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#but the first series was/is just superior
elodieunderglass · 2 days
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On the topic of the monarchist animals I'm just really curious. What makes the winnie pooh real animals bourgeois? It's not like they own much more than the others. Do they just have bourgeois energy?
(In reference to my addition on this post; https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/748488762087047168/hold-on-lets-do-this-properly-paddington)
In the post I state that none of the stuffed/toy animals in the Winnie the Pooh series are monarchists, but that the real animals are bourgeoisie. Obviously this is tongue in cheek, but it’s still politically interesting to me because nobody ever reads Winnie the Pooh as an actual book. They just draw depressed Disney Eeyore and think they’ve done something.
Owl and Rabbit are real wild animals that live in the Hundred Acre Wood. The other characters in the story are Christopher Robin’s stuffed animals.
The “real” animals (reasonably) consider themselves to be separate from the stuffed ones, but where it becomes unreasonable is how they assume superiority and how they use this to exert authority.
(A charming response about how the stuffed animals view this: Piglet points out that Rabbit is both clever and Has Brain, and Pooh replies that this is why Rabbit “doesn’t understand anything.”)
Owl is characterised by being a bit of a fraud. The stuffed animals respect him for his presumed education and literacy, but even a preschooler understands that Owl can’t actually read. he actively deceives the other characters in order to maintain a higher social status over them. (Actually, Rabbit’s the most literate character in the Wood.) Owl gains relatively little advantage from this status, apart from his belief that he is superior and the pleasure in everyone deferring to him. A notable theme throughout the written series involves characters approaching Owl for advice, based on his self-made reputation of being wise and thoughtful, and him giving explicitly bad advice, rather than admit that he has no idea how to help. Also, they forcibly give him someone else’s house, in such a way that the actual possessor of the house (Piglet) feels he can’t speak up. Pooh immediately offers to Piglet that he move in with him, which even as a kid felt like an incredibly unsatisfactory solution to having the shyest character’s actual house given away to the character who casually lies about everything just to feel superior.
Rabbit is a grown-ass adult real wild animal. He is the social leader of a massively large family and an extended group of hangers-on (he has fifteen or seventeen close relatives, and the extended Friends-and-Relations are a sort of army); he is the only actually literate person in the narrative, so it is understandable that he feels this (although he also believes Owl can read.) literacy and Brain are considered very important in the Wood.
Rabbit believes in his own superiority and believes himself to serve as a sort of cadet to Christopher Robin. In the series Christopher Robin is the ultimate judge, and a kindly ruler; Rabbit positions himself constantly at Christopher Robin’s right hand and wants to be his enforcer. Christopher Robin, who is five and a fairly distracted God, does not really enforce anything. This does not stop Rabbit from trying to organise the entire Wood. It’s frequently mentioned that Rabbit wants to feel important, he wants to be the Boss. A beautiful, beautiful commentary on his character is when he wakes up feeling “important, as if everything depending on him… it was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody said “Yes Rabbit” and “No Rabbit” and waited until he had told them.” Fantastic!
However, we can see where this leads him. In the first book Rabbit is shown being hostile and actively anti-foreign in his approach to other people. When kanga and roo arrive in the forest - sanctioned by Christopher Robin who has received new toys - Rabbit instantly says they have to get rid of them. Like there is NO friendship in Rabbit’s heart here. There is no “god has placed a new friend in the wood so we have to get on with it.”
Rabbit’s anti-immigration stances are funny, and in-character, and shown by the narrative to be wrong and unfair. But they’re pretty unleashed.
His plan is to kidnap the baby and hold it hostage until the mother agrees to “leave the forest forever and never return.”
This is not a normal response to a new character. It is in fact fucking unhinged. Coming from the most normal-adult real animal in the story, it comes out of nowhere. “We have to eliminate them instantly. Take the baby hostage, blackmail the parent and deport them” Rabbit these are war crimes.
Anyway it’s all very heartwarming as Rabbit learns that he likes Baby Roo. (Their relationship grows warmer as Baby Roo says “yes rabbit” and “no rabbit” better than anyone else.) We never really learn why Rabbit is so violently anti-immigration that he instantly jumps to doing crimes, but it’s possible that he doesn’t like the threat to the status quo. Baby Roo, by deferring politely, thus turns out to be a valuable social inferior for Rabbit’s power base.
But in the next book we also get another new character introduction: Tigger. rabbit does not like tigger. In fact, he stops visiting Roo because Tigger lives with them. Rabbit, frustrated by Tigger’s bounciness, also decides to deliberately trick and bully Tigger in order to make him “small and sorry.” The fact that this comically backfires on Rabbit is part of the Pooh-lore storytelling style, of course, but it’s still something obvious even to the preschool audience - that isn’t how you treat your friends.
In conclusion, due to their hoarding of (social) capital and behaviors that prop up an unjustly unequal social system, I think the real animals in Winnie the Pooh are a bit bougie.
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But Daddy, I Love Him (chapter one)
Daemon Targaryen x f!reader
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synopsis : the reader is a daughter of the Lord of House Arwen - ever so dutiful and mild-mannered. Slated to be the lady wife of some highborn Lord, someone who is noble and decent. Not the volatile Rogue Prince. Not Daemon Targaryen.
in this chapter : The Rogue Prince and the reader meet. Their fates entwine. A fool is made out of a Lady.
themes/warnings : Daemon being Daemon is a warning in itself, Daemon has a superiority complex, highborn!reader, House Arwen is my own creation (name inspired by lotr!)
series list : chapter one - chapter two - chapter three
word count : 2k ▪︎ masterlist
a/n : the title and the series concept inspired by the TS song ofc <3
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Dutiful daughter, all my plans were laid. Tendrils tucked into a woven braid...
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Your chambers. The Godswood. The library.
Every day is the same. The mornings start with your ladies in waiting helping you prepare for the day. Running your bath, carefully pressing your frocks, lacing you up in your bodice. Making sure each lock of hair is in place, the right amount of rouge dabbed against the apples of your cheeks.
You were once a perfect little girl, now a perfect little lady.
Soon a perfect little lady wife.
This is your story, already woven, already told time and time again. The same story for all ladies of your standing.
All you have to do is to be good. And so you are.
Thank the gods for the stories you read, enabling you jump into different lives. Adventures and romances you know you will never have, not truly. But you are happy to play the fool with every page turned.
The library has become your safe haven, your home within your home. Nestled high in the sprawling castle of House Arwen. Nothing can disturb you here. No one.
Or so you thought.
The very first words you hear Daemon Targaryen say to you come across as rather rude. You will find in time that he does not mean to be rude. Not all the time, that is. This is just how he is.
"I have always found that story rather dull. Amusing how you seem to be so engrossed in it, my lady."
"Excuse me, but I will you have you know - " you raise your head, taking in the visitor. Or intruder.
"Prince Daemon," you rise from your seat, offering a well-practiced curtsy. An instinctive move of obeisance for a lady like you.
He barely acknowledges your gesture, his face flat and impassive. "That book. I was forced to read it in my youth. Our Maester all but shoved it down my throat."
You immediately do not take to his approach. That book is one of the most famous tales from Old Valyria. He should know, being of Valyrian blood and all.
"I believe there is much to like about this book, my Prince."
"Such as?"
"Well, it depicts a warrior knight of Old - "
"Some warrior knight," Daemon scoffs, not even letting you finish your statement. "He gave up his powers for the love of a wench he knew for just a fortnight. He had every chance at glory but he squandered all of it away. For what?"
"For... for love?" comes your response, though you know he did not really want one.
For someone who claims to dislike this story so much, he sure knows it well.
He mindlessly taps his fingers on a nearby shelf, eyes lazily reading the titles. Drifting through the room with the unmistakeable disdain of someone who is used to having so much, the world practically by his feet, but is disinterested with it all.
You think that you could fall dead right then and Daemon wouldn't care. Wouldn't even bat an eyelash. He rolls his eyes at your mention of love, and it does not help your impression of him.
"There are only two things worthy of love in my eyes, my lady, and that is power and blood."
"Blood? Well, my prince, family is one of the most important - "
"Blood is not the same for me as it is for you. My blood carries a legacy of fire and magic, being of Old Valyria. You would not possibly understand how I hold my blood in high regard."
Oh may the gods strike him down now.
Your hands clench into fists, pressing against your skirts, but you don't have it in you to notice the unladylike gesture. All you can think of is letting him have a piece of your mind. "A family can have a flock of sheep or a horde of dragons, my prince, and it makes no difference to me. Your family is your family, your blood is your blood. But whether you choose to love them does not solely depend on blood."
It is as if he sees for you for the first time then, the moment you show that you have your own voice, and that you will not simply cater to his whims.
He turns eager to press you further, make you break, make you cave in. "What of you, my lady? What is it that you find worthy of love? Family, I presume, from your poorly formed argument? What about a lord husband?"
"I do love my family," you nod. "And when I do wed, I am sure I will love my lord husband just as dearly."
He walks closer, but does not stop in front of you as is the polite thing to do in conversation. He circles you, and you feel exposed by the way he openly takes you in. "Oh, but how will you know? You do not have a choice, do you? How can that be love?"
You do not answer right away, for the prince has just voiced one of your biggest fears. What if you do not find love in your lord husband? What sort of life would that entail? One which you have been preparing for since you entered womanhood, one you always thought you would be willing to accept. It is your duty, after all.
So you say just that. "It is my duty, and if I am able to fulfil my duty, then I am certain that will bring me happiness."
Daemon scoffs, his lips forming a self-righteous sneer. "In the story, do you then think that the warrior knight would have been better off fulfilling his duty and abandoning his love?"
"It is not the same."
"It is exactly the same."
"No," you emphasize, "because he had a choice. I do not."
He had stopped right in front of you, a bit too close for comfort, almost as if he needs to lean in to scrutinize you fully. "Love is the death of duty, my lady. Take my word for it, you would be far better off playing your role. If you truly wish to honour your family, you would not fall in love at all."
He's so close that you can feel his breath fanning your face. If you didn't know any better, you would believe that simply being so near Daemon Targaryen is the reason why your body feels like it is on fire. He gives off heat like a furnace, like a dragon.
Maybe he is a dragon. Is that not what they all say about Targaryens?
You open your mouth to take a breath, lest your throat also burns from the dry warmth, your stomach curling adding to your nerves. It prompts you to ask, "What about you, my prince? Has duty stolen every chance you have at love?"
His eyes draw downward to your lips, and his faint blonde lashes catch the light. The Rogue Prince does look otherwordly. Everything you have heard about him has been inadequate.
His violet eyes meet yours once more. "I would not bother with such frivolity. As I said, my lady, power and blood are all there is."
"Perhaps so. Perhaps true love only exists in the stories that I read."
"You are learning," he nods, and offers what might be his first genuine smile to you.
"Nevertheless," you step away from him, and carry your book back to the shelf. "I do not fault the warrior knight for choosing love over glory. I would choose as he had done, if that were a possibility."
His response is glib, but not meant to offend. "Then you are a fool, my lady."
"I wish I were a fool, my prince," you smile, lowering your gaze. "Aren't all fools happy?"
"You wish nothing more than to be mere mummer who has found happiness in love."
"If only," you say. It's surprising how easy you're finding it to engage in conversation with him. It feels like you have known him for many moons and not only for this moment.
The Rogue Prince, of all people. Which begs the question, what is he doing in the library of House Arwen?
"Pardon me, my prince, but why have you graced us with your presence this morning?"
He turns serious, almost bored, that he has to acknowledge the reason for his visit. "My brother, the King, has sent me to relay an official decree to your Lord father. He is to accept the position of Master of Coin for the small council."
"He... he is?" you swallow. This would mean that you have to go with him and live in the Red Keep. This also signals that your betrothal to Tyland Lannister is afoot. Your father had recently paid a visit to Casterly Rock to arrange for your marriage to Tyland or Jason Lannister. If it is to be with Jason, you would be sent to Casterly Rock. If Tyland, your father would take the offer to be part of the small council. You are to accompany him and begin courtship with the Master of Ships.
At least it will be Tyland and not Jason.
"Yes, I am supposed to meet your Maester here in the library to deliver the royal decree," Daemon replies, the task so insignificant to him, unaware that he has just delivered news that determines the course of your life.
Not that it makes any difference. Your father has always wanted to join houses with either the Lannisters or the Baratheons. Forge a true Westerosi alliance. It seems that he will finally get his wish.
Your thinking gets the better of you, and you stand unmoving, the weight of duty suddenly feeling too much to bear.
Daemon's face scrunches in what can misconstrued be concern. But surely he isn't. He must only be uncomfortable at your sudden silence and blank expression.
"Is something the matter? Are you not pleased that your father is graced with an opportunity such as this?"
"Of course. I am sure that he would be delighted."
"You do not seem to be."
No, you aren't. While you have met Tyland Lannister before, there was never any attraction there. From your side and his. Yours would be a marriage of convenience, for the benefit of both Houses.
How I wish I was the warrior knight.
"It matters not how I feel, my prince."
There is movement by the doors, and the old Maester rushes in all out of breath.
"My prince!" He calls out immediately. "My deepest apologies that I have kept you waiting."
Daemon pays him no mind. His attention is solely on you. Conscious that the Maester observes the exchange, you clear your throat. "I shall take my leave, my prince. The Maester will see to you now."
You tilt your head and curtsy in farewell. As you pass by Daemon, your hand brushes against his, the pads of his knuckes rough against your own. The first and likely the only time your skin will come into contact with his, you strangely think with regret. Still, it catches you off guard and you feel a sensation like needles pricking all the way up your arm.
"My lady," he greets, and under his breath, making sure the Maester cannot hear, he adds, "my lady fool."
Another smile is shared between the two of you.
Love is the death of duty, he had said. Sooner rather than late, you will find out just how it rings true.
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Supper with your Lord father is but another constant. You have always been grateful for it, especially since the passing of your late mother.
He is the only family you have around, with your elder sister already married off to some Lord in the Riverlands. She has already done what was expected of her, securing an alliance for House Arwen and bearing children for her Lord Husband.
The mantle has been passed on to you. It was never something to ponder over, as it is not something in your control.
Do your duty. Play your role. Pray that you never fall in love at all, Daemon said.
But might I fall in love with Tyland? Should that not be what I aim for?
"I heard that you encountered Prince Daemon this morning," your father says. "I trust that you acted accordingly as befits his station."
"Of course, father."
"Though it matters little to me how that rogue prince fares." The derision in his tone cannot be contained. Your father has never held Prince Daemon in any regard, viewing him as a waste of his titles.
"The Prince was gracious enough to exchange pleasantries with me."
Pleasantries. Never mind how he mocked your story, your family, and by extension, you.
"Careful, daughter. Prince Daemon is never loathe to chase after the nearest skirt that catches his fancy. I feel for his newly betrothed, the Lady Laena Velaryon. Far too good for him, that one."
"Daemon is betrothed?" you ask, unable to hide your surprise. Last you heard, his wife Rhea Royce passed in a tragic hunting accident. You also heard the whispers that she perished by her husband's hand.
After finally meeting him, you would not count it as an impossibility. But some part of you does not want to believe that he could be capable of something so vile.
"Yes, Prince Daemon has been betrothed once more. No doubt the most fruitful union for their Houses," your father confirms. With all this talk of betrothals, you already know what is coming, but your stomach sinks all the same when he adds, "as will be the union of House Arwen and House Lannister, dear daughter. You should consider yourself highly fortunate. I have toiled considerably to bring about your betrothal to Tyland Lannister."
"Of course, father." The words are empty, worn through, forever echoing in your ears.
Of course. I will do my duty. What is love after all, but a passing fancy, mere fiction entombed in between pages?
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The red scales of the infamous Blood Wyrm glisten under the bright sunlight.
Caraxes lets off an ear-splitting screech as Daemon guides him across the skies.
"Daor tolmiot sir." The Valyrian smoothly comes from Daemon like a song. Not far now.
Not far from the seat of House Arwen in the Westerlands. His destination, for some unknown reason.
Just the seventh day after he was sent to deliver the decree, he finds himself returning once more. It is the day that your Lord father, yourself, and the rest of your envoy are set to ride for King's Landing.
And Daemon has decided to extend an offer to you, the Lady Arwen, one that might infinitely expedite your travels.
There were a myriad of justifications floating around in his head. He found out that you are betrothed to Tyland Lannister and his actions on this day would no doubt ruffle the preening lion's mane.
Anything to needlessly anger a Lannister, Daemon would enjoy.
He would revel in the pleasure of bespoiling such a prim and strait-laced Lady such as yourself. It would be like sport to him.
It must also not be forgotten that this would rouse the ire of your Lord father, who has never held any love for Daemon and vice versa.
All these reasons make complete sense to Daemon. All but one which he does not allow himself to entertain.
That he wishes to see you.
Who are you, if not just another proper wench with your honour and your faith for the Seven Gods up your arse? Daemon has much more discerning tastes, from dragonrider to tavern whore, but never one with your disposition.
You are nothing to Daemon. No one.
But that does not mean he will refrain from indulging in the pleasure of causing chaos.
The clouds part as Caraxes dips lower, revealing the outline of your meagre castle.
"Sepār ilagon konīr." Daemon refers to the inner courtyard where a line of carriages await, precious possessions being lugged onto them by footsoldiers.
Caraxes dives down with precision, his wings casting a shadow over the courtyard as he suddenly descends, leaving everyone startled.
Daemon's boots heavily crunch against the gravel as he jumps down, and he scans the wary crowd for his prize.
Soldiers rising to attention, bowing their heads to their prince. Ladies-in-waiting openly ogling him as he draws nearer. The Maester and his apprentices approaching him with rushed greetings springing from their mouths.
And then, there you are.
Standing just behind the small crowd, whispering hurriedly to your companion. You shush when you spy Daemon heading right for you.
"My prince." You perform the usual curtsy. Daemon thinks the movement does not suit you. He much preferred it when you were getting riled up at his remarks back at your library.
"My lady," he greets. "Lovely weather we are having, is it not?"
You appear confused, your eyes narrowing and nose scrunching for but a brief moment, and Daemon relishes in prompting such an unguarded expression. But it reverts back into your polished smile.
"Yes, it... it is, my prince. Forgive me, but I was not aware that we were expecting you."
No. Of course not. "Let me rephrase that. It is lovely weather for dragonriding, and I am inclined to think that you would enjoy the journey to the Red Keep."
"I am afraid I do not follow."
Daemon gets right to the point and his next words ring true, leaving no room for doubt as to his intentions. "My lady, I would like for you to ride with me."
Your posture becomes slack, and you gape at him like he has grown a second head.
"That would be inappropriate, my prince."
"No," he sneers. "It would be inappropriate if I take you for myself right there on the dragonsaddle, my lady, but I merely wish to offer a ride."
Your companion blushes profusely at his words. Apparently the image affects her so much all she can do is stare at her feet.
You, on the other hand, are unyielding. Your eyes blazing right through his own violet. A nagging voice in Daemon's mind insists that this is what he came for. Nothing else.
You finally say, "It is unbecoming of me to even entertain that notion, Prince Daemon. My Lord father and my betrothed would surely not approve."
Daemon takes a step closer, and the two of you stand nearly toe to toe. "But do you not wish it? Do you not wish to fly on dragonback? Much like the heroes in your stories I would wager."
"Those are just stories. It would be foolish of me."
Daemon laughs dryly, "My lady, is that not what you are? A lady fool who dreams of adventure and love?"
You frown when he has you cornered, your thoughts whirring in that foolish head of yours. Daemon feels the need to run his thumb over your pursed lips.
Perhaps I am the foolish one.
The Maester interrupts, breaking the impasse, nervously looking between the two of you.
"My prince," he says, "if you came to speak to the Lord Arwen, he is still in his chambers. He should be on his way down shortly."
You glance at the Maester then back to Daemon, awaiting his response, but he has none to offer.
You tilt your head disapprovingly at his outright discourtesy until he extends his hand to you. "My lady," he says with sincerity, "you shall be made a good lady wife soon enough, but today I invite you to be foolish with your prince."
It is the Maester who speaks, "My prince, the Lady Arwen must not - "
But you rudely interrupt, a newfound fire blazing in your eyes. "Is it as exhilarating as the stories say?"
"Enough to please a fool," Daemon replies.
With a smile, you fit your hand right into his, consequences be damned.
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I may not write for him as often, but Daemon just might be my favourite to characterize and the most fun to weave stories with 🖤
This is a fixed miniseries, with a more or less fixed story, so it will only a three-parter.
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okay so tua s1 is the best, s2 is the funniest and s3 is the most like the comics
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frobby · 4 months
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I'm excited for the yohaji anime and I'm glad it's gonna reach more people BUT there's 2 things I'm afraid of:
People canceling haruaki ep 1 for his autistic swag
2. People shipping haru and Sano because they're the two protagonists
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solvicrafts · 6 months
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BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH I FUCKING HATE THAT ARGUMENT THAT THE SERIES SUCKS BECAUSE IT DIDN'T COME FROM A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE
if you genuinely believe that shit I need you to do me a favor and jump into the nearest active volcano
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ultimatepeter-man · 5 months
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What style Peter Parker is the best design?
If we're going by his character design in just the shows, hmmm, well...
I have grown very fond of his USM design, especially he seems to have grown with his own design throughout the seasons. If you compare him in season 1 to him in season 4, the changes are INSANE.
I mean, look at my profile pic! He's so pretty ♥‿♥
I didn't especially like his design in MSM, but that might've just been because I kind of got annoyed with him over all, maybe? Like, the design itself is fine, but then he started talking and it ruined it a little for me LMAO No hate to the voice actor at all, MSM Peter just sounded so annoying, which is like poking a beehive I know, because USM Peter is voiced by Drake Bell XD
SSM Peter was a pretty good design, I think. He's a little cutie and I love the little mole by his eye. Very cute. 10/10.
Spider-Man the Animated Series Peter not as much, only because he looks like such a chad XD but he's also one of the few adult Peter Parker's that we got in an animated show, and I NEED more adult Peter please and thank you. His design wasn't really all that bad, it's just that almost every other male character in the show had the exact same build as him XD Which is also like poking a beehive, because most of USM's male and female characters share a similar build.
I do LOVE Spider-Man Unlimited Peter's design. What a cutie in all his saturated colors. I love it.
You know what, I think Spider-Man Unlimited is my favorite Peter design. I think he's just neat. And I love him.
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foxstens · 1 year
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am i the only one who adores aftg and loathed trc
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kcrossvine-art · 2 months
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Hi fellow adventurers!! A few weeks ago i caught wind of "Delicious in Dungeon". I'm not really an anime person, but I am a TTRPG, CRPG, and cooking person- . And holy shit. It is so good i  convinced my partner to binge read the whole thing. I'm caught up on dungeon meshi, the anime, and just yesterday i also finished dungeon meshi, the manga.
Its rare to come across a serialized story that is so thematically cohesive and knows its characters so well. All of the bonus content like the artbooks and monster tidbits are just the icing on top.
So, inspired by Ryōko Kui's writing and illustration I'm going to attempt to create a recipe for every single Delicious in Dungeon recipe!-
Today that means Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom hotpot is on the menu!
(As always you can find the cooking instructions and full ingredient list under the break-)
MY NAMES CROSS NOW LETS COOK LIKE ANIMALS
SO, “what goes in to a Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom hotpot?” YOU MIGHT ASKThis is one of the pricier dishes until we get to the kelpies and dragons of the menu-
Rock lobster tail
Porcini mushrooms
Shiitake mushrooms
Snow fungus
Small potatos
Fensi (glass noodles)
Water
OPTIONAL: your choice of dipping sauces
There was a crossover/promotional event in Shibuya which featured various realworld dishes from the series. They had one for Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom, but they used prawns.  while those cook better in a hotpot, they also didn't look enough like the scorpion for me, they also used udon noodles for the slime and a seaweed/kale(?) mixture for the algae. If you're looking for substitutes due to price or availability i would start with those ingredients.
AND, “what does a Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom hotpot taste like?” YOU MIGHT ASKI hope Senshi would forgive me for technically cooking the lobster outside the pot, once he tastes it.
Okay im always partial to veggies but wowowowowowowoowowowow the snow fungus and the mushrooms tasted soooooooooooo good in the lobster stock
A nice delicate layering of different flavors
Try to get a bite with the lobster meat and shiitake together, dip in butter then chili- trust me
Its up to you what texture you prefer if you want to put the noodles in at the end or put them in halfway through the meal. Either way dont go for eating those first as theyre very filling
I think this would pair well with a citrus drink, something light and clarifying
This would also pair well with being extremely high and hungry (if you feel safe cooking while inebriated lol) very calorically dense
For the trial run I did one lobster tail in the pot with everything else, and one lobster tail off to the side to be picked apart. The former is more in spirit with a hotpot, but it got rubbery as the meal went on and lost its nice taste. The latter may be a bit more work but all you have to do still is boil it and set it aside. I found it held up much better. It was also easier to get inside the shell.
. If you have hardshell maine lobster available, i think it would be superior to rock lobster (keep in mind crustaceans will get rubbery if cooked too long in the pot) . Green onions and/or lotus root would make excellent additions
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From getting the ingredients out to sitting down and eating, id say it took maybe 30 minutes max? It'd vary on how fast you can prep vegetables and get the various implements heated.
Hotpots are not something i do very often as i'm usually just feeding myself. I think thats why a hotpot makes perfect sense to start the series off. If you want to set the tone of "take care of yourself, eat food with others, and use what you have" (generally speaking) there is nothing more simplistic, flexible, and defeats-the-purpose-if-you-eat-it-alone than a hotpot. Gather around and let your friends bring ingredients to the pot if you want to fill your heart up extra full <3
I'm doing something different here because unlike previous recipes where i used a bunch of different sources and made my own recipe out of hodge-podging it, or just used another persons recipe entirely if they did it really well, i made this more whole-cloth based off of what i had available, what I could discover through research, and my existing knowledge. Instead of the recipe being 50/50 original, this one is more 20/80. So. I'll pass the final verdict off to you guys :D 
What would you rate this recipe out of 10? (with 1 being food that makes one physically sick and 10 being food that gives one a lust for life again.) Did you love it, did you hate it? What're your thoughts on what I could do different, and what would you have done instead?
🐁 ORIGINAL RESIPPY TEXT BELOW 🐁
Ingredients:
2 Rock lobster tails
3 Porcini mushrooms
2 Shiitake mushrooms
Snow fungus (a good handful, should rehydrate in the hotpot)
2 Small waxy potatos
Fensi (glass noodles)
Water/lobster stock
Method:
Lightly rinse all of your vegetables beforehand and let them dry.
Vertically slice the porcini mushrooms. Cut off and dice the stems of the shiitake mushrooms. You can slice the tops if youd like.
Peel and cube the potatoes, roughly an inch each.
For the lobster tails; Boil a pot of salted water. Keep the shell on. Weigh the largest tail and add 1 minute of cooking time for every ounce of weight.
When done, strain the lobster from the water. Pour the water into your hotpot as the base. Serve the lobster on the side so people can pick the meat out to dip into the hotpot.
Bring the hotpot to a simmer. Add the potato cubes, snow fungus, mushrooms, and noodles.
OPTIONAL: this wasnt in the show, but its fun having sauces on the side :) i had oyster sauce, dry seasoned chili dip, melted butter, and soy sauce available
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edenesth · 5 months
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The General's Wife
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Pairing: military general!Seonghwa x wife!reader
Word Count: 1117 words (I'd normally put it as 1.1k but uwu)
'Crazy Form' Comeback Special Series | Hongjoong | Seonghwa | Yunho | Yeosang | San | Mingi | Wooyoung | Jongho |
ATEEZ Masterlist
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"Ooh, what's a pretty little thing like you doing in a place like this?"
You sighed, wondering when these men would ever learn. It wasn't your first time paying this bar a visit; they should know better by now to not mess with you.
Pushing your drink aside, you turned to look at the brave soul who was stupid enough to put his hand on your shoulder. He smirked when you remained quiet, "You're a shy one, aren't you? No worries, I can make things more fun for you."
The men around him were muttering fearfully amongst themselves, wide-eyed, "Does that fool really not have a single clue who he's dealing with?"
You shrugged off his hand and felt sorry for him, "Oh dear, I pity you." Confused, he followed your gaze as you showed him an emblem you'd pulled out from your pocket. His heart nearly stopped when he finally realised who you were.
"Y-you're... shit, you're the general's wife."
You winced, realising those might be his last words, especially when you saw your husband walking into the bar.
Seonghwa halted just behind the man, fixing an intense glare on his vulnerable back. In a voice that sent shivers down spines, he growled, "Have you grown tired of living, soldier? If you're looking for dumb ways to die, consider today your lucky day."
The man visibly trembled as he turned around slowly to face his superior, falling to his knees in fear, "G-General Park! I swear, I d-didn't know she was your wife—"
A resounding smack cut off his sentence as a powerful backhand slap connected with his face, sending him sprawling to the ground.
You gave a subtle shake of your head, silently urging Seonghwa not to escalate the situation. However, your plea proved futile as your husband, with a wink in your direction, assured you, "Don't worry, my love. I won't be too harsh on him. I'll give him just enough punishment to ensure he understands never to lay a hand on my wife again."
Despite his comforting words, you knew better than anyone those were lies. The man probably wouldn't see the light of day again. Beneath the sweet exterior he reserved for you, your husband harboured a ruthless side, a quality that propelled him quickly up the military ranks, earning him a formidable reputation.
Before becoming your husband, General Park Seonghwa was a fearsome military commander, striking fear into almost everyone. Uninterested in academics or any other pursuit, he was a natural-born warrior. At the mere age of 12, he knew he was destined to be the god of war.
However, amidst the battlefield and bloodshed, there was one thing he treasured above all else – you. His first and only love; he stumbled upon you in your backyard, clandestinely wielding your brother's sword in an attempt to learn self-defence when no one else would teach you. A noble lady yearning for more than a mundane life.
At first glance, he knew you were special.
Seonghwa vowed to make you his wife someday, and he did. Not one to follow rules, he sneaked into your backyard one day, scaring the daylights out of you. With sharp critiques, he pointed out the flaws in your stance, inadvertently teaching you enough to defend yourself.
In short, love blossomed before you discovered that he was none other than the renowned General Park, the King's most trusted warrior leading the royal army. When he sought your hand in marriage, your parents were more than delighted to see their only daughter assume the esteemed title of the general's wife.
Due to Seonghwa's crucial role in the kingdom, he frequently found himself deployed to battle whenever political tensions arose between Wonderland and neighbouring nations.
Despite his repeated warnings, you always made the journey to his war sites to be with him. During your visits, much like the current one, many of his inexperienced men, unaware of the situation, would mistake you for a lost civilian in a war zone and foolishly attempt to make advances.
Now, this unfortunate man, like those before him, would meet his end before having the chance to serve his country—all because he couldn't keep his hands to himself.
You were escorted out of the dimly lit bar before you could witness what your husband's right-hand man did to the poor bastard. Whatever it was, you knew it would be far from pretty. To distract you from the unsettling thoughts, Seonghwa wrapped his arm around you and kissed you hard.
Pressing a hand against his chest, your attempts to push him away were useless. He was well aware of your shyness, with his men watching and all, but that was his intention. He needed these fools to understand that you were his woman.
Sensing your discomfort, your husband gently cupped your cheeks, pulling back slightly to assure you, "It's alright, darling. I'm here. No one will dare touch you again. You trust me, don't you?" Without hesitation, you nodded; there was no one in the world you trusted more than him.
His heart melted at how swollen your lips looked, and he couldn't resist pressing his lips softly against yours once more.
With a self-assured smirk, he withdrew slowly, his arm securely wrapped around your waist. He turned to cast a cold gaze at the men who instantly cowered under his scrutiny, "What are you imbeciles standing around for? Don't you recognise who this is?"
They gasped and immediately straightened up, bowing deeply before offering salutes in your direction, "Welcome to the base, Lady Park!"
You acknowledged their greeting with a nod, and with an elegant wave of your hand, they finally dared to disperse. It was an unspoken rule that everyone under your husband's command had no choice but to follow. Those who defied these rules deserved nothing less than severe consequences.
As you nestled into Seonghwa's temporary quarters that night, a comforting warmth enveloped your heart as he drew you close in bed. Planting a tender kiss on your head, he asked, "My love, do you ever regret marrying me?"
Given your dislike for violence, it was truly ironic that you found yourself wed to a military general, of all people. He often wondered how a refined lady like you could fall for a man of his rough demeanour.
Before his thoughts could linger, you gently cupped his jaw, compelling him to meet your gaze, "Never. I want no one else but you." The intensity in your eyes conveyed a steadfast conviction, reminding him you were different from other women.
Indeed, you were special.
After all, you were the only woman audacious enough to capture the intimidating General Park Seonghwa's heart.
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Would you believe me if I told you this man isn't my ultimate bias? Yeah, me neither. He wrecked me so bad this comeback, I'm barely recovering. Y'all stay safe tho lmfao.
Anyway, thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed! As always, let me know your thoughts! <3
Tag list: @aurasblue @marievllr-abg @itsvxlentine @minghaoslatina
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All Rights Reserved © edenesth // DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, PLAGIARISE OR REPURPOSE.
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pinkrelish · 1 year
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𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐬, 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐬.
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ex-con!linecook!eddie x fem!reader
✶Steve messed up. He assured you over and over again that you could have the spare bedroom in his apartment, but while you took your time mulling over his offer, someone else moved in: his down-and-out best friend who needed a place to stay. When you show up at Steve's door with little warning due to your job relocating you, he suggests you and Eddie share the bedroom. Nothing wrong with that, right?
Besides the fact Eddie hated you, and in turn, you hated Eddie.✶
NSFW — smut, masturbation, eddie watches porn, dry humping, cumming in pants, reader flashes her bra & wears a pencil skirt, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, there was only one bed(room)
↳ teaser oneshot | [wc: 9.3k] | series tba!
⋅line cook hc from @bewilderedbunny⋅
Steve was a nice guy. Really.
He was your pen pal since meeting at summer camp when you were both eight-years-old. He was sweet, and wrote you back within a week, without fail. He was your first kiss one sweltering afternoon on the dock over the lake; a quick peck when the counselors weren’t looking. He was one of your first contacts in your flip phone, and his picture occupied the first circle when you got a smartphone, after pestering him to meet up with you in Indianapolis, snapping the pic at a crosswalk; a day where your conversations spanned nothing and everything. What was there to talk about when you talked via pencil, pen, markers, emojis, and photos for years, and suddenly forgot the past decade when you encircled your arms around each other?
He was a nice guy throughout all of college. He’d text you during class. You’d text him from states away, falling asleep at your dormroom desk. He worked at his father’s business. You started as an unpaid intern collecting coffee orders, and pulling all-nighters doing spreadsheet grunt work your superiors didn’t deem worthy of their time.
Stevie 🌞: just quit your job and live with me!
Stevie 🌞: I still have that spare bedroom
Stevie 🌞: rent free
Year after year, you always declined. Climbing the ranks at your job was important to you; and one day it paid off. They were relocating you to the Chicago, and if you didn’t take their pitiful relocation package, you’d get a decent advance on your next paycheck (which was dire considering your salary was roughly the same, despite the ever increasing cost of living); and knowing Steve always had that spare furnished bedroom, and most of your belongings could fit into your car (as long as you didn’t need to see out the rear window), it seemed like a done deal.
Until you surprised him.
You: hey! can i move in w you? my jobs relocating me to chicago and i might already be two hours out. sorry i didn’t text sooner. i had to leave my apartment asap. fuck paying for the damage cindy’s doberman did to that place 😬
Stevie 🌞: Lets talk when you get here
Stevie 🌞: I’ll meet you for coffee
Let’s talk? Never a good sign, even when he was smiling at you from over his latte.
————
“My friend needed the spare room, but he’s a good guy, I swear,” he told you.
“He’s just a little rough around the edges,” he told you.
“He’s understanding; I’m sure you two will get along,” he told you.
“He can make space in the closet for your stuff, and one of you can sleep on the couch,” he told you. “Maybe you can alternate! Bed, couch. It's not like I’m charging him rent, so he should be cool with you living with us until you can afford to move out, or whatever. No big deal. I don’t really care when, you know that. No rush.”
Right. Just share the room.
You weren’t present for the conversation; Steve and Eddie were in the bedroom while you stood awkwardly in the living room, but the result of the exchange made quite the first impression.
“I dunno,” Steve’s voice carried, “maybe you could work something out like you get the room Monday through Wednesday, and she gets it Thursday through Saturday. Sunday’s up in the air?”
“Oh, just share the room like I used to, huh?” Eddie asked, alluding to the life he lived several months ago. “Finally got some privacy to breathe around here, and now you’ve invited some chick to live with us without telling me? Actually–no–you invited her to live here. In my room. No heads up.”
Steve’s wince was audible in his heavy sigh. “You work weird hours, you probably won’t even have to interact with her. C’mon, man. She’s been my friend since we were kids, and it’s just until she finds her own place. She’s cool. She’ll sleep on the couch, or whatever if it really bothers you; just like, let her keep her clothes and shit in here, and let her use the computer for work.”
“Whatever, man.”
“Eddie, wait!”
Thunderous footsteps and a seething, “Fuck this,” followed the heightened emotions, and before you could straighten your spine, you were introduced to your new roommate.
His pace faltered, not expecting you to be standing there. The fine wrinkles in the outer corner of his eyes pinched tighter, and his long hair flowed around a faded black snake tattoo on his throat, stretching across the strained tendons it was inked over, reaching the twitching muscle in his jaw from his clenched teeth. It took him a narrow-eyed glance to sum you and your pink luggage up, and place you firmly in the ‘I don’t like you’ category in his mind, and he continued his march.
“Hi! I’m–”
Your outstretched hand went ignored as he passed you.
He shoved on his boots, and slammed the front door behind him, rattling every piece of metal in the apartment. You stared at where he was just standing, vision marked with a black silhouette of the good guy you’d be sharing intimate space with for the next.. however long, and still with your hand out, you swiveled to Steve. “Yeah, he seems nice.”
————
Eddie Munson glared at your very existence. He wore a permanent crease between his brows when you were in his vicinity. Apprehension tensed his muscles when your soft gaze slid from Steve, to him. There was distaste in his frown. He rolled his eyes when you laughed too loud at the TV. His voice was vitriol, words clipped when he had to speak to you. His shoulders hiked to his ears when you entered the kitchen for a glass of water and caught him mid-chew on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich after he got home from work. When it was your turn to sleep in the bed, he made it a point to come home as loud as possible–yanking open the drawers on the dresser, waking the computer to blazing home screen, and leaving the light on when he went to shower across the hallway, pretending he didn’t hear you grumble at him to turn it off.
You wore a sleep mask to bed after that.
And when you slept on the couch, it was the only time he cooked for himself. Scraping pans across the burners, clinking silverware, gathering his hair off his neck and twisting it between his laced fingers, creating a cradle for him to drop his head back and sigh at the ceiling, just loud enough to stir you from your sleep.
You wore earplugs to bed after that.
Eddie Munson made it known you were not welcomed in his territory, and saw your accidental warm smile thrown vaguely in his direction as a threat to his well being.
But as much as he ensured misery every second you had the fortune of spending in his presence, you weren’t so innocent of terrorizing his every waking moment either..
Soon, Monday through Wednesday, and Thursday through Saturday, and a chance at a lazy Sunday were not enough.
————
When Steve was home, he acted as the mediator when it came to you two being at each other’s throats after another vicious stare-off. Currently, Eddie was standing with his arms crossed, leaned against the counter with his cheeks darkened to a fleshy red, and you were pacing the kitchen, wrapped in a bath towel, stating your case to Steve. You argued since most of the hair clogging the drain belonged to Eddie, he should be the one to clean it. And Steve, not knowing how to interpret Eddie’s steely focus on the fridge as if you didn’t exist, nor the fact a woman was dripping wet and yelling at him, he put his hands up in defense.
He edged away from your ire until he was at the cabinet housing a toothpick dispenser, and depressed the mechanism for one to roll out. He snapped it, put his hands behind his back, and shuffled the two ends into his palm, and had you choose one. Eddie kept his gaze averted, but grasped the other.
You held the long end of the toothpick above your head with a smile to rival the kitchen’s daylight bulbs searing into your retinas. You were the winner, and Eddie was the loser who had to clean the bathroom.
This worked swell when Steve was around to mitigate the tension. But when he was on a business trip, or out on a date, the Bed Schedule was a formality at best, and largely ignored at worst.
Meaning, the bets, deals, and favors began.
They started small: Rock, paper, scissors; winner gets dibs on those just-washed sheets. Flip a coin and see who has to rough it in the living room for the next two nights. Draw the shorter toothpick and try not to stab it in Eddie’s eye when he smirked.
But those were childish games. It was the deals and favors that proved more interesting.
“Can you help me punch holes in these?” you asked, voice high and urgent as you rushed to grab your color coded pie charts from the printer and clip them into a presentation binder.
He scoffed from the bedroom doorway, smelling of fryer oil and bacon grease. “What makes you think I want to help you after cooking for assholes all night?”
“Because you’re nice, and you love me.”
“I despise you,” he corrected, crossing his arms tight over his chest. He shifted his weight from foot to foot while you organized the pages, resisting the bait to give him what he wants, but you knew in your heart it was the only way to not be late for work this morning.
“Fine. You can have the bed tonight.”
He stayed put. “Nope. You know I’m working the overnight shift until Thursday.” That way, he slept while you were at work, and you slept while he was at work.
You glanced at the blue dawn creeping in from the window, then red the time on your watch. “Okay, fine, whatever! Have it all next week. I don’t give a fuck, just help me!”
Reveling in his victory, his plush lips stretched into a wide grin, showing too much teeth. He sauntered at his leisure, closing his eyes half-way, and gazing at you down the long slope of his nose. “Good girl, I knew you could do it,” he mocked.
You wanted to strangle him.
–And another time–
“Shut the fuck up for an entire day, and you can have to whole fucking closet,” Eddie snapped after your fifth instance of complaining about your professional office clothes not having available hangers due to him taking them for his old, ratty band tees.
Centering yourself, you brushed the dust off your favorite pants after finding them wadded up on the floor, and whispered, “I hope a rogue knife finds its way into your thumb again tomorrow.”
You swore you saw his hand flex out the corner of your eye, reacting to your curse.
–And the week after that–
You: come help me bring up these groceries
You: elevators broken
You: we can race up the stairs
You: loser washes dishes and takes out the trash
😒dumb: as long as the loser doesn’t cry about it when she sleeps on the couch
You: whatever
😒dumb: i’ll even give you a head start to make it fair
Struck with being that person grinning down at your phone in the stuffy underground parking garage, you gilded your thumbs over the keyboard in a fluttery tease.
You: you just want an excuse to stare at my ass
It took Eddie longer to reply, fumbling with his phone to find the emoji keyboard, only to send–
😒dumb: 🙄
–And the week after that–
“Get a life, you fucking loser,” you yelled from within the metal cylinder of the dryer, bent over on your hands and knees to wrestle your silk blouse free from where it was tangled in a rope of bedsheets, after you told him–explicitly–to never wash it because he’d do it wrong.
He merely watched you struggle from the sidelines, informing you, “You’re the one who asked me to do laundry. Don’t toss your precious, delicate shirts on the bathroom floor if you don’t want them thrown in with everything else. And by the way, I did my part of the deal, so the room is still mine tonight.” As a bonus, he added as he walked away, “Suck my dick, sweetheart.”
Your gums ached from how hard you clenched your teeth. You didn’t leave your blouse on the floor. He did, when he went hunting for his wallet he left in his jeans, and dumped all the clothes out of both baskets, mixing your work clothes with his.
That night, you locked him out of the bedroom. Fuck him.
————
After tireless days of the same back and forth, the juvenile deals and favors were losing their significance. Someone needed to up the ante. And a certain line you two skirted taunted you both, but remained uncrossed until..
————
The hallway leading to your apartment was stale with inactivity. Most people had been home for hours, or were back from bars and crashed on the couch, drooling on their girlfriend’s favorite decorative pillow–the kind with the pom poms. You thought of them with envy. Snoring, dreaming of some blissful shit like sheep hopping a pasture fence. But not you. Your 9 to 5 extended far past those numbers on the clock. It skipped right over them, just like you were skipped over in meetings, being told the extra burden you were taking on was good for the company, and the programs you were learning would be paid in experience. Bullshit. You were tired, and the last thing you needed was some long haired man stubbing his toe on the coffee table to wake you up–morning or night.
But perhaps you were blessed.
You opened the door to near-darkness. Not a lamp, or TV on inside to show someone was home. Not a groan, sigh, or blast of music funneling from a set of oversized headphones. Not a creak of movement from the hallway, or bathroom; surrendering your heartbeat as the loudest feedback.
It appeared you were alone. What a wonderful thing.
The muffled thud of the low pile rug under your heels gave way to silky sweeps of plush carpet welcoming your aching pantyhose-covered feet. Moving further into the apartment, you knew the shapes to avoid in the dim light coming from above the stove, casting the coffee table and scattered stools at the breakfast bar in shadow.
Groggy from exhaustion, you blinked at the spice cabinet door Eddie left open before leaving for his shift. During a conversation with Steve, you let it slip that people who leave the cabinet doors open annoy you, so of course he began leaving one open as a greeting when you came home.
You closed it with your right hand, swinging your laptop bag wildly, and before you could react, the strap caught the top of the glass sugar jar and knocked it over in a wincing crash. Luckily, after peeping one eye open, you assessed nothing broke, but now there was a streak of glittery white dust on the countertop you definitely weren’t going to clean up.
Maybe you could strike a deal with Eddie to wipe it up for you. It was–in a way–his fault, since he left the cabinet door open. If you didn’t need to close it, none of this would’ve happened..
You made a gagging sound.
Since when did your immediate thought process swing to him, and how do you get it to stop? It was bad enough you peeked around the corner into the hallway, praying, praying, praying the bedroom light was off, and feeling your body slump with utter relief when it was. Being on the same planet as him was hell, you didn’t need your private thoughts to linger on him, too.
Mentally dismissing Eddie Munson from your brainspace, you invited yourself into the bedroom. You sought the cushy mattress to cradle your weary body after a long day, and the nest of cozy fleece blankets to swaddle you as you drifted to sleep. Unfortunately, the idiot’s pillow smelled far too much like him; cigarettes and cheap vanilla cologne combined with his hair products, burning your nose like toasted sugar. Despicable. Just the worst. You should exchange it with your own pillow, but you forgot it on the couch, and the couch was so very, very far away..
~~~
Eddie sat crouched in the alleyway outside of Benny’s Diner with a stubby cigarette balanced between his lips, blowing the smoke out in a slow exhale like a roll of fog on a misty morning. Cold emanated from the bricks pricking the expanse of his shoulders, and the night air chilled his damp shirt to his sticky skin, erupting goosebumps along his forearms. Standing around him were the other cooks on break. He didn’t share a common language with them outside of gestures, curse words, and kitchen lingo, but they gathered in a semi-circle as if to include him.
His shift was over. He’d technically clocked out, but he loitered until their vices were stomped under their shoes, and he snuffed his glowing ash on the wall behind him, and followed them inside.
Washing his hands first, he dried them on the towel tucked under the string of his apron tied around his waist, and set up a space on the flat top for him to occupy since the dinner rush had long since died, and the only patrons on the floor were drunks wandering in for greasy hashbrowns. He grabbed the four quart Cambro from the fridge beneath the prep area, and ladled enough batter for two large pancakes. Borrowing a station, he sliced up a ripe banana from the walk-in, and dropped it into a hot pan with a bit of butter, caramelizing them on the range while he waited for the pancakes to be flipped.
The guys behind him read off the few tickets, and carried their conversation from earlier. Eddie caught some of it, learning a few words here or there, but regardless of the language barrier, he knew they were talking about him. They were snickering with their heads together, pointing at the pancakes he was making despite being clocked out.
Eddie spoke with a sneaky grin, “If I make them for her, she’ll leave me the fuck alone on my day off.”
The guys may not have understood entirely what he meant, but his sunny disposition juxtaposed by his wry gaze communicated a universal plight: girls.
One of their hands landed hard between Eddie’s shoulder blades when they doubled over in a belly laugh, and the other one made whip-cracking sounds, calling him the same slang word he called the married cooks. It wasn’t worth it to attempt to correct them that these pancakes were not for his girl, but for his future migraine, so he hummed along with them, and flipped the pancakes with his right hand while tossing the bananas with a swift jerk of his left.
After their gossip, they went back to work, and Eddie grabbed a to-go container, loading it with the two pancakes and sliding the caramelized bananas on top. He brought it to the prep area to drizzle with chocolate sauce, and finished it off with heart-shaped strawberries, a dusting of powdered sugar, and a sprig of mint. He didn’t cut the strawberries that way with ulterior motives, it was just something he did when he had spare time in the morning. Cutting a wedge out of the stemmed top, and slicing them vertical. The customers liked it. It was cute, supposedly. There were no hidden intentions to him taking his time to place them just so around the box; it was merely him taking pride in how he plated his dish.
Clamping the container shut, he untied his apron, changed his shoes, and left out the back entrance, kicking pebbles under the crescent moon, and walking through the front door of the next building over. Gray concrete, a faulty elevator, ugly rugs to feign elegance, and high rise as far as ‘high rise when you live next a bunch of squatty buildings’ went. It was home, and it was blissfully dark inside.
Eddie worked his feet out of his tied-once-and-never-untied street shoes, and dropped his non-slip clogs next to them in a loud clatter.
He breathed. Inhaled deep. Sighed through his nose.
Quiet. Peaceful respite behind his eyelids.
The adrenaline ebbed. The hours of shouting and being shouted at, metal on metal clangs, timer beeps, and mechanical whirr of a ticket being printed out would never cease haunting his mind, but he should stop flinching from the imaginary sounds after a few hours. The pain stretching the length of his back should ease under a hot shower. The throbbing ache in his knees should lessen once he sleeps. The fatigue, like needles driven into his bones, should heal so he could be on his feet for thirteen more hours tomorrow.
Warmth worked its way beyond the calluses creating a barrier in his palm supporting the styrofoam container. Syrupy sweet hot sugar invaded his nostrils from the pancake bribe, battling the stench of his dried sweat and body odor baked into his t-shirt. The tiled entryway beneath his feet woke him out of his daze, and he slid his heavy-lidded gaze to the vacant couch; the comforter was folded, and the pillow was propped up, unslept on.
Briefly he wondered if you went out with your friends after work. But as he approached the kitchen, his dreams were crushed by a single closed cabinet door.
You were home.
You were home, and you weren’t on the couch, nor in the shower.
Eddie allowed his eyes to flutter closed as he hung his head back. In that position, he rolled the disappointment out of his shoulders, and braced them with something new.
Irritation.
Tamping the frustration in the pit of his stomach from bubbling up, he exhaled another calming breath, and opened the fridge, placing the pancakes exactly front and center amongst the fresh produce he was sometimes excited to create with, and sometimes slammed to the bottom of the trash when he was too exhausted and uninspired to do anything with their rotten corpses.
He prepared his expression into one of unbudging indifference. Flat, and unwilling to back down.
And yet, his nose scrunched when he pushed open the bedroom door, and there you were, as predicted, lounging amongst your hideous blankets spilling out from under you as if you were an opulent pearl nestled within an oyster shell.
The resentment built as he assessed your form delicately painted in a red glow from the ugly neon sign in the shape of a lipstick kiss tacked alongside his favorite band posters. He’d only lived with Steve long enough to feel comfortable decorating the blank walls, and you ruined the Rob Halford flow three days into your invasion. Your face was highlighted by the dim blue light of your laptop resting on your stomach, rising and falling with each gentle breath, and you were haloed by the Himalayan salt lamp crowding the nightstand. It’s trendy, you explained.
With vehemence, he flickered the light switch.
You cringed from the bright assault, and clacked your fingers on the keyboard, pretending you weren’t dozing off a second ago. “Can you go away?”
“What’re you doing in here?”
Unimpressed by his tone, you glazed your response in insolence. “What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m minding my own business.” At that, your attitude was solidified, along with how this interaction would go.
Eddie stared at you for a long minute. Not once did you acknowledge him. He watched your eyes dart across the screen, probably watching one of those Youtube videos where girls walked around exciting cities with a camera way too close to their face, and he dragged his gaze downwards, noticing you were still in your work clothes; though, your blouse and skirt were disheveled, and your pantyhose were discarded on the floor, still holding the vague shape of your legs, resembling a flattened rotisserie chicken.
He focused on your eyes again. Bloodshot, rimmed in red with a suggestion of water clinging to the outer corners where your eyelashes met, and sporting a hefty burden of bags beneath them.
“It’s Wednesday,” he reminded you, voice heavy in his chest, but sounding scratchy, and hollow. His throat was shot.
“Mm,” you hummed and glanced at the clock in the corner of your screen, “it’s Thursday, actually.”
White hot anger boiled in his veins, striking his skin like a leather lash. It simmered, popped, sizzled, boiled over. The yelling, the timers, the cacophonous clanging. The ticket machine, the keyboard, the stinging cut on his thumb. Smug fucking brat laying in his bed on his night to have it. It was sudden, it was stark, and it was hatred.
“Make a deal.”
“A deal?”
“A fucking deal,” he repeated. “You know, like we’ve been making?” He stopped himself short of calling you a dirty name, but you must’ve gathered it from his tongue’s hesitation, because you turned your head a few degrees to challenge his temper.
“Oh, lucky for you, there was a two-for-one deal at the store.”
You waved two middle fingers at him, showing a bit of teeth with your crooked grin.
The hatred festered, but not as vicious. The anger was there–oh, the anger was there–but the energy to keep this going hit its peak, and fizzled. There was no sense in reasoning with you. The pancakes in the fridge were for a different occasion, he couldn’t waste them on this, and he was too tired to come up with his own bet, deal, or favor. “Just think of something so we can get this over with,” he nearly begged.
After some consideration, you held your fist out for rock, paper, scissors.
“Where’s the option for a gun in my mouth?”
“Harsh,” you pouted. Instead, you pointed at the 20 sided die on the desk. He inclined his head, shaking it with a slow sort of intention, eyes wide to express his warning to knock it off, and give him a true answer, something to make this worthwhile.
Finding the whole ordeal dull, you returned your attention to your laptop, pressing the white earbud into your ear before unpausing the video.
It took seconds off his life, but you finally spoke again.
“How long were you in prison? Six years? Bet it’s been a while since you’ve seen one of these in the flesh.” Due to your satin cream blouse being unbuttoned at the neck, you dipped your thumb under the collar, and traced the vibrant temptation of your red bra strap in a long, deliberate stroke. You hooked the soft pad of your thumb under the luxury, and brought it out for his viewing pleasure. A moment later, you snapped it to your skin, and went back to typing, not once breaking concentration with your video.
Eddie’s fascination, however, was trained on the dainty crimson gift slipping under the shimmery cream, sliding against the soft slope of your shoulder.
Heat thrummed in his chest. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, sloshing his blood like viscous tidal waves, muting the clacky sound of your keyboard. Anger mixed with something more, something worse. It warmed his cheeks, and reignited the cold sweat prickling his back. It honed his curiosity, sinking every detail of the second tortoiseshell button on your blouse into his mind. Memorizing how the fabric around it went taut, and glinted honey at the height of your breath. Noticing how the bottom of your shirt was wrinkled and pulled slack, but still tucked into your pencil skirt. Remembering how the tight material hugged your thighs when you traipsed around the apartment. Although, the navy blue number was less defined now, fitting looser around your hips.
He didn’t know how long he was fixated by your clothing, until you sighed.
“Not enough for you?”
You asked it with forced casualness, he could tell. Your voice was too even, tone too polite, eyebrows too raised in mock indifference. You were introducing a line that had yet to be crossed. A door which, when opened, would give access to more possibilities than the usual bets, deals, and favors. An enticing offer, and he didn’t deny the nervous flutter of intrigue arousing his blood elsewhere.
But past the line was dangerous territory. Right? That’s where things got muddied, and feelings got involved.
Or maybe not. Because, above all else, he hated you, and you hated him.
This was a deal like any other.
“Maybe this’ll help,” you said, never breaking eyesight from the screen, its colors reflecting in your pupils.
You were the epitome of cool pinching the blouse between your fingers and slotting the buttons through the holes one after the other. Down, down, down to your navel, tugging either side of the shirt open, letting the elegant cream frame the aggressive scarlet.
Eddie was taken off guard.
The bra was more akin to lingerie than he expected. Its cups contained you like a poorly kept secret. Curves of red peonies covered your nipples–hard bud pressing against the center of the flower from the thrill of exploring a new end to your daily arguments. Your areolas peeked from between the petals, where the intricate lacework went see through, granting him a preview to the smooth flesh beneath.
Click clack, click clack, space bar, space bar, space bar, he swore you pressed your arms together to make your breasts rounder. Actually, he didn’t need to second guess. He saw the cusp of cleavage squish before his very eyes.
“Satisfied?” you inquired.
No, he ached.
The voice in his head was so automatic, so sure, he didn’t question it, either.
When he refused to verbalize the things which made him nauseous, his opulent pearl rolled onto her shoulder and lifted the laptop the pillow, turning over onto her stomach to engage with it solely, circling a manicured fingernail over the trackpad, and clicking.
To his surprise, the video on screen wasn’t of the vapid people you watched, but of a troubleshooting guide to the program your company was having you learn in order to teach it to the higher ups next week. (Or so he heard when you told Steve yesterday.) You tabbed out of the video, fixed a property in a column, checked the statistic it was evaluating, and added in an aesthetically pleasing green color before tabbing back.
He couldn’t parse how he felt about you having to do more thankless tasks off the clock, especially when you were clearly tired, but something else stole the last of his fiery anger, and doused his willpower to resist a glance.
Your habit of unzipping your skirt as soon as you walked into the apartment proved evident when you rolled over. The silky polyester lining slipped against your skin, shifting the long zipper from your hip to your backside. The halves parted, showing the end of the cream blouse, and a peek of skin. You adjusted how you laid, rocking your hips back and forth until you sank into the plush blankets, and propped your chin in your palm when you weren’t typing. Small movements working the skirt higher, and higher, bunching the fabric around the fat of your ass. Squirming, and stretching, tugging on your blouse, pulling, pulling, blouse, skirt, blouse, skirt, and then he saw it..
Red.
Delicate, feminine.
Tucked, hidden from anyone’s view but his, were the matching red panties to your bra. Trapped in a valley between thighs and ass, and stretching over the swell of your heat, embellishing the mouth watering desire in opaque lace strained firm against the outline of his treasure.
Eddie swallowed.
“Why’re you still in here?” you asked with a bite of annoyance. “You got to see a girl’s bra for the first time ever, probably. You should be celebrating, throwing yourself a party. In the living room. On the couch.”
The anger had returned like a slap of reality across his cheek. He narrowed his eyes at the back of your head, remembering why he loathed you with every fiber of his being. “I’ve seen a bra before.”
“Pictures don’t count.”
“Whatever, bitch.”
Your body jolted with a snort, and he flung open the door hard enough for it to bounce off the door stop. He heard your infuriating inhale, and slapped the lightswitch off, shutting the door behind him with excessive force before you could ask more demands of him. Gladly, he closed himself out of his own bedroom. The physical barrier under his trembling fist had never felt better, still gripping the knob as if he’d go back in there.
He wouldn’t.
He let go of the chilled metal and stalked down the hall, curbing himself from stomping out his frustration, only to throw himself onto the couch. Stomach burning with hunger, hatred. Chest heaving with rage. Pulse rising in his throat, beating against the ball chain necklace he wore. Breathing so hard, sounding as if he’d ran laps before collapsing onto his bed for the night, crossing his arms to squeeze his biceps, massaging his fingers down the muscle. Occupying himself. Distracting himself.
It wasn’t working.
He was mad.
Furious.
Draping his hand over his eyes, he gave himself a moment to make a decision, and pushed his bangs off his forehead. They stayed in their gravity defying position due to the oil. He needed to shower. He needed to clean himself of this day, and go to sleep. But he couldn’t.
The fever in his veins was too distracting. He needed to take care of it. Get rid of it.
Sitting up, he unfolded the comforter from the end of the couch, and propped the pillow against the armrest to angle his head slightly up, where he could see the hallway.
From his front pocket, he collected his phone and laid it on his stomach while he unbuttoned his pants, pinching the waistband together and pulling the zipper down, sighing through his nose at the relief of the lines he was crossing.
He grasped his phone and brought it close to his face. Cupped in one palm, and using the other hand to tap it twice. A streak of perspiration was left on the screen where he swiped in his passcode, using his index finger to open a private browser and type in a porn site. Any porn site. Whichever variation of the word porn + noun he thought of first. It didn’t matter much to him; that’s not where his preferences lie.
office worker
co-worker
secretary
office worker tight skirt
office worker pov skirt grinding
His brain went stupid for synonyms trying to narrow down his search. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he knew the ultra HD, professionally lit, fakey acting wasn’t it. He scrolled, and scrolled. Narrowed his search again. Ticked off boxes on the side. Tried broader genres. Went back to the results he was on, and traveled down the rabbit hole a few more pages until, at last, he found what suited him.
The thumbnail appeared promising. Dimly lit, sorta bad quality, and clearly shot at home with a woman whose body type wasn’t far off from what he was hoping for. He even appreciated the visual similarities in the amateur actress’ navy blue skirt, and off-white blouse. As long as he scrolled down a tad to crop out her face, it was perfect. Plus, it was easier to insert himself into the scene that way.
He clicked it, and– ”Jesus Christ,” he turned down the volume as quickly as he could, accidentally pressing down the two buttons on the side that took a screenshot and saved it to his gallery.
The video started a little further into the act than he anticipated.
Such a fucking idiot, Eddie, Jesus Christ. Sitting in thick silence, he waited to see if you’d heard, and once his face calmed of the embarrassed flush stinging his cheeks, he moved on.
Eddie worked his right hand under the comforter, but heeded his boxers as a layer of separation. At the first contact with the parts of him he denied aching for the bane of his existence, he allowed his eyes to flutter closed. Gently, he raked his fingernails down the base of his shaft, and over his balls. He cupped them. Felt their heft. Cradled them and dragged them softly upwards, letting them fall and stretch before repeating the motion, enjoying the tickly sensation of being the first thing he touched. His most sensitive, most susceptible part of himself. Meanly ignoring the other part of him twitching, throbbing, begging to be catered to.
He kept some fraction of his brain alert to the hallway, senses sharpened by the spike of adrenaline, listening out for any sound of you exiting the room. But most of him was focused on hitting the play button, sticking to his decision that he couldn’t wait to do this in the shower. He needed it now.
It started with the woman already in motion. Shot from the guy’s point of view laying on the bed, his obvious hardon pressing through his slacks into her pussy grinding down on him. Her skirt lifted with each motion, showing her black underwear. Not that he was complaining they weren’t red, but he didn’t concentrate on them.
He switched from playing with his balls to gripping his cock. Finally. It buzzed with the rush of pleasure, harder than it had ever been, even in his youth. His fingers hardly met through his boxers, but he encircled them the best he could, and started with fast, desperate, stunted strokes, getting himself to where the guy in the video was in a matter of pent-up seconds, clenching his ass to buck his hips up. Heart pounding. Inhales shaky from the speed at which he took care of his problem, exhales interrupted by muted huffs.
Maybe he should be embarrassed, but it didn’t take him long to feel that encouragement to keep going, keep going, keep going. Where each frantic pump along his length was better than the last. Where each accidental graze of his fingers over the lipped edge of his tip sprinted towards his bliss.
In the video, the woman dipped a finger between her lips and moved her panties aside.
There was a low hum in the back of his throat, engrossed by the wet warmth opposed to his dry fist.
Metal knob turning–door creaking–carpet groaning, step, step, step–
It was a fucking miracle he managed to close out of the window in his panic. His thumb missed it the first two times as fear coated him in a cold sweat, and the phone fell out of his palm, smacking him in the chin as you rounded the corner.
You didn’t spare him the time of day as you walked into the kitchen and got a glass from the cabinet. Didn’t bother looking at him as you stood at the fridge with your hip cocked out, holding the cup under the outer dispenser and depressing the button for ice.
The fridge made a mechanical whirr, and filled your glass. Ker-chunk, ker-chunk, ker-chunk, the ice cubes tinked into the cup for the longest seconds of his life. His hand was frozen mid-tug on his dick, and you were wearing an oversized t-shirt, and nothing else. Truly, it hardly covered your ass. It clung to your hips, brushed the height of your thighs, and suddenly, he was checking how obvious the bulk of the comforter was over his lap, and if it creased when he moved his hand upwards.
Nothing. Not a fold out of place. He could keep it up. Stroke, by stroke, brushing his fingers over the head only, testing his limits to keep discreet while you switched to the other spout on the fridge for water.
Even when you turned to him, he massaged himself over his boxers, soaking the sticky slick beads of precum into the fabric.
“What?”
Your tone didn’t deter him from tracing the underside of his swollen head, caressing the glans with the same sort of sentiment he experienced in the homemade porn between a real couple–all gentle and nice.
He mustered enough brain cells to respond, “What? I’m already sleeping on the couch. Can’t you leave me alone for one night? Or are you that desperate for attention?”
None the wiser, you took a sip from your glass, and folded your other arm across your stomach, making it obvious from the natural sway that you weren’t wearing a bra. Probably weren’t wearing panties either..
Swallowing the ice cold water with a satisfied ‘ah’, you went on your merry way. “Just came to gawk at the bridge troll, is all. Night night!” Your annoying farewell was followed by the creak of the door, and the faint click of it closing.
What a fucking irritating person.
The anger bristled again. Definitely anger. It was there, lurking, when he rubbed at the sore spot on his chin and picked up his phone, unlocking it to stare at the homescreen.
There was no patience within him to find the video. Besides, the sanitized professional thumbnails on the homepage were enough to have him dropping his phone to the cushion crevices beside him, surrendering himself to his imagination. Nothing lived up to the scenarios in his head, anyway.
Before getting ahead of himself, he slid his fingers beneath the elastic waistband, and gripped himself wholly. There was no sense in denying what he wanted: the raw desire of his hand wrapped firmly around his cock, not caring about creating a mess. It could be cleaned up later. He needed this. Now.
He immersed himself in the fantasy.
The visuals took place minutes ago, if he hadn’t backed down. It was based on you refusing to give him the bed, and instead of walking away from your bratty attitude, he lifted his chin, and broadened his chest with a confidence he didn’t possess. Fantasy Eddie had the courage to kneel on the mattress like he belonged there. Your body would dip, rock towards his imposing knees straddling either side of your calves, and in his strongest dreams, he acted out what should’ve happened.
If he had his way, he would begin with your hips. A single strong palm on the curve would have you hiking them up to greet him, and he was a gentleman. As soon as you presented him with the opportunity, he was scrambling to spread your legs so he could dip between them, eager to please. He wanted to know the sensation of coarse red lace scratching across his tongue; it would be a novelty only he would know. His hands would be on your upper thighs, bringing you closer, closer, to where his mouth awaited you. Persuading your face to the sheets. Putting a wicked arch in your back, granting him permission.
He’d angle his mouth to your clothed clit and collect spit to his bottom lip, parting, and lapping his tongue over the pretty thing, suckling it through the fabric. His nose would be to your cunt, inhaling the musky pheromones. Didn’t matter how long you’d been at work, proving yourself to people who would never appreciate you like he did. He cherished every bit of you so much. The heady scent intoxicated him like a drug, the dimples when he smashed the fat of your ass around his face, your silly whine when he pressed kisses up your pretty pussy. The anger was gone. Like that, he adored you. After all, you craved him. And it’d been a long time since he was wanted. It felt nice to not be rejected.
Eddie, Fantasy You gasped when the wet sound of him sucking your clit through your panties grew in fervor. He was drunk on you. Trying hard. Giving more. Licking at the dark patch he created. God, he loved it. He loved the evidence. He could suckle, moan, flatten his tongue like torture and just breathe on you until he fell asleep, waking up to nudge his teeth over the sensitive areas you presented to him. Spending hours getting you to your peak, over and over.
But in reality, he was approaching his end rather quickly.
My turn, sweetheart, he regretfully informed you.
Getting to his knees, he positioned himself behind you. His cock slotted so nicely against you; red lace meeting unzipped gray uniform pants, and he wasted no time stoking the flames from where he left off.
He clapped your cheeks around the hard outline of his cock. His black boxers stretched to their limits to contain him. There was a dark patch at the tip peeking out between your ass, growing with each slow, assertive grind he committed to, fucking himself into the curve of your cunt with ragged breaths. Losing himself. Mouth agape, and eyebrows pinched as his needy head was swallowed when he rocked his hips back, and reappeared with a rough thrust.
Again, it didn’t take long until he needed a break to make himself last longer.
He draped his weight over you as he slid his rough, calloused palms up the backs of your thighs, creating goosebumps along the sensitive flesh on his way to your sorry excuse for skirt. He bunched the pitiful thing to your waist, and reached for the hem of your shirt.
You hummed in approval, pressing against his lap.
It was hard to balance, but you supported him as he yanked your blouse up–sucking in a sharp breath when you moaned, and rutted yourself on his length–and he brushed his fingers along your soft skin in search for the bra clasp, and when he found it, he pulled the band tight. The latch gave. He caught sudden heft in his palm, cupping you and the bra together, massaging lightly until your nipple slotted between the base of two of his fingers, and he applied the gentlest pressure.
Oh fuck, you whined so nicely for him.
They’re extra sensitive after being caged all day, you explained.
Yeah? Does it feel good?
You nodded, cheek smashed against the wrinkled sheets.
He pinched harder.
Saliva gathered at the corner of your lips, spilling in a sticky string as you dragged your head in another nod, heavy-lidded eyes just visible through your lashes, open mouth panting for him.
True satisfaction spread like weightlessness from the pit of anger in his stomach. He wasn’t supposed to be making you feel good, not the person ruining the one place he found peace after six years of paranoia, but here he was, wishing the taste of your pussy lasted longer in his mouth. Here he was, anchoring his forearm alongside yours, gripping the same sheet you gripped while he beared his weight down on you, and pressed kisses to your clothed shoulders.
His other hand was trapped between you and the bed, but each pulse around your nipple was another long stroke on his cock.
The scene had been set. The build up and story line were crafted. Now, he could play.
He worked kisses under your collar, tasting the sheen of sweat at your hairline, leaving trails of spit to cool as he lolled his head on top of yours, resting his forehead amongst your hair, and he put his lips to the shell of your ear, feeling you shiver beneath him.
Do you think you can treat me that way, and get away with it? Fantasy Him asked. Think you can boss me around whenever you want? He punctuated his question with a hard, unexpected thrust, earning a gasp from your pretty mouth.
Turn over. He didn’t command it verbally, but when he took away his hand to smack the side of your ass, and sat back, you were aware of his unstated switch in position.
You laid on your back, legs spread for him. Skirt bunched around your hips, blouse fallen open, except for the one button remaining. He grasped his cock, and stroked himself through his boxers for you. His brows were drawn together in a gentle question, gaze locked onto yours. This was supposed to be about him, but he still asked, Is this okay? Is this what you want?
The source of his anger, his rage, his frustration–all the blame, burdens, and negativity he attributed to a single woman–opened her arms to him, and nodded.
He passed over your pussy to praise kisses to your stomach. Deft fingers working to undo the last button on your blouse, and explore upwards. Wet smacks of his sloppy gifts arched your back the higher he traveled, molding his large hands to your body. Brushing his rough fingers to the junction of your inner thigh and hip, and spreading you open so your pussy swallowed the fabric, wedging the red lace tight to your clit for later. Up, up, his kisses covered you, until he nosed at the underwire of your bra, and lifted it out of the way.
Fuck, Eddie.
You pushed his hair out of his face. The shorter curls fell from the low bun at his nape, and you tucked them behind his ear so you could watch his tongue lap and swirl at your nipple. Your fluttery moans were heaven, as were your tits being shoved in his mouth. You squirmed for him, clamored for him. You wanted him, needed him. Did you care that his hair was greasy? Did you care that dried salt crystals from sweat scratched your fingers when you cradled his jaw? Did you care about his smell from thirteen hours of being in a hot kitchen when you cupped him under the armpits, encouraging him with a buck of your hips to get back to business?
He supposed not, since it was his fantasy.
But just like reality, you were trying to boss him around.
Want me to fuck you, sweetheart?
You could hardly meet his gaze, eyes so heavy with lust you couldn’t keep them open long enough to beg.
He aligned himself, nudging the tip of his cock to your clit, and he savored the experience of watching the bliss wash over you. It took him a beat to realize, but he moaned in response to your moan. Watching you react from where he picked up his head from your chest, memorizing the fake vision of your face losing the usual harsh distaste for him. Your lips were better this way–lush, and making an effort to sound out his name as he drew his hips back–not sneering because you had the displeasure of asking him a question.
Still, he drove forward with haste. Cotton on lace. Layers of separation. Anything else was too intimate for how he wanted to fuck you, rough and fast, caring only about himself and not about your poor neglected clit, swollen and pleading for his soft tongue, only to get rough, unmeasured thrusts. Messy, and unintentional, and denying. Until you made them work for you.
You used the meat of his shoulders as leverage. Digging your fingers in, holding tight as you rocked with him and raised your legs, wrapping them around his ass. The squeeze of your thighs, and pressure built from your locked ankles tipped you into a better position, and now, his entire length was flush to your clit, not simply passing over the top of it.
All of him was touching you, touching you, touching you. Trapping his cock between your stomachs, damp with reignited sweat. Back to rutting against one another at a desperate pace, chasing the tension, the high. The snap of his hips. Your stuttered groans for more. The anger, the hatred. Festering under the surface, bubbling in your insolence. Present in his teeth grazing your throat, nipping at the pulse, kissing, sucking, licking, tasting.
You’re gonna make me cum. Even Fantasy You said it in a lower register, reaching where the molten resentment laid dormant.
He found the same gravelly animosity and warned you, “I’m too close, I’m too close.”
You cradled him tighter, burying your heads in each other’s embrace. Muscles quivering from effort, burning with each grind, tensing under curious hands finding new places to cling to, curves to admire. Until they stayed put.
Nails bit flesh. Strong fingers dug painfully at bone. Mouths fell open. Eyes closed. Writhing flesh on fabric, and flesh, you trembled under him.
I’m–mm, Eddie–I’m cumming–
His thrusts faltered, jerking into short bursts, and his gracious moans went high and tight in his throat, spilling out as he panted, “You make me feel so good, baby. Fucked you so good. I can’t–I’m cumming–fuck–”
Fuck, Eddie–Fuck, Eddie–Fuck, Eddie–
–”Fuck,” he babbled aloud.
The climax took him to the dark apartment. The overwhelming shadows of sleeping in the lonely living room on the flat couch under an extra blanket not yet broken of its factory starch, scratchy on the skin. His muscles were still tensed into him curling in on himself, lifting his aching neck and shoulders off the pillow for a few more pumps of his hand sliding over his slick shaft, spreading the warmth oozing towards his hip, no doubt tangling the curly thatch of hair above the base. In lip-biting silence, he stroked himself, not daring to breathe after he knew he said something out loud from his imagination. He listened. Eyes straining to see the hallway.
His bangs stuck to the heavy sweat on his forehead.
His entire body was heated beyond belief.
Anticipation sat heavy on his tongue.
But as he came down from his peak, nothing happened. He stayed lonely. His heartbeat pounded against the guitar pick sticking to his chest, and that was it. Now his head was cleared of distractions, and he could sleep. The fantasy was a fantasy, and in this reality, he wouldn’t do this again. It was too weird to muddy the multitude of negative feelings he had for you with.. whatever this was.
A release, that’s what this was.
Kicking the blanket off, he swung his legs to the side to sit up, socked feet softened by the plush carpet. He pressed his palm over the sticky substance dripping downward, and soaked it up to the best of his ability. And as his cum hit the fresh air, and his inhale was cut short as he smelled his shirt, he thought about the shower he needed. And he thought about the dark patch on his boxers. And he thought about his clothes in the dresser in the bedroom.
Looking down, he inspected his gray pants, and groaned.
They were ruined.
So, so ruined and obvious as to what he was doing.
There was no way he could go into there and grab new clothes for a shower. The thought of facing you after this, and you seeing him in this pathetic state–and God, if you knew it was because of you, and because he couldn’t control himself–he’d rather die than admit you did this to him.
Fuck.
Couldn’t even go to his own room for some fucking clothes so he could shower after working all day.
Yeah, that confirmed it. He fucking hated you.
Hated you even more when he thought about you sleeping on his mattress, wrapped snug in his bedsheets wearing only a t-shirt with nothing else to cover you, and his dick twitched again for that red lace he knew was discarded in the laundry basket.
“Fuck my life.”
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bo0tleg · 1 month
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One thing I like about Top Gun (1986) is how believable the development with Ice and Mav's dynamic is.
I've seen a lot of the "Rivals suddenly become buddies after traumatic event together" in media, but I don't think I've seen it done better than in Top Gun. Mostly, I attribute it to how much build up it has.
Most of the time, the 'Rivals' hate each others guts throughout the entire movie/series and then they go through an extremely traumatic event that binds them for life and shifts their entire concept of each other. Ice and Mav never once changed how they saw each other, it just changed their understanding of it.
Ice saw Maverick as dangerous and Mav saw Iceman as stuck-up and commanding. And they weren't wrong, by any means.
From the beginning, they have tension between them because of how different they are. And it ends up in the audience seeing Ice as the 'Antagonist' because that's how Mav sees it, and we're seeing it from his perspective as the protagonist. But Ice was never inherently wrong, in fact he was right.
Other than his first scene, Iceman always has a point in what he's saying. He's criticizing Mav, not insulting him. Sure, he does it in a brash way because masculinity, but he's not trying to insult him, he's trying to knock him down a peg and wake him up to reality. All Ice wants is that he starts to act as a team player, start caring about everybody's safety AND his own, rather than being reckless for the sake of being reckless. But Mav sees it as an insult because he can't process criticism in a healthy way (due to how he grew up). The same thing happened with Charlie, for the record.
And so the strife between the two begins. What I like about it is how it bleeds out of them over time, becoming more settled as the movie goes on. In the locker room "You're dangerous" scene, the tension is palpable. It's obvious they're agitated by each other, and feel the need to prove they're the correct one.
If you pay attention, this whole... demand for superiority goes away as time progresses. They're fine with each other's presence, it's not like they're constantly at each others throat all the time. In the shower scene, Ice dropped all of the aggression and competitiveness from his tone and is instead just laying out what he thinks. He's not undermining Maverick, he's not lecturing him like a child. Iceman is just telling Maverick exactly how he sees the situation in hopes that it would make him realize what the fuck he's doing, but with little hope that it'll actually work.
That doesn't mean Ice is always correct either, he doesn't understand why Mav acts the way he does, thus fails to take into consideration the emotional trauma behind it. Which only causes even more strife.
The entire time, Iceman isn't being a dick for the sake of it, he just wants Mav to stop being stupid (by his standards). And Maverick doesn't understand it because all he gets from what Ice says is insults.
Maverick isn't good at understanding what people mean to say if it's implied, you need to say it to his face. This is the reason he stayed quiet in the shower scene, because Ice finally laid everything out in simple words that he can understand without making it sound like a dick-measuring contest.
Thing is, the tension mellows out. At the beginning, you could see the tension and cut it with a knife. By the middle you can see them getting used to each other without jumping to constantly trade jabs (namely: the volleyball scene, it's just a bunch of guys being dudes, and the scene where Charlie says that Mav flew recklessly in front of the whole class, Ice doesn't comment on it in any way). Over time, they've settled down into their tension without needing to address it all the time.
Then Goose dies.
And the tension between them is still there.
Just because Goose isn't there anymore, doesn't mean their whole dynamic vanishes all of a sudden. You can see their hesitation towards each other (especially Ice), and that's great! It demonstrates that Goose dying doesn't magically resolve their problems with each other in solidarity.
Ice tried to give his consolations to Mav, and is awfully awkward about it. You can see on his face that he wants to say more, but doesn't because he knows it's not his place given their history. And not much is said, but a lot it communicated. (Val Kilmer is a killer actor for this, OH MY FUCKING GOD BLESS THAT MAN)
Even in the graduation scene you can see how out of their depts they really are with each other. A stilted congratulations, that was it. But they're trying, and that's what matters.
A scene I think gets overlooked a lot is the scene right before the Layton, where Ice expressed his worries about Mav to Stinger, and Mav heard him. Because I feel like that was a shift that was more drastic than the Layton itself for them.
What Ice was doing in that scene wasn't doubting Maverick's flying abilities, it was his mental health. Sure, he passed the psych eval, but that means next to jack shit when in a real combat situation so close after his backseater dying. And Ice might be worried that he's gonna be left hanging, but with the way he was speaking I'm more inclined to believe he was more worried about Maverick's wellbeing than himself. Ice almost looked resigned. He knew it was gonna get dismissed because that's the military for you, but he still wanted to try to vouch for Mav to stay groundside, if only to keep his mind at bay.
But Maverick heard him, and as usual, he read it as an insult. He wasn't wrong to assume Ice didn't believe him capable of flying the mission, which wouldn't be a lie, but failed to realize that he had more than one reason to want Maverick on the ground rather than in the air. And for the first time, Maverick believes him.
Up until this point, Mav dismissed all of Ice's so called 'insults' because he was certain in and of himself. But now he isn't anymore.
And it affects his performance in the air. I'm not saying he was as shitty as he was at the start of that combat because of what he overheard, but I am saying that it certainly didn't help matters in the slightest.
So their weird 'stepping-on-eggshells' situation is all over the place by that point. Because they started to care about each other despite not being what one would call proper friends yet. It's establishing a potential friendship by implying that 1. Ice cares about Mav's wellbeing and 2. Mav cares about what Ice thinks.
On the ground, they have the wingman exchange, and their suddenly buddy buddy. Thing is, it wasn't sudden at all.
They've been setting this up the entire fucking movie.
Going back to what I said at the beginning: Ice thinks Mav is dangerous and Mav thinks Ice is stuck-up and controlling. After the Layton, they still think those things because they weren't wrong to begin with. What changed was that instead of seeing it as something that pitted them against each other, it was seen as something that simply was about the other, and that there was no changing it. It could be good.
Mav being dangerous could be good and Ice being stuck-up and controlling could be good, because those were just traits of who they were. By the end of the movie they didn't change how they saw each other, just how they interpreted each other.
And it was built up during the entire fucking movie.
There was a reason to why they acted the way they did with each other because of the stilted interpretation they had of each other. From rivalry to friendship (and perhaps more later down the line), it's glaringly obvious throughout that it wasn't a sudden shift, it was exponential.
That's why I think it was so well developed, because you could see it coming.
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rookieloveskashi · 8 months
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Don't Mind Me
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Relationship: Hatake Kakashi x fem!Reader
Rating: Explicit - Minors DNI
Warnings: smut, established relationship, masturbation (male), teasing, cockwarming, riding, voice kink, praise kink, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, creampie, POV reader
Word Count: 4.3k
Summary: You're settling in for bed, but Kakashi isn't quite ready to sleep.
AO3 Link
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Anyone who knew Kakashi Hatake knew that there were only a few things he was likely to be doing at any given time. Training was high on the list, as well as going out on missions or indulging Gai in yet another competition; all activities designed to keep his body fit and his skills sharp. But when he allowed himself some true restful downtime, he had one favorite pastime: reading Icha Icha.
Kakashi was infamously known to kick back with his book in any number of locations. He could be spotted in even the most public of places—surrounded by superiors or students alike—with one of his ever-present paperbacks tipped in such a way that no nosy onlookers could peer over his shoulder.
As if the entire village couldn't tell the content of those pages from the book's cover, the author's reputation, or the Copy Ninja's giggles.
And as often as he could be seen reading in public, Kakashi spent just as much time reading in the comfort of his own home. Reading before bed was an old habit of his, since he'd first turned to books as a potential distraction from the nightmare fodder constantly rattling around in his head. Over time, Kakashi found the near-perfect antidote to his nightmares in the romantic exploits of the Icha lcha series, buying copy after copy to ensure he would never go without.
More recently, he'd stumbled upon the good fortune to find you, and the romance that blossomed between the two of you was something that Icha Icha just couldn't match.
He still liked to flip through the book before falling asleep, but you suspected it was more out of routine than necessity. These days, the best way Kakashi knew to fall asleep was to get tangled up in bed with you, and it was a sentiment you wholeheartedly shared.
As he read, you nuzzled yourself into the perfect position against him. You loved the feeling of his arm around your waist, his solid form under your fingertips, his cheek resting on the top of your head. He would breathe so gently, you barely felt his chest rise and fall. Every minute or two, you would hear Kakashi turn a page; the sweetest domestic white noise lulling you to sleep.
Just as you had nearly drifted off, something disturbed you just enough to snap you back to consciousness. Maybe it was some tiny twitch of Kakashi's muscle, or a slight change in temperature in the room, or maybe one of your synapses just tripped over its own feet. But whatever the cause, your eyes fluttered open and adjusted to the low light of Kakashi's reading lamp.
As your vision focused, you first spotted the gently illuminated pages of the book Kakashi held in his left hand, his wrist still propped on your hip. The writing on the pages was distorted in your blurry vision. You couldn't discern what was happening on the page, but the number printed neatly at the bottom let you know he'd gotten through about thirty pages since you'd snuggled in with a kiss on his cheek and a whispered 'goodnight.’
Then your focus shifted as movement a little further back caught your eye.
Looking past the book, you were treated to the sight of Kakashi's free hand working over his exposed cock, his fingers wrapped around the shaft and stroking over the length at a languid pace. He was in a state just shy of fully erect, the skin gliding up to roll over the ridge of his cockhead with every upward motion. The tip was slightly darkened, with a generous drop of opaline precum welling at the slit.
It didn't take even one second for your entire body to react; your eyes widening, your cheeks flushing, your mouth watering. And that's to say nothing of the reaction between your legs.
Your body was excitedly awake, but your brain seemed to be lagging behind.
"What’a’ya doin’?" you heard yourself ask, the words blending together in a poor attempt at shaking off the dregs of sleep.
It was a stupid question—there really wasn't any way to misinterpret what you were seeing—but still, the words tumbled off your traitorous tongue without any command.
"Hm?" He turned his head just enough to fix his charcoal eye on you. A rosy blush colored his cheeks, but you weren't sure if it was there before or after you'd caught him.
"I'm sorry," he continued, crinkling his eye into a smile. "I thought you were asleep."
You couldn't think of any way to respond. The entire situation was nothing short of ridiculous. In the scant time since you'd closed your eyes to go to sleep, Kakashi had gotten so worked up by the content of the book that he'd felt compelled to reach down, push his sleep pants and his briefs down far enough to expose his dick, and start masturbating, all without disturbing you in the slightest.
And only Kakashi knew how long he'd been at it before finally letting his composure slip just enough to wake you.
That's some use of jōnin skills.
You couldn't help it; the bark of laughter burst from your throat before you realized it was happening.
And the more Kakashi just stared at you in response—scarred eye closed; pink deepening the color of his face; hand frozen, just holding his dick—the funnier it got. Snickers and giggles built in your chest faster than you could breathe them out, more and more until your eyes were watering and your stomach burned from laughter.
It could have been anywhere between ten seconds to ten minutes before he finally broke his silence. "Y/N," he calmly spoke, your name almost lost among your continued hilarity, "if you keep laughing like that, I might start taking it personally."
Your body shuddered as you tried to get your breathing under control in an effort to spare both his pride and your abdomen. "I'm-I'm…sorry—" you gasped, squeezing your eyes tight to force the building tears to fall. "It's just…silly."
A strange look sparkled in Kakashi's eye. "I've been accused of being a lot of things, Y/N, but never silly."
"Well right now?" you grinned, "that’s exactly what you are."
“And just what exactly is so silly to you?"
Even thinking the explanation caused more giggles to sputter from your lips as you spoke. "You're secretly touching yourself to that pervy book while I'm practically on top of you. It’s just…funny that it affects you that much.”
Kakashi silently watched as you stifled the new outburst of laughter. His eyebrow raised a fraction of an inch, but it quickly settled as you relaxed.
"Ahhhh, I see." He closed the book, holding his page with his thumb as he snuggled you a little closer. "Don't worry, Y/N. There's no need to be jealous.”
"Wha…jealous?" you echoed. "Of a book?"
"I only wanted to give you the chance to get some rest," he continued. "I know you've been busy lately, and naturally I don't expect you to answer my every beck and call. So…" Kakashi trailed off with a shrug, then leaned down to kiss your forehead. “Don't mind me.”
With a smile, he returned his attention to his book. You stayed frozen in position as Kakashi went right back to reading as though nothing had happened, his eyes on the filthy words and his hand resuming its lazy strokes over his swollen cock.
Wait... what?
Had you just been...dismissed?
You were awake and uncomfortably aroused—two facts that you were sure he was equally aware of—and he chose to just...go back to the book?
Now you were the one taking something personally.
You nudged his arm to give yourself space to shift your hips, intentionally rubbing the front of your body against his side while you slid off your panties and successfully recaptured your boyfriend’s interest. Kakashi watched with curiosity as you propped yourself up on one elbow and gently shooed his hand away from his penis.
When the obstacle was out of your way, you sat up on your knees and tossed your leg over your hips to straddle him.
"What's all this?"
His voice was measured and controlled, but his attention was fully on you. You suppressed a haughty grin as you reached down to take his erection in your hand, gently running your thumb over his slit to collect the precum and bring it to your mouth.
You moaned as you licked the bitter fluid from your digit, swirling your tongue and holding eye contact all the while. After a few seconds you removed your thumb, glistening with saliva, then wrapped your hand around his dick once more to guide him to your entrance.
You bit your lower lip and slowly sank down on him, sighing as the tip of his cock spread you open. The stretch stung a little—your body working with less preparation than he typically gave you—but it was still the feeling that you were craving: him. His right hand settled on your thigh and followed as you went lower and lower, descending so slowly that you were feeling the burn in your thighs.
But it would be worth it.
Maybe now you were the one being silly, but you were determined to prove to him that no book could compare to you.
It wasn't until your ass met his thighs and you saw the smirk spread across his face that you realized you'd fallen into one of the Copy Ninja's perfectly laid traps.
He...I can't believe he sweet-talked me into sitting on his dick!
You had to school your face to keep your jaw from dropping in dumbfounded embarrassment. It was all too clear now. This had been his game all along.
Here you were, thinking you were taking some kind of control, when in reality, you were exactly where he wanted you. On top of him, hands on his chest for leverage, his cock so deep inside of you that you swore you could feel him bulging against your stomach. Wetness drooling from your cunt, making his lap slippery and shiny.
You wriggled your hips to get comfortable, noticing the way he triumphantly grinned at your movement. His cock filled you to the point that you could hardly adjust. And he just laid flat and watched you, waiting for you to start riding him, a look in his eye that proved he knew exactly how badly you wanted to do just that.
Hmmmmm, maybe he'll be waiting longer than he expected.
The perv truly loved it when you fucked yourself on his dick. Nothing turned Kakashi on like watching you raise yourself up just to crash back down on him, greedily wringing his every inch for your pleasure.
Not this time.
In a fit of theatrics, you stretched your arms to the side and yawned, giving him one last good look at your body and the cute bulge under your navel where his cock was securely snuggled. You leaned forward—trying to ignore the tight squeeze of his fat dick inside you and how perfectly it stretched you as you moved—and carefully laid down on his chest, wrapping your arms around him and nuzzling back into his neck.
“Mmmm sleep tight, Kakashi,” you murmured.
Stunned silence was your only answer, and you had to hold yourself back from cheering in the name of victory. You were way too wired to actually fall asleep now, but the next move was all Kakashi’s.
Finally, finally you'd gotten the upper hand. True, you would probably benefit more from riding him until you were fucked too stupid to even remember where you were, but the victory of surprising him was almost as sweet. Besides, with his sex drive, you could easily get another chance to take your pleasure from him. Beating him at his own game, though? You might never experience this again.
Just as you were starting to worry that the silence would stretch on forever, Kakashi addressed you in a whisper.
“Sweetheart?”
And let the groveling begin.
“Mhmm?”
He kept his voice low and soft, his gentle question tickling your ear. “If you're going back to sleep, you don't mind if I read just a little bit longer, do you?”
You furrowed your brow, wondering if you should truly be insulted that he was still thinking of the book. “You want…to keep reading?”
“I’m almost to the end of this chapter, and I hate to leave things unfinished.”
There was a brief pause of silence where you tried to figure out his plan. “Okay,” you finally answered. “But don't move; I’m so comfy.”
“Don't worry Y/N,” he cooed, holding his book up in position. “I'm comfortable too. Right where I am.”
Suspicious as you were, you allowed your eyes to close as you breathed in the familiar scent of Kakashi's skin. Despite the demanding feeling of fullness between your legs, everything was serene. Kakashi stayed still, exactly as you asked. You couldn't even notice when he moved to turn a page.
You were reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that you might have to settle for a draw when you heard Kakashi’s low, rumbling voice in your ear.
“He licked his lips, his love's delicious juices making his entire jaw shine.”
You sharply sat up enough to look at him, cursing the pathetic little moan that slipped past your lips as you felt his cock brush along your walls. "W-what are you doing?"
His eye flicked to yours, the usual stormy grey now completely black and as devious as the smirk on his face. “I’m reading, Y/N.”
“But…out loud??”
“What’s wrong?” Kakashi grinned. “Is it affecting you?”
You started sputtering a nonsense response, but before you could manage to form a single word, he simply looked back at the book and continued reading. “‘You taste better than I ever imagined, gorgeous,’ he growled. ‘I can't wait to feel you.’”
The words sounded so beautifully lewd in Kakashi’s thunderous baritone, you couldn't fight the shiver climbing along your spine. Against your conscious will, the muscles inside your cunt tightened around him and forced a needy moan from your lips. He just felt so good, you decided right then and there that you were done with whatever game you'd been playing. Screw it.
He could gloat all he wanted, but if you didn't get some friction, you were going to lose your mind.
You lifted only a centimeter off of him before he stopped you with the strong grip of his one free hand on your hip. “Kakashi….” The whine that left your lips was absolutely pitiful. “Why are you—”
“Because, if it's so silly that I like these books so much, you should have no problem holding still."
What?!
He had to be joking. He wouldn't seriously torture you—and himself—like this…would he?
With a subtle shift of your hips, you dared to test the waters. Only the barest hint of satisfaction swept over you before his grip tightened.
“I said…hold still.”
Your walls gripped down on him, clear arousal drooling from your cunt. All you wanted was to move, or feel him moving inside you. But his fingers stayed latched to your hip, his pelvis stayed flat on the bed, and his voice stayed cool and even as he breathed life into the story on the pages.
“‘I want to make love to you until the sunrise,’ he proclaimed while stripping away his trousers. ‘I’ll spend these next five hours showing you the greatest pleasure you've ever known.’”
It wasn't even the smutty nature of the book that had you all hot and bothered. Kakashi could have been reading his own shopping list and you would still be weak just from listening to his voice. Those filthy words only dumped kerosene on the fire.
“‘Open yourself for me, my love. Let me inside.’”
Everything you wanted was so close. So close, but you couldn't have it. Not with the way Kakashi was restricting you. His wide palm was an anchor you had no chance of escaping. All you could do was ignore every impulse and desire in your body and continue to stay still while Kakashi narrated all the things you’d rather be doing.
“He ran his fingers along her pink folds, touching the silky skin he would soon feel around his cock. He smiled as he watched his beautiful partner writhe under his touch. Her mouth formed the most perfect shapes as she whispered his name, begging her lover to give her what she needed.”
You bit down on your lip to distract yourself from the sound of his voice, his smooth tone easily casting a spell over you. He wouldn't let you move, but you had to do something before you lost your mind.
Gently, you pressed your lips to his throat, testing soft kisses along his neck. Kakashi paused his narration, chuckling a laugh that vibrated against your mouth.
“Are you enjoying the story, sweetheart?”
“Kakashi…please…” you whispered. “I need you.”
You could hear the smirk in his voice. “Oh yeah?”
“Please,” you begged, tipping your head up to kiss the sensitive spot behind his ear. “Please, baby.”
A soft sigh slipped past his lips. “Hmmm, alright.” He shifted his weight letting you lean back enough to see his face. “I’m going to let go, but you're going to be good and stay put for me, won't you?”
Eagerly, you nodded. “Mhmm.”
Kakashi smiled at you. “Very good.”
With his one hand still holding the book, Kakashi moved his right hand off your hip. Goosebumps chased his touch, calluses tracing their way down your plush thigh. His long fingers splayed over your soft skin, fingers reaching back toward your ass while the pad of his thumb landed right over your needy clit.
You gasped at his touch, shoulders tossing themselves back without your permission as your spine curved in ecstasy.
“There we go,” he smiled at you. “Now, where were we?”
Kakashi slowly started circling your clit with his thumb. Another feeble whimper escaped you and your grip on his shoulders tightened, your fingernails digging tiny crescents into his skin as he continued to read.
“Her body opened for him, unfolding like the most beautiful flower. She was still flushed and sensitive from all his tongue had already done to her. Strings of arousal glistened between her folds, and he had never felt such a strong ache between his own legs. ‘Please kiss me,’ she sang. ‘Kiss me and make me yours.’”
You panted little breaths in time with the pattern he was drawing over your engorged bundle of nerves. It wasn't enough. It wasn't even close to enough. The action in the story was progressing much more quickly than he was. His thumb moved maddeningly slow, making your muscles twitch and your body want to scream. You wanted to grind into that lazy thumb and fuck yourself on his perfect cock. All you dared to do was whimper into his neck and dig your fingernails a little deeper. 
That is, until Kakashi overplayed his hand.
“He plunged into her warmth. Pressure surrounded him; her h-hot, t-tight, wet insides fitting him just right.” His throat bobbed with a heavy gulp. “She was m-made for him, her m—”
Kakashi’s cock throbbed inside of you, causing both you and him to moan. Your internal muscles fluttered at the long-awaited stimulation, exploiting his moment of weakness and baiting him into giving you more. He clutched at your body to regain control, but you could tell his resolve was finally crumbling.
You seductively brushed your parted lips over his earlobe, relishing the heavy sigh he awarded you. “Don't stop,” you whispered, letting your voice drip with desperation. “Tell me what else he does to her.”
Kakashi tossed his head back with a groan, and his hips thrust just an inch off the mattress. You could have cried at how good the friction felt. “Kashi!”
“He—haa—sunk d-deeper inside…” Kakashi continued to read in a choppy voice as he worked his cock in and out just that last inch. “She felt…like heaven…so good…”
Carefully, you let your hips start to roll against him. Most of the pressure and stimulation was still directly on your clit, and now that you had a little control, you were already trembling. It was so much closer, but it still wasn't enough.
You wrapped your arms around him tighter, grounding yourself as you started fucking him the way you’d wanted to since you’d caught him fucking his hand instead of you. His broken narration started to get lost among his moans and your whimpers. You let his name slide from your lips in a plea, and that was the last straw. 
The book clattered to the floor with a sound so worrisome, you wondered if you needed to stop. But Kakashi's free hand was immediately on the back of your head, holding you in place against him while he started to thrust up into you in earnest. His hand on your hip squeezed tight, letting go only for a second to land an encouraging smack across your ass that had you clenching in on him. Then he found his grip on your hip again, pulling you down to meet his thrusts with resounding wet slaps.
“Up baby,” he ordered, releasing his hold on your head. “Ride me like you mean it.”
With an intoxicated laugh, you planted a loud, sloppy kiss on his cheek. Then you moved your hands to his chest and pushed yourself up into a seated position. His eyes seared into you as you immediately got to work; rolling your hips and extending your thighs to rise up over him, tits swaying in a way that made him lick his lips.
On your first full descent down his long, thick cock, you practically screamed out for how good it felt dragging along your needy insides. Kakashi bent his knees and planted his feet so that you could fuck yourself on him exactly how you needed to.
“Fuck, that’s it baby.”
Kakashi looked at the place where your bodies met; yours taking him in again and again and again, bouncing up and down with an urgency that left a creamy white ring around the base of his cock. After all of his teasing, that sight alone was enough to have him ready to blow.
“Not…gonna last.”
Your fingernails burrowed into his skin, digging out little crescent shapes that stood out even among all of his scars. “Not yet,” you begged. “Please, not yet…need more.”
A deep, resounding groan rippled up his throat. “Take what you need. Fuck yourself on my cock.”
Your mouth hung open, eyes rolling back in your head as you worked your body over Kakashi’s perfect dick. He was exactly what you needed in every way. The breath was knocked from your lungs every time you brought yourself back down. Your body moved in perfect harmony, every muscle and nerve playing its part so you could selfishly enjoy him. You could feel beads of sweat running from your neck down your chest.
Kakashi watched you with both eyes open. His hips kept rocking to meet you, but the rest of his body simply reacted to your movements. He smiled as your body stuttered in pleasure, so close to your peak but barely missing it.
“Kashi…” you whined. “S’close…please…”
“Need my help, sweetheart?” Apparently, Kakashi couldn’t help but taunt you one last time. But your only goal now was to cum, and you vigorously nodded, giving him the control that he never failed to use to your benefit. “C’mere.”
With one arm wrapped around your hips and the other high on your back, Kakashi pulled you back down to his sticky chest. You held onto him as he pressed his wide palm into your lower back, grinding your clit into the coarse silver hair trailing up toward his navel.
“Kakashi!” Pleasure immediately washed along your entire body, already better than anything you’d been able to accomplish on your own.
“That’s it, Y/N,” he panted. “Now cum on me.”
You bit down on his neck and whimpered from how good he made you feel. The light sheen of sweat on his skin tasted of salt and only made your mouth water for more. You gave up on the last dregs of your dignity, grinding into him with the single-minded focus of getting off on your gorgeous, beloved menace of a boyfriend.
“Y/N…fuck, please…”
His voice was deep and reverent even as he was pleading for you to cum, and the beautiful sound finally caused the building tension in your lower belly to snap. You responded with a gasp as your inner walls squeezed down and suffocated his cock. Not a second later, Kakashi let out an indulgent, satisfied sigh and you felt his cock pulse inside of you, filling you with warmth.
“Mmmm, baby…” His body relaxed beneath you, his arms encircling you to cradle you to his chest. “Fuck, that was good.”
You planted a kiss on his neck, smiling at the faint mark left there by your teeth. “Better than the book?”
Kakashi ran his hand up the back of your neck, spreading goosebumps along your skin. His long fingers tangled into your roots, gently coaxing you back a little so you could look at his face. His other rough palm cupped your jaw, his thumb stroking your cheek as his eyes narrowed to complement his adoring yet devilish grin.
“What book?”
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tagging @deviant-donna 💕
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sidsinning · 2 months
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#1 thing I am the most curious about/eager for the series to explore is 1000% the Morningstar family, especially Lilith
Bc who even is Lilith in reality besides what we have seen her as in the eyes of the other characters
Clearest image we get of her is in their family portraits
We usually see her as the menacing mystery figure working in the background, but in these photos she's clearly a normal happy mom who genuinely loves her family as any mother/wife would. She's not just a smirking dominant figure with a hidden agenda. All she's doing is having fun with her family and has no qualms about showing a range of emotion.
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Charlie sees her as the role model she takes after and wants to make her proud. It turns out she sees Lucifer in pretty much the same light, but with the addition of having an awkward relationship bc of the distance they've had. With Lilith she never speaks about her with any lingering awkwardness, so we can assume she's been a good mom raising Charlie this whole time.
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(For those who are saying "Lilith is a bad mom bc who leaves their kid alone for 7 years???"- she is literally thousands of years old while Charlie is well into adulthood before those 7 years. It's like a business trip to them. She wasn't an absentee parent for leaving for 7 years out of Charlie's 200+. The thing that's weird is that she's not communicating with Charlie. Our girl deadass owns property with a job and employees. Just bc she's not great at it and is having Lucifer step in to help recently, doesn't make Lucifer the superior parent suddenly. He's confirmed to be a kind of shitty dad despite how much he cares for her by the creators themselves. Kind of the point of his introduction ep guys. The 7 years are a mystery to unpack. Chill tf out.)
In this flashback people are blaming Lilith for separating Lucifer and Charlie on purpose, seemingly as the cause of their distant relationship. But it feels more complicated than that, based off Lucifer's reaction.
He's sad reaching out to Charlie by the end of the flashback, but when Lilith first appears he's smiling all the same and not deterred in giving Charlie to Lilith to carry away for what reason we don't know. A normal, standard occurrence he's used to. It seems both parents have agreed it's best for Lilith to take Charlie at this age now, for whatever reason.
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Was his mental health affecting his parenting too much so they decided Lilith would shoulder the bulk of the task? Maybe Lilith really did separate the two somehow for her own reasons and convinced Lucifer with it? Another mystery reason each parent agree on?
When exactly did both of them separate? When Charlie was already an adult or around the time of the flashback when Lilith was her primary caretaker as a kid? (I'm assuming adulthood since Lucifer and Lilith seemed to still be getting along in the flashback despite her emotionless face.) Why did they separate when Lucifer seems to clearly love and yearn for her all the same, still wearing his wedding ring? 😭😭😭
And ofc what is this deal she made with Adam to stay chillin on a beach in heaven, and why did Adam, a reckless narcissist who likes yappin to whoever is gonna listen, not ever reveal this fact to her family to the very end?
There is just so much to unpack with their family and Lilith is the key ingredient rn to unlocking it
Like ofc I'm looking forward to Sir Pentious in heaven, Alastor's deal, the future of the rebuilt hotel, Lucifer now being a seemingly main character in season 2, etc.
But the Morningstars,,,different level
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dilemmaontwolegs · 2 months
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The Perfect Life || CL16 {3}
Summary: Charles is beginning to see the cracks in your facade and it only leads to more questions than answers in his quest to get to know you. Warnings: angst, swearing, sarcasm, abusive parents, flashback to Jules WC: 2.1k
One || Two || Three || Four
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Ten Years Ago The nurses greeted you by name as you walked into the ICU ward with a book in your hands and your school backpack slung over one shoulder. For the last six months you had visited your friend twice a week and learned the names of all the staff while you sat at his side. 
“I have the new, unreleased, Jack Reacher,” you said as you took your seat between the bed and the window. The only other sounds in the room were the quiet whoosh of the ventilator and the rhythmic beat of the heart monitor. “Father knows the Editor at Bantam Press.”
You dumped your bag on the floor and opened the novel. The action thriller wasn’t something you would choose yourself but Jules had liked the series so you read it aloud. The neurologists seemed to think it could help him and the psychiatrists seemed to think it could help you.
“Moving a guy as big as Keever wasn’t easy,” you began the story. Time slipped away as you turned each page and you were so engrossed in the words that you didn’t notice your phone vibrating in your bag. You were late to your piano lesson, but more importantly someone else was arriving for his weekly visit.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Charles snapped as he breezed into the room and crossed his arms. 
“Same as you, visiting,” you murmured as you packed your bag up, leaving the novel on the table that had a vase of fresh flowers. You touched Jules’ hand with a silent farewell and kept your eyes low as you made your escape. 
You were almost to the door when an arm blocked your way. “Don’t come back again,” Charles growled. 
Your fists clenched at your sides as you dared to lift your head and meet his glare. “He is my friend too.”
Charles rolled his eyes. “You’re just a stupid little girl. He avoids you because he finds you annoying.”
“You don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I know he wouldn’t want you here.”
You swallowed the lump in your throat and nodded because he was probably right. That was the last time you visited Jules, and the first time you truly hated Charles. 
“That was harsh,” Lorenzo stated as you passed by on your way out of the room. 
Charles waited for the door to close before he asked his eldest brother, “Were they friends?”
Lorenzo chewed his lip and shrugged. “They weren’t friends,” he admitted and Charles turned his back with a scoff as he made his way to Jules, missing the quiet confession tacked on to the end, “They were closer than that.” 
You had been so furious when you left the hospital that you smashed your fist into a wall in the car park where your driver was waiting. 
“Phew, that’s quite the punch you pack, little lady,” a stranger had chuckled between the drags he took on his cigarette. “With a bit of training you could do some serious damage.”
You looked at the blood running over your knuckles but you were numb to the pain. “I like damage,” you commented quietly. “Do you know any trainers?”
Present Day Charles drove along the scenic coastal road towards Saint Tropez rather than the faster highways. He lowered the windows and donned a pair of sunglasses as the breeze whipped his dark hair back. Everything about his ostentatious image screamed old money until he smiled and it was too carefree. Old money didn’t show such emotion, your mother said it was uncouth to feel anything except superiority. Those weren’t her exact words but it was the gist of the conversation.
“You frown too much,” he commented as he handed you his phone. 
“I hardly have anything to smile about.”
“For starters, we escaped that - whatever that was, because it certainly wasn’t charitable. And now you are in control of the music. I think that is enough for a little smile.”
You tossed his phone back on his lap and turned your attention back to the waves breaking against the rocks. “I don’t listen to music.”
“Everyone listens to music.” 
He fiddled with the stereo and the slow melodic beginning to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata filled the car. Each note sent echoes of pain shooting through your fingertips and you closed your hands as they began to shake. Your knuckles throbbed with the memory of sitting before your mother and reciting the classical greats you had been made to learn. You were constantly showcased to her friends, placed on a pedestal to flaunt skills that had no real purpose other than to illustrate the other families' mediocrities.
Until you made a mistake. 
You flinched as the allegretto movement began and your hands snapped close to your chest as you felt the piano lid come slamming down on them again. It was like falling in a dream and startling as you woke up. Charles was watching carefully as you found yourself back in the leather seat and not the velvet bench.
“Turn it off.”
He hit a button on his steering wheel and silence descended in the small space. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.” 
Charles thankfully let it go and concentrated on driving to Monaco. You didn’t even bother to argue with him when he passed around the outskirts of Nice without stopping, you had found a small distraction by making shapes out of the clouds. It was only when he slowed to drive through the signature winding street that passed the casino that you looked down at your chiffon gown and frowned. “I am overdressed, even for this place.”
“You can wear something of mine.”
“No thanks,” you said, quickly shutting down the offer with a shake of your head. You grabbed your phone from your clutch and sent a quick message to Arthur. “I have some spare clothes at your brother’s place, we can just pick them up.”
Charles’ brow lifted. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to stay in this dress all afternoon?”
“No, why do you have clothes at Arthur’s?”
“For when I stay there, obviously. Do you think I stay in a hotel here?” You rolled your eyes. “No, wait, you probably thought ‘Daddy bought me a penthouse’.”
He had the good sense to look guilty but it also confirmed your suspicion. 
You knew the small city almost as well as Nice and found your bearings as he made his way to Arthur’s apartment complex. It wasn’t far from Charles’ but you had never been there, Arthur had just pointed it out on one of the many outings into the city. 
“You have a key too?” Charles asked as you unlocked Arthur’s door instead of knocking.
“You’re starting to sound a little jealous now.” The door swung open and Arthur waved as you shot past the sofa he was relaxing on and ducked into his bedroom to change into a pair of leggings and one of his old Prema shirts.
“Who’s jealous?” he asked as you flopped down beside him and used his thighs as a pillow. 
You draped a hand over your forehead and sighed dramatically. “Your brother is madly in love with me, but he can’t get over how close we are, Tur. There may be a duel at dawn, ready your pistols and kiss your mother in case it is the last time.”
“You really need a nap don’t you,” Arthur teased. His fingers carefully plucked the bobby pins from your hair and Charles watched on silently as the haunted look that had been in your eyes the entire ride faded away. “Dare I ask why you are here? You didn’t kidnap her did you?”
“I’d probably be floating facedown in the riviera if I tried that,” Charles replied with an indignant snort. “She voluntarily got into my car.”
“Ah, that’s progress, I suppose.”
“It was the lesser of two evils,” you corrected as you closed your eyes. The late night was beginning to catch up with you and a yawn cracked your jaw before a soft blanket fell over you. “Mm, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” 
Your brain hadn’t realised Arthur’s hands were still busy and the voice came from the blanket box where Charles had stood. Rather than question the goodwill, it was easier to pretend he hadn’t been nice because it was starting to really confuse you. 
“Did your genius brother tell you his plan?” you asked as you shifted around until you were comfy and looked up at your best friend. 
“He may have mentioned it on the drive home last night,” Arthur said. “Honestly, it was all he talked about.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.” Arthur turned his attention back to you. “Are you actually considering it?”
You barked a laugh that was a big enough ‘no’ but followed it up with, “Absolutely not. It wouldn’t even work anyway.”
“Why not?” Charles asked, taking a seat in the armchair opposite.
“No offence, but what do you bring to the table? Outside of F1 your name doesn’t mean anything.”
Growing up in Monaco where one in three people were millionaires, Charles wasn’t blind to reality, he knew first hand how elitist the ‘old money’ families were. “So why marry Jules?” 
You heard the pain that one question held and sighed as you sat up, woefully abandoning the idea of sleep. Charles didn’t like how the question made him sound petulant, or that he was somehow a better choice than Jules was - he didn’t think that at all, he just couldn’t understand why the plan wouldn’t work.
“It wasn’t about Jules. You forget that while he raced under the French flag the Bianchi’s came from Milan. The Italian market is one Father wants to break into.” You got up and went to the kitchen, pouring yourself a glass of Prosecco from the fridge. It was a little flat after being open a few days and you swirled the drink around, watching the bubbles rise to the surface. “Father’s five year plan was for Jules to win a championship with Ferrari, cementing the name back into Italian households, and then train his new son-in-law to join the family business.” 
The silence was heavy but Charles eventually recovered from staring out the window deep in thought. “Did Jules know this?”
“He knew enough.”
“What does that even mean?”
“He knew he was important enough to blackmail my father, kind of ballsy if you ask me, but it worked. Jules threatened to quit racing if he revoked the funding for your driving academy.” You drank down the Prosecco in a few unladylike gulps before refilling it as the bitterness in your belly grew. “Must have been nice to have someone fight all your battles.”
“I’m trying to help you now, but you’re being stubborn,” Charles said as he crossed the room and took the bottle away. “I don’t understand why.”
“You don’t understand? Maybe it’s because you treated me like shit for years and I can’t trust you.”
“I thought Jules didn’t like you, I figured it had to be for a good reason.”
“No, you figured you could judge me without even trying to get to know me. That’s pretty fucking shitty, but you know what? I’ve come to expect it from everyone. The only person that’s ever treated me like a fucking human being is sitting right there.”
Charles followed the angry point of your finger to his brother and sighed. “I can’t change the past, okay, but I am trying to make up for it now. Please, just let me help you, it’s the least I can do - for you and for Jules. It’s just a job.”
You crossed your arms and tipped your chin back to look him in the eyes. “What makes you think I would even protect you? I could let you get mobbed and point them in the right direction.”
Charles smiled and you realised you were no longer impervious to the fact he was quite handsome but it was his words that shocked you more. “Because I believe you’re better than that.”
“That might be your biggest mistake.”
Charles held his hand out. “We will have to test it and see. Deal?”
You looked at Arthur and so much hope filled his face it was impossible to stomach the idea of watching it fall away. So, you shook Charles’ hand and swore you heard Jules’ laugh in the seagulls' cries. Yeah, he would probably be laughing, he always laughed when you made a mistake. 
“There’s no use crying, lapinette, might as well laugh and learn,” Jules would say.
You only wondered just how bad this latest lesson in the school of hard-knocks would be.
Part Four.
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night-raven-tattler · 2 months
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What's your ideal type?
Summary: What would be the best traits for their potential partner to have?
A/N: I didn't want to leave Lilia out of the series even though I only write platonic relationships with him, so I wrote about his ideal friend instead. Enjoy!
Characters: Diasomnia dorm (Malleus, Sebek, Silver) x GN!Reader (separate, romantic), Lilia and GN!Reader (platonic)
Other parts of the series: Heartslabyul, Savanaclaw, Octavinelle, Scarabia, Pomefiore, Ignihyde
Warnings: none
By opening the document, you agree to Mx Tattly's terms of source confidentiality.
-ˋˏ’✄┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈
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Malleus' ideal type would be...
Someone who playfully teases him. Malleus can be quite a tease himself, and enjoys seeing people squirm under his playful eyes. While he knows how it feels to be at the receiving end of that treatment thanks to Lilia, he'd still get surprised if you reciprocate.
Someone who can see beauty in the desolate. Being the goth king-to-be that he is, Malleus' tastes tend to gravitate towards darker aesthetics: abandoned buldings, antiques, vintage paintings and furniture, gargoyles... He can't help but be slightly upset when people mistake a grotesque for a gargoyle, but he's amazed when you correct them before he gets to.
Someone who can enjoy grand gestures. It's possible it is a byproduct of him being a prince, but Malleus and words such as "subtle" or "small" are from different worlds. He just wants to shower you with the best offerings to show his attention. Maybe his desire to put valuables with you is because dragons tend to hoard treasure?
Someone who isn't afraid to call him out on things. Malleus is many things: powerful, wise, capable and kind. But he's also stubborn, prideful and has a tendency to do things first and ask later. When he unintentionally crosses your boundaries, tell him. When he plans to do something before asking, tell him. Don't be his yes man. He'll respect you immensely for calling him out. After all, you ability to treat him like any other student is what drew him to you in the first place.
『••✎••』
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Lilia's ideal friend would be...
Someone who appreciates cooking. Lilia is a creative person, and it really shows in his cooking (for better or for worse). While eating his food is... a bit of a challenge, your interest would not go unnoticed. Who knows, maybe enough interest would have him allow you join him for a cooking session! A perfect opportunity to stop him from being too creative.
Someone who can take his jokes and pranks. What can I say, Lilia loves having a good laugh, even if sometimes comes at the expense of pulling a prank or two. While harmless, his pranks can be annoying. Take them on as a challenge, and you'll never find your slippers again, or you will have all of your mugs laid on your kitchen floor face down once every 17 mornings. Depends on you if you find that fun or not.
Someone who gets along with Silver and Malleus. His sons are his pride and joy, no matter what. While Lilia knows that sometimes people just don't fit well together, he can recognise effort when he sees it. If you want that spot at the dinner table, you have to get along with his family first.
Someone who can still love the world, despite any hardships. Lilia has lived on this earth for long and faced heartbreak after heartbreak, uncertainty and grief. His healing is not over, and that's okay. He'll appreciate you talking to him about how the would doesn't suck that badly after all.
『••✎••』
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Sebek's ideal type would be...
Someone who respects Malleus and Lilia. If you want any chance of even getting along with Sebek, you have to pay your respects to two of the people he respects the most. While you don't have to kiss the ground they walk on, a few nods of approval during Sebek's endless speeches about their glory and superiority would not go unnoticed.
Someone who likes praising him. I'm not saying Sebek is easily swayed by praise, but he'd be joyous to hear how well he's doing. He's a dedicated guard with perfect scores at school and a will strong enough to move mountains. While the praise directed at him would be something he's not really accustomed to, he'd stop trying to redirect the praise towards Malleus soon enough.
Someone who challenges him. Sebek is not the most agreeable person, but he's always open to learning and improving himself. He's just very, very stubborn. You don't have to dismantle his whole ideology about humans or anything like that. Instead, just give him the puzzle pieces: he'll enjoy the challenge to figure out your thought process while trying to prove you wrong. Whatever the outcome is, Sebek will always come out of the other side with a newfound respect for you.
Someone who can teach him how to be gentle. Yes, Sebek is loud, extra and arrogant. But, above all, he wants to do right by his loved ones. If you can teach him how to come from a place of compassion and genuine goodwill instead of having him default on his aggresive demeanor, he'd be quite amazed with you. His job was never to be kind and gentle, but he can still be those things while protecting the people around him. He'll treasure everything you'll teach him, and he'll hold you in his heart close to his idols.
『••✎••』
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Silver's ideal type would be...
Someone who respects Malleus and Lilia. While Silver is not the type to sing their praises during every moment of the day, he respects his liege and his father more than anything. He can't have someone disrespect two of the most important people in his life. It's the bare minimum for him if you want him to pay you any mind.
Someone who is earnest. Silver is a kind and sweet boy. His help and advice are always genuine. His dedication to protect the people he loves come from a desire to pay back the goodwill of the people in his life. He might not notice when people don't have the most genuine intentions, but he can tell when you are a nice person, especially to the people around him. His wariness will quickly dwindle, and he will warm up to you in no time.
Someone who knows when to nudge him awake and when to let him sleep. Silver dislikes how often he falls asleep during the day, and has a lot of guilt from not being to stay awake. He really takes note of how people react when he falls asleep near them or when they wake him up. Even though he still feels very helpless against his curse, if you still treat him just the same then he'd feel the littlest bit less guilty about it.
Someone who shows him he's enough. Above all else, Silver believes in paying back the kindness he has received from the world. He works very hard, harder than needed. Sometimes he needs to be sat down and told that he is doing enough. He is enough. It will not change his hard working nature overnight, but acknowledging his efforts sure makes him feel like he's going in the right direction.
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icarusallusion · 1 month
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One of the main reasons I've been so fond of Otasune since I first knew it was a thing was because I think they're genuinely one of the purest forms of love in Metal Gear.
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Throughout the series we see horrible relationships between horrible people trying to get by and then that relationship gets dragged through the awful scenarios they live with, be it war, internal struggles, infidelity etc. Despite this common place struggle with so many other characters, we see Otacon and Snake steadfast loyal and healthy throughout every struggle they go through.
They may not be an official couple, but they will always stay the most communicative relationship even outside of shipping. I see people joke about how Otacon kind of bosses Snake around (especially in MGS4), but I always saw it as refreshing. In the series, there is so many times where x character does something horrendous and y character just sits aside and silently sulks about it.
But this doesn't happen, like at all, with Dave and Hal. There are many times where Snake doesn't think about consequences to his actions as a general rule of soldier, however Hal has never been a soldier. So when these things happen, Otacon tells him off and it's something Snake genuinely needs to hear. It's something human, away from combat. Because Otacon is one of the very few characters that talks to Snake as a person, as a human, not as a soldier or fucked up clone baby.
Snake has gone his whole life scrapping the bottom of the barrel to stop feeling so lonely, he flirts with every woman he sees, he attaches himself very easily onto superiors, etc. Snake is a man who has spent his whole life trying to appeal to people, to get the praise he was never allowed as a child. Otacon gives him the comfort he never got. While any military superior can say Dave is the best of the best. None will look him in the face and tell him he has to live to just live.
Hal also opens a lot of doors to Snake's own discovery about himself. While this next point might sound a little cringy, stick with me. People may joke about the anime interest Snake and Otacon share, but it always came across so genuinely sweet to me. Snake's only interests up until he met Otacon have been, stop feeling lonely and war. I think even part of his musher life and interests within sledding can contribute to part of this. I mean come on, not even a regular musher keeps 50 dogs in their house and dogs are a natural remedy to loneliness. But in all seriousness, David refers to the huskies as his only family and I don't see him connecting with any other mushers he works with, it reads as him wanting to not be alone while also still being so lonely. As well as how mushing is considered a more normal interest than being an otaku, especially in the early 2000s. Mushing is a sport, and being an Otaku was pretty much unheard of or hated. Watching this guy who has been stuffed full of war propaganda scream a dorky "falcon punch" and "ninjutsu" with his best friend is so heartwarming in a way.
As well as Otacon's whole meme turned question of "do you think love can bloom on the battlefield?" Is something that I think Snake needed to be asked. It's probably been something he's been thinking about. It is also one of the most human things Snake asked throughout the game. About finding love in fear. Otacon constantly prods into Snake's heart and brings out the good in him.
Not only does Hal open up a space for Snake to have genuine unashamed interests and show true pure humanity. He also shows off their childhood. Both Hal and David never got proper childhoods. They connect that with each other through cheesy animes, talking about uncertainty in love, finding out what life is all about, navigating feelings, and through that damn cheesy handshake hug. It's all genuinely pure and wholesome love that connects what they didn't get to explore in childhood with one another. When Snake opened that piss covered locker and saved Otacon, he brought his own salvation into his life without knowing it. The very presence of Otacon saved Snake. It's why MGS4 felt so depressing for me especially, the strain between Snake and Otacon left a hole in my little heart and made Snake feel even more hopeless.
I also want to talk about how Snake benefited Otacon.
Otacon begins as cowardly and timid, he's an incredibly insecure character that struggles to connect with others, probably stemming from the issues in his younger life. When he meets Snake, he's faced with someone he could relate to that has an outward appearance that makes him seem so much more confident than he is. Snake is not this, he's as insecure as Otacon. Indirectly, Snake is the whole reason Otacon gets on his feet to take action against terrorism, takes action to become a better person. Snake shows Hal that he doesn't haven't to be strong to do the right thing. Throughout time, Snake helps Otacon come to terms with his own self worth and issues.
In MGS2, it has one of my favorite examples. The infamous bro hug scene.
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Before it, this is when Otacon allows himself to open up about his childhood, not even just Infront of Snake, Infront of Raiden too. This showcased such a development in his character because he's proudly talking about it, while even through tears he doesn't hide it anymore.
Did you know that during that scene if you pan the camera to Snake, you can see that he is crying too?
When Hal has a breakdown over his sister's death, Snake is there to comfort him as well as tell him how it is in bluntness with a hand on his back that he needs to save people. It isn't cold or callous, it's letting Otacon know that he has something worth fighting for after a loss like that. Then when they face one another, they embrace each other and Snake tells Hal that he believes in him. Hal spent a lot of time as a scientist, hoping for someone to believe in him, while Snake puts all of his belief into Hal.
I can never forget the iconic "You're the only god I can pray to, Otacon" line. Snake has a deep loyalty, love, and belief in Otacon that Otacon has never been truly given before.
They both, in turn love each other till the end of their lives. Their love was one of the most heart wrenching and beautiful things in Metal Gear Solid and it's no surprise it captivated so many people. Their relationship, whether you ship them or just see them as a bromance. There is no denying the love they feel for one another as friends or lovers is one of the most iconic and sweetest bromances out theres They have impacted so much pop culture and I love them forever, as I'm sure many of you do who read all the way to the bottom.
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