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tired-and-ticklish · 3 months

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Bonding Exercise

Sequel to “Rough Day”

Summary: Angel and Husk try to escape Charlie’s new idea for a bonding exercise, but The Princess, her girlfriend, and a certain Radio Demon are persistent.

TW: Tickling (slightly intense), Swearing, Slight Restraints, Alastor being a bastard, References to Alastor’s past, Angel Dust being Angel Dust.

Disclaimer: I do not support V*v*z*epop, I simply like the characters and exploring their dynamics, usually in silly ways.

Part Three

“One~”

Despite the distance the two demons had put between themselves and the Radio Demon, they both could clearly hear his voice, accentuating how absolutely fucked they were. Angel was a bit faster, his longer legs giving him an advantage, but Husk wasn’t far behind, running quicker than he ever had in his life or unlife.

“Split up!” Angel exclaimed, quickly turning down a random hallway.

“Don’t need to fucking tell me twice!” Husk replied, almost skidding to a halt as he course-corrected down an entirely different hallway.

Charlie stopped upon seeing them both go in different directions, pouting slightly “Now who do we go after?”

“How about you two go after our effeminate fellow, and I’ll go after Husker?” Alastor suggested, though Vaggie raised an eyebrow.

“We’re not trying to torture them.” The bodyguard replied, to which the deer waved a hand.

“If I intended to torture either of those two, everyone would know.” Alastor replied, the radio effects of his voice becoming more sinister, but just for a moment. “No, I simply think our dear bartender needs to smile a bit more!”

“Come on Vaggie, I think I know where Angel’s running!” Charlie exclaimed, grabbing her girlfriend by the arm before she could protest and starting down a different hallway.

Vaggie couldn’t help but give Charlie a smile, despite thinking the whole idea was a bit ridiculous. Still, it gave her an excuse to get Angel back for all the times the spider demon had messed with them, or done anything that pushed back his ‘progress.’ She also knew she couldn’t find it in herself to say ‘no’ to the Princess, especially when she got that determined glimmer in her eyes.

“Good luck, darlings!” Alastor called as they both ran off, before continuing his own pursuit of the bartender.

—

Angel ran as fast as his legs could carry him, listening for any signs of his pursuers. All he needed to do was get to his room and barricade himself in there until Charlie forgot this whole dumb idea. However, Hell was more likely to freeze over than its Princess giving up or forgetting any of her ideas.

The spider knew his room was close, and he hadn’t seen or heard any of the purseres. Maybe that all went after Husk? A small shudder went up Angel’s spine as he looked behind him. As much as he did not want to be tickled again, the idea of the cat demon being tickled by Charlie, Vaggie, and Alastor was a fate he wouldn’t wish upon anyone in the hotel.

“Oh Angel!” He was torn from his thoughts, looking forward and almost screaming as he saw The Princess and her girlfriend, waiting right in front of his door.

“Found you.” Vaggie said, grinning mischievously.

Angel attempted to turn on his heel, but couldn’t slow down enough for it to be effective. His legs got tangled in one another, and he tumbled to the floor, groaning as he did. Before he could even attempt to get up and flee, the girls were upon him, Vaggie holding his upper pair of arms over his head, while Charlie straddled his waist.

“L-Ladies please,” Angel attempted to beg, tugging his arms as best he could. “Y-You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, we know.” Vaggie said with a sly grin. “But we want to.”

Charlie immediately started skittering her figures on Angel’s stomach, making the spider snicker. Angel attempted to shove the Princess off with his lower set of arms, but anytime he tried, Charlie would ‘accidentally’ tickle a bit harder, making him lose focus.

“C-Chaahahaharlihihihihe wahahahait!”

“Awww but Angel, you look so happy right now!”

“Behehehecause yohohohou’re tihihihihckling mehehehe!”

Angel squealed as Charlie’s claws made their way to his lower set of armpits, shaking his head. In his attempts to plead with the Princess, he didn’t notice until it was too late that Vaggie had changed her position, pinning his upper arms with her legs, soon feeling her fingers on his ribs.

“EEP! NohhoohoHOHOHOT THEHEHEHEHerehehehe!” Angel shrieked, his face turning a light pink shade.

“Hey, Angel, do you have more or less ribs as a spider?” Vaggie asked, ignoring his pleas. “Guess I need to double check.”

“Dohohohon’t YOHOHOOHHOU DAHAHAHRE, Vahahahahagina!”

The pornstar felt Vaggie stop tickling him for a moment, making him realize he had just dug his own second grave. Any begging he could have done was soon cut off by the feeling of the hotel guard’s fingers slowly and torturously dragging over his ribs, followed shortly by her counting.

“SHIHIHIHIT SIHIHIHHIT IHIHIHIHI’M SOHOHOHOHRRY!” Angel cried out, kicking his legs as the girls continued tickling him.

“Two… three… Fiv- Wait, that’s not right.” The spider could practically hear the smirk in Vaggie’s voice “Can you hold still? I’m trying to count.”

“IHIHIHIHI CAHHAHAAN’T!” Angel whined

“Aww, sure you can Angel!” Charlie said encouragingly. “I’ll even go slower so you can focus!”

At that, Angel felt Charlie’s tactic switch from scribbling on his lower armpits, and a finger on each one just slowly start circling around the hollows, driving him up a wall. It tickled just enough to get him giggling, but also left him wanting more. The spider was starting to get the suspicion that somehow, someway, the girlfriends had gotten Cherri Bomb to tell them exactly how to destroy him.

“Five… six… Huh, you’re actually doing a good job.” Vaggie said as she tickled between his ribs “Guess the redemption work is paying off.”

“Well, he hasn’t asked us to stop.” Charlie pointed out, making Angel’s face turn an even darker shade of pink. “Maybe he’s enjoying this~?”

Fuck, despite how kind Charlie was, she was absolutely fucking evil when it came to tickling.

—-

Alastor hummed as he casually walked the direction Husk went. Sure, the Radio Demon could simply summon the bartender to him, but where was the fun in that? If there was one thing he loved more than the act of killing, it was the thrill of the chase. The fear and desperation in people’s eyes, the absolute panic that washed over as they were cornered, before he descended upon them.

An expression he’d like to see on that obnoxious, pompous, piece of shit television one day.

It was an expression he had seen Husker make many times over their years knowing each other. Though, often that was because the cat had done something to make the deer angry. Now? Now, Alastor would be seeing the hotel’s dear bartender making that expression for an entirely different reason.

It was one of the reasons he suggested to be the one to go after Husk. Not just due to their longer time knowing each other, but because the Radio Demon was already aware of what would cause the cat to break from his usual grumpy demeanor. Surely, people would assume Alastor of all people would think tickling was a waste of time, but oh, how he enjoyed it.

Spending time with both Husk and Niffty, he had learned a few things. Specifically, the maid wasn’t at all ticklish, whereas the bartender was entirely too ticklish for his own good. If nothing else, Alastor was known for dealing in extremes.

“Ah, there you are!” Alastor exclaimed, seeing Husk had run himself into a corner, the cat quickly turning to look at him.

“Shit, fuck, dammit!” A string of expletives left the bartender’s mouth as he tried to look for a way to escape. Any hopes of that were cut off by the shadows that followed the Radio Demon pinned the cat to the wall. “Look, boss, t-this whole thing is ridiculous.”

“Oh, on the contrary, Husker, I think this will be quite enjoyable!” Alastor said, looking the bartender over. So many good places to start, and each eliciting a different reaction from Husk.

Husk, meanwhile, tried to free himself. If he hadn’t known any better, the cat would have assumed Alastor somehow planned all of this. Which, he really couldn’t put past the deer, but planning for Nift to tickle Angel, leading to this whole thing? That was the type of planning not even the Radio Demon could come up with.

Mostly because no one could really ‘plan’ for anything with it came to the hotel maid.

“I recall this,” Alastor began, the claws on his right hand gently wiggling on Husk’s chin. “Being a wonderful place to start.”

The reaction was instant, the cat’s fur quickly puffing up slightly as he bit his lip. He wasn’t going to give the bastard the satisfaction, not if he could help it. Of course, he had tried, and failed, in the past, but that didn’t mean he was just going to give in to the Radio Demon’s antics.

“Still trying that tactic, are we?” The deer hummed in amusement, moving his other hand to Husk’s side. “I never understand why you must make things so difficult!”

A few snickers came out, but the bartender was determined, trying to squirm away from Alastor’s hands. Said hands simply followed where the cat moved. Now, Alastor could use his powers to tickle multiple spots at once, but that was something reserved for those who pissed him off enough to face his wrath, but not enough to where he’d be satisfied by killing them.

“You know, Husker,” Alastor said casually, like he wasn’t tickling the demon before him. “When we were filming that ridiculous commercial for the hotel, I had half a mind to have our darling Niffty tickle you, just off-camera, so you’d be smiling!”

“Bihihihihite me!” Husk replied, doing his best to glare at the Overlord.

“A poor choice of words, considering who you’re talking to.” The Radio Demon chuckled, now slowly moving his left hand toward the bartender’s side. “You should really think before you speak.”

Husk tried to growl at Alastor, but it was cut off by the ticklish feeling on his side. More snickers gave way, the cat demon’s lips forming a wobbly smile despite his best efforts. He felt the deer’s right hand move from his chin and start poking his ribs, making the bartender snort a bit. He knew the deer was messing with him, taking his time before going right for Husk’s death spot.

“I never tire of counting your ribs, Husker.” Alastor mused. “Afterall, I need to make sure you’re all together!”

“Yohohohohou cohohohohocky bahahahastard!” Husk retorted.

Alastor tsked, and the cat felt himself start to panic as the Overlord’s hands went toward his stomach. “Always with the fowl language, that should be reserved for birds!”

If Husk could groan, he would. Of course Alastor had to get one of his stupid ‘jokes’ in while the bartender couldn’t just walk out of the room. Though, the puns did help whenever the Radio Demon wanted Angel Dust to leave him alone. He didn’t know what was worse, the Overlord’s love of ‘dad jokes’, or his insatiable sadistic streak.

“Wohohohuld yoohohhou stohohohp- FUHUUHUHUHCK!” Husk exclaimed as Alastor scratched and clawed at his stomach. The first of the bartender’s worst spots.

Once he was sure Husk couldn’t escape, Alastor snapped his fingers, causing the shadows to let him go as the bartender slid to the floor, still trying to run away from the Radio Demon’s fingers. The deer poked and prodded, even circling a finger slowly around where the cat’s belly button would be.

“Don’t cats enjoy having their stomachs petted?” Alastor teased, a small laugh track coming from him.

“THAHAHAT’S dohohohohohgs yohohoHOHOHO PRIHIHIHICK!”

“Ah, forgive me.” Alastor said, not at all sounding apologetic “I was never a ‘dog’ person. Cats are much more amusing!”

“Thhihihihihis IHIHIHISN’T AMUHuhuhuhuhumsing!”

“You’re entitled to your opinion, but you wouldn’t be laughing if it wasn’t!”

Husk was going to kill him. Okay, no, he wasn’t that stupid or reckless, but he was going to make sure the Radio Demon paid for this. However, Husk’s plans of revenge were cut off by the feeling of two of Alastor’s tendrils stroking his wings, causing the bartender to scream with laughter.

“You know, I think Niffty needs to brush your wings soon, when was the last time she did that?” Alastor asked, despite knowing Husk wouldn’t be able to answer.

Despite both Angel and Husk being tickled out of their minds, they both hated to admit they were having fun. Maybe Charlie’s idea wasn’t so dumb.

#hazbin hotel tickle #tickle fic #tickle #lee!angeldust #lee!husk #ler!vaggie #ler!charlie #ler!alastor #a LOT of ya'll wanted part 2 so here you go #will there be a part 3? probably. Angel and Husk need their revenge #sorry it cuts off weirdly I wanted to finish this before I disappear for a week to spend time with my bf

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shadow4-1 · 4 months

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Got You! - Ghost x Reader Oneshot (NSFW)

please mind the tags on this one! this one is especially dark! tags: heavy noncon, slight dubcon, some torture, predator/prey dynamics

Summary: Being on the frontline as a Kortac hacker is just another job for you. But after a mission goes sideways, you find yourself in the clutches of a broken yet monstrous man they call Ghost.

You typed quickly and quietly on your tablet. A thick cord wormed its way from a port in its back all the way into a wall of servo units. The wall blinked and hummed, some lights flickering as you did your job and did it well.

"I can't believe they're paying so much for such little data." You murmured to yourself, eyeing the storage left on your removable drives. It was less than a couple gigabytes of intel. Off in the distance, you heard a few pops of gunfire, your fellow Kortac members keeping the area secure for you in particular.

"What a weird place to put this shit." You murmured again, glancing around at the room.

You couldn't remember where, in what country you were exactly. This was your third intel op for the week, it was all beginning to blend together. First time had been Russia, and then Spain, and then...Morroco? You were in Morroco, right? Based on the soft rug beneath your knees, the cotton drapes, and the casual color scheme, you supposed so.

All that mattered was getting the hell out of dodge. You half glanced back down at your tablet, another five minutes to completion. Most of the lights on the racks of servers had turned red, a sure sign you were doing your job correctly. Although, the more you looked around the stranger it all felt. Yes, you were a talented hacker. You'd worked hard to get where you were, but your instincts had never let you down either. Something about a server room being in the living room of a Moroccan household didn't seem right.

You heard some more insistent pops of gunfire. They weren't as far away as before. Your heart began to thump with the beginnings of anxiety. Leo, your main escort, was sure to be just outside of the cinderblock house. A part of you wanted to run to him, but you had to stop yourself. Three minutes, and you'd be able to get the hell out of there.

The pops of gunfire quickly became sprays. You heard something shatter across the street. Fuck.

"Leo!" You hissed out, grabbing your tablet, readying to rip the cord out of the back. "I almost got it!"

Thirty seconds. Come on. Come on!

Leo burst through the door, slamming it behind him. He huffed with adrenaline, forcing the door to lock and slamming a nearby bookcase against it. The gunfire was outside. You heard some yelling and returning fire. A man cried out in pain, you guessed one of yours. The glass of the living room window exploded.

Luckily for you, the servo units blocked your body from the main impact. Unluckily for your tablet, it was knocked from your grip. It skidded across the floor, screen shattered with a hole in the center.

A sniper.

You tried to reach out for your trusty tablet, but Leo had other ideas. With one of his large, tan arms, he hooked it around your center and yanked you upwards. Before you could even question him, he began to pull you towards the direction of the back of the house. Sprigs of his usually neat, slicked back hair fell across his forehead. He looked worried, an expression you were not used to seeing on the normally jubilant man.

"Leo, wha-"

You were cut off by the sound of the front door and bookcase splintering inwards. Daylight streamed into the dark house, making it harder to see. Leo practically picked you up and carried you as he ran. There was a long hallway with multiple doors that he locked behind you until finally, your path ended in a bedroom. The layout of this house was strange, but you hoped that it would help throw off your pursuers for just long enough that you could escape. It seemed Leo was thinking the same thing.

"Come on, girlie! The window, quick!" He huffed out through his thick, Australian accent. You happily obeyed, trying desperately to lift up the sill of the nearest window.

"It won't move!" You cried, throwing your entire shoulder against the small ledge. You yelped out in pain, multiple nails had pricked your palm. "It's nailed shut!"

There was a sickening crash from somewhere on the other side of the door. Leo stood tall, his rifle in hand, ready to blast a hole through whoever was planning on coming through. He looked over his shoulder, his brows furrowed in determination. Somehow, his energy was what you needed to keep from falling into a pure panic.

"Try the other one, girl! Kick it out 'f ya 'ave to!" He commanded, his low voice like a spell.

You climbed up onto the bed in the corner of the room. Sure enough, there was a skylight within reaching distance. You threw your body up the wall, the metal bed frame squeaking and shaking beneath you. You clawed and scratched, your fingertips barely making it to the ledge.

"I can't reach!" You cried. "M' too short!"

Leo made an aggravated noise in his throat, but it wasn't directed towards you. Out in the hall, there was the unmistakable sound of a door being kicked open. You glanced down at Leo, tears pricking in the corner of your eyes.

So this was it, huh?

Fucking weeks, months, of being stationed with this random man, and this was how both of you were to die. Cornered and helpless in a foreign country. A part of you supposed that maybe it was meant to be. Leo had always been kind of sweet to you in comparison to the rest of the men you worked with. Hopefully, your shared end would be quick.

Leo's eyes quickly swapped between you, the skylight, and the door. He blinked and then jumped up onto the bed with one stride. You squeaked as he pushed you to the wall, lifted the butt of his rifle, and knocked the glass out with a singular, smooth motion.

"Leo wai-"

He didn't wait. He dropped his rifle on the bed, hooked his hands underneath your thighs, and lifted you easily. Despite his help, you only managed to be tall enough to get your arms through the windowsill, but it was enough.

The door to the bedroom was thrown open with so much force that it caused the plaster of the wall to crack. Leo turned his back to the wall, letting your legs kick off his shoulders.

"It was a pleasure!" He called up to you, voice cracking.

"LEO!" You cried.

A folley of shots flashed from a muzzle in the doorway. Leo let out a garbled growl, reaching for his knife in its holster. He surged forward with his weapon, blood spots leaking into the back of his canvas vest. Leo was dying, and yet he kept fighting.

Fighting for you.

You refused to let his sacrifice be in vain. You turned your attention back to the roof beneath your fingers. The skylight was part of the floor of the flat roof of the house. If you managed to get your body through the sill, you could potentially be able to run from rooftop to rooftop to safety.

You used what little leverage you had in your arms and legs to push yourself up. It hurt, the glass dug into your fatigues and was no doubt embedding itself into your skin, but you hardly felt it.

Leo called out your name in a gritted scream.

You had to keep going.

Tears pricked in your eyes. You kept squirming and clawing your way up, pulling your right knee through the window. That was the final amount of leverage you needed. With a hard kick, you threw yourself a couple feet away from the skylight. You sucked in a well needed breath and turned over to fall on your knees.

You'd made it.

All you had to do was stand up and make a running jump to the next banister. You presumed it couldn't have been more than five feet away. Totally doable, even for your smaller stature. You got your right foot underneath you, using your hands to push up from the floor.

Something wrapped around your right ankle, squeezing so impossibly tight you felt the joints squeak. You cried out in pain, trying to right yourself, but falling onto your left side. You looked down at your legs to see what had ahold of you.

Fear froze you in place.

Through the darkened hole of the skylight, surrounded by broken glass, was the dark figure of a man's head. He was covered in all black, save for the bleached white skull he stared at you through. His eyes were so dark and smothered in kohl that only the whites of his eyes were truly visible.

He looked alien.

And he had a terrifyingly casual hold of your ankle with only one hand.

"Got you..." He hummed, his voice deep and dark and dangerous.

The panic finally kicked in, in full force. You screamed and threw your entire body weight away from the strange monster of a man. It seemed he anticipated your move because he tugged back at the same time you tried to surge forward. You gained absolutely no ground.

Tears began to blind your vision and you clawed and kicked with your free foot. You miscalculated. The extra foot was his next target. With his other hand, he snatched your free ankle into his grip.

You fell to the ground, kicking and screaming. Your leg muscles burned, your heart felt like it was about to explode with panic. You tried so desperately to use what was last of your strength to wiggle free, but it was no use.

With one very hard yank, he pulled you backward. In what felt like slow motion you watched as you were torn away from the sunny afternoon, the terracotta bricks and laundry clotheslines of freedom. You fell down and down and down into the darkness of the bedroom prison that was sure to be your tomb. Your nails caught on the texture of the wall as you belly flopped onto the bed below.

All of the air was forced out of your lungs. The fall had only been a few feet, but the impact of hitting your ribcage on the metal bedsprings of the mattress was enough to wind you. You sputtered and coughed, subconsciously curling up on yourself. The blankets tangled into the soles of your boots as you tried to put distance between yourself and your attacker.

A beat passed, and you gasped out, finally getting a lung full of air. You panted hard, putting your arms over your face, expecting a flurry of blows or a knife in your ribs.

"Who do you work for?" The man asked as he slowly stepped off the bed with heavy, measured footsteps.

Hysterically, you sobbed, refusing to look at his masked face. Despite your fear, you felt him come around the side of the bed to lean over your face. In a complete panic move, you kicked yourself backward, only serving to push yourself deeper into the corner of the bed against the wall.

It seemed the masked man's patience was dwindling. He roughly grabbed you by the shoulder and shook you with enough force to slam the back of your head against the wall. The pain, luckily, did clear your head enough to actually answer the question he asked.

"K-KORTAC!" You stammered out. "I-I work for K-Kortac! C-cyber tech o-operator!"

The man looked down at you with an odd sort of interest. He looked down at your legs, seemingly off in thought. The light that filtered down from the broken window cast him half in shadow and half in light. Behind him, on the floor, lay a body in a growing pool of blood.

"Leo..." You hiccuped out in recognition, feeling an intense pull of hysteria.

The man didn't even glance back at your fallen comrade. Instead, slowly, his eyes panned up your body until his gaze landed right on the Kortac chest insigna of your kit. Tears plinked down your lashes and into the canvas material.

The mystery man clicked a button on a comm unit tacked to the front of his vest. A man on the other end yelled out a callsign through static.

"Ghost! Ghost! How copy?" The voice had an accent you couldn't make out in your addled state.

"Copy, Soap." The masked man (Ghost, you presumed) spoke back. "Get to exfil now. Don't wait for me."

"But Ghost-"

"I said don't wait for me, sergeant." Ghost nearly yelled in annoyance. "Exfil in 40, out."

He stopped pressing the button on his comm unit and looked down at you once more. His expression was unreadable. You tried to make yourself seem as small as possible before him.

Ghost slowly glanced over his shoulder with only his eyes. He seemed to give Leo's dead body a short once over before he focused his attention on you again.

"You shag 'im?" He asked.

"Wh-...what?"

"You shag 'im?" He asked again, this time using your name to make the question somehow even more personal.

You looked up at him in a mix of horror and revulsion. What kind of question was that? This man had pursued you like an animal, murdered one of the few men you respected in cold blood, and now wanted to know if you'd been fucking that man while his dead body was still warm?

"F-fuck you." You choked out. Despite feeling drained off all your physical strength, you still had some mental fortitude left.

Ghost let out a soft huff. Whether or not it was a noise of amusement or annoyance, you couldn't tell.

You screeched as he grabbed the front of your kit with one hand. He lifted you out of the corner and slammed you back down in the center of the bed. The metal base squeaked and groaned but held up beneath the impact of your body again. You yelped out as he took his other hand and pulled out a wicked looking knife from his belt. The edges glinted with red, drying blood.

You tried to bat away his hand but he was significantly stronger than you. Even with all your might, he didn't budge. Running on pure fear and self-preservation, you dipped your head down towards his wrist. You clamped your teeth down hard against his gloves. He brought the knife up to your kit but stopped.

He made that noise again. And this time, it seemed to border on amusement.

The world turned black for a second.

When you came to, you could taste copper in your mouth. It ran hot down your nose and out the corners of your lips like drool. You groaned out pitifully, your body giving up any and all fight.

The bastard had knocked your lights out.

Despite all of your senses swimming in pain, you could feel your body physically lightening up in weight. With a bloody gurgle, you glanced down. Your kit and utility belt had been cut away, leaving you in just your fatigues.

"There we go. Good girl." He grumbled, putting his knife away. Something about the tenderness of his voice did not match up with his actions.

You whined out a cry, and he let you. He made no move to deck you again. Instead, unzipped your pants, hooked his fingers into the waistband, and yanked down.

You tried to pull your legs up and away but barely managed to twitch them. Your pants grew tangled around your still boot clad ankles. Ghost took absolutely no time in ripping it all off your body, making you sob as he twisted your already sore ankles.

"Stop..." You hiccuped weakly. "Please."

Roughly, he pushed the hem of your longsleeve up and over your breasts. He jerked it up over your shoulders so hard the fabric snapped and ripped. He threw the ruined garment to the side, seemingly too enraptured by the sight of your near naked body.

Weakly, you put a hand up to his chest as he put his knee up on the bed. There was no strength behind your push, and it seemed to amuse him. He let out a cruel chuckle and pinned your hand over your head as he positioned his entire body between your thighs.

Tears spilled so freely down your cheeks and neck that they soaked the bedsheets beneath your head. This was wrong. He had to know this was wrong. He couldn't do this. Could he?

"Please...no..." You whispered.

He didn't say anything, just breathed in slowly and steadily, eyes roaming over your entire body. He didn't move to touch you, or rip off your panties, or do anything else as monstrous as he'd done before. He just stared at you with an odd sort of fondness.

With his gloved hand he cupped at your face. You whimpered and cowered in his touch, but it was sweet, almost lover like. He wiped as much tears and blood from your face as he could, even taking the corner of a blanket to dab the excess body fluids away.

You were so confused and scared. What the hell was wrong with this guy? If he wasn't going to kill or rape you what did he want?

The hysteria finally set in.

How fucking funny was this? You couldn't find a decent man for years. Leo was the only one to come close, and even then, he was dead. And the two of you had barely been considered acquaintances. This big, fucking hulk of a monster knocked you out, ripped off your clothes, and now wanted to be tender with you all of a sudden?

You giggled once. Then that giggle turned into a chuckle. Soon enough, you were laughing softly against the hand cupping your face.

"I...what do you want?" You managed out between hysterical pants.

He didn't answer, just leaned his body down low over you. The bed protested hard beneath you both but stayed together. Slowly, he began to put his entire weight down on you.

At first, you wheezed, your beaten body unable to handle the load on top of it. Eventually, after enough time, you began to melt beneath him. Despite the discomfort of everything, his body felt warm and solid... and almost safe in a fucked up way you couldn't explain.

Ghost slid his other hand between you, cracking your legs apart. His still clothed core pressed up against yours. You knew that the too hard lump straining against the fabric was definitely not a gun.

"Why?" You asked meekly. "Why are you doing this?"

The man buried his mask clad face into the crook of your neck. He inhaled sharply before slowly breathing out.

"Mine." He admitted, giving your body an experimental thrust.

He groaned low in his throat. Again and again he thrust hard against your center, his cock grinding into your panty clad entrance.

What did he mean he "mine"? He was trying to fuck your forcefully pliant body. This man was a fucking lunatic. What in the godforsaken world di-

The head of his cock brushed up against the mound of your cunt. Despite the layers of clothes between them the head found its way just deep enough between your lips that he brushed up against your clit. Tears pricked in your eyes. Again and again and again, he pleasured you with each cant of his hips. You cried at the feeling. He wiped the tears away sweetly.

Why didn't he just rape you hard? Why did he have to drag this out, make it sweet? If he wanted your body so bad why didn't he just take it? He obviously had no qualms about using force.

"Thas' it, love." He murmured softly. "Just like that."

Was this some kind of sick fantasy? Did he truly believe you were into this? Or was he just pretending you were to fulfill some kind of fucked up need for human closeness?

He kept rutting against you, mumbling quietly against your neck. Most of it was filthy name calling, the rest was too damn sweet for the act he was committing.

"Fuckin' pretty thing you are. Not getting away from me." He muttered, seemingly half out of his mind. "Never getting away from me. Ever again."

You were so confused. Since when had you ever met this man before? You were certain you would've remembered him and all of his monstrous qualities. You tried hard to squirm away from his touch, but he kept you right where he wanted you to be.

"Never again, love. Not letting you slip through m' fingertips again." With his free hand, he pulled the front of your sports bra down. One of your breasts popped free of its confines and into his view.

"No please..." You begged.

"Should've thought of that before you ran off." He growled.

Words relaying your confusion immediately died in your throat. Ghost tugged the bottom portion of his mask up and then proceeded to pull your nipple into his mouth. He bit you hard, making you scream before letting up. He lapped at the aching bud, forcing it to harden into a throbbing peak. As if just to spite you, he traced your areola with his tongue, making your entire body shake with whiplash from the pleasure.

"Stop please!" You begged. "You're hurting me."

Ghost made that huffing noise again, his breath cooling the saliva against your nipple. He pulled your other breast out and pressed the two together. He swiped the flat of his tongue over both buds. You squeaked and tossed your head back.

"Thought you could hide behind your lil' computer, love?" He growled out, his drool leaking between your tits. "Thought I'd never find you?"

"Wha-?"

"Thought you could just drop off the face of th' Earth n' I'd never find you again?" He nearly yelled. "Should've known a slag like you was just in it for a paycheck."

"I don't...what?" You tried. "What do you mean?"

Ghost sat up to glower over your face. His jaw was set hard. You could see the veins in his neck since he'd pulled his mask up to his nose. You blinked tears out of your eyes. What you thought was the shadow of his jugular turned out to be the corner of a neck tattoo. One you immediately recognized.

"S-Simon?"

Despite his obviously bad mood he still managed to crack a smile. It was genuine and yet still so full of malice. His grin was still as beautiful as the night you'd met him. And the night you'd chosen to run away.

"I was scared!" You cried out in admittance.

"You were scared?" He chuckled. "When every night you were in my bed n' cummin' on me?"

It had been years since you'd seen him. You'd been mere weeks out of university, adrift and broke, but with a shiny new certificate in computer science. Just to get a free meal here and there, you'd found yourself going out on dates with random men. You'd never had much luck with men, and so it was easy to forget their many faces.

But Simon's you could never forget.

He'd been quiet, almost too quiet. He'd exclusively asked you questions about yourself in a much meeker voice. Come to think of it, he'd sounded like a different person the whole time. Did he do it on purpose so as not to intimidate you? Or was it a side effect of the pills he was taking while he'd been on medical leave?

He'd made it clear the two of you weren't going to be long term. And you were okay with that. It wasn't until you got a job at a programming firm that he started getting leery. When you made it clear your fling of a relationship wasn't going to work he'd retreated. And then he came back...lurking in the shadows.

"I-you were stalking me!"

"You still have no idea what I've done for you."

For a moment the two of you looked at each other. The pure terror of a moment ago was starting to wash away. This man was no longer a complete, deranged stranger willing to murder you in cold blood. He was still unhinged and dangerous, but he'd shown he wasn't going to kill you immediately. Your chances of getting out of this situation were much more likely. You appreciated those odds.

"What did you-"

"Y' think i' was a coincidence?" He hummed, cocking his head slightly. "Getting that job. N' endin' up here?"

"Simon-"

"You were meant for me." Ghost said with pure conviction. "You were meant to be next to me...under me."

The egoistical side of you wanted to fight, to scream, to make it clear you'd never want him ever again. The other side was absolutely certain that to live through this encounter was to appeal to him. You'd done it before and it'd worked. It was partially why you'd slept with him so much back then. And why you'd forced yourself to cuddle into his iron grip afterwards.

"On your back. On your knees..." He kept trailed off, eyes drooping in arousal. You felt a hard twitch between your legs.

Your stomach lurched at the thought of your dead, fucked out body being haphazardly tossed on top of Leo's. You needed to live. You'd do whatever you had too. And you knew what'd it take.

"S-Simon...I-look I'm sorry." You swallowed hard, tasting nothing but copper. "You scare me sometimes, but I-I still really care about you."

"Don't lie to me, lovie." He scoffed. The usage of his old nickname made you shudder.

"Simon...I've never stopped thinking about y-you." You sighed out, feeling your skin flush with embarrassment for admitting such a thing. It was marginally a lie since you mostly thought about him with fear in your heart. But there was a part of you who missed his body, his hands, and how'd he'd fuck you apart night after night.

"Please....I-" You slowly moved to sit up on your elbows. As you did your core inadvertently brushed against him. A warm jolt of pleasure shot up through your spine and you couldn't help but bite your lip.

There was a new tension in the air.

"Always such a fuckin' minx." Ghost growled.

"J-just for you." You admitted, forcing your gaze away from Leo's body. "I swear..."

"I know." Ghost hummed, cupping your face in his palm. The sweet gesture made your lashes flutter.

"You're a good girl." He said, as if off in thought. "Just needed a break. N' now you're back, back w' me."

"I..." You blinked, feeling tears well in your eyes. You were playing right into his hand. You knew it, and yet...a part of you didn't care.

He'd pulled strings, murdered and God knows what else just to give you a life outside of him. It'd all been one big, nasty lie just to make you feel good. Just so your inevitable fall back into his arms would feel earned. Because you didn't earn anything. Your entire life trajectory had been an unearned lie. But somehow, someway, you'd earned his affections. And that was all that seemingly mattered in your life.

"Mm...missed you, love." He sighed.

With that he kissed you softly. He was too sweet, too loving. It made your heart ache. You couldn't stop the few sobs that escaped. He didn't seem to care as he licked over your blood tinged tongue. He tasted like he'd always had. Like fresh cigarettes and bitter pine. Your head swam.

"Fuck. M' missed the way you taste." Ghost sighed, licking his lips.

He roughly tugged your panties, making the stitching pop, forcing the elastic to dig into your flushed skin.

"W-wait I-" You squeaked.

It didn't matter. With an easy flick of his wrist the entire garment came off with a rip. The amount of strength and tension used on the cotton practically burned your skin as it was forced off of you. You cried out in discomfort, trying desperately to close your legs, but it was of no use.

Without another second to lose, Ghost hooked his arms up beneath your legs and forced them up. He pushed them back so hard and so quickly he forced the air out of your lungs. You gasped, trying to right yourself.

"There w' go." He growled, staring at your now bare cunt, your knees up to your ears. He kissed your mound, nuzzling his nose into the dusting of hair, breathing you in.

A part of you felt disgusted. You'd been sweating out in the desert, sweating in fear of him, and it seemed he was drinking it all in. Truly a beast he was.

"See you haven't shaved." He hummed, giving a few broad laps to your folds. With each lick, a bit of his thick saliva grew matted into the light dusting of hair. You whimpered.

"Good." He chuckled.

You yelped when he slipped his tongue into you. It was thick and wide and he'd never had any issues getting you open this way. He much preferred to lick your cunt lips apart to accommodate him than sully his fingers. You hated this despite how good it felt. His fingers were always a bit less personal. This way? You had no choice but to watch as he devoured you like a starving man.

You supposed he was.

He'd made it clear you were his and his alone. And if that was the case, then he was only yours too. At least, you'd hoped so. You hoped no other woman would ever be subjected to this torment.

You cried out, legs shaking from the stress but also the pleasure. You tried so hard not to watch him drill his fat tongue right between your lips. He was drooling, his saliva spilling down and down over your neglected clit and onto your squashed tits. He wiggled his tongue in a way that brushed over that rough spot he liked torment. He bullied the tip of his tongue as deep as he could, letting it point right between the gummy ridges of your g-spot. You couldn't help yourself.

It'd been years.

Every man you'd ever talked to had scorned you or disgusted you. You'd never wanted to touch one until Leo had come into your life. And even then, he was untouchable. You'd been too nervous to flirt. At the time you didn't know why, but now, you'd subconsciously known you'd had a skull on your back. Perhaps you were getting a slight kindness for staying untouched all this time.

You cried as you came. Your hips bucked and writhed. Your spine protested, your head swam from the lack of blood flow. Everything floated away for a gorgeous second before your soul slammed back into your addled body.

"Fuckin' 'ell..." Ghost purred. As he talked a wetness spilled out of his mouth. For a brief second you wondered if he was really drooling that much. "C'mon, lovie. Give it to me."

"Wha-"

Ghost latched onto your clit and sucked so hard you screamed. You felt two of his fingers slip inside you with no resistance. They bullied that spot again while he forced pleasure out of your nub. The first orgasm didn't have a chance to fade into an afterglow. The second orgasm came quickly. It burned. Your belly muscles didn't even have a chance to relax.

"Simon!" You mewled, absolutely lost.

He wouldn't stop. He kept taking and taking and taking. He let his teeth graze at the sensitive flesh of your clit. You saw stars again. This time, the orgasm was so violent you screamed. Every bone in your body shook. Your eyes rolled up into the back of your head.

You came to with the warm splashes of wetness against your breasts. A familiar and yet foreign pressure in your belly was being released. More warm wetness dripped quickly onto your neck and chin. You let out a weak cry.

When you finally managed to open your bleary eyes you realized what'd happened. The entire bottom half of Ghost's face was shiny with slick. He huffed against you with pure excitement in his eyes. Your cum coated the inside of his mouth with the telltale sheen of cream.

"Knew you were a squirter." He grinned at you.

It was as if your orgasm was a feast for him. He hungrily lapped every ounce of your relief off of your body. To get to your cummy chest he released your legs. They fell apart, and you groaned in relief. Fresh blood finally flowed to your head, and you grew dizzy.

"Ah ah, no goin' soft in th' head on me now, lovie." Simon hummed as he laved his big tongue over your wet breasts. He slapped your cheek. Not enough to really hurt you, but certainly enough to clear up the stars in your eyes.

"Simon..." You hiccuped.

"Only got a few minutes left." He mused, eyes scouring over your entirely bare body.

Despite wanting to fight him, your extremities felt like jelly. You couldn't even catch your breath. All you could do was lay there in complete submission.

Without a warning, Ghost used his strength to flip you completely over. He forced you up onto your knees and pressed your face into the now tainted sheets.

You wanted to cry, you wanted to scream, but there wasn't much of a point anymore. No one was coming to help, and even if they did they'd be dead before they could process what was even happening to you. Ghost was going to take you. And you'd asked for it.

It beat death, right?

He entered you roughly from behind. Luckily, he'd prepped you well, so there wasn't any pain. Just the warm, muted burn of him stretching you open for the first time in years. You'd forgotten what the feeling of sex was like. You couldn't help the low groan that escaped your lungs.

Ghost was right there with you. He hissed loudly, gritting his teeth as he sunk right into you. His big, gloved hands palmed roughly at your ass. He forced your cheeks apart to no doubt give him an excellent view of where you joined together. You squeaked when you felt a couple of his thick fingers spread your lips apart even further.

"Fuckin' 'ell." He groaned. "Missed this tight lil' cunt o' yours."

You whimpered.

"Next time I'll make sure you get the fuck you deserve, lovie." He growled. "But m' runnin' short on time."

"Si-."

A hand roughly grabbed your throat and squeezed. You opened your mouth in shock but nothing came out. No words, no air, just a silent shock.

Ghost began to move, fucking you roughly. He wasted no time in forcing his fat cock back into those parts of yourself you didn't know existed. He kept his grip tight. You couldn't breathe in or out. Tears and panic began to well in your chest.

With the smallest amount of energy you had left, you tried to claw his hands away, but he just choked you tighter. The mix of fear, lack of oxygen, and pleasure was too much for your brain. Black spots began to form in your vision.

"There we...ngh-go." He huffed. Every thrust was punishing. You could feel his sharp hipbones and hefty balls slap into your core. Your only saving grace from the stinging contact was the cushion of your innate softness.

You began to choke. The pressure building in your chest and behind your eyes was immense. The entire room was spinning. Drool spilled past your open, air hungry lips. The black spots began to completely fill your vision. Everything started to float away into that dark, sleepy place.

"Fuck." Ghost panted, his thrusts becoming uneven. "Fuck!"

The moment he came, he let up on your airway.

Everything had turned black for you. When you finally came to, completely out of it, the entire act was over. It hurt to much to move, but you could feel the wet cream between your legs. It had been awhile but you could never forget the feeling of being stuffed with Simon's seed.

His comm unit made a static-y noise and he answered it.

"M' on m' way. Five minutes to exfil." He hummed. "N' I managed to catch a lil' bird."

Ghost didn't wait for his teammate to respond, instead he lazily got off the bed. He eyed your body, smirked, then pulled his mask back down.

"I hope you learned your lesson, lovie." He said, lovingly rubbing your cheek. "Time t' come home."

You couldn't make any noise, your voice stolen from you. You couldn't even swallow. All you could do was lay there and look at him as he took to work getting you dressed again. He was haphazard and rough. Anything he couldn't put back on you, he didn't. The last thing he adorned you with were ziptie handcuffs to your hands and feet.

Ghost then threw you over his shoulder and headed back out the way he came. He didn't even bother to walk over Leo's corpse. Instead, he opted to step directly onto the dead man's head. You closed your eyes and desperately tried to block out the sickening, wet sound.

The sunlight burned but its blinding, white rays were welcoming. You'd never thought you'd see the light of day again, and so the blistering heat of it was welcome. Something told you to relish in it, as it might be awhile before you'd get to see it again.

The position over Ghost's shoulder made it impossible to look up. The only thing you could see were the back of his legs and feet. However, you could hear the sound of men yelling and running around. They began to get washed out by a helicopter whirring, it's blades cutting the air and cooling the sweat on your skin.

Ghost stepped onto the helicopter and unceremoniously dropped you to the metal plated floor. You couldn't even groan in pain as your leg took the brunt of the fall. All you could do was lay there, restrained and in so many different versions of pain.

The small grouping of men in tactical gear hungrily eyed your body. Each one was more distinctive than the last. One of them slow whistled and when he spoke you recognized him as the man over the comm unit.

All of the men, including Ghost, stood around you. They discussed your fate, each one getting more and more creative as they went on. The one in charge, the one with the beard smiled sweetly down at you. He wiped a stray tear away from your face with the back of his curled index finger.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Simon. We'll get 'er to sing for us."

In that moment, you realized you should've asked Leo to shoot you when you had the chance.

#simon riley x reader #cod fanfic #simon ghost riley #call of duty #cod imagines #mw2 headcanons #captain price

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wen-kexing-apologist · 4 months

Text

Kiss-eki: Dear to Me

*Kicks open door*

SURPRISE BITCHES! I am several days late and hundreds of dollars short, but I did finally *finally* decide to watch Kiseki: Dear to Me in an attempt to add one more show to the Completed Watchlist for 2023. This was a show I was planning on watching a bit earlier, probably closer to the time it was actually airing, because I'd heard it was ridiculous and thought it would be a good show to have on in the background during work. But @ginnymoonbeam had my best interests at heart and told me that I Absolutely Could Not Do That because There Was Body Language Dammit!

If I have not made it clear, THANK YOU FOR SAVING ME, GINNY!

Kiseki was absolutely wild and completely insane if you try to describe a single aspect of the plot whatsoever, but I would have given it a ten off sheer entertainment value if it wasn't for those back to back fake outs with Chen Yi being shot and Fan Ze Riyu being stabbed. But, I digress. I have only seen three things from Taiwan at this point, but those three shows have provided quite a lot of evidence to the claim that Taiwan is nearly unparalleled in their ability to portray domesticity and physical chemistry. I have also heard that Taiwan has a tendency to create content on more taboo subjects, and Kiseki was my first forray in to that side of Taiwan considering Ai Di and Chen Yi are brothers and Bai Zong Yi is a minor when he starts his relationship with Fan Ze Riu. I think both of these subjects were very smartly handled in their set up and their structure. I normally hate the like, adoptive siblings falling in love thing, cause like...that's your sibling, but they don't give us a lot if any flashback to these boys growing up together, and they don't share last names, or really call their adoptive father Dad, so there are quite a number of abstractions in that dynamic that means this is the first time I didn't have a squick about it. And having Fan Ze Riu trying so desperately not to succumb to his feelings for Bai Zong Yi and to put that distance between them, to have Bai Zong Yi be living alone and also be 17 so he's pretty close to legal age, and then to have Bai Zong Yi be the pursuer in their relationship both serve extremely well in making that relationship feel responsibly handled.

I have not been in the tags, so forgive me if this has already been done, but I have not stopped thinking about the first kiss between Ai Di and Chen Yi or the first kiss between Bai Zong Yi and Fan Ze Riu since I saw them and I simply *must* do a scene/body language breakdown about both of them. God, it's good to be back!

[side note: I was going to split this up with funny titles like Cat Boy and Mr. Sulky, but I realized that actually could apply to both couples...]

Ai Di and Chen Yi

Okay FIRST OF ALL, I just want to say that I love Ai Di, I love how ruthless and blood thirsty he is and how incredibly dangerous and scary he could be...if he wasn't so easy to pick up and carry around like a football, or like...a feral, hissing kitten. I am going to focus mostly on the first kiss that Chen Yi initiates with Ai Di because holy shit was there so much complex emotion and reaction packed in to that pretty small moment, but before I do that I am contractually obligated to acknowledge how fucking brilliant it is to show how much/how well Ai Di and Chen Yi know each other, by having Ai Di torture Chen Yi for information by threatening to feed Chen Yi incredibly spicy baby corn AND TO HAVE THAT TACTIC WORK. And to show how much Chen Yi tolerates by having him easily get out of the restraints and tie Ai Di up when he gets bored. Fucking incredible character choice to show how absolutely batshit Ai Di is, fucking incredible relationship choice to show how well Ai Di knows Chen Yi, and fucking incredible choice to use for a call back later. Also, fuck this show for that birthday cake scene! Brutal.

Okay. That said:

You know Ai Di has not for one second stopped loving Chen Yi, and now he is being met with some actual interest from Chen Yi. Chen Yi is full reciprocating what Ai Di has wanted for so long and if this were a typical BL with more simplestic characterization, we would have gotten the moment where Ai Di just melts in to it, fully lets himself have it. Accepts that Chen Yi has woken up, gotten with the program, and is ready to be in a relationship with him. And to be honest, that is what I was expecting. Ai Di has been such a loud and obvious simp for Chen Yi that I thought for a moment he would be the kind of person to let himself have it. To not question it too hard, especially because he is young and impulsive. So imagine my surprise when I got this reaction from him instead:

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Ai Di likes to challenge, likes to push buttons, likes to press. And he starts this scene doing just that. He is on his way to tucking Chen Yi in to bed (folding the edge of the bed spread over him because Chen Yi is drunk off his ass and too heavy for Ai Di to manhandle under the covers. But the second that Chen Yi starts simping over his Boss again, Ai Di stops performing any level of care for Chen Yi, and you can see this little change in his face where he gets annoyed and actually undoes his little moment of care and pulls the bedspread back off of Chen Yi and then he postures and he’s trying to act tough, and he’s needling intentionally, and all of these things where he is trying to be antagonistic to Chen Yi because that is the only way that Ai Di really knows how to express his emotions and he’s butt hurt about Chen Yi once against obsessing over someone Ai Di knows he can’t have when he is right there.

Now, Ai Di gets manhandled a lot by Chen Yi and while he isn’t able to break out of it, he does very often struggle/fight back to get out of Chen Yi’s grip when he’s been baby carried away from a scene like a sack of potatoes. Which is why I do think Ai Di is giving in to his own feelings a bit here because he…doesn’t do that. He lets Chen Yi pull him closer, he lets Chen Yi push him up against the wall. And he’s still needling but it’s all bark, no bite. When he starts calling Chen Yi impotent his face softens looking up at him.

And then Chen Yi goes in for the kiss and Ai Di’s eyes go wide, you can see an entire internal monologue running through his head. I am fairly confident there are some what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck’s going through his head when Chen Yi first kisses him.

gif by @khaotungsfirst

There is a moment, just a moment so quick where Ai Di kisses back, where his heart gets the better of his judgment and he lets himself *have it* for *just* a second, and then his brain snaps back almost immediately and he bites Chen Yi and pushes him away.

And honestly, I do not understand how actors work, because Ai Di’s face twitches. How the fuck does Louis do that?! He’s out of breath, and his mouth is agape, and he looks horrified, and heartbroken, and confused, but maybe a little hopeful. Like he won’t let himself believe that Chen Yi would actually do this. Like he is thinking Chen Yi is doing this out of pity, or just to shut him up, or mess with him. Because Ai Di messes with Chen Yi all the time. This is what Ai Di wants. He wants Chen Yi, but now that he is face to face with the possibility he does not have the ability to believe in it.

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

And in a very rare occurrence he listens to Chen Yi when Chen Yi tells him to get out of his room. The gears are definitely turning, but he simply cannot believe it, and it is so fascinating to me thinking about all these little microexpressive moments we get from Ai Di later on in the show that he really does not believe that Chen Yi kissing him in Episode 6 was Chen Yi actually admitting feelings, because every time that Ai Di tries something like torturing Chen Yi with spicy baby corn, or flirting to try to get Chen Yi to be uncomfortable or to back off, he reacts with genuine confusion when Chen Yi flirts back.

Case in point:

gif by @25shadesoffebruary

gif by @shijiujun

Bai Zong Yi and Fan Ze Riu First Kiss

It’s really interesting for me to compare this kiss to the Ai Di and Chen Yi kiss because they feel like completely mirrored (read: reversed) reactions. Where Ai Di leans in to his kiss for a moment for a moment and then forces himself to push away, preventing further intimacy, Fan Ze Rui forces himself to push away for a moment and then leans in to it, allowing the intimacy to proceed.

gif by @alejunsu

The set up is incredible, and in my opinion, foreshadows the fake amnesia plot in that Ze Rui is absolutely laser focused on his task (treating Zong Yi’s wounds) and intentionally ignoring everything else because he knows that it is irresponsible for him to initiate a relationship with a seventeen year old. Zong Yi is the first to lean in and go for a kiss, and he lingers at a distance that is respectful but with obvious intent for as long as it takes Ze Rui to look up and notice. There is a split second where Ze Rui’s eyes flit down to Zong Yi’s lips, and then he puts himself right back on task. Zong Yi is not to be dissuaded and goes in for the kiss again. Ze Rui notices, and grabs at Zong Yi’s shoulder to stop him, furrowing his brow in what I would consider confusion and focus, but once again his eyes betray him and he looks back at Zong Yi’s lips. This time without looking away, so Zong Yi continues, leaning in slowly and Ze Rui is drawn in at this point, he is frozen there, he isn’t trying to disengage from the inevitable anymore, unable to rebel against his own desire.

gif by @alejunsu

Their lips meet, and to me it looks like Ze Rui is shocked, like his brain has short circuited and he doesn’t know where to go from here. It’s like his body is just reacting and reacting before his brain can catch up with the responsibility. He kisses back before his brain has really processed what is happening, and then he knows he shouldn’t be doing this so he tries to push away in the most half-hearteded attempt to be responsible, and a second later he’s abandoned the effort and started engaging more enthusiastically in the kiss.

I do not fucking know how Hsu Kai does it because I swear to god Fan Riyu was cycling through about a hundred different emotions in this one moment and they were all acting against his physical reaction to the kiss. The way his arm goes out to Bai Zong Yi's shoulder to try to keep physical distance between the two of them, while he is having a full out internal war with himself? Holy fucking shit. It’s really like his brain is going “is this actually happening? Shit yes it is I have to- fuck it”

gif by @maxescheibechlinichacheli

And at the start of his active participation in the kiss he is still not letting himself have it. I think he is still stuck on the fact that he shouldn’t be doing this, and as a result he pushes Zong Yi back so he can see his face, study it. All it takes is for Bai Zong Yi to go back in yet again to continue their kiss, and then it’s all over for Fan Ze Rui. He’s all in. His hand goes to Zong Yi’s face, to his neck, and before we know it he is pulling himself in to Zong Yi’s lap from the floor so smoothly.

Reunion Sex

I initially was only going to focus on the Ep 6 Ai Di x Chen Yi and the Episode 7 Zong Yi x Ze Rui moments in this post, but I am so in love with the structure of the reunion sex scene that I absolutely had to talk about it.

Again, I do not understand how actors work because Hsu Kai just knocks it out of the motherfucking park. I love that when Fan Ze Rui rouses from sleep and starts muttering under his breath and engagin with Zong Yi, you don’t need any visual confirmation from the story whatsoever to understand that Ze Rui definitely has actual dreams of reuniting with Bai Zong Yi. And you don’t need that additional confirmation because of how Hsu Kai sells the talking in his sleep moment here when he’s riding on the pills and alcohol.

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

He blinks through heavy lids and reaches out toward Zong Yi instantly, his smile is absent and dreamy, and unrestrained in a way that genuinely impresses me because I feel like it is hard to pull off acting the kind of drowsy you are when you’re still trapped in the limbo between wake and sleep when you’re not actually experiencing it. Ze Rui’s touches are unrestrained, his eyes are barely opened under their own weight, and he’s loose and droopy still when Bai Zong Yi lifts him in to the hug. Ze Rui’s bones look heavy and his muscles look loose, and he’s not really able to maintain his own structure as a result. Settling back flat pretty quickly have Zong Yi has released him from his embrace.

And then the light changes and the setting gets dreamier despite the fact that Ze Riu is actually starting to wake up, being reminded this is real, Zong Yi is real with grounded touches that we see in close up. And I am so sad we don’t get to see Ze Rui’s face at the exact moment of the scene when it clicks for him that this is real, because it happens during the close up of the hands (which I am also fine with :D). But when we pull back out into the wider shot, Ze Rui is already sobbing against Bai Zong Yi’s cheek. And Ze Rui tries his damndest to be his normal jokey, smiley self once he knows what is happening is real, because that’s who Zong Yi loves, and that’s who Zong Yi deserves after all the pain he’s suffered for Ze Rui but instead he just…breaks. Y’all I lost it at the way all the strength just falls away from Ze Rui’s voice when he says “kiddo”. How small he sounds when he says he’s sorry. The meekness in his voice during his own apology speaks volumes for how important it is, how much weight it carries. Because Ze Rui knows what happened to Zong Yi over the past four years. He knows all of it. He knows that Zong Yi went to prison to protect him, he knows that Zong Yi got attacked there, he knows that Zong Yi has memory problems now because of it.

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

He has all of this guilt that is driving the way he interacts with Bai Zong Yi in their interlude here. By the way: “It’s been 1,573 days. Did it hurt?” is joining my list of Incredibly Devastating Lines. And it’s not just because of the line itself, it’s not just because of the way Bai Zong Yi shakes his head no. It’s especially devastating to me because right before Ze Rui asks the question, he slides his hand up to the back of Bai Zong Yi’s head and massages it a little bit with his thumb, like he’s trying to rub at an ache in hopes of getting rid of the pain. It is in no way the focus of the scene, and the action is mostly cut off and regailed to the edge of the screen, but jesus fucking christ it did wonders for me in terms of selling the scene.

Anyway, Ginny was right, the body language was incredible, and I’m glad I didn’t watch this live or else I’d have gotten zero sleep writing essays every day of the week about some of these scenes

#kiseki #kiseki: dear to me #ai di x chen yi #zong yi x ze rui #taiwanese bl #wka long post

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bengiyo · 2 months

Note

Hi Ben!

I saw Vee from You're My Sky in your most misunderstood characters list and now I'm curious, what's your opinion on this series as a whole? Gifs tell me that it has a high production value, great cinematography and Suar in it, so I'm quite tempted to give it a go. But it's rarely talked about so... is it really worth a watch?

I love You're My Sky because it was the first show to follow in the wake of I Told Sunset About You and try to bring rich color, engaging cinematography, and and structured presentation of character dynamics after ITSAY. It's also a sports BL that takes its sports portion super seriously. It's also the show you should watch if you like when the younger guy is pursuing the older guy, because that's true for all three couples.

The show has three couples in it, and I really liked how the show kept all three couples at about the same moment emotionally throughout the entire runtime. It meant that we sometimes wouldn't see one of the side couples for a while, but I much prefer that to having the couples be in really different places and throw off the emotional tone of an episode.

Our primary pairing is between Thorn and Tupfah. They are childhood friends. Thorn followed Tupfah to his college after a few years and was confused why Tupfah no longer plays basketball. Theirs is a friends-to-lovers story where Thorn has been pining for a long time.

This show let us also see them spend time as a couple and face real complications that a couple of two aspiring professional athletes would face, including availability for college practice and potentially ending up with different clubs. There's also a great deal of examination of the kinds of coaching environments athletes might suffer or thrive under.

The second couple, Saen and Aii, aren't a sports couple, but Aii is older and graduating. He's focused on leaving Thailand and pursuing a professional career in Japan. In them you get a determined, sociable younger pursuer and a standoffish older interest.

I really liked where they went with this couple because we got to see a grandmother giving a knowing smirk when she enters the bedroom after their first night together, and we see them deal with the impending stress of being in a long-distance relationship for likely years.

I wrote about Vee in the ask you mentioned, but to reiterate, Vee is assigned to work with his sister's boyfriend on the track team. Vee, being the flirty little shit he is, teases Dome and is having a good time until it gets way too serious for both of them and he's having a panic attack in the middle of a race.

Their story is compelling because it doesn't end in success on screen. The social politics of their attraction make it impossible for them to consummate this romance under the current circumstances, and the show explores how this choice impacted the sister as well.

And then there's the basketball! This show does so much cool shit with the camera and the frame around the basketball itself. It also has a robust supporting cast in the basketball team. There's a beautiful scene of the whole team giving space to Thorn and Fah to figure out something important, and there's another lovely scene where they talk about gender identity.

Truly, as a man who enjoys sports and sports dramas, they did not fuck around when it came to doing the sports portion of this. The only other BL I remember being this serious about the sports was maybe Project S: Spike. Almost all the gifs are going to be the romance stuff, but the sports stuff in this show is well done.

I'm a big fan of this project, and I think it has some of my favorite presentations of masculinity in genre. I will probably rewatch it after I finish this UWMA rewatch.

Thanks for the ask!

#answered #you're my sky #thai bl

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waitmyturtles · 1 year

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Turtles Catches Up With the Essential BLs: Bad Buddy Edition

[The Reasons and Gratitude: While QL has exploded in volume over the last half-decade, I’ve been juggling a career with making and feeding babies. Now that my kids are bigger, I’m catching up on the essential QL dramas. Big ups to @absolutebl’s encyclopedic lists that I use for reference, as well as the recommendations of many dear mutuals. For the Bad Buddy recommendation, I thank my forever darling, @the-nihongo-adventure! Thank you for reading my reviews of shows you’ve already watched! REALLY LONG POST COMING: caveat emptor.]

I’ve been thinking for days on how I should start this review. Bad Buddy has waylaid me with an emotional brutality (in a good way!) that I haven’t been able to shake for weeks. Couple that with a speedy education in the ways of Aof Noppharnach through Moonlight Chicken, and well, my middle-aged heart has taken a lot.

Before I dive in, I’d like to quickly cite the amazing @emotionallychargedtowel, who referenced Murray Bowen’s family systems theory in a post about pursuer-distancer couplings. Family systems theory posits that human behavior is shaped by the structure of the family unit as a complex social system. In other words: through spoken, unspoken, assumed, and expected demands, instincts, boundaries, and pulls/pushes, humans as individuals are conditioned to interact in society vis à vis how they learned to interact with others through their familial upbringings.

Why do I bring this up in regards to Bad Buddy? I haven’t even begun to plummet the sheer depth of analysis about BBS on Tumblr (I’m deeply impressed by the volumes of analysis by my new dear mutual, @telomeke-bbs, whose posts served as wonderful references while I was watching the show), so if I’m repeating popular analysis, I apologize.

But for me, BBS was rooted first and foremost in a study of intergenerational trauma, and how our two UNBELIEVABLE protagonists, Pran and Pat, battled expected roles and boundaries from their families/family systems and friends to end up together.

I know now, through Moonlight Chicken, that Aof is an utter master at layering themes together. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.

And I want to say upfront that while I want to be an objective reviewer of this show, I absolutely cannot be. While I’m thinking about Aof’s mastery of studying intergenerational trauma through the lens of a QL drama, my heart aches, in passionate subjectivity, about how important his work is for young Asians watching it. I only can wish, as a first-generation child of immigrants from South and Southeast Asia, that I had been able to watch these shows when I was growing up. If I had seen Asians making shows about intergenerational trauma through an Asian lens, about very progressive topics like same-sex relationships in Asia -- I would have known that there was a world of support and shared experiences for the kind of intergenerational trauma that I and my friends faced, when we all were growing up, Asian in America and elsewhere.

This was a terribly long introduction to say that while many other themes percolated throughout Bad Buddy (in typical Aof fashion, as I’m now understanding), including school dynamics, Thai queer culture, unrequited love, familial acceptance of same-sex relationships, and more -- that for me, in a very biased way, I HAD to see this show through the lens of intergenerational trauma. This show helped me to have hope that generations of continental and diasporic Asians will be better able to fend off these pressures through the medium of drama art.

So. My thoughts on Bad Buddy are rooted in a lens of intergenerational trauma. But what I also picked up on, vis à vis the boundaries I mentioned earlier emanating out of families as complex social systems -- is that Aof threw in a little (actually a lot) of David Hegel’s thesis-antithesis-synthesis framework as well. This framework allows for the criss-crossing of boundaries to come to a unified resolution -- and good lord, Bad Buddy came to that conclusion so INCREDIBLY well. The Hegelian framework was the means by which, I think, Aof could explore tearing down the deep-rooted effects of intergenerational trauma on the Asian society depicted in BBS.

Throughout the entire show, Pran and Pat danced around boundaries. At least at the start of the show, they never dared to cross the line between the two garbage bins in the front of their houses. These boundaries had been CREATED by Pran’s and Pat’s parents. And the boys were taught from birth -- you cross that line, and bad things will happen. Don’t play with the boy next door. Don’t fall for the kids next door. So: don’t get caught in front of us.

But Pat and Pran crossed the boundaries BEHIND their houses, BEHIND the VERY watchful eyes of their families, starting at a young age, and keeping that boundary-breaking a secret. Pran crossed a significant boundary by saving Pa from drowning.

But then they went to the same university, and new boundaries formed, between their arch-rival faculties. Pat sees that pressure and acts within it, defending his engineering homies against Pran’s architecture friends.

We saw in the first episode that it would be Pat’s family that would be the first to begin breaking those boundaries as adults -- but it wasn’t Pat who began that work. It was Pa.

I’ve always found it interesting that it’s younger siblings who often have the “easiest” time breaking hard-set boundaries and family codes. I know, because I count in that category (and I know this is an overgeneralization, but just roll with me for a sec). Younger siblings see the shit their older counterparts -- parents, sibs, whoever -- create and deal with. And younger sibs then can develop better ways of managing the pressures that come from that shit. Myself included, I’ve often seen younger sibs be the first ones to marry in family units, to have children, to get jobs, to move away from home, etc. Younger siblings often have the ability to say NO more easily than their older family members. It’s, I think, a natural occurrence to take place in a family system of multiple siblings.

So it’s Pa who says to Pat: promise me you won’t hurt Pran. Right off the bat, she asks for a breaking of a boundary that Pat, his parents, and the engineering faculty homies want to uphold. And Pat, being devoted to his sister, agrees to the promise -- and the whole confused dance between him and Pran as adults begins.

I LOVED this. The show needed an immediate impetus to break what could have been a groaning, stereotypical Romeo-and-Romeo paradigm. This wasn’t going to end in mutual suicide -- hell no, not in a Thai BL. This drama needed to go places. As well, for me, I think Pa was set up to be an indirect foil to the pressures that Pran faces later in the series, simply by way of BEING in the form of a younger sibling.

The repeated theme during the first few episodes that I latched onto was Pran saying to Pat, “things don’t end well when I’m close to you.” In episode 1, Pat retorts -- “at least you won’t get transferred this time around.” In episode 4, Pran repeats himself, and guess what happens? He sees Pat with Ink, and experiences the repeated trauma of unintentional rejection at the hands of Pat.

So, Pran feels like he’s learning his lesson, time and time again. He’s thinking -- I like Pat, I can’t help but like Pat. But my parents might be right. Bad things happen when this dude is around. My heart gets broken.

What’s the difference between Pran and Pat here? Pat can exist more carefree, open, instinctual. He can like people more openly. He can be honest with his feelings. WHY? Because he had a family support system while he was growing up that allowed him to take risks -- because he had a sibling, because he was the eldest son -- because he knew, through his family structure, that despite his behavior, that his family would be there for him. He was simply raised differently, in part because his family was slightly bigger, and his family had LESS to lose if they potentially lost Pat to a lifetime of disapproval. Pat can take risks, because he’ll still have Pa, even if he loses his parents.

When I think about Pran, through the lens of intergenerational trauma, I go back to the family systems theory. While I was talking about younger siblings earlier, Pran’s a totally different story. He’s an only child. He IS the BRUNT of the familial pressure to conform to everything his family wants him to be. He was raised that way, and no one can help it, if the family unit is a triad. If Pran disappears from his family because of their disapproval -- not only do they NOT have a son, but Pran HIMSELF doesn’t have a family. He has far more to lose. He feels he can’t take risks.

I am sure there’s reams of analysis about how understandable Pran’s reaction to his first kiss with Pat was. But I took his walk away from Pat to be that recognition. Pran simply could not believe in a future with Pat -- no way. Pran would lose everything he knew.

Hegel’s framework? This is Pran’s thesis: while I love Pat, I can’t have Pat, because if I have Pat, I’m crossing a boundary that should never be crossed. My world will fall apart. I need to walk away and deny that that kiss ever happened.

And what’s the antithesis here? I think, at this moment in the series, the antithesis IS Pat. It’s Pat’s queer revelation, and his ABILITY to just MOVE on his feelings. In just ONE EPISODE, y’all! In episode 5! SO FAST! (Come AWN, Pat, you WINNER, LOVE YOU.) But that’s Pat for you -- Pat, the antithesis of Pran, the guy who can move, because he has less to lose.

(Let me stop for a sec, stop the analyzing. THAT KISS. THE BEST EVER. NANON! OHM! COME AWN! AAAAHHHH!!!!)

So what does Pat do in episodes 6 and 7? He starts the first SYNTHESIS: he crosses that damn boundary and chases after his man. He goes to the zero-waste village, and -- as SO OFTEN happens in Hegelian thesis-based frameworks -- the guys go to the sea, to the water, to cross the water, to kickstart Pran’s antithesis to his life thesis, and to begin their synthesis together, their connection. (Remember Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and crossing the river, woop woop!)

Like I said before -- not to be a huge fuckin’ nerd or anything, but whoops, too late -- I think the Hegelian framework allowed Aof to WRITE this script and leverage the familial boundary risks for the sake of the show. Because, as I wrote at length in my review of the Cherry Magic movie, taking these risks from the perspective of the Asian family unit is EEEENOOORMOUS. Legit, fam: Asian families WILL dump children. There is disowning. It happens. It’s KNOWN, in the backs of our minds, BAKED UNCONSCIOUSLY into our understanding of who we are as Asian individuals, that our families might give us up, because many of our families have overtly threatened it. Even if there isn’t active disowning, parents can passively judge you and be disappointed in you for the rest of your life, and you damn well know it.

Overgeneralization? Whatever you think. But I’ve experienced it. My friends have experienced it. Kurosawa knew it when he risks disownment to stay with Adachi in the Cherry Magic movie. I severely risked it when I, like, grew up -- when I wanted to date, to get engaged, to get married. I didn’t talk to certain family members for years. My siblings’ relationships were strained. All because I wasn’t falling in line with my family’s expectations for who I needed to be vis à vis THEIR expectations of me -- to stay home and let them dictate how to live my life (literally, not joking).

Instead of doing a typical Romeo-and-Romeo set-up, I think what Aof was doing here, by way of having Pat step out first to begin the boundary-breaking -- and we know now WHY Pat could do that, because of his family system ALLOWING him to be a person to take more risks -- is that he was demonstrating that positive change could happen, the trauma could be stopped, if the guys created family between each other. AOF IS SAYING: I’M GOING TO PROVE THAT THEY CAN STOP THE TRAUMA TOGETHER. I’m crying right now.

And before I get further, another note about Aof’s brilliance. He allowed us to see HOW COMPLICATED Pran is, before the real boundary breaking began. He allowed us to SEE that Pran COULD MAYBE BE OKAY with taking a risk -- vis à vis Pran’s love for music. God, I was SO STRUCK in the scene when Pran is writing the high school song with Pat in episode 5.

I think Pran’s not just talking about love here. I think, indirectly, he’s also talking about the risk of riling his family boundaries up.

(I want to note quickly that both Aof and Jojo Phukhaotong really leverage Nanon’s acting beautifully in these moments -- besides this music scene, there was Pran and Wai in the library talking about relationships and the school play, and in Dirty Laundry, Night meditates on music and love to a sleeping Neon. Nanon really nails this unwinding in his acting.)

I think Aof included these scenes of Pran meditating like this, because Pat couldn’t just hold Pran’s hand at the beach and sweep Pran away. That’s not how the Hegelian framework works. You gotta be ready, to be active, you gotta do the WORK, to reach enlightenment. The entire series shows Pran’s journey to acceptance about himself and about the fate he’ll have with Pat. We, as viewers, needed to see Pran be ready to do that. Sure, he has a forever crush on Pat. But we’ve now established the utterly enormous risks he faced -- more so than Pat ever needed to deal with -- if Pran’s family learned about Pran’s feelings, leanings, and ultimate decision to be with Pat.

We needed to hear, verbally, that Pran’s hesitation was real, that he was balancing in a very complicated way, all the risks he needed to consider. Maybe some people got frustrated at the high level of his complicated feelings, but I think the pace and plot made total sense. And, oh god -- the scene at the beach, where they touch hands and imagine a world where their parents aren’t fighting. Oh my god. AAAAAHHHH. Tears. Synthesis, baby, synthesis.

So then. The boundaries between the guys come down. They start getting kee-yoot. The games in episode 7, the help with the play in episode 8. It’s chef’s kiss, y’all.

But the boundaries come roaring back. The trauma resurfaces. Even while Pran contextualizes to Wai in the library -- “you can’t change the person or the time” when you fall in love -- what also doesn’t change is the world around them. The faculties still hate each other. Pat experiences familial rejection for the first time in his dad’s disappointment about the architecture play. The relationship is revealed. Wai rejects Pran. The seniors reject Pat.

(FAN BREAK: luv you, Aof, that gratuitous shirtlessness at the xylophone, LOVED IT, ::pointing to Aof::, LOVED IT.)

But. Episode 9 kicks in. Korn comes thru, MVP. (Yum, satay.) And I see something in Pran, when he approaches Pat at the bench at lunch.

I see Pran finally, truly, CROSSING HIS OWN LINE. Pran could have PANICKED at the revelation of their relationship to the school. He could have used it as an excuse to chicken out, to back away, again to cite that bad things happen when I get close to you, Pat.

But Pran didn’t do that. He holds Pat down, he steadies Pat. They hold each other down, because -- oh god, my chest is aching here, I’m tearing up -- in that moment, Pran’s recognizing that you need to be there for the family you’ve chosen and made. These are HIS NEW BOUNDARIES -- his new family system and unit. It’s his, and his alone.

Sure, we see in earlier episodes that part of Pran’s love language is nurturing, through cooking for Pat (and sometimes Pa, too, omg so cute), and that he learned that at the hands of his mother. But I saw something different in that simple scene at the lunch bench, after Pat got rejected by his seniors. I saw Pran’s confirmation that he was going to stick the landing of the synthesis, once and for all. That was when he wasn’t going to use any other excuse, ever again, to walk away from Pat, as others had begun to do to Pat.

And then we get the last three brilliant, BRILLIANT episodes of this already brilliant series. Let me set this up, because I think the way Aof did this, as yuzh, was incredible:

Episode 10: There are too many things about episode 10 to list in this already enormous post. I may have to write a separate post about how I think episode 10 was one of the greatest single episodes of a drama I’ve ever watched (the penultimate episode of Extraordinary Attorney Woo also comes to mind).

In any case, the Hegelian framework comes roaring back. We’re nearing the end of the series, and we need to remember as to why we’re here, and how we got to this point. The episode served as a major reminder of Pran’s original thesis -- we learn the reason why the families were at war. We learn that the demands of the separation came from Ming and Dissaya. The boys come out to their folks. The truth of Ming and Dissaya come out.

We learn that Ming himself is a product of MAJOR INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA, from his father, so much so that he fucked up a major opportunity for Dissaya. Trauma on trauma on trauma. (Seriously relatable for almost all Asians with pressurized parents.)

And Pran -- PRAN -- TELLS HIS MOTHER, TO HER FACE, that it was HER traumatizing HIM that led HIM to be the way he IS. At the end of this episode, before he rejoins Pat, he finally confronts his mother, and begins his holistic antithesis for the final time.

The boys come back together at the end of the episode, and weep, and embrace. And Pat says: we’re getting the fuck out of here.

(Now’s a good time to link to a meme on intergenerational trauma that my cousins in SE Asia shared with me around the end of 2021 -- interesting timing that this was floating around the WhatsApps and LINEs of that period.)

Episode 11: Leaving. Antithesis. The sea. Crossing boundaries. Living their lives together.

Oh my god, my aching heart. Pat spending most of the episode insisting that they were going to live together, forever, in the village. The antithesis to their lives in Bangkok. Pran knowing better. Pat knowing it, too.

The fact that until the very last minute, the entire episode was spent in the village, meant SO MUCH TO ME. This episode gave the guys TIME to process THEMSELVES, and their decisions. Oh lord, tears on tears.

And: what did the guys do? THEY COMMITTED TO EACH OTHER. CREATING THEIR FAMILY TOGETHER. They were going to do it THEIR WAY -- and, AND, AND -- BREAK THE CHAIN OF TRAUMA that they both faced, as assigned and influenced by their parents, by leveraging their new family unit TOGETHER.

And who helped give them that oomph, that power? Who helped them get context to see that that work was WORTH DOING -- even if it wouldn’t end up changing their families?

Uncle Tong. The boys got to see that through Uncle Tong.

They got to see that one individual, or two individuals together, can’t change the world. The boys learned, indirectly, that they can’t change the world of their parents. But they can improve THEIR OWN WORLD.

Episode 12: SYNTHESIS.

When I was perusing the BBS tags for analysis, something I read piqued my interest: that the boys had to remain closeted to their families and friends.

I wouldn’t call it closeted. Instead, I want to guess what Aof was doing here.

I truly think Aof was showing compassion to the parental generation. It’s not the parents’ faults that they themselves were products of intergenerational trauma (peep the meme from earlier).

For me -- I’m an adult now, but I still carry the scars of my childhood -- I was disappointed not to see a bigger family resolution during my first watch of episode 12. But after a careful rewatch, I think Aof was being majorly realistic in his writing. These families weren’t going to come together in a finale, let alone in a day, let alone after DECADES of fighting.

Intergenerational trauma has to stop somewhere if you’re cognizant of it, and Pran and Pat’s parents weren’t cognizant of it. But: the guys certainly were. As we saw in the shots above, Pran himself CALLED OUT his mom for it in episode 10.

So I think I understand why Aof didn’t make a sparkling, holistically accepting ending out of this, because -- it was unrealistic. Ming and Dissaya still carry THEIR scars, and THEY need time to heal, too.

Their partners -- Pran’s dad and Pat’s mom -- are more ready for that change. They’re getting slightly caught up in the winds of change. Hell, even Pat’s mom says, “We are the adults” in episode 10 to Ming. Like Pa, Pat’s mom is demonstrating a little gentle nudge towards changing HER boundaries of the situation.

And the boys stated their stance at the end:

“Just like Uncle Tong said, we can’t change the world. All we could do was adjust to it, and live happily. We might not be able to change the people around us. BUT THEY COULDN’T CHANGE THE TWO OF US, EITHER.” [emphasis mine, obv]

I want to make one very last point that deeply touched my heart, and, I feel, confirms my theory about the boys making a new family unit together, complete with the boundaries of their choosing, and refusing to carry the trauma of their pasts. @telomeke-bbs wrote a lovely post, in part, about the meaning of Pran’s liquor gift to Ming. I totally agree with the analysis, and just wanted to add some cultural flavor.

Being an in-law in an Asian family structure means you show respect to your in-law elders. It’s just an unspoken, natural part of our being (and it helps if you like your in-laws). I’m married to a Westerner, but in many ways, I treat my Western in-laws with the same kind of respect as I would if they were Asian. So that means, I cook generously (they don’t expect me to do it, don’t worry -- I just like doing it, because it makes me feel like we’re family), and I serve up fine-ass cocktails (hell yeah). It’s fun, but it also makes me feel like I’m nurturing my extended family.

Pran gave the liquor gift to Ming, because....Ming is his family. Hey, Ming? Womp womp. You’ve got a son-in-law -- because Pran is taking on that role, despite your best efforts to reject that reality. And I see you, Ming, slowly, slowly, slowly begin to imagine that reality when you took a sip.

The reality is that when the boys became family to each other, they indirectly adopted each other’s families as their own -- because that’s just what happens in a relationship. And the liquor gift confirmed that. My heart SWELLED when Pran gave the gift to Pat, and I saw the duty-free bags in Pat’s family’s living room. How many times have I seen that scene in my life, when fam came back to visit from overseas -- scores of times. It meant so much. I’m going to bring a piece of overseas back to my family, even if my family, my in-laws, reject me. Maturity, motherfuckas. My man, Pran. Best son-in-law.

Aof took SO MUCH of what Asians expect about how our lives should be lived in this show, and absolutely turned it on its head. His SCRUTINY at what keeps adults back, at how adults raise children -- and about how children can CHANGE PARADIGMS, through love and partnership -- is CRITICAL COMMENTARY for young Asians, and young people around the world.

Oh, man. Do I have any more words? I’m all written out. If you got this far, thank you. This show WILL BE required viewing for my kids when they’re older. I want them to see what intergenerational trauma means to their Asian heritage. I want them to CALL ME and my hubs OUT for it. And I want them to know how they can be so strong, like Pat and Pran, to change the trajectory of their lives for the better.

*Tagging @bengiyo by request. <3

#bad buddy #bad buddy the series #backaof noppharnach #turtles catches up with thai bls #turtles catches up with the essential BLs #nanon korapat #ohm pawat #ohmnanon #intergenerational trauma #intergenerational trauma in asian societies #intergenerational trauma in asian families #david hegel #bad buddy meta #bad buddy the series meta #patpran #pran x pat #pat x pran #pranpat #aof noppharnach

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hexonthepeach · 7 months

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a gentle tongue breaketh the bone | 15: release

pairing: fem hybrid fox omega!reader/hybrid Alpha!nct 127

tags: reverse harem, non-traditional omegaverse hybrid! cyberpunk au, pack dynamics, polyamory, slowburn/slowbuild, angst & hurt/comfort, heavy content warnings inc. torture, graphic violence, suicidal ideation, explicit sexual content

summary: the year is 2127. decades of eugenics and warfare have led to the rise of designated populations: the ruler Alphas and their rare, prized omegas sequestered from the Beta population. in the aftermath of the War of the Two Tigers, New Goryeo ushers in an Imperial dynasty determined not by birthright but by the alliance of the Syndicate’s clancorps to choose the best pack of your generation. you are destined to take your place within the Imperial harem as a queen, and–perhaps–Imperatrix herself

but you have a secret, written into your skin and bones–one that could easily kill you, depending on who finds it out

ten years ago you chose your Alpha and their pack in a fateful meeting

now, you must make them choose you

[masterlist & glossary] [read on AO3] [0: prologue] [1: escape, again] [2: lost and found] [3: returned] [4: bound] [5: home] [6: gift] [7: reunion] [8: security] [9: secret] [10: prisoner] [11: gambit] [12: haze] [13: shock] [14: feral]

wc: 4.3k

chapter warnings: horror scenario, graphic violence, explicit non-con/extremely dubious consent involving a feral hybrid [dead dove do not eat], attempted suicide, angst

109 . . . 108 . . . 107 . . .

Numbers flash on the screen in the shuddering crawl down to the magical, distant 88. You keep looking through the spiderweb of the broken door each level for a sign of your pursuer, even though you know such speed would be superhuman, beyond anyone's ability.

101 . . . 100 . . . 99 . . .

There's a mechanical click-click-click and a screech of emergency brakes at the exact same moment that everything goes dark. For a moment you're struck by the glow coming from the city beyond the smoked glass, eerily similar to the auroras you'd seen far north.

Then the silence swallows you whole.

It feels a little like you imagine the bottom of the sea might be–worse for the things lurking in the cold dark, silently approaching.

You're trapped in a tiny box in a huge building with the main power cut, with the utter certainty that if you do not escape, you will die.

You could keep sobbing, could keep huddling on the floor and wait for it. Maybe it would be easier than what's ahead. A part of you more human than animal doesn't want to fight it anymore. It wants to crawl back and meet your fate head on, neck and belly exposed.

Is there a way out that doesn't involve fleeing?

You're high enough here that if you could make it off the floor, you'd most likely black out before the collision a hundred stories down. Your next life might be easier, as your mother had once said to you.

It wasn't so much of a comfort, now.

Trapped between floors, the steel edge of a ceiling bisects the glass just beyond. It's the only thing you can use to leverage as you kick through the broken glass, wounds reopening and new ones torn from your slowly healing skin as you stifle your own scream.

Your fox knows you have to, by any means, be quiet.

The only sound you can hear is the clatter as chunks of the door fall yards below, leaving you peering into the open dark, unable to see a thing. You wait for what feels like forever to move again, once the quiet is a roaring in your ears.

The fight between the instinct to flee the elevator and the fear that if the power suddenly returns and you'll be bisected lasts only a moment. You squeeze through the painful jaws of the hole, clutching at the edge with bleeding hands before dropping to the floor.

Whatever attempts you made to calculate distance it's still not enough–you fall from the ceiling hard, the ground immediately jarring your bones, concentrated on your wrists and ankle. You fold into yourself in pain, skull clacking with your teeth.

You have some vision in the dark–enough to make out the soft blips of emergency lighting deeper in the floor, the faint outlines of an office interior more familiar to you from old melos. Dust coats the trickle of blood from your legs as you move, trying to avoid the shuffling disturbance as you step on paper strewn across black tile, frayed cords erupting from the carpet.

There’s something even more strange about this place, you realize–the smell of sulfur reeks throughout the room and there’s no sign of windows, as if the entire place has been barricaded and closed hermetically. Old screens are fractured with bullet holes, shell casings rolling beneath your feet.

An echo of some lower ancestor guides you through the dark.

Move. Freeze. Assess. Move again.

It's a special kind of rhythm made erratic as you listen. Your ears are a guide, instinct driving their direction.

There are sounds that are clearly building related–murmurs of distant elevators, droning from the city or lower floors. But without the constant hum and hiss of the air circulation there's an unsettling quiet here. You're in a cemetery for last century's corporations, tech abandoned and lifeless, useless to you now.

You look for anything in reach that might be able to help your escape, making your way slowly towards the familiar green man denoting an exit stairwell. The door is closed as far as you can see, slinking below the low dividers on the desks in case you're already being watched.

You know you'll know when you’re found–the prickle on the back of your neck steadily increases as you make it to the exit door, finding it retrofitted with a series of internal locks and a dead console.

You lift your wrist to it, realizing again that your agent, or rather Taeil’s, is back in Containment. You’re not even sure it would do anything, if you had it, but panic blazes through you at the knowledge that there’s not an easy way out.

That prickle is now a sting, driving you mad at being unable to place its origin.

All you know is that something is near.

You duck below a desk, avoiding tangling in spare cords and cable. The sound that should be coming from the stairwell is somewhere else–faint clicks and taps that echo through the entire space.

It's far enough away that you feel confident in slinking through the maze of stations towards another apparent exit. You wish you could transform–wish you could be the animal in this moment instead of a frightened human.

You can't fight back–can't even subdue the other Alpha by collar command with your own digging into your sweat-damp throat. At least, you think, he won't be able to mark you–

Something makes a noise, only a few meters away. Overhead, loud for how unexpected it is.

It's a soft chuff of breath, a rattling, gravely drone, and then–strangest of all–a soft rrowr.

If you weren't paralyzed with terror it would sound almost endearing.

The vocalization repeats, plaintive. It reminds you of something you'd read about, in relation to the mating habits of large Felids.

You're not being hunted, you realize.

You're being courted.

The call repeats a few seconds later, further away. Your lungs burn from your held scream, inching away, eyes on the ceiling.

Panels have been removed or hang haphazardly, revealing the space beyond for vents and wiring, surely too crowded to move in as quietly as your pursuer seems to be.

You don't dare stand up, but you do find more speed in your crawl on all fours. The stained carpet muffles the sound but in your haste you accidentally tug something off a desk above–the equipment clattering to the floor.

The silence that follows is deadly.

You make a decision in the split second between realizing your mistake and knowing the outcome.

Now, you run.

Something thuds to the ground behind you–no,not the ground–on top of one of the low desks. You can't turn, you can't even glance over your shoulder as you sprint for the stairwell door.

You expect the sound of footfalls, unable to accept when there are none.

You turn to look one last time–seeing only an empty room–right before the heavy body slams into you from above.

You don't hold in your scream now, shrieking as you fight back, rolled across an explosion of paper and plastic remnants of some exploded machine, clawing at the man holding you down. Through the old burn of gunpowder you’re drowning in that Alpha scent that once seemed familiar, cedar bark warmth mixed with the rust of dried blood.

"Jaehyun," you wheeze out from under him, trying to reach him. "Please don't hurt me, please don't–"

Your babbling is cut short by the tongue on your neck, canines clinking against your collar.

That rumble-tick–not a purr but something more sinister–fills your ears as he continues to lick at you, much more gently than you expected. You will yourself limp, face pressed painfully into the carpet, crying silently.

"Please don't hurt me," you repeat in a whisper.

Hands knead into your pinned shoulders, claws tugging at your shirt but not penetrating. After a few moments he eases off, adjusting to straddle your thighs, scraping rough fingertips over your arms and the hair raised across them.

"Please come back," you say. "Please stop."

You're surprised when he speaks, still giving off that throaty noise–more feline than human.

"Mine," he says, softly.

You're able to see him from the corner of your eye, face and wide body shadowed in the dark.

"Yours," you agree, surrendering. "But you have to let me go."

It doesn't appear to affect him, his eyes shining discs in the dim. He leans in to clean a swipe of blood from your cheek, making you moan uselessly.

"Let me go, please. I won't run," you plead.

He only holds you more tightly, lifting you against his chest to better reach the skin not rubbed raw by his rough tongue. You hold your breath as your mouths meet–fangs too big to breach your lips, the smell of blood overwhelming.

He kisses you–no, cleans you, dragging sweat and grime from your chin to your cheekbone. It's an intimate, loving gesture, leaving you shaking as your body responds outside of the fear and adrenaline, scent blooming at the Alpha care it's receiving.

No, no, no, you think, horrified. She can’t want this.

In the haze of heat you can still remember the way Mark’s breath had bubbled red on his lips as his throat was torn into. You know your fate will be the same if you resist, not even a collar will save you. But you have to try.

You fumble for something–anything–gripping a length of cord and tugging it to yank it free. His clawed hand encircles yours, crushing your fist until you yelp.

Jaehyun hesitates in alarm–long enough for you to swirl out of his hold, on your back, rabbit kick activated–slamming your foot into his injured side.

The noise that comes out of him is unbearable, more strangled cry than a roar. You don't wait, scrabbling along the floor with the cord in your grip, pulling yourself free.

You stumble out of range, overturning a metal cabinet with a sudden burst of strength behind you, slipping through tight spaces between desks to the dark door.

Another lock, but this one is blessedly de-activated, opening with a shove against the metal push lever that has you into the stairwell and rolling down the nearest incline, jarred as the door groans to close behind you.

You don’t have the time or sense to listen for his pursuit, throwing yourself down flight after flight without counting, past strange barricades of furniture and the charred smell of long-extinguished explosives, metal doors beckoning at each level.

Then you finally see illumination through the reinforced glass of a floor’s window–something glowing on the other side. The hybrid scents pervading here are more recent, as if frequented.

A sign of life, perhaps. You pull the door, blasted by cold air just as something drops beside you from the open space past the railing, heavy and large.

You slip through but so does he, just behind you, door slamming shut. You realize he's not even bothering to give chase as you run down a corridor into a labyrinth of ceiling-high server banks, humming in all directions.

It’s impossible to know which direction to take, where to go, but one thing is clear as you feel the presence approach behind you, moving slowly and deliberately.

You are not going to escape.

There’s only one way out, now. If you have a choice it will be how you meet it.

You just need to find an opening.

You turn, and drop to your knees.

“Please don’t do this,” you plead, seeing your breath in the air with your eyes lowered. “Please, Alpha.”

He circles you inquisitively, trailing blood from his bare feet, silent as the grave.

“Jaehyun,” you say, willing him again to comply, desperately. “I know you’re there.”

You feel more than see him come down to meet you, shivering as his breath blows on your skin.

"Please come back to me. Please protect me, Alpha."

Your conviction works, or at least appears to as he returns to doting upon you in the manner of his true form.

Arms encircle you, back pressed to yours as he licks at the marked side of your face, beneath the sweat-soaked fall of your hair. Your tail swishes on its own whim, your body folding as he seems to relax along with you, carrying you down with his weight.

“Mine,” he says again, more rumble than word.

That sound vibrates through you, treacherous in the way your body craves it to continue, to be soothed.

You hadn’t imagined any specific outcome when you’d run to him earlier, human mind calculating steps to earn his protection in much less violent fashion, but now you understand that the outcome would have always been the same.

With or without conscious control, you’d both be driven to mate.

It was only natural that you wanted him to take you, to find some way to rewrite the thing screaming inside you for the male who had abandoned you and left you here with nothing but self-loathing for company.

Perhaps you should feel guilt about this, too. But no–you only know survival.

“Yours,” you answer, nuzzling experimentally into his nearby, bare arm.

His skin is radiating heat but you can feel the weakness of his pulse from blood loss, the tempting vanilla orchid of his scent growing stronger as you kiss down his arm towards his wrist in the illusion of seduction, tongue trailing until you feel the roughness of his gland beneath it.

You're careful not to make a sudden movement, gently indenting your teeth in to make sure you can–

Teeth close on your ear, not clamping down but firm enough to make your vision flash white, head yanked back as your arms give out and you're crushed beneath the full weight of the Felid, growling in between panting whines.

"No, no, no," you beg, angling to try and finish the claim, stilling when you realize his teeth are tearing your delicate ear. “Let go.”

He releases you to speak.

“Won’t run,” he whispers your own words back to you. “Mine.”

That single instant of relief dies when you feel the bite on your spine, above your collar. Jaehyun's teeth are poised to crush your neck where it connects to your skull, purr deep in his chest as he fumbles between you, between your legs–

"Crimson," you say, vision darkening even before the shock hits you.

Your muscles spasm, uncontrolled twitches. The cement floor rises to meet you, snatched back by the hold on your neck as your body goes limp.

Why didn’t it work? you think.

He’s still gently biting you as the seconds tick down, releasing you when you don’t move to lick at your neck and snarl when you twitch through the last of the seizures.

In the dark and without any other recourse you feign death, all the fight leaching out of you along with the heat from your face against the frigid floor. Your nails scrape against it as your body is moved for you, the sounds of his whining desperation muffled in the aftermath.

He paws at you to make sure you are still alive, licking at your ear until it moves, his delight apparent in the way he picks you up like a ragdoll to hold you tight to him. You’re so tired you can’t struggle away. All that energy expended only to end up here, submitting involuntarily.

This is what you’d wanted, after all.

He can at least give you what you need.

The omega at your core doesn’t mind so much now that his taste is in her mouth, isn’t unwilling even as frighteningly human hands lift your hips, angling them up, trapping your limp tail between your bodies as he grinds into your thighs.

Instead, she shudders into it, eyes closing against the soft green light the moment you're touched and freed from the constriction of your clothing, blooming into warm arousal in this worst of possible environments. You can only experience what happens next as if still paralyzed, distant and pulled back in a thousand-foot view.

There's no escape.

Humiliated, you weep slow tears, bracing yourself. Something thick and hot prods at your opening, forced so quickly into your ready heat you can't even scream.

Just a moment’s relief courses through you, the need wound tight inside your belly cut loose as radiating waves of pleasure accompany being penetrated, being filled by your Alpha.

No, not your Alpha. Not yet.

That glow recedes, quickly, as savage claws rake you inside when he pulls out. And then he’s rocking into you again, deeper, your tears sliding across the cement as you’re pushed forward, immobilized by the pain.

A croak escapes your chest, the aftereffects of the collar making speech impossible. Again, and again, until there’s no new sharpness, just an excruciating throbbing inseparable from the sweetness of reaching another peak.

You feel the gush of slick, the slipperiness tainted with something stickier, fresh blood lingering in the air. Your thighs quake as you try to find the control to break free, pull away, force him out. The animal in you resists it, but now at least she’s gnawing with the need to sink her teeth in, to make him stop hurting her in any way possible.

The Alpha’s panting snarls turn plaintive, a heavy head against yours as he makes one–final–rut into you.

This one tears you open, just as you finally have enough breath to cry out, the scream muffled when your teeth snap shut, finally, on something other than air.

The body over you stills as he surges deep and hot inside you, agony disintegrating your last will to fight as a familiar swelling follows–digging those claws in so deeply you feel like they'll never be released.

You sob in the dark, defeated, pulled into a gray unconscious where the horror can't follow.

Distantly, somewhere, someone calls your name.

Tense silence accompanies the journey back in the autocar, more-so when the elevator doors open to a pitch-black hangar, red emergency lighting making the everyday setting eerie.

Johnny can scent it immediately–gunpowder and blood.

"Stay here. Guard him." Doyoung doesn't protest as Yuta thrusts the gun in his direction, Taeyong's bleary eyes blinking into full consciousness as he realizes the danger.

"Are we being attacked–?"

"Quiet," Johnny orders, ears flicking up from his skull as soon as the space is silent again.

Then he's off–too fast for Yuta to follow, though he knows his partner will catch up in time.

There's a siren ringing in his head even if the alarms are quiet, an instinct in his marrow that has him stalking the peaceful interior corridors.

All he has to do is follow the thick and cloying smell of drying blood, finding Jungwoo crouched over what looks to be a mangled body, next to the equally destroyed NeoTech elevator bay.

The instant he enters the commons the younger man lifts a shotgun at him, eyes wild and grip shaking as the laser sight bounces across Johnny’s bare chest. Johnny doesn’t flinch, crouching down over the casualty.

Mark. He’s breathing, barely, gurgling in his ravaged throat with each breath under a makeshift tourniquet.

Jungwoo lowers the barrel after a few, tense moments, hands slick with blood.

"I thought you were . . ." he says, voice a wisp.

"Who did this?" Johnny asks.

Jungwoo shakes his head, wiping tears or sweat from his face with his sleeve. "He's still alive."

"WHO?!" Johnny repeats, voice booming through the empty space.

The Canid tosses something at his feet, metal mesh sliding across the floor. The collar is ravaged, torn apart with inhuman strength, shredded wires still sparking.

"No," he says, more to himself than the other Alpha.

"I didn't know," Jungwoo repeats quietly, sniffling. "I didn't–"

"Shut up, SHUT UP!" Johnny doesn't spare another moment to check his second-in-command, turning to find Yuta poised behind him, face haunted with more than alarm.

"Get Moon up any way possible." He says, glancing back at Jungwoo. "If Lee dies you're dead, too."

He's already headed where his nose is leading him–to the emergency stairwell.

"Don't kill him," Jungwoo says–soft but not softly enough. "Please."

Johnny doesn't answer.

It's a tortuous journey down, past the barricades and stopgaps they'd put in place long ago lest they ever face invasion from lower floors. Not once had they ever had to deal with a threat from outside–no one was stupid enough to go up against their security.

The threat had always been living in their midst.

Jaehyun's scent is just as thick here as it was above, the trail solidified by the massive amount of blood he appears to have lost before healing began. His friend had never had an easy time with physical injury–too modified by anti-shift therapies to recover as easily as he or Yuta did.

Something like a lead weight is pressed into Johnny's chest as he nears the brightest blooms of that familiar, woodsy scent–vanilla and tannins in his throat with each breath now tainted with something even more known.

You.

He doesn't know what floor he's on, just that he can taste you in the air, nauseatingly fresh. It leads him deep into the old research floors and the Nyctos kill house, strip lighting illuminating the blasted out office interiors they used for CQB training, every corridor and bank of ancient monitors a known checkpoint.

He finds Jaehyun not by scent trail but by the soft sounds leading to his hiding place in a corner of one of the old server rooms, still used for environmental building controls.

Hunched over his knees, the younger Alpha doesn’t even look up at him. The stack of data drives beside Jaehyun is smeared with gore, his hands flexing and clenching in the way he knows all too well as a self-soothing gesture once the claws are gone.

Johnny's fury diffuses.

Regardless of circumstances, the defeated creature in this room is still his closest friend. The Alpha urge to protect his packmate remains even if he knows it won't last for long–can't when he's hit with the intensity of your pheromones and the acid taste of fear.

Something worse lingers in the air, something he can't confront.

"What did she do?" He asks, not daring to come closer.

The Alpha's head bobs, unable to lift to meet his eyes.

"I can’t remember," he says, voice far away. "I can feel it."

Jaehyun's fingers sink in his greasy hair, threatening to tear it out at the root. His left wrist is a mangled wreck–blood pulsing dark down his forearm in an awful mirror of Johnny's matching scars. "I can feel everything."

"Where is she?" Johnny changes tack, panic making him desperate. "Where did she go?"

Jaehyun shakes his head, devolving into horrible, choked sobs that shake his entire frame. There's no point in torturing him, no reason to stay when the beast in his blood is ready to kill the pathetic thing in front of him.

Johnny flees instead.

Coward, you'd called him.

Maybe you were right.

He'd kept himself and his brothers alive until now, helped build this entire enterprise on a foundation of control and order that had slipped and collapsed the moment you'd come back into his life.

If he's being honest with himself, you were always on a collision course: two dark objects in space in erratic orbit–never able to escape the gravity of the bond he's tried so hard to ignore until now.

It's inescapable.

He knows you're alive even if there's a hollow place inside his ribcage he can't explain, a grave stillness that only gets worse as he traces your exit.

A smeared handprint on the banister leading to a lower floor. A spot of blood on a stairwell. A drip of saliva, or worse, on the tile leading into the old rec center they still maintained for the recruits on the 95th floor.

He doesn't know what he's looking at in the flicker of the decentralized lighting–an uncannily still, black and red haze in the murky pool.

No.

The word resonates through his entire being, throwing him into action, chemical-rich water burning his eyes as he plunges in. He's not capable of being gentle, tearing you to the surface to drag you out limp and unbreathing.

Your face is bloodless and bruised, scratches weeping fresh pink rivulets from your arms and legs.

There's no stiffness yet, you're still warm as he blows air into your lungs and presses on your breastbone to try and revive you–a horrible echo of a decade ago, when he'd managed to break free from the beast long enough to see you breathe once more.

This time, you don't choke up the water in your lungs.

You don't respond at all.

Johnny lifts you up, head lolling against his arm, tears splashing hot from his face and onto yours. His fingers feel useless, clearing tangled webs of hair from your cheeks and forehead.

You can't be gone, you can't be.

He can still feel you.

Even if you don't have a heartbeat, he can still feel you.

Something breaks in him, holding you tight to his chest. It's like a thin rod of glass in a safe designed to never be cracked, the cable from which his entire world hangs snapping under the weight of every decision he's made.

There is no existence that he can survive without you in it.

He braces your neck, clinging to you as he rocks back and forth involuntarily. A cold artificial texture under his fingertips brings him up long enough, the choice made before the word even leaves his mouth.

"Crimson," he whispers.

The collar's light blinks red, your body jerking with the electrical stimulation to your autonomic system. It's torture waiting for it to be over, only to find you're stilled again.

"Crimson," he repeats.

Again, when the refractory period ends.

"Crimson."

Over and over, until you finally heave and cough and hot fluid gushes down his back, until you're coming back to him in fits and starts, to his eternal relief.

He eases you down, cradled in his arms as your eyes flutter open, as you blink up at him.

There's an emptiness in your gaze he's never seen before–something reflected of what he's felt for so long, now dead.

And in his heart, where the bond sings, a tiny tug of connection. The only thing on the other side destroys him more than those cruel few seconds of your absence–something worse in its finality.

Boneless with exhaustion, features drawn and hollowed with pain, you repeat the sentiment thrumming through his burning chest.

"You should have let me go," you whisper, turning your head so you don't have to look at him anymore.

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#agtbtb #nct x reader #nct 127 x reader #nct 127 omegaverse #nct 127 cyberpunk au #nct fic #nct 127 fic #nct imagines #nct 127 fanfic #nct 127 imagines #nct smut #nct 127 smut

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obstinaterixatrix · 3 months

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Speaking of Tokyopop, here’s a series they licensed a while ago

For four years, Naruse was swept up in his love for his novelist boyfriend, Toui. But tiring of his flightiness and lack of commitment, Naruse finally walks away from his relationship.

Or at least, he tries to. Every time he runs into Toui, they seem to get tangled in one another's emotions and end up sleeping together. They argue and fight, then afterwards comes the pang of regret. Maybe their relationship is doomed to fail. Or maybe, it just needs a new angle...

lovers to exes to situationship to lovers lol. I think the writer does a good balance of ‘this is why they fought to the point of breaking up’ and ‘this is why they aren’t getting back together’ and ‘this is why they end up together again.’ I also like how it starts from when the dynamic changes—the main character flips from being the pursuer to the distancer, and the love interest flips from being the distancer to the pursuer, so most of the manga is seeing them both in roles they’re not really used to. good amount of resentment and longing and self-deception

#recs #mm recs #orlbs #misclb

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emotionallychargedtowel · 1 year

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re-evaluating pursuing & distancing in Utsukushii Kare season 1

I promised an analysis of Utsukushii Kare season 2 overall a while back. I ended up rewatching the whole series to try to get everything fresh and accurate in my mind, which was helpful, but it also gave me, well, too many ideas for one post. So now the plan is to address these thoughts in chunks that will hopefully add up to something useful.

I started my examination of pursuer-distancer dynamics in Utsukushii Kare with a pretty strong assumption that while their ways of fulfilling their roles were sometimes unusual, Hira was definitely the pursuer in the relationship and Kiyoi was the distancer. As I watched season 2, I increasingly saw Kiyoi as pursuing Hira. But now that I’ve gone back and rewatched the whole series, I think I failed to recognize the ways in which Kiyoi was always pursuing Hira. I think this shift in my thinking really sheds some light on other aspects of their relationship and the story more broadly, and it shows more continuity between seasons 1 and 2 than I had previously noticed.

I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s a real difference between the kind of pursuit where you are seeking to establish a relationship with someone and the kind where you are seeking intimacy with someone you’re already in a relationship with. And these differences often map onto role differences and relational styles, including gendered ones. Think about how things go in a stereotypical, heteronormative relationship. Before a relationship is established, men are supposed to make the first move (women, on the other hand, can face negative consequences if they try this). But once a relationship is under way, we’re more likely to see women pursuing and men distancing when it comes to intimacy. (A frequent exception is pursuing physical intimacy, which can often be an area in which roles are flipped, with pursuers becoming distancers and vice versa.) At the same time, intimacy-seeking can happen outside of a fully formed romantic relationship. In other words, the kind of pursuing that happens within a relationship can also happen before a relationship has fully gotten off of the ground.

I’m going to try to maintain distinctions between the following types of pursuit:

Pursuing contact; making an effort to spend time with the other person. (This type can happen within an effort to form a relationship or within an existing one and these contexts can cause big differences.)

Pursuing emotional intimacy, including showing vulnerability, self-disclosing, and processing/resolving problems in the relationship. (This type is most crucial after a relationship has started but not only can it occur before that, it really needs to in order for the relationship to start on a meaningful basis.)

Pursuing physical intimacy; this doesn’t necessarily have to mean sexual contact only, but some non-sexual types of physical intimacy could be primarily/entirely about emotional intimacy and then they’d be a better fit with that category than this one.

(By the way, these aren’t from any sort of existing typology I found or anything like that. They’re just categories that came up and seemed significant as I was looking at examples here.)

Next, I’m going to to through a timeline of Hira and Kiyoi’s relationship in season 1 with an eye toward who is engaged in some kind of pursuit of contact and/or intimacy. This is a close read and rather lengthy but for folks who are engaged enough with this show to want to dig into the story deeply I hope it’ll be interesting.

This is also the kind of thing that I would expect folks to be able to legitimately disagree about. A lot of our perceptions of these things will be affected by our own frames of reference and the roles we tend to take up in relationships.

I want to note that I think there’s a real difference between pursuing vs. distancing and the seme/uke trope. Actually, looking closely at Utsukushii Kare has really informed how I see this. I’m still working out what I think about it at this point, but for now I’ll just say that despite seeming like they’d overlap a lot, pursuer/distancer and seme/uke roles don’t map onto one other very readily. Actually, I’m increasingly finding that it’s often ukes who do more pursuing with regard to emotional intimacy than semes, which seems important. Anyway, I’ll circle back to that eventually.

One final note before I get started: I keep forgetting to credit @lollipopsub for their excellent subtitles, which I’m referring to in almost every case here and in my other posts, so I’m circling back with an edit to add a tag for them here. I highly recommend checking out their stuff. They pay a lot of attention to important details, give well-placed translator’s notes, and have really helped with my understanding of the show.

On to the season 1 timeline!

Kiyoi “saves” Hira on their first day by walking into class late when he’s struggling with introducing himself to the class. Not really an interaction, per se. They do make strong impressions on each other that set them up for what happens later. Hira says Kiyoi “grabbed hold of me like a tidal wave” from that first time he saw him. Kiyoi sees Hira as a “useless loser” but he’s so struck by “the look in his eyes as if I were the only thing in the world” that he becomes curious about him.

Who’s pursuing here? No one, really. Except that Hira’s way of looking at Kiyoi is so intense and conspicuous that it could really be considered a kind of pursuit (a theme that continues as the story progresses).

(screenshot via Foreigner on MDL )

Hira walks up to Kiyoi as he’s laying down (seemingly asleep) on a bank of lockers in an otherwise uninhabited classroom. Kiyoi is actually pretending to be asleep. “I didn’t care about him,” he says later, “I just wanted to see what he’d do–this guy who was always staring at me. That was all.” When Hira looks at him pretending to sleep and whispers “so beautiful” to himself, Kiyoi says it’s “the first time I’d received a compliment so earnest,” and that he “wanted those eyes on me again.” In retrospect, he realizes there was “a desire in me” that he “didn’t yet know how to name”--that he was starting to have feelings for Hira. Hira also thanks Kiyoi for what happened on “introduction day” and Kiyoi responds by saying, “What the hell. You’re gross.”

Who’s pursuing here? Kiyoi set up the interaction in a way, but it’s also partly a matter of chance. Hira isn’t pursuing Kiyoi when he calls him beautiful as he doesn’t think he’s awake. Kiyoi’s rude comments could be seen as distancing (though they may appeal to Hira).

(screenshot via amigo_love on MDL)

Hira and Kiyoi get assigned to cleaning duty together and stuff ensues. At first, Hira is distressed by this. “A king and a commoner like me aren’t supposed to mingle,” he thinks. Kiyoi uses the cleanup duty assignment to rope Hira into doing things for him and the whole Shirota crew. This is one of the few times that Kiyoi actively chooses something that leads to Hira being bullied or dominated, and it’s a decisive choice. He’s not thinking about it that way, of course. “It started out just as a whim. I had to know what he wanted from me. I had to know the emotions hiding behind those eyes.” But once Hira waits for a table at the diner for the group, his “gofer” role is pretty much established.

Who’s pursuing here? Kiyoi. Neither of them chose the cleaning duty assignment, but once it happens, Kiyoi wrangles Hira into being a “gofer” in order to find out more about him.

Hira follows Kiyoi after seeing him on the street and learns he takes dance classes; they have a conversation in which Kiyoi asks him to keep this a secret from the others at school. Hira isn’t trying to interact with Kiyoi here. He just wants to watch him. Kiyoi’s wise to ask Hira not to talk about the dance classes. Later events show that if their peers had learned about them he may well have been targeted for bullying. The interaction about the secret is important. Kiyoi is left wondering if Hira is “different from the rest” and finds his heart racing during their conversation, and Hira thinks, “it’s the first time I ever looked this directly at someone.”

Who’s pursuing here? Neither of them. They get to know each other better and end up sharing a secret, but neither intentionally created the situation or took advantage of it much. (

(screenshot via Vanessa Ferey on MDL)

Kiyoi suggests having the summer break get-together at Hira’s house and he chooses to come with Hira to get ice cream when he could easily have avoided it. The fact that Hira lives alone is a handy excuse to meet with the others there. We never get any detail on Kiyoi’s perspective on this interaction, but it would stand to reason if he had remained intrigued by Hira. After the girls protest when Kiyoi draws the short straw that would make him accompany Hira to the store, Hira offers to go on his own. But Kiyoi leaves soon after and catches up with him. It’s completely his decision. This leads to Kiyoi riding on the back of Hira’s bike and the two of them getting in trouble. Hira, of course, comes up with other reasons in his mind for Kiyoi’s decisions, such as wanting to make sure Hira was really keeping his secret.

Who’s pursuing here? Kiyoi. He creates the situation by initiating the hangout, then makes a point of going with Hira on his errand.

Hira and Kiyoi speak alone after Kiyoi loses the contest. Hira plays a more active role in creating this situation. He follows Kiyoi backstage and sees him cry and punch a wall in response to not performing as well in the contest as he’d hoped. Then, when Kiyoi leaves the diner, he follows him to, well, whatever that place is with the circular bench and the fairy lights. I’d actually forgotten something important about this scene. Hira follows Kiyoi, but Kiyoi does something surprising once he sees him. Well, first he calls him “stalker.” But then, pretty much out of the blue, he tells Hira, “As a kid, I dreamed of getting inside the TV,” and goes on to confide in him about his childhood dreams of becoming a performer. This is very out of the ordinary for him and involves seriously vulnerable stuff. This is probably one of the reasons he turns on Hira so quickly afterward–he seems to feel overexposed. At that point, he pushes Hira away more strongly than at any other point in season 1, responding to his declaration that he likes him “like crazy” by saying, “I hate you like crazy! You’re fucking disgusting.”

Who’s pursuing here? Hira is literally pursuing Kiyoi by following him around at two different points. But it’s notable that Kiyoi pursues Hira emotionally by opening up to him in such an unguarded way (even if he does become guarded again super quickly).

Shirota dumps tomato juice on Kiyoi, Hira defends him, and they talk in an empty classroom afterward, leading to the famous hand kiss. Neither Kiyoi nor Hira initiates the event that brings them together–it’s obviously not either’s idea for Shirota to bully Kiyoi in this way. Hira responds with a degree of loyalty (and violence) that makes a huge impression on Kiyoi. Hira also goes and sits with Kiyoi afterward of his own accord. Their subsequent conversation is a turning point in their relationship. Kiyoi guides the conversation into very personal subject matter, asking if Hira “likes men.” Hira, of course, completely misses the subtext that this would be something he’d have in common with Kiyoi. He responds by telling Kiyoi that he is the only person he is now, or has ever been, attracted to. Then Kiyoi asks Hira if he wants to kiss him and offers him his hand. He fakes him out at first, pulling his hand away at the last moment. But he still presents it again and lets Hira kiss it.

Who’s pursuing here? Hira does take some initiative, both by defending Kiyoi and going to sit with him. But it’s Kiyoi who controls the conversation and steers it toward personal topics and subject matter related to their relationship, and it’s Kiyoi who offers to let Hira kiss his hand.

Hira and Kiyoi start hanging out together regularly. After the juice incident, they start spending time together pretty often. Hira doesn’t seem to invest any meaning in the timing of this, but it’s obvious that between the way he defended him and the significance of their interaction afterward, there’s been a shift in how Kiyoi sees their relationship. Kiyoi actually hinted at their spending more time together even before this, like after their water-fight when he tells Hira that he needs to stay stocked up on ginger ale at home (and then good ol’ oblivious Hira thinks, “Why would he say that?”). But the day of the juice incident clinched it for Kiyoi. He still has his doubts about Hira in some ways, but his loyalty and protectiveness at a time when others abandoned him was a big deal. As Kiyoi puts it, “he sacrifices everything for my sake.”

Who’s pursuing here? We don’t see anyone initiating hanging out, but let’s get real. It was Kiyoi. Hira would never.

And then we come to the final moment of their time in high school: the graduation day kiss. This is almost entirely Kiyoi’s doing. He goes off by himself to a secluded place after making sure that Hira hears him announcing he’s leaving. It’s up to Hira to follow him, which he does. Kiyoi desperately wants Hira to make some kind of declaration of love or put the moves on him somehow, but as usual Hira is way too oblivious to pick up on any hint of that. So Kiyoi has to take action himself. He kisses Hira, freaks out, and runs off. To most people, kissing someone is interpreted as a sign that you might be interested in them romantically and/or sexually. Naturally, Hira interprets it as “a kiss given out of pity,” Kiyoi’s way of “telling me to stop chasing him.” It’s pretty frustrating to hear Hira go on from there to say that “every word that passes Kiyoi’s lips never leaves my mind….I embrace everything that Kiyoi gives me,” when he’s actually rejecting what Kiyoi is offering him and putting words in his mouth. I guess he’s just working overtime to convince himself. And then, of course, he changes his phone number for no actual reason.

Who’s pursuing here? It’s Kiyoi again. Hira followed him to the back of the school, as he was intended to. That’s his contribution. Kiyoi orchestrated the whole thing and when it was clear Hira wasn’t going to do anything, he planted one on him. And then Hira pulled a massive distancing move. He misinterpreted Kiyoi to an extent that seems almost willful, stopped trying to see him, and changed his phone number, making it impossible for Kiyoi to reach him.

Aaaaaand then after more than a year apart, Hira and Kiyoi meet up again when Koyama takes Hira to the play Kiyoi is in. Kiyoi hears about someone named Hira from the older Koyama, one thing leads to another, and he arranges for Hira to be invited to the play. He’s not exactly friendly when they do see each other, but for Hira, being called “stalker” is a form of flirting. Hira provides his trademark stare which, to be fair, seems to be a big part of what Kiyoi was hoping for. But he doesn’t stay for the afterparty or do anything to maintain contact with Kiyoi.

Who’s pursuing here? Kiyoi pulled all the strings and all Hira did was do his trademark stare. Though maybe I shouldn’t downplay that since it’s actually a pretty big deal to Kiyoi.

(screenshot via Ginger Ale on MDL)

Hira goes to the play a second time in a terrible disguise, attends the afterparty, and hangs out with Kiyoi in the park, after which Kiyoi asks him if he’s dating Koyama. Did Hira actually make a move this time? Maybe. He went to see Kiyoi’s play again, without Koyama this time, while wearing a really obvious disguise that made him stand out even more than his usual appearance. Kiyoi invited him to the afterparty again and he went. Those two weirdos spent the whole party obsessing over each other from across the room, drank too much because they were too worked up, and ended up sobering up in the park. They have a pretty decent conversation where Kiyoi dropped lots of hints and Hira got none of them, culminating in Kiyoi asking him at the train station if he’s dating Koyama and an oblivious Hira being like, “why do you ask?”

Who’s pursuing here? Well, Hira does come to the play of his own volition, which is something, but his disguise implies he wasn’t actually trying to interact with Kiyoi, just watch him from afar…unless a part of him knows it sucks? Kiyoi makes a good effort with the hints and making cute lil faces at Hira. It’s all for nought but at least he’s trying.

Kiyoi calls Hira (while pretending it was a wrong number), uses it as an excuse to ask if he can rehearse at his house, then shows up and finds Koyama clinging to him. Kiyoi plays off the phone call like it was an accident, which is somewhat shitty. But at least he reached out. Hira says yes to the rehearsing thing. It’s not his fault Koyama tackles him just as Kiyoi is walking in (on purpose?). Kiyoi pulls his usual “I don’t give a shit” thing in response.

Who’s pursuing here? Kiyoi initiates contact, albeit in a fairly cowardly way. Hira is receptive but doesn’t do much. But it’s not his fault Koyama cockblocked him.

Hira fills in for the lighting person at Kiyoi’s play, stuff happens, yada yada, he licks the blood off of Kiyoi’s hurt finger, almost kisses him but doesn’t, then tells Kiyoi he can’t date him because he’s a king and he’s just his servant, after which he totally ignores Kiyoi telling him he likes him back. This is all after Koyama tells Kiyoi what Hira told him about the one beautiful person he’d taken photos of and how he loved them beyond reason and arranges for Hira to pick up that lighting shift so they’ll have a reason to see each other. Kiyoi kicks a table leg out of frustration and they end up getting knocked down by a bunch of junk and Kiyoi’s finger gets hurt, which leads to the licking situation, and almost-kiss, and Hira full-on rejecting Kiyoi whether he realizes it or not.

Who’s pursuing here? Well, honestly, Koyama’s doing more to help than either of these two goofballs. Kiyoi’s fed up from the start and I can’t blame him. Hira’s inability to process information that doesn’t match up with his personal mythology is on clear display here. There’s a reason this is their lowest point during season 1.

Hira tells Kiyoi over voicemail that he’s going to the place he first “saved” him (their high school) to “dedicate the night” to his love for him, after which he’ll forget him (sure you will, buddy). Kiyoi shows up, there’s a chase and a scuffle, and they finally have it out, then get together. Hira does something decisive here for once. He says he’s serious about putting their relationship behind him, but he’s clearly disappointed when he thinks Kiyoi won’t come. It’s extremely on-brand for Hira to reach out to someone not by explicitly seeking connection but by expressing his (supposed) resignation and hoping they’ll swoop in. Kiyoi tells himself he won’t come, then does, then runs away as soon as Hira sees him. When they do start to talk, Hira says a lot of the usual Hira things. Talking about how much he loves him, begging him not to go. But he offers little else until Kiyoi shifts things by opening up big time, including telling him yet again that he returns his feelings (in a really angry way–I’m pretty sure it’s the only confession I’ve seen in a drama that involves someone yelling “baka!” at the object of their affections–but it’s understandable). Kiyoi goes through their history and points out example after example of how Hira expressed through words and actions that he loved Kiyoi but failed to follow through, even though at times he was pretty clear about reciprocating his feelings (especially when he kissed him). We know from season 2 that Hira doesn’t really internalize the part about not viewing Kiyoi as a “king,” but at least in this moment, he seems to at least sort of get that Kiyoi likes him back and that he needs for him to see that and respond instead of talking himself into an imaginary rejection. Hira does put himself out there in one really notable way: he asks if he can touch Kiyoi, hugs him, and then lays him down on a danged desk and makes out with him. It’s honestly a red letter day for Hira showing some guts.

Who’s pursuing here? Although it’s in a backhanded way, Hira initiates this interaction. And in a way, he shows vulnerability and genuinely tries to engage Kiyoi. But things only start to change, start to open up the possibility of a real relationship, when Kiyoi opens up about his feelings for Hira and how Hira’s behavior has affected him. That said, Hira makes a big contribution too by literally reaching out to Kiyoi and initiating making out with him like he’s an “ordinary” human being.

That’s the timeline. Now, a few big themes and tendencies to note:

Most opportunities for contact were created or facilitated by Kiyoi.

When someone showed vulnerability or made the first move to connect emotionally, it was almost always Kiyoi (though both characters are still very guarded at this point).

Hira’s declarations of love and frequent compliments are tricky to categorize here. There can be an element of vulnerability in expressing these feelings, but it’s not the same as the kind of self-disclosure Kiyoi engages in, and sometimes Hira’s idealization of Kiyoi is itself a form of distancing (e.g. not being able to date “the king”).

Hira’s way of looking at Kiyoi–like, literally, the staring, meaningful looks, eye-fucking, whatever you want to call it–does seem to function as a kind of pursuit at least some of the time. It often impacts Kiyoi in that way. But it’s not exactly a straightforward move.

Both characters seek physical intimacy in different ways/at different times. Kiyoi proposes the hand kiss and kisses Hira on graduation day, while Hira does the hand thing (!) and initiates touching, hugging, and eventually the whole classroom table makeout situation.

There are also some obvious contextual factors that should be kept in mind here. The big ones that come to mind for me are:

Their power differential–Kiyoi has a great deal more social status and related power than Hira, particularly in high school.

The fact that they first got to know one another in this hierarchical context is bound to set them up for certain habits and expectations. Hira literally acted as a kind of servant for Kiyoi and the rest of the Shirota crew at first!

Both characters are deeply affected by their past experiences with peers. For Hira, this mostly involves a history of bullying, being ignored, and being excluded (in part due to ableism). For Kiyoi, his past experiences looked favorable on the surface but were seriously lacking when it came to authenticity or real intimacy.

We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Hira’s stuttering is a disability. The negative peer experiences I just mentioned had at least some basis in ableism and really, it might account for all or nearly all of them. The wear and tear on his psyche of dealing with pervasive ableism and the bullying and aggression that comes with it can’t be overstated. This also helps with understanding some of his maladaptive coping strategies (which it seems were actually pretty adaptive in the past).

I’ll return to the pursuer/distancer thing in another post about season 2 and I have some additional thoughts about how to put it in context with BL/yaoi tropes as well as some other relevant ideas.

#pursuer distancer dynamic #psychology of BL #utsukushii kare #utsukare #utsukushii kare season 2 #hira x kiyoi #hira kazunari #kiyoi sou

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blue-howlite · 4 months

Text

"Our pretty thing"

(McMillan twins x GN!Reader, one shot)

It was supposed to be a normal evening, but if you're close to Forgotten Hill nothing can be normal.

Warnings: kidnapping, pet and owner dynamics if you squint not too hard, mentions of gore, generally dark content, being referred to as "it", chasing and hiding, being treated like an object, the guy from Little Cabin In The Woods, mentions of witch-y rituals, English isn't my first language.

Author note: I received (and lost) an ask about the McMillan twins and a reader that meets them and doesn't start as their friend. So... this is like really dark so I hope you weren't looking for a cute slice of life trope. If you were, just send a new ask, I can always write more for my favourite creeps.

You had planned this evening for weeks. There was going to be the meteor shower of the year, at least according to the "experts" on social media. You had found the perfect little clearing, in the middle of nowhere; no light from nearby cities would ruin the night. There was a town a few miles away, Forgotten Hill. According to the GPS it was just a five minute drive, close enough if you needed it. You laid the blanket down in the middle of the clearing, glancing at the woods around you. No sounds came from there, you probably scared the animals living there with the noise of your car when you arrived. It was peaceful, and the night wasn't even too cold. As you laid down on the blanket, you thought it was really the best night for stargazing. Soon you saw your first shooting star of the night, with a long, white tail that disappeared almost immediately. Another followed, just a few minutes later. Then there were several, like distant white lines running across the sky; your eyes couldn't take them all in, there were just too many, and it was beautiful. It lasted several hours, and you're not sure when you drifted off.

When you opened your eyes again, you couldn't see the stars. Instead, a face was hovering over yours. It was disfigured and too big for a normal person. You stared into the thing's eyes for a few seconds, then let out a scream and rolled on your side, to get away from it. You got up and ran to your car, but the thing was quicker and blocked your path, standing in front of you. Now that you gave it a better look it seemed human, but something was terribly wrong with its proportions. You stepped back, trying to think quickly. Talking to it didn't cross your mind as an option, you were too scared, your throat felt tight. So you ran in the opposite direction, into the woods, hoping that the creature would lose sight of you. It didn't, as you heard its footsteps behind you. There was some distance between it and you, but it was too fast and you were still dizzy from your nap in the clearing. It was approaching, getting closer, your eyes tried looking around to find somewhere to hide- then you collided into something, since you weren't looking where you were going.

A hand grabbed your arm, supporting you as you almost fell back. You got pulled up, towards what, or who, you bumped into. As you looked at them, your blood froze. Staring back at you was a crow, and it took you a few seconds to realise it was a mask. You tried pulling yourself free, now afraid of the stranger, but they easily kept their hold on you.

«Leaving so quickly? The show is just about to start!» he, a man by his voice, said in an almost mocking tone. Then a twig snapped, and you whipped your head around, remembering your pursuer. But the creature was nowhere to be found. Instead, another masked person stood. His mask seemed to represent some sort of bug, but you didn't recognize it. However the red jacket made you think of some general from the history books. A thought hit you, and you relaxed a little.

«Is there some sort of fair going on around here? I came here for the meteor shower, I didn't know about it.» you said, with an awkward chuckle. That was the logical answer; the small town nearby you saw on the GPS probably had some sort of festival going on. You looked back at the crow masked man, and noticed the black robes. They were in costumes, clearly. You didn't remember hearing of scare attractions close by, but they were probably scare actors. The one who chased you was surely a colleague of theirs.

«A fair?» the crow man tilted his head to the side. A great actor, you told yourself, he was really unsettling.

«Did you come here alone?» asked the other with the bug mask. His voice was very similar to the crow man, you noticed.

«Well-» your brain was already realising how foolish you were to relax. It was the middle of nowhere, in the woods. Both men were relaxed, at ease, despite finding you, a stranger wandering in the woods. Until you got back to your car, you weren't safe.

«My friends went a bit ahead, but they're waiting for me.» you lied, hoping it would sound believable. The bug man walked closer to you, seemingly staring at you and blocking you between him and the other guy. You looked down, trying to calm yourself.

«Why are you lying?» he asked, lifting your chin up with a hand. Now your hands were shaking, as the two guys had trapped you between them. You tried responding, but another sound got your attention, and theirs too. It was a roar, coming from far in the woods.

«Ruth's ritual worked, it seems.» said the bug man. «Which means we can leave.» said the crow man, tightening his grip on your arm. The other hand, the one holding your chin up, was still there, firm. The bug man turned his attention to you again.

«You're in luck. We don't have to get rid of you. Not right now, anyway.» he let go of your face, and you could almost hear a smirk in his tone. You were terrified now. Masks and rituals? Getting rid of you? This was a cult, that's how it looked to you.

«M-My friends are waiting for me, I should really go, or they'll get worried-» a cackle from the crow man interrupted you. He seemed amused by your attempt to lie again. The bug man also let out a soft chuckle. You took this chance, now that their guard was lowered, and bolted to your right. The crow man's nails left scratches on your arm when you tugged yourself free, but you ignored the pain and just ran, trying to put distance between yourself and the two strangers.

You heard a laugh, but you were unsure which one of them was. Their voices were too similar to tell them apart. Then footsteps, quickly approaching. Twigs breaking. You dared to look back, just to see the bug man looking back, chasing you. The crow man was nowhere in sight. This worried you. When you turned again to see where you were going, the crow man had somehow materialised himself ahead of you, you'd soon run into him like you did before. You tried turning in another direction but you slowed down to do that. The bug man caught you, holding you tight from behind. «That was very rude!» said the crow man in a mocking tone, walking up to you. The other man was holding your arms to your sides, keeping you still. The crow man got right in front of you; then you felt a sudden pain to your head, and everything went black.

When you woke up again, you weren't in the woods anymore. You were in bed, in a dimly lit room. Your head hurt a lot. It felt like someone smashed it against a brick wall. Then you remembered: the woods, the masked men, how you tried to run...

You sat up. That wasn't your room, so you assumed they had kidnapped you. But something about it... looked like a hospital room. Did you maybe just faint, and they brought you here? Maybe you had just been half asleep and those men weren't actually half as dangerous as you thought. That's what you tried to tell yourself, hoping things would just work out.

«How are you feeling?» said a voice you recognized. The bug man was sitting close to the door, staring at you through his mask. Every hopeful thought vanished. You noticed some long, sharp things on his fingers, like claws. They were blood stained.

He patiently waited for your answer, and you cleared your throat. «My head hurts.»

He nodded, as if expecting it. «Forgive Nathan, he can be a little impulsive at times. He will apologize to you, I promise.» he said, sounding... oddly reassuring. So Nathan was the name of the crow man. It somehow eased you, knowing they had actual names and weren't just monsters with masks. But then you knew that you didn't just spontaneously faint, you were made unconscious.

«I'm colonel Ethan McMillan. The other person you met is Nathan McMillan.» he said without you even asking, maybe noticing the change in your expression.

«Where am I?» you asked, gripping the edge of the mattress to suppress the small shaking of your hands. If Ethan noticed that or not you couldn't tell, his mask was still hiding his face.

«Forgotten Hill's hospital. You will stay here for some time.» he got up from his seat, then opened the door and glanced your way. «Respect the rules, and everything will be fine. If I catch you out of your room, there will be consequences.»

With that he left, closing the door behind himself.

You were shaking, confused and terrified. A few hours ago you were stargazing, and now you were confined to a hospital room by a stranger with sharp blades on his fingers who threatened you if you tried leaving. You stayed there, raking your brain for anything that could get you out of that situation. You were so deep in thought, you jumped when someone knocked on the door.

«Cute thing, are you awake?» he asked. The voice was the same as Ethan, but there was something else to it. Something different. Nathan came in without waiting for your answer, then closed the door.

«I apologise for hitting you, cute thing. I thought you would run away again.» he said, sitting on the chair Ethan left. He looked around, then sighed. «This place is depressing. I'm not surprised Ethan's patients want to leave all the time.»

You didn't respond to him, afraid of doing something wrong. "He can be a little impulsive sometimes", Ethan's voice echoed in your head. You were afraid to do something wrong and tick Nathan off. Your head still hurt after the hit in the woods.

Nathan focused back to you. You couldn't see his face behind the mask, and by now it was starting to annoy you. «Do you want to leave, cute thing?» he asked, with a somewhat teasing tone. You were caught by surprise.

«Ethan said that-» you started, but Nathan scoffed.

«Ethan says a lot of things and has a lot of rules. I'm not Ethan, I'm Nathan. I'm sure he mentioned it, right?» when you nodded, he sighed.

«I hoped to introduce myself on my own... But he probably did not expect me to come here and talk to you. Which is why I will ask again, do you want to leave this place?»

This time you stopped to consider it. By how he was phrasing it, it sounded like Nathan wanted to sneak you out, without letting Ethan know. That would have meant that once out, you could attempt an escape more easily if only one of them was following you.

«I do. Please.»

Nathan chuckled and stood up from the chair. He didn't get close to you, but raised a hand with his palm up, inviting you. You got up from the bed, walked towards the masked man and took his hand. Nothing bad happened, and you relaxed a bit. Then he closed his hand over yours and gave it a light tug, pulling you closer. The eyes of the mask staring back at you were unsettling to say the least.

Nathan opened the door and led you outside, carefully looking around. He was definitely sneaking you out without Ethan's permission. Not like you cared, as long as you got out. You two walked down a corridor, then in an old lift. You noticed the blood stains and scratches on the metal wall, but tried to not think about it and suppressed the shivers in your body. Nathan just stared at your hand, opening and closing it in what seemed to be fascination.

«I can never get this kind of control over my puppets; their fingers break as soon as I start adding the thread and wood.» he commented, flexing your fingers. It was pretty weird, having a crow face staring at your hand. It made you feel like he could just bite your fingers off any moment as if they were worms.

The elevator got to the ground floor, and Nathan led you to the exit door. He fiddled with the door a bit, working on some sort of code. Then he opened it and pulled you out with him.

It was dark outside, it had only been a few hours since you were stargazing. Around you was the town, small and deserted. You couldn't see anyone around. Plus you couldn't tell the direction your car was. Your escape plan was slowly falling apart in your head as you realised you would not be able to get away from Nathan.

«What is wrong, pretty thing?» he asked, with that mocking tone. He pulled you away from the front of the Hospital, and towards a specific direction, or so it seemed. As you followed him, you noticed shadows moving around him. You squinted your eyes to see it better; it had a pair of white spots on one end, and its body was a bent shape, like a reversed V standing on one of its legs. It didn't look human or like anything you'd ever seen before. Just as you were about to ask Nathan about it, the shadow disappeared.

As you kept walking, you soon saw a building. It was big, and there seemed to be some light inside that was shining through the windows.

«Welcome to the Puppet Theatre! This is where I, the Puppeteer, work!» Nathan said with a certain enthusiasm, opening the door and leading you in. You thought of bolting away while he stepped in, but he was still holding your hand, firmly. So you walked in and let Nathan close the door behind you, just to pull you again, past the ticket office. A puppet started greeting you both, but Nathan ignored it and just pushed the door open, leading you in the actual theatre. Then he did something you didn't expect; he took his mask off.

You thought that under the mask there would be a hideous face, maybe scarred or deformed, like the one of the creature that chased you first in the woods. Instead, it was a normal, human face. He was way younger than you thought he'd be, probably around your age. Brown eyes, brown messy hair and pale, smooth skin. In different circumstances, you'd even think he was handsome. You didn't realise you were staring, until he chuckled.

«You look surprised, pretty thing.» he said, tilting his head to the side with a curious expression. You blinked a few times and looked away, pretending to be interested in the place. You should have been interested in what was around you, to find a way to escape or fight back. «It's nicer than it looked from the outside.» You managed to say. Nathan hummed, as if pleased with your answer. Truthfully, the place looked kinda good, if you could get past the fact that it seemed abandoned. And a nice music was playing, a bit eerie but still enjoyable; you could even have danced to it.

But now your exhaustion was catching up with you; luckily your head didn't hurt as much as before, but it wasn't fine. Nathan was about to start dragging you around again, but you needed to rest.

«Nathan-»

The way his expression lit up startled you. It wasn't the cold amusement you saw just moments before, he seemed intrigued now. Just by you saying his name.

«That is my name.» he said, staring at you. You nodded, a bit unsettled.

«Yes, well, I- I'm tired.» was all you managed to say, fear and dizziness washing over you.

His eyes softened a little, but there was a glint of something in them, something dangerous... you couldn't let your guard down yet.

«Is that so? But I want to show you more, pretty thing.» he said, with a little smirk on his lips. You had to admit it; he was terribly attractive when he did that.

«But we could make an arrangement, yes? I will let you rest, if you let me study those pretty hands of yours. I rarely get someone with such pretty hands unscathed, I want to make them for my puppets.»

You thought about it. It didn't seem unfair, and if he wanted to just see your hands, why not comply? After that you could find a way out of there more easily, once you were rested enough. You nodded, and he led you through some corridors and doors. The more you walked, the more tired you felt... the more you realised how stupid that was. When you saw Nathan was leading you to a basement, you started fearing for what he meant by "studying" your hands. There were blood splatters on the walls, and chains. Nathan let go of you to walk to the wall, and you took the chance. You ran back from where you came, closing the doors behind you as you passed them, hoping to slow him down. But you couldn't remember exactly all the turns you took, so you started just randomly running down the corridor, hoping to find an exit. Your blood froze when you heard the sound of something slamming against one of the doors far behind you. As you turned your head to look back, a hand grabbed your arm, pulling you forward.

Soon you realised you were in Ethan's grasp, in the corridor you found yourself in. He was wearing his mask.

«I told you not to leave your room.» he said in a reprimanding whisper. There was a hint of something else in his voice, something akin to worry, but you didn't really focus on that as you could hear Nathan approaching.

«I'm sorry! But please let me go-» as the last door was about to go down, Ethan pushed you into a closet. «Stay. There.» His voice was commanding and his tone firm; he would not accept disobedience this time. The closet doors closed in front of you, and you covered your mouth as you heard the last door go down; Nathan's steps quickly approached.

«You let the pretty thing escape, I presume?»

It was Ethan's voice, you could tell.

«It seemed to be behaving well and to be too tired to try an escape. I misjudged it, but it can't have gotten far.» Nathan's voice was further from Ethan's, but it was still too close for your liking. You were forcing yourself to stay still and control your breath, terrified that the smallest sound could give you away.

«Let's search the building then.» Ethan's voice, again. A terrible doubt crawled up your spine: what if he was about to just give you back to Nathan?

One set of footsteps started growing distant, but another was getting close. You held your breath as the closet door opened; but Ethan's bug mask was staring back at you. He grabbed your arm and pulled you out of the closet; Nathan was nowhere in sight. But you were still shaking, and Ethan noticed that. With a sigh, he took his mask off. You took a shaky breath when you saw a face identical to Nathan's- then it made sense to you, how similar their voices were. They were twins. And one immediate difference you could spot, was Ethan's more disheveled look. Black circles around his eyes, and if Nathan's hair were messy, Ethan's were even messier.

«Will you obey this time?»

The fact that the mask was off felt somewhat reassuring. You managed a weak «Yes», your hands still shaking.

Ethan gave you an approving nod, then led you down the corridor, in the opposite direction from where Nathan went. He was still holding your arm, firm but not too tight. You tried to not look around too much, your head was already spinning as it was. Your focus was all on Ethan, to make sure to match his pace and follow the turns he took.

You're not sure when you got out of the theatre and into the woods, but there you were, under the night sky again, with tall trees all around you. Ethan stopped, and you almost bumped into him. He faced you and lifted your chin, careful not to scratch you with the long metal claws on his fingers. He turned your face side to side, his eyes scrutinizing every one of your features. One of his fingers was resting on the side of your neck, feeling your pulse.

«Your exhaustion is catching up to you. You have fifteen minutes at best, before you collapse.» he declared, but he didn't let go of your face yet. One of his metal claws grazed your throat; if on purpose or by accident, you couldn't tell.

«I haven't seen a combination of skin tissue, bone structure and eye aspects as intriguing as yours in a long time. It would be a shame if Nathan disfigured it before I managed to emulate it for my future projects.»

Your head was starting to feel heavy, understanding what he was implying was too hard for you. It sounded vaguely flattering though.

«And it would be a shame if Ethan took apart your perfect hands before I learned how to emulate them for my puppets.» a voice sounded behind you, startling you back into a more awake state.

Nathan was just a few paces behind you. You weren't sure when he got there, but Ethan didn't even flinch. He just moved his clawed hand away from your face, and looked at his brother. You didn't turn to see him. Instead, you looked at the ground, at your feet. Everything was starting to spin in your vision, it made you feel nauseous.

«What solution do you propose then, brother?» asked Ethan, his voice stern. Something told you he wasn't going to give you up to Nathan. It was a small comfort, you didn't know what his "projects" involved. Nathan walked closer, placing himself right behind you. He raised your other arm, the one his brother wasn't holding, and took your hand.

«I won't turn the pretty thing into a puppet, and you won't turn it into one of your creatures. We'll share it, taking turns studying it.»

The way they talked about you sent chills down your spine. They were both holding you, yet it was as if you weren't even there; they talked about sharing you as if you were a treat they just had to break in two so that both had a piece.

Ethan hummed, a small sound that didn't escape you.

«It seems like a fair deal. But first, the pretty thing should rest.»

A buzzing sound invaded your ears, as your vision started fading. The last thing you heard, before you collapsed, were three words; you couldn't be sure which one of them spoke them, their voices muffled.

«Our pretty thing»

#forgotten hill #forgotten hill x reader #ethan mcmillan #nathan mcmillan #ethan mcmillan x reader #nathan mcmillan x reader #this was oddly easy to write and I'm not sure how I feel about that since it takes such a dark turn

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dont-offend-the-bees · 2 years

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Theories based on leaks abounding, so avoid if you don't want em, but I'm throwing my own wwdits finale theory/ideas into the pot bc I might as well

Regarding the season finale, 'Memories'

The most popular take I've seen around here is that Nandor's gonna lose his memories — either through a djinn wish or that tantalising foreshadowing about the Guide losing her memories for hooking up with a slayer. And I would love that, but you know what I'd love even more?

Guillermo losing his memories

Now hear me out!

So far this season, Nandor is getting it rubbed in his fucking face that Guillermo is important to him and that he might've missed his chance with him. Guillermo isn't rising to his jealousy bait, isn't taking up offers to see his magically enhanced dick (this fucking show), is dividing his attention to look after baby Colin and talk to his long distance secret boyfriend and presumably do Nadja's accounting (for whatever shady ass reason lmao).

Guillermo is, largely, operating as an independent person who spends time with Nandor and helps him, but doesn't need him or even technically work for him. Nandor, conversely, needs Guillermo a lot, or at the very least wants him around. He wants his help, his advice, he wants his attention. Even if he still hasn't actually consciously clocked that he has feelings for Guillermo and that his ex-familiar is the love he's been looking for, he knows that he wants Guillermo's attention and affection and time, and he's getting it but it's no longer undivided, and I think that bothers him more than he'd admit — partly bc yknow, classic Nandor abandonment issues, but also because whatever Nandor does, it all comes back to Guillermo.

And now on top of just having this strange sense of jealousy about Guillermo having other things/people in his life taking his attention, and this odd sense of discontent with his wife-to-be who is perfect on paper but still not quite clicking for reasons he can't name; on top of all that he now has to think of Guillermo during sex, too! (unless the djinn didn't actually curse him and he's just using that as an excuse for thoughts he was having anyway, of course xD)

I think as the season goes by and we get more and more ridiculous scenarios that emphasise just how throughly gone for Guillermo Nandor is, and how he needs Guillermo far more than Guillermo needs him, he's gonna get frustrated and angry and hurt. And I think it could all come to a head with a fight with Guillermo where he lashes out and wishes that he'd never welcomed him into his home, never scooped him up from that Panera Bread.

Cue Djinn.

Of course, for angst reasons, this is Nandor's last wish and he can't undo it. Which brings us to the final episode, Memories. And the reasons I adore this concept of a memory wiped Guillermo even more than Nandor are:

A) it's a culmination of this Nandor Pining era we're in. Guillermo desperately trying to make Nandor remember has angst and cuteness potential too especially in regards to like, how Nandor's feelings for Guillermo might differ if this time they didn't meet in a master-servant capacity, but also a risk of retreading ground we've already explored in things like 'The Wellness Center'. Putting Guillermo once again in the role of pursuer is a bit familiar and a bit of a step back after all his recent growth, but totally flipping their old dynamic on it's head by having Nandor be the one desperately trying to win the trust and affection of this memory-wiped Guillermo, who mostly sees this weird guy bugging him as a pushy nuisance? I'm here for it.

B) "From Panera Bread you came, and to Panera Bread you will return once again!" is now foreshadowing

C) MANY things they could do with memory-wiped Guillermo. Is he now meek and self-conscious with no self esteem again, because he earned that confidence through his trials and tribulations in the vampires' world? Did he grow in confidence a different way and now he's actually *gasp* well-adjusted? Does he SEEM well adjusted but actually under his polite every day Panera Bread manager facade he's still got something deeply fucked going on? So many great possibilities, either for exploring how he could've turned out different under different circumstances, or for showcasing just how far he's come over these 12 years and 4 seasons by showing us where he started.

D) Everyone's attempts to bring Guillermo home would just be such a beautiful way to show how he's actually wormed his way into the hearts and lives of these vampires. I mean for a fucking start, he is literally helping to raise Baby Colin Robinson this season. I think if I saw Colin talking to this man who doesn't remember him about his uncle Memo who always supported him no matter what, my lungs would cave in. And much in the same vein of Laszlo's "that would be a humiliating end for you" to Nandor, I can see him talking to shy, unassuming Panera Guillermo all serious and solemn, lamenting the man he once was and could be again if he'd just remember, damn you. And as for Nadja we'll that leads us onto point:

E) This whole situation would almost directly parallel Nadja's season one plot with Gregor/Jeff. She sees Nandor, her friend who's heartbreaks she's always found upsetting and tried to prevent (see 'Gail'), and sees him helplessly yearning for a man who might've loved him in a past life, but now doesn't remember who he is. Lbr, that's gonna hit close to home. Especially if we go with the new Guillermo is back to being a self-conscious pushover idea, after once being a man strong and deadly enough to be a bodyguard to fucking vampires, because that's exactly what happened with her warrior love Gregor becoming Jeff. I just think this parallel could open up some fucking incredible conversations between her and Nandor and memory-wiped Guillermo.

Obviously, this wouldn't address all the things we've had brought up this season, like the new Forbidden Romance angle, and this probably isn't gonna happen. But I love it and I may just have to try and write it sometime if I have the time and energy.

If anyone loses their memory, though, whoever is is, I hope one of the ways their friends try to bring it back is by making them watch the documentary footage.

#wwdits #what we do in the shadows #guillermo de la cruz #nandor the relentless #Nandermo #wwdits spoilers #wwdits leaks #fan theory #mr. bees speaks #Long post

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daiyu-amaya · 5 months

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What is your favourite relationship dynamic that you use while writing fics?

I wouldn’t say they are my favorites but it is often my go to while writing but the "Distancer and pursuer" dynamic and the "Fear and shame" dynamic are literally all my fics lol

For example I see that both types describe how I write Raphael/saki, Obi-Wan kenobi/count Dooku, Vlad Masters/Danny Fenton, and a few others

Example for both dynamics separately,

F&S: Donatello/Saki

D&P: Vlad/Dan/Clockwork

I define those two types of relationship dynamics below the read more in case anyone isn't sure what those are 🙂

A distancer/pursuer dynamic can emerge when the relationship is one-sided. This dynamic is often rooted in your or your partner’s attachment style and how you bonded with a primary caregiver in your childhood. If a primary caregiver was not emotionally supportive and validating, it can result in fears of rejection, abandonment, and isolation.

Fear and shame When one partner is fearful or anxious about receiving love or sharing their emotions, a power imbalance often happens where one partner feels hurt or shamed. In turn, this can lead to emotional outbursts and anger. Most of the time these dynamics link back to unresolved childhood trauma and how a person was attached to a primary caregiver during their formative years.

got the definitions from this site

#fanfiction #creative writing #writing #asks #my writing #answering asks #honestly i never really think about it and the article was super helpful #i knew there were words for the type of relationships i write #and the article sums up 98.9% my fics in those two Categories

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wen-kexing-apologist · 3 months

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Hi!

For the trope ask game

8. May/December & 12. Forced Proximity

Rose💜

8- May/December

So there are actually quite a few age gap romances in BL but hmmm this one is a little difficult for me because there are a couple that I really really love. I like the idea of the May/Decmber trope being not only a significant age gap but also two people in very different stages of their lives, so as much as I love Wataru and Daichan I feel like they are both settled, domestic, and while generationally different, they are both working adults.

I think I want to actually throw this to

Fan Ze Rui and Bai Zong Yi, Kiseki: Dear to Me

What I appreciate with their relationship is that unlike some of the other May/December relationships, they meet when they are relatively older. What I mean by this is that Lian and Kuea from Cutie Pie grew up together, Wataru has known Daichan since he was twelve. Bai Zong Yi meets Fan Ze Rui when he is 17, in what I would call a truly unhinged first contact. I loved watching their relationship develop from utter annoyance to tolerance to friendship and then to love. I think what I love about this relationship is that there is a clear attraction between them for awhile, but Fan Rui is trying to be responsible. He knows Bai Zong Yi is a minor, he has a dangerous lifestyle, sure he definitely wants to be with Bai Zong Yi but he is not trying to encourage Bai Zong Yi’s feelings for him, even if they are reciprocated.

Part of why I am choosing these two is a) because the tension in Fan Rui knowing that this relationship is not responsible and Bai Zong Yi’s clear and obvious interest in him creates one of my favorite first kiss acting moments and b) because I think Kiseki actually managed to handle this relationship responsibly by having Bai Zong Yi be the pursuer, by having Fan Rui try to distance, by having Bai Zong Yi initiate.

Their reunion scene was beautiful and that lap sit during their first kiss was smooth as butter.

12- Forced Proximity

Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, AND I FEEL FINE.

What an incredible example of a forced proximity second chance romance with such fucked up relation dynamics that I absolutely got to obsessed over. I mean, be honest, how many shows do you see where your characters are forced together on a road trip to try to get their recently acquired, superhero seventeen year old child back to his family before the world is destroyed by a giant meteor? This plot sounds ridiculous, and it is, and yet the character dynamics are so compelling, and there is an incredible emotional core that operates throughout. Good job!

For the BL Romance Tropes Ask Game

#bokura no micro na shuumatsu #the end of the world with you #kiseki: dear to me #bai zong yi x fan ze rui #ritsu x masumi #ask game #bl trope ask game

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talkonlinecounselling · 1 year

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From Conflict to Connection: How Relational Life Therapy Can Transform Pursuer-Distancer Relationships

In romantic relationships, it’s common for one partner to be more interested in emotional or physical intimacy than the other.

This can create a situation where one partner feels like their significant other is smothering them, and their partner ends up feeling starved for affection.

In the world of psychology, this is what’s known as the pursuer-distancer dynamic.

And although it is quite common, the pursuer-distancer dynamic can wreak havoc on otherwise healthy relationships, creating resentment on both sides, and a situation where one person feels overwhelmed, the other feels neglected, and neither party feels fully satisfied.

This may sound like a totally untenable scenario, but the truth is, there are many methods for helping couples overcome these issues, and one of the best ways to do that is by using a modality known as relational life therapy.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what relational life therapy is, and why it’s so well-equipped to help couples caught in a pursuer-distancer dynamic.

If this is something you’re experiencing, and you’d like to learn more about a form of therapy that can help you and your partner resolve your intimacy-related issues, then this article is definitely for you.

What Is Relational Life Therapy (RLT)?

Developed by well-known family therapist, Terry Real, relational life therapy, otherwise known as RLT, is a kind of couples counselling that focuses on improving relationships and enhancing personal growth by exploring patterns of behaviour and communication within relationships.

Relational life therapy emphasizes the importance of accountability, emotional connection, and communication skills in developing healthy relationships, and it’s based on the belief that our early experiences with attachment and family of origin dynamics tend to shape our patterns of behaviour in the romantic relationships we have as adults.

RLT is also meant to empower individuals to take responsibility for their own feelings and actions and to communicate their needs and emotions effectively.

This allows people to develop greater self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and skills for setting boundaries, expressing their needs, and resolving conflict, all of which can help them to become more adept at building and maintaining a healthy romantic relationship.

How Does Relational Life Therapy Work?

Relational life therapy consists of three separate phases, each with its own specific goals.

This includes the data-gathering, or assessment phase, a second phase, known as the changing the dance phase, and the final phase, which is known as consolidation.

Let’s take a closer look at each phase, so you can have a better understanding of how relational life therapy works.

Phase 1: Assessment

The assessment phase allows the therapist to help both partners identify the underlying issues that are causing problems in their relationship, while gaining a deeper understanding of their own and each other’s communication styles, emotional needs, and patterns of behaviour.

For example, if one partner tends to avoid intimacy, this could be because they had to provide comfort and support to a parent after their parents divorced, had to be a best friend or surrogate parent for younger siblings, or have had controlling and intrusive parents. Alternatively, this could also be a result of the fact that emotional or physical intimacy was not modelled in their family.

Whatever the case, when intimacy avoidant people were growing up, typically, love was intrusive or was not modelled, and this phase of RLT helps to identify how those events have influenced their behaviour.

Phase 2: Changing the Dance

After identifying the underlying issues in the assessment phase, the changing the dance phase allows the therapist to help the couple to challenge dysfunctional patterns of behaviour and develop more effective ways of relating to each other by working on things like their communication skills, emotional intimacy, and power dynamics. This phase involves several key steps, including:

Identifying the negative cycle: The therapist helps the couple to identify the negative cycle of interaction that is causing problems in their relationship.

Challenging negative beliefs: The therapist helps the couple to challenge negative beliefs that are contributing to the negative cycle, such as assumptions about each other’s motives or intentions.

Creating a new cycle: The therapist helps the couple to develop new patterns of behaviour that can replace the negative cycle and promote emotional intimacy and mutual respect.

Improving communication: The therapist helps the couple to improve their communication skills by teaching active listening, assertiveness, and effective expression of emotions and needs.

Addressing power dynamics: The therapist helps the couple to address power imbalances in the relationship, such as one partner dominating the other or using passive-aggressive behaviour.

Phase 3: Consolidation

During the consolidation phase, the therapist will work with the couple to help them develop a plan for how to maintain the changes they’ve made, and continue to build a stronger and more intimate relationship.

This involves several steps, including reviewing the progress that the couple has made, acknowledging the hard work they’ve done to improve their relationship and celebrating the successes they’ve achieved, addressing any unresolved issues that are still causing problems, and finally, developing a plan to ensure the couple can continue to maintain the positive changes they’ve made.

How Can RLT Help Couples in Pursuer-Distancer Relationships?

In our experience, relational life therapy is incredibly effective at helping couples in pursuer-distancer relationships, and there are several reasons for this.

For instance, some forms of couples counselling focus almost exclusively on teaching couples how to stop destructive behaviour patterns and giving them the skills to deal with each other in a more appropriate and respectful manner.

But if you neglect to get to the root cause of the behaviours that are causing problems, which are often linked to childhood trauma, then it can be extremely difficult to actually put these skills to use.

With that in mind, relational life therapy takes a much more comprehensive approach to couples counselling, digging deep into the root causes of behaviour patterns, challenging the beliefs associated with them, and helping couples to forge a better path forward by focusing on what needs to change, and then offering couples a plan to maintain those positive changes over the long-term.

What’s more, many other models of couples counselling tend to promote the idea that your partner should accept you just the way you are, and should put up with your destructive behaviour, and be responsible for helping you to correct it. But many affected partners would argue that this just isn’t fair.

That being said, RLT puts the responsibility for healing childhood wounds and changing the destructive patterns of behaviour they inspire squarely on the shoulders of the person who’s engaging in them, and not on the partner who’s being affected.

Moreover, relational life therapy is also great for addressing grandiose behaviour, which refers to a pattern of behaviour where one or both partners display an inflated sense of self-importance, superiority, or entitlement, which can have a very destructive effect on a relationship.

It does this by helping couples to identify the underlying causes of this kind of behaviour, which can include things like fear of vulnerability, insecurity, or the need for validation.

At the same time, it also helps couples deal with these kinds of issues by encouraging them to not only recognize and challenge these patterns of behaviour, but also effectively address them by actively listening to each other’s perspectives, understanding how to communicate with each other in a more authentic and vulnerable way, and learning how to control their emotional reactions and responses to each other.

Are you and your partner dealing with intimacy-related issues? Contact us today to book your free consultation.

#Relational Life Therapy #Relationships #couples counseling

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