body back to his. There is no escape.

Morning

Kiba sleeps really heavy. Almost like the dead. So he is not the first to wake up. Neither is his S/O. If it weren’t for the ninken, no one would be getting out of this house on time. When Akamaru gets up he wakes Kiba first. The two of them generally go running in the morning. A well placed cold nose to the neck or back of he knee cap wakes the man for the two of them to start the day.

Before he leaves he wakes his S/O to tell them that the two of them are going out. This is when the man is the gentlest, kissing their forehead, waking them with a whisper. While the two of them go running, his lover wakes up. They go to at least get coffee and/or tea started before they decide on what they want for breakfast.

Breakfast is a group activity. A ritual started when neither had a mission or work to attend to that early. Both of them work together, talking and laughing. Akamaru at their feet patiently waiting for his share to come flying his way.

After breakfast, they head off for the day. No matter where in the village his love needs to be, the shinobi and his partner, first walk them there before going off to begin their day. With a kiss to their cheek and a swat to their behind, the Inuzuka runs off before they can slap him.

Naruto

Bedtime

These are times the knucklehead ninja lives for. Growing up, he didn’t have anyone to come home to at night. So to have his S/O there, Naruto is forever excited. To him it is like having a real family so for a while he wanted to do everything together.  Getting ready for bed is one of those things.

He will forever be the sweet boy friend that helps his lover change their clothes. He doesn’t even cop a feel…well most times. In his mind, he is taking care of something that is important to him. So he will even help them brush their hair too. In the end, every sleeping outfit is topped with his old sleeping hat. They look a little too cute for him to stand.

Though they may not always bath together, they’ve grown a strange ritual of brushing their teeth side by side. Thankfully, they now have two sinks. In their first apartment, there was an incident that occurred after one ill time spit to the sink… Naruto had never been so afraid for his life.

Since his bed is never made turning it down isn’t really a concern. They’ve been together so long that they each have a side of the bed. His, on the right closer tot he window, and theirs, on the left closer to the lamp.

Due to the position of the bathroom, his S/O will always climb over him to get into the bed. They could walk around but what is the fun of that? Plus Naruto isn’t complaining in the least. Sometimes he will hold them there and tell them how beautiful they are or tease him about having to pay a toll. He can never remember what the fare is so the prices change all the time.

“That’ll be three kisses,”“Yesterday it was one,” they laughed perched on top of his lap.“Really?” his question serious as he tried to think back. “Well union rules, yeah so… we had to up it.” he’s partner shook their head paying the fee as slowly as possible.

It might be how they pay the toll that makes him forget what it was to begin with.

With his mission schedule, Naruto isn’t always home at this time. It starts to get more and more rare as he takes on more responsibility. This is generally the time where they talk. Nothing serious while in bed, that was a rule they had set. Just silly things, shopping lists, pranks, the epic battle of water that ensued from fixing the sink. Little things, mundane things, things that mean the world to him.

As they lay together in the dark, he loves to make them laugh. Their laugh is honestly the last sound he wants to hear at night for the rest of his life. Well that and the sleepy way they say:

“I love you,”

Sleeping

Sleeping next to Naruto is not all sunshine and rainbows. For some reason, his lover has yet to figure why, the man cannot stay in one spot. So yes, they may have started out spooning, his arms around them, face in their hair. But that isn’t the way he stays.

Throughout the night, he tosses and turns trying to get comfortable in all manner of positions. He may not look it but he is incredible strong and has been known to pull them into whatever position would best suit him. As sweet as that might sound, it can be pretty terrifying being near dragged clear across to the other side of the bed.

That is better to the alternative. if he isn’t holding them he will fail his arms. His S/O has taken to putting their head under the pillow so when his hands come flying they don’t have a repeat visit to the hospital. It took some pretty heavy convincing to the medical staff that his partner’s broken nose had not been intentional.

Don’t even get them started on his occasional snoring. It makes them want to smother him with a pillow.

Naruto has survived three of these said attempts.

To combat all of this, his S/O has grown to  laying on his chest holding his body much like a spider monkey. He can’t move very much and if he rolls it isn’t too dramatic of a change.

All and all, it isn’t so bad in the end. Sometimes the whisker marked man mumbles in his sleep. All the sweetest things, how much he loves them, how beautiful they are, some observation about their body…and ramen. Rating higher that ramen for Naruto is always a win.

Morning

Much like Kiba, the Sunshine boy of the Hidden Leaf is a heavy sleeper. And tends to over sleep. His S/O has taken advantage of that from time to time by setting his clock forward before getting up themselves. Nothing makes their day more then watching their boyfriend run around the house proclaiming how late he is.

On more than one occasion, they have sat at the kitchen table watching him freak out and run out the door. Just to come back within the hour giving them a glare before going back to bed.

On normal (non pranking) days, they wake up first starting breakfast hoping the boy wakes to to the smell. If he does, he’ll join them at the table. If he doesn’t, his S/O will go to wake him, only to find themselves pulled back to bed with the promise of five more minutes.

After breakfast, his S/O will help him shave. They sit on the counter carefully running the razor over his face. He, just rubbing circles into their thighs while they work.

“There, all finished,” the smiled running the wet rag over his face. “Didn’t even miss a spot.” Naruto looked in the mirror reviewing their work, running his hands over his face.“It’s perfect, good job (Name),” the look of pride beaming on their face warmed the ninja’s heart. Resting his forehead on theirs, he gave a contented sigh as they caressed his clean shaven face.

Due to enjoying their company a little to much, Naruto will not notice the time. It is up to his partner to notice for him. If they don’t, he will still be running out of the house late…just to come back 5 minutes later to retrieve his missions reports he left…

Neji

Bedtime

Being a Jonin, aiding the man family, training and all the family that comes with it tends to take up most of Neji’s time. Lately, it doesn’t seem him he and his S/O get much time together. Anytime to do get to share is important to him. For his partner it is treated as a time to unwind and allow him to de-stress.

He can find his silence in them. Just quiet from the craziness of the world. He can mediate while they start the bath. When it is ready they both bathe together. This is when he slowly becomes less and less tense. His S/O doesn’t expect him to immediately open up about everything that has happened the past few days.

The Hyuga will let them wash his hair and take care of him. With him taking care of everything, its a relief to just not worry about something. His S/O will now tell him, first that he was missed then of small inconsequential things. Prices at the market, an adventure Hanabi and they had, always speaking as if no time had past between them.

As they do, Neji keeps a hold on them. Just enjoying the feel of their body near his.

After their bath, his S/O has him sit on the futon and works on braiding his hair back for bed. This ritual had been added after one to many times of accidentally laying on the man’s hair in bed too frequently. By this point, he is relaxed enough to tell them all that had happened. The missions, the training sessions the possibility of him taking on students. And they listen encouraging him and silently laughing at the thought of him with a trio of genin in tow.

“I don’t think it is that funny,” he grumbled as they tied off the braid.“The thought of you with three Genin comical.” They chuckled. “Can you imagine instructing a tiny Lee?” The thought tired him out more than he believed possible.

Sleeping

Sleeping is not as rambunctious as Naruto or Kiba. Neji is a sound sleeper when he finally gets around to sleeping. While his S/O might go straight to be, the Hyuga could stay up an hour or two reading. If he isn’t reading he may watch his S/O sleep, watching how calm they are and thankful they are safe and here with him.

When he does settle down to sleep, he pulls them to his side. Their head rest on his arm and holding to him. He will run his fingers through their hair and kiss their forehead, reminding them how much he loves them.

The man doesn’t move to much in his sleep. Once he is asleep, only the moving of his head or an arm will move. If his S/O moves in his sleep he will move a hand to them. Though he may not pull him back to him, knowing where they are allows him to sleep easier.

He isn’t the soundest sleeper, he will wake up throughout the night. He may even get up to get some air. Every once in a while, his lover will notice the absence of his presence and go to him.

“Why are you awake?” he asked as they settled themselves down next to him on the porch, the blanket wrapped around them.“Miss you,” they sighed cuddling to his side. Neji smiled wrapping his arms around him as they fell back to sleep.

Them sleeping like this isn’t uncommon. He will carry them back to bed, pulling them back to his side and continuing to rest.

Morning

Mornings where he doesn’t have a mission are rare. If he doesn’t have to leave at the crack of dawn he will spend time in bed with his S/O. It is very unlike the earlier raiser but sleeping in like this wasn’t going to kill him. Sleeping in can be used loosely since he isn’t sleeping just laying there with his eyes closed.

“Don’t you have training soon?”“Soon, but not now.”

Usual mornings would consist of him mediating while sorting out his schedule with his S/O making sure he, at least, gets tea in him before he leaves. He doesn’t really have breakfast in the morning picking to eat closer to noon. He would live his love with a kiss on their cheek before going off to train by himself before assisting Hinata and Hanabi.

Sometimes they will watch him, slightly fawning over him. He gets embarrassed about it so they won’t do it too often. Most mornings they will go off to tend to their morning responsibilities, after bringing food to the exhausted shinobi.

But today he just wants to be with his partner. At least until a messenger comes along calling him to the Hokage’s office.

[shiparmada]

Flights of Fancy

Here it is! The wing fic that I’ve been promising!

Read on AO3

Or Read Here!

 “Do it again, Master îmwe! Do it again!” Velat called out. Velat was a small human with huge eyes and a penchant for trouble. He reminded Baze a lot of Chirrut, especially when he smiled.

Chirrut’s sightless eyes swung towards the small child and he grinned towards him, a match for the boy’s. “Alright! Alright,” Chirrut turned his head in Baze’s direction and his grin grew. “Baze! Catch!” and Baze’s hand rose automatically to catch the staff from the air as it was thrown to him.

“You would have made a good circus performer!” Baze called back from his spot on the edge of the Square of Stars. They had been sent with a simple mission to deliver the extra food the temple had to those who needed it, and of course as soon as that task was done, Chirrut had wanted to stop and play with some of the children in the square. Baze had made a show of grumbling and complaining, but of course Chirrut had already won. Baze loved the children too, loved seeing their eyes grow as Chirrut showed off, loved when they came over to Baze to sit under the shade of his wings, loved when some of them drifted off around him, while others laughed at Chirrut’s antics.

Baze’s heart felt light here.

“Why thank you!” Chirrut called back to him, his ebony iridescent wings spreading languid through the square. In the sunlight streaks of blues and purples shone on the beautiful glossy feathers. “Perhaps in another life.” The children around him all goggled as if they had never seen the guardian before, but Baze could not blame them for their interest. Every time Baze saw them extended to their fullest, showing off their power and grace that was just an innate part of Chirrut, it felt like the first time as well.

These children had not seen those powerful wings’ beginning though. Did not see how they had started off small and fluffy, had not seen them in their development when the fluffy down shed away and were replaced with the elegant black feathers. Memories of those silly looking things were what kept Baze from goggling like these children.

Baze spread his own tan-and-red wings slightly, creating more shade for the children who sat around him, and he smiled as a small hand reached up to stroke one of the banded feathers. He tore his eyes away from Chirrut to tell the child to be careful, they were a part of him and pulling them would hurt. He didn’t get the chance to because just as he opened his mouth to speak, the wind whipped up around them and fluttered around, pulling up dirt and sand that clung to the streets, and by the time Baze could turn his head back, Chirrut was already in the air.

The children were already gasping in awe before Chirrut did the first trick, a swooping barrel roll that made Baze’s heart clench for a moment. It released once the roll was completed, and Chirrut completed a high loop. After three or four more tricks Chirrut finally landed, using his wings to slow his descent so he did not break his fool legs, and meeting with his adoring fans.

Baze’s heart swelled at the scene as he watched Chirrut laugh and pick up children, lifting them over his head and letting them pretend they could fly. It was not until all the children were safely out of the way that Baze threw the staff back, watching Chirrut catch it easily. “Baze,” Chirrut called over, tapping the end of the staff to the ground. “I believe it is time for us to go.”

Baze let out a breath and he nodded, shifting and standing up. The children under his wings complained and tried to grab for him. He apologized to the small children as he folded his wings again and moved over to Chirrut. “Did you have fun showing off?” he asked Chirrut as they left the disappointed children behind, heading back for the temple.

“Of course!” Chirrut said with a bright smile and laugh. “Those children always brighten my day; it is only fair that I should be able to brighten theirs.” Chirrut’s wings tucked up tight against his back as he walked, careful of the people sliding around them.

“I think I saw the beginnings of wings on Telica’s back,” Baze pointed out, and he smiled when he saw Chirrut’s smile brighten even more.

“Really?” Chirrut tapped his staff over the ground. “We should keep an eye on her,” he said, pausing when Baze chuckled, “she could be in the next generation of guardians. Oh, that would be exciting.”

“We will,” Baze said, looking over Chirrut’s wings quietly. He watched the feathers shift and slide together, their jewel tones bright. Baze swallowed hard and looked away quickly before he had thoughts of touching them. “Then you could train her, you’d love that.”

“Mm,” Chirrut’s smile softened at the corners, nodding to Baze. “Yes, I would…” He paused his walking when they entered the Old Shadows, Chirrut taking a deep breath as he did and centered himself. Then they were walking again, this time in comfortable companionable silence.

Chirrut spoke again after a moment, just in front of the gates of the temple. “Baze, have you been feeling something… off when you sense the Force?”

Baze paused and looked back at Chirrut, an eyebrow raising. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” and then Chirrut paused, thinking carefully on his words, “it feels like something is… imminent. It’s not a vision, but it feels like the Force is trying to warn me of something larger than I’ve ever dealt with.”

“You think the Force is speaking directly to you?” Baze asked with a small scoff. “Do not let Master Ivenna hear you. She will call you blasphemous.”

“She does anyway,” Chirrut pointed out, walking through the gates. “But I’ve spoken to the other Guardians and they are not feeling it. The Disciples say they can interpret something, but it does not seem as I am feeling it.” Chirrut shook his head. “I am sorry, I am being silly. Of course, the Force is not speaking directly to me. I am probably just thinking too much on it.”

Baze’s hand moved before he could stop himself, sliding between feathers until he was touching along Chirrut’s spine. “You are silly,” Baze said quietly, “but not for trying to interpret the Force.” Chirrut’s wings fluttered around Baze’s hand, the silky feathers sliding over Baze’s arm.

“Hm,” was Chirrut’s non-verbal response. “I wish I could shake the feeling that something terrible is coming. Everything is as the Force wills it…” Chirrut swallowed and did not finish the line, throat bobbing as he swallowed. Baze’s hand clutched into the robes through the feathers.

“Chirrut,” Baze said quietly and then tugged on the robes, getting Chirrut to stop and to turn to him. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” Chirrut said, and Baze was sure he was telling the truth. “No I’m not afraid, just… nervous. Anxious, I suppose. I do not like this feeling, and I do not like not know why I’m having it.” Chirrut frowned, moving his head away. “It would be easier if I knew why.”

“I know,” Baze responded quietly before he tucked his hand under Chirrut’s jaw and lifted it gently, leaning down close and pressing their lips together. Baze listened to Chirrut’s feathers shake together as Chirrut’s wings trembled and Baze could not help but smile into the kiss. Chirrut stepped close, his staff becoming pinned between them, the metal handle starting to bruise Baze’s skin. As Chirrut deepened the kiss Baze brought his wings forward, covering them from wandering eyes.

The kiss was broken slowly and reluctantly by them both, Chirrut backing up slightly to unpin the staff. “Mm… you’re using your wings to screen us, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Baze’s easy answer came, looking down at Chirrut’s soft pink lips, the flush of his cheeks. Ten years and Chirrut was still the most handsome man Baze had ever known, and Baze felt grateful that Chirrut wanted Baze as well. “Should we go to our room?”

Chirrut’s grin was back and he nodded. “Yes, Baze, I think that is a good idea.” Chirrut’s free hand slid into Baze’s and he tugged on Baze’s hand to lead him away. Baze’s wings folded back as he followed him, finding himself grinning along with Chirrut.

The door slammed opened as Chirrut opened it and then once Baze was in through the door Chirrut used his staff to slam it closed. The kissing resumed where they had left off, hot and hungry. The staff clattered as Chirrut tried to put in in the corner of the room and missed, and Chirrut let out an angry huff when Baze laughed into his mouth.

“You keep doing that and I am not having sex with you,” Chirrut muttered to him. Baze could not stop the laugh that escaped him, kissing him again and then pulling back.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Baze said, lifting Chirrut up and stepping over the staff as Chirrut’s wings flared and Chirrut squawked. “And you’re terrible at acting indignant.”

“I will have you know,” Chirrut said, tapping Baze’s forehead as Baze set him down on their shared bed, “I am great at acting indignant! It is my specialty! I am an expert at acting indignant!”

Baze kneeled in front of Chirrut and leaned forward, burying his face into Chirrut’s shoulder as he laughed. He could not see Chirrut’s bright proud smile from there but he knew he was wearing it. Chirrut’s hands slid over the tops of Baze’s wings and Baze shuddered. “I want you inside me,” Baze murmured into Chirrut’s shoulder as Chirrut’s hands slid against the muscles around Baze’s wings, pressing into the knots that were ever present.

“Anything you want, beloved,” Chirrut said, one hand sliding up and cupping Baze’s cheek before kissing him deeply.

“Mm…” Baze reached down, tugging at Chirrut’s robes and sliding them away from Chirrut’s shoulders, tugging at the shirt underneath. “We are supposed to be meeting with the other Guardians…”

“I’m sure they will be able to run the meeting without us,” Chirrut said before he kissed Baze again, and they melted together comfortable, following the comfortable routes they had carved out throughout the years.

[checkyesifulikeme]

this is just me being emo over my boyfriend because a month or so ago we decided today’s our one year and i Love him so you don’t need to read this like at all but if you want to....b my guest! 

i never in 1 million years thought i would meet someone like dorian. NEVER. never never never. listen. the ~year or so before we met was my first time being single and feeling completely okay. feeling happier than i’d ever felt before just exploring my interests and making new friends and doing new things, i’ll always cherish that time because i really feel like that’s when i began to know me as i am today. i always felt so detached from who i was growing up. i never made many friends, throughout middle school i was almost completely alone save for my online friends who i love with my whole heart and am still friends with almost a decade later like.........what. but anyways i was so alone and feverishly rejected every aspect of myself that i felt made me so alone. i was too quiet, too shy, too anxious, too sad, too ugly, too hairy, not smart enough, not funny enough. i’ve criticized myself like this from as early as i can remember. on my 5th birthday i walked away from the little area in the park we’d cleared for my party and played alone by my favorite tree, probably pretending to be a jungle cat or something like that. only within the past couple of years did i realize that all of these things ‘hindering’ me are not actually hindering me at all. the only thing hindering me is my repetitive thoughts of “don’t be like this. you are *insert negative thing here* because you are like this. be like them. be like anything Other. just stop doing what You are doing.” and for a very long time i didn’t realize how damaging this was. i always looked up to my father as a child, like he could do no wrong to me i loved him so very much. but he used to be colder than he is now (he’s softened a bit w age/being w a pisces woman for 10+ years) so he had a very deadpan sense of humor and sometimes made remarks that dug deeper than i think he knew into my soft skin. my dad was never abusive, moreso just disconnected in a way many men are, i think. insensitive is a good word. and i’ve always been hypersensitive yet longed so deeply to be exactly like my father. calloused, but funny. able to pick up and play any instrument i wanted to. good at math. all of that! he built his own bass guitar. i think some of my intense obsession with self critique stems from that idealization of a semi-callous man from a very young age. i’ve always been deeply sensitive and easily bruised but i pretend not to be. i downplay my pain. i downplay my scars. i laugh while i tell stories of being blind-sided by my best friend all while i have a symbol of our friendship inked into the back of my arm (no i don’t regret it). i sat alone with the thought of my mother going to prison. i downplayed my pain. my ex cracked a joke about being my “new mom.” i went home and cried for hours.

but anyways. i’m so off track i really didn’t mean for this to turn into my life story but i have always been super self reflective as i said before. but ANYWAYS. dorian and i began talking after that year or so of being alone. i went from an abusive relationship i’d been in from ages 15-17 to dating an alcoholic 4 years my senior to dating his co-worker who i secretly couldn’t stand. and then i was alone and i was happy and i felt like Me for the first time since i was 15 years old. i was done running from sitting with myself. after said year went by i decided i wanted to say fuck it and just talk to some boys i thought were cute cause i knew i had it like that and was like let’s just be a silly lil ho! but that shit is hard first of all idk why boys do That like i was exhausted from it all bitch it wasn’t even fun. but anyways one of the boys was my Now bf dorian and i thought he was the biggest fuckboy like he exhibited prime fuckboy behavior. before that we’d followed each other for like over a year on twitter and i’d curved him twice so i didn’t rly want to DM him (i thought it would look suspicious of me or something) so instead i found his insta and followed it and played the Waiting game and it worked! we started talking and basically we had like the worst compatibility ever over text imo so i wasn’t that into it but he was cute as h*ll to me so i said fuq it baby! we ended up meeting a few weeks later when i drove 2ish hours up to his city with my then best friend to go to a *** *** concert (i will not expose who this is LMAO) so we had like. 30 minutes to meet beforehand and he was highhhhhhhh off his ass when he rounded the corner of the cafe we were meeting at bitch was toasted bitch was fried out his mind i’m telling U..and the entire time he just flamed my shit. and i literally could not tell for the life of me if he liked me or if he was just saying fuck it and doing whatever. oh also i bought him baby pink nail polish as a surprise because he’d mentioned missing having pink nails but he ran out of his polish so i was like ! on the drive up and stopped at a target to find him one (pretty big move for me TBH i’m so shy about people enjoying their gifts especially a STRANGER like..). but he liked it and i was happy. then that night we were texting once i got back to my city and we teased each other a lot but then the teasing turned into making actual solid plans for him to come stay at my house for a couple of days. i was extremely nervous as you can imagine like i’m a Woman and he’s a Strange Man from another City coming to stay in my Home but my crackhead ass did it anyways and i didn’t die and this all has a happy ending so! that’s good. great even. but yes he came down and stayed the night. the next morning while we were getting breakfast and talking was when i realized oh damn i might actually,,really like him? the night before i’d just felt sorta on edge and paranoid because i have a lot of #trama and don’t trust my own judgement very well due to prior abuse so i was just extremely on guard but my walls came down a tiny tiny bit the next day. we agreed on almost everything and liked a lot of the same stuff, like every other sentence was “me too!” to the point that i thought he was fucking w me just to impress me or something/i was worried he thought i was doing the same. we drove back up to his city that night w a friend of mine to go to Another concert (lana del rey, i’ll expose this one) and i just remember having this feeling deep in my chest. not even butterflies. like when you stick a marshmallow on a branch and shove it into the flames of a campfire and the fluff bubbles and pops and drips the coal below, coating it in a sticky hot glaze. that’s how my heart felt. i listened to the shadows by peter & kerry and chanel by frank ocean and passion fruit by drake (lmfao) and felt like a marshmallow perpetually engulfed in flames. i felt so happy i could cry. i felt a little scared too but mostly happy. that’s also something i’ve read before that always stuck with me. something to do with when you meet the right person it’s not supposed to feel like an excited delirious fit of insects in your belly it’s supposed to feel calm and warm and comforting. and that’s kind of how it felt. i don’t know if that’s a 100% worldly truth because i don’t believe there is ever any one right way of Experiencing anything but i just remember thinking about that quote sometimes and being like “huh.” 

after that initial feeling of falling in love it just kept going. we saw each other for 2ish days every week from then on, until he evntually moved down here at the beginning of august. we’d only been dating for 6 months but a combination of unexpected situations just sorta pushed things along rather quickly. but i wasn’t nervous. which was strange because both of my longer term relationships got a bit rocky around discussing our futures together. i always claimed to dislike thinking too far ahead but in reality i disliked thinking about being tied to said people in said way. but with dorian i just felt joy. we stopped at ikea “just to look” on the way down and bought a vegetable knife, a cat bed for winnie and wesley,  a collapsible tunnel they never played in, 2 giant asymmetrical mauve plates, tupperware with yellow lids and lots of other miscellaneous stuff we didn’t really need nor did we have the money for.

as hard as 2018 was for me i would never reverse a second of it. not for anything in the entire world. i slowly lost all of my high school friends. i slowly lost my mind a little bit too. but he stuck with me through every bit of it. i can’t even begin to get into every wild ass thing that went down throughout the past year but we stood together through it all and that feels so fucking good. i sat on the phone before we lived together and listened to him cry because the world is too cold and i cried with him because i was freezing. he picked me up and carried me home when i ran out of the house crying so hard my head was spinning and i couldn’t see past my tears after the end of one of my longest friendships. a man stared at us from across the street and i sobbed until i couldn’t breathe. 

we’re not perfect people and sure anything could happen. we could break up tomorrow. sure. believe me i know that anything can happen. like i said earlier, i have a sizeable matching tattoo with an ex best friend who i essentially thought i’d end up buried next to. but like i said earlier, no, i don’t regret it. and i would never regret love like this. but i also don’t think i will have to. never have i met someone who wants to understand me so fully. who loves me so unconditionally. who gave me the time to open up and decipher my thoughts and feelings and didn’t get tired of it. who helped me to realize that it isn’t me not functioning like ‘every one else’ that’s the problem, it was the self hatred bred from me believing that in the first place. acceptance. he accepted me as i was and i accepted him as he was. i remember saying i felt like i needed someone like me when it came to relationships. growing up i was very drawn to “opposites attract!” and sayings like that, most likely because of my self deprecating disposition, but after the end of my second relationship i knew i was wrong. my whole life i have felt misunderstood and disconnected and alone in my head and like the butt of every joke like a punchline on loop. he was the first person to ever really take me out of that. to sit there while i cried and babbled incoherently about how i just couldn’t put the words together to express why i was upset or tell anyone where it hurts. why i was anxious. why i was mad. i remember clearly sitting with him in my old apartment while my ex roommate/best friend was at work and  crying and saying i didn’t know how to ‘say it’ and him explaining back to me everything he’d heard from me so far and his interpretation and i cried and cried and cried and i felt seen for maybe the first time in my entire life. i don’t know what’s in me to make me feel so incredibly separate, and to in turn isolate myself out of this immensely penetrating sense of isolation, but he was the first to extend a hand and actually mean it. i’ve been too many people’s empty shell of a girl to project everything they wanted to see onto. it’s easy to do that with someone who rejects themselves because what is there to lose if you’re not afraid to lose it? i wasn’t perfectly healed when we met, i will never be ‘perfectly’ healed. he was not either and i do not expect him to be. i’m only 20 so really what do i know about life at all. nothing lmao. but i know that dorian is my fucking rock. and i’m his fucking rock. and if i asked him if he wanted to move to another city tomorrow and build a house out of rocks we collected on the drive there he would say yes. and i know i’ve never felt afraid with him. i know i’ve never felt demeaned or belittled or laughed at. i know we play like teething puppies who roll around and bite at one another but are always having fun and if one of us goes too far the play immediately stops and we lick each other in apologies and forgiveness and start our play again. i know we can say ‘i’m sorry’ without the slightest bit of hesitation or resentment because what’s the point of meaningless pride in all of this. don’t we hate that shit anyways? i know i stopped off the freeway and chased a dog with you and both of our best friends at the time a mile or so down the road but he just kept running farther and farther away until we eventually gave up on catching him. i know after that we drove back to my city holding hands and listening to the playlist i made you while we drove 80 mph through the inky black desert. i know i glanced over at you mouthing all of the words to a few of the songs. this is one of my favorite memories. the beginning of our love in it’s most raw form, to me at least. i know we texted each other paragraphs and you couldn’t pay me to take me away from those conversations. i know the entanglement of my volatile emotions and pride gets in the way of things sometimes but i also know when to cut it because that shit’s stupid anyways. i know our composite chart has our moon, mercury and venus in the 7th house and that made me smile because the girl on twitter who read sza’s chart said that was a favorable aspect for marriage. i know that i don’t really believe in marriage but i wouldn’t mind celebrating our love and making the playlist for the wedding and probably getting mad over people talking over “this part!” i know that you’ve never once discouraged me or limited me. i know that we’ve been through things together that would cause most to trip and break a bone or two, at least. but not once have i questioned my love for you. i’ve said doubtful things once or twice, but please understand and believe me when i say that it was only out of habit. isolation. i push back when things hurt. it’s easy for me to leap to worst case scenario in the blink of an eye. my formative teenage years were spent with someone who yelled at me and guilt tripped me and demanded and demeaned and demanded and demeaned and when i left for the second time they didn’t demand anything from me that time. it was a couple of hours later when i got a call from my mother telling me they’d attempted suicide immediately after leaving my house. i felt as collapsible as the tunnel our cats never used. everything i was afraid of came true. i’ve lived in fear for a very long time. you’re the first person to show me there is nothing to be afraid of and to love me with no strings attached. you just wanted to understand me as much as i wanted to understand you. you made me feel wanted, but after i’d began wanting myself, too. i’m just happy we met when we did, and i hope you are too. we’re both damaged in different places but maybe the damage only allows for more love to leak out and accumulate in our bloodstreams- just in different ways than we expected. i love you dorian. and i can’t end things i just ramble and connect and ramble and connect until i stop somewhere suddenly. i just love you i love you i love you i love you i love you. i know that i saw angel numbers before we ever met and that angel number turned out to be my life path number (which i found out about a year later). 333. 333. 333. 333. i know if you add 1 to either digit of my birthday you get your birthday (17 & 28). i know we both loved my chemical romance and fetty wap when we were younger. i know your moon is my sun and your rising is my moon and in some strange way that correlates to you telling the same jokes i’m thinking but don’t always have the energy or will to say. i know that i played you a song off the playlist i made for you before i told you it was made for you and you knew it and had sampled it previously and i thought you were fucking with me because it’s not a very well known song. i know that you texted me telling me you found the song and scrapped it and rewrote and recorded it for me and named it after the color of my nails. i know that you are everything i’ve ever wanted in love but could never put into words much like everything else i’ve felt deeply in this life. i know you don’t rush me at thrift stores because you like them as much as i do. i know you and you know me and that’s all i’ve ever wanted. i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you. 

--

The Shadows / Peter & Kerry

Relax my hands on the table Uncurl my fingers to reveal superficial indentations Crescent moon shapes mark the surface of my palms It's twilight: your shadows lurking over again Your shadows lurking over again Try to hinder foolish pride From shooting out my mouth like a gust of wind And blowing out your light All I want is you to shine And I'll wait here with you until sunrise I'll wait here with you until sunrise I'll wait here with you until sunrise I'll wait here with you until sunrise I am blinded by your light Your dark shadows always lurking behind you I am blinded by your light Your dark shadows always lurking behind you And I'll wait here with you until sunrise

[peter-horrocks]

Football in France

As football mania hit fever pitch in France last week I was on a TGV fast train heading from Paris to Aix-en-Provence somewhat relieved it was actually running and amused to be getting the excited updates of the progress of the world cup final game over the intercom system whilst the carriage staff painted passenger’s cheeks with the tricolour of red white and blue. I had plenty of time to reflect on football in France.

In fact, I am truly grateful to the French amateur football system as I am sure it saved me from the potential health pitfalls of one of the most pervasive bad habits in France and the UK for that matter, smoking. Yes, it was football which made me give up smoking when I was young, nipping it in the bud forever and it introduced me to eating seafood too.

From a very early age I played football both outdoor at school, in the street, the park and for my hometown Middleton near Manchester on some of the muddiest windswept cold pitches in the UK. I experienced the sparse facilities at boundary park where I played for Oldham Athletic as a junior and even more rudimentary set up at Rochdale FC’s home Spotland where my youth club team won the regional final.

At Lancaster University the only thing I did of which I can still feel proud was winning the college cup with Grizedale for the first time in their history and to this day I can remember slumping in the shower still in my full kit as the water washed the mud off my multiple cuts and bruises.

I did give up for a period of ten years as a kind of personal protest at the wave of hooliganism which for some weird reason took root in the eighties. Then started again playing for Gargrave village team in Yorkshire where the sloping pitches matched the contours of the dales, finally settling for indoor 5 a side in Skipton where I was swiftly hacked down for “showboating”, a brutal reminder of UK sporting values whatever your age.

Which brings me on to France where I first played for the town team of St Foy la Grande (which is about a one hour drive from Bordeaux) whilst on my gap year working on a vineyard. It was the farmer himself who suggested I give it a try and he organised everything.

The first step was to pass the medical. Yes before you can join a club and play at any level you need to produce a medical certificate and that applies to numerous activities, I had to do the same here more recently when I joined the local climbing wall.

Like many a miss-guided youngster I had started smoking when I went to high school and by the age of eighteen, I was merrily working my way through packets of Gauloise and Gitanes during my days trudging up and down the vineyards with secateurs in hand. I was suddenly concerned that smoking might become an issue at my medical. So I stopped three days before my appointment with the doctor.

The doctor had me do a number of strenuous exercises then proceeded to check my pulse, take my tension level and listen with a stethoscope to my chest. “Vous fumer?” he asked. “No no” I gasped desperately. “Oui vous fumer” he replied and proceeded to fill out and sign off my certificate. That was it for me. I never touched a cigarette ever again and am forever grateful.

Mid-week I set off on my old Peugeot “mobylette” on the ten kilometres of unlit country road to training. Training!!! I had never ever done a days training. All we ever did back home was play matches. Not even a stretch beforehand as it was generally freezing outside and you would have been called all the names under the sun if you did anything more than lace your boots. Yes, training on a beautiful flat green pitch under the glare of floodlights. Floodlights!!! I couldn’t believe it. I was used to having to weave my way around numerous muddy pitches with a backdrop of cotton mill chimneys not a  pitch with a stand on one side and blooming floodlights on a warm balmy evening. 

We trained and practised, and I rode home after with a big grin on my face, I didn’t even care when my ride broke down and I had to walk the last few kilometres in the dark wondering occasionally into the drainage ditch which invariably runs each side of a French country road. I played a season for Ste Foy and enjoyed being known as “le grand anglais” and they made the most of my height and ability to head the ball as I was way bigger than anyone else. 

After the games came the “troisieme mi-temps” or third half which was spent with the whole team, manager and the few supporters and relatives in a local restaurant. After significant victories it sometimes got raucous and on one occasion I was faced with a forfeit of standing on the table and eating an oyster.They don’t have oysters where I used to holiday in North Wales, just fish and chips. So the sight of this thing which not only looked disgusting but was still actually alive and moving was not good. Normally I would have declined but in these circumstances,  there was too much honour at stake. I gulped it down and followed it swiftly with a glass of wine. It was actually rather good, a nice taste of the sea. Surprising, like French football.

In the dressing room at Old Trafford enjoying the French connection

My team which I have always followed is Manchester United as you were born a red or a blue where I came from in those days, you didn’t choose fancifully. The club has a strong connection with French players and none more so than Eric Cantona (the King) and I always enjoyed this aspect. Nowadays it is Paul Pogba who is flying the red’s flag and causing as much controversy in his own way as Eric “le roi” did.

I found this poster of King Eric on the wall of a restaurant in Bandol.

I have been to a number of French matches in France over the years, starting in Bordeaux, again in my gap year. There I was astonished when a chap in the crowd tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I had a knife so he could cut his “saucisson” which is a kind of dried salami type sausage. No way that would happen in the UK. It reflected the French people's attitude to football then as it was before they won the World Cup for the first time and interest was low key, food far more important. 

More recently I went to see Marseille for whom Didier Deschamps was the manager and I actually once saw the crowd go on strike, which made me laugh. His fortunes have certainly risen since then and the stadium has been expanded and developed as have many in France to reflect the sports growing status.

Watching Didier Deschamps Marseille before the days of the roof

So, I have followed football and played back in the UK and over here and it was wonderful to see France deservedly crowned world champions and a relief to see the celebrations completed without serious incident and the country briefly united and happy after what has been a number of difficult years for the French. I think few will begrudge them the trophy and in my mind, there is little surprise that they are so technically gifted and dominant.

On Wednesday evening I played as usual in a mountain village near Grasse with the Saint-Cezaire-Sur-Siagne veterans, finding myself still thankful to the French football system for helping me quit smoking so I can still play well despite rapidly approaching 60. I played in my Marseille kit bought for me by my French family one Christmas and on the pitch they called me Waddle after Chris who was one of the few English players to play in France, for OM too. 

The standard was as good as ever, we were joined by numerous local youngsters who like to play with us because of the “bon ambience”. We played on the superb three-quarter size all weather astroturf pitch with big goals and as usual, the floodlights were on and it was a warm balmy evening. Is football coming home after all? Maybe it is, it depends where home is.

Something quite unique I have come across here is a concept called Urban Soccer which allows individuals or groups to sign in and join up with others to form five-a-side teams and play at centres such as the one at Villeneuve Loubet where they have converted a tennis club into a complex of over twenty floodlit all weather pitches. It is a great way to participate in five a side, there is a clubhouse with a bar and you can even arrange to have your match filmed. There are regular tournaments with referees and everything. I've tried it with family and friends here, its good fun. One French friend told me he signs up and plays when he goes to New York with work as there is one at Central Park.

It is just a game though for some reason football attracts millions of peoples interest throughout the world, whether playing or watching or just criticising anything and everything from overpaid players to lack of facilities. In the UK it is still played with passion and grit which I love and in France with technical ability and speed which is wonderful to experience. I personally treasure every moment I am still able to play. Enjoy!

Best wishes

Peter Horrocks

Peter H. Copyright © 2018 Peter Horrocks, all rights reserved