#all of the other ROs are relatively easy

[theresattrpgforthat]

I was wondering if you had recommendations for a game that evokes the vibe of like The Thing (or Among Us) from the social angle - there is something here passing itself off as human, as *one of us*, and we need to find out who it is. Maybe with hidden roles? It seems like there's a lot of interesting space to explore there.

Thank you!!

Theme: Hidden Role Games

Friend, I've got more games for you than I thought I was initially going to find, and each one is in a different setting! Enjoy!

What We Thought We Knew, by Mouse.

You play as a group of friends who have known each other for many years- at the very least since highschool, and have gone through many transitional phases with each other.

It has recently been revealed to you that someone in your friend group has not actually been there for all of these events- they have been implanted in the group for whatever reason and all your memories modified to fit them into the narrative. None of you know who it is -- not even the fake.

In order to find out who the fake is, you must experience some of your core memories together again, moving through them like you are those versions of yourselves again, to try and spot the mistakes in the memories, the distortions that don’t quite make sense in the context of everything else happening.

The hidden role in this game is as determined by the GM, and the fake will not know that they are the imposter at the beginning of the game. The setting for this game appears to be relatively agnostic, so you could make this a fantasy setting, a futuristic setting, or even a modern setting. Characters have four stats: Head, Heart, Flesh and Beyond. The game is designed off of Caltrop Core, so when you roll your dice according to stat, there’s graded successes/failures. Players will also get chances to identify a distortion, which helps the group figure out what pieces of information don’t add up. If you want a game with mystery for almost everyone a the table, you might want to check out this game.

Jackrabbit Parole, by Willow Willis.

Well, you screwed up. Whatever you did, it was bad enough to land your ass in prison. Not just your average state-of-the-art correctional institution, either. This place is Bad News.

Parole? Don’t make me laugh. This is your life now. There’s no help coming for you and your fellow unfortunates. You’ll shit, sleep, work and eat when and where they tell you to for the rest of your miserable existence. If you want out, there’s only three paths:

Execution. Suicide. Or escape.

And since the first two don’t sound too promising, all you’re left with is jackrabbit parole.

Jackrabbit Parole is a game about prison escapees, one of which is a Snitch. The exact setting of the prison is up to you - the only thing that matters is that you’re stuck here unless you find a way to get yourselves out. You’ll roll to determine what your characters’ relationships are, and draw cards determine your roles.

There are two special roles: the Ringleader and the Snitch. The Ringleader has access to everywhere in the prison; the Snitch wants to get as much information as possible and pass it on to the guards. The Snitch profits by keeping everyone here, which means that players cannot communicate openly about their plans. The game plays over three acts, so I think it’s pretty easy to contain inside a single session, and it comes with some suggested settings if you’re not sure where to start.

Conspire, by Cherry Picked Games.

Conspire is a hidden-role storytelling game. Players delve into any moment of conflict, real or fake, and populate the scene with shady figures. They secretly assign objectives to these in-world characters and shuffle the roles amongst themselves. Everyone draws a role to inhabit and acts them out, not knowing who any of the others are or what they are trying to accomplish. What follows is an intense tale of bluffing, brokering deals, and shaping the very universe to your whims.

This feels like a GM-Less game, with all of the roles and motives of each character determined according to the setting and people created by the group at the table. Each piece of the puzzle is created collaboratively, so you’ll know what’s going on with one or two people, but not the whole picture. If you want a game that gives everyone the same responsibilities and has the flexibility to fit the settings in your head, this might be the game for you.

Eulogy of a Fool, by Kate.

In Eulogy of a Fool, all players are attending the funeral of a Fool. However, the Fool is in this crowd, having faked her own death to collect on a life insurance policy.  Everyone in attendance must give a eulogy while the Fool tries to blend in and everyone else is trying to single out any suspicious persons.

This game consists of a series of cards, 20 of which are Identity cards, and 30 of which are relation cards. There will only be about as many cards in play as there are players for any given game, so I think having so many options allows for a different game every time you play. Each player will also have to give a eulogy about the deceased, using information given to all non-imposters, while the Fool will have to improvise as best as they can. Looking at the instructions and prep for this game, I think this game would be very easy to learn. There’s a script for the GM to follow while running the game, and the cards make it easy to generate characters on the fly. If you want a game that’s part ttrpg, part card game, this might be the game for you.

EUREKA, by @anim-ttrpgs

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is an original, fully fledged, 200-page 2d6 TTRPG from The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery inspired by The X-Files, Kolchak: The Nightstalker, and much more!

Eureka features investigation mechanics that let players take initiative, use their characters’ unique strengths to find clues, and deduce conclusions themselves rather than to just walking into a room and roll Investigate.

EUREKA’s main focus is on solving mysteries, but the way character creation is meant to be set up means that it is very likely that characters will have a lot of secrets, purposefully hidden from the rest of the group at game start. If you are playing a supernatural creature of some kind, your character will have plenty of reasons to keep their identity a secret. While the group is trying to solve whatever mystery there is, your characters will have to decide just how much they trust each—other, with dramatic reveals possibly prompting some thrilling and suspenseful moments. This game isn’t quite in it’s final form, but there’s a robust community currently play-testing it, and the folks behind the development are very eager to answer questions and help you get a game to the table.

Loyalty, by jackdawfactories.

You are the crew of a deep-space mining vessel who have just been awoken from stasis. You are coming in to land on a previously uncharted planet, and must investigate the nearby cave system for its utility to you - but of course, there’s more to it than that…

Loyalty is a game based on Ridley Scott’s Alien, and combines standard RPG mechanics with a hidden role aspect. Survive the horror you have unleashed while working out who - anyone - is the traitor in your midst.

This is a game in which more than one person could have a secret role. You draw a card from a regular deck of playing cards, and based on what kind of face you have, you are either an android infiltrator, or a human. Because the character creation is randomized, it’s totally possible to have an entirely human crew - but the players won’t know this, and thus the paranoia will still be present.

On top of this paranoia, you’ll be facing off against an alien, and the more you come up against it, the stronger it gets. There’s a win condition, a lose condition, and the possibility to eject a suspect out of an airlock. If you like heightened stakes and no good endings, this might be the game for you.

The Warmest Place to Hide, by Rosie.

The Warmest Place To Hide is a TTRPG homage to John Carpenter's The Thing. 

It is the longest night in Antarctica, and something has made its way inside the research station at which you work. You and your teammates must work together to protect yourselves from assimilation - but when the creature can make itself look like anyone and anything, who can you really trust?

Create a base, populate it with crew, then see if you can survive an alien invasion.

This is the game for folks who want a direct re-creation of The Thing. As this is a Caltrop Core game, the rules are fairly minimal and use dice pools of d4’s. You can roll randomly for your character’s background, and choose an archetype that will give you specific skills and special abilities. You’ll also receive a random assignment of “Human” or “Something Else”. If you are Something Else, you always have to opportunity to take over any dead characters.

I’m not entirely sure how you communicate to players that they are Something Else without alerting the whole table; I’m assuming that this is the sort of game that involves passing a lot of notes. I think it might also be interesting if the GM introduces other threats that could kill players so that the Thing can approach and assimilate them without the players necessarily knowing who’s doing it.

#indie ttrpgs #tabletop games #dnd #game recommendations #asks #hidden role

[moonah-rose]

What I love about Ghosts is how much of a slow burn the enemies to found family is. Yes there's a pretty big leap from "tried to kill her" to "forced allies of convenience" in the first two episodes, there needs to be to set up the premise, but after that there's such a gradual build up to a real cosy feel in the group.

It would have been so easy to have this dynamic reach its peak by the end of S1. There's a few soft moments like Alison talking to Pat's family and the Friends sofa bit outside but only after Pat explains to her how important the moonah ritual is to Robin. But it's not enough to make them that close yet and in the finale the ghosts mostly want Alison to stay for their own convenience, except Kitty and Thomas, with Fanny only just beginning to accept Alison is part of her bloodline. Captain still wants them gone but concedes to help them stay more for the others. Alison is touched by the gesture of the jewel but still admits that it's a nightmare living with them and wants to leave - and only stays because Captain screws her over via manipulating Kitty.

S2 starts with her waking up and sighing about how she's still "living the dream" (aka her nightmare). However, so we're not quite on the same page as last season, she has now established a routine with the ghosts and knows what each of them need. There's a feeling of comfort beginning to creep its way in, even if they still annoy her. And they're still not willing to help her at the drop of a hat, especially Julian unless he can get something in return, and some will go as far as to work against her when she's trying to make the house look haunted. Had the Grey Lady episode took place in S5 you know they would have all jumped at the chance to help Alison whatever she asked. But this series has a lot more episode focused on Alison connecting with the group like learning about how Thomas died and the Captain's past and Kitty's kinda sad childhood, so it feels natural and heartwarming when they all come together to help protect the house from burglars for her and she appreciates out loud how they're not as selfish as when she first came there. And they all do what they can to help with the wedding, partly for it to be a success for Alison but also just to help. Honestly on my first watch, with the snow and everything, I thought that was the Christmas special! So it lead in nicely to the actual one. Because the gang are finally at the stage where Alison would be comfortable spending Christmas with them and they all come together to sing with her to make her happy, even Robin who thinks Christmas is just a recent fad.

Series 3 is where that leap from friends to family happens and is contrasted with Alison thinking she's found a long lost blood relative, which she confesses is something she's wanted as she never had a lot of family around her. I like that they didn't have Lucy be her actual sister that turned out to be a villain, as we already have an abusive sister with Eleanor, but it still serves as a parallel between her and Kitty to make Alison realise that she has found a sister, and more. Robin saying "welcome home" and the look on Alison's face is enough to let us know this is no longer just a project for her with some annoying pests to deal with. And the final shot of them all "eating" together is one of my favorites.

The show could have easily ended there if it wanted to. Or it could have gone on another two seasons with everything being perfect and wholesome. But it doesn't; because families are not perfect. We still have an episode centered around the ghosts trying to apologise for upsetting Alison, much like a bunch of kids with an overworked mother, and they want to make it up to her not for their benefits but because of what she means to them. Episode 2 also has Alison missing feeling needed by the ghosts when they're busy doing their own thing and realising she just wants to spend time with them, even if it's just something as simple as a walk with Robin. And when Mary passes on, Alison is absolutely devastated and puts aside her work duties to prioritise helping the other ghosts grieve. Then there's her joining (evil) forces with Julian to take on Barclay together. And the series ends with Robin, who began the show just enjoying scaring the shit out of Alison for the lulz, confronting his ten thousand years old ptsd and taking a bolt of lightning to save her husband.

That's four years of development. Compare this to the CBS version where they all click together a lot faster and we don't see nearly as much of Sam losing her temper with the ghosts, and plots always seem to be wrapped up so much quicker (the fact there was no apology from Thor for possessing her still irks me). This isn't necessarily a knock against the American version, their episodes are ten minutes shorter because of ads, and it's more of a style choice as well as Sam just being a far more patient character than Alison. I know a lot of people prefer that the show begins a lot more wholesome to start with so it's down to taste. For me the heartwarming moments mean so much more when they've been earned over a lot of struggle.

Take the climax of Series 5. It's one of the few moments of TV that have made me gasp out loud. I genuinely forgot that we never saw Alison find out Julian pushed her. I guess I assumed she found out off screen or worked it out when she realised Julian's ghost power. But it really was the perfect point for her to find out; because had it happened any earlier then she wouldn't have hesitated to leave with no amount of speech able to change her mind, and likewise Julian wouldn't have had anything to say to her. But as someone else pointed out, it's much more difficult to forgive someone you love for doing something truly evil, even if at the time you were less than strangers. It's a crushing betrayal for Alison to find out that someone she thought as family once tried to kill her but also that the rest of them kept it secret. There's no obligation or pressure for her to forgive them; but she chooses to, because it's been earned over more than three years. And to parallel the S1 finale, the other ghosts are desperate for her to stay (including Cap this time), no longer for their own convenience but just because they love her.

And now we wait in terror for the Christmas episode to rip all of it to pieces. 🥺

#bbc ghosts #ghosts meta #alison cooper #found family #julian fawcett #kitty higham

[coeluvr]

Hi, I just wanted to say that I love the game and can't wait to see how the story unfolds. However, I was wondering how you plan to incorporate the theme of revenge, especially when some of the ROs seem to have close relationships with characters who were directly involved in the murder of our family/friends from the Palace/servants we knew from birth/etc. (Helios -> Luceris, Hunter -> Lancelot). I find it difficult to imagine being friends, let alone lovers, with someone who thinks fondly and is close to the killers of my family. Hunter even uses the 'you are not your family, you will prove yourself' line, which made me want to punch them! 😆 So, considering this, would they be okay with an MC who wants to seek revenge on those directly involved? How do all the ROs perceive this? Based on the prompts and asks, it seems like most of them would like the MC to 'get over it' and not create any conflict.

Will it even be possible to kill them down the line AND get a relatively good ending ?

I probably need to write a FAQ but I haven't yet so I'll answer lol

I find it difficult to imagine being friends, let alone lovers, with someone who thinks fondly and is close to the killers of my family.

Romance isn't mandatory and friendships aren't either (except for Fadiya lowkey) but you'll need to at least speak to other characters to get the story moving and some of them will care for you even if you don't care for them (Lancelot and Hunter). Your only viable ROs would be Fadiya and Soarine since they aren't connected to any of the people who destroyed MCs life.

So, considering this, would they be okay with an MC who wants to seek revenge on those directly involved?

Depends on the RO. Helios most certainly won't be okay with it. I can say that Hunter and Fadiya won't necessarily jump from joy either.

Life isn't as nice or easy to let MC romance people close to the murderer(s) of their family and them being like "Hell yeah!"

MC will need to stay quiet about revenge, they can't tell the RO until a later point in their relationship (if they ever do before they take revenge on those people). So maybe it is more of a betrayal from MC @ RO but I don't think a vengeful MC should care about their feelings and if they do then it's not what matters to them above all else.

Some things have to be sacrificed to get revenge, a healthy "no lies in our relationship" romantic relationship being one of them.

How do all the ROs perceive this?

I'll leave you guessing this one.

Will it be possible to kill them down the line AND get a relatively good ending?

This part confused me a little because I couldn't figure out if you meant kill Luceris and company or the ROs 😭

I feel like I can't answer this because it's so subjective. There are definitely good endings for people who want revenge and want to have romance but it's not necessarily ALL sunshine and rainbow. But then you might get the "worse" ending if your MC made choices for that.

The ROs will have to come to terms with who MC is, good or bad, so that's an obstacle on its own. Relationships have obstacles. They won't blindly love MC so I'm sorry if that's what you want 😭

I can't say much more because we aren't really into the meat of the story yet, arc 1 of the story has barely started LOL and I feel like once you get more into it I can talk more freely about all of this.

If this doesn't clarify things for you then feel free to send me another ask! 💗

#coe answers #vicky-198

[chibivesicle]

Daniel Law thoughts and observations.  Why is his last name so bloody difficult to figure out?

This is a quick and frivolous post as opposed to my normally long form ones.  I’ve got it hard for Daniel at the moment; I’m wade through the vast expanse that is the internet looking for merch for him.  Steven merch is like shooting fish in a barrel with how popular he is.  K.K. merch is also easy and super cheap second hand.  But Daniel merch.  Hoooo boy, it takes some time and effort to find.

The first issue around him is his bloody last name.  Which Japanese isn’t equipped to deal with.  This shows in my merch quest as I’ve scrolled through pages and pages of items.  But first:

The Darkhorse translation calls him Daniel Low.

The Funimation translation settles on Daniel Law.

When you listen to the sub and the dub, both the Japanese VA and English VA both clearly say “Law”.  I’d like to also note that the Japanese VA for Steven, Mitsuru Miyamoto, has really good pronunciation for all of the English terms/names he says specifically which makes me really think “Law” is the intended spelling.   The credits also reflect this.

Both versions also settle on the title of Lieutenant.  While the literal translation is Assistant Inspector (keibuho - 警部補).  I’m not sure why they didn’t go with Detective which sounds like the most American term and Inspector being British.  I guess Detective is a role while, Daniel would still have a police rank associated with him. But I know squat about American policing terms and job titles.  Maybe, I should go back and watch some Law and Order and cringe?

Where is this total weirdness around Daniel’s name coming from?  Especially if we get a season three and Marcus also shows up for the Calamity Auction arc.

Now, we all know that having an equal transfer of Law into Japanese can’t happen since there is no way to make say a “La-wa” etc.  The best you can get is to drop down in the r-line to the “ro” combo.  But then you’ve got that pesky “w” you need to do something with.

If you wanted “Low” this would be the easiest way to get it.  Go with “ro” and add the long vowel dash making it “ro-oh”

But we can see this reading of “ro” with a long “o” can be [sighs] Rho, Lau; Low, Loo, Rau, Raux, Roe or Roh.

Okay, this isn’t what happens in the credits.  The Japanese credits write his name out this way.  “ro” with the “u”.  Now, the first hit is “Law”.  Yay!

But then we get also; Loew, Low, Lowe or even Rowe!  Argh! 

So, how does this tie into merch?  Well, how his name is spelled on KKSS merch of course and how to search for it!

For Back 2 Back full color acrylics that were Jump (Festa Specials I’d guess), we get him and Marcus being referred to as Lowe.  ‘Cause they are twin brothers and Daniel is the older one! Another issue with Japanese language mechanics versus English but that’s for another time.  I’d read Daniel to be several years older since he’s referred to as “older brother” in B2B but since you have to place your sibling in age relative to you - Marcus has to say older brother in the original Japanese.    

There is also a small special badge set with Steven and Daniel here, where he is also referred to as “Lowe”.  Did I impulsively buy this?  Yes, yes I did of course!

Yet when we look at other items music/band themed (acoustic guitar) , the American heroes (fighter pilot? why?), ice skating, saloon barkeep/western. he’s got a last name of “Low”.

You might begin to think - okay, it is clear that 1.) there is no official spelling of his name down on paper.  2.) merch designers see ロウ and make an educated guess 3.) his name can’t be “Law”.

Buuutttt let’s go to the actual search function of a Japanese site like Goods Republic.  And what do we find in the character list on the left hand side?  Daniel Law.

Additionally,  you go on Zen Market and access JP Mercari directly, searching with the terms of ダニエル and 血界戦線.  You will get merch that not only pulls up Daniel but all the translated descriptions will always refer to him as Daniel Law.

What have I learned from this?  That until we get season three and Daniel gets a floating info box like below, we will never truly know how his name is spelled.  However, with the sense of humor that Nightow has and his wordplay in English, I really still think the original intent is “Law” because he’s a fucking cop.  Come on, easiest cheese joke ever.

And if he doesn’t get a floating info box in a season three, it means they aren’t giving him full justice due to his increasing role in the series.

#kekkai sensen #kekkai sensen manga #kkss #blood blockade battlefront #daniel law #lieutenant daniel law #inspector daniel law #your best is as good as mine at this point

[ranticore]

1-4 & 18+19 for John and Macha!

the whole party thirsts for john info

1. What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.)? 

john's name. he was always going to be named for one of the four evangelists, the only question was whether he was going to be matthew mark or john. i already had bg characters called mark and matt so it had to be john!

macha uhhhh spoilers

2. Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind? 

yes john was originally a parallel universe version of an established character, with the same overall appearance. he got his current look (i.e short, brown hair etc) a year into that story and he chose those elements himself.

macha is a black horse so like

3. How did you choose their name? 

john as mentioned before, macha i actually don't like how that name went because i really did just grab a name from mythology that's mildly associated with horses but otherwise doesn't really fit. but idk what else i'd call them, i reckon they'd be a true nameless character if i made them now

4. In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts? 

john - the fact that his hometown ferru is on the coastline! i had no idea it would become properly nautical but ro mentioned there could be a shipping element that is mildly viking flavoured and i took that and ran with it. the mountains surrounding ferru making travel on foot difficult, the location of rare metal mines, and the enormous amount of wealth concentrated in ferru all made his family's dominance in the shipping industry a no-brainer.

macha's backstory is strongly intertwined with finbarr's so it was relatively easy to slot them in there.

18. What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?

for john, i rolled to see if he's into a range of fetishes and discovered that his strongest turn-off is bondage (giving and receiving)

macha i'm not so sure, there haven't been recent new developments in the story of mvf so it's been consistent for a while. OH wait, i remember, it's that macha can only communicate coherently by occupying a disguise - undisguised, they can barely talk. so to communicate they have to "be" someone else, and they pick that someone deliberately to provoke a desired response. but if that disguise is broken by outside forces, it becomes dead to them and they can no longer use it as a means of communication

19. What is your favorite fact about your OC?

john can't swim :'(

macha became a goth for real in the 1980s, fully loves the music, the fashion, etc though tends to stick with very classic tradgoth elements

[abstractnaturaldisaster]

Steddie Hockey Casino Night AU Part 1

so for people who might not be part of the general hockey fandom, Casino Night is a fundraiser a lot of clubs do where fans can by a ticket to play casino games with players and raise money for the team’s charity foundation. it’s a chance for fans to interact with the players in a more social environment and it’s a pretty popular event for most clubs. more comments about this AU below the ficlet! c:

***

Steve Harrington was used to Casino Nights. His NHL career had spanned about a decade at this point and he’d been to his fair share of fan-facing fundraisers. In his younger years it was a fun night to let loose a little during the season (with the coaches blessing, no less). He’d used his easy charm to hook up sometimes but mostly he wandered the venue and enjoyed feeling wanted by the admiring crowds. In his veteran years, Steve usually b-lined his way to a back poker table and sat near the dealer, hunched over his cards, making friendly but limited conversation with the rest of the table. Most of his teammates brought a significant other, a girlfriend or fiancée, to help take pictures, hold drinks, and jump in with any awkward silences throughout the evening. Steve Harrington didn’t have a partner, but he did have a cadre of rookies (one of which lived with him at his condo Henderson (said-rookie) affectionately called the Bachelor Pad), a tortoise named Fred, and the team’s social media manager turned best friend, Robin. 

The hurried hook ups of his youth ended up creating his girl-in-every-port reputation and Steve was willing to ride those rumors to avoid any more serious speculation into his love life. Steve was out to team management and his teammates as bi but he didn’t particularly feel like addressing his sexuality in a press conference so the genders of his affairs were a closely guarded secret. At one point Robin had tried to convince him to have NDAs ready to hand out to anyone he brought back to a hotel room after an away game. Steve had ignored the suggestion. Honestly if his bisexuality were to come out via some sort of tell-all tabloid at least he wouldn’t have to be the one to break the news. In reality, who Steve hooked up with was of very little interest to the general population. At the end of the day, he was nearing retirement and was hoping he could finish out his contract and melt into the relative obscurity most minorly successful NHL alums were able to do. He wasn’t going to have the long drawn out career of someone like Ovechkin but he would be able to retire and live happily without much concern for future finances. He’d thought about taking a couple of years off and then maybe starting to coach youth leagues or college teams depending on how far the Harrington name could get him. Steve’s musing was interrupted by Henderson aggressively knocking on his bathroom door.

“Steveeeeeeeeeeee,” Dustin yelled.

“What, Henderson?” Steve answered.

“Help?” Dustin asked and pointed to a full on rats nest that had somehow developed in his crispy gelled curls.

“Oh, man, how did this happen?” Steve asked.

“I dunno, dude, please fix it? Mike and Lucas won’t let me live it down if I show up like this.” Dustin moaned.

“Alright kid, come here, we gotta get some of this gel out of your hair first,” Steve said as he bent Dustin’s head over his sink. 

Steve was able to get enough of the gel out and run a comb through Dustin’s curly mop to approach something that could be considered a hairstyle. They were getting close to running late so Steve rushed through the process of throwing on his tux and pressuring Dustin into wearing his nicer game day suit while calling their driver to meet them out front.

“Alright, kiddo. You ready for your first casino night?” Steve asked.

“Yea! Mike and Lucas are dragging Will out so it should be fun to hang out and meet people.” Dustin answered.

Will was Robin’s social media intern. Not all of the staff had to go to the event but similar to how Steve and Robin had become inseparable at team events, Will was pulled into the Mike-Lucas-Dustin orbit in a similar way. The group had even taken to playing D&D one-shots on long travel days since Mike had some experience DMing in a high school club. Steve was a little impressed with himself for being able to remember some of the terminology for the game; however, he did give the group shit for playing their nerd game instead of going out to celebrate after away wins.

“That’ll be nice.” Steve said as the elevator door opened to the lobby of his building.

The big black SUV was already out front waiting on them so Steve herded Dustin through the lobby and into the car. 

“Hey Jon!” Steve greeted his driver. Jonathan had been with Steve for a while, long enough to have been roped into his ragtag adopted family. There was a little tension between them for a while when Steve found out Jon and Nancy had started dating seriously. Nancy had been Steve’s longest relationship and they’d stayed friendly after they broke up. Nancy had wanted bigger and better things than being a SOAP to an NHL player and honestly Steve couldn’t blame her. Jon had been enamored with Nancy since he met her through Steve. Steve hadn’t loved that they’d gotten together but that had been years ago at this point. They had two girls that Steve was low key obsessed with and offered to babysit as much as his schedule allowed so he had let go of his (admittedly low-stakes) rivalry with Jon.

“‘Sup, Steve? Dustin?” Jon asked.

“Jon! Can you please convince Steve that he is absolutely overdressed for this shindig?”

“I dunno, dude, I think he might be the expert?” Jon joked. He’d driven Steve long enough to know not to get in between Steve and his rookies.

“Ugh. You’re such a pushover.” Dustin said as he buckled in.

“I just know who out of the two of you pays my bills, kid.” Jon winked at Steve in the rearview as he pulled out into traffic.

Steve settled into his seat and used the drive to melt into his public-facing-Steve-Harrington persona as Dustin prattled on about their cup chances this season. Steve let him ramble on even though he personally hated to jinx anything mid-way through the season.

“Alright, gentlemen, we’re here! Just give me a call when you’re ready to head out.” Jon jumped out to open Dustin and Steve’s doors, a formality Steve only allowed when Jon drove him to official team events.

Steve took one more deep breath and steadied himself for the evening as Henderson was already running off to join the rest of the team. Steve was a little nostalgic for his rookie days when everything seemed so fresh and new. Now he felt like he needed to crack his back after getting up from sitting too long and he was absolutely looking at hip surgery if he got another bad check. Regardless of how old Steve felt, he put on his media smile, straightened his jacket and got ready for introductions, already mentally planning out his escape routes for the evening.

***

hi friends! my sister and i recently went to our first casino night and i have had this brain worm in my head rolling around for a while and this giant first chapter just appeared, lol

in terms of world building, if you’re familiar with hockey twitter i am thinking of steve as a joe pavelski type and dustin as one of his rookies. lucas and mike are also team rookies but i haven’t really picked any positions for anyone since it’s casino night and i don’t have to lol. so if anyone has any specific head canons for positions please share!!

don’t worry -- eddie will be here in the next part! 

like last time, i’ll post on AO3 when i get a few more parts finished.

#steddie #steddie fic #steddie fan fiction #fanfic #hockey au #casino night #veteran player steve harrington #poker dealer eddie munson #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things fic

[outpost51]

— The Unlikely Adventures of Bitchface and Go F*ck Yourself (18+)

Calling the Devil isn’t the same as seeing the Devil come.

Chapter WC: 10,714

Warning(s): explicit sexual content

{READ HERE ON AO3} or below the cut ˏˋ°•*⁀➷

9 months, 9 days remaining

Dillon spent the day wandering around the house, tidying things up from the party, cleaning random shit she thought might need cleaning, and waffling. Most of her day was spent waffling over the summoning, actually. Every time she passed the stack of books, she glanced at the one on top, written in a language she couldn’t understand, but someone had helpfully gone through and Romanized every word in the space beneath each line. Eugene had provided a total of three books on summoning, each more cryptic than the last; as that one was the most cryptic of all, it had to be the one that would bag her a good Conduit.

She wasn’t using her soul anyway, and from the looks of it, one-time use was relatively cheap, just like Eugene said. A Fae woman had asked him to make her a garland of flowers and dance beneath the Hill with her, because she wanted to make someone jealous and gain her attention. An angel had tasked one of his colleagues with one week of volunteer work with him, and on a second occurrence, asked for his grandmother’s pot pie recipe. She could only find one mention of a demon, also one of Eugene’s, and their name was listed — none of the other entries had names. The cost was… abstract, to say the least; they wanted Eugene to acquire a list of items, all of which either weren’t inherently tangible or were so bizarre, he puzzled out the possibilities in the margins of the page: a newborn’s joy, a lover’s sigh, a double-edged betrayal, and so on, twenty items in total. Each was marked off in a different color, so clearly it hadn’t been impossible, just challenging enough to prove his worth.

She could manage that, probably.

That was it, Dillon decided. She would do it that night, get it over with, and maybe not stress herself bald by the next week.

And no sooner had she decided that, night fell, and she wasn’t prepared at all. She had to make an emergency trip to Sprawlmart for chalk, since they hadn’t had any in the house since she was a child, and salt, since someone had used the last of it and put the empty container back in the pantry. She grabbed a container of frosted brownies on her way to checkout, hoping the presence of an offering would entice her potential Conduit to work with her and hoping it might convince them to give her a discount.

Halfway home, she decided that even if the demon didn’t like brownies, she’d have them for herself as a nice thinking snack while she was figuring out whatever cost she was assigned, which still had a chance to be lesser if ‘it’s the thought that counts’ applied to demons.

Keeping the lines straight within her circle was the hardest part of the setup, despite the basement having a smooth concrete floor and literally using a makeshift string compass. The rest was easy, from pouring the salt and setting the candles, to measuring the recommended safe distance away — starting at the salt lines, not the summoning circle — for her own ring of protection.

Dillon braced her feet shoulder-width apart before opening the book to the page she marked and taking a deep breath. “Ne’ippu glun ror, im cotod er mist!” she chanted, gaining confidence with every word. She could do this, she could absolutely do this. An icy breeze swept into the room, and on it rode an unnatural shadow. “Gleb urme im dox la scast prens, rim satra… sa-trac-ro im florte glun clinvuhe!”

The shadow solidified, and it took every fiber of her self-control not to bounce in place and run a lap around the room. It grew, and grew, upward and outward, until in its place stood a massive beast so large they had to stoop to avoid spearing the low ceiling with their horns. Massive black wings sprouted from their back and flared once in defiance, though the motion looked uncomfortable, as an almost imperceptible wince jerked them as close to their body as possible.

“Demon—”

“I have a name, you know,” the demon huffed. Was that an eyeroll? “You do know it, do you not?” Dillon thought she saw a corner of their mouth twitch in amusement.

“Y-yeah, obviously,” she sputtered with a scowl. She needed to rein the situation back under her control. “But I command you to tell me anyway!”

“You first,” they said. The demon sat back on a chair she couldn’t see and crossed an ankle over their thigh, wings relaxed and sagging behind them. Upon closer inspection, she realized the demon was leaning back on their tail. They picked under their talons with a shard of bone they pulled from who-knows-where like this whole situation, the one sending her heart rate through the ceiling, was nothing more than a trivial inconvenience.

“Wh— me?”

“I don’t see anyone else here.”

Dillon’s frown deepened, but her maternal grandmother’s insistence on proper etiquette tugged at her subconscious. “I’m Dillon,” she gritted out. “She-her.”

The demon raised a brow. “Really, you’re giving me your full name already?”

“What? No, you got my first name and—” She realized where the miscommunication was. “She-her. My pronouns. I’m a girl.”

“Really,” they drawled. There was that tug at the corner of their mouth again, and goddammit, she’d played right into their fucking hands. “Zadimus.” They paused, working their jaws to pick the words out of their fangs. “We don’t… have those in our own language, typically. Which ones are masculine?”

“He-him?”

“Then those are the ones I use.” Zadimus hopped back to his feet and suddenly all traces of whatever jolly asshole he’d been previously were gone, replaced once more by the beast as which he’d arrived. “You know I can walk right out of this, right?”

Dillon looked down as he delicately stepped on the outer ring of the summoning circle, as if he wasn’t entirely sure it would work. “You can’t… you’re not supposed to cross that, the book said.”

“Oh this?” He swept his tail out to knock a candle aside. “Oopsie,” he sang, but with the sneer on his face as he smudged the crude chalk line with one clawed foot, the notes rang sour. “Honestly, you don’t have to be Michelangelo to draw a simple protection circle, but this?” He gestured to the wobbly, broken line she’d drawn around herself. “This is just sad.” He paused, a thought dawning on his face. “Wait, you don’t have some kind of—” he waved his hand through the air as if to swipe the answer from it like a buzzing fly “— tremor, or poor vision, or something like that?”

“N-no?”

The sneer was back. He crossed the smudged line. “Oh good, it’s not as fun to kick them when they’re handicapped. It just makes me a bully.”

“Silence, demon!” she commanded, a last ditch effort to regain some control. Zadimus was close enough she could feel the heat radiating from his skin and she had to step from her apparently useless circle to put a broken chair between them as some semblance of a barrier. “I summoned thee, and—”

“Pbff.”

Her mouth dropped back into a deep scowl, which only seemed to make Zadimus struggle even harder to hold in his laughter. “What? Was that not the right command?” She flipped frantically through the book for another picture that might indicate a demon in someone’s thrall, yelping when it was unceremoniously yanked from her grasp with a flick of his wrist.

Zadimus flipped through the pages and outright guffawed at a few. “This is porn,” he said finally.

“What?”

“This is porn.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” she snapped. “It was an expression of disbelief. I summoned you with it, this is some kind of trick.”

Zadimus thwumped the book shut with one hand. “Nope, you were just shouting, and I quote—” Inky darkness swallowed his eyes and his voice split into hundreds as he cried, “She begged him for more and who was he to deny her! His rod was polished and standing at full mast, her cunt slick and ready for—”

“Aah! Okay, okay, enough!” Dillon waved her hands frantically to cut him off, finally throwing one of her bat slippers to get his attention. It bounced harmlessly off his face, but it shut him up. “I get it, it’s porn, you’ve made your jokes. So how did you get here?”

“Ah, I was bored. I’m the thing you and your weird little friends tried to seance out of here, or whatever it was girls do at sleepovers when they aren’t fucking.”

“We don’t— first of all,” Dillon snapped. “I’m twenty.”

“Had me fooled.” Zadimus pulled the broken chair barrier closer with his tail and fixed it with a snap of his fingers. It creaked under his great weight, but at least she would have a few more seconds to react should he decide he was bored of her.

Taking a deep, calming breath through her nose, Dillon straightened up. “Second of all, that’s porn you’re thinking of,” she quipped with a grin, triumphant in her attempt to turn his smug correction back on him.

It didn’t work. The wicked sneer was back, scrunching both pairs of the demon’s eyes into tiny slits. “And how would you know that, little human?”

Dillon’s mouth pressed into a thin line as embarrassment bloomed across her cheeks.

Zadimus crossed one leg over the other and looked her up and down, slowly taking in her oversized tee, cotton Bram Stoker boxer shorts, and the singular bat slipper still on her foot. “And you couldn’t even be bothered to give me a show? Pity,” he drawled, then tossed her other slipper back at her feet. “Normally I get billowing robes and antique sconces. By the way…” He trailed off, furrowing his brows. “Which one was the brunette with the permanent scowl? Yes, like the one you’re making.”

“B-Bonnie?”

He snapped his fingers. “Bingo! Bonnie was the one shaking the table.”

“That bitch,” Dillon huffed, momentarily forgetting the big fuckoff hellbeast within evisceration range.

“Mmh, I would’ve hewn the thing in two. Shaking’s just amateur. Anyway.” He waved his hand and everything hanging on the walls started rattling. “I was the one doing everything else, so I suppose you got what you wanted with that little foray into the unknown, didn’t you?”

Dillon swallowed.

“You know what they say, little human,” he drawled. “Be careful what you wish for.” Dillon’s prior assessment of her reaction time and the demon’s speed were clearly mistaken, because in the scope of a single inhale, he was toeing the edge of her circle and stole the air from her lungs with a snap. “You just might get it.”

Time slowed to a crawl as he smudged the chalk line and surged forward. It was supposed to keep her safe, just like the other one was supposed to contain him, but it was just white dust on the basement floor, wasn’t it? Her feet left the ground. She thought the lack of oxygen might have been making her dizzy, it felt like she was floating, and she’d almost convinced herself that his sudden movement was playing tricks on her mind when her spine slammed against the wall behind her.

She kicked her feet, clawed at the vise grip around her throat, lifting her higher, higher; he was going to strangle her, and all she could think about in that moment was Daisy, and how sad she’d been that she died without saying goodbye. Her eyes flared with defiance as she gritted her teeth against the pain and kicked harder — she managed to plant one foot on his hip, then the other, but all the effort she made to stop one threat to her life meant nothing if he still had her lungs paralyzed.

“My, my, don’t you have the prettiest eyes?” It was such a bizarre observation, in such an awestruck tone, she couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. “You’re either incredibly brave or preposterously stupid, Dillon. I like that.”

A warm tingle washed over her, but she couldn’t even appreciate it as all the air rushed back into her chest so fast it burned. “F-fuck you,” she wheezed, then braced for his grip to tighten. It didn’t. Instead, his mouth twitched, and his tail flicked in and out of her periphery, like a cat’s.

“No, I think I want that the other way around.” From the look on his face, he seemed as surprised he’d said it aloud as she was he said it at all. She blinked, and the shock vanished from his eyes.

“Come again?” she sputtered.

“Oh, I intend to.”

“I’m not some floozy in a bar, and that’s not even a good pickup line.” Stupid, stupid, stupid, what was she doing antagonizing the massive beast? His fingertips were touching behind her neck and he still had plenty of grip left to squeeze.

He sniffed. It was odd, she thought, the way his nostrils flared in annoyance; his nose, or what seemed like it, was almost completely flat and so very far from human but his mannerisms were so similar, it was unsettling in its own right. “No,” he corrected, “you aren’t. But you are trying to find a Conduit, are you not? I’m not some floozy in a bar either, I don’t work for free.” He looked down at her feet, still firmly dug into the soft flesh above his hips, and the sudden grin on his face had her keenly aware of three facts: his teeth were even bigger and sharper up close, his gauzy pants left little to the imagination regarding the size of other parts, and everything about this entire, actual demon that should have terrified her made her belly flutter.

“Not my soul?” she asked.

He cocked his head, sending his wild mane sliding over his shoulder. “What use would I have for your soul? You’re not evil, and even if I could get anything out of it, you’d get sucked right into the Holy Holding Tank before I could so much as taste it. If I wanted to gamble on something stupid, I’d park my ass at the nickel slots and at least get a few drinks out of it.” He yanked her right ankle and stepped forward until his belly was pressed firmly between her thighs. “I teach you how to use magic, you be my little bed warmer.”

“How… how did you…?”

“Know? You left your notebooks out all over the place. The impossible knowledge thing is a myth, we’re just a particularly observant bunch.”

Dillon tried to weigh the pros and cons through the solid bulk searing straight to her core, but he was too much of a goddamn distraction. “What happens if I say no?”

“Then I either come up with some asinine tasks to provide sufficient entertainment value for the work I put in, or you find yourself another Veilborne who may or may not be so gentle and accommodating.”

“You call this gentle?” The grip on Dillon’s throat tightened without warning, constricting her airway and blood flow until she panicked that the pressure behind her eyes might make them pop out like a stress toy. She weakly pried at his fingers and his hand immediately relaxed, point proven. “F-fine, fine, you’re gentle and accommodating,” she wheezed.

The toothy sneer she received shouldn’t have made her loins clench. “Glad we’re in agreement.” She knew he felt it, too — how could he not with his proximity? But the greater evidence, the one that spread pink to her ears, lay in the heavy undulation between her legs.

He decided he quite liked the sound of her little gasp, so he repeated the slow roll of his hips to make her do it again, then abruptly disconnected, dropping her to the floor. “Think on it. When you realize the generosity of the deal, call me again from your bedroom.”

The book flew to his hand and shifted; the blue cover burned itself black, the pages yellowed with age, and a frayed ribbon appeared between a few pages towards the back. “This one’s not porn, try the spell I marked. It’s just a call, not a summons, simple enough. I won’t be far.”

“You’re not… why are you helping me?”

“Bored. Maybe you’re a little cute when you scrunch your dinky little nose up in concentration.”

“How do I know this isn’t some prank or something that’ll kill me?”

“I guess you’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?” He gave her a cheeky wink which quickly blew wide when he noticed the brownies at her feet. “For me?”

Dillon nodded and knitted her brows, tugging her piercing hard enough to wince. “You’re not what I expected a demon to be like, Zadimus,” she muttered as he popped one of the treats into his maw. A black forked tongue slithered out to catch a bit of frosting clinging to the side of his mouth.

The demon looked taken aback by her admission. His wily expression softened. “You aren’t the typical summoner either, Dillon.” He closed up the tray and returned the leftovers to the dumbfounded human. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a blood sacrifice to oversee.” He wiggled his fingers in a manner that suggested he might have been making a joke. A well of darkness sucked him into thin air, leaving behind nothing but a tiny burp of ash-scented smoke.

Dillon sat on the floor for a while, staring at everything and nothing all at once, trapped in an endless loop of her heart pounding in her chest, her pulse throbbing between her legs, and her head swimming in every possible direction and a few not-so-possible ones, slipping into the cracks between space and time.

When she finally managed to stumble to her feet, her mind still felt disconnected from her body, like it was unwilling to accept the pull of her loins in the direction of something far more dangerous than an anonymous boy cosplaying a vampire in the back of a goth club she wasn’t supposed to be in anyway.

And was that really such a bad thing? She flopped back onto her bed and jolted when her mind finally reconnected to her body. He wasn’t… terrible-looking, as far as otherworldly creatures went. She’d certainly seen freakier demons in the books Eugene lent her, one of which she was going to have to explain she lost to a demon’s antics, or somehow manage to convince Zadimus to turn it back once she was through with the spell he’d assigned her as homework. His features were flatter in profile than a human’s, and he was the color of an ancient mountain in winter with rough scales in places that felt like jagged stone, but those were easy enough to get used to. The wings and horns wouldn’t be a problem either; she’d certainly crushed on a few metal band members that had wild costumes and body modifications, so it wasn’t so far of a stretch. She could think of quite a few uses for the tail too.

His teeth and claws, however… those would need a book’s worth of boundaries set. Probably. She thought about it a bit longer.

Maybe she’d let things get a little dangerous and just keep a first aid kit and a few safe words on hand.

Dillon shut her eyes and tried to push him from her mind. He’d do nothing for her but keep her awake. She needed her wits about her to properly weigh the possibilities, set up a negotiation, and draft a written, binding contract he couldn’t weasel his way out of. Clear minds made iron-clad agreements with no exploitable loopholes.

No matter what she tried, though, his eyes bored right into her consciousness as if they were burned there when he branded her soul with his gaze. All four held her in their thrall, mocking her, setting the marrow of her bones alight with white-hot fire that warmed her from the inside out and licked salacious promises across her skin, carving her up and piecing her back together until —

Her eyes shot open. Fuck. He did something to her, had to have done something, because never in her life had she lost sleep over anyone but her sister, and she sure as fuck wasn’t about to start over some demon prick with entirely too much confidence in his bedroom prowess. Why else would he strike up such a bargain? It definitely wasn’t for her; she was short, pale, had dark circles under her eyes to rival a boxer, and the last time she put any effort into her wardrobe was the day she watched a machine plant her Daisy in the ground. She didn’t consider herself a particularly sexual creature, and she would almost say she put active effort into not being seen that way with every article of clothing being either several sizes too large or designed with the express intention of scaring off crowds of people.

Well, fuck him. She’d had an exhausting week, and he was just some fuckass standing between her and a nice, demon-free dream. Dillon dug around under her mattress, hoping she hadn’t pushed her stash too far in the gap last time. With a hiss of victory, she pulled out the black velvet pouch of her — oh, that would be embarrassing if the smug asshole went snooping around. The silicone creature toy plopped into her lap and rolled off the side of her thigh. Maybe she’d just make do with her hand, since she was trying to get a beastie out of her head, not facilitate his digging in like a tick.

Dillon dropped back onto her pillow with a sharp huff. “Smug bastard,” she grumbled, tossing the toy back into the pouch and throwing it under the bed without bothering to stash it between her mattress and box spring again. She’d get it in the morning.

9 months, 8 days remaining

Dillon slapped the cheap rug she bought on clearance at the dollar store onto the floor in front of her bed. She wanted to see that smug piece of shit smudge her circle now, since she’d drawn it in permanent marker. She grabbed the hula hoop — also from the same shopping trip — and tossed it on her bed, then settled herself in the middle of it. A circle was a fucking circle, and he could suck it.

She opened the book with a bit more aggression than necessary, but she didn’t care. She had a plan and she wasn’t about to derail it over a cracked book spine and a few wrinkled pages. There was a bright pink sticky note affixed to the bookmarked page, translating the incantation to English. How thoughtful.

She wouldn’t be using it. He said he wouldn’t be far, so she assumed he would be waiting around and listening for her to call him. The incantation was unnecessarily fluffy for what he deserved, in her opinion. If he wanted groveling, he picked the wrong human to pester.

“I don’t have all night, Zadimus,” she spoke into her rug circle. “Come here so we can get this over with.”

Sure enough, the same shadow slithered under her door, consolidating in the center and forming into one very unamused demon. He looked over her sweatpants, messy bun, and ratty t-shirt with disdain. “Really? Couldn’t even spring for something the tiniest bit sex—”

His face sank into a deep frown as he realized he couldn’t stalk forward beyond her marker boundary and was, in fact, stuck standing in the middle of a cheery smiley face rug. “Clever girl,” he drawled. The lack of an amused lilt in his voice worried her, however; a promise of violence lurked where she expected pleasant surprise. “Am I to assume this means we have a deal, then?”

Dillon opened her laptop, not giving him a second glance lest he distract her again with his rakish wiles. “No.”

“No?” The room heated in an instant as his wings flared upwards. The display was still intimidating despite the indignant noise interrupting his growl when they fumbled against the ceiling and sent a storm of plaster popcorn snowing onto his head and shoulders.

“If you fuck up my room, I’m adding it into the contract that you’re paying for it,” she sighed. “Calm your tits, big guy, I just want to get everything in writing before I agree to any terms.”

“My tits— you little—!” Zadimus settled his wings against his back with a huff. Dillon had to stifle a laugh; he really did look like a large, sulking bat. “At least break the circle while you’re typing. I’m bored.”

“And I’m not stupid,” she quipped. “You’ve been here five minutes. You’re not bored, you’re butthurt.”

Dillon watched the gears turning in his head as he tried to glare her down. She’d dealt with bullies her whole life. If he wanted to break her, he’d have to try a lot harder than a rude look and a disgruntled rustle of his wings. After a period of tense silence and the gentle tikk tikk tikk of her typing, he straightened up with a sniff. “I’ll pay for pizza,” he offered.

She cocked her pierced brow. “Demons eat pizza?”

“We eat pussy too, a fact you’d know by now if you didn’t trap me on a fucking rug.” Her blush brought the smug sneer back. She supposed it was better than looking like he’d set her alight with his mind. “I have every intention of making you do that often, little human.”

Dillon gave him the half second glare his statement deserved and went back to typing. She'd downloaded a contract template that morning that seemed to work fine enough for her purposes, and though the wording was a little difficult to get down at first, she eventually got the hang of it and finally managed to crank out something worth signing. She considered phoning Darren to have him give it a once-over, but quickly scrapped that plan when she remembered how much detail she put into the section outlining her end of the bargain; Zadimus was a tricky motherfucker, and she wanted to make sure her bases — and bedroom boundaries — were thoroughly covered.

As soon as she heard the distant whirring of the printer downstairs, she shut her laptop and made for the door, casually flicking her hand to break the protection barrier caging the demon in. She half expected him to follow immediately, but when she looked back, she saw him still standing on the rug, watching her with a shocked expression that almost made her laugh. He didn't seem like the type that got surprised often. "Are you coming? I thought you wanted out."

Halfway down the stairs she found herself pinned to the wall, a heavy, magma-hot body pressing against her back and talons in her hair, smashing her face against the rough painted surface. It sent a twinge of want straight between her legs. She should have used the goddamn toy last night; at least then the solid bulge inches away from where she wanted it wouldn’t have her wanting so much. "You're playing with fire, little girl," he hissed into her scalp.

"And you're playing with my last nerve," she hissed right back, ducking out of his grip to continue her previous path.

Again, he stood silently stunned where she'd left him. He would have taken the cordless phone right to the face had he fumbled it into his grip any later. "I wasn't aware we were still in the nineties," he snapped, chucking the phone right back. Dillon supposed she deserved the unexpected follow up of another phone flying at her face, but in her defense, one did not simply assume demons could even use phones, much less own them. "Stone Circle and Pizza Palace should deliver here, just put in what you want on the app for one of them, I don't care which."

Dillon stared down at the phone, then at the contract in her hand, then Zadimus. "Sorry, did you say app?"

"I'd really like to know how you think I've survived this long on your side of the Veil without knowing basic technological advancements." Zadimus crossed his arms over his broad chest. "Am I to assume you'll just drop dead where you stand if I tell you I also know what video streaming services are and that I have favorite shows?" He snorted at the venomous glare he got in return.

Dillon slid the contract across the counter, gesturing for him to sit on one of the bar stools. "Sign this first."

"Why?" Zadimus waited a few beats to sit at the counter so she wouldn't go thinking she'd managed to order him about and get the idea in her pretty little head she could do so whenever she pleased; he was already planning to sit down, and did so of his own volition, clearly. He lifted the sparkly monstrosity of a pen she'd placed on top of the stack of papers. "Oh yes, I see, the glitter makes this extra legally binding," he drawled.

"It's all I had in blue," she gritted out. "And I can't order pizza on your phone before you sign that, because it would place us under a working agreement without a contract binding us to specific terms."

"Someone did her research," he cooed. Rather than signing with the pen, however, he pricked the pad of his left thumb on one of his fangs and pressed it to the line above his name. In an instant, a deep, oily-black signature burned its way onto the paper.

"Really?"

"Oh, were you expecting less melodrama?"

Dillon sucked a breath through her teeth and signed above her name normally, in regular pen before tapping out her order for Pizza Palace and tossing his phone back.

Zadmius caught it, though not without a healthy dose of huffing and puffing and general offense. "Can we perhaps not throw my phone when I'm within passing distance, little human?"

"I'm not the one who doesn't have my phone in a case, demon," she quipped back.

He could have turned her to dust. Would have, had she been anyone else — and if there wasn’t a clause in the contract specifically forbidding him to do so. Clever girl, indeed.

By his second slice of ultimate-supreme, however, he was in a much more forgiving mood. “So,” he began as he started on his third.

“So?”

He made pointed eye contact with her as he slowly finished the slice in his hand and took his sweet time washing it down with soda. Bless humans and their affinity for fizzy flavored chemicals. “Are you planning on anyone coming home any time soon?”

Dillon scanned his face for any clue about the ulterior motives of that sentence. “My mom and my sister will be gone for a few days,” she answered, caution tainting her words. “Why?”

She didn’t get an answer. Instead, Zadimus waved his hand dismissively, and in that single motion, the security system chirped a cheerful goodnight as it entered Bedtime mode, the lights cut out everywhere but above the table, and the front door’s deadbolt slid home with a finality that made her heart stop. Before she fully registered what was happening, Zadimus hooked his fingers under her arms and shoved her over the tabletop.

“What are you do— hey!” Dillon made an indignant noise in her throat as she was manhandled onto her back, giving the demon a few token kicks until he tossed her legs over his shoulders to hold her in place.

He dropped to his knees and the windows trembled at the sight — just the windows, of course, she was immune to his charms, her legs weren’t shaking, he was simply jostling her around. She maintained the act for the time it took Zadimus to inch her waistband over her hips, down her thighs, and around her knees, following the thick fabric with his mouth, every kiss branding her skin with carnal promises. “Sealing the deal,” he finally murmured on the way back up, and when she felt the first press of his tongue through her cotton underwear, she ceased to give a single fuck about maintaining appearances.

“We should probably… people eat here, Zadimus,” Dillon huffed. She had another protest ready, a whole list of reasons they absolutely shouldn’t fool around in the kitchen of all places, but all of it went up in flames, each rough stroke of his tongue stoking them higher and higher.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he teased back. It made her hips jerk so subtly she was sure he wouldn’t notice, but his rough chuckle dashed all hope of it. “With toys like yours, I wouldn’t have pegged you for such a prude.”

“I’m not a pr— ohh, wow, okay.” Dillon arched against his mouth as he lightly nipped her through her panties. He trilled an intrigued noise and did it again; as far as she was concerned, he could spend an hour doing that alone and she wouldn’t complain. “I’m not the one who’s, who’s leaving my underwear on,” she retorted, though it was devoid of her usual venom. The bastard had de-fanged her without even taking all her clothes off, and she vowed to get him back the second he released her. She wasn’t sure how exactly she’d pull it off, but it was his turn to get reduced to a panting, wet mess.

“Perhaps if you ask nicely, I might be inclined to acquiesce to your request.” Every word sent a zing of pleasure ricocheting through her pelvis.

Dillon groaned in frustration. Fine, she’d do it herself, she thought, but when she made to yank her underwear down, he gathered both her wrists in one hand and pinned them to the table next to her hip. “Oh, come on!”

“That isn’t asking nicely, little human,” he purred. “Try again.”

“Fuck you.”

Zadimus nipped her again in reprimand, and that time, her hips bucked sharply against his mouth, sending a twinge of soreness through his jaw. He pinned her hips to the table too. “I only need three hours of sleep a day. I’m very well rested and I’ve had over a thousand years to master the art of patience. Ask. Nicely.”  Her belly fluttered frantically beneath his palm like a bird caught in a trap. “I can wait.”

How many pretties do you want before the please, some small pathetic thing in the back of Dillon's head begged. She wouldn't roll over so easily, still struggling with all her might against his grip and bucking so hard into every languid swipe of his tongue that her tender flesh met teeth, and the fact that she liked that could be addressed later. Much later, when she wasn't trying to think about every possible way to get what she wanted without begging for it. She was stronger than that. Stronger than him. Her will was unbreakable.

"Please, please, please stop teasing," she whined. "Can I have my hands back, too? I'll be good."

Maybe her will was a little bendy.

Something about making eye contact — though with which pair of eyes, she wasn't sure, and when she tried to meet both it made her even dizzier — between her legs while he slid the crotch of her panties aside with a finger, and continuing that eye contact as he lazily licked a searing path right up her center, unlocked a part of her she didn't know she'd ever locked away. There was a twinge in her back where it arched up off the wooden surface. A few vertebrae popped. And yet he wasn’t even breathing hard, utterly unfazed by the circumstances. How could he not be as lost to the desire swirling around them as she was? Her throat was raw from shouting and the most reaction she got in return was a gentle-but-firm hand pressing her hips back down again before she bucked herself right off the table. "My hands," she gasped again, "please!"

"You're going to pull my hair, little human, I don't think so."

A laugh struggled out of Dillon's chest between breaths. "So the big, big bad demon doesn't like a little rough stuff?" she goaded. "Pathetic." The challenge melted right out of her soul as her eyes met his again; the heat in them was undeniable. She may have thought herself an immovable object once, a stone wall standing strong against eons and eons of the worst nature had to throw at it, but he was an unstoppable force, battering against her defenses. "I asked nicely."

"Oh, is that how this works? You crook your little finger—" she hadn't noticed his own slip inside her until he did just that and she felt the first stones fall from her crumbling wall as the pressure concentrated on a spot that made her vision go white "—and bring me to heel like a good little thrall? I think not."

"I won't — oh, fuck, do that again — I won't pull your hair, princess, you worked so hard with those, those cute little braids at your temples." She may have had the highest grades in her class while she was in school, but no one ever accused her of being smart.

"Playing with fire."

"Maybe I'm a fucking arsonist."

Something like intrigue flashed through his gaze and she felt the grip on her wrists loosen— not by much, but just enough to wriggle free. True to her word, she didn't pull his hair.

She grabbed his larger set of horns like handlebars and pulled herself up, taking back control of her own pleasure. She expected retaliation; maybe he'd grab her hands again, pin her down, bite her if she was lucky, but he did nothing of the sort. Zadimus groaned low in his chest and the vibrations lit up her lower half like New Year's Eve. His hands went to her thighs, digging in his claws hard enough to dance just on this side of bad-pain, but not hard enough to draw blood. She had half a breath of warning before he rose to his feet without even bothering to break her grip, then slammed her back against a wall, knocking the wind from her lungs.

Well, fuck him. If he wanted a fight, she'd give him a fight. Dillon adjusted her grip on his horns and locked her ankles behind his shoulders to trap him in place as she met every thrust of his tongue and fingers with one of her own. She knew on a logical level she wouldn't be able to keep him there even if she never skipped a single leg day — and quite frankly, she'd never attended a single leg day in her life — but the sentiment was there, and it was apparently one he appreciated very much. However— "You're overdressed," she gasped.

"I'm sure you don't want me making a mess of your mother's hideous wallpaper."

"Then don't," she bit out. "Take me upstairs."

He didn't reprimand her for her lack of manners — or so she thought until he slung her over his shoulder like a sack of flour and slapped her ass hard enough to echo.

"Fuck you!"

"Such a mouth on you, little human," he teased, smacking it again.

"You swear as much as I do," Dillon whined. She shoved against his wings to keep them from slapping her in the face every time he took another step. "You left the light on downstairs, asshole."

"Oh, did I?" Zadimus spanked each cheek in turn and snorted to himself as the first floor was plunged into darkness. “Clap off,” he sang under his breath.

"Showoff."

"The show hasn't even begun, mon petit aperitif, I still have my pants on." He took his time turning on the shower, fiddling with the temperature, pulling out towels — all while letting Dillon dangle over his shoulder, and when she decided grumbling wouldn't get her anywhere and instead caught one wing in her hands to bite the sensitive membrane, he reminded her that his hands weren't the only disciplinary tools at his disposal, wrapping his tail around her arms and yanking her upright. How she still managed to maintain enough dignity to look angry with her pants and underwear hanging around her ankles, he didn't know, but he liked it a fair share more than he was willing to admit. It's not like anything was fully on display either, thanks to the massive shirt drowning her in fabric, but that was easily remedied. He grabbed the hem and made to rip it free—

"Don't tear my shirt, please." The quiet earnestness of her plea was jarring in the wake of her snarling fit, enough so that it turned his muscles to stone and forced him to meet her eyes. There was a flicker of fear in their hollow depths, suddenly so cold and lifeless, had he not felt her pulse fluttering against the underside of his tail, he'd wonder if she still had one at all. "Daisy bought it for me. It was the first concert we went to together."

Well, fuck. Zadimus set her down and stepped back, watching her kick off her other clothes and slowly, reverently strip off her shirt and fold it on the counter. "You really do love your sister, don't you?"

The fire went right back into her eyes as she looked up with raw determination and something he couldn't place, the sort of vicious familial passion he'd never observed in a member of his own kind; it drove otherwise pacifistic mothers to violent, gruesome vengeance killings, and made brothers fight more fiercely for — and sometimes against — each other than they would in any other circumstance. "I poured my soul into the ground so she could climb back out of it," she spat. "What do you think?"

"I think we're going to get along brilliantly," he replied, then pulled her into his arms again to crush their mouths together. The kiss was short-lived; she drew back and he worried he'd crossed a boundary somewhere, but she thrust her thumbs into his mouth and pried his jaws open.

"So that's what it was!"

"Whah?"

She grinned in triumph. "Your tongue's pierced, you wily fucking devil."

Zadimus batted her hand away. “I have other things pierced, you know, if that’s what really gets you going,” he drawled. “But as it stands, Miss Monroe, you have a filthy fucking mouth and it’s high time someone cleaned up your act.”

“That was awful,” Dillon snorted. She quickly occupied herself with biting at his neck to stifle the giggle that escaped on the tail end. Hopefully the heat from the shower would cover her full-body blush of embarrassment soon enough. “I thought you had over a thousand years of experience, Mister…” She furrowed her brow. Did demons even have surnames? If they did, she sure as fuck didn’t know his, and—  “How did you know my last name?”

“I assumed the lovely wood carving your mother hung over the fireplace was your family name, otherwise I have some concerns about the acquisition of this house.” She couldn’t hide her laugh this time, but when he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, she felt his mouth twitch into a smile against her scalp. Damn him right to the pits of whatever hellish landscape from whence he came. He wasn’t supposed to be charming, and she wasn’t supposed to fall prey to anyone’s charm at all, much less his.

“You’ve had my full name this whole time,” she gasped. “You could have done anything with it.”

“I could have,” he confirmed. “Still could.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

She buried her face in the bony ridge of his collarbone as he stepped into the shower and the warm spray hit her back. “Why?”

He was silent for a while. She had to pick her head up when her refuge started filling up with water and risked a glance upwards. Confusion played across his face as he tried to find the answers she sought in the grout between the tiles. Even with four eyes and such uncanny features, he was easy to read; what was it like, she wondered, to be such an open book? She guarded her emotions closely and her heart even closer, but when he turned his gaze upon her once more, she felt more of her stones fall into the deep, dark sea. “Maybe I’ll have an answer for that when our contract is through,” he said finally, and tilted her chin up further to capture her mouth again.

“Careful, Zadimus,” she whispered, pulling back for air. “I might think you like me and my brazen ways.”

They met again in a clash of tongues and teeth, and their voices reverberated around them in discordance as he backed her against the wall once more and reached between them to line himself up. That sensation brought her mind back to the surface for a moment; she shoved both palms against his chest, not expecting any give, but glad he at least got the message. “Contrary to whatever terrible smut you have stashed in your bedding, I don’t get anything out of your misery.”

“I— first of all.” Dillon’s blush deepened, and she snapped her fingers in front of his face when she saw his focus had wandered down to watch the pink spread to her breasts. “Eyes up here.” One set followed her hand.

“I can focus on more than one thing, you know.”

Her lips pressed together in a thin line. He leaned in to kiss away the irritation, but met the palm of her hand instead. “That’s not the point. I’m an adult, I understand the difference between porn and reality, but I am very small and you’re very big—”

“Thank you.”

“That’s— ohh, you are the most infuriating—”

She was too distracted to catch his face again, and he took full advantage of the breach in her defenses to plant annoying kisses at either side of her mouth, up her nose, on each of her dimples, and revelled in the glory of all the fight leaking right out of her when he made it to her forehead. “Ah, I see, that’s the off button,” he teased, kissing her brow again.

“You’re a rotten bastard,” she huffed.

“Opinions change as quickly as the wind, Dillon.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That they’re quite fickle, but with the right tools—” he rolled his hips forward, gliding his length across her cleft and relishing the flutter of her eyes, the slack of her jaw “—you can sway them in any direction you please.”

“You can control the wind?” she asked, an edge of wonder coloring her breath.

“I can control a lot more than the wind, little one.” With a single jerk, he entered her — not far, he’d given his word, in a roundabout way but he’d given it nonetheless — and at her ecstatic cry, he pressed onward, slowly working his way in until she stopped him with a harsh intake of breath. “Too far?”

Her pinched expression carried his answer even before she nodded. One eye slid open at his grunt of acknowledgment, then the other, but the furrow between her brows remained. “That’s it?”

“Well, now, that’s just insulting,” he joked. “It’s not the size of the ship, Miss Monroe, but the skill of the captain.” He absolutely deserved the slap to his bicep, but he still picked up the pace in retaliation.

“Not what I, what I meant,” she panted. “No argument, just ‘don’t go any deeper’ ‘okay’?”

“What part of ‘your not-sexy pain doesn’t turn me on’ was unclear?” He sniffed away the growl in his throat and sneezed over his shoulder when the action resulted in water up his nose. “It would be terribly unfortunate if you were to let a name slip in the throes of passion, and I just so happened to find myself in the neighborhood of whoever made you think that was at all acceptable.”

“How noble my Conduit is,” Dillon teased, though her smile and the flutter of her heart were genuine.

“I aim to please, if this—” he gave her a harder thrust that curled her toes and left her gasping “—wasn’t indication enough.” He pressed his grin to her throat, biting and licking and suckling her damp skin until he knew he’d leave a mark. Was it a bit juvenile to leave a hickey on the first date? Probably, but he was far too gone to care about third, fourth, fifth impressions. “Hold on tight if you want me to get my hand between us,” he murmured, and chuckled when she latched on like he was dangling her over the edge of a cliff. He supposed he was, metaphorically speaking; her walls clenched and squeezed stars behind his eyes, he knew she was close, and like hell he’d finish first like some kind of putz.

Her flat little teeth weren’t good for much in a fight against anything other than another human, but he was more than okay with humoring her attempts to mark him the same as he’d marked her and rewarded her efforts by rubbing quick circles at the apex of her thighs. He felt her brows move against his shoulder; he switched the pattern to vertical strokes. A quiet huff; side-to-side. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth when she squirmed, insistently bearing down on his hand. By the second attempt at finding a pace that suited her, he chuffed, “You know you can just tell me what you want, right? I’m not so insecure in my masculinity to think I know everything there is to know about your preferences the first time.”

Dillon didn’t respond, instead grinding her hips harder onto his hand and meeting him thrust-for-thrust. After a while, she grumbled under her breath until he changed his hand’s rhythm again.

“Is that how we’re playing this?” She nipped his collarbone and startled a breathy laugh from his chest. “Does the little arsonist want to keep lighting matches?” Another bite, harder this time. He tugged her wet hair free of its tie, then tangled his hand in the hair at the base of her skull and yanked her head away from his flesh. Her harsh cry of delight drowned out the running shower as he picked up his pace. It only took a few more thrusts to send her over the edge, and her violent curse of his name tugged him right over with her, tumbling head first into an oblivion of their own creation.

The water had long since gone cold, but he couldn’t be bothered to move until he finally caught his breath. While his tolerance for temperature changes would have allowed him to bathe in the chill without issue, Dillon’s lips were a concerning shade of blue and her teeth chattered louder than the spray. “How long does it take the water heater to catch up?”

Dillon shrugged, shivering too violently to care very much about forming words.

Zadimus quickly rinsed away their combined mess, apologizing under his breath every time she flinched away from the cold, then cut the water off and made himself comfortable on the floor. She didn’t protest the towel-swaddling, nor did she put up a fuss when he cocooned her with his wings, releasing steady pulses of warmth into the nest he made.

“N-neat t-trick,” she huffed. Her shivering slowly ebbed away, leaving her tired and achy all over. It was better than just a few places hurting, she supposed, because then she could just blame it all on the cold, rather than get flustered every time she felt a twinge in her back. Speaking of— “How bad is it?”

Zadimus pulled her close and lifted his wing to check the damage. His low whistle wasn’t promising. “At least it’s autumn,” he offered. “I don’t suppose you own any turtlenecks, do you?”

Dillon couldn’t move, so she focused her glare on the shower wall and hoped it would refract into his eyes. “So that was a hickey.”

“Oh, don’t act so high and mighty now, you were just as mouthy,” he huffed, brushing the tangles from her dripping hair with his fingers. “Do you need to dry your hair?”

She shook her head. “I let it air dry, it’s short enough not to bother me.”

“Are you going to bite me if I carry you down the hall?”

“See, before all that, I might have thought the correct answer was ‘no,’ to assure you I wouldn’t retaliate.” A wry grin twitched at her mouth. “But now I’m not entirely sure you’re not asking for a reward for your chivalry.”

“Cute,” he chuffed, gathering her into his arms and starting down the hall. “You’re going to catch me on a bad day with that at some point and I won’t be quite so— ohh, terrible thing…” His knees went weak at the sharp pinch of her teeth on his nipple. “Don’t start something you don’t intend to finish tonight,” he warned. “I almost dropped you, how would I explain that to your poor mother? ‘Terribly sorry, Missus Monroe, but your daughter decided she wanted to be a feisty little thing and got crushed beneath my beautifully sculpted— ah-ah! Naughty minx!”

Zadimus tossed her onto her bed and thumped her nose, but she simply held her hands over the spot and laughed, utterly unapologetic for the throbbing of his left pec, now bitten twice, and his cock, standing at full attention. He brought his hands to his hips. Dillon’s eyes followed the shiny gold barbells running a four-runged ladder down the underside as it bobbed in the aftermath of the motion. He whistled through his teeth to catch her attention. “Eyes up here,” he taunted, mocking her earlier reprimand in a terrible falsetto.

He wasn’t ready for the mix of raw vulnerability and unbridled curiosity he found lurking just beneath the surface of that emerald sea, and when she rolled onto her back, he knew she would find the same in his eyes. She was so… soft all over, inside and out. From the residual motion rippling its way across her belly and breasts, to the small, trembling thing she locked away behind a fortress of steel and stone and cast into the dark depths of that roiling ocean. She must have thought herself so difficult to read, a puzzle that could only be solved if she herself provided the key. He wondered if telling her would make it easier for her to let him in, or if she’d simply reinforce her fortress and hide away in the dark forever.

Dillon didn’t chide him for it when she caught his eyes roving, perhaps because she knew she was just as guilty of the same curiosity, but a flash of disappointment sank his shoulders as she brought her knees up in some semblance of modesty to hide what lay between them. He had his answer, at least, but even the strongest walls crumbled in time, and he was exceptionally patient. Still, she didn’t avert her gaze when he stepped closer, braced his hands on her pillow, and even when he slightly dropped his weight onto her shins in a silent request.

Her tiny, delicate fingers, still icy from the shower, explored his chest, his shoulders, and finally tangled into the still-damp strands of hair clinging to the back of his neck. She sighed and her knees fell open, but whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t the gentle drape of his warmth as he rested his chin on her sternum and wrapped his arms around her waist. “I don’t think your bed is big enough for both of us,” he murmured, relishing the subtle twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“Sorry, I forgot to ask my mother for a bigger mattress, just in case I made a deal with a comically large demon some day and he decided to stay over,” Dillon snorted. Her nose scrunched up at his thoughtful hum buzzing through her abdomen. He did it again and she laughed properly, thumping his nose when his amber gaze latched onto the bounce of her nipple.

“I can’t help it, Dillon, they’re right there.”

“And who decided to use my chest as a pillow?” She scoffed. “I don’t know how you’re even comfortable. There’s barely anything there in the first place.”

“That’s demonstrably false, I’m looking right at the evidence disproving your ludicrous claim.” He flicked her left nipple in emphasis.

Dillon frowned to hide her gasp. “I didn’t say there was nothing, just… not a lot.”

“Mmh, by whose standards?”

Pink flushed over her cheeks. They both knew he’d won, and she didn’t feel like digging a deeper hole tonight, so she averted her eyes and dropped it altogether.

“By yours, perhaps,” Zadimus continued regardless. “But by mine…” He kissed his way across her breastbone, gingerly tracing under her breast with his thumb.

Dillon’s eyes fluttered shut as his tongue blazed a trail that his lips followed up the alabaster hillside, and she found her hands tangled in his hair before he even made it to the peak. A tease of warm metal grazing her nipple tightened her grip out of reflex and the salacious groan Zadimus released had her arching up into his attention.

When his hands started wandering, she set hers exploring too; mapping out the ridges and valleys of the rough scales on his collarbones, his shoulders, down his spine; trailing across his jaw, running her fingertips over the pointed scales clustered at the corners and on his chin, jutting out like crystal growths; tracing the shell of his ear with her nails, the motion stuttering when it was rewarded with a sharp suck and an enthusiastic undulation between her thighs.

He switched sides and rumbled around her flesh, “Keep goin’.”

“Don’t make a mess on my blankets,” she chastised. His tail curled around her ankle in some unknown answer. In the middle of her eye roll, a twitch of his wings caught her attention. Were they sensitive at all? She ran an experimental finger up the leading edge of one and he froze, going preternaturally still until she removed—

“Don’t stop.” The strain in his voice was reflected in the subtle tremor in his arms, his abdomen.

Dillon repeated the motion on the other wing. His tail wrapped tighter around her leg, as if that grip was the only thing keeping him grounded. She traced the thicker, scaled hide protecting the bones beneath, then ran her fingers down the thin membrane casting a cool, blue shadow over them where her overhead light shined through.

Zadimus twitched like he’d been shocked and went limp, uttering a harsh word in another language she knew had to be a swear. His wings draped bonelessly over the edges of the bed. They sounded like a leather coat being slung over a chair.

“You made a mess on my blankets, didn’t you,” she sighed. It wasn’t a question.

“Just the one, technically.”

“You know you’re—”

“Never living this down, yes, I wouldn’t expect anything less from the tiny human who laughed in my face when she should have been screaming,” he groused.

The words left Dillon’s mouth before she could swallow them down and lock them away. “I don’t think I could ever be afraid of you, Zadimus.”

The room around them fell silent. She waited for his answer, some reassurance it wasn’t the wrong thing to say, but she was met only with the sudden chill as he pushed off the bed, that didn’t leave even when he gently maneuvered her under the blankets and tucked her in. As an afterthought, he waved his hand over the topmost comforter. It vanished. Shortly after, she thought she heard the distant bang of the washing machine shutting in the basement and the rush of water through the pipes.

Zadimus pulled out the trundle with a sigh and settled himself upon it in a rustle of wings. The low frame creaked under his weight, but held.

“Your feet are hanging off the edge,” Dillon stated, hazarding a peek over the edge of her bed.

“It’s better than the floor.” Zadimus didn’t fight her off when she tugged his hand up to the bed to lay her head in his palm. He flexed his fingers, gently scratching her scalp as best he could. Something clearly nagged at her, though; her brow pinched as she stared at his face. “What?”

Her mouth twitched, forming around a different word than what followed. “Are you… missing claws?”

He searched for some kind of context in her eyes and finally found it in the odd sensation of her hair passing over his raw nail beds. “Ah, yes. I filed them down.”

“Why?”

“All the better to finger you with, my dear,” he drawled, laughing when the blush returned in full force. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t entirely sure you’d go for it, but I didn’t feel like ruining the mood to fix them if you decided to accept.” Her cold fingers left little trails of ice in their wake when she brought them up to idly trace whorls on the back of his hand and the side of his palm.

They laid like that for a while, silently basking in the afterglow and each other’s company. It was an odd thing, this companionable silence, and he knew it wouldn’t last once morning came, but he clung to it for as long as he could. He couldn’t remember the last time he simply existed in the presence of someone else without any ulterior motives from either party. I don’t think I could ever be afraid of you. He hoped she couldn’t feel the spike of his pulse.

Once the sun rose and she’d slept off the flood of endorphins, they would go right back to antagonizing each other during their lessons, which he hadn’t even planned out yet. Fuck.

“Zadimus?” He almost didn’t hear her soft murmur over the cacophony of his own thoughts.

“Yes?”

She was silent for a while, like she’d surprised herself with her own quiet outburst and now had to decide if she actually wanted to say what she’d set out to. “Nevermind,” she said finally. The disappointment in his eyes was well hidden by the shadows beside her bed and his own wings, but she must have felt the emerging tension anyway; her grip on his hand tightened and she rubbed her face against his palm.

He was next to break the silence. “Shay,” he whispered, unsure if it had even come out at all.

“What’s that?” Her hands stilled as she listened.

He worked the words around in his mouth, doing precisely what he’d assumed of her moments prior. He wasn’t even sure what had possessed him to speak at all; usually, he either waited for his lay to fall asleep and snuck out, or they both passed out immediately sans pillow talk. “We don’t have family names,” he explained. “We have spoken names, and full names. That’s the other part of mine.”

“Shay,” she repeated. It sounded strange coming from her, the slight twang of her accent made it sound more like shy, but it was close enough.

“Yes. Keep it close. I won’t use yours if you don’t use mine.”

He felt her nod against his palm. “Thank you.”

He furrowed his brow. “For what?”

“Trusting me. Leveling the playing field.” His hand pinched under her shoulder with her shrug. “You can turn me to dust before I can blink, you’re a lot stronger than me, and it’s… comforting to know the odds are a little less stacked against me now.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Dillon,” he snorted. “There’s great power in you, I felt it.”

Her smile tugged in his hand. “Goodnight,” she whispered.

“Sleep well,” he whispered back, knowing he wouldn’t be sleeping at all.

Arsonist Chronicles Taglist: @sparatus @thetrashbagswasteland @writernopal @tabswrites @starknstarwars @asher-orion-writes @captain-kraken @teamdilf @void-botanist

Ask to +/- in the tags, replies, inbox, or HERE!

#the arsonist chronicles #unlikely adventures #my fic #paranormal romance #chapter update #finally the smut arrives hope it delivers

[notsobeautifuldisaester]

I've been having KS on my mind, so here are some out-of-pocket headcanons (mainly about the side characters)

Tw: Homophobia, implied sexual content, sexual harassment, child injury, bullying, depression, disordered eating, PTSD, self-harm

Sangwoo killed nine women prior to the CEO'S daughter

Sangwoo picking of his victims varies. Sometimes it's because they're easy to get, sometimes it's because the victim pisses him off, sometimes they resemble his mom, and sometimes he thinks the world would be better off without them. The first one was an elderly lady who found Eunseo's corpse.

Sangwoo didn't kill every woman he dated/slept with. He has about 5 serious exes (One he killed when she found a tied-up victim of his.

Bum is a frequent user of dcinside, a forum site. He's usually on the dating advice side of things, he's usually a nuisance to the other user.

Kwak's son died in a traffic accident. Due to him and his ex wife divorcing (work got in the way), they don't see each other that much.

Seokho's ex-wife would have accepted if just told her Seokho he was gay (she would be confused at first but wouldn't harbor any resentment), she mainly was betrayed by his cheating, lying, and spending a considerable amount of money at the bars.

The bartender from the second gay bar and Seokho were friends from the military plus he was one of the few who attended his funeral.

Seokho's family practically disowned him not only for his infidelity but because he was gay

Seokho's family was generally strict and conservative which made him feel like he had to lie

Seokho was selfish in his encounters, usually rushing and pressuring his partners into sex before moving on to the next man.

He tried to get his act together with Sangwoo such as stopping himself when he noticed that Sangwoo was distressed and asking Sangwoo if he was going too fast.

Jieun and Donggyu were childhood friends. Their moms was friends and they grew to like each.

Their friendship wasn't entirely wholesome. You know those stock bully characters. That was them. Donggyu would steal people's food, kick them around, spray them with water guns and pull girl's hair while Jieun would make mean names for kids she saw as behind her (eg; they were ugly, acted oddly, smelled bad, or plain jealousy on her part.)

Jieun was actually serious about Sangwoo. All the boyfriends she had prior to him were more or less flings.

Choker Boy (Ro Kun-Won) is relatively plain and quiet in his day-to-day life.

The ski mom and her kid did survive their attack. The son woke up and got help.

Jieun's mother grew extremely depressed after her daughter's murder to the point that she barely ate and didn't have the energy to cry when identifying her daughter's body

Ski mom had trouble identifying her attacker since Sangwoo was wearing a mask, one of her eyes was bloodshot, and his hair wasn't showing. His eyes were his only identifying marker.

Both the ski mom and ski kid suffered psychological trauma from their attack. The ski mom was repeatedly questioned and accused of lying for attention even as going to court and showing evidence. The ski kid blames himself for getting them in the situation in the first place and suffers nightmares and self-harm due to guilt.

The Ceo's daughter was a massive goal for Sangwoo. He thought it he could kill her and get away with it, he could do anything.

Sam-Kyung (My fan name for the Ceo's daughter) show of "arrogance" was when she said that Sangwoo's house was a bit plain (as a joke)

Sam-Kyung only used her status as the CEO's daughter when Sangwoo was going to kill her, She and her father's relationship is a bit strained.

#ks #killing stalking #ks ski mom #ks sangwoo #ks ceo's daughter #min jieun #oh sangwoo #chief kwak #yoon bum #ks headcanons

[damnation-if]

hey! could i get 8 for all the ROs please! thanks and congrats on the follower milestone!

oof, good one! thank you for the ask!

8. If your OC were to live in some other time period, which era would they be best suited for?

as far as "best suited" goes i'm going to treat that like a question about when they'd find it most easy to survive, not like... which eras would Value them the most or anything. i hope that's okay

Arianis - Arianis is to a certain extent rather timeless in some ways... any of the many eras in which people were paid to sit around making art and music would suit them rather well. they'd have liked the Bohemian Revolution, for example, but also various different ancient cultures like Greece and Babylon

Heluur - um. the Jurassic, i guess? he'd find it boring of course, but it'd probably be among the least amount of pain in the arse for him lmao. i guess if you remove his obvious difficulties with Fitting In it'd probably be something close to current day. smartphones are handy for someone who can't get out and about much but he'd like a little less global apocalypse and rising fascism please (me too actually)

Lithiana - similar to Arianis, although in her case it'd be sex work rather than artistry haha... however i do think she'd prefer some time and place where women aren't treated too badly

Malkorath - hmm... something relatively modern, so that people aren't walking around screaming and trying to burn them at the stake constantly, but also before the internet and smartphones and the rise of accessible handheld photography for people to gawk and take pictures of them everywhere they go lmao. somewhere between the world wars and like. the 80s-90s i guess

Suchebh - i think they'd enjoy Ruining a great many time periods... as far as actually liking any it'd have to be something before xtianity began conquering and subjugating everyone, which differs in year based on the location on the planet of course. i can picture them in lots of places... their outfit is actually based on minoan fashion so maybe there? tits out and all that 😌

Twilit - they probably have the least trouble fitting in in any time period in particular since they can make pretty much anything work. modern science would certainly be of more interest to them than anything humans have done previously though

#what does the chaos mirror see #anon #time flows differently in the queue #if anyone is curious i picked the jurassic because there was a glut of sea life at the time not just because it's The dinosaur one #he likes fish... #RO: arianis #RO: heluur #RO: lithiana #RO: malkorath #RO: suchebh #RO: twilit #thank you again!

[springsaladgaming]

don’t know if this has been asked but i figured with the weather getting scorching where i am, i thought i’d ask: what are the ROs fav ways to stay cool? hope you’re doing well and good luck to you as the story continues! excited to read more :)

Hi, anon! I hope you are doing well too, and I'm glad you're enjoying the story so far.

(I hope this hasn't been sitting in my inbox too long—sometimes mobile doesn't notify me like it's supposed to.)

I wanna start by rambling a bit: the fictitious city of Hansboro is supposed to be located in Michigan. Compared to where I live, their weather doesn't get very hot. (I wish my summers were more mild—I am not built for the heat 😭) That being said, I went to university in Montana, and after an extended period of time with weather around -20°F (approximately -29°C), even 30°F (-1°C) can feel pretty warm. So I guess it's really all relative, even if I personally think the characters of Ninelives have it easy in the summer. 😂

Now for the answer to your question:

In the event of overheating or hot weather, Ansel, Cherry, and ??? stay cool simply by staying in indoor, climate-controlled spaces. The book shop works for that for Ansel and Cherry and is easy to do since they spend most of their time there anyway. ??? is in a similar boat, spending a lot of time in office buildings and meeting rooms, so overheating is never a problem for her.

Teagan and Alex prefer to cool off by going for a swim if possible. Teagan frequents a gym pretty regularly, so this is easy for him. Alex would have to make plans ahead of time or brave the waters of one of the Great Lakes. (I can't remember right now which one I placed Hansboro closer to.)

Lucia is most likely to just suffer it. She does not prefer swimming and also isn't going to change her plans around just to escape the heat. If it really becomes a problem, a quick rest in a cool area or a couple of minutes splashing cold water on her face will do it for her.

Rene is likely to deal with heat better than the others, being from Florida and more used to consistently high temperatures. If the heat really becomes a problem, his preferred way to cool off is with a tasty cold drink or treat.

Thanks for the ask! I hope you're able to stay cool yourself as the weather gets hotter.

#ask #ninelives ros #character asks

[tlscog]

Corruptant (Still a working title) - RO list and demo links

Hey everyone - I finally got around to sprucing things up a bit but it will still be a bit on the normalish end considering I am poor as dirt. This will be the pinned post just for relative ease of access.

Demo link : https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/corruptant-shattered-mind-wip-working-tittle/119286

Here are the RO’s and they are romanceable no matter what.

Solvinash/Sol

A creature from beyond your realm, one seeking revenge after being trapped on what can be considered a small spec of dust in the vastness of the cosmos.

Ripped from its form, Sol wanders the Earth with a faux female body. A face with soft features and sleek black hair. A beauty that is easy to approach that hides a haunting truth. Sol’s origins make it a threat and trust is difficult to come by. Though it doesn’t bother Sol as they only serve a purpose and their goals align perfectly.

Sol’s true form is all but unknown, as Sol only wishes to take back what was stolen, its power

Her name name in literal terms means - The one who devours stars as given to her by the Creator.

Sol finds conversation tiresome and only wishes to get to the end of her current destination with little push back. Though through persistence you can make Sol curious to why you would ever consider her something to accompany and will often leave her questioning why you would ever insist on pestering her with small talk.

Further along the relationship she is able to use her faux body with much more ease able to produce more genuine emotions and has a strong attachment to you - learning both compassion and purpose.

Sol has no strong likes or dislikes. Except for her own kin, Eldritch things.

Eris Lowell

Worshiping the moon comes with a price, a price of sacrifice. Eris was born to be a sacrifice but in turn, she opposed tradition - fighting back against elders and priests alike. Scarred from her upbringing she is now worshiped as the Moon Goddess chosen.

Young and incredibly talented, she is blunt and doesn’t waste time on simple things. A gift of leading her own pack that has been doomed by a war against the unknown… as the chosen she and her family must face it instead of the leaders of Werewolves.

A tall and muscular woman with faint scars left from her upbringing. Black haired with a tanned complexion and sharp features hide her savage nature behind a strong and stoic facade. For the sake of those that look up to her. The only people she is doing it for.

Eris isn’t shy of being blunt and open with topics relating to romance, and courtship. She usually sits on the fence on such topics as her future is often up for discussion on finding suitors and approaching new interests are often trampled with the responsibility that comes with it.

Further along her relationship, due to her nature, she expresses affection more physically rather than verbally and would prefer to be closer to more than anything else.

Princess Hayden Mortis

A murderous and aggressive vampire that slaughtered the original family that claimed the Mortis title. Her father sits on the council after her involvement in bringing them to power and is now tasked as an Envoy to work with other Supernaturals to face oblivion.

Short silvery hair with blood-red eyes. A flawless complexion with not a single mark on her body, an appearance of a pure-blooded vampire but she is nothing but a muddy mix between royalty and peasants. Following the whim of her father and their Lord to be cleansed from the mud… and in turn. Become the Queen of Vampires.

Aggressive and vulgar tendencies are the easiest way to describe her, she doesn’t lack compassion often showing a side of her that slips through the cracks of her cold exterior.

She has no affiliation with the Vampires and often says that she couldn’t care for any of them or their little war - she has a constant need to want to prove herself in a way that she knows they can’t push her aside as another filthy half born.

She will always end up thinking of you, even if she is distant and acts cold but will make it clear that she genuinely cares for you... if her vulgar and flirty comments don’t tell you that already.

Tarragon the Exiled

A descendent from Oberon himself. Imprisoned for his mischief against humankind, he is forced to serve them at their every whim. Teaching the magic and also keeping an eye on the human realm for his hateful father.

A short brown-haired man with a boyish face, tattoo-like markings on his body with glimmering scaly skin, and pearly blue eyes. He only brought humans’ attention to the possibility of Oblivion rapidly approaching to do them this one favor and then finally be free of his punishment.

But he underestimated that which awaits him beyond this realm.

A man with a lot of secrets and one that he isn’t willing to share than only his father knows. Among his people he was seen as kind and caring with a sweet smile, but it is only hiding a more malicious need and desire inside of him.

The more and more he grows attached to you, the more he feels he needs to protect you even if it costs him his life - believing that you are a person that deserves such devotion.

That and sarcasm is usually a win for him.

Zhurumhan

A man with golden eyes, carrying the grace of an Angel in the body of a human. Short light brown hair and a sturdy face.

A Nephilim. One that walks among the humans in search of his brothers and sisters alike. Want to break the chains of both heaven and hell that bind them - sealing their true potential. They seek the power that rivals both God and Satan - to free their kind forever.

A straight forward man with a heart of gold, often seeing the good in everything and trying to strive to be better in every way he can. He doesn’t truly believe that his cause is a good one but that it is necessary, firmly believing that one must often do a bad act to achieve a greater good.

His life is a open book and he isn’t afraid to share or take criticisms. As for you a growing worry that you may stray to far from yourself and become something you aren’t. Often trying to help you deal with everything and hoping that you’d confide in him.

He has a weird relationship with chains.

#Corruptant #choicescript #choice of games #romance #romance options #interactive fiction

[thescarsilivewith-if]

I suspect tumblr has eaten my first to your harem questions (probably because of the length...) so here are my thoughts again. (Apologies for clogging up your inbox if the first one indeed arrived.)

I was pretty happy to learn that the game had a harem, especially one which wasn't the typical 'Cut-throat, every person for themself, backstabbing everyone and their parent to get their child to be the heir' dynamics which is so often found in these situations. Instead, we have a harem of mostly supportive people (Dehjyr excluded) who got brought together by the Queen's will but still found themselves as a relatively stable familyish unit.

I really enjoy the various consorts and the potential they bring to the table of the story. It would be easy to focus on Dehjyr's influence alone but I think there would be a lot MC could talk about with them. Surely, they have experience and knowledge (What were the years in the palace like while MC was gone? What was off about the population, the servants, the workers? What news did they recieve from their families at home?) and especially a network they can fall back on. Also, I think they could offer emotional support to the Monarch. Yes, MC had a great father but they must have spent time with the other consorts as well and maybe there are some things the Monarch would never reveal to their siblings/ROs but would be more open to sharing with the consorts. Or maybe the Monarch could come to them for advice on matters of the heart or how to prevent dissatisfaction on their own harem, should the MC go the poly route. That said, a ruthless Monarch would also have much to gain from manipulating the consorts, potentially in an effort to secure their own standing.

As for the siblings, I love that there are so many and keep wondering if there are any conflicts amongst them? They have very different personalities which could clash. Are there some (friendly) rivalries? Who are they emotionally vulnerable/open to/with? Really, I'd love to have a moment where the Monarch is able to sit down with all of them and listen to what the four years were like for the siblings? There must have been so much helpless anger, so much anxiety and stress. Yes, Sahyra (and MC) got hit the hardest but that doesn't mean that the rest of the siblings were unaffected. But there also must have been little moments of joy snatched between all the darkness. Depending on the Monarch, I imagine they must be gladdened to hear about it all.

Which kind of answers your last question, what I'd like to see with the harem.

I am very glad to see that the closeness of the members of the harem is appreciated! I love large families and parenting done by multiple people so this was the ideal situation. MC will need all the support they can get, and the consorts might offer just that - after all they have always stood by your side.

The consorts surely have some valuable information for the monarch if they'd ask for it, and honestly they would be happy to help them regain control over what would have never been taken from them. But of course a manipulative monarch could also gain a lot from their knowledge and position with the servitude.

Oh, the siblings have their own dynamics for sure. For example, Cheyann and the twins have more than once end up in arguments over little things as they have both ended up becoming a bit aggressive over their things during the imprisonment by Dehyjr. Thenje, on the other side, became even more avoidant.

If your MC wants to get closer to the harem, there will definitely be small and tender moments between them - and along the way the consorts and kids might even talk to the monarch about what happened during those years they thought them dead.

#i always love your long asks❤ #you give such valuable feedback #thank you! #the queen's harem #vividescapist

[rosemaryreaper]

I’m procrastinating, so here’s a sneaky peak from Chapter 2.

* * * *

Ros waited until the cart reached the road before she left her cover. In this world, if you needed assistance, a farmer was usually your best bet for not immediately ending up shot or enslaved—as long as you didn’t do anything stupid. But Ros also had a weird track record with farmers, and this one had unusually high security. She could see more uniformed silhouettes patrolling the far end of the fields. Not to mention the abundance of turrets.

As she crossed the grass, an angry Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt! buzzed overhead, like she had kicked a nest of large murderous hornets, followed by the distinct clunking of too many barrels locking into place. Adrenaline numbed her hands. She breathed through her nose, restraining her flight instinct, and kept walking. The farmer appeared on the porch, hunting rifle in hand, and silently watched her approach.

She took it as a sign she had come close enough when he aimed the rifle at her chest. Empty palms turned towards him, she slowly raised her hands alongside her head. Common courtesy.

Even from the distance, she had him pegged as the owner. Now that she could see him properly, the farm clothes were a giveaway—dirty coat and work gloves over a button up shirt and tattered jeans. He looked about in his early forties, with lank brown hair and a scruffy beard that suggested a trim was a luxury he rarely had the time to afford. Nothing about his expression was threatening. That he would shoot her if she stepped out of line was a simple fact.

“I hope you’re not here to start trouble,” he said, which reassured her that no matter how far north she traveled, folks all greeted each other the same way.

Ros dared to look up at the turrets humming on the roof. To no surprise, all barrels were trained on her. “And get shredded to bits? No, thank you. I’m just looking for directions—and to trade for food, if you have some to spare.”

Hesitant, the man lowered his gun, though he kept his finger by the trigger. “We might be able to come to an arrangement. Where’re you headed?”

She lowered her hands. “Diamond City.”

“By yourself?”

Ros stared at him.

He winced. “Apologies,” he said, prompting Ros to reevaluate her prior assessment of him. She now doubted he could shoot a bloatfly. “You’re about a six-hour hike out. Getting there’s easy enough.” He pointed towards the road. “If you follow the signs to Boston, you’ll eventually find yourself at the gate. A trade route runs by there, so the roads are relatively protected. I wouldn’t set out so close to dark though. Always a few ferals about.”

“Appreciate it.”

His eyes found her Pip-Boy. They always did. “You from Vault 81?”

“No.”

“You’re certainly not from around here then. That’s the only inhabited vault in the area.” Ros filed this information away for later. When she didn’t take the bait, he said, “But that’s neither here nor there. I have a map. Can upload Diamond City’s location to your Pip-Boy, if you’d like.”

“What would it cost me?”

“Nothing, for the map. Directions are free. Food and supplies are a different story.”

A ball of fur materialized by his feet. A well-fed gray tabby wove between his legs, meowing her little head off.

From inside, a feminine voice shouted, “Maisie! I already fed you, you greedy little fluffball!”

The farmer carefully nudged the cat away with his muddy boot, so she meowed her way over to Ros instead. Tentative, Ros bent down, hand outstretched to allow the cat to sniff. Maisie rubbed her face against Ros’s thumb. When Ros stroked her soft fur, the cat flopped over on the ground, her purr deep and rumbling.

“Hello pretty kitty,” Ros greeted. “Who’s a pretty kitty? You are.”

The farmer gave her an amused smile. In a deliberately visible motion, he clicked his rifle’s safety on. Ros straightened, cheeks heating.

“Maisie,” he said humorously. “Our heroic guard cat. Never have to worry about thieves when she’s around.”

The voice called from inside again. “Daddy? Who’s out there with you? Has the General—”

A young woman froze in the doorway, about the same age as Ros—and apparently sporting a similar love for flannel. She was the farmer’s daughter all right. She had the same brown hair, cut short, and the same brown eyes and sun-tanned skin. Her other features though—her dainty nose and narrow chin—belonged to someone else.

“Who’s this?” she asked. Quizzical, rather than wary.

Before the farmer could answer, a second voice barked, “Lucy! Stay inside!” Then the girl was yanked back through the door, replaced by an older woman with a pipe pistol, which she wasted no time in aiming at Ros. “We don’t want any trouble, you hear?”

“Put that gun down, Connie,” the farmer said. “They’re just here to trade.”

“Then they’ll have to do business with me.” Connie glared at Ros. “We got melons, tatos, ammo, and aid. What do you want?”

Ros wasn’t quite sure how to answer. She’d never tried to barter at gunpoint.

Gently, the farmer reached out and pushed the barrel down. “You’ll have to forgive us,” he said. “We’ve had plenty of trouble with raiders in the past. Can’t be too careful.”

“Uh, no worries,” she said.

“The name’s Blake Abernathy. This is my wife, Connie, and our daughter, Lucy.”

Lucy had reappeared in the doorway, despite her mother’s efforts to push her back. She gave Ros a friendly wave.

Abernathy held out a hand. Ros took it—and the permission it gave to step on the porch. “Ros,” she said, giving his hand a firm shake.

“Nice to meet you, Ros. Let’s go ahead and get you that map first. We can work out a deal after.”

“I’m low on caps, but I can offer labor—handiwork, repairs.” She glanced up at the turrets again. They had returned to scanning the perimeter, their motors whirring softly. “I’m good with tech.”

His eyes darted to her Pip-Boy, ever so brief. He grunted, thoughtful. “How good are you at climbing?”

#rosemary reaper #fallout 4 fanfic #fallout 4 #ros markey

[tc-doherty]

9, 11, 19 and 20 for the asks! :D

Favourite OC?

Ithea, it's no contest! She's just been part of my life for so long. After her I really feel like Dante needs serious consideration because he was a side character from an RP in middle school who I continued thinking about and draw pictures of until I decided to put him in a novel like. last year. So obviously I really like him! I also love Gheist a lot~

Sum up one or more of your wips!

Well summaries of my work are very easy to access however I feel like when it comes to Silverwood I usually just do the sort of overall vibe, but I don't know that I've necessarily gotten into the core conflicts of each generation.

1st generation the conflict is between Ithea and her father on one hand and Ithea and her brother on the other hand. Her father is trying to undermine their race for various reasons and she sees it while others don't because she wasn't raised in that culture. She wants to put a stop to him and his bullshit but unfortunately only manages to turn almost everyone against her so things proceed even faster after she dies. The conflict with her brother is personal and if it weren't for his inability to let go of the past, she might have been able to get more done on the actual conflict that she's worried about but sometimes things don't go the way you want them to.

Generation 2 also has two things going on, there's Charlie who gets involved with a resistance group and ends up funding a failed coup d'état, and all the politics going on over there. There is also Cyan, Gavin, and Kaite who are inventing the concept of organized crime. As for the other siblings there is some information about what they're doing but it's not as important to this particular section of history.

Generation 3 is sort of a domestic arc where the siblings end up coming back together and deal with a bunch of emotional baggage, the world is at this point at least relatively peaceful so there's not so much political nonsense going on it really is just focused on the actual relationships of the Silverwood kids as adults and also their children.

In generation 4 everything goes to shit again and one of Ro's grandchildren leads a revolution and takes over the government of 2 separate countries before deciding that one of them is too troublesome and stays with the other one, prompting all kinds of chaos. If there ever is a generation 5 it will probably revolve around the inheritance rights of the throne that Rona abandoned.

What are some things that inspired your stories? Real events? Maybe a dream?

I am often inspired by dreams actually! I tend to have very plot heavy dreams that I remember well so I've used those on multiple occasions. Celestials, Magic Black as Knight, and Northbound are still active stories that are wholly or partially based on dreams.

Otherwise I get a lot of inspiration from the "wow I would've written a relationship like that so much better" LOL

What story are you the proudest of? Why?

The Ghost! It really is exactly the kind of book that I wanted to be producing when I decided to be a writer, I love the characters and the world building and the story, I think it's held up really well considering how long ago I wrote it, and it just honestly means a lot to me. It's really one that I wrote not just because I had the idea but out of sheer love for the idea and the characters and that love has not diminished ^__^

I'm playing this ask game!

#writing #writeblr #ask games #thanks!!

[juantheashura]

As a humble reader can I ask of when NSFW will happen in the story?

I'm a bit unsure of what you're asking, so if this isn't what you meant, don't hesitate to hit me up again!

If you mean when there'll be sex with the ROs, it won't happen all at the same time or chapter, it'll happen in different scenes and such. For example, if you're romancing Lat, you can probably tell she's rather forward already, so it'll be soon. If you're romancing Aki, then it'll take until the final chapters, as it is a big step for her. Nova doesn't have many qualms regarding sex, so it'll happen relatively soon. For Mars, you may have to wait a bit until you live closer. It's not exactly easy to shack up when your schedules differ so much.

The only one that won't get stuff like that with is Ignis, because she has intimacy issues. I've mentioned them in the past, and her scene in Chapter 4 already starts hinting at it as well.

That said though, expect more, um, 'fade to black' scenes than anything truly spicy. It's... pretty dumb, but I feel a bit uncomfortable regarding lewd stuff with the characters. That's not to say I'm against fanart or fanfiction or anything, though! I just don't feel entirely at ease writing it myself. It's not really my style.

---------------------

And, uh, as a sidenote disregarding the above, um...

I've been considering whether or not I should start a Patreon. I got some news a little earlier, and, well, it's nothing extreme, but it's become clear that I'll have to start relying on my own income more often, and as a mid-term college student, my income wavers between 'theoretical' and 'your nice uncle from the States sent you this'.

It's not set in stone yet, but I've begun to brainstorm ideas on what kind of stuff could be offered. It'd be nothing extreme, just a few tiers with the highest one being maybe 10 or 15 bucks.

You'd get stuff like direct/more in-depth QnA, earlier chapter releases, worldbuilding articles of your choice, and perhaps even flashbacks from the other members of the cast. I might also offer the chance to name a few secondary/minor characters that play something of a part in the coming chapters. (You're going to be meeting a lot more powered people soon).

Again, it's not set in stone, but I'd like to know your thoughts. Is it something you'd support? If it is, what kind of rewards would you like to see?

#anon ask #wip ask #ro ask #patreon #a tale of heroes #question to my followers

[winterswrandomness]

hi ro :) i’m very curious. i normally send outfit ideas for characters and such. do you have any outfit ideas for just. me. as a person. dkhdkdjdh- i’m gonna be stuck in a state of Only Having Like 6 Shirts for the foreseeable future but when i get the chance to i’m gonna be looking for New Clothes to bring to college and i want some ideas :) that and. i like being Assigned things dkdhkdhd there’s a reason i do a lot of uquizzes and ask games

GASP OOOOOO okay hold on hold on just one second after you read this, you're getting pictures for the different cuts and styles in the reblogs afterwards too

alright, hi Cobs! so this time, we're cutting most of the brainstorming bit that I usually leave in to show my thought process, and we're jumping straight into reasons then summaries. this is gonna be less "here's a whole outfit for you!" and moreso "here's a few extra pieces that you can use to expand on what you already have"; think of it as helping you build up a bit of a capsule wardrobe! (if you want to know more about those PLEASE reach out again they're so fun)

so basically, suggestions for new things to expand your wardrobe will be included, and we'll be brainstorming some different ways to mix them into outfits alongside things you probably already have!

outfit 1

So, we both know you like your all black outfits and leather jackets. So, for this first outfit, we have a relatively simple one! It's gonna be more suitable for when it gets chilly but not necessarily cold, so typical autumn time weather since that's usually around the time your average school year starts.

I'm thinking a scarf, because Neck Cold No Fun AND because you can tie a scarf so many different ways! you can do the casual loop around the neck and flick the ends over one shoulder, two shoulders, or in front! or, you can fold it in half then slip the ends through the loop and wear it like that, which I do recommend trying because it Feels Nice and Fancy (see image 1, found below, for a visual reference). You can probably also look up scarf videos to find different styles! Browns and reds could go nice with the darker colours, and adds a good pop while still being a bit more under the radar, and if you wanna be a bit bolder yellow could also be nice! green is also pretty good, and so is plaids. what colour looks good does depend on your shirt, however!

I'm having a hard time imagining a shirt other than white or grey (brains are just Like That sometimes), BUT the thought of a nice blue could be good. Goes with your brand, too! like, and I'm relying on some of your current wardrobe here because what's the sense of buying entire new outfits if you already have good pieces? that's a rant for another time, feel free to let me know if you're interested. but! I think your jacket with a blue shirt and a plaid scarf could work really well, and jeans are an easy add on too! gonna exclude shoes and stuff here, and I can definitely recommend potential accessories as well. So!

For your first outfit assignment, the summary is:

- grey or blue shirt, light or dark is your choice however I might say go for a bit of a medium-lighter shade to add a bit of contrast

- leather jacket

- plaid scarf (shades of grey with bits of white, maybe) (refer to image 1, found waaayyyy down below)

- literally any plain pants you own

and optional accessories include

- gloves, because I know you enjoy those fingerless ones and those could work really well

- necklaces to add that extra bit of pizzazz; dogtag style ones could be nice, and I would definitely say silver but gold would also work. any charms too, you might be able to find some cute second hand ones (also I Will give you tips for finding new wardrobe things at the end of this)

- ankle bracelets. Personally, I love them and they go well with anything, really! they're also super duper easy to obtain, because you can easily make them at home with some strings and beads, and you can even make custom charms for them if you have clay! custom charms also goes for necklaces, too

- a beanie or hat

I'm also realizing this outfit is kinda similar to Sou's from YTTD

outfit 2

Alright, outfit number two! I think stripes would be super nice. you could look really good in stripes! and this may seem a bit out there, but I'm tempted to say a brown cardigan or otherwise open front sweater. I know, it's a bit crazy, but listen- it's cozy. also reminds me of mushrooms and moss! I think it could go really well with your doc martins too

For the exact stripes, I'm thinking "static stripes" (check image 2, found below) which is basically really thin stripes really close together, which makes the eyes do a weird "woah that's moving" effect. Either that, or your classic chunky stripes! could go really well tucked into some loose baggy pants, or shorts if you're feeling funky!

honestly this one is super much simpler, so. y'know

second outfit summary is:

- brown cardigan

- static stripe shirt (see image 2) or chunky stripe shirt

- doc martins

- baggy pants, or shorts

and for accessories

- I would personally suggest an ankle bracelet or necklaces

- a belt could work really well too, just to add a bit of sectioning to the outfit

- rings could work nicely as well!

outfit 3

One fact about me is that I love layers, and a Very Fun thing I can always recommend just trying is a graphic t-shirt over a long sleeve. That's right, over

Alternatively, you could do the really nice combo of a button up or button down with a sweater on top! which, fun fact, there is actually a visible difference between button up and button down shirts. with button downs, there's buttons near the collar so you can button the edges of the collar down! and on a button up, you don't get that!

so like, button up/down shirt with a sweater on top (could work with literally any sweater, yes, even your 3rd Life hoodie if you wanted that) and let's see uhhh hmmm. I was never really good with different pants options, I'm more of a skirts gal myself anyway, but I think it could be nice to just roll up the cuffs of some pants and wear socks underneath that go under the hem

outfit 3 summary

- button down or button up, your choice, any colour but white or black is usually a good option since it goes with literally everything

- sweater/hoodie, like maybe that one sweater you got from the target discount section could work pretty well

- cuffed pants

- long socks that go under the pants hem. very important for the integrity of the outfit, do not leave out the ankle (and if you do, how scandalous /j)

So yeah!

Next up is just a list of every item I listed so you can pick out things you do and don't have, some different references, and then a couple links you may enjoy

list:

- grey shirt

- leather jacket

- plaid scarf

- plain pants

- gloves

- necklaces; dogtag styles, silver, charms

- ankle bracelets

- beanie

- brown cardigan

- static stripe shirt, chunk stripes shirt

- doc martins

- baggy pants

- shorts (high waisted short are always nice)

- belt

- rings (simple bands could be nice)

- button down/button up

- sweater/hoodie (though I'd suggest crewneck sweaters)

- cuffed pants

- long socks

references:

(image 1; a picture of a masculine person wearing a scarf that's folded in half then loop around the neck, the loose ends tucked into the loop)

(image two; a white and black shirt covered in thin stripes so close they almost blur together. there's a bird on the upper left chest)

links:

Here is a youtube playlist I compiled for a friend about alt fashion that I could find! I compiled this a while ago, it may not be The Most Accurate to alt fashion since that's not my specialty, however that's not why I' linking it, I'm linking it because there may be a few interesting pieces and combinations you could take inspiration from

also a video on thrifting by bestdressed on youtube, who goes into a few details about thirfting in person and briefly touches upon online thrifting!

Also a tutorial on how to make a pointy hat, just because like. I think you'd enjoy that

and not just one, but two scarf hacks!

I feel like I could definitely give you better outfits, but that may be a task for Morning Ro. My mom is staying home tomorrow though, so I'll be available all day if you wanna do some one-on-one brainstorming for an immediate back and forth!

Also for fancier outfits, tail coat. consider it.

#inbox! #huelo cobblue :> #we're adding a smiley now it just Feels Right and Better #I've been working on this for the past 6 to seven hours cbsnccnc #I really wanted to do good and earn a good grade in Friend something that is both possible to achieve and reasonable to strive for #outfittime! out fit time! #Please feel free to tell me more about you sense of style because I have not yet nailed it down all I know is dark colours and comfy vibes #I am soo far out of my wheel house vndcnvn