#and it was enough that the thought of being unkind was so fucking foreign to teenage me actually learning more about DID and meeting people

[arcaneyouth]

being a singlet who is very supportive of systems and has been for a long time makes some experiences really wild because like. ok so i experienced semi good rep of DID when i was very young. i read a brand new story by one of my favorite authors about a character with DID. the story started with the author saying it was likely not perfect representation and it's very important to listen to people with DID and not let his story overtake theirs. i had asked my mom about it and she said this was a real thing people experienced, but it probably wasn't super accurate in the story because the guy writing it didn't have DID. this was my first experience with DID. my takeaway from it was "oh that's neat! sometimes one person is actually lots of people and that's normal!" and then i moved on.

so like. genuinely growing up and realizing the world is super weird about people with DID was like a brick in the face ALIUSDHALSIUDh what do you mean. what do you mean you think these people are weird. i thought we all agreed they were normal. and i STILL experience that even now knowing more than i did before, i may have only had 1 experience with DID as a kid but that was enough to completely normalize it for me, i don't know how you can't just be normal about systems they are literally just sitting there we all know this (<- we apparently don't all know this)

#something to be said about how even flawed attempts at representation can do good #i don't think the story ever got finished but the one short snippet i had that was done in a respectful light #that was all it took for me. that was it #looking back on it it really wasn't an accurate depiction of DID. not at all. but it was kind #and my mom (who as far as i know doesn't have any kind of personal experience with DID) also told me to be kind #and both of them told me systems were very normal and we should listen and be kind to them #and it was enough that the thought of being unkind was so fucking foreign to teenage me actually learning more about DID and meeting people #who have DID that i was surprised by it #to any systems reading this i know i'm not the only person who was taught to be kind to you #there's space out there for you and people who very earnestly try even if they get it wrong sometimes #people like this author who clearly did the best research he could at the time #and people like my mom who didn't really know a lot but still thought it was important to introduce me to it so i knew to be kind #peace and love and all that

[bloomyagi]

beautiful, beloved, mine (m)

summary: you set him ablaze. he can only hope you like watching him burn for you. alternatively: this love for you is consuming him, and it all comes out in a badly vomited confession after he corners you at a gala.

pairings: shouto todoroki x f!reader

genre: pro heroes au, characters are aged up 20+

warnings: smut, dry humping, shouto comes in his pants, sub!shouto, he’s a good boi for you, he loves you very much n wants to be your baby

length: 2,447

notes: can u tell how much i love him pls -

.

.

.

“Can I be yours?”

Shouto Todoroki, ranked third pro-hero in Japan, has his strong arms braced around your head. In all your years of friendship, he has never been anything but exceedingly polite. He is well-behaved, thoughtful and sharp. He is guarded, though not intentionally, not anymore—it is reflex, a shield he has never really learned to lower. A reminder of his childhood.

You think he’s drunk. He must be, beautiful dual-coloured locks dishevelled, black button-up half-open and exposing his gorgeous collarbone. You watch, unwittingly, as a bead of sweat trickle down his neck. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, biceps flexing.

The dimmed lighting unfairly accosts you with his devastatingly handsome features and muscular body. And his eyes. His heterochromatic eyes are alight with something fierce and intense. They are also clear, glowing, almost, in the dark.

The two of you are somehow on the balcony, shut away from the rest of the world, the bass and the sounds of life fading in your little bubble until all you can hear is the blood rushing in your ears, the warmth of his breath, the heat of skin and the fluttering of your heart in your throat. The cement wall digs into your back.

No, you correct yourself. He isn’t drunk. He’s barely tipsy. He doesn’t like to drink, rarely acquiesces to Kirishima’s insistence of shots.

He doesn’t smell like alcohol. His scent has always been calming, detectable under the thin layer expensive cologne he uses—he doesn’t like perfumed smells either, only uses it on nights like these, when he’s obliged to look the part—that fresh, cool scent. Of clean sheets, laundry detergent.

Still, this is out of character. Todoroki has never once crossed a line with you, with anyone. He’s quiet, reserved, though he smiles more now, the forming dimples in the corner of his eyes a living testament to his character growth. He treats others fairly. He is not unkind, honest and straight-forward. He is many things, and with the way he’s gazing down at you now, you are suddenly reminded of Midoriya’s hushed remarks earlier.

“You can’t see it, but Todoroki-kun treats you differently. He thinks about you, what you’d like and what you like. He cares about you so he’s careful around you. He wants to cherish you. He’s cold because he uncertain. He doesn’t know what to do. This is all new to him.”

“What is?”

The number one pro-hero had looked at you strangely. “Being in love.”

Midoriya is indisputably Todoroki’s best friend. Still, his actions are baffling. Why you? Why now? No, you couldn’t see it at all.

“Todoroki, are you drunk?”

“No. Though I required a little … liquid courage, as they say,” he rasps. He’s so close. His voice, so deep and husky, has you biting your lower lip. His gaze falls immediately.

He doesn’t touch you. The way his arms flex, hands clenching and unclenching, and his stiff posture tells you he wants to. He’s visibly restraining himself. Waiting, watching. Hoping.

“You never … why me?” You say softly.

“I could not. I wanted to, so badly. I have always wanted you. I always thought it was impossible for someone like me—to find someone I would want to share my life with, given my upbringing and dysfunctional family. But then things changed, got better, and then I met you.” He takes a shaky breath.

“I found wordless comfort in your mere presence. I found I could be emboldened, empowered, changed by your words. Every day I wondered how I could be worthy of you—if I could ever be worthy of you. Then I realized it was you … it would not matter to you, so long as I was honest with who I was. That is just the kind of person you are …” He shuts his eyes. His lashes are so long, you note absently.

“I am touched by your existence … I find joy in your spirit, yearning for your embrace, for the heat of your skin pressed against mine, I crave it … these foreign desires, they elicit something dark within myself,” he continues, breathing a little ragged now.

“This need, this desperation, like fire spreading in my veins, uncontrollable and hungry … I feel restless, itching for something, someone … Now I finally understand. I feel like I want to—to devour you. It is no longer enough, seeing you as I do, being as we are, mere friends … I want more, need more. With this desire to monopolize, I fear I have become … insatiable,” he trails off, turning his face to the side in shame.

Oh. Shouto Todoroki is in love with you, you realize with a jolt. He longs for you. For your companionship, your wit, your soul and your body. Your heart.

You reach up with a trembling hand to touch his jaw, guiding him until he looked at you once more. He doesn’t resist, pliant and eager as he leans into your hold.

“Only if I can be yours in return,” you say.

He lurches forward, knees nearly giving out as he slumps in your arms. “Oh, thank god, I … I was anxious I would have ruined everything. I knew it was unlikely they would be reciprocated, but I—I had to try,” he gasps. “This desire, it was consuming me.”

“Todoroki …” You thumb his cheekbone. He sighs faintly, body curving over yours as he presses close. “Call me Shouto, please …”

“Shouto.” He makes a strangled noise.

“Again. Please. You must understand, I have longed for this for so long …” He pleads shyly.

“Shouto,” you whisper, stroking his cheek. He’s so unexpectedly adorable. So, so adorable.

“My apologies, darling. I know I’m taking liberties, but I’m weak … I’m not strong enough to resist such temptation. Not while you are here, in front of me like nights when I dared to dream… So beautiful.” He nuzzles your palm.

You flush at his term of endearment, at the rawness of his tone. He has laid himself bare, singing his truth like a Shakespeare sonnet.

“You woo me like you’re waxing poetry … does this often work with others?” You murmur. You think you’re in real danger of melting.

His eyes fly open in alarm. “No. Never. It has only ever been you. I speak only from the heart, I have never—never done this before, am I explaining myself poorly? I am often told my words could use some more tact …”

Your heart swells.

“I’m just teasing, Shouto,” you say softly, combing a hand through his locks apologetically. “Your words are beautiful, I’m touched, truly.”

He relaxes, curling closer in your embrace.

“You don’t know … how I dream of building a home with you, of sharing all my firsts with you, cooking and setting the table with you … breakfast after long nights, filling the space between us with laughter and joy. Sleeping next to you,” he slurs. And then he goes on plainly, “How I fist myself every night thinking of the swell of your hips, the curl of your lips, your sweet, enthralling scent …”

You inhale sharply. Part of you is entirely taken back by the dual-haired hero’s use of uncharacteristically vulgar descriptions. His words drip over you like a honeyed aphrodisiac. Sweet and addictive.

“May I?” He draws closer, hands releasing you to brace against the concrete behind. Your body shivers involuntarily, missing the heat of his palms immediately.

“Yes,” you whisper.

Shouto dips his head, beautiful heterochromatic eyes watching you carefully for any sign of hesitation or indication you wanted to stop. Ever the gentleman.

This is who he is, you realize. Respectful of your boundaries, honest and, with you, gentle. He eyes flutter close when his lips touch yours. They’re warm, sweet with a hint of the alcohol he consumed earlier. Your fingers bury themselves in his locks, the kiss unhurried, savouring each moment.

Then you open your mouth, tongue touching his. And Shouto falters. He groans throatily, your nose tickling at the scent of ash. Ah. He’s losing control. He jerks away quickly, right hand enclosing over his left.

“Don’t tempt me,” he rasps, blush rising.

You snag the rumpled collar of his shirt, pulling him close. “Kiss me again.”

And when you guide his hands over your hips, he grips them tightly and crushes his mouth against yours, kissing you hard. Spit runs down your chins, messy and sensual.

Something hard presses against your inner thigh. You push his legs apart and shove your leg in between. He chokes, eyes rolling back.

“Ngh—!” He gasps. “More—hngg—please!”

You pull back to survey him. He chases after you, lips slick and swollen.

“Shouto. You like this?”

He pauses, sucking in a breath sharply, eyes flickering. And then—

“Yes,” he whispers, a whisp of flame flaring on his left.

Your core clenches over nothing at his needy, humiliated tone.

“I like this too,” you confess, trailing a hand over the ridges of his abdomen, fascinated by the way the muscles clench.

Shouto mewls, chest thrusting forward when you pinch his nipples experimentally through the cotton. “Ah—ughh—yes!”

“Can you come like this?” You wonder absently as you twist his perked nubs harshly. He moans brokenly, hips jerking.

“I—I d-don’t­—kno—hah,” he pants, eyes half-lidded as he struggles to focus. Pleasure clouds his senses, head fuzzy and vision hazy.

“Can you get off here, like this?” You ask softly. “I want to see you come undone.”

Shouto blinks blearily at you, nodding eagerly. “Hng—yes, wanna be good for you,” he slurs. Oh. My. If you weren’t dripping before, you certainly are now.

He stumbles a little as you push him against the wall, switching positions. He’s barely standing at this point, leaning heavily against the cement as he gazes up at you with glazed eyes. He looks utterly fucked out and utterly delectable.

You undo the remainder of his buttons, holding him back firmly when he whines, pawing at the fabric, wanting to rip it off.

“We still have to walk out of here,” you remind him, giggling. His only blinks at you blankly as if to say and? Too gone to think of the consequences.

“This view is reserved for my eyes only,” you murmur, nails scraping against his nipples. He gasps, back arcing. “Yes, yes!” He agrees mindlessly.

He grinds against your thigh desperately, the weight of his cock heavy and hot. He throbs at every touch.

“Kiss—kiss, please,” he whines, reaching for you. You oblige, internally fawning over his cuteness.

His hips move faster, chasing release as he moans and keens into your mouth.

He parts from you with a gasp and wet shlick. “Feels so good—sho good—hngg,” he babbles. His asymmetric temperatures intensify, the heat of his left searing you and the chill of the right piercing you.

“Oh—I’m—I’m c-cu—” he cries out, gripping you tightly as he fucks himself against your thigh urgently. You push your leg against him harder, nails digging into his stomach.

“Come for me Sho,” you murmur, biting his lower lip. His mouth parts in a silent wail, head tossing as his eyes roll. His body shudders, something warm seeping into the fabric of your jeans.

With a strangled groan, he sags against you, exhausted and spent. You stroke his hair soothingly, brushing back the sweaty locks and peppering chaste kisses over his face as he comes down slowly.

Faintly, you register someone calling your name.

“Oh, Midoriya. Over here.”

Shouto is too out of it, still coming down from his high, his soft moans tickling your ear

“Oh, there you are! Have you seen Todoroki-kun? I—oh!” He squeaks loudly, spinning on his heel immediately and covering his reddening face.

What a sight the two of you must be. A perfectly debauched Shouto, shirt falling over his broad shoulders, the fabric clinging to his glistening skin, raised lines over his bare chest that appear angrier in the darkened lighting, slumped over you, body trembling from the aftershocks of his orgasm.

The One for All user pales when he spots the noticeable burn the size of a palm on the wall behind your head.

“Uh—neverminditwasn’timportanthahahaohsomeone’scallingmegottagobye!” Midoriya practically screams in your face before bolting from the scene in the next beat.

Shouto manages a tired chuckle as you blink in the wake of his dust.

“You’re surprisingly shameless,” you remark when you turn back to him.

His wry smile slips, letting out a weak mewl when you squeeze his cock over his slacks teasingly. He’s already chubbing up, hips rolling slowly against your touch.

“I told you, didn’t I? I’m insatiable when it comes to you, darling,” he murmurs, cheeks dusting.

“Then let’s continue,” you say, helping him stand. He valiantly tries to salvage whatever is left of his shirt, but it’s hopeless. He gives up, letting it drift apart, sculpted abdomen and chest in full view.

“Hmm. I quite like this view,” your palm rests on his stomach, smiling when he jolts at your warmth.

“My place or yours?” He breathes, pulling you flush to him.

“Yours, I think. I’ve been meaning to try out your new jacuzzi,” you rest your cheek against his chest, tracing nonsensical patterns on his pec. Goosebumps rise on his skin, and you can hear the rapid fluttering of his pulse. He’s—nervous?

“I built it for you,” he confesses, burying his face into your hair. “After you mentioned how much you wanted to try one, I thought—well, I don’t know what I thought. I only know that I went out the next day to hire a contractor and expand my bathroom. I suppose part of me nurtured a hope I’d one day pluck enough courage to ask you to come over and give it a try …”

You pull away, looking up at him in disbelief. He laughs dryly at your expression.

“Yes. I know. It sounds as irrational as it felt. I still haven’t used it yet.”

“Then …,” you hesitate. And then you say shyly, “Then if you’d like … we could try it today? Together?”

“I … yes, I’d love that,” Shouto swallows thickly.

You take his hand as the two of you start to make your way back. He squeezes your hand once.

“Let’s go home,” you say softly. The corner of his heterochromatic eyes crinkle, lips curling into a gentle beam. He looks radiant, beauty amplified by his dishevelled and unkept state. He leans down to kiss the corner of your mouth.

“Yes,” he says. “Let’s.”

#shoto x reader #shouto x reader #shouto todoroki x reader #todoroki x reader #todoroki smut #shoto todoroki x reader #bnha x reader #bnha smut #bnha imagines #mha imagines

[marybethsjournal]

Flaco’s Rules (Flaco x  virgin f! reader)

Summary: You come back from a long journey without telling Flaco beforehand and he teaches you a lesson.

Word Count: 2624

Warning: smut (also the first time I’ve written smut so lmk if I should write more or not lol

Here is the story link if you prefer ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768013

It had been about a year since you and your brother had unofficially joined the Del Lobos. That was quite a long time to y’all, seeing as the two of you didn’t like to commit to other people, y’all had always rode alone. It wasn’t so hard to be an affiliate of the gang, however. You and Billy could go wherever you pleased and not communicate with the gang for weeks on end, as long as you brought money back to the gang and spoke to Flaco when you returned to the Grizzlies. The two of you weren’t exactly the typical Del Lobos affiliates, but you were quick and accurate with a gun and had never snitched before, so Flaco welcomed you and Billy into the gang rather kindly. 

This time, you and Billy had been gone for at least a month. You hadn’t intended on staying out that long, but a heist led you to France and it had taken forever to travel there. Upon your return, Flaco demanded to speak to you and Billy. Flaco always wanted to hear from you after your trips but when the Del Lobos told you that Flaco needed to speak to you, they passed along that he was much more tense, almost angry, than usual. Not much scared you in this cruel world, but an angry Flaco did.

You and Billy immediately set off to speak to Flaco in his cabin. It was a very short walk from the rest of the cabins, but the fear in the pit of your stomach made you walk much slower than normal. Billy seemed to have the same feeling.

“What do you think he’s going to say?” Billy asked you.

“He’s probably mad we stayed out this long? What else does he have to talk about? Surely he’s not calling us in to have tea, Billy.” you replied with a shakiness in your voice.

This apparently made your brother quite angry. His face went from fearful to enraged in half a second. 

“He doesn’t control us. He can’t tell us what to do. We will never be his workmen. We forge our own path.”

“I agree, but we accepted his offer of protection in the Grizzlies and he expects us to follow his rules, I suppose. Just try not to make a scene. I know how you are.”

“Fuck you, I’ll make a Hell of a scene. Just watch.”

“Billy, stop”

It was too late. The two of you had reached the door to Flaco’s cabin and instead of listening to you, your twin had bust through the door without warning. He always had been hellbent on destroying authority.

“Mr Hernandez, we do not have to answer to you! You think you are better than us but old man, you are far past your prime. In fact, my sister and I have racked up bigger bounties than you already. This superiority complex has to stop or else you will find a bullet between your eyes.” Billy word vomited at Flaco.

You had looked at Billy in confusion the moment he started talking. Superiority complex? Bullet between his eyes? What was this man talking about? Flaco eyes grew dark at the rude words and you cowered in fear, planning on what to do if Flaco tried to kill him.

To your surprise, Flaco began laughing. “Oh, the little boy think he can talk big to Flaco? He think he can scare me, huh? Puffing out your chest, thinking he is a man. You are pathetic. Leave before I shoot you, I will talk with the girl. She is more reasonable than you.”

Billy scoffed. “Who do you think you’re talking to, old man?” 

“Billy, go. You have disrespected him.” you said softly.

Billy huffed and puffed but he still ended up leaving.

“Now, what do you want, Flaco?” You asked. Your brother insisted on calling him Mr. Hernandez as a way of “keeping his distance”, whatever that meant, But you, well you had a sort of friendship with Flaco. You definitely had a soft spot for him. You didn’t feel anything but disdain for most men, but you liked Flaco. Maybe more than you would like to admit.

“You were gone for a long time.” he informed you, like you didn’t already know.

“I know, we didn’t mean to. We made our way to France for an art heist and we sure made you a lot of money. Would-”

“I was worried,” Flaco said softly, cutting you off. “I do not care about the money. Your cabron brother is right. You have big bounties on your head.”

You laughed lightly, not showing that you were taking his care for you to heart. 

“We can take care of ourselves. Been taking care of ourselves for well over a decade, since we were very little.” you told him, looking at your shoes. You didn’t like to open up to people

“You will have to tell me about that someday. When you are ready. Anyway, don’t care much for the jackass. But you, I care for you. How did your trip go?”

“Fine, made out with a lot of money. Billy’s cockiness got us a bounty over there. That’s a first for us, being wanted in multiple countries.” “Sounds like him.” Flaco chuckled warmly.

“It was good besides that. Ate a lot of the native foods and saw beautiful buildings. I liked it there.”

“Did you find a French lover? That is what they’re known for, eh? Love?”

You laughed at him. “I think that is just a stereotype. I was too busy anyhow.”

“Too busy for love? You have a lot to learn, but you are young and Flaco is old, so it makes sense you are not as wise. Surely you had boys following you around, though? You are very beautiful.”

“I guess so.” you responded awkwardly. Truthfully, several men had followed you around during your time there, yelling things at you that you were glad you couldn’t understand. You assumed they were lewd. It all made you so uncomfortable.

Flaco sensed something was wrong and, not knowing how to comfort you, changed the subject, although not one you particularly wanted to talk about either.

“You did disobey your part of the deal, though. You understand that, yes?”

“The deal?” You asked. You had no idea what he was talking about.

“The deal we made when you joined Del Lobos. When we gave you our protection.”

Oh, that. You didn’t remember there being any specified deal, much less that you couldn’t leave for an extended amount of time, but Flaco looked angry so you decided not to question him further.

“Oh yes, I do. I’m sorry we broke the rules, Flaco.”

“Do not call me that right now. We are not friends. I am your boss. You address me as such. This is a serious thing you have gone and done.”

“I’m sorry, sir?” the term felt foreign on your tongue. You didn’t answer to anybody like this.

“Yes yes. Good. You two need to learn. Your brother, I’m afraid, I can not reprimand because he will make me angry and I will kill him. Poof, no more Billy. But you, I think I can handle you.”

Handle you? What was that supposed to mean?

“I’m not sure I understand. I really am sorry.”

“Sorry is not good enough. I have leniency because you are young and stupid. Any of my men who would do what you did? I shoot them. But you are grown, yes? Old enough to know better?”

You and your brother didn’t explicitly tell people your age for security reasons, so it was a valid question on his part, although you felt you definitely looked old enough for that generally to not be a question. But you were pretty young and you looked it. 

“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t be so friendly with you if I was just a kid. That wouldn’t be exactly safe.” You tried to laugh but Flaco’s eyes were narrow and so unkind in that moment that you decided against it.

“Good, then you won’t have a problem taking your punishment.” He smiled wickedly.

“What punishment,?” you asked. Flaco furrowed his eyebrows. “sir?” you added.

He smiled once again, but didn’t let his stern exterior go. He sat down on his cot.

“Lay here.” he patted his lap.

“Oh I don’t think so” you backed yourself into his door. Flaco stayed where he was and looked at you patiently. He wasn’t stopping you from leaving. This was entirely up to you. The two of you stared at each other for a few moments. You could feel the immense tension between you and Flaco. Finally, you walked over and bent over his knee.

“Fine. I guess this makes sense. I did break the rules.” You were mostly reasoning with yourself, not Flaco.

“No, chica. Pull up your dress. You can leave your drawers on.” The request probably should have offended you, but you felt heat in your core at the thought. You tried not to show this on your face, however, and pulled your dress up before laying back down on Flaco’s lap.

“Such a good listener, you are. Wish you would have listened to my rules the first time.” his hand rubbed your ass through your bloomers before striking it abruptly. You yelped in surprise. What was more surprising was that it felt good. You’d never been spanked before, this was all new to you.

“Flaco-” you started.

“Shhh” he brought his hand down again, hard. If he kept spanking you this hard, your ass would be stinging for days.

Yet he didn’t relent. He spanked you seven or eight times, each one harder than the one before. Despite your best efforts, you involuntarily started to let out strangled moans. You cursed yourself after each one. You were in trouble with Flaco, not having sex with him. 

Flaco finally stopped and you assumed he was done. However, when you got up, Flaco pulled you back down by your hair. Ugh, why did that feel good too?

“You are not learning your lesson.” Flaco hissed, obviously frustrated, but at the same time it didn’t quite feel like he was frustrated with you.

“No I promise, Flaco.” he smacked your ass once more. “Sorry, sir.”

“I need you to pull your bloomers down.” he told you sternly.

“What? No.” You may be an outlaw, but you were still a lady.

He grabbed you by the chin and forced you to look at him.

“Y/n, I’m not gonna make you but-” you nodded at him, signifying that you were okay with it. You never thought you’d be doing this but for some reason, you trusted Flaco. Besides, you secretly wanted him to keep going.

Flaco was visibly confused as to why you had nodded but had made no move to pull down your bloomers. After a few moments, he took the hint and pulled them down himself. You immediately clenched your thighs together, praying that he couldn’t see how wet you were. That however, was a massive failure.

“I think you need to explain something, mi novia.” he said, in the meantime giving you two hard slaps on the ass.

“I don’t know what that means, sorry sir.”

“It means my girl.” he told you in a soft, husky voice.

You shivered at the words. You wanted to be his girl. You wanted it badly. And he seemed to be on the same page as you. He hadn’t done this because you did something wrong and he felt it strongly needed to be corrected. No, he wanted you just as badly as you wanted him.

“I- well I liked it when you spanked me. I didn’t know I would, I’ve never been spanked before.”

“You’re inexperienced, huh?” Flaco asked, moving his hands from your ass to feel the wetness between your folds.

“Flaco!” you gasped.

“And expressive. I like that.”

“I’m just, oh! I haven’t done any of this before.”

Flaco pulled his hand back abruptly. He was silent and you, sure that you had done something wrong, sat up and looked up at him.

“You aren’t a virgin, are you?” he asked in disbelief.

“Ummm, yeah I am. I’m sorry, I suppose.” you got up from his lap and picked your bloomers off the floor, absolutely mortified.

“Wait, mi angel.” Flaco grabbed your arm. “It’s not a bad thing, not at all. I was surprised, is all. You’re a rough and tumble girl.” he laughed, but it was clear there was meaning behind his words. “Come back here, let ol’ Flaco make you feel good.”

You smiled and laid over him again, this time both of your intentions being clear. 

“How about you sit on my lap while I help you? So I can see your face? That should be sufficient payment for the pleasure I will give you, yes.”

You would have jumped over the moon if Flaco had asked you to at that moment, so of course you did what he said and sat in his lap with your legs spread.

You never thought you’d be here, Flaco fucking you with his fingers in his cold cabin (although you felt anything but cold at the moment). You had dreamed of it, sure, but this was real life. You had never considered that Flaco had been attracted to you, but now as you felt his dick strain against his pants, there was no denying it. 

Flaco fingered you at different paces depending on what he felt you needed based on your expressions. The higher and more frequent your moans came, the faster he went. When he felt it was becoming too much for you, he slowed down a bit, never losing his rhythm. He didn’t want to overstimulate you, at least this time. Flaco was good at this, surely very experienced, but you tried not to think about that. You focused on the feeling in the pit of your stomach and Flaco’s eyes, which were looking directly into yours. It was a bit intense, but it only added to the experience for you. He seemed to love it, biting down on his lip when you moaned particularly loud. At this point, his fingers were completely slick and you were fucking yourself back and forth on his fingers. The heat in your core was getting more intense and you were becoming desperate. You begged over and over for him to fuck you but he refused.

“No, angel, that is too fast. I have to come up with a way for it to be special.” More special than this? You wanted to protest but he kept fingering you the whole time, bringing you closer to your orgasm the whole time, and you couldn’t find it within yourself to argue back. Besides, a promise to get with Flaco again another time wasn’t so bad.

It didn’t take much longer for you to come undone. Between feeling Flaco’s dick strain against you through his pants and the swift rhythm of his fingers, it wasn’t longer before you threw your head back, moaning his name, and came onto his fingers. He smirked at the scene and kissed you quickly before removing his fingers. 

“You were so good mi novia,” Flaco praised you, before adding, “Now put your clothes back on before you catch a cold. You need to stay warm.”

“We can- we’re gonna do this, again, right?” you asked Flaco after you put your skirt and underwear back on and started to walk out the door into the cold.

“Like I could go through this life without having you again. Silly girl.” Flaco told you before picking up a piece of wood off his table and starting to whittle as if nothing had happened.

#Red Dead Redemption #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr #flaco hernández #flaco hernandez x reader #f reader #flachoes

[runningwithhellhounds]

Three years later it becomes clear: squid-boys never stood much of a chance breathing on land.

''Is he awake? The tranquilizer is loosening. Oh, he moved. Did you see? Left fingers.''

Your shoulder – right, you hit a rock. A set-up of metal walls glistens in the corner of your vision. You can't move. Some wetness in your throat makes you despair, makes you cough, involuntary and chokey and wet. Your muscles just don't move the way you want them to.

''Hey. Are you awake? Back away, I think he's scared.''

''Binary gender is a construct,'' a voice says, light, somewhat serious, somewhat self-aware.

''Oh, I'm sorry. Are they awake.''

Fuck you, you think. This happened just fifteen minutes after waking up. If this were to happen later, maybe you would be less out of it and more situation-wise, more windbreaking skin. More teethful. Wetness should be at your side and not pool where it shouldn't. Wetness should drown things when you willed it to.

They carry your limp body into the metal box, as you knew that you would, carried to the truck door and packed away neatly. Your body feels particularly insensitive, even when gloved hands touch it, maybe in the enlightenment of death, or something death-like.

In the box, the only way to look is upwards at the glass cover plate. It doesn't move when you push against it, and none of the other walls do. When the light in the space of the truck is cut off, you stop pushing at the upper plate, because it makes you feel flattened, or something that can be flattened with force, in the way of soft-tissues invertebrates. It makes the air in your chest twist into impossible illusion shapes, looped into themselves.

And then the truck screeches to a stop. When it does, abrupt in the way of accidents, you think of the gods you've been learning to despise in the practise of eighteen years. You would think your spite is more polished by now, better refined, with how raw and disgusting it has felt. But now your ears are ringing with divine working in one's life shall become apparent as an ineffable experience; divine working—

Your ears are ringing with Andrew and eyes burning with the image of the hell-made saviour of him. You hear shouting. The truck sways with the force of something, and you go with it, like unrooted watergrass. If this is Andrew, he must be sating the hunger of his hyper-grin. A new image blazes into you: out of water, in the air of land, bloodied hands remain bloodied. You are used to water washing blood from your skin, the skin remaining stainless, shedding impurity and grime and violence right off. If this is Andrew, he must look like a terror.

But there is a godly part in this. If this is Andrew, he has brought what you have always wanted: difference without novelty and novelty's stomach-digesting discomfort. The truck sways again and you are still holding your breath.

*

It has been over a week since Andrew removed his arm from around your shoulders, and you both fell in the water of a flooded basement, comrade-like, collapsed and breathing fast in the aftermath of things. He dragged himself to the staircase and spread over the length of a step, legs up on the railing, the weight of his cement-bag body sagging. The thump of his head falling back against the wall made you want to urge forward. But you didn't. His clothes were soaked past his waist, black jeans abyss-black. His head lolled to look at you and you felt all too transparent, like he could see right through your skin and muscle, liver and intestines and all your soft organs. You were still spiked-up, body still ready to rush. Too tender when he was looking like this.

It has been over a week of you dragging your body through the ecosystem of the basement. The water is shallow enough to make the basement a crawl-space. You crawl around the pillars, wondering if you can do it in an utterly random pattern. Don't think too hard. You think you're going crazy. From aloneness. All the other beings in the flooded basement are small and timid. Don't think too hard.

Andrew comes every day, every second day, every few days. Irregularly. He brings stacks of food.

''It's not this dark outside,'' you tell him the next time his boots settle with your eye level, ''The windows are tinted. It's darker in here.''

He brings you a flashlight. You don't use it. To what, target yourself? A predator with nothing to prey on. A predator with nowhere to go.

He sticks his feet in the water and reads with your flashlight. He brings you games of multiplication and these little metal wire shapes to disentangle. You get better than him at chess quickly. It surprises him. It doesn't surprise you.  You have been thinking about mathematical perfection and formal proofs your whole life. You have spent your whole life over-chewing your people's stories; it makes you a good social learner; a learner from mistakes, yours, others'.

''I am going to promote my pawn,'' you observe. He brings his hands up, all fingers meeting in a point aligned with the centre of his chest and then he pulls his hands apart and spreads his fingers into something open and empty-handed.

''I don't care,'' he says, then huffs and laughs meanly until he swallows it down, and then bolts upstairs. You can hear him rage there, the thumping of what you imagine is hands hitting the frame of a doorway as he enters a room, pushing empty drawers shut, throwing himself on a bed. You don't understand his theatrics, or his rage.

Most of the time he is gone, though. It would be okay, that nothing ever happens, if nothing happened inside of you, too. You just feel disused, as a person. Your skin is pale without bruises and your head is empty. Andrew has brought you a waterproof phone, a metal little thing. He's been gone for days, and you've been existing amongst clutter, a being in the ecosystem, an object in stasis. This water tastes different. It leaves a dirty taste in your mouth that you try to get rid of by licking your lips. It doesn't work, but you keep catching yourself doing it anyway.

You call him.

''I feel sick,'' you say.

He brings you aspirins, more food, a radio.

He hasn't been saying much. This isn't what satisfaction looks like, you think as he expressionlessly tears a second packet of salt into his food box. His quiet leaves you feeling alone in un-novel ways, even though most of your aloneness is new. To be fair, you have only found dissatisfaction to be unkind; not intrinsically, not out of necessity, but out of something more spiteful – maybe stubbornness. Anyway. Anyway, maybe you shouldn't think of quiet as unkind. What else can you expect. Being low-maintenance feels kind of right.

*

Somebody is in the house.

When the steps come, they come slow, and with foreign wilfulness. You still. You watch your breath skate over the surface. You know that you wear suspicion the way Andrew wears the relaxed slope of his shoulders, but you're right, you're right.

You are right. After minutes of soft thudding, a corrosion-of-a-boy appears at the top of the basement staircase and deflates in front of your eyes. He peeks downwards quickly, then half-turns, his eyes again jumping around in the way of sweeping: thorough and clearing. The semi-dry sepia shrubs outside the window, the unopening front door of abandon, the end of the hallway you only saw once. He stops. He deflates. He exhales, exposing the wear of him, then covers his eyes with his wrist. He stops like that.

You are watchful. You make yourself unseeable and now that he doesn't see you by how he continues walking downwards. You watch as he crouches his anaemic-looking body on the last step above the water, looking around in a glazed way, with clumsy attention. His eyes are shadowed by the downwards tilt of his head, so you set your gaze to the tight pull of his shoelaces and the triple knots of them. Slow enough to be soundless, you lift some more of your body out of the water.

''Psh,'' you say, and the boy stills. Stops breathing, until he leans his head forward, a little, squinting, and you think about a fish hook.

''Merman?'' he asks, stupid.

He looks a thought away from bolting, a distraction away. Haunted? you wonder. Fast as someone would be if they had something sharp snipping right by their neck. For a moment, you worry that Andrew has installed cameras, but he wouldn't.

''Are you with Andrew?'' you ask, and have him scrambling up – and it rolls a terrible terrible sense over you. A sense of Andrew's hyper-grin. A sense of his red-dripping hands. An unpunctuated question of things Andrew could do.

You don't want him to go. ''Wait, wait. Do you have an aspirin?''

He stops in something surprise-like. Continues looking undecided. He looks like a person who only trusts himself. Who wonders whether he himself is trustworthy.

''Black hair,'' you address him. It seems to stagger him further.

''I don't,'' he says, then clears his throat. ''I have needles. Some alcohol?''

''Alcohol is a very ineffective drug.'' Drugs know you, you know drugs. You say this to skirt the edge of things, because some basicity is growing inside of you. Psychotropics have always meant skirting things, for you. People have always only responded to the wrong ugly aspects of you using them, and they have responded in an ugly way, when they did.

''Is he the one keeping you here?'' the boy asks lowly, with horror. Andrew wouldn't. The boy probably doesn't know Andrew specifically. He is probably just wary. Trustless. He absently wipes a hand under his nose and looks at his hand as it comes away clean.

''No, no. He helps,'' you say, throat wound up in a familiar way.

The boy's gaze doesn't linger on the un-land-suited parts of you. What must you look like? Hiding in a vacated house, now un-vacated, now a whole new ecosystem. You dragging your body around it purposelessly in the manner of dethroned kings. In religious stories, evil is described along the image of decadent, scorching beauty, or ugliness, never ordinary. What are you? Stale, now; touch this – this; ah, pfh, in the hold of gloved hands. Are you ordinary. Can you be unordinary in a good way. Please. Suddenly, you feel the crash of some alien plea, fully, mouthfully in a way extraneous things can't be.

The boy stands up, scanning the basement around you, the misplaced wooden boards and pillars and the handles of some exercise equipment above the water level. The place you scavenge. The place where electronic devices make your eyes hurt. The boy shakes his head.

''Does Andrew—'' he starts, then reconsiders, ''did Andrew—'' stares at you wordlessly, before he glances over his shoulder and grips the strap of his bag with both hands.

''Are you in a hurry?'' you ask.

His eyes are a little wild when he turns back to you, and his nodding is shaky. ''He will be back, right. Andrew.''

The air isn't right. You twist your arms under the hunch of your shoulders. ''Are you really?'' you ask after a moment.

''I don't know how to tell the truth differently,'' he evades the question; you notice things like that. You stare. You stare. He sharpens under your gaze. His grip on the strap tightens. His eyes narrow when yours do, and his face is tightening up with something wild and exposed and almost breathless.

''Look, I'm just asking, okay?'' you roll the words out carefully. ''You don't have to, I won't— It's just me here, okay? But are you— are you—do you know Wes—''

''No. No. I'm. I'm Neil and I don't know anyone here,'' he says, then runs back up the stairs, and you think: fuck.

*

''What have you done,'' you accuse Andrew right as the door at the top of the staircase gapes wider, more late-afternoon orange light seeping in. You don’t know if you should tell him about Neil. Andrew halts and untenses with a controlled exhale before he even fully tenses. He turns his head before he turns his body, the slit-eyed mechanism of it.

You watch him pull down his large brown-knitted sweater from where it has creased at his waist. This is the softest you have seen him. In his mechanical way. He walks down.

''What do you mean,'' he asks blankly. You lift your eyebrows. You don't want to prompt his answer. You want to squeeze out his hiding space until he is forced to expose himself. Something tells you he has not been sufficiently challenged, lately, that he has been glaring his way through people's curiosity until they took their questions back.

''I will stay here now. I needed the foster address to get a job. I don't need it anymore.''

''You work?'' you ask, dumbfounded.

''Warehouse stock control. I'm getting machinery training. Forklift truck. Vroom vroom'' his tone mocks himself. He doesn't answer your question. He lifts his mug above his open mouth and nothing pours out, which he must have known before he lifted it and did it anyway.

''So what did you do,'' you ask. You imagine he squints his eyes, but he doesn't do anything, really, you just see the questioning of it.

''I left and now I'm moving here. What do you think I did? Oh thee who inquires with an accusatory tone.'' He sits down, then stands up enough to pull a pen from the pocket of his black jeans. ''What will you charge me with, officer?''

''Okay,'' you say carefully, raising your hands. ''Were they bad? Wherever you were staying.''

''Sure.'' He gives a not impressed look at your raised hands, then pulls a sudoku from this jacket pocket, and you think: how can this be the thing that bores you the least. He has this unasking about him: he doesn't wonder about your life, or about its past, or about its pastness. How you sometimes wanted to be one of the little beings that scuttle inelegantly, instead of a self, and how you now drag your body around in patterns. You still don't know to where he disappeared for two years, and he doesn't ask about the gelatinous ways in which life unfolded in that time. He doesn't bite into pasts. It's very uninviting.

''So why were they bad?'' you ask, then watch him build things inside of himself. Stories, lies, napkin-houses that fold the dirty sides inwards.

''They don't read social cues,'' he says, finally. You wonder how carefully crafted this answer is. But who are you to judge? You haven't told him about Neil.

''And I read things fine, for you?'' you ask.

Andrew's eyes trace the line of your shoulders. You turn a little, into something more invisible, and Andrew nods a little.

''You wear your body like it's soft,'' he says.

You feel a strike of something pulpy. You look down at your body, water surface wavering around it. The stricken feeling is illusionary; it reminds you: Andrew's curiosity is just selective. Just one of the on-off things he switches, like his energy and benevolence. It's selective in the way of not knowing things that are easy to know, like knowing to list your body organs, and on the other hand saying, you wear your body like it's soft.

''This doesn't work,'' you say. Twitching your head sideways to indicate the space of the basement.

''I know,'' he says after a moment, taut. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

''I can't even move.''

''I know,'' he says. I'm sorry, he doesn't say.

*

Andrew should be sleeping upstairs when you hear a crash, some crashing, and then quiet. An accident, you imagine immediately, your mind attuned to likely narratives, bad things, extrasensory things.

''Andrew?'' you ask tentatively. It's something bad. It's always something bad. But then the quiet is broken with more crashing, scrambling, the noise of something desperate. The sound has moved down the hallway, where you can hear more clearly. Andrew is saying something through his teeth, softly, melodically, always teethfully. You hear a gasp.

''Neil?'' you say.

''Neil?'' Andrew pronounces carefully. He pushes the weight of something unwilling to the basement door. A hand in Neil's hair is pushing his hand backwards, harshly, and a knife glistens by his throat artery. Andrew isn’t grinning, but you can’t unsee him grinning.

''Why did you come back,'' you say to Neil, who is forced to look at the ceiling, one hand around each of Andrew's arms.

''Come back,'' Andrew repeats blankly, looking between you and Neil.

Neil uses both hands to push at the arm with the knife and suddenly knife is held by them both, away from their bodies and struggling for a swing, both breathing hard with faces sharp. You imagine red-dripping hands. You don't want the knife to swing. You don't want it fiercely.

You open your vocal cords in the right way and a shrill blooms from the resonating spaces in your cheekbones, outwards, hitting Andrew and Neil with the force of soundwalls breaking. It's piercing to your ears, too, and you know it doesn't even compare. You're the predator, then, and they are prey-like. Neil falls down the stairs. Andrew falls to his knees and elbows, hands closed around his ears.

Neil is staggering, touching his ears, spitting water away from his lips, wild. You offer a hand and he stares at it, then moves further back. He bumps into a pillar and startles, before walking around it to take another step back.

Andrew cracks his neck sideways, both sides, glaring at you, then slowly takes two steps down to pick up the knife.

''Neil came back, Aaron? Is there something you aren't telling me? Try not to lie.''

''What,'' Neil asks, then covers and uncovers his ears again, panicked, looking between Andrew and you. His hearing. It probably hurts. It's probably disorientating.

Andrew snaps his fingers three times. Neil doesn't respond. Andrew keeps snapping rhythmically; the more times he does it, the higher up the clog of eeriness in your throat climbs. Neil pushes his hair out of his face, breathing hard at his reflection. He's cupping his ears, shaking his head, shaking the ringing out, until he looks up at Andrew, and Andrew stops snapping and drops his arm.

''What?'' Neil asks again, quick, twitchy. Andrew tilts his head. Neil takes another step back. ''Who are you on the market? Are you resistance? Is this how you know?'' he looks at you.

''The market. Food?'' Andrew says, just as you ask, ''Criminal?'' Neil is talking about the criminal market. He is talking about prized items like you. You know from stories; you just hear big names, as a lesson for avoidance. There is nothing familiar about the way Neil looks. But his hauntedness; it might look like something familiar.

''Liars, liars,'' he Andrew smiles, syllable by syllable. ''You're staying, then,'' he says to Neil. ''You have overshot your runaway runway, huh? We have something to talk about. I see we'll be dining finely tonight. The plentiful company of the three of us.''

Andrew carries himself like a punchline, when he talks. It's annoying.

''He's patronising to everyone. Don't think you're special,'' you tell Neil.

Neil smoothes his hair back and wipes the water off his face. ''Who are you?'' he asks tautly. ''Resistance? Nobodies don't hide Others in abandoned houses.''

''Your turn to share, squid boy,'' Andrew says, both reappearing and coming down. Neil is in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic. Andrew ceremoniously offers a metal fork to Neil, and then hands out a plastic one to you. You pull it out of his hand.

''We are not. You both. You both say these statements. As if you knew. Nobodies don't do this. Nobody knows anything for sure, okay? Tentativity can be enjoyable sometimes.''

''Pescatarian, anyone?'' Andrew asks, pleasantly. ''Come, Neil. You can't stay in wet clothes. We'll talk.''

They disappear upstairs. In the way of denouements, you feel a resolution unfolding. Or hoping for one, anyway. You press the feels of your palms over your eyes. They will probably talk about you, too. And then Neil will appear in Andrew's clothes, dark and monochromatic, and it will make you think of the cosiness of monochromatism, of how homewise it is. It will make you think of when your cousin was glancing at you with a frown and your aunt told her, leave him, he's just brooding, and the cousin still went to him, calling out Aaron Aaron Aaron.

They keep sneaking glances at each other. Neil's dark hair and Andrew's face so much like your own make you think back in time, back to the few days before the metal box and dismal circumstance. I like your hair, you signed to the girl the name of whom you had been trying not to think, drawn to things that are too dark to shine. She was lingering by the mosaic in front of the growth of your rock opening that you had deliberately let become overgrown, something one pushes through with spicy feeling. Thank you, she signed, I like your face. That sounded like a really bad comeback. I do like it, it's very symmetrical.

Neil and Andrew's eyes meet, and you think: you two assholes are too self-absorbed to not do this staring contest.

*

Andrew's phone rings. He turns to bore into Neil's eyes. He moves the phone away from his ear, and says: ''Nathaniel?''

And Neil panics.

In the way of narrative complications, the three of you end up in Andrew's warehouse car.

You are in the backseat, covered with two blankets, feeling yourself frown as you readjust your grip on the four two-litre water bottles you are hugging to your chest.

''This is clearly idiotic,'' you inform them, again, because apparently neither of them senses the threat of a looming climax. The so many things that will go wrong, because nobody has any sustainable plans.

Andrew is loosely gripping the wheel with faux laziness and Neil glances around full-bodily, alert, before returning to zooming in on google maps on a new phone he just had in his bag. He destroyed Andrew’s.

''This doesn't work,'' Andrew repeats your words so wholly blankly that it is no-doubt mockery.

''Not nearly the stupidest thing I've done,'' Neil mutters. Andrew flicks his eyes at Neil. You squint as you flick your eyes between them. Andrew is tapping his fingers on the wheel. Neil is hunching low in his seat, scowling at the screen. Andrew reaches over to Neil's side to pull sunglasses from the glove compartment, and Neil leans away to make space without looking from the screen.

''So you two are friends now?'' you ask, something strange and foreign tinting your tone. ''Or have you guys started—''

''He's a benefit,'' Andrew interrupts. The sunglasses render his thoughts further invisible. He is a thing of well-fitting black placed within American-spaced property and nothingness. He evades the friend part with his answer. Like so often, he is making himself into invisibility and insinuation.

''You smell like excitement,'' you tell him and watch as his face jumps a little.

''You can smell feelings now?'' He snatches the phone from Neil's hands, maximally zooming into the location that Neil has been inspecting for minutes. Neil keeps looking in the empty space of the phone, hands hanging around phone-shaped air, before he drops them and buckles his seat belt. And you think: theatrics on the road.

You shrug. You can still sense Neil's panic.

''You smell like wet,'' Andrew retorts, looking who knows where. Having learnt from exposure, you know Andrew looks down on things he feels, and you soak in them. Leave him, he's just—

''Just start the engine,'' Neil says.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099911/chapters/35012867

#aaron's pov #Andreil #aftg fic #aftg #tfc fic #neil josten #andrew minyard #aaron minyard #c: #hey girl i think the scottish landscape painting postcard you selected for your grandfather is very heartful #prompt me #spare one honest comment? #one good comment of any kind?

[shinidamachu]

No Place I Would Rather Be

Summary: We're a thousand miles from comfort. We have traveled land and sea. But as long as you are with me, there's no place I'd rather be. Word Count: 3.617 Genre: fluff Fandom: InuYasha Pairing: Inukag Format: oneshot AO3 Link: 🌹 Fanfic.Net Link: 🌹

Boredom was eating him alive.

Days had passed without a single lead about the jewel fragments. So much that their little group had disbanded for the time being. Sango went back to what was left of her old village. It had been a while since she last paid homage to their dead. Kirara, of course, was her loyal company — and also ride. Miroku was visiting Mushin’s Temple, as if the place hadn't been profaned enough, already. Shippo was still around, but keeping his distance due to InuYasha’s stormy mood.

The frustration of it all got him desperately wishing for some kind — any kind — of action. Something that didn’t involve sulking under a tree and watching time crawl. Every second of this idleness meant another second Naraku was out there, still breathing. Collecting the shards was a small mean to achieve a bigger, imperative ending. It gave him purpose, a sense of getting closer to his ultimate goal step by step. Waiting got them nowhere. It only granted him to be alone with his thoughts and the combination was nothing but disastrous.

Lucky for him, his private source of distraction was not too far away.

Kagome was humming a foreign tune, the same one she liked to sing whenever she was happy. Following the melody was almost mandatory. InuYasha didn’t realize what he was doing until he arrived to the other side of it, where the girl thumbed through her hair in a futile attempt to tame her hair, the lake’s surface a natural mirror at her convenience. InuYasha made his presence known before his own reflection joined hers.

“It’s no use, ya know.”

“Jerk!”

The girl glared at him and retaliated by splashing water on his direction — of which he easily dodged. InuYasha had to admit her reaction was justified, given his past tendency to be utterly unkind to her. This time, however, although his tone wasn’t devoided of casual teasing, he was being completely honest. When you spend sunrise to sunset with someone for so long, it was inevitable learning a thing or two about them. Kagome had a wild hair. Not in a bad way, but it sure had its own will. Especially in the humidity, which was definitely the case of that afternoon. To an outside viewer, the strands could pass as straight. Noticing the shy waves at the end and how they used to stand out after getting wet was a privilege for the few allowed to look closer — a privilege InuYasha cherished. She always had her hair down and he liked that she did. It was destined to be free, to go with the wind. And it had grown a hell of a lot since they first met. The half demon wondered if Kagome was aware of how much. He certainly was.

Then she got up, revealing clothes that were undoubtedly new to his eyes. It was one piece, all lime flowers and malleable fabric against her cream skin. A bit longer than what she usually cared to wear, but leaving her arms and shoulders at plain sight in compensation. The view was thrilling, until his eyes caught the yellow backpack laying by her feet, causing his grin to falter. He understood the implication behind it, even if the question had yet to pass his lips.

“What’s with the weird kimono?”

“Oh, this.” Kagome lowered her gaze, inspecting for herself. Her combative attitude swiftly turning into a cautious posture. “It’s a sundress. I’ve been meaning to ask… can you please give me a ride to the well? I’m going home.”

There it was.

Somehow, getting his suspicions confirmed did nothing to prevent the scowl from forming on his face.

“Thought the school thing were over for the summer.”

“Well, yes...”

“Then why the fuck ya going home for? We still have plenty of supplies!”

“Because I promised I’d go to the movies with Hojo and now that we’re on vacation I don’t have excuses not to go, anymore. My grandpa literally ran out of diseases I could have. And what’s the point, anyway? Jewel hunting is going through a dry spell, everyone left… and I haven’t seen my family in weeks.”

Half of what she said didn’t make any sense to him and InuYasha positively hated the half that did.

“What if something comes up? I can’t see the damn shards like you do.” He argued.

“You jump through the well and get me.” She shrugged, as if the idea was highly unlikely. InuYasha opened his mouth to list the many, many reasons her solution was flawed. She bit him to the punch. “Listen, it’s not a big deal. I’ll be back tomorrow. I bet Miroku and Sango won’t even be here yet.”

It wasn’t fair.

In general, storming off to her era was Kagome’s way of punishing him for being a massive asshole. He got that. To tell the truth, more often than not he deserved it. But InuYasha was in his best behavior — despite feeling rightfully entitled to throw a tantrum, given the circumstances — precisely because he needed her close. He needed her to stay. Picturing Kagome hanging out with someone else instead was the worst kind of self torture. Would she change her mind if he swallowed his pride long enough to say so? Would he ever get the guts to let it out? She hadn’t invited him to come along. Was this Hojo guy really that important to her? More than InuYasha was? Trying to talk her out of it was a dangerous move. He’d put his foot in his mouth, she’d put his face on the ground. That’s what they did.

Either his expression betrayed the turmoil inside or Kagome became too good at figuring him out. Whatever it was, her smile shined, reassuring and warm.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be so quick, you won’t have time to miss me.”

“Who says I’d miss ya?” He dismissed, his indifference unconvincing even to himself.

InuYasha perceived another presence approaching. Shippo. His arrival couldn’t be more providential. Kagome had a soft spot for the brat. If anyone could get her to stay, it was him.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just the runt.”

Like he had been announced, the kid emerged from the trees in a hurry, Kagome’s bow and quiver looking gigantic on his tiny hands.

“Kagome! InuYasha!”

“Shippo-chan! What’s going on?” She asked, as soon as the boy reached them.

“There are rumors of a jewel fragment, two villages to the west.” He explained, with the pomposity the information called for. “Kaede sent me.” His chin was up high, like the statement added a final hint of importance to the message. “Here,” continued the kit, offering Kagome her weapon in a formal manner.

She hesitated.

“Kagome, let’s go!” InuYasha was prepared to move at the sound of the word ‘jewel’, their earlier argument happily buried and forgotten.

“Wait! Don’t you think it’s strange? For days we had no leads, and now, just when we splitted up…”

“Yeah, well, so what if it’s a trap? It wouldn’t be the first.”

Coward that he was, Naraku resorted to the nastiests schemes in order to get what he wanted. His disgusting fingers laid on every happenstance that had ever caused them harm. What choice did InuYasha have, though? Ruse or not ruse, he had to check it. Regardless of anyone else’s help, it was his duty to get vengeance on the bastard — for Kikyo, for himself — and Kagome knew that.

She sighed and took the bow and arrows from the fox’s hold.

“Thank you so much, Shippo-chan! Now can you do me another favor?”

“Anything!”

“Go back to Kaede. Tell her InuYasha and I are on our way.”

“I’m not coming with you?” He whined, as confused as InuYasha. They never traveled without the child.

“That’s right. We don’t know how dangerous this may be. I need you to stay and if we don’t come back tomorrow by noon, get Miroku and Sango and send them to us. Can you do that for me?”

Shippo resolutely nodded .

“I won’t let you down, Kagome.”

“I know you won’t.”

And through the same path he had appeared he went. Kagome fixed a pleading glance at InuYasha.

“Can I at least change clothes before we g—”

“No time to waste.” He said, grabbing Kagome and her bag to leap towards west.

Kagome was whistling that same song again.

It took him an enormous amount of self restraint not to whistle along.

He was happy. So wonderfully happy. It was astonishing, the effect that tiny, bossy human girl had over his humor. The fact they were following the possible whereabouts of a lost jewel piece also played a role on his attitude swing, there was no denying that. But even if this turns out to be nothing at all, it would be a small price to pay in exchange of spending more time with her.

“Weren’t you mad about not coming home just now?”

His curiosity was genuine. Kagome had been angry since they left and InuYasha would be the person to know. She had two kind of anger. The one he could hear and the one he could feel. Even though she had been unusually silent, her frustration was palpable at first. Mercifully, it seemed to fade away the more ground they covered. Her one complaint was the soreness that too many hours on the same position inflicted upon the muscles, which was why they were both walking. As a rule, he was strictly opposite to anything that might slow them down, and the human pace was unbearable once you had a taste of demonic speed. Running free, with trees and people alike turning into a blur on each side of him, was an unparalleled sensation, amplified tenfold whenever Kagome was riding his back. He didn’t regret giving in, though. They weren’t far from their destination, after all. In addition, her comfort came to be a priority, despite him still being unaware as to when or how.

“Well… yeah, but… what can I do, right? Besides, I haven’t realized how much I missed this.”

Clueless, InuYasha searched their surroundings, unsuccessfully intending to spot what she could possibly be referring to.

“Whatcha talkin’ about?”

“This!” She spinned around, open arms and face to the sky, chasing daylight like a sunflower, the movement bringing her garment to life. “You. Me. An adventure. Don’t get me wrong, I love Shippo and the others, I’m glad they joined us. It just feels like we haven’t had as much quality time together as we used to, after they did.”

“Y-you miss that?”

She shook her head up and down with enthusiasm and a content smile fought its way across his lips.

“I know we could hang out in Kaede’s village, but it’s not the same as going out. O-on a trip, I mean.”

Although InuYasha couldn’t make out why her cheeks were suddenly burning red, he did see the logic her reasoning, and the feeling was mutual. There was a certain level of closeness only the road could provide. No curious eyes. No sly comments. No need to explain themselves. InuYasha had missed that as well.

He often played with the thought of stealing her away, of placate his selfish thirst for her undivided attention. Not once had he imagined Kagome would be as eager to go as he was to take her. Regardless, the timing wasn’t right. It never was. From the moment they met, they were tossed into a mission and there was hardly space for anything else. So he settled for whatever he could get until it was over.

“Why would you miss those trips? It ain’t like I was nice to ya back then.”

It didn’t make sense to him that she would. His memories were of a spoiled little girl, complaining about the bugs and her aching legs and the fact she hadn’t bathed in days. There was no escaping InuYasha’s share of responsibility on the issue. He could have made her life easier, had he bothered to. But at the beginning he saw Kagome as a potential threat he would eventually get rid off. How could he have guessed, after the many betrayals he had endured through the years, that his heart would be safe on her hands?

Kagome limited herself to a shrug.

“You are now.” She stated, as if it made up for his unexcusable former behavior. Her unconditional forgiveness amazed him, no matter how regularly she had shown it to him. “Also, it feels like old times.”

“It doesn’t unless you get kidnapped, somehow.”

“It happened once or twice!”

“Keh! Stop kidding yourself.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“No, shut up. I’m sensing a shard and it’s moving away.”

Wordlessly, InuYasha returned the backpack to her and offered her his back.

They raced at full gallop, Kagome guiding their course. The forest transitioned into arid highland, where dirt, thorns and rocky surfaces took place.

“Hey, you!” Kagome yelled at the youkai emerging in their camp of vision. Their target. Over his shoulder, the startled creature sneaked a peek at them and increased speed. Growling, InuYasha matched his rhythm. “Wait up! We won’t hurt you.”

“I’m pretty sure Imma hurt him.”

“Give the jewel fragment to us peacefully and you’ll be free to go!” She went on, his snide remarks as ignored by her as her plead was by the demon. InuYasha’s patience was wearing thin. Now that the rumors turned out to be true, his focus was entirely aimed at the task at hand.

“Are those fancy arrows of yours just for show?”

Kagome let out a deep breath. Shooting was her last ressource. She preferred to sort things out with words first. It rarely worked. Still she always tried.

“I suppose we have no choice.”

The arrow hit the creature in the calf and his groan of pain reverberated through the field. Not lethal, but enough of a nuisance to make him drop the run. InuYasha closed the distance between them within seconds. Kagome climbed off him and together they inspected their opponent.

On the floor, a possum demon hissed and exhibited his fangs at them, his ugly face twisting in agony while he pulled the arrow out. A cascate of blood immediately flowed from the wound. InuYasha was not fooled by it. Being a full youkai, he would be healed soon.

“Where is it?” InuYasha asked Kagome, not daring to leave the bastard out of his sight.

“His belly.”

“Step away, you filthy half breed!”

“Excuse me?” Kagome defied, any trace of courtesy forgotten.

“That was quite the damage she did on ya, there.” InuYasha released Tessaiga from its sheath as he approached the fallen man. “Think I can top it, though.”

“Step away, I said!”

His fear was palpable. InuYasha could feel it. See it. Smell it.

Smell it.

Faster than realization, the odor filled his lungs. It burned his nostrils, his throat. He could taste the toxic substance on his tongue. It was unbearable. And gasping for air only resulted in the pungent scent flooding him further, overwhelming his senses. A defense mechanism, he thought, his vision blurring, his knees giving in. I’m going to faint. No. No, no, no, no, no. Kagome. He had to protect Kagome.

There was a cry of his name.

And then an awful lot of darkness.

InuYasha came to abruptly, uncertain and alarmed by the new reality.

In one minute, the sun was up and he was succumbing, his consciousness leaving him to drift. In the next, he was awake and crickets sang the night’s arrival.

It was tempting to think he had dreamt the whole thing. A stupid, ridiculous, crazy ass dream. However, the lingering smell left no room for argument. It happened. The scent was weaker. Fading. But was there, overpowered by a significantly nicer aroma. A familiar one, sweet on the nose and soothing to the soul. Kagome’s.

He was lying half naked in her sleeping bag.

Sitting up, InuYasha seeked for the priestess, desperate to make sure for himself she was safe and sound.

The fragile light of her modern lantern illuminated the cavern that sheltered them. At its entrance, a girl rested — her silhouette contoured by a starry sky. 

“Kagome.”

“You’re awake!”

She rushed to him, tripping over her own eagerness. Her beautiful clothes were dirty and a bit ripped at the hem. A small scratch cut her cheek, remnants of dry blood tainting her skin.

“Are you alright? What happened?”

“I’m fine!” Kagome kneeled in front of him, a gesture he appreciated. There was no peace for him without an up close inspection of her well being. “I purified the demon after you blacked out. Turns out it was a trap. Thousands of Naraku’s second-class demons came for the shard when I took him down. I tried to purify those too, but more of them kept coming and I ran out of arrows, so I casted a barrier and—”

“You casted a barrier?”

InuYasha was beyond impressed. Barriers required great power and discipline. Even from Kaede or the monk. Kagome had apparently done it all by herself. Effortlessly. On the spot.

“To be honest, I don’t know how I did it. I just… I saw you lying there and I… anyway, the barrier purified the ones who touched it. Eventually they all died or left. How are you feeling?”

InuYasha didn’t answer the question.

“I’m sorry, Kagome, that you couldn’t rely on me.”

Guilt pulsed within him like a heartbeat. Constant and compulsory, expanding the outcomes of its work through every inch of his body.

“It’s not your fault. Your nose is too keen, of course you’d be affected the most.”

“But you got hurt!”

“In the thorns. I was careless. Don’t worry about it, it’s not even going to leave a scar.”

“It shouldn’t have even happened. I’m supposed be the one protecting you, not the other way around.”

It could have been worse. InuYasha should be grateful for that. He wasn’t. It could have been worse. And he wouldn’t be able to help her, to save her from this insignificant peril while she had already saved him in every conceivable way there was for a person to be saved.

“I’m not as helpless as I used to be, you know? I’ve grown a lot.” She had a point. InuYasha himself had told her that much, once. Kagome had faced scarier dangers than that. And she could absolutely take them. But he didn’t want her to have to. “Not to mention, it was totally worth it.”

As a proof, she exhibited a jewel fragment, glowing in the healthiest shade of pink.

“You got it!” InuYasha captured the shard, glancing at every angle of it in awe.

“Don’t act so surprised.”

Kagome went for her backpack and came back, falling on her knees again. Her hand dove in and emerged holding the glass container in which they kept the other pieces. She opened it and tilted the receiver to InuYasha, hinting for him to do the honors.

It was as if she had been waiting for him so they could do it together.

As if it was their private, sacred ritual.

He did as she wanted, mirroring her satisfied smile.

“Where’s my haori?”

“Oh! I… I put it away.” Blushing, Kagome tore her gaze from his and InuYasha followed it to a corner of the cave, where a huddle of scarlet fabric laid forgotten. “I figured you’d heal faster with that smell gone and your haori is soaked on it. Sorry.”

“D-don’t apologize, stupid. It was the right call.” To feel useful — and to occupy his brain with something other than the image of Kagome undressing him — InuYasha searched her backpack for the first aid kit, a tool from her era he was sadly too intimate with. “Now let’s take care of this cut.”

“Okay. You have to g—”

“I know what to do. I’ve seen you do it a thousand times.” Her lips parted, and InuYasha added: “Don’t act so surprised.”

He cleaned the wound with cotton, water and soap, then used a different ball of cotton to carefully apply the content of a smelly little bottle to the extension of it. Kagome hissed, but he ignored it in favor of wrapping it all up with a band-aid. To ensure it was properly stretched, he gently ran his thumb through it, allowing the touch to linger more than necessary and his stare to go from her cheek to her eyes.

Her eyes.

The most stunning maze.

Let yourself get in, you are sure to get lost.

She blinked before he could, keeping them closed and leaning into his palm, her hand lifting to cover and caress his.

It would be so easy to grip her chin. To turn her face to him. To bring her to his lips. 

So easy to steal a kiss.

Why do the easiest actions have to carry the most difficult consequences?

Clearing his throat, InuYasha transformed present into a loving memory.

“Take some rest. We leave first thing tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me.”

On the way to claim Kagome’s prior guarding position by the entrance of the cave, InuYasha collected Tessaiga while she busied herself with getting cozy inside the sleeping bag.

“Kagome?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“InuYasha, I think we’re way past saying thank you for saving each other’s lives.”

“No, not for that. I mean, for that too, but... for coming. For staying by my side.”

“Stupid.” She mocked him, her voice lethargic as exhaustion finally caught up to her. “Where else would I be?”

A/N: this was some serious self indulgent bullshit. I regret nothing.

@inukag-week​ here is another piece of contribution. Kind of merged the Loyalty and the Instinct prompts here. Oops.

#Inukag Week #InuYasha #Inukag #Kagome #Kagome Higurashi #My writing #Inukag Fluff #Inukag Oneshot #Inukag Fanfiction

[elisaphoenix13]

Against All Odds (Ch.4)

Scott fell asleep again after he managed to eat what Stephen had made for him, but another coughing fit woke him up about half an hour later. A quick glimpse around the living room in front of him showed that Stephen and Quill were absent and Scott assumed that they took off. He wouldn't blame them, they had other friends or families they could go to and Scott appreciated that Stephen even took the time to make sure he was okay. Quill was also a pleasant surprise but Scott took his presence with a grain of salt. He probably gave Stephen a ride and only decided to check on him--

He was starting to sound like a broken record player. Quill wouldn't want him. There. He could admit things and accept them.

He didn't have to like it though.

Scott releases one last cough into his blanket before turning over and closing his eyes, and almost opens them again when he hears someone shuffling cards. Were Stephen and Quill still here?

"I think he's still asleep." Quill says from the direction of the dining table.

"Why are you still here? I told you I would be staying with him tonight so I don't need a ride." Stephen asks.

"Hey, he takes time out of his day to help me with math and I know he didn't want to in the first place. It's the least I can do." Quill answers.

The following moment of silence is filled by the sound of shuffling cards.

"Okay...now tell me the real reason." Stephen says calmly.

"What?!" Quill sputters.

There was silence again, and Scott was confused. Why did Stephen think that Quill had another reason for tagging along with him? The staying part was a little weird, but that was just the kind of guy Quill was. He was nice to most everyone unless someone gave him a reason not to. Scott could tell the silence wasn't true silence after a few seconds because he could feel the tension in the air, and that usually meant one thing.

Stephen was staring Quill down.

It was a very uncomfortable experience and always successfully got Scott to cave and admit whatever Stephen was suspecting when the older boy used it on him. It was a look that made it feel like Stephen was staring into his very soul and discovering every untold secret without Scott having to say a word. He was weak compared to Quill. The senior would no doubt return the stare with one of his own and they would at least come to a stand still since Stephen's was nothing to underestimate.

Quill actually caved as well but whatever he said was too quiet for Scott to hear.

"I had a suspicion." Stephen mutters and Scott could hear his smug smile.

"You said you were staying with him tonight, right?" Quill wonders. "Is there something going on…?"

"No. We're just friends." Stephen informs him and the sound of a glass being set down on the table follows shortly after.

"Where are his parents?"

"Out of town."

"Still?!"

No no no. Please don't say anything. I don't need or want his pity.

"What do you mean?" Stephen asks carefully.

"His parents were out of town on Monday!" Quill exclaims. "When are they supposed to get back?"

"...I couldn't tell you. It's going on four months."

Stephen, you dick.

"Are you taking care of him because you feel sorry for him?" Quill asks.

"Of course not. He's my friend. I just happen to know that he has no one to rely on. Scott doesn't know what it's like to be taken care of. He's not just invisible at school. His parents apparently barely manage to send him money for food." Stephen admits quietly.

"That's fucked up."

"I agree...but whatever your intentions are, don't do it because you pity him. If you hurt him, I will come after you."

Whoa. Scott didn't think that Stephen actually cared about him that much. He didn't even know what to think about that. What he did know was that it filled part of a huge hole in his heart. A hole he didn't even realize he had. Was it caused by the years of constant cold shoulders he got from his parents? He couldn't recall a single good memory from his childhood. For as long as he could remember, interaction from his parents was few and far between. They did the bare minimum to keep him alive and the moment he could walk to school by himself, they stopped dropping him off and picking him up.

There was never a nanny or a babysitter to give him more proper care. Business trips became a constant when Scott was old enough to be left home alone for long periods of time, and then his parents were gone all the time. Scott had to teach himself how to cook, how to do laundry, and even how to budget the money his parents sent him twice a month. He didn't know what praise was. Didn't know a parent's love.

No kiss on the cheek or forehead at bedtime from his mother, no pat on the shoulder or hair tussling from his father for getting a good grade, no hugs...no anything. He'd seen people hug each other and he so desperately wanted to know if it was as nice as it looked. Scott was so touch deprived that he lived vicariously through watching others interact.

Love was foreign to him in every way, shape, and form. At least until now. Was that what this warm feeling was when Stephen threatened Quill? He heard that friendships were a form of love. How pathetic was he to not know something like that?

"On a lighter note…" Quill starts. "Want me to go out and get the three of us dinner and a few movies?"

"Maybe two of us since Scott can't really taste anything with his cold.. and I don't know what your taste in movies is like. I think Scott has a few to choose from." Stephen answers and Quill shrugs.

"Dinner?"

"I think I'll make something tonight."

Scott dozed off after that and didn't wake until Stephen woke him with a light dinner waiting on the coffee table for him. He picked at it while the other two found his decently sized movie collection and surprisingly agreed on one, and he managed to eat most of his dinner before lying back down again. That had been about twenty minutes into the movie. Stephen gave him more medicine just before he fell asleep again five minutes later, and dozed in and out of consciousness for the rest of the night. He heard some whispering during one of his moments when he was between sleep and awareness, but he wasn't completely alert. Scott was actually on the brink of sleep when the couch disappeared from under him.

He must be dreaming. He's had weird floaty dreams like this when he was sick before, but he never smelled cinnamon in them. That was definitely new. Scott just chalked it up to his brain trying to comfort him in some way as the feeling of cushions came back under him. He just garnered enough energy to roll onto his side and wrap his blanket around him before falling back into a decently heavy sleep.

When Scott woke again, his head felt less cottony, but his throat still hurt. Which was no surprise considering how much he had been coughing yesterday. The cough wasn't gone yet either. It was just as harsh and congested as the day before and was unfortunately what woke him up. Scott had to sit up in bed so he could try to get some oxygen into his lungs, and when the coughing fit finally passed, he looked around his bedroom. The sunlight pouring through the--

Hold on.

His bedroom?

He most certainly fell asleep on the couch, and as far as he knew he wasn't a sleep walker since nothing like this had happened before. Maybe he was sick enough that he walked upstairs to his bedroom without much clarity to remember it? He'd never done that before either. Stephen wasn't strong enough to carry him, let alone all the way upstairs.

But Quill might be.

Oh my god...the cinnamon.

His dream wasn't a dream after all. The couch didn't disappear because he was having a floaty dream, it disappeared because Quill lifted him from it. The upperclassman that Scott had an enormous crush on and was tutoring, not only came to his house with Stephen to check on him, but carried him to bed! Scott knew the guy was nice but this seemed a little excessive even for Quill.

Scott shakes the thought away and climbed out of bed (albeit a bit woozily) and grabs a clean black shirt and black sweatpants before walking into his bathroom to take a shower. He stood with his forehead placed on the tiled wall in the hopes that the steam would help with his foggy head and his congested cough a little more, and sluggishly got dried and dressed once he was through with his shower. To his delight, his appetite was better than the previous day and he hoped he would be able to taste his food this time. He just needed to make his way down to the kitchen and try to figure out what looked or sounded good.

When he got down to the foot of the stairs, he was surprised at what he saw in the living room. Stephen was sleeping on the couch with a blanket he probably had to go looking for (there was a closet in the downstairs hall with some extra blankets), and a pillow that Scott definitely didn't use. That was actually expected based off the conversation he overheard yesterday. What was really surprising was seeing Quill passed out on the floor, with a pillow and blanket (that was barely covering his lower half), and the glaringly obvious fact that the senior had stripped down to his boxers for bed.

Fate was incredibly unkind to him before, but now it was dangling his half naked crush in front of him, and Scott could do nothing. Nothing but turn, shuffle into the kitchen, and look through the fridge for something to eat. Scott couldn't expect Stephen to continue to take care of him, and he had every intention to thank him and Quill for checking on him and taking care of him last night and then have them go home, but his body had different ideas.

Scott's vision swam as he reached for some yogurt, and then he felt himself falling sideways until he hit the ground with an audible thud. Just loud enough to wake his guests of course.

"What the fuck was that?" Quill demands as Scott groans from his impact with the floor.

Stephen was the first to show up and he closed the refrigerator door before kneeling next to the younger teen. "What are you doing out of bed?"

"'S okay...I can take care of myself. Just slipped." Scott slurs as his friend helps him up. "Just make the room stop spinning an' I'll be golden."

Stephen ignores him and looks behind Scott. "Help him to the couch."

Scott feels himself being pushed back gently until his back collided with the wall, and he blinks when the wall moves and directs him toward the couch. It took a few seconds for Scott's brain to catch up and realize that the wall was actually Quill, but he was already sitting on the couch when he finally managed to process that little tidbit. Actually, Scott was being kindly pushed down so that he was laying instead of sitting, and he felt himself melting into a puddle of goo when the same hand that had pushed him, started massaging the back of his neck.

"Tha's nice…" Scott mumbles as his eyes close.

An affectionate gesture. He was sick and someone was comforting him with a gentle massage and Scott couldn't stop himself from drinking it in. Someone was giving him attention, and while part of him wanted to run and hide, another bigger part wanted to enjoy it while he could.

It's Quill you ginormous dumbass! Quill is giving you the attention! He's the one touching you!

Scott didn't care at the moment. The gesture was more important because he's never been given any kind of affection before. The world had always kept going around him and he felt stuck in a dark corner of it because he was always ignored. He was ignored and neglected so much that Scott used to question his existence, but this small gesture? It was the first sliver of light to visit the dark corner of his reality. Scott almost wanted to cry because someone (besides Stephen) finally saw him and he wanted that light to envelop him. He wanted more.

"Scott? What do you want to eat?"

Scott was too blissed out from the tiniest gesture to answer.

"I think I put him to sleep." Quill responds as quietly as possible.

Scott didn't bother correcting him, and it didn't matter after a couple more seconds of his neck massage. He fell asleep again, and it was the best thirty minutes of sleep he ever had.

[brunhiddensmusings]

Tell me more about this conspiracy theory about dragonball as a retelling of journey to the west please

okay, some of this is pretty surface level to the point its just face value but also just more ignored then denied firstly, i must establish ‘journey to the west’ to those not familliar with it- its a 2000+ page long chinese novel from the ming dynasty, like 1600 if i recall, but odd because it focuses on a buddist mindset in a time when china still considered buddism to be a foreign influence. the author uses fairly large sections to critisize the other contemporary options to buddism such as daoism (for being largely unconcerned with helping people or betterment) and confucianism (for being rigid to the point it cant adapt and promote extremely bloated beaurocracies incapable of doing much) as well as to extoll the upsides of budism (namely magic powers) and how badass demons are journey to the west is notable for being the origin of about 80% of all anime tropes and over a dozen anime and videogames are directly based on it son goku, unsurprisingly, is pretty much a dirrect anlouge for son wukong, the magical stone monkey king that was born with laser eyes spends the first 7 chapters becoming about (i lost count) 8+ kinds of immortal, learning how to shapeshift and fly from an old hermit monk, and pissing off most gods of any note and the entire bureaucracies of both heaven AND hell. as i said, this is face value to the point its pretty open

son wukong’s identifying features including a size-changing 8 ton iron staff, being pretty much indestructible even to major gods, being extremely impulsive and moderately arrogant, flight, and pretty much openly admits he has probably eaten some people. this should sound familiar however he is not the main character, Buddha himself buries him under a mountain (which has a magic seal on top because a regular mountain wouldnt be heavy enough to hold him) to try and teach him some humility (which fails) saying he needs to wait untill someone frees him in which case he will be endebted to and be the servant of said free-er. while we progress to the ACTUAL protagonist of the story a bald monk named Tang Sanzang is in fact the central charachter, although his name has been interpereted several ways including Tripiṭaka (also the name of the baskets of scrolls hes supposed to carry). the big B entasks he of the shiny head with the task of journeying from china to india to pick up said sacred scriptures so holy they can redeem anyone and then bring them back to filthy filthy china thats badly in need of these ‘morals’ things people keep talking about. but this is where you start to get a lot of ‘wait, that sounds familiar’ when i describe things like ‘bald monk’ and the adventures cueball the magical is going to go on with his companions of anime

because almost immediately after freeing son wukong from the magic mountain of sityerassdown and putting a magic circlet on his head that causes him great pain when baldy says a prayer to keep him in line (yes this is where inuyasha gets the ‘sit’ necklace) they come across a SHAPESHIFTING PIG DEMON who turns out inst all that bad a guy its just that his new wife is very upset because she thought she was marrying a handsome bishounen despite admitting hes a dilligent worker and treats her well because hes seeking attonement for having eaten people after being kicked out of heaven (where he used to actually be a bishounen in the celestial army) for hitting on women. yet another case of DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR

and i just now realize why he was wearing the chinese military officers uniform or at least would sound familiar to people who watched the original ‘dragonball’ and not just DBZ where oolong and the 50 other characters who were all established to be quite powerful when used cleverly were all relegated soely to be sideline cheer squad and ‘hey, remember these guys, from back when this wasnt the kiss goku’s butt show’- which is the point here following the original journey to the west story you started with the magical monkey shenanigans (check) then he learns from hermit (check) how to fly (check) and shapeshift (i guess they thought he was powerful enough without it despite it being one of his major go-to solutions in the story but i get that they already established thats a power someone else had so i understand leaving it out narratively) battling demons, gods, and pissing off the kings of hell and the emperor of heaven (check) and then gets humiliated by Buddha (absent, again i understand leaving this out for narrative tone and to avoid being overly religious in a kids cartoon despite actively leaving king Yema in the story) teams up with the bald monk who they initially clash but becomes his friend over time (check) who then becomes the main protagonist (major not-check) magical monkey jerk is repeatedly scolded for wantonly killing people and given a magical crown of headaches ( fail) teams up with shapeshifting pig who also becomes close ally with useful powers but has deep character flaws (check) and then team up with a dragon who ate their horse who then apologizes by transforming into a horse and then everyone forgets its a dragon (wait, what) and then team up with a river god named sandy (by this time the dragonball plot has already passed mars and is orbiting Jupiter because i think this is when frankenstein appeared and then king piccolo with his sons drum, tamborine, piano, and cymbal, i think goku kills one eats another and asked a samurai if he could eat the third but this is before they retcon piccolo to be a namek {eg- from the planet ‘slug’} instead of a demon because they keep waffling if demons are real) and is then followed by a long list of falling into traps laid by demons because the monk is naive, the pig is cowardly, the monkey is foolhardy, the dragon is too busy staying in his ponysona, and the river deity is carrying the bags narratively this is confusing for several reasons but i could literally teach a college level class on what DBZ does that no writer should ever, EVER, do and every friday to prevent unkind amounts of homework point at how original dragonball at least had narrative cohesion of purpose when it went off in left field but that's part of the journey- in original dragonball everything is a journey of the human spirit for self improvement, in original journey to the west everything is a journey of the human spirit for a shot at redemption, but in DBZ everything is goku is awesome and nobody else is worth his time unless they go ‘ha-ha, i am the most powerful fight punch guy in universe, we must fight’ because fuck anyone who isnt the most powerful being in the universe and even fuck them because they almost never have a reason for being the most powerful and its irritating how shit they are like some of them are mentally five years old who gave you the power to be this dangerous. whats odd is they specifically set it up several times that goku is supposed to narratively step aside and his son(s) step up to carry on the legacy in a return to the earlier more sensable formula, even presenting them as being less powerful as him as an attempt to move away form the absurd escalation issues the series had where goku can destroy a planet by farting yet every thursday they mysteriously find someone five times stronger then the last strongest person in the universe as that wasnt the point in either original dragonball or journey to the west where being clever was always far more important then being powerful, especially as son wukong was mostly more powerful then goku anyways but still got in monster of the week shenannegans not solvable by impulsive brutality. they knew this was a problem, they understood that the endless escalation had gone to the realm where the audience had lost any investment and nobody other then goku could be useful to the story to the point that they even had a WHOLE SERIES where to try and counteract the power creep they had some weird explanation goku is actually time traveled or cursed or some shit so hes only a kid and roughly as strong as he was in later episodes of the original dragonball..... close, so close to actually addressing the problem but also keeping so many other problems krillin moving into being the protagonist would have alleviated the majority of the problems DBZ had- the power escalation bullshittery and the complete lack of stakes as you know goku is going to punch the thing untill it explodes after six episodes of yelling and anything without ‘planet gonna go boom’ no longer seems like a problem worth caring about. goku being downgraded to being the impulsive muscle on a team that included others that were less overtly powerful but still narratively useful to the adventure would have also alleviated almost all the ‘everybody who isnt goku is a fragile useless  porcelain figurine of a child’ problems that are very counter-intuitive and kind of insulting: in original dragonball, for example, master roshi was the only known human capable of doing the kamehameha which took 50 years to learn (goku learns it by watching it once and that should have been the cap for him being overpowered{a rival teacher had a more powerful version that nobody else learns}), climbed the sacred tower which took 7 years (it took goku about a week, which is well within the realm of where escalation should be), and blew up the fucking moon but in dbz his ‘power level’ is lower then his pet turtle..... despite all of that and being the one who trained goku and krillin allowing them to be absurdly strong in the first place so they apparently forgot their own history.  so taking the actual good story points they aready had and throwing them in the trash is a running problem

they even had the setup for krillin being in peril continually, all the ‘krillin dies’ memes are about on par with how often every demon on the road (which they pass like gas stations) are kidnapping and trying to eat Tripitaka, whcih is framed as despite Tripitaka being powerful he isnt as powerful as his allies but never framed as useless, especially as even goku has to seek help frequently, often from non-martial sources instead of the ‘kung fu solves everything’ mindset im unsure if anyone will want to start a fight about my statements regarding daballz but im okay with an intelectual argument about its writing .... how do i tag this? i forgot replies dont let me do that but i need to learn how to tag my rants one of theese days in hopes they actually get feedback

[mentalmimosa]

a lesson i wanted to teach

“I don’t like it when you speak to me that way.”

“I know. But someone has to. Otherwise you would think of running wild.” His soldat laps at his throat, that scolding tongue warm and lush. “Someone needs to be keeping you in line.”

Steven’s head knocks back against the wall and he grips the man’s hair, pulls it taut in his fingers, tighter. “And that someone is you, is that it?”

A hum, a flex of a powerful hand at his hip. “Is my job. You know that, милая. Why else would you fight me so hard?”

“I don’t fight you.”

“You do.” The soldat chuckles, the soft lines of his mouth turning teeth. “Every moment of every day.”

Steven was eighteen, a man in his own right, a few years and the final fade of his father’s health from becoming a king. But he was also impulsive and prone to fits of temper and, in his father’s eyes, in many of the ways that counted, ill-prepared to rule anyone, including himself: hence the ever-present soldat.

He was a foreigner, which had surprised Steven; he’d assumed his father would choose a loyal man, a known subject, to be his bodyguard. But his father--infirm as he was now, his thin frame fading faster with each passing year--was far wiser about such things than Steven had given him credit to be.

“One of our people,” his father had said, “you would find a way to manipulate. I know you, son; you would not hesitate to trade on their fondness for you--or else you would be pliant honey to their face and stubborn steel the moment they turned their back on you.”

Steve had shaken his head, as much to keep the laughter from his face as to ape at contrition. “Oh, Father. Do you think so little of me?”

“Little? No. You are as much your mother’s son in spirit as you are mine in appearance.” The king had smiled fondly, his attention for a moment far, far away, as it often was when he spoke of his queen. “She too had the ability to...charm, shall we say, even when being straightforward would have been easier. Or more logical, at least. An excellent quality for a consort, I found, but less effective, I think, in a ruler.”

In that moment, in his father’s resolution, he’d seen his freedom slipping away: the hours he spent roaming the streets with Sam, both cloaked from their head to their boots; the long, wild rides through the countryside with Margaret, his father’s Master of the Horse; the time he was supposed to devote to learning statecraft bent instead to his pencils and his sketchpad--all these pleasures slipping like petals from his hand.

In a panic, he switched tactics; snapped:  “I don’t need a nurse minder, your highness.”

His father had laughed, settled back on the throne and laughed until his breath would not come. “Of course you do!” the king had said, reedy, a smile stretched across his gaunt face. “Or so I’ve always thought. But for now, you’ll settle for a personal guard who will answer to me, not to you.”

Even with the forewarning, though, the weeks of pointless arguments, the day the soldat had arrived had come as a shock. He was younger than Steven had anticipated--only older than he by a decade or so--although the hardness of his face and the metal machine that took the place of his left arm spoke of a life very different than that of the prince.

“It was taken from me,” he said without flinching; a story, then, he’d told a hundred times before. “And this, it was given to me in its place.”

Steven found himself staring at the mechanical fingers, the neat rows of ever-adjusting metal plates that rippled and shifted, it seemed to him, as would one’s own skin. “Have you had it a long time?”

The soldat chuckled. “Almost as long have I lived with it as I had life before. So yes. A long time.”

When he smiled, when Steven looked up and saw the corners of the man’s mouth lifted, there then, he realized, was the most striking trick of all: for the soldat, his soldat, was lovely. His hair was too long to be fashionable and his clothes were all wrong and he represented the first check on Steven’s behavior that he’d known in his life but--he met Steven’s eye and smiled again--dear gods, Steven thought, at least the chains that bound him to propriety were beautiful. It might not be so hard to be good if the soldat’s company were his reward.

His heart raced and tried to be in the right place but his bent towards appropriate behavior could only last so very long. Three weeks, to be exact. Nearly a month before he’d tried to sneak out; before he’d waited for the long still hours of the night to descend before he send a whippoorwill’s call from his window and waited for the wind to bring its return.

It had, and oh, how pleased he’d been. Margaret had gotten his message, passed from hand to trusted hand from the kitchen through the halls and the gardens and down to the stables:

Two on the clock, it said. Shall we travel again to the stream?

And now she waited for him just beyond the garden wall on a quick, quiet mount; waited to carry him swift to the stream beyond the foothills where the moon lay in thick waves upon on the grass, where the light would catch her hair when she unbound it so it fell over her shoulders and over the firm cream of her breasts. He’d moaned soft at the thought of it, having her astride him again; this many weeks without her hands upon him, her mouth, had pulled his good intentions so very thin.

His hands were on the edge of the parapet, his mind already a mile ahead, when he’d been snatched about the waist and thrown hard to the floor.

“Where is it you are going?” the soldat said.

“Out.”

“No.”

Steven sat up, his scowl cut through by a wince. “Yes. I have a date.”

“Tsk. A date. No, you do not. Not at this time of the night.”

“Yes, I--”

The soldat regarded him. “With who is this date?”

“None of your damnable business.”

“Ah.” A tilt of the head. “This is why you are going in the middle of the night, yes? Is someone you are not supposed to see.”

He scrambled to his feet, fury kicking him off his ass. “Supposed to see? What the hell does that mean?”

“You know, prince.”

“I don’t!”

The soldat had reached for him, caught his arm in a grip that was unforgiving but not unkind. “The mares in the pasture, they are not for you. In a few years, you will be king, yes? You will need a consort, not a mate of play.”

“A playmate,” Steve had said wearily as he was towed through the door, back through his sitting room, and down the hall to his bedchamber. “That’s what you mean.”

“Mmm,” the soldat said thoughtfully. “I suppose yes.” He brought Steven to a halt by his bed, the turned-back sheets testimony to his aborted escape. “And now I mean no. Do you understand?”

“If you’re so smart,” Steven said, one last gasp of his dignity, “how did my message get through? Hmmm? You didn’t know I sent it, did you?”

The soldat’s mouth curled. He let Steven’s arm go. “A lesson,” he said, “I wanted to teach. That is why. Your old ways of doing things, I need you to know: they will not work anymore.”

Steven’s face burned. “You could’ve just told me you knew, instead of letting me get my hopes hope.”

“Showing is better than telling,” the man said. His eyes flicked down, back up, and his smile went insolent. “And there is more than hope you have up, yes?”

“Get out!” Steven had said, humiliation turning in his mouth as fast as fury. “Get out of here, you bastard. Get out!”

The soldat had held up his hands and stepped back. “I will be here,” he’d said. “Again, always. Right outside of this door. In case you decide to try again.”

He had, of course. Not that night, but many others, driven not as much by lust as by something fiercer, something more solid: a need to be right, a need to prove the damnable soldat wrong.

“You’re a chain!” he’d shouted on more than one occasion. “A fucking anchor around my waist, soldat!”

“Tsk,” the soldat would say, hauling him bodily away from what he wanted, from his latest exercise in free will. “This is my job, until you learn how to govern yourself.”

“I’m a prisoner!” he had bellowed one night as the soldat spirited him away from a knights’s party, from hours of promised drunken bliss at Sam’s side. “You can’t hold me like this! You can’t tell me what to do!”

“You are no prisoner,” the soldat hissed in his ear, “except to your own selfishness.”

“Oh, now you sound like my father!”

“Your father would never speak to you such. Perhaps if he had, he would not have a cur for a son.”

“You--! How dare you speak to me that way!”

The soldat hauled him around the corner and kicked open a kitchen door, commenced hauling him up the back stairs. “What other way is there that you understand? Telling of no for you is never enough.”

“I’ll tell the king about this!”

“About what? His son being drunk fool? I think, Steven, he is very aware.”

He’d twisted in the soldat’s grip, heard the whir of those metal gears, felt the pinch of metal through his tunic and into his flesh. “Stop talking to me like I’m a child.”

The soldat slammed to a halt on a small landing and squeezed Steven against him, his voice, his arms choking and tight. “When you stop acting like one,” he said carefully, softly, a snake’s rattle in each and every word, “then, I promise. I will.”

That night, Steven’s dreams had drowned in mead, had sunk beyond the resentment of the everyday and settled in the sand of sucking want, of devouring, of Margaret’s dark head buried between his legs, long hair brushing his thighs as she took all of him in her mouth but then her eyes brightened, faded from rich brown to soft blue and suddenly it was the soldat his dream saw there, head bobbing, hands heavy stones on each hip, a rumble in his throat that Steven could feel in his prick and when he awoke, he was working himself against the bed, straining, the last of the dream still caught in his teeth and the soldat rubbed steel against his clench, the shock of cold a counterweight to the heat of his mouth and Steven came with a sob, a great wrench of his hips, a pulse of wet in the sheets as if he were a boy again, his own pleasure outside of his control.

It had been then that he had realized, through the muddled state of his body, his brain, that perhaps what he wanted from the soldat was not solely respite: it was a very particular kind of relief.

And if said relief led in the end to him finding an opening, an alternative way around his father’s strict plans, well then, he’d thought, a sated smile on his lips. So much the better.

#shrinkyclinks #stucky #steggy #kingdom au

[mita-rashi]

on AO3

Anko spends her time after the war between hobbies. Hobbies being eating, drinking, pissing, and shitting, whatever it is she can fit into her extremely packed hospital stay. Very important stuff for a very important kunoichi like herself.

She’s amused (and driven crazy by) the fact that this is the most free time she’s had in years. And look, she’s got a bed by the window, lucky girl that she is. It’s the perfect scenario for her to reflect on all the stupid, fucked up things she’s done in her life.

It’s not like she has much else to do with her time. Iruka is busy enough that he can’t always visit. She’s on chakra blockers and sedatives to stop herself from trying to mold chakra, because she’s the kind of belligerent shithead that will push herself to the point of destruction if not actively restrained from doing so. The universe has seen fit to leave her alone with her thoughts, and since she’s never seen a gamble so set against her, she’s not even going to take the bet. She’s going to finally let herself sit and think.

Sometimes she tries to remember Yamato when he was young. It’s hard, her memories from that time all seem so foggy, like her brain was so busy trying to teach her how to put one foot in front of the other again that it forgot to remember anything she experienced.

But she thinks she knows what he was like back then. A scrawny, shy thing, right before puberty hit him like a truck and turned him into the man she knows now. There was his longer hair and his softer voice and the weird feeling in her stomach that she was standing next to someone who a harsh breeze could tear apart.

He doesn’t act like that now. She’s seen him snap the neck of a child soldier about to turn on them, seen him do things without hesitation that would have left her sick in her head for weeks. Sometime between the fragile frame and the harsh breeze, he grew up, and whatever spark of something more she thought she saw finally died.

She wonders what that dead thing inside him is doing at a time like this. If she has enough time to unbury unkind things, she knows he must as well. She wants to know what the first thing he decided to unearth was. What it will be. Anko wants to sit beside him and turn a little key in the back of his head, open his skull right open, and watch as that brain of his scurries through traumas and lost lives.

The first time Anko met him, he was balancing on a line he didn’t understand. She wants to know if he understands it now. If he’d go back and change anything if he had the chance.

Anko remembers a girl with long brown hair walking a crooked, crazy line, and the little boy that landed when she fell right off it.

Now she heads into things she doesn’t want to think about. Things folded up neatly and tucked away. Small deaths that she buried so deep she can sometimes forget what they did to her in the first place.

Sometimes the smell of rain reminds her of him, because it was raining when she realized something was wrong. It was the final, fleeting moment where she was able to humor the thought that she still had him, before reality snapped it away. Rain and the smell of cigarettes from her neighbor next door, an old woman who would smoke and talk to her when both their windows were open - those are the strange, disconnected things she associates him with now. It’s been so long and so loud she doesn’t think she can remember anything else. Shisui is forever the memory of the water stain on her ceiling, the sound of an old, wet cough, and smoke that Anko can smell and also barely see on the edges of her vision. He’s the crushing weight of the moment she realized she was right.

There’s nothing when she tries to think back. It’s like it didn’t happen.

Because Anko had no place in finding the answers when he was gone. And there was so much silence surrounding him. His clan. Itachi. She felt the violent swell of change raise up all around them long before the massacre happened. It was in the name that was caught on her tongue, the name she couldn’t say, the name that became so heavy it got stuck in her throat and made her choke.

Back then she had been used to her home being empty, but there had been days and nights when it was not, when he spent his time with her and she felt relief, and to have such an simple, easy joy disappear…

She blinks back tears.

She began writing her thoughts after that. If it weren’t for his name in those early pages, Anko would buy the lie that he had never existed. They had never existed.

It’s easier to move now. Her fingers and toes and arms and legs and all the important parts of her. It’s not that she couldn’t before, but everything felt so foreign, so empty and light that every step felt like her moment to fall of the edges surrounding her. But she’s good now. She’s getting good.

She dreamt one night she was with him again. Her sensei. Flat on one of his exam tables, held down, and he was there with her like he used to be. Except this time she knew what they really were. He was above her, examining her, feeling for all the parts of her that were crackled and split open. She was the specimen. The thing being examined. Just another notch in his belt of ideas. But at least time it was honest. This time she could scream.

She woke up with red in her mouth and arms heavy like lead. She skipped her chakra blocker that next day, and the day after, tongued the little pills and spit them into the trash, and on the third day she tried to prove him wrong. Her skin was on fire, a series of snaps before the loud and violent pop, the chakra pathway in her left hand completely blown out.

But she was right. She did the right thing. Her sensei didn’t come to her in her dreams again. She’d done it -- made herself defective and uninteresting and all by herself.

It’s all so stupid and senseless.

She has a roommate who cries when the medics talk to her. Anko is quiet and pretends not to notice. And she’s quiet later that night when she watches her rummage through the cabinets and drawers.

“They’re not dumb,” she says. “They’re not going to leave anything here that you can off yourself with.”

There are too many bodies above and below her. Too many souls for a place like this.

#mitarashi anko #yamato tenzo #uchiha shisui #character study #ok here is the thing #i got lots of HC and stuff out in this #who cares if it doesnt make sense it drained me emotionally

[junkyardlynx]

Pt. 13

The presence made no attempt to disguise itself, nor it’s...gentle rankling of hostility. It trampled through the fallen leaves and branches of the woods, birds scattering in it’s wake. The our visitor was loud, obvious, and it seemed like they were none-too-pleased to be there. I briefly wondered what they could be so agitated about as I buried my head against Sarisa’s warm stomach. 

“You really think you should keep your face right there?” She asked, even as she continued to play with my hair.

“I really doubt they’re coming to fight if they’re being so loud about it.” 

I had almost pulled my head away from her when the flimsy plywood door flung open with such force that it actually agitated me, so I stubbornly remained. Why do people feel the need to slam doors? Can you just act like a person? It’s not that hard. It’s actually easier than slamming it, because you use less force.

“Your friend is struggling to maintain control of his own begotten flesh and the two of you remain locked in an embrace as the morning turns to afternoon. Why did I bother with this fool’s errand?”

The voice that addressed us was dripping with venom. Muffled slightly through a mask, it was feminine, with a touch of gruffness that coloured it’s fanciful speech. Sarisa tapped the back of my neck and I lazily pulled my head away from her stomach, every cell in my body still screaming for rest. I waved my hand dismissively as I went to turn my head. When I saw who it was, I smiled. This was rich, honestly. 

“Hey, it’s you. How’s the jaw? I really thought you’d get cold feet when it came to hunting Jeal down again.” 

I laughed in spite of myself at Sarisa’s comment, then shook my head. I could feel the visitor’s glare as a physical force. 

“Sorry. I assume you’re here to disturb our recuperation for some actual reason? Given the overall lack of anything approaching stealth.”

“It should be obvious, given my opening statement. Did you not come to this dilapidated observatory platform in search of your friend Thomas? No wonder he trusted you so little.”

I had taken the situation easy at first, but the remark about Thomas and trust ignited something in my belly that I couldn’t ignore. I forced a laugh as I stood up, using the flat of my palm to crack my neck and jaw. It was meant both as a show of intimidation and a way to loosen myself up. 

“I see. Well, you’re certainly right. We certainly were locked in an embrace, as you put it.”

Most of my mana was depleted and the air was thick with a sort of stillness. We’d burned up all the latent mana, commonly known as aether, in the area with our big stupid battle.  Still, there was something that a lack of magic couldn’t take away from me.

The body I’d built to handle it all.

I shot forward, shirt open and trailing behind me. My right leg shot up, aimed at her head, but it was pushed away by her crossed arms. The mere act of being deflected caused my the wound on my side to scream in pain, the scabbing flesh twisting and pulling itself open to acquiesce my desire to move. I didn’t care.

“Fool! Why do you resort to violen-”

I dropped low, aiming a sweeping kick at her legs with my left that she barely manged to jump over. 

I was angry. Ever since last night, when I lost myself against Amduisas, I couldn’t control it. It raged in me, burned in me, chilled me to the core. It felt like my anger wasn’t in my control, wasn’t even mine, but it used me. Like it was the anger of something far older and far colder. My body was aching to move, to fight, to kill. Something in my blood. There was something in my blood.

I don’t know what it was, honestly. Maybe everything about her infuriated me. I had pieced together what had happened, that she was the one that told Thomas everything. That got him wrapped up in this big, huge mess. For her to come in, break Thomas’ heart with an inconvenient truth, turn him against us and then talk about trust? Hypocritical. Unforgivable.

“Do you know what I just finished doing, you oni-wannabe?”

My voice was oddly cool as I twisted the motion of a sweeping kick into a rising one, left leg shooting up towards her mask. She pulled back skillfully, but not entirely quickly enough. The tip of my foot caught the bottom of her mask, pulling it up. Guiding myself into the air with the momentum of my kick, I returned to a standing position. I heaved a few breaths, my tattered and bloodstained rag of a shirt swaying lazily in the slight breeze coming through the open door. Sarisa made no move to stop me.

“I just slew a Duke of Hell. I just transmuted my own flesh to make up for a mistake I made in that fight. I think I deserve a little rest before cleaning up the rest of your FUCKING mess!”

The unmasked visitor regarded me stoically. No emotion or thought betrayed her stony countenance, but some personal war was being waged behind those dark eyes. Feeling unkind and not in any sort of mood to offer a chance at personal reflection, I flew forward with a straight right jab, bereft of technique. It struck the sheet metal beside her face, opening the laughably weak material up to the outside world. 

“I think that about pays you back for last time. Doesn’t feel great to be attacked for no real reason, huh? You sword-wielding maniac.” 

I pulled my hand back through the thin wall and turned around, taking a step towards Sarisa.

“...You are correct.”

I stopped. The validation wasn’t really validating at all, strangely. It deflated my righteous anger. She continued to speak, this time at length as I turned around.

“This mess is of my own making. I miscalculated. I, and my superiors, failed to properly assess the situation. At the time I engaged you, you seemed to be a threat we could not ignore. Your intentions were unclear and your training was harsh from what we had observed. Your foreign blood awakening in the Russian mountains at the mere age of thirteen was our major concern. We acted under this knowledge while failing to realize that the mere fact of your birth had already broken the Seal. For this, I apologize.”

Her words left me moderately baffled, but Sarisa spoke first. I took the moment to rein myself in, quashing that mounting fury in my bones.

“Wait, what’s this “blood awakening” thing? Jeal, what happened on that trip?”

I honestly didn’t know myself, so I shrugged.

“My sorcerer’s blood, I guess? I dunno. I guess I never told you about it, but I had to defend myself in the Urals and...that’s when I took my first life. Mage hunters like our friend here tend to be sensitive about that stuff.”

The visitor laughed, clear and ringing. She found something hilarious. It vexed me.

“Ah, you really are unaware. For someone so sharp, you sure can be dense when you wish it. Jeal, you are not entirely human and I am not a simple hunter of magi.”

She approached me slowly, drawing a blade from her hip. She held both hands up, her right hand clutching what looked to be a red letter opener. Two steps away from me, she motioned for me to stick out my arm. I rolled my eyes, but offered my right arm.

She nicked the vein with the red, red blade.

The blood that dribbled out froze as it came in contact with that peculiar knife. 

“I am Fujiwara, onmyouji and descendant of Abe no Seimei. My selfsame clam hunts what you might call Japan-native demons, or fiends. You carry the blood of a particularly dangerous Yuki-onna from the Aomori province. It is clear you have no control over it, but the fact remains as you tremble with the desire to remove that which vexes you.”

“Guess my dad left out a few details about how he met my mom.” 

My own voice was weak. My anger was gone, and confusion seemed to wash over me. I took a seat by Sarisa on the table, who seemed to be regarding me with a mix of similar confusion, worry, and slight wonder.

“Now that we’ve all had a chance to poke and prod each other, uh, maybe we should. We should talk about the elephant in the room. Not Satsuki, Jeal. It’s Thomas. I’m talking about Thomas.” 

Sarisa broke the awkward silence as I pulled into myself, assessing what I knew. My mom was apparently some super-popular Japanese snow spirit? I thought she was just a mage like dad, which is why she lived so long. Didn’t really take into account any of the little details like the stories and folklore she shared, or the fact that she always complained about the heat. She was just my mom. 

I sat there in a daze, legs swinging from the desk a little until Sarisa prodded me into the conversation. I felt strangely anxious, filled with restless and aimless desire.

“Jeal, Fuji says she has information on where Thomas is.”

“What? Oh, cool. Wait, what?”

“Thomas was moved from this location a scant few hours before your encounter with the Duke. It seems as though he was brought back into town. To the school, more accurately. There’s something you should know, though.”

Her words kinda made me slap myself in the face. What an obvious place to take him. I guess I didn’t expect it because hey, who’s gonna bring someone to the most obvious place ever after engineering a plan like this?

“Jeal, Fuji says the town is gone.”

“Rissa, you just said they brought him back there.”

“The buildings remain, and even some of the people. However, that place is not meant for the living now. I imagine this ritual was decades in the making.”

The intentionally obscure phrasing of her words was agitating me, like almost everything about her. However, Fujiwara seemed to be our ally for now, so I grit my teeth and asked what I already knew, somewhere in my breaking heart.

“What. Happened?”

“The town has been sacrificed, for lack of a better phrase. A boundary rift has been deployed, and demons walk the streets, hunting down those that remain. Your own house lies dormant and empty. I looked when escaping, and seems that your casting of Xyir managed to give your parents enough time to flee themselves. Selfish to their own ends, I imagine.”

My head pulsed terribly. A headache hatched from all the anger, beating in my temples, and I grit my teeth hard enough to crack them. I wanted to lash out in this anger, berate her for talking ill of my parents, ask her why she did nothing to save the town. I knew that my mom and dad escaped to live another day, escaped to fight another day. I knew that coming to us for help instead of attempting to do everything alone was the right choice on Fujiwara’s part, but I still choked on that fury. I felt the blood in my veins turn to slush, barely chugging through my arteries as I struggled to contain my emotions.

Turns out the kind of people who would bring their sacrificial lamb back to the most obvious place were the kind that would turn a town into a living hell. That was fine. I’d send them to a real kind of hell. Something in my body, in my bones, in my frantic blood ached for release. Something cold and ancient.

“Let’s go.”

#writing #my writing #the deeper wound #modern fantasy #magic

[horriblegif]

LEVEL DRAMA 50

It’s not usually our style to respond to artworld dramas in any medium longer than a few tweets. They’re never particular exciting beyond the unholy fascination akin to watching some rats fight over a headless cockroach on the floor of a Subway. Moreover, they’re usually confined to a pattern - think of a writer publishing some text on something which upsets people by association and then using his/her social media to promote that text, thusly charging the gravitational pull of indignation and buying space for a pop-up arena of combative discourse below. An example of this would be Art in America’s 2014 piece ‘The Perils of Post-Internet Art’ by Brian Droitcour, itself a wavering diet-summation of a genre that seemed to evolve out of increasing access to technological means of image making and also began to historicise itself simultaneously. Weird right!!? Predictably, arguments followed on social media with responses from implicated parties and sideliners, running the gamut of indignant whiny rebuttal to carefully oriented endorsement. There’s a lot of wiggle room for staking out narratives, personalising them, claiming them or discrediting others, in other words a divine gift to every editorial intern for glossy art magazines that are half full of adverts for luxurious things and half full of tiny texts about arts beginning and ending with the authors name. Qualitative judgement and criticism in the Greenbergian sense is even more obsolete, obsolete accelerated, block-chained and stacked. The modern critique exercise garners no adhesion to the contemporary artscape even as an arse-aching literary nostalgia throwback. Old platforms haven’t all died and new platforms are not always replacing them, but reflective mediations serve commonplace delight regardless of the impossibility to predict.

Brexit and Trump, among many other unkind reminders given up to cultural onlookers, prove that despite our illusions of a slogging but mobile transition towards rectifying centuries of inherent vices within civilisation, there are still a lot of racists around. Not all supporters of Trump might have been racist, but nevertheless they did support one. Not all supporters of Brexit might have been racist, but the rise of hate crime against foreigners post-referendum says enough. Life goes on, whatever post-rationalised narrative you believe is the causation of this crisis in the west and until we’re in a full-blown totalitarian regime we have choices to resist without putting our lives at stake. These resistances can be boycotts, mild political integration or volunteering, adding to body count at protests, whatever.

The slightly shit TV adaptation of The Man In High Castle, which roughly follows a similar format to the Phillip K. Dick source material, does one thing quite well. It shows how many people can adapt or exist quite easily to life under fascism. Obviously the people that do are within regime-defined parameters of acceptable, something that Trump/May and the ukip scum keep trying to define with immigrants (first them, then us all). Most of the denizens of the art scene will not cease to exist, despite the general idea that fascist government wasn’t great for most art/artists. Over half of us fit into those parameters already! Futurism had a pretty big old boner for violence! But we think, given the tragedies within industrialised memory and after the late 60s that art is predominantly a progressive, liberal thing. Okay it has structural problems with insane gender and race bias, but that’s work in progress. As a concept, art galleries or institutions are not seen as part of a mechanism of state-sanctioned harm. Something like that, right? It’s the artists we turn to in dark times to offer cultural reflection and symbology for resistance. Yeah m9, not really so much.  Post-vetements overstyled white art males of the curatoriat continue to offer smug “everything is shit” commentary in which they can never be proved wrong. Declining to offer any meaningful critique of tories/republicans but always ready with a hatchet for liberals when they fail. Staying aloof, hand wringing and never forced to contemplate more than jokes about self-employed artist tax returns or some hot take post-potato. Other artists who proclaim radical actions and aesthetics go on to exhibit at art fairs, work with commercial galleries and operate easily within a cultural exchange network built on un-unionised work and cheap labour. An independent project space goes commercial, takes money for anyone, talks about feminism but hangs out with Anita Zabludowicz on her Venice Biennale yacht. Curator does interview and talks about the nature of rigorous critique, but freaks out when it is suggested that putting only their mates in an arts council funded exhibition might be something that is twatty. Pointing out hypocrisy and bad art practices become anti-art, hatin’, jealousy or some kind of trolling without good faith (what trolling with good faith is, please tell us on a postcard addressed to BBC FOUR, PO BOX 80085, Arsequake Kingdom). Artists are not only often creepily “libertarian” but, in the case of LD50 Gallery, sometimes outright mini-fascists.

At this juncture we finally arrive at the point of this longform rant. LD50, a small project space in dalston junction, had some exhibitions of questionable taste and arrangement in recent months. The alt-right exhibit it staged using scavenged parts of the aesthetic and philosophical matter online wasn’t immediately partisan on the surface. It could have been bad satire, it could have been one of those things many adult-child digital artists do where they incorporate the very thing they critique. Obviously the depraved chasm which 4chan and allotments of reddit are located in is morbidly fascinating, to someone who feels they’re on an important media archaeology tip even moreso. Despite the Hitler quotes coupled with anime motifs and other bizarre conflations of alt-right imagery, the show itself didn’t offer a concrete position. This is a commonplace exhibition model that allows “racy” subject matter to be presented with critical immunity, because the art moves to within a viewers praxis. More often this is used with cultural appropriation, where a white artist will extract reference points and framing devices from culture they do not belong to and situate the art itself on the intersection of their gaze, etc etc. So the art is about the white gaze on other culture, that way it removes itself from, at best, being accused of ignoring postcolonial theory or, at worst, just being mildly racist. Very meta though, and you can extract 2000 words from meta quite easily. With the benefit of hindsight plus a screenshot of a private fb conversation, it became obvious the curiosity with the alt-right wasn’t coolly detached in the LD50 show. Given the social media output of LD50 runs along moaning lines about the apolitical nature of net artists and glib rejoinders to political/social occurances, strangely they might have found the blazing political net art they were looking for… just the bad kind of politics. HEY, bad is a construct in art that is irrelevant after postmodernism and pop art, so who is to say it is bad? It’s just neo-reactionary. Sounds like the working title of a group of Final Fantasy rebels. These dodgy politics weren’t always so clear, even in that classic uncertain/ironic way, so it’s possible it was a slippery slope slodden down.

As said in the beginning of this longform rant, the social media microdramas of the art cottage industry aren’t very interesting in themselves beyond the sorry online appearances of calculated hostility and contrived artjoke acumen. But with artist Sophie Jung posting in a public way a ‘call-out’ to a curator of a gallery holding quite dodgy fascist views, the fallout is more interesting than the usual bruised/inflated egos or comment flame wars. The gallery itself has responded by “archiving” the post and all the comments on the main page, as doxing (a strategy of online shaming perfected by the alt-right) bait to sentient pepe memes and twitter eggs. It’s an obfuscatory and aloof reaction, one that shows particular acumen to online psychological skirmishing. Take away the veneer of irony and you see only a few slimy individuals toying with repugnant ideas that most good artists would give no merit, even as illusory discourse.

Is it right to call out someone by posting private convos? Well, check the gallery events and talks - they were pretty public (albeit small and within purposely obfuscating platforms) call outs to those neon genesis authoritarians. A lighter discourse than “is it ok to punch a nazi?” but no less annoying. Of course the answer is yes. Do you argue the inverse that the alt-right should be given platforms? Do you agree with the BBC giving airtime to UKIP but not the Green Party, who have existed for longer/have more members/more elected MPs/have actually run a fucking area of the country? Logic has associations, and while you can spin them away, we fucking see you. The alt-right would legislate for the structural, hidden bureaucratic violence against non-white/foreign people but it is not OK to punch them? They’d happily punch you. It can be so easy if it doesn’t affect you, or to think it wouldn’t, to think that exposing their bullshit is better. Hindenburg thought Hitler wouldn’t be as evil when he finally was given power, the tories seemed to think appeasing the UKIP types was the best way to keep themselves in power. Fuck m9, punch tories AND nazis if you can get away with it. Yeah, if you can back it up, calling people out on something as basic as nazi sympathies is OK. Why did it take so long to be called out on? The alt-right are super zeitgeisty right now and net art dorks are into that because it can be processed into smug “political” diatribe and gestural academica. Things within the art gallery mechanica are afforded un-anchored critical protection at least until the management are revealed to think the muslim ban is fine.

It’s creepy that artist who have exhibited there previously, such as the fantastic Joey Holder and John Russell, weren’t aware of the dodgy politics. Some probably were, such as the Brad Troemel replica dubiously created by AMC network Deanna Havas. Some, like confused net art bro who makes net art that is a bit fash Daniel Keller coyly sits on the fence, crashing a nice-guy routine who isn’t allowed to be sexist. Sad! Other obsessive high grade opinion-merchants like Daniel Rourke attempt to turn everything into irony, glib spectator drama etc. In our limited capacity of visiting LD50 a couple of times for exhibitions and being involved in an event unrelated to the programming, it never was apparent to us there was batshit mental “eugenics isn’t such a bad idea” mind thematic brewing. We have to get used to being surprised in 2016 and 17, though complicit white men wriggling to force jokes out of “paleoconservatism” or something has stopped being surprising since 2007. 

So all in all, it’s weird that Lucia Diego and by extension her gallery LD50 are so hot on nazi sympathisers or validating bigots. It’s less weird that a number of friends and collaborators gained before this right turn are just enjoying the spectacle as another performative event. Writer and curator Morgan Quaintance has written about the apolitical nature of the post-internet artist flotilla, the retreat into speculative reality depletes the apparatus to draw ethical lines and instead propels the artist/writer/whatever to pursue “gaming” the system instead. The autumn programming should be a public shame in itself, but the convo screenshot blew away clouds of doubt by direct admittance. But many white women still voted for Trump despite the “grab ‘em by the pussy” recording. Such is the dark art of spin. However, beyond LD50, this isn’t the first art gallery or curator with extreme ring wing views, no fucking shit. You’re aware the Zabludowicz Collection was built with arms dealing money, donates money to the tories and donates money to pro-israel lobby groups, right? To quote artist Patrick Goddard:

“Its been happening for some time and unfortunately artists and their work continue to be instrumentalized by ‘philanthropists’ with darker purposes and dirtier-than-usual money.

The Zabludowicz Collection is an artwashing operation designed to legitimate Israel’s systematic refusal of rights to Palestinians. (along with the BICOM lobbying group – also set up and funded by Zabludowicz money)

Zabludowicz’s strategy is part of a global shift to the right, and very much anticipates the US and UK state assault on arts funding, forcing culture increasingly to function as a vehicle of the right. Furthermore Poju Zabludowicz gives significant donations to the conservative party and a select few pro-Israeli Labour candidates. (Ruth Smeeth being a notable recipient of BICOM money – who kicked off the anti-Corbyn claims of anti-Semitism last year)”

The director of ZC doesn’t espouse any political opinion though, just a disturbingly banal desire to be press-shotted with artists and to fly around the world looking at arts. Their programming does not reflect the mechanism that the foundation operates, which apparently complicates the issue for artists enough that any mea culpa is fine. It looks like until some outright admission of fascist tendencies is made from the primary source, everything is up in the air conceptually. Another question is a worrying route into a sort of McCarthyism, where everyone who works with a place of dodgy politics is “besmirched” by association and the trend of the left attacking their own allies is further proof to right-wing nutcases like LD50 that post-internet art is trash. We can assume some people had suspicions of this gallery at the beginning, but no confirmation appeared in the absolute until the alt-right lovefest. Fair enough, net art people are often very weird anyway (which is fine!). Do you think the ZC doesn’t do similar things with Zionist interests, but without a programme of talks and some art to accompany it? Heather Phillipson, in a Nov 2016 interview with Adrian Searle says, and we quote ‘My next work will be furious. Fascism is on my doorstep’. Heather Phillipson has frequently worked with ZC beyond just exhibiting some work there. We really are at a loss to understand this kind of blindspot, how endemic it is among white artists in western cities. But without any provocation of fascist rhetoric it is unfair to start singling out artists and mudslinging - though we welcome all explanations as to how Heather Phillipson can be angry about fascism but be uncritical of an organisation that… ugh, just re-read what Patrick Goddard wrote. Research it, it’s not fucking secret. The mucus membrane between act and operation, is it that hard to see through? Is it really a massive, Trumpian stone wall? Would artists be ready to form a picket line outside LD50 if Richard Spencer was invited to speak? Even more neoliberal art apologists might refute that method of protest. Imagine the local community of Dalston Junction will hate artists in general even more if they notice white supremacist conferencing being held in a gallery. As if gentrification wasn’t enough! Do we all want to be associated with this kind of thing? Jake and Dinos Chapman are big fans of Nick Land and have shown work at LD50. The Chapmans are standard conservative reactionary britart hangover troll fossils. It’s embarrasing.The Guardian Newspaper employs a similar coterie of journalists that soften the dangerous ideologies of May/Trump et al. by zoning in and selectively extrapolating miniature nuggets of “leftism” (such as Trump’s opposition to TTIP) all the while crowing “he’s a monster he’s a monster but….”  and looking at their political games with the detachment of an old cunt with a southwest london mansion who enjoys playing chess on their Gateway 2000 PC, their only brush with anything “liberal” being time spent in a minor theatre company during youth.

If you’re an artist doing some part-time teaching at art schools, tell your students about this! Make sure they don’t enter into the post BA/MA world as apolitical vessels thirsty for a myth-made-real version of ideologically dubious expression, based on a default assumption that artists are sympathetic to labour. If you don’t teach, perhaps consider it a good way to pay for those easyJet flights to European museums or Rat Basel Miami, unless you are too busy arguing about how Adam Curtis is the anti-christ while Theresa May closes our borders to the refugees of wars our state was implicit in funding or operating in. Understand that complications arise when the main financial sponsor of Frieze Art Fair is also the bank of choice for the Trump family. Maybe you avoid the Deutschebank events if you’re exhibiting there, because wouldn’t that compromise your ideology? If you’re in a union, make sure you vote for a union director who isn’t pro-trident. Write to your MP, don’t just screenshot your ‘delete my uber’ account dissertation. It’s OK to criticise your peers, hold them to account for some kind of progressive standard of ethics but piling hate onto an old lefty is not productive when you’re both just trying to unpick capitalist lineage to better understand power and it’s movements. JJ Charlesworth, a writer of ArtReview is a essentially a lobbyist for Tory interests, negging on cultural boycotts or protests against hate-speech! Evidence is in his dodgy slightly-closed-closet-door bigot attitudes, I’m sure lots of people have screenshots of a trans bashing comment or something that betrays a concience. But he might review your shows, has a family, so let him have his tory views in peace, right and don’t forget the afterparty invite. Manick Govinda, an Ayn Rand lovin’ brexiter working in an artists development studio?? What the fuck do you think will happen down the line? Because when they face criticism they complain that their comments receive criticism as a result of the “left” being the “real” threat to “free speech” it should worry you, despite the trenchant desire within your loins to be knighted by their credible notice, or whatever pressure boost your economy-of-prestige fueled trajectory needs for the sake of yr neuroses.

Now LD50 is out of the bag as too right-wing for the art world to swallow without criticism, but people still will fight over how it is bad to post private convos and publicly ‘out’ people even if a few months before they had a fucking anti-semite skyping in. And that will still be spun with tailored words.

Because a lot of us in the London art scene are white and generally not on the breadline of poverty we’re kind of unaffected by LD50s fascism, there is a reluctance to stake out a vocal position because we’re taught to court ambiguity as successful methodology, or something like that. The non-position position, the entrepreneurial cloak, logic mazes eating themselves as the apex form to attitude. The gallery have since changed their trading name to TIVERSE LTD but their prognosis can’t be long-term survival, unless their instagram weirdness really galvanises the turncoats and creeps or finds some very rich David Ike fanboy to invest. Ignoring bad smells is never a great idea, our whole biological purpose of smell to detect invisible malaise and thus act upon removing the harm it can do to our bodies. Not the most high-brow parallel, can we get a point across without retweeting our twitter bot making garbled Bifo and Deleuze references?

What is the fear that forces us to hold back on committing to our views… views that SHOULD by default be progressive, inclusive and reformative? It’s not fucking Serpico, it’s art, but the stakes aren’t wildly different. Beyond art, a place in Dalston has offered those with academic fascist sympathies a place to organise. How is that anything but awful?

[existentialwannabe]

I’m just going to write everything down here because I  can’t write it anywhere else, I  guess it’s not safe.

The world is at its peak worst right now. Whether it’s due to the fact that COVID-19 has brought the absolute worst out of the American government and the American people while the rise of dead black bodies increase, it’s a fucking MESS. I  can’t help but write about this because it just seems that even during a world pandemic there can not be any clarity of human interaction, human communication, and human existence that can just exist on a neutral plane. I  rewind my thoughts back to September of 2019 and think about how abhorrent it was to have to deal with Kiley post Kiley-gate. I will openly admit that the way I  handled the “break” of our relationship was not fair to her because I  did not openly communicate my need to not want to be her friend. I  always kept her at ease by saying “I  need more time” which was just a buffer for the words that I  was afraid to say which were “I  don’t want to be your friend”, “You scare me”, and “You’ve manipulated me to the point where I  don’t feel comfortable looking at you”. It was overwhelming and the heaviness in my chest felt like a 20 pound weight that I consistently carried from Sept. to Dec. of 2019.

 I was overtly zealous in thinking that things could feel “normal” or “better” when she left even especially since I  had personally grown and cleansed myself as much as I  could. But it didn’t get better. The other problems that were gasping for air underneath the depth of what Kiley did resurfaced in a dramatic and suffocating manner. The next demon that I  had to fight in the apartment was Soph. I  always denied the comment that Kiley always made that her and Soph were really more alike than people assumed. Sadly it pains me to give this to her, but she was right. Soph was a less “in your face” version of Kiley. Her actions, her words, and her lack of action showed its face as swiftly as a breeze. MK and I  have a tendency to see issues as something ignorable, which is not a very positive quality for us earth signs. MK ignored the fact that she had to pee in water bottles/cups at night to avoid Soph’s wrath because she knew it would be better for her mental health. I  ignore Soph’s coldness and backhanded compliments as a way to just never leave my room to avoid confrontation. Our ignorance manifested into a mechanism that would later be weaponized in a way that leaves me and MK feeling so extremely tired.

I’m jealous of MK because she was able to escape the apartment and live with her boyfriend in a way that saves her the trigger/emotional drain of 116 Winthrop Road. I’ve decided to quarantine with my mom in order to help her out because she’s in NJ all alone and having to be an essential worker in NYC during this very scary time. MK found Kelly, a subletter and one of my students, who would take her place. Albeit the transference system of Kelly coming into our apartment was NOT healthy because Kelly lied about her partner being with her for a while... things felt very out of control. I  don’t know if I  have the heart to tell Soph that I  primarily left because I  couldn’t deal with having to run into her into apartment, or wait forever to go to the bathroom, or receive passive aggressiveness for trying my best to maintain a certain space... I  really left because I  couldn’t deal with her. I’m still now afraid to go back because I  literally do not want to look at her in the face. I feel horrible for saying that because that’s unkind to say about another human, but it’s how I  feel. 

I  feel like these past two years of just living with a situation of humans that “seemed perfect” has entirely broken me. I  lived with Kiley who claimed to be my best friend but really just used me. Naturally, used most of her very close friends as ways to stabilize herself that no one really consented to. When I  think back to our “friendship”, I  just think about the one time she told me that “I    have the responsibility to fix her when she’s depressed because that’s what a good friend/good person is supposed to do”. I  think about the times that she’s barged into my room and forced me to speak with her at all hours of the night because she knew I  couldn’t lock the door. I  think about how her definition of a friendship was just meant to be a transactional method of taking all of the good energy from others in order to make her feel something. I  constantly grind all of those gears in my head and the worst part about it all is that I  am a master’s psychology student... I “should know how to get all of it out”, but I  really can’t. 

Kiley is someone that keeps living in my head rent free alongside my ex and all of the others in college who gaslit me into thinking I  am a bad person. This quarantine is emphasizing the fact that these unconscious thoughts that I  used to suppress everyday are burning so ferociously inside of me. Quarantine is reminding me that I  really need therapy and that I  really need to grow more into a person. At this point in my life, I  think I’ve done just a phenomenal job pretending that I  have everything together... but I don’t. I’m not a fully grown emotional person who has self integrity and tenacity to face the world and others.

This notion brings me back to Soph. I know that I’m not a full person because she reminds me that I’m giving losing all of my humanity to individuals who make me feel small. She has power over me in a way that she doesn’t deserve. I  see her as a person and I  have my observations. In my brain, I’ve broken her down to a tee. 

Soph is a strong product of her environment. Her parents, who she does not “overtly” like, are capitalists who have shaped her to think, breathe, and really only treasure herself... and her money... and the fact that her work entitles her to think less of others who don”t work as hard. Her parents have such harsh understandings of reality and are trump supporters, but still provide her with an unconditional love that she rejects. This is the most strange quality about her because her parents have given her everything from therapy to full financial support... and that still isn’t enough for her to thank them for flowers, driving hours to give her food, or for being alive. The complexity of this relationship affects her ability to handle others. 

Romantically, she’s really had one “serious” relationship with a boy that cheated on her freshman year of college. From there, she does not know how to handle “intimate” relationships so she subjects herself to just sleeping around and keeping any form of male relationship casual. It’s so interesting to me that she does this BUT lets the men have power over her because she recognizes that she wants more... but with the wrong type of men and for the wrong reasons. She becomes obsessive while also experiencing a deep form of denial that affects her mental capacity to function and emote properly. She even let the last guy that I knew of who she was sleeping with, physically abuse her, and she still slept with him afterwards even though she had a complete mental breakdown.. even though MK and I  had to convince her that, that was domestic abuse and she should escape a situation she still has the privilege to do so... but she still slept with him and doted on him like nothing was a problem.

She is a really bad roommate. She keeps her pans and pots in her room because only she can use them. She has very strong affinity from making sure that every financial transaction is “fair and equal”. Even though she charged MK a $1 once because MK asked for and consumed one of her ginger candies that Soph frequently ate. Soph does not do chores. She barely cleans her own dishes. She has never cleaned any form of the apartment whether it was Linden or Winthrop. She does not take out the trash, buy communal supplies, or remove her goddamn hair from the shower drain. She leaves the toilet paper rolls empty. She lets trash and recycling reach full overflow and have the audacity to say someone should take it out. She uses the bathroom for 2 hours at night to do her routine and pick at her skin which leaves others holding in their bladder or needing to find another way to release or else she gets aggressive. She dismisses you if you acknowledge her if her door’s open and you don’t want to seem unkind when you pass by her room. She makes every conversation about herself or revert back to herself. No one is allowed to have an issue with her or else she is the victim. “Her opinion doesn’t matter and she might as well be quiet” because every time she vocalizes an issue that literally involves her need to change, adapt, or release some of her power/privilege she gets disgustingly defensive. She, at this point, has asked me to lease my room because there's no point of me having a room in the apartment if I’m not there. 

There are so many levels and now that I’m out of the apartment, MK is out of the apartment, and Kiley’s replacement Julia is out of the apartment... it is Soph, Kelly (a stranger to her), and to my fucking surprise Karley (a sublet for Julia who was never mentioned to me) in the space. So rather than handling her issues with being surrounded by foreign personnel who she can’t manipulate or know will submit to her actions, she is now becoming passive aggressive which puts me in MOM mode because Kelly is someone that I’ve known for years and I’m protective. I  know Kelly has made mistakes about not letting anyone know about her boyfriend’s temporary stay, but the way Soph is trying to evacuate her out of the apartment is out of proportion. Soph claims that she doesn’t want to “house a freeloader” until September even though this person comes from a very bad circumstance. She had the audacity to text me that her father was in the same situation and wouldn’t do what she did which PISSED me oFF bro. It will always revolve back to how her or her family are better in circumstances and doing things in a more/different “moral/fair” circumstance. 

At 213.9 miles away, I  have to diffuse fights and have conversations about living situations. It’s ridiculous that if Soph is not accomodate to the highest degree above everyone else, than everyone has to suffer. No distance limit required. Today I  texted her and said that I’m financially good, can handle my shit and that she needs to stop worrying about it forreal. I  can pay for my shit and me not being in the apartment provides less conflict????? BUT I  have to sublease or come back?? No way. I  know she’s struggling with strangers in the house, working from home, the pandemic, and the apparent “debt” that she is going through but I  can not physically fathom how she can still be such a domineering person over an apartment that she does clean, take care of, or respect only because she’s currently the only person there right now with her name on the lease. It’s just unimaginable. As I’m typing this and rewinding the conversations I’m having with Kelly, having with MK, and having with Soph. I’m tired man. I want this pandemic to be over, or more or less have it be august so I  can be free of Soph.. I  really hope she recognizes that we probably won’t have a relationship post quarantine and post this lease because we didn’t even have a stable one when we lived less than 6 feet from each other. It’s sad that I’m going to basically have to “Kiley” her because this person has taken away years from my life and gained them in ways that are abusive. It’s truly unreal for me and on top of not sleeping from the uncertainty of the future and the huge spike of white supremacy with the lives of black people at stake, I  have to have her own my mind as well. I   know I  have the power to control it for me, but I  can’t stop thinking about how unfair she is definitely being from afar to others who really DON’T deserve it. Welp, there's my mess of a thought process. 

#may28th2020 #quarantinethoughtsaboutmylife