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#but as this cannot be taken as a given i will say this:
mrowlai · 2 days
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sick day
character(s): wanderer/scaramouche, wriothesley, childe/tartaglia
summary: you’re sick and they take care of you (can be read as platonic or romantic, possibly ooc wriothesley)
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Wanderer/Scaramouche “I really cannot be sick right now, I have things to do the next few days and my entire body hurts,” you groaned.
“Stop complaining.” Wanderer rested a warm towel on your forehead. “Or it’ll just get worse.”
You had fallen ill after a bad rainstorm caught you defenseless while running errands in the forests of Sumeru. Chilled to the bone, you had returned home and fell asleep, forgetting all about how Wanderer was set to come over that afternoon.
Thankfully, his tsundere act didn’t prevent him from helping you out with your cold.
You let out a violent sneeze that tossed the compress back towards him. “Sorry,” you grumbled, turning towards him.
“Use a tissue next time, ew,” were the kind words that came out of his mouth. “Or at least warn me.”
“It’s not like I can predict some of these things, and you don’t have to be an ass about it.”
“I also don’t have to help you, but here I am,” he huffed, moving to place the towel on your head again. “I’ll go grab a bucket soon, just in case you throw up.”
“I doubt I’m that sick,” you said.
“Good, because that’s the last thing I want to clean up.”
“Just shut it and let me rest.” You closed your eyes and crossed your arms over your chest. Surprisingly, he followed your request and let you doze off, staying by your side the whole time.
Wriothesley You made your way up to his office in the fortress, sniffling and coughing the whole time.
“Wrio, I think I’m sick.”
“I’d say that’s accurate. So why are you here and not resting?”
“I wanted to see you. Plus it’s a just a cold, I’ll live.”
Wriothesley chuckled. “You really should be in bed at the infirmary if you’re sick. At least while you’re here, have some tea with honey for me.” He pulled a chair over opposite his desk and motioned for you to sit down while he prepared the tea. He, of course, made himself a cup as well.
“Thank you,” you said hoarsely before you blew on the steaming liquid. Once you felt it was cool enough to drink you took a small sip. Instantly you felt your throat soothed as the sweet honey made its way down.
“Has anyone checked your temperature? Sigewinne?” Wriothesley took a sip of his own tea.
“No, not yet. I felt like complaining to you first.” You smiled.
He let out another laugh. “That’s very kind of you, but we really should get you to the infirmary to make sure it’s nothing major.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s just a head cold, though,” you said. “It’ll probably be gone in a couple of days.”
“How about we finish this tea and head down. If you’re right I’ll let it go, but if you’re wrong you have to rest on the doctors orders.”
“Deal.” You smiled behind your cup.
Childe/Tartaglia "You're sick."
"No I'm not."
Childe slowly put a hand to your forehead and hummed. "You have a fever. Did you dress warmly like I told you to?"
You looked to the ground as your cheeks grew hot with shame. "N-no."
He had taken you on a trip from Liyue to Snezhnaya after you expressed interest in experiencing the culture there. Despite given his clear warnings of the cold, you had only packed a thick jacket and crocheted scarf to keep you warm.
Upon seeing you, Childe let you borrow his fluffy hooded coat and handed you a spare pair of mittens he kept on him. They were a little small since he carried them around to help out his siblings, but you were grateful nonetheless.
Soon enough, he had you in his spare bedroom surrounded by blankets. A bowl of chicken broth with noodles sat on the nightstand next to you. You assumed he had a lot of experience taking care of sick people due to how big his family was. That many kids in one household was bound to spread the flu like wildfire if one caught it.
"After you eat, I need you to get some rest, okay?" Childe said it as more of a light demand than a suggestion. "Tourism can wait, and in the meantime I'll see if I can find some warmer clothes for you to wear in the meantime. What was your favorite color again?"
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a/n: this turned out a bit longer than i had planned but i hope you enjoyed it! if you’re sick while reading this i hope you feel better soon.
© mrowlai
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risuola · 2 hours
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F. READER X SUKUNA RYOMEN // After Sukuna finally got a human body, his power was taken away and sealed within you.
cw: Sukuna is separated from Yuji and has his own body (not the heian form tho!), smut, mentions of hurt and violence, some blood and execution mentioned, reader discretion is advised — 7,3k words
a/n: ok so i've been meaning to finish this wip for so long and as i opened the file i realized i don't like the way it's written and i rewrote all 11 pages in word and now it's hopefully finished so... enjoy the usual — hurt, comfort, angst-fluff dynamics and emotional constipation ♡
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“What do you want, curse?”
A long, deep sigh escaped your lungs as you reached for a towel to dry your body off. As you stepped out of a shower, last thing you expected to see was the King of Curses himself leaning nonchalantly against the tiled wall of your bathroom, eyeing you with the wicked smile on his face. How on brand. You didn’t expect him but saying that his sudden presence surprised you would be an overstatement. You learned to expect him anytime.
“Don’t ask silly questions,” he scoffed, narrowing his eyes that in the sharp lights of your ceiling lamp glistened in blood-red. All four of them were fixed on your damp frame, on your exhausted body. It wasn’t the best day to mess with him. Not that any other day was better to deal with the most cursed curse of all curses that ever existed — this one though was particularly inconvenient.
It wasn’t longer than maybe an hour since you got home, returning from a mission that Gojo had given you, entrusting your power to rid the world of a group of curses. They were exceptionally violent, first to special grade with no doubt and you did, in fact, manage to exorcise them all, but not without your body getting painfully battered.
“You know I cannot grant your wish, don’t you? I wouldn’t give you your powers even if the world was on fire and you were the last available option to save it.”
He scoffed, again, and smirked like the pure evil that he is. You approached slowly, reaching for the robe hanging beside him, hopeful to get this conversation over sooner rather than later, but before your fingers even had a chance of grasping the soft, silky fabric of the gown, Sukuna snatched your wrist. His long, calloused fingers wrapped tightly around your forearm and he twisted it, tugging and pulling, until your back hit the wall.
Trapped between the cold tiles and his muscular frame, you winced at the sudden wave of pain that struck your body. Your reaction time lacked as in matter of split seconds both of your wrists were pinned above your head, bound by only one of his large hands and you were helpless. So devastatingly, utterly helpless against the sheer force in front of you. Your bones were fragile as twigs in his iron grip, so easy to bend and break under the pressure of the power he held and you knew it from practice that he could and he would break them if he wished to do so.
“That little mouth of yours is gonna get you in big trouble one day,” he said, a sound as low as a purr, and a grin spread across his face, as he lowered his head enough to meet your eyes. His gaze, tinged with crimson and madness, pierced your soul and if you didn’t know better, you’d say your prayers right now because the face in front of you was a face of slow and cruel death.
“I bet I can manage the trouble that is you. I appreciate the care,” you were calm, sounded calm, despite the rushing rumble of your heart against the ribcage in your chest. You were nonchalant, ignorant even, most likely very naïve and dumb, but you knew that what would be a certain demise to anyone else, for you it just wasn’t.
Born into a family of ordinary people, you were different. Gifted with the sight that allowed you to notice what was invisible to the eyes of others — the spirits. Curses. The ability formed your life, led you onto a path which eventually crossed with the man you only heard legends about. Satoru Gojo had taken you under his wing, showed you the world of jujutsu and allowed you to be yourself when everyone else wanted you to just act normal. But you were a special one. You were gifted, no, you were heavily and deeply tainted with something you couldn’t understand. Something even he couldn’t understand. There was no rank for you. No label that could be tied to your name. You were just different, with the exceptional physical fitness and peculiar, precise control over the cursed energy, you easily passed all of the tests and challenges. But your powers are dark. They are heavy, suffocating, they made other people fear you despite the kindness that showed through your warm personality.  
“I hate it when you talk down to me,” Sukuna growled. His low voice died down when he slowly pressed his lips to yours, greedily taking your breath away as his hand swiftly removed the towel from your body. A shiver ran down your spine, the sudden contact with the cold ceramics behind you made you jolt forward, involuntarily pressing your body against the wall of muscle. Ryomen’s clothed torso provided more comfort than the bone-chilling tiles. You felt him smirk against your mouth.
When Sukuna separated from Itadori’s body, materializing in his own form and threatening the entire universe with his existence and unsatiable thirst for blood and destruction, Satoru, along with some other people that you didn’t know, acted immediately. It was a sacrifice to pick you for the new vessel, it was a decision made in a rush and you’d have to think twice before agreeing to it again if you ever had a chance. Your technique allowed you to store someone else’s cursed energy so it was an easy choice for everyone involved.
The King of Curses got stripped of most of his power when he was barely awakened in his own body, and said power was then transferred to yours. Sealed inside your fragile human frame, nearly destroying you from inside out with the initial shock wave. Since that day you had to learn and accept to live with constant pain, the never-ending suffering, because locking away Sukuna’s evil was much more important than your well-being.
You were told that it’s different than what Itadori was to the king. The curse created a space for itself inside Yuji’s soul, keeping his own powers contained to only himself and you — you had his cursed energy constantly, unstoppably racing through your body, poisoning your veins with every pump of your heart and it hurt. It burned like a hellfire was spreading throughout your circulatory system and since that day, your life had become a curse itself. Your sleep has gotten worse, you were tired and for the first few weeks you were barely able to move. It felt like the cells were tearing themselves apart inside you, like everything was in a state of never-ending volcanic eruption. It was agonizing, torturous. You felt like dying. Every day. Luckily, Ieiri was able to develop a medicine that taken every day, calmed everything down enough to make it bearable.  
You got used to it, as the year passed by, but what you also had to get used to, was the owner. Ryomen Sukuna visited you so often that he partially lived in your apartment, patiently torturing you with his presence until you gave him what he was rightfully entitled to. He didn’t even consider covering a part of your rent, asshole. He couldn’t kill you — your death would take all of his powers down to your grave with you — but it didn’t stop him from trying his luck with everything that wasn’t enough to take your life.
You remember the first attempts, the first showcases of his annoyance. It was a shame, it was pathetic to Sukuna and he felt humiliated to get caught in such a simple trick, to allow himself to not have his guard up from the very first breath he took once he separated from the brat. All of that pent up anger, he threw on you and the many trials of violence and brutality had taught him that your tolerance for pain was high. And you fought back. Over time, and after many weeks you spent inside the hospital bed underneath the precise care of Shoko, Sukuna had realized that no amount of beating and torture will force you into obedience — as annoying as the realization was — so he changed his ways and switched to haunting you. Taunting you with his constant presence. Able to enter your apartment at any given moment, the curse made sure you were never too comfortable in your own home. You grew to live with that too.
“Hurts?” Sukuna grinned, watching the wince that twisted your otherwise attractive features the very moment his fingers dug into your side. With sadistic pleasure he studied the way your brows creased and your eyes fell shut. The rumble of your heart was evident in the silence of the bathroom and even more evident were the very palpable fractures of your ribs underneath his palms. “Want me to stop?” He mused, griping the injury tighter and the cruel wave of pain almost knocked the air out of your lungs.
“You are charming as always, curse,” you scoffed, forcing some oxygen into your system and cussing yourself internally for showing the pain, for giving him the clearest indication of your weakened state. For giving him something to use against you. “It hurts, yes. I’ve had a rough day, I’d like to rest.”
“Then I will take you to bed,” he let go of both your hands and ribs, scooping you up and carrying you towards the bedroom. Your bare body seemed tiny against the tall, muscular built of him. Too fragile to be so stubborn and blame it on said fragility, but Sukuna out of habit put you down onto the plush sheets with gentleness so uncharacteristic of him.
“You know I can’t give you what you want,” you looked at him, your gaze portraying the tiniest sliver of hope that finally he’ll understand and give up, but giving up wasn’t a phrase present in king’s vocabulary. He’d rather die than let go and both of you knew it. “I’m sure you can tell I’m exhausted, but if you make me, I will fight.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, woman,” he grinned, allowing his two pairs of eyes to run down your naked body, silently admiring the petite frame that was capable of holding all of his strength. “I wouldn’t force you to fight when you’re already so beaten. What do you think I am, a monster?”
“Not a monster. You’re a curse, which is worse.” A shrug of your shoulders sent a jolt of pain throughout your body and it took everything from you to not wince in front of him again. You reached for a t-shirt you use to sleep in — a garment stolen from Itadori, big enough to almost be a dress, comfortable cotton that wrapped you with softness and warmth. Sukuna knows your body. He’s seen it naked, touched and tasted it many times and the piercing gaze of all four of his eyes on your skin was something you grew to accept, but you wanted to get dressed anyway. Sukuna was never a gentle lover and your broken ribcage wouldn’t take his roughness too well.
"It sounds so lovely in your mouth," he chuckled, taking the blouse from your hands and tossing it carelessly away. "Who said you can dress up?"
"Who said you can give me orders?"
"Am I not the king?"
"Of curses, yes. I'm not a curse, your jurisdiction does not apply to me."
“Gods, you need to shut up.”
There was only one thing Sukuna grew to enjoy a sliver bit more than torturing you and that was having sex — though he dismayed the thought of such primal pleasures taking over his urges. It felt foreign at first, as if his own body tried to betray him by showing interest in a simple, unworthy human just as you, but he was able to reason it within his own, conflicted mind. Intimacy created a leak. A leak of his own power seeping through you, an unknown weakening of your defenses and Sukuna was able to, quite literally, fuck his powers out of you, absorb it back into his own form, feel more like himself for just a little moment.
Other thing is — and he hated it the most — that he genuinely enjoyed the time in bed with you. It was pleasurable, too pleasurable almost and Ryomen actively dismissed the idea of you stripping him off his cold judgement, the clarity of his thoughts, but he loved it also. Every soft whimper and whisper of his name that ever slipped through your lips made his ego grow, made him want more and although he hated the seal, he admired the shell you wore around your soul and if there was ever anyone he wished to be intimate with, it was you. You held his power in the body he was able to touch, to taste, to have, and over time Sukuna grew to respect it, in his own twisted way. Over hundreds of years he’s been around, he had seen people brave — or stupid — enough to try and contain his power, to ingest one of the cursed objects his soul was fragmented into and then, he watched them die in pain and suffering just from a small fraction of it. You were able to hold it, agony or not.
You, on the other hand, had no clue what exactly was causing the seal to leak, you couldn’t tell why was it happening when he was inside you and not when he was trying to beat the life out of you. Why breaking your bones never let a drop of his energy to slip from under your control and the intimacy made you lose it just like that? You couldn’t tell, but just the fact that Sukuna’s able to regain any amount of his legacy through intercourse should be enough of a reason to never, ever let him touch you, but oh well. Elders didn’t like you anyway and the cursed energy released was so insignificant it wouldn’t really cause much trouble — that’s at least how you reasoned with yourself. Sometimes you wondered if the small boost was even worth all the trouble for the king, but it wasn’t hard to notice he was clearly enjoying just being close to you.
“Oh, do I?” You questioned him; dared, and he took you on a challenge, pressing his lips to yours. You whimpered and pressed your open palms to his clothed chest when he climbed on top of you, hovering above your much smaller frame and allowing his shadow and evil aura to swallow you and you flinched. Your senses, however trained, were always on high alert when he was so close. It was reflexive, a first response that screamed, begged, to get away from him, to run and don’t look back but you had to learn pushing it down. It’s been only few weeks since you managed to fix and patch up the hole his fist once made in one of your walls and putting up a fight right now would certainly damage your apartment yet again. Not to speak about yourself.
“You never know when to shut up,” he purred against your lips and moved, following the edges of your jawline and down your neck, spreading wet bites and marks along your delicate skin there.
“Sukuna, please, not today,” you whimpered, pleading and gasping just slightly, feeling his long, calloused fingers already finding their place between your thighs, teasing the awaiting bud of joy and pleasure that, unlike you, was very excited for the events unraveling.
“Why not?” He asked, letting go the sensitive skin right above your pulse and admiring the reddish, swollen patch he left there. “You’re so wet, I cannot ignore it.” You could feel his grin against your shoulder, hear it in the mocking yet proud tone of his voice because he was proud of himself. He knew how to push your buttons, which ones to push first and how to navigate his lips and fingers across your curves and hollows to make the most out of it because truth is, ever since he got his own human-like body, he was able to appreciate physical pleasures that before that, he couldn’t care less about. “Aren’t you ashamed? A sorcerer, spreading your legs for the king of curses? Moaning my name instead of spells, digging your nails into my skin instead of knives?”
“Aren’t you ashamed? The King of Curses himself, getting so hard and worked up for a simple human?” You replied with a mock underlying in your tone and he laughed.
“Didn’t I already tell you to shut up?”
“You did,” you confirmed, nodding and pulling his blouse up, forcing him to undress and he complied. His covered in black markings skin, stretched over a strong musculature never failed to make you gasp in awe. Sukuna is an attractive man, slightly reminiscing you of Itadori due to him being the last of his hosts, but also completely different. The aura is different, the height and body shape. There’s nothing of Yuji’s kindhearted, warm nature — Ryomen is a menace. His eyes are narrowed, knowing, proud. He’s arrogant, he’s full of himself, he’s spiteful and uncaring and sometimes you wondered how he managed to coexist with the society for a year now, with his temper so cold and obnoxious.
“So behave,” he smirked, pushing your knees apart and slipping two of his thick fingers inside you. He worked them easily through the slick, warm entrance and stretched you with slow movements. A brief attempt of foreplay, careless towards the discomfort his hands managed to cause you, but he loved it — he loved to feel how wet you could get for him, he loved to see you all worked up, blushed and flushed, squirming underneath his very touch. “Behave or it’ll hurt more than necessary.”
“It’s going to hurt anyway, there’s no way around it,” you breathed out, your tone quite blank as you tried to brace yourself to feel every broken bone in your ribcage. Truth is that breathing was causing you problems and you were actively pushing the petrifying thought of rough sex deep down your thoughts. “I’m not good at behaving.”
“Hard to disagree,” the curse chuckled, running the tip of his tongue along the length of your neck and it took him a second to replace his soaked-up digits with his rock-hard member. Low, animalistic and gravelly purr escaped his throat, as his length got into the tight embrace of muscles inside you. A velvety warmth mixed with sharp, stinging feeling of your nails digging into the skin of his back made his mind go blank for a moment. You run your fingers across his body, adding new marks to the constellation of his own and he took in the way your breath hitched in your chest, the soft thud of your heart that he felt underneath his lips as he kissed your neck, nipping and sucking spots onto the otherwise clean surface. Hot waves of euphoria rushed through him, adrenaline pumped inside his veins and were it not for your injuries, he would be pounding into you relentlessly by now, pushing you above and beyond your limits, mercilessly taking your breath away time after time, watching your eyes roll to the back of your head and basking in the exhilarating feeling of you taking him in. If not for the bones that he so clearly can feel beneath his fingertips, the fractures sharp against your skin over your ribcage, he would be relentlessly rushing towards orgasm and ecstasy. This time, he refrained. This time, he decided to be curious, to see how the softness you always tell him about tastes on his own tongue.
Sukuna’s movements were slow, odd but deep and heavy. Every nerve, every sensitive spot in your entire body was hit and abused again and again and again. His lips kept gluing themselves to your mouth, your neck, shoulders. He was kissing your chest, nipping at your skin, making you heave, and moan, and whimper. He was taking you all in, observing, listening, savoring and it didn’t take long for the heat to pool below your stomach. A coil of tight pleasure, a knot begging to snap open and undo itself. The man was all over you, his hips worked in a rhythmical melody that’s got you lose your focus, your train of thoughts. It cleared your mind — a blank space that now was filled only with him and the intense, addicting way his hips moved.
You trembled.
Your thighs were shaking, your breath cut short.
You’ve had your fair share of intercourses with the King of Curses — each of them pleasurable in its own way. He has his ways of exhausting you, of pushing your limits, overstimulating you. He experimented, dominated and forced you into submission one way or another. Sukuna is no stranger to pain and violence and throughout the year you’ve got to know all colors of his palette but nothing, not once, resembled the tenderness he showed you this time.
“Suku–ahh—” you panted, cried out, gripping his biceps tightly.
“That’s right, let it out,” he grinned, demanded and moved his hips with more precision, just a little more force to hit that one spot he knew does it for you and it stole a breath from you. Your back arched, despite the broken bones, your head went blank as the groundbreaking wave of pleasure washed over you. The tight ring of muscles kept squeezing and contracting and Sukuna groaned along with you. He was leaking, his balls heavy and aching for release that he forcefully postponed, greedy to take more from you before he gives you any of his.
He pulled out, almost completely — a false promise of a breather — and then pushed back, fully, completely. His body moves more frantically, more rushed and yet, the compassion rushed in his veins, stripping the thrusts off their usual violence.
Odd. Addicting.
The first bliss was soon followed by two more and your third climax was his first. He became sloppier, hurried as he chased the sweet, sweet release and you tangled your fingers into his soft, blush-colored hair pulling him in and kissing his breath away. You couldn’t focus and nether could he. Nothing but the immense pleasure of the act, nothing before and nothing after, just here and now. Your body and his, in your apartment, in your bed. And when he came, he drew blood from your lower lip, catching it between his sharp fangs.
You let out a shaky breath, way more tired than before and yet, you smiled softly when Sukuna collapsed onto the bed beside you — the last bits of reason that made him shift his body to the side so that he wouldn’t put his weight on top of your fragile frame. He had this infuriating and oddly attractive smirk plastered onto his face and you knew he’s listening — to your calming breath and the harsh thuds of your heartbeat rumbling inside your chest.
Sukuna felt content. Utterly and completely satisfied and what’s got him surprised, he also felt his cells swell with power. The amount that leaked, due to unknown reasons, was incomparable to what he’s ever been able to absorb before. He couldn’t tell if it was your exhaustion, the wounds and damage your body was covered with or just the way he took you this time, but he knew for a fact that there was more. He also noticed that this time, unlike any other, he was completely abandoning the idea of cursed energy. It’s as if it entered his body on its own, without him actively taking it in, all while he was completely lost in the moments of pleasure, lost in you.
A grin on his face only got bigger, the feeling of might overwhelming him for a moment. He wanted to laugh, to scream, to destroy and kill. To feel like his old, superior self, to force his way through other people’s suffering. It felt ecstatic, to have a part of himself back, to feel the strength surging through him and—
—that’s until he looked at you again and he realized there was a scent of blood in the air. A metallic hint of something that was very wrong with you, something that he never thought he would miss since he loved to be surrounded by blood. But you were quiet about it. Breathing fast, with a hand pressed to your side and your eyebrows furrowed — a clear giveaway of the pain that slowly returned to you once the euphoric aftershocks wore off.
“You’re bleeding, huh?” He more so stated than asked, gathering himself up and gently, carefully slipping one of his arms underneath your knees and the other around your back. Once he lifted your worn off body, not without a quiet wince slipping from your mouth, the red, vibrant stain revealed itself from where you were resting. “That wound was there before, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was,” you replied, weakly, leaning the side of your head towards his flexing bicep and clenching your fingers around your fractured mid-section.
The shower, hot and steamy, wasn’t the most pleasant of all, but it did wonders to wash away the sticky residues from your thighs and the blood and sweat that mixed atop of your skin. Sukuna’s large hand pressed itself onto the wound, forcing it to stop bleeding — trying, at least.
“Why didn’t you heal it?”
“I didn’t have enough power to do so. I just barely managed to close it, and—” You trailed off, feeling dizzy. It was getting to you, ridding you of basic abilities to communicate and the king caught up immediately.
Water got turned off and he dried you quickly, superficially. You felt the towel being run over your limbs and pressed around your torso where the most damage was. Then he wrapped a bandage around you, tight and precise, hopeful to get the bleeding in control before he took you back under the sheets — with clean underwear on and after he flash-changed the sheets into clean ones.
Your battery was so low, you felt like you’re gonna pass out any moment.
“It was amazing,” you told him, once his weight dented the mattress and his body heat reached your cold skin. Usually, you wouldn’t feed into his ego, it was already way too big and swollen, but you figured he deserved to hear a praise after he restrained himself from fucking you to death.
“Rest,” he ordered, harsh and dry but he couldn’t hide the little smirk that tugged on the corner of his mouth. He acted like he didn’t care of what you just said, but he did, and he’ll remember it.
With hopes that sleep will solve your health issues, Sukuna watched as you drifted away and with deep dismay he noticed that the white bandages that hug your torso were slowly and steadily turning red. Your face was in a constant frown, you were visibly in pain and getting feverish, if he wasn’t mistaken, and he cursed his own self for caring about such things. You were a strong woman — despite all of his insults and cruel words he had told you during the past year — and he had never, not once, saw you in such a pathetic, vulnerable state but then, maybe if he stayed with you more often instead of leaving the moment he was done fucking his powers out of you, he would know better. Even so, you never complained and Sukuna isn’t stupid, he knows how much trouble his cursed energy causes you, how much pain and everyday agony you have to push through and yet, he never heard you whine about it.
King’s hands moved on their own, and when they touched your cold body, the healing process began. He watched the dark bruise around your ribcage fade into nothing and observed how the fractured bones underneath the skin moved and shifted into their original places. The blood stopped soaking the bandages and once rid of them, Ryomen watched how your skin knitted back together, leaving nothing but a pale, pinkish scar. Every last bit of his power he put into the reverse cursed technique to repair as much damage as he could. Then, with his arm around your waist, he fell asleep next to you.
* * *
Waking up to a man in your bed wasn’t exactly something you’re used to — even if said man is Ryomen Sukuna who’s an often guest between your sheets. He never stays because he never cares enough to stay, not to mention staying in a tight embrace. You found yourself snuggled close to his side, your head resting on his muscular chest while his arm was wrapped around you, making sure you’re not going anywhere. His hand was resting exactly where the pain should be and with shock you realized there’s nothing — no hurt, no bandages that you have a dull memory of being wrapped in.
You didn’t heal yourself. You were too tired.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sukuna’s voice stopped you, when you made an attempt to pull yourself away from him. He sounded lower than usual, raspier and unsettlingly not evil.
“Why are you still here?” You asked, running your hand over the bumps of muscles on his abdomen. “I’m so confused. I’m not togging to complaint though.”
“You’d try, silly woman,” he grunted, amused and squeezed your side more securely. “What the hell did you do to me, huh?”
“I don’t know, but I appreciate the healing,” you teased.
“Don’t ever talk about it.”
Laughing, you forced a groan of annoyance out of him — the kind of groan that let you know you're treading on thin ice and one thoughtless move could break it, one word not thought through enough could make you fall into the pit of cold and ice.
"What, you want me to forget that the King of Curses used his hard-earned power to heal a mere sorcerer? Not a chance."
"If that mere sorcerer bleeds to death, my power will be gone as well. I had a reason for it."
"If you say so, Sukuna," still amused, you pulled away from his embrace and got up from the bed, nearly dodging a slap he aimed at your ass.
That morning, you had breakfast with the King of Curses, bringing this wonderful adventure with him to an unexpected end. Afterwards, he kissed your breath away and left you confused as ever.
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Several weeks had passed until Ryomen once again entered your field of view. Unfortunate.
You had a day off, enjoying it in a café with your friends, seeping carelessly on a latte with the almond milk and a dash of honey. It was a beautiful day, warm too, and you thought nothing would mess this up but life proved you wrong when the curse stormed in, steaming with rage and madness and — call it intuition — it was a dead giveaway of why he showed up.
“Such a great day, huhhh–“ you wailed quietly, lifting your cup from the table before his fist broke the wood in half. It wasn’t hard to notice how absolutely furious he was and it made you both curious and alarmed.
“Give. Me. Something.” The man growled lowly, frustrated and outraged and you couldn’t recall any time you ever saw him that infuriated.
“I can’t, you kno–“ you tried to tell him, but before you even got the full sentence out, he already had his fingers wrapped around your neck. A sharp sound of glass shattering accompanied the quiet yelp you let out as he yanked you up and slammed your back onto the nearest wall. You felt your feet losing their contact with the ground.
“Give me something.” He repeated, his voice so low and menacing that it sent shivers down your spine. If felt as if you were speaking with death. He was so close, you felt his uneven breath on your face, the crimson of his eyes seemed to glow. “Give me something or I’ll fuck you right here and now to get it.”
The rage in his eyes, the absolute storm of bloodlust, you wondered what has gotten him so worked up. King of Curses had a short temper, yes. He was often annoyed, angry, of course, but such fury wasn’t typical to his character and you knew that if you refuse right now, he will surely go through with the threat he made and you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. You’ll just get hurt.
“Put me down,” you tried, speaking calmly and wrapping your fingers around his forearm, hoping to give him a hint before your windpipe was fully crushed. Your heart was racing inside your chest, you heard the pulse in your ears, felt it in your head and neck. Fear wasn’t the most familiar feeling for you — you’ve grown accustomed to Sukuna’s violence, his tantrums and threats, his forceful ways of getting what he wanted and you also got to know him enough to know this kind of rage wasn’t caused by someone stepping on his toe or taking the last package of his favorite snack. This wasn’t caused by someone looking at him from the wrong angle. This was pure. Primal. “What happened?”
“Give me my power,” he said again, terrifyingly calm and he lowered you down so that your feet reached the floor again, but instead of letting go of your throat, he squeezed it even tighter, pressing his entire body against you. “I’m asking for the last time.”
Everyone present in the café — those who didn’t turn tail the second Sukuna raged inside — were too stunned to react, too petrified to intervene and you couldn’t blame them. The King of Curses, even stripped of most of his cursed energy, was still a threat not to be ignored. Still a menace, a mischievous demonic creature feared by curses, sorcerers and now also regular people that had a misfortune to meet him. The very sound of his name made all of them tremble in terror. You didn’t expect anyone to help you.
“I can’t breathe,” you struggled the words out, whispering on top of the very limited air that flew barely between your upper and lower parts of the respiratory systems. Sukuna growled but loosened the death grip he had on your neck, allowing the oxygen once again into your lungs. Then, you made a mistake. Then, you decided to trust him. “I hope you remember that I will be executed for this. Make it worth it.”
* * *
Later that day, deep into the night you woke up to a sudden slam of the doors. The very familiar, dark aura filled in your otherwise calm apartment and it took no effort to realize who just invaded your space. There were only two people brave enough to enter your home so recklessly and it wasn’t hard to tell them apart.
“Stay in bed,” Sukuna said once you pulled yourself up from the pillows and the mattress and he headed straight into your bathroom. “I need to wash up.”
You exhaled and lay back down, taking in the soft, monotone sound of the shower. You couldn’t tell why he was there, why did he come to your place and act like he owns it but frankly, you couldn’t care less right now about how he behaved. It somehow put you at ease that he decided to show up after what happened before. After what led you to face consequences you wished you wouldn’t have to face.
Few slurs broke up the hushed hum of water and soon it became quiet. Ryomen showed up in your bedroom just few moments after — partially dried, fully naked, with the black markings that adorned his pale skin on full display. Your eyes run down his silhouette, taking in the view no one else had a chance to experience and you let out an exhale. The man ruffled his hair with a towel, an attempt of making it less dripping, and casually slipped under the covers next to you, as if it was his place all along. You spared him the comments about how comfortable he had suddenly become within the confines of your apartment and waited patiently to hear whatever he had to say.
“There was a special curse user earlier,” he began nonchalantly, as he settled against the pillows, supporting his head with both of his arms crossed below it. “He was after you, wanted to suck out everything you have sealed inside.”
“I heard.”
“He wanted to, to quote him, fuck you dry of my power, kill you and make me watch as he became me. That was the plan, to take away the title of king.”
“So, it was about your reputation?” You questioned, letting out a deep sigh and turned away from him. He was quiet for a moment, his eyes piercing a hole through your back.
“Do you think I need to worry about my reputation?” Sukuna growled annoyed and you hummed softly, neither confirming nor denying.
“I guess not.”
You were tired. Exhausted. That was supposed to be your day off, your time to rest and reset but what it turned out to be, was just a disaster. You spent hours arguing with elders of Jujutsu community, trying over and over again to protect yourself, to defend your own life against the accusations that were being thrown at you from every angle and even Gojo couldn’t do much after you willingly released Sukuna’s power from the seal within you. It was bound to happen, you thought you were ready for it ever since it was mentioned for the first time. You were scheduled for execution as it seemed to be safer for the world to kill you, and king’s powers along, than to spare your life and risk it getting out of you, but Satoru then intervened, forcing the date to be postponed. You were high in ranks and he swore you’re capable of keeping the force safe and you did just that for the last twelve months. That’s until you decided to break all the rules and bend to Sukuna’s will.
It wasn’t just that. The cursed user revealed a way to loosen up the lock that held the danger away from the outside world, that he made it known that intimacy was a way to go, your future was decided already. With the knowledge out and about, the elders came to realization that in time there will be more curses or curse users that will come to you to get a taste of that sweet, sweet power and if they won’t do it, Sukuna will. Telling them that the amounts are insignificant didn’t help your case either — those pricks focused more on how you know that rather than what that meant. A diseaster.
“Now what’s wrong, huh? I didn’t kill anybody.”
King threw an arm around your waist, turning his body towards you and supporting his hand on his elbow, to see you better. He pulled you into his chest, as if he wished to hide you completely inside his embrace, to protect you from whatever was weighing on your mind and you’d be very surprised if not for the turmoil now raging inside your head.
“My execution has been decided,” you spat out quietly and felt how every muscle in Sukuna’s body tensed significantly. “It’s scheduled for tomorrow night.”
“What execution? I didn’t kill anyone. I got rid of a fucking curse user. I even saved a little brat. Unintentionally, but still.”
“I know, Sukuna, and I am grateful. I really am, but–“
“But what?”
“They found out that sex creates an opening and it just got worse and worse from that moment. They wouldn’t listen and what could I even say to make it sound better. They already figured out that I’m sleeping with you which is enough of a reason to kill me.”
“And what did the jerk in the blindfold say?”
“There’s not much he can do at this point,” you sighed, mindlessly smoothing little circles over the hand that was keeping you close. “From what I know, Gojo stayed in Jujutsu high to discuss it further, but yeah… it’s tough.”
"Should I talk to them?"
"I'm not sure if you insulting or threatening them, could help in any way."
"So what, you expect me to agree to your death?"
"I've thought about it," you said quietly. "God, I'm naive, but I think I'll give you your power back before they execute me. I just hope you don't burn the world to ashes."
"Y/n, for fuck's sake, screw that power. I want you to live. I acted before because that bastard wanted to hurt you. I don't care about my reputation; I don't need to. Sure, it pisses me off that I was robbed of my energy," he babbled, rushing his words. You knew that he wasn't the best at explaining emotions and that he would rather die than admit that he cared for someone. "I need you alive."
"Did the King of Curses perhaps fell..."
"Don't push it," he snapped and you chuckled.
"You two are soooo cute."
Gojo’s voice cut through the tense atmosphere, as he materialized out of nowhere, nearly stopping your heart in the process. Last thing you expected was having him witness you in bed, with your back pressed to the very naked Sukuna and you should’ve seeing that coming because you knew Satoru will step by once he’s done negotiating. While you were shocked, the curse didn’t even flinch. “Oh, am I interrupting something?”
"Satoru...", you lifted yourself up on one of your elbow. "Why are you here?"
"I come with good news," a grin spread across Gojo's face. "You will not be executed tomorrow. They took into consideration the fact that Sukuna helped a child and no one was hurt. Well, I forced them to consider it."
"It was an accident," Ryomen muttered in his own defense, but you glared at him, clearly ordering him to shut up. Oddly enough, this time he complied with no remarks.
"Happy little accidents, as they call it," Satoru giggled and spread his arms. "You're safe. Don't mess around too much for a while though. I'm talking to the curse."
Sukuna rolled his eyes, all four, expressing the particular inconvenience of the request, but you knew he'd tone himself down for as long as necessary.
"I can't believe you convinced them for the second time," you fell back into the pillow, relieved.
"What can I say, I have a strong personal charm," Satoru bowed theatrically. "So, are you two together or do you just fuck?"
"We can discuss that some other time, right?"
"Oh yeah, right. Stay safe, kids!" saying that, Gojo disappeared and none of you even made an attempt to address how he called the thousand years old king a kid.
You let out a deep breath — the one you held for god knows how long — and felt the stress finally taking its toll on you. An exhaustion, sleepiness, anxiety – all of those came crawling at you at once.
"You're so tensed up," Sukuna purred, placing a small kiss on the side of your neck and he wouldn’t say it, but you could tell from the way his body felt against yours, that the tension left him as well. "You can relax now."
"Right," you muttered, sighing and with the encouragement of his hand, you turned to his face and immediately met his lips. He kissed you like a starved man, with a hand on the back of your neck. Murmuring, you surrendered to his touch, allowing yourself to get lost in the feeling of his mouth, to forget about the cruel and cold world around you and to indulge in whatever that was that you had with Sukuna. “We can relax now.”
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fandomfluffandfuck · 23 hours
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It’s been a bit since I wrote about feral!Bucky but I genuinely cannot put into words how much Steve (and me) loves him
Bucky now associates physical touch with pain, with torture. He hides from visitors, scampers away from touch, and never lets anyone get close to him. Nevertheless, Steve wakes up from a nap one day with Bucky curled into his side, and Steve is pretty sure that if he could, Bucky would be purring like a kitten. 
“Bucky?” Steve asks tentatively, trying not to spook him. Bucky doesn’t seem to be upset by Steve sudden consciousness, instead just making a small noise and wrapping his arms around Steve’s chest possessively. He mumbles something that sounds like “Stevie”. 
“You alright, angel?” Steve asks with a grin, confused but pleased with the change in Bucky’s demeanor. He knew Bucky had always been closer with Steve, trusting him more than others, but this was still new territory. He slides his arms around Bucky, which causes Bucky to make a happy noise that Steve hasn’t heard in years. 
————
Also, maybe Bucky’s a bit territorial now that he’s been given more freedom. The poor thing doesn’t know what to do with himself. However, after consulting a bunch of psychiatrists and Dr. Banner, Steve knows what he needs to do. He empties out an old walk in closet, and fits it with as many soft things as he can find. He buys as many plushies as he can afford, and stuffs the closet with them. He remembers how much Bucky hates harsh lights now and decides to buy those pretty string lights that Peter has in his room at the tower. He shows it to Bucky when it’s finished and they’ve both had a good day. 
“It’s all your own space, Buck. I’m never going to come in here without your permission. I swear it.” Steve says, holding Bucky’s hand, which lately Bucky won’t let go of. 
“It’s… mine?” Bucky says, slowly, tentatively. He’s scared that all of this will be taken away. 
“Yeah, Buck. Yours.” Steve says, as comforting and securely as I can, trying to make his confidence transfer to Bucky. 
Steve is tackled in a hug, and there are tears wetting his shirt. He hugs Bucky back, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. 
“Thank you.” The whisper is so soft, so small, that it’s almost imperceptible. But Steve hears it. He’ll always hear Bucky. 
————
Then, of course, there’s the moment when Steve’s telling Bucky about life back in Brooklyn, a topic that Bucky is very interested in. He’s going on about something that they did to piss off Becca (“we were teenagers, Buck. The best entertainment we had was making that poor girl mad.”) when Bucky stops him. 
“I remember.”
Steve drops the pencil he’s holding. “You… You do?” There’s so much hope in his voice. There’s unshed tears in Bucky’s eyes, and a small smile on his face. 
“Yes. Rebecca. My Becca.” Bucky’s smile gets bigger, as does Steve. Steve rushes to his side, hugging him. Bucky’s crying, and Steve’s not far behind him. Bucky laughs, and it is the best goddamn sound Steve Rogers has ever heard. “She was so mad. I can’t believe we did that.” He giggles, and it makes Steve feel like maybe everything will be okay. 
previous feral!Bucky
Me too! I am such a fucking sucker for feral Bucky
I am beside myself thinking about Bucky being so touch adverse only for Steve to wake up and find him tucked into his side 😫 and there's something so special, too, about Bucky having moments in recovery where he's so suddenly more himself. It makes it so much more painful to see the rapid realignment. It's as if he's found two loose ends and knotted them together as quickly as his fingers would allow to ensure that he doesn't misplace them again. Gah! It's so just 🤌🏻ouch🤌🏻
Oh my god!! The territorial thing, yes! I've had this in my notes for actual years, waiting for me to come back to it and do something with it:
Sometimes, during Bucky's recovery, he latches onto things with this ferocity, holding until his fingers hurt, distraught when he accidentally breaks it, if the object of desire is fragile, claiming "mine." He won't let anyone touch it, not unless it's over his dead body. Steve has genuinely never been so distraught and proud of someone for grabbing a mug and declaring it as their own. Bucky deserves to have his own things.
Same wavelength, lmao
That's so fucking sweet, though! I love the idea of Bucky having his own space. (And I love the idea of Peter's room in the tower having fairy lights. Fuck yeah.)
Ah! That last part is the fucking best. Steve will never be as eager to be interrupted as he is when he's in the middle of a story, and Bucky stops him because he remembers. He doesn't need to tell him again, he remembers. Steve could fucking kiss him. Steve will kiss him. Steve will pick him up and spin him around, clutching his waist all the while, a huge grin on his face.
In conclusion:
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Thank you so, so much for this!!
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scrawnytreedemon · 6 months
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While I intend this blog to remain a largely news-free space due to the constant hellstate of the world, let me be clear that I stand in full support of both the Palestinian and Jewish peoples who are currently experiencing relentless hate and suffering in these horrid times.
I am disgusted at the number of people, especially "progressives" on this website who have used this situation to spread both Islamophobia and Antisemitism. This goes double if you dared to reblog those "punch nazis/fascists <3" and "[x] are welcome here!" posts while in the next breath spreading dangerous fucking narratives that kill people.
So many people in online political spaces evidently see this as nothing more than a case of picking "sides", when ultimately what matters is supporting the oppressed against fascist governments and militias, wherever they are.
Common people will always have more alike with each other than their leaders. This is not a novel concept. Your activism should always be motivated by love and compassion first, and hatred second. If you use your beliefs as an excuse to find an acceptable target to vent your hatred towards regardless of the actual material outcome, you are no fucking activist.
You're a bigot.
#current events#antisemitism#islamophobia#scrawny rambles#scrawny speaks#again i have not been saying much both for the fact that this blog is meant to be a quiet place#and that i do not consider myself to be a reliable source of serious information and/or morals#but regardless i have been watching i have been taking note#i see you i hear you#and while i am currently in no position to materially help right now#the moment i can i will#i don't like signalling this kind of thing because i want it to be evident in how i *act*#but as this cannot be taken as a given i will say this:#you are welcome here. i am so sorry the world is hateful and vile and i wish i could wipe it all away.#you and your folk did nothing to deserve this and you are right to be scared. and i wish to give you my love.#fascism and genocide are not things to be taken lightly. bigoted 'jokes' are vile and dangerous. human life is what's at stake.#we are heading into a wave of hate that has the potential to repeat history in the worst way imaginable. get a fucking grip.#i'm unlikely to address this further as again. reasons stated above. but i wanted to make my stance clear.#it is late as fuck and i'm pissed. people who should know better miss the fucking memo completely.#i'm fucking glad i unfollowed a popular blogger when i did because look what they're posting now. antisemetic 'jokes'.#i really wonder how common this shit truly is. how many people get away with cloaking themselves as 'progressive.'#or perhaps they genuinely think they are. cognitive dissonance is one hell of a drug. fuck them regardless. scum.#you are no progressive. you are a bigot. a leftist bigot is a bigot regardless of how 'revolutionary' you posture to be.#anyhow apologies for any errors. again. it's late. hope you guys are doing well <3
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malinaa · 5 months
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if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing
#imagine you're a boy who's going to die. you're in love with the girl you've been watching from afar. you know your fate.#you just want to help her‚ but then there's the announcement and she's here in front of you‚ kissing you‚ risking her life for you and you#think‚ i could live and i could love. you think she loves you when she hands you the berries‚ when she puts them in her mouth.#then you both survive and you go back home and nothing is real anymore. you have nothing. no family. no friends. no love. just an empty#house. a drunk for a neighbor. the love of your life walking into somebody else's arms. you think‚ i survived the games. i could survive#this. and you also think‚ i should've bit down on those berries‚ should've felt the juice burst before i died.#and then the third quarter quell announcement rings in your ears and you think‚ she will live and i will die as i should have in the first#place. the girl you love kisses you on the beach and somewhere you heart stirs and your mind revolts and you savor every touch she has ever#given to you‚ in front of the cameras and off. because you are a tribute and you are always being watched and snow's presence looms and#you think‚ i know she cares. but you get taken. you get drugged. you get tortured‚ your mind altered. the girl is a mutt‚ a murderer. she's#everything you despise‚ your mind stirs. your heart revolts. you gain more awareness but cannot distinguish reality from fiction and you#have never known katniss' love. the war ends. you heal. you come home. you plant primrose for her. years down the line‚ you grow in love#more than you thought possible. but some days‚ you cannot tell fiction from reality so you ask the love of your life‚ you love me.#real or not real? and she says‚ real‚ and kisses you.#and you sigh and kiss her back and revel in this. a home. a life. a love.#lit#the hunger games#everlark#otp: real or not real?#katniss everdeen#peeta mellark#text#tais toi lys#thgpost
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bijoumikhawal · 10 months
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RE: cultural appropriation primarily being about an economic state of affairs where white people make money off of other people, a related idea I've been contemplating but haven't been able to like. Finish writing about is the idea of cultural decontextualization, which is when a cultural majority (often but not always white people) engage with another culture in a manner that erases- and may simultaneously replicate- racist histories, and is more about creating false narratives than economics.
A personal example would be white people making clothes based off of Coptic Egyptian artifacts, especially while generically referring to them as "Roman" or arguing Coptic art does not exist, which denies Copts part of Coptic history while resurrecting the French Coptomania of the 1920s, and specifically Albert Gayet's actions of taking items from Coptic graves to the point where a model was dressed in a tunic and shown off (which is also terrible from an artifact preservation perspective- this tunic would've been at minimum, 1300 years old at the time).
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acesammy · 6 days
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once again coming back to complain abt stats. I got a good grade on this last bit of homework, but everything i was docked on was literally so stupid i want to pull my hair out. Like i /literally said/ the y-intercept is not in the values we recorded, therefore it is extrapolation to report it. but noooo the correct answer is '0 is not in the [insert x value] therefore it is extrapolation. that is, and i cannot stress this enough, the same thing
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kaeyaphile · 23 days
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all thoughts, head full of ✨aventurine✨
+ a bunch of rambling/life updates in the tags, oops
#kayleigh.txt#y’all i seriously cannot stop thinking about this lil’ pixelated man 🫠#i officially have everything to fully level and max him and his lightcone and his traces 👏🏻#only e0s1 of course; i’m broke af 😅#hopefully for his rerun i can get some eidolons but alas not this time unfortunately 💔#he’s literally on the same level as kaeya in my heart; favorite hsr character for sure#(jing yuan has been demoted to my second favorite now because i am a silly goose)#i honestly never thought i’d be so adoring of hoyoverse characters but... here we are 🤷🏼‍♀️#actual legitimate feelings for real people??? ❎#actual legitimate feelings for fictional characters??? ✅#aNYWAYS the brainrot is really bad y’all and i apologize that my entire personality has been taken over by this man 🤡#i wish that i had an income right now so that i could commission some self–indulgent selfship art but alas 😩#once my irl bestie’s wedding and honeymoon is over on may 10th i will be going back to looking for a job 👌🏻#i’ve applied to probably 50+ jobs throughout the past few months and have heard absolutely nothing back 💀#i have given up for now; i have to get my mental health and autoimmune diseases under control first tbqh#i have a psychiatrist appointment on the 16th which i am terrified regarding but hopefully it goes well 🥲🤞🏻#and i am going to start a new injectable medication for my autoimmune diseases asap#i have to deep clean my house and revamp my reptile enclosures before i commit to a job as well ugh#i have to actually get my shit tf together before i start legitimately looking for a job again is what i’m saying 😂
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bunathebunny · 1 year
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archon war zhongxiao is just a pinning story of two people who have responsibilities of their own and they put it before themselves and therefore cannot do anything but to pine after their love
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redysetdare · 1 year
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It's funny how someone can say "I've reached a point where I'm tired of explaining to people who purposefully refuse to listen why what they're doing is harmful" and people will purposefully misread it and respond with "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PPL WHO ARE GENUINELY IGNORANT??? WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW??? YOU ARE BEING UNREASONABLE!!!"
Like wow you're exactly who i am talking about, good job!
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artemismoorea03 · 4 months
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DP x DC Prompt: The New Teacher
(So, I've seen a lot of prompts that have Danny go to Gotham and be a teacher but I don't remember seeing any with it in this direction, so on the chance that this is an original idea here we go!)
Jason was given a choice, or multiple choices. Babysit the Replacement on a mission that could last a week, go to Bludhaven and have some 'brother bonding time' with Dick who needed backup on a big case, or take a temp solo-gig in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere called Amity Park.
Well, considering he was still a bit hurt about the fact that B replaced him all those years ago and the pit loved to grab hold of that bit of frustrations towards his younger brother, that didn't seem like a smart idea. Dick wasn't an option either because he knew that would lead to 'talking about feelings' and other shit that he didn't want to do.
So he took the solo-gig.
It was supposed to be easy, at least that's what had been implied by the others he'd spoken to about the case. It seemed like most of the Justice League thought this situation was being 'exaggerated' because most of the time when somebody checked out what was going on there was nothing happening. No big take over, or kidnapping, or 'end of the world' situation, but there had been too many calls to put Bruce's mind at ease. The frequent calls mixed with the fact that the Government apparently had the area under a 'black out' made Bruce even more nervous.
Hell, if it hadn't been for the fact that Bruce was famous and that Scarecrow, Penguin and Riddler had all escaped from Arkham he would have been doing the case himself.
Which is how Jason ended up in a restraunt named 'Nasty Burger' looking at the news papers he had managed to get from a stand down the street while taking notes of things he had already seen. It wasn't just that the Government had cut them off, all of the tech in the city was easily 20 years outdated compared to the rest of the world.
Nokia phones, chunky computers, hell he'd even seen a kid with a PDA of all things. Thankfully, it looked like his tech still worked other than running slower than it should have, but thanks to modifications made by Barbara and Tim things were running better than he expected. But, they did struggle to have access to anything, specifically the news.
Hence the paper.
Ghost Boy: Friend or Fiend. A new vote cast by the city has found that the Ghost Boy - Danny Phantom - has had an astounding rise in support after the events over the Christmas Holiday. The new polls suggest that 43% of Citizens support Danny Phantom, with the majority of his support coming from the students at Casper High who insist that Phantom is a hero who has saved them countless times over the past few months. 49% of people still agree, however, that Phantom appears to be at the center of the majority of the attacks with many still claiming that he is the sole cause of the attacks. However, 8% of the population remain undecided, including many teachers, police and hospital staff. Upon seeing the new results of the pole Mayor Montez had this to say; "While I will admit that Phantom appears to favor the younger generation and frequently seems to come to their aid, we cannot forget what it has done in the past. Taken hostages, injured innocents, and caused millions in property damage. Phantom may not be a 'villain' in the typical sense of the word, but we shouldn't blindly trust him just because of a few good deeds."
So there was a... hero? Half hero - potentially villain - in Amity Park? That might have explained some of the calls they'd gotten from Amity park over the past few months. Still, he was concerned by some parts of the report.
Students at a high school were frequently coming under attack? So much that this potential-villain kept saving them? Just what was the cause? What could cause so many issues?
Jason looked up as he saw that same PDA kid talking with a girl with short black hair in a half-ponytail who was wearing a black crop-top. The girl seemed annoyed while the boy seemed worried about something.
"But it's Vlad, Sam... what if he does something?" He heard the boy whisper, "We should go back him up..."
"He doesn't need our help, besides Jazz ran away from home, remember? She got herself into this mess it's her problem to get out of it. Something that Danny should have learned a long time ago."
Jason frowned, pretending not to hear them as he hesitated then got up and walked over to the two younger teens. "Hey, excuse me."
The girl looked annoyed and suspicious while the boy looked confused.
"Uh, yeah?" Tucker asked.
"Hey, sorry to bug you both. But could you guys tell me about this... 'Danny Phantom' person?" He asked, holding the newspaper out.
The girl looked even more suspicious, "And... who are you?"
"And how haven't you heard of Phantom?" Asked the boy.
"I just moved to town." Jason admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "So, I'm just trying to catch up on all the town drama."
"You moved to Amity Park... willingly? Psh, what do you have, a deathwish?" The girl grumbled.
"Come on, I just moved from Gotham, which is worse?"
The girl blinked as the boy laughed.
"Furries vs Ghosts, who will win~" He said as the girl elbowed him. "Ow! What?!"
"Danny Phantom is a hero." The girl explained, "He showed up in April and has been protecting the town since."
"A hero, huh? Could always use more of those in the world, but the mayor seems to have it out for him."
Tucker sighed, "No kidding, man. Somebody framed Phantom for something really bad and no matter what he does to try to fix it the city just see's that incident as the only thing he's ever done. It was the first big 'public thing' outside of the high school so it was huge but it wasn't his fault."
The girl reached for her phone suddenly, looking at it before she answered. "Hey, Danny. What's up?" She was quiet for a moment, "Yeah, we're at Nasty Burger, wanna join us? Lunch on me?"
A quiet mumble came through the speaker before she smirked.
"I'll order for you then. Double or triple?"
More mumbles.
"Triple it is. See you soon." She said, then hung up. "Come on, Tuck, Danny is on his way for lunch."
"Hell yeah, see you later, dude." The boy said, then jogged off with the girl.
"A teacher? Yeah, it looks like there's some openings but why would you want to have your cover as a teacher?" Oracle asked as Jason sat in his hotel room, looking through the paper again.
"Most of the incidents seem to surround the High School, I want to see what's going on."
Oracle hummed, typing for a moment. "Alright, well as luck will have it, it looks like teachers are sparse at Amity High, at least from what I'm able to get using your connection... which is infuriatingly slow, by the way, are you sure you did it right?"
"I've done it a million times, of course I did it right."
Oracle grumbled, "Stupid Amity black-out. Okay, so you have options. Most of the teachers have fucked off so all of the teachers in Freshmen year switch around to cover lessons or do mixed lessons. For example the English teacher also teaches Math and the normal Math teacher also teaches Science. So it looks like you could have any position you want and the school would just shuffle around the teachers."
"You said English is taken, right?"
"Yep, the teacher is named William Lancer and he- oh... wait, he's on a leave of absence due to injuries he suffered over Christmas Break. Concussion, broken arm, and bruised ribs, he'll be out for a few weeks."
Jason smirked, "Perfect. Sign me up."
". . . Jason, the English and Math teacher... never thought I'd see the day. Alright, I'll type up your application, send it in and casually push it to the front of the line. You'll be official by the time Winter Break ends in a few days. So get studying."
"Sounds like a plan, but I'll be fine, I mean our family is crazy and i deal with criminals on a nightly basis. How hard could this assignment really be?"
He would regret asking that question by the end of his first day as an Amity High School teacher.
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arlh0e · 2 months
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The situation with the Owasso Public School district and the Owasso Police Department regarding the death of Nex Benedict is nothing short of fucking rage provoking.
A 16 year old non-binary child was brutally beaten in their high school’s bathroom (which they were forced to use because of Oklahoma legislation requiring that trans students use the restrooms coinciding with the gender assigned to them at birth) by THREE girls for over two minutes before other students and a singular school faculty member managed to pull these girls off of them.
They had their head repeatedly smashed into the floor. For over two minutes. Their face was covered in cuts and bruises and they were unable to walk without assistance following this attack.
Nex was suspended for several days for engaging in a “fight”. (Btw 3 to 1 is NOT a fight, thats called getting jumped.)
After seeing the schools nurse, Nex was denied the option to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance as it was deemed “unnecessary” but it was suggested that a guardian took them to get checked out if they were concerned about Nex’s injuries.
Nex was then taken to the hospital where they were discharged, but were then rushed back to said hospital the next morning, where they were pronounced dead.
The Owasso Public School district has stated that because Nex died the following morning and not the night of the attack, that the attack is unrelated and did not cause the death of this child.
The Owasso Police Department claims that they cannot release the autopsy report to the public but that “A complete autopsy was performed and indicated that the decedent did not die as a result of trauma.” It has been implied that Nex died of natural causes or from an underlying medical condition. Less than 24 hours after having their head brutally and repeatedly smashed into a bathroom floor for over 2 minutes.
I don’t know about you guys, but I personally am beyond sick and fucking tired of watching republican politicians be so loud about how they’re “protecting children” and then turning their backs on trans kids and believing what is probably the laziest cover up of a non-binary child being brutally beaten to death while they were AT SCHOOL.
And what makes this even worse is that according to the Benedict family, Nex had been telling them about how they were being bullied at school and that they felt unsafe. They had told the school that they were being bullied and they felt unsafe. The school had been given every opportunity to neutralize the problem and prevent this very situation and chose to do nothing, and that negligence caused the death of a student. And they have the audacity to claim that Nex’s blood is not on their hands and that they “do not tollerate violence or bullying of any kind” and “are taking the situation very seriously”.
Nex Benedict was brutally beaten to death in a school bathroom and Oklahoma schools, law enforcement, and legislative officials are doing nothing about it.
Nex Benedict. Say their fucking name.
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Attached is the link to the go fund me started by Nex’s mother. Warning, in the description, They are deadnamed and misgendered, however this was remedied in an edit lower down on the page, where their mother states that they will be addressed properly on their headstone.
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femininemenon · 1 year
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"i'm struggling to find gifs" "why can't i find gifs of this scene or this show" "why are less people taking requests"
you repost to twitter, to pinterest, to instagram, to tiktok and lord knows what else. on twitter, a single gif taken from a gifset that didn't even receive 1k notes (not 1k likes or even 1k rbs, if that even exists these days) can get 3m views and 30k+ likes. without credit, of course - if you're lucky, you get a mispelled: made by x on tumblr, no link of course.
hell, you repost on this very site and you refuse to listen. your set, stolen from someone else and mixed in with quotes, gets 1k notes meanwhile the original sits at less than 500. you do not credit the person who made it.
we ask you to reblog things instead of liking them and you go on rants about how it's unnecessary and how we should do it for fun. we explain a hundred times that tumblr doesn't work the way other social media platforms work, but you refuse. you wonder why there are less gifmakers.
gifs don't take 10 seconds like on ezgif or imgflip or whatever the hell you're using. it takes hours sometimes to even download footage, but you don't care. it's a moving image that we "stole" (?) from the original work but the labour? you don't care. depending on our process, it can take from half an hour (the downloading and the editing part) to hours upon hours. but who cares.
you credit text posts, fanvids, and you go after those who steal written work (as you should). we cannot even get other gifmakers to care when our stuff is stolen. staff took away our only tool to fight reposters on this site, and we never had any to fight reposting to other sites.
we know what the staff is aiming at with the changes they make and the changes they refuse to make - we explain that why disabling likes would help, they say they will not do it. they cannot slap an @ onto gifs when saved to prevent stealing but boy, look at the shiny new editor that adds an additional least 5 minutes to upload your gifs! again, intention is very clear.
we know you don't steal gifs under a certain quality and we know you ask us for requests for scenes/parallels that have been done because you do not like the quality of those. we see you stealing quality sets.
there is no point to this i just needed to vent. staff is disregarding the very foundation of this site, gifmakers are given less and less respect and you wonder why scenes aren't giffed.
i don't know. add your perspective if you want
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exhaled-spirals · 3 months
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« To mention the global loss of biodiversity, that is to say, the disappearance of life on our planet, as one of our problems, along with air pollution or ocean acidification, is absurd—like a doctor listing the death of his patient as one symptom among others.
The ecological catastrophe cannot be reduced to the climate crisis. We must think about the disappearance of life in a global way. About two-thirds of insects, wild mammals and trees disappeared in a few years, a few decades and a few millennia, respectively. This mass extinction is not mainly caused by rising temperatures, but by the devastation of natural habitats.
Suppose we managed to invent clean and unlimited energy. This technological feat would be feted by the vast majority of scientists, synonymous in their eyes with a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions. In my opinion, it would lead to an even worse disaster. I am deeply convinced that, given the current state of our appetites and values, this energy would be used to intensify our gigantic project of systemic destruction of planetary life. Isn't that what we've set out to do—replace forests with supermarket parking lots, turn the planet into a landfill? What if, to cap it all, energy was free?
[...C]limate change has emerged as our most important ecological battle [...] because it is one that can perpetuate the delusional idea that we are faced with an engineering problem, in need of technological solutions. At the heart of current political and economic thought lies the idea that an ideal world would be a world in which we could continue to live in the same way, with fewer negative externalities. This is insane on several levels. Firstly because it is impossible. We can't have infinite growth in a finite world. We won't. But also, and more importantly, it is not desirable. Even if it were sustainable, the reality we construct is hell. [...]
It is often said that our Western world is desacralised. In reality, our civilisation treats the technosphere with almost devout reverence. And that's worse. We perceive the totality of reality through the prism of a hegemonic science, convinced that it “says” the only truth.
The problem is that technology is based on a very strange principle, so deeply ingrained in us that it remains unexpressed: no brakes are acceptable, what can be done must be done. We don't even bother to seriously and collectively debate the advisability of such "advances". We are under a spell. And we are avoiding the essential question: is this world in the making, standardised and computed, overbuilt and predictable, stripped of stars and birds, desirable?
To confine science to the search for "solutions" so we can continue down the same path is to lack both imagination and ambition. Because the “problem” we face doesn't seem to me, at this point, to be understood. No hope is possible if we don't start by questioning our assumptions, our values, our appetites, our symbols... [...] Let's stop pretending that the numerous and diverse human societies that have populated this planet did not exist. Certainly, some of them have taken the wrong route. But ours is the first to forge ahead towards guaranteed failure. »
— Aurélien Barrau, particle physicist and philosopher, in an interview in Télérama about his book L'Hypothèse K
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ominouspuff · 3 months
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Kote’s House
Kote’s first house is a pathetic thing, and he is incurably proud of it. The twi’lek he purchased it from very evidently could not make up his mind what to do with a man that grinned while he haggled, but it was the first time Kote had haggled over a purchase of his very own. He had thoroughly enjoyed it.
The house is built for one being, and a compact being at that, but Kote doesn’t have much. Moving in is quick, and most of his efforts during the next few days after go into attempting ambitious repairs for things he doesn’t know the first thing about. 
His plumbing is an issue, he knows. Something is getting blocked up. Somehow while trying to fix the kitchen tumbler, his fresher spout explodes.
He hadn’t kept his new house a secret from anyone by any means, but it is still surprising when Fox barges in through his jamming front door. He finds Kote on the floor in his cramped kitchen while the fresher rains water in the adjacent room, laughing so hard and so crippled with delight that he can’t get up.
He tries to explain how wonderful it is —
“I-I have to fix my plumbing on my own, vod—”
—but judging by Fox’s single raised eyebrow he knows it doesn’t translate.
Fox, it turns out, is moving into the neighborhood. Kote doesn’t ask about the house Fox already has — the house he has visited, which is very nice and fancy — or point out that Fox’s contract there cannot possibly be up, which begs the question of why he’s here in Kote’s neighborhood — except that Kote already knows the answer to that question. So he doesn’t ask.
Fox doesn’t show him any grace or forbearance, though.
“Don’t even know how to fix a damn pipe, front lining show-off—” His brother snarls, but it is muffled; his top half had to go down beneath the floor they’d pried up to get at the plumbing issue.
“So that’s what they had you doing all these years.” Kote says, because he really is in a criminally good mood. He barely ducks the foot-long pipe Fox throws at his head, feeling giddy.
He makes dinner that night in thanks. Fox stays, ostensibly because now that he’s fixed the fresher he intends to use it, because his new house isn’t hooked up properly yet to all the supply lines and power grids. 
They choke on homemade tiingilar (vode-style; Kote can’t pretend at the real thing yet) so heavily spiced it’s got grit to it that sticks between the teeth. It’s disgusting, but Cody had bought fifteen different spices and while usually he likes to keep his approach to the unknown more cautious, more methodical, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more than use them all at once for the first time. 
Wolffe joins them not long after; brings a few others along by recommending the apartment he picks out, so that soon most of the complex is taken up by vode, Kote hears, but he doesn’t visit yet. Everyone’s too busy coming over to his house, it seems; filling up his kitchen and asking why he hasn’t fixed the trash disposal yet, why he doesn’t have a couch, doesn’t he know they’re all the rage among civilized folk?
Kote fixes the trash disposal with Rex, who is better at it than he is but says it’s only due to Skywalker’s influence on managing all things mechanical. 
“How is Skywalker?” Kote asks, and gets more than he bargained for over the next hour. At first he’s a bit off-put, because he’s trying to get dinner sorted again and he’s not been very fond of Skywalker at the best of times, but Rex is snorting out a story and laughing and it’s contagious, so Kote just resigns himself and settles in to enjoy.
Skywalker has little ones, now. Obi-Wan is the only one that can get them to sleep. Ahsoka is distressed; she knows better, but every instinct in her is apparently in agony over the little ones’ inability to eat meat yet. She obsesses over nutrients in their diet — which, given what tiny natborn humans primarily ingest in the early stages, makes for some slightly awkward conversations.
Rex helps with dinner afterward, and they take turns being incredulous over natborn baby facts, shoving around one another in the tiny, uncomfortable kitchen.
“What’s your next project?” Rex asks at one point, glancing sidelong with a cheeky look, and Kote levels his vegetable knife at him (he’s got a vegetable knife. Specifically for vegetables. It’s a very new concept). 
“I make everyone’s dinner on Tuangsdays.” He says. “I’m productive.”
Rex’s sharp-toothed grin turns thoughtful. “Yeah” He says. “Everyone loves coming here, you know. You could be the new 79’s.”
Kote knows. He plans and plots, and puts more work into researching recipes than he’s put into any research whatsoever in months. It feels a bit like coming out of a shore leave; his thoughts quicken and his excitement grows. He hunts down a market. He brings a bag. He shops, bargains, and returns victorious.
He sends out a few comms., and can’t help but shake his head and grin at how different the responses are. 
What a marvelous idea, Cody. His general — ex-general — says.
Yus pls, Ahsoka sends back, with some sort of strange tooka vidclip that dances with wiggly gyrations Kote can only assume indicate excitement.
Where is your house, Anakin says, blunt and to the point, and Kote can appreciate that. 
He sends the address. He cooks all day. The sun sets, and Fox and Wolffe arrive, already bickering, Rex trailing behind with a long-suffering look sent to Kote, begging commiseration.
“Ugh, don’t you ever stop smiling, now?” He gripes when Kote just grins at him. 
“Nope,” Kote says, unrepentantly.
He leaves the soup on the stove, simmering, and takes his cup of caf to the window. He leans on it, breathing in cool air, and just listens — listens to the squabbling as Wolffe gets on Fox’s case for not washing Kote’s dishes correctly the last time they visited. Hears the soft thumps of Rex sneaking into the cramped room Kote has set aside for plants and the sole pet he has; a pastel goullian, fins swaying ever so gently, permanent scowl in place. Thinks he catches, distantly, the sound of his remaining three guests (Padme couldn’t attend, and had made him feel very awkward by how thoughtfully she apologized for it) plodding up the hill. 
“Cody!” Ahsoka cries, coming into view and waving. 
Kote’s cheeks have stopped aching from all the smiling he’s gotten used to, so it’s easy to let another through.
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woso-dreamzzz · 2 months
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Injured VII
Alexia Putellas x Child!Reader
Jenni Hermoso x Child!Reader
Summary: Alexia tries to get her act together
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For as long as she will ever live, Alexia will never forget her mother's face that day at Alba's door.
She will never forget the genuine horror on her mother's face even as she took control of the situation. She will never forget that night when Alba slammed her against the wall after the final of the Copa de la Reina. She will never forget the way you hid behind Jenni's legs after your ballet lesson.
It's all she thinks about even as she sits in the rocking chair with a sleeping Jaume in her arms.
"Ale?" Olga says sleepily," It's three in the morning. Come back to bed."
Alexia doesn't want to. She doesn't want to let Jaume go but she doesn't want to look at him either.
He was so perfect. His birth had been quick and easy unlike yours. Alexia had felt an instant connection to him, unlike when she suffered a bought of post-partum depression with you. He was so soft and so perfect and yet...
Alexia couldn't believe that she has pushed you away in favour of him.
She had a beautiful son and daughter. Two children, not one.
She thought having a sibling would be the best thing for you. She wanted to build a family with Olga. She never considered that she hadn't actually included you in that family.
"Alexia," Olga says, a bit more awake now," Come on. He's due for a feed soon. I'd like some sleep before that."
Mechanically, Alexia places her son back in his crib, wiping away some of the drool on his face as she allows Olga to lead her back to bed.
A sense of numbness follows her now and it's clear to everyone.
Word has spread amongst the team now about what has happened. They know the bare minimum, only that Alba took Bambi and that Jenni has dropped everything to fly across the world for you.
No one knows why, officially. It's clear that Mapi and Ingrid have informed a few team members. Paredes, in particular, cannot look Alexia in the eye anymore and some of the younger players are wary seeing that.
Her life is falling apart. She had no idea you were the linchpin holding it all together.
Olga lays next to her, head pillowed on Alexia's chest.
"You're so tense," She says," Relax. Everything's going to be fine."
Alexia scoffs. "Is it?"
Her question hangs in the air for several minutes. Neither of them speak. Neither of them move.
"Yes," Olga says eventually," You need to stay positive, Alexia. If not for yourself then for your daughter-"
"Your daughter?" Alexia echoes Olga's words perfectly," My daughter? Is she not ours?"
The silence is telling and Olga rolls over and away.
"Is she? Jaume is ours. y/n is yours."
Alexia sits up in bed, reaching over to flick a lamp on. This wasn't a conversation she could have in the dark.
"We have a son together. We're going to get married. In what world is Bambi just mine?!"
"In every world!" Olga sits up too. "She has always been yours, Alexia! I am just the woman her Mami is marrying! Nothing more, nothing less!"
"How can you say that?! We're making a family together! Bambi is included in that family!"
"Of course she is but when have I ever taken that role in her life?! You took her to football! You take her to ballet!"
"She stays home with you all day!" Alexia bites back, standing now until they're both yelling at each other over the bed. "You make her lunch! You keep her occupied!"
"And you do her baths and her bedtime routine! You do her morning routine too! God, Alexia, I am essentially her glorified babysitter! You have never once let me take over those things!"
"You didn't ask?! Olga, if you wanted to do that stuff just ask me!"
"And be rejected? No! You've never given any indication that I was even allowed to try!"
"Because I thought you didn't want to! Bambi has always been mine! Forgive me for not knowing how much to put on your plate. I was trying to make this transition easy!"
"An easy transition?! Alexia, I was pregnant! I was already thrown in the deep end! Adding a self-sufficient kid wouldn't have been much worse!"
They're both screaming at each other now and Jaume clearly hears the noise because he cries from down the hall.
Alexia takes a deep breath, eyes shutting briefly as she counts to ten to calm herself.
Olga goes to get Jaume, moving out the door.
"If we're going to get Bambi back," Alexia calls after her," Then we have to both want her!"
The forms about your ballet class lay on the kitchen table when Alexia gets up the next day. Things were frosty last night when Olga came back to bed with Jaume but they seemed to be looking up when Olga said that they would have a mature conversation about the Bambi situation when Alexia got home.
Alexia picks it up as she eats her breakfast, skimming through it. It's for an extra class on Thursday nights (five until seven) on top of your usual ones. Apparently, it's for those little kids that have real potential. As in, the potential to be great.
Alexia had been one of those kids but for football instead of ballet. She had excelled. She was one of the greatest in the world now all because her father saw the potential in her and signed her up for a team.
She had tried to do the same with you. She took you to the under-fives Barcelona team but it hadn't turned out how she want it to. The other children had left you in the dust. Alexia had hoped that it would be a one time thing, that the first session was a fluke.
You were already so different to her and even back then, she knew that when Jaume arrived things would be different.
She'd tried to get you into football so you would have something to bond over together, at least until Jaume was big enough to play with you.
But it wasn't meant to be and her Mama had insisted in signing you up for something else.
Originally, Alexia had planned on it being another team sport, desperate to have something at least similar to football that she could cling to.
Instead, her Mama had reminded her of last Christmas when the family went to go see the Nutcracker and how enamoured you had been.
Ale's Mama had pushed and pushed for ballet and Alexia was glad that she had.
The forms sat signed on the kitchen table as Alexia washed up her bowl and dialled a number on her phone.
"Hola, Mama," She says," It's about Bambi..."
It's after training that Alexia goes to see her Mama and sister. They meet up at Eli's house and all crowd around the kitchen table.
Jenni is there too and when Alexia asks who is looking after you, she's told that Mapi and Ingrid have taken you for ice cream.
"I don't like this," Alba mutters from where she's leaning against the wall. She's the only one not sat, arms crossed over her chest. "How do we know that she's not going to take Bambi home and neglect her again, huh?"
It's the hardest words Alexia has ever had to say but she pushes them out of her mouth. "I don't want you to give me Bambi back, not now at least."
"What do you mean, Alexia?" Her Mama asks.
"I...I have a lot of making up to do," Alexia admits," I broke her trust and that is not an easy thing to get back. If I want Bambi to come home then she has to want it to. I don't want her to be unhappy again."
"What are you saying?"
"Let me visit her, please. Let me earn back her trust, please."
Everyone knows Eli is in charge here. She is the head of the family and everyone defers to her on big decisions like this. This is a family matter. This is about her granddaughter's happiness and her daughter's peace of mind.
"Bambi is very fragile right now," Eli says quietly but the house is so silent everyone can hear her clearly," This is a serious matter, Alexia and if it was anyone else's daughter, child services will have already been called."
Alexia looks down at the table, the same table she would be scolded at when she was young.
"Your father would be ashamed of you." Eli's words are hard and biting and it's exactly what Alexia wants, even if it causes a sharp pain in her chest. "This is not how we raised you. That little girl is so beloved by everyone and what you have done...I love you, Ale, but it is unacceptable."
"I know, Mama. Please, let me make this right."
"Bambi coming home is her choice. It is not a when...it is an if. If I decide that you are doing more harm than good then there will be other actions we can take."
She looks at Jenni, who up until this point has been silent and Alexia's eyes dart to her too.
"Mama, what are you talking about?"
"Eli," Jenni says," She is trying. We don't need to-"
"Jenni still has adoption papers," Alba says from her corner of the room," All they're missing is your signature. Mama is saying that if this cannot be resolved and Bambi doesn't want to come home..."
She lets the idea hang in the air. She doesn't need to say it out loud. They all know what she means.
"It won't get that far," Jenni says, looking at Alexia for the first time since all of this became real," Bambi loves you."
Alexia pushes through the lump in her throat and the tears pricking in her eyes. "If I cannot make this better then she will have the best chance with you."
Jenni looks away first. "She has ballet on Saturday until one. We can do a visit then."
"Thank you."
Olga is sitting with Jaume when Alexia gets home. It's an almost perfect image. All it's missing is you at Olga's feet, playing with your trains.
She can imagine it, your trainsets spread all over the floor and your ballet bag left abandoned on a chair. You will smile when you see her and Alexia will litter your face with kisses before doing the same to Olga and Jaume.
It will be perfect, Alexia promises herself.
"Hey, little man," She coos to her son, hefting him up into her arms and pressing a kiss to his forehead.
Jaume giggles at the affection, lips smacking together as his hand whips out to grab at Alexia's nose curiously. He's been a little fussy recently and extremely sensitive to changes in light but he seems a little happier now.
"That's my nose," Alexia says. She wiggles it. "Is it really funny? Huh? Is my nose funny?"
"Jaume seems to think so." Olga rises from the sofa and pecks Alexia's lips. "How was your mother?"
"Helpful."
"And Alba?"
"She was...Alba."
"And Jenni?"
"How did you-?"
"I am not blind or deaf, Ale. Your team gossips. Jenni has comes back to Spain for y/n."
"Amor-"
"I'm not threatened," Olga laughs," You broke up for a reason but even I know that a meeting of y/n would involve her. How was it? What did they say?"
Alexia manages a smile. "I can see her on Saturday, after ballet. There's a place where you can paint pottery nearby. I think I'll take her there."
"That's nice," Olga says.
"I..." Alexia's been floating in a happy bubble ever since she started to drive home. She doesn't want to ruin it but she has to know. "Did you have a think about what we talked about?"
Olga sighs. "I love Jaume," She says after several beats of quiet," Because he is mine, yes, but mostly because he is yours as well. And I love you so much."
Alexia doesn't like where this is going. "And Bambi?"
"I'm sorry, Ale, but I do not love y/n but...I think I could learn to because she is so much like you and I love you. I do not know y/n like I know you and Jaume. I want to though. I want her home with us so I can love her like I love Jaume. I am sorry if it is not what you want to hear but it is my truth and I hope that is enough."
Tears fall down Alexia's cheeks.
"It's enough. It's enough, amor."
Alexia spends all week waiting for Saturday. There are matches to prepare for and media commitments to do but you're all she can think about.
She wonders if she should bring you a new train to mark the occasion but the model train store has finally shut down and Alexia cannot get one for you in time.
Next time though, she promises herself that she'll got you a new train for your collection. Her palms are sweaty and she's nervous when she spots you and Jenni walking down the street hand-in-hand.
You're still in your ballet clothes but you've got one of Jennie's jackets on and it's dragging on the ground behind you because it's too big. Your hair is still done up in a bun and a few wisps fall down to frame your face.
"Bambi," Alexia says, suddenly breathless when you look up at her.
"Hola, Mami," You reply, ducking a little bit behind Jenni as you greet her.
"Your Mami and you are going to paint some pottery," Jenni says," And I'll be right here to pick you up when you're done."
"You won't be late?"
"Of course I won't be! You're my most favourite little girl in the whole wide world! I'd never be late to pick you up!"
You smile and giggle when Jenni peppers kisses all over your face before gently moving you towards Alexia.
"Hola, Mami," You say again.
Alexia smiles and takes your hand. "Hola, Bambi."
You look very nervous and your hand is unusually warm in Alexia's, though she puts that down to you coming straight from ballet.
There's a big wall where you can choose what to make. Alexia gets a mug and, unsurprisingly, you want the train. It's at the very top of the shelf and you can't reach and you don't want Mami to get upset at you for asking when you could easily get something that's closer to your height.
But Alexia notices.
She's making sure to pay a lot of attention to you now. To the way that your ballet pumps are wearing a bit at the soles and the way you play with the sleeves of Jenni's jacket.
"Do you want the train, Bambi?" She asks," Do you want me to pick you up so you can grab it? Can I touch you?"
You nervously nod and Alexia pretends to not notice the way that you don't breath until you're safely back on the ground.
The little shop is quaint and fairly quiet and Alexia lets you choose the table at the very back.
Very gently, she telegraphs her every move to you as she rolls up the sleeves of Jenni's jacket so you don't get paint on it.
You're both quiet as you paint.
Your little tongue is stuck out in concentration as you dip your paintbrush into the paint and move it to cover your train.
"You moved up in ballet," Alexia says eventually," How was that?"
"Was good," Is the response from your tiny voice," It is harder now but still fun." You blink a few times as the overhead light buzzes and you scratch at you neck. It's been a little itchy since you last saw Mami and you don't like.
You haven't told anyone because you're scared they're going to get angry at you. You're a big girl now. Big girl don't complain about something as silly as itchy skin.
"I'm very proud of you," Alexia says," And I'm glad that you're enjoying ballet so much."
Your watery little smile back makes Alexia nearly cry herself. "Really, Mami?"
"Of course. I am so proud of my Bambi. You make me proud everyday."
"Are you sure, Mami?"
"Yes. I am very proud of you."
You sniffle a little and duck your head back down to continue painting. It hurts to move your head though. It's all stiff and tight so you have to hold it at an odd angle so you don't cry - though you're not sure if it's because of the pain or the fact that Mami is acting like this is the Before.
The Mami from the Before never got angry when you asked silly questions. The Mama from the Now got angry at you once when you asked a silly questions when Jaume was crying.
You hope that this Mami won't be mad because you ask a silly question.
"Mami," You ask softly, the memory plaguing you ever since your Jenni returned to you," Jenni says she wanted me when I was little. Did you want me?"
Whatever bubble Alexia was in before pops and it's like icy cold water has been dumped on her.
"What do you mean, Bambi?"
"You and Miss Olga wanted Jaume," You say," And my Jenni says she wanted me. Did you want me too?"
"Bambi..." Alexia doesn't want to think about those first few months of having you. The post-partum depression had hit hard and Alexia could do little but deal with yours and hers basic needs.
She had loved you and resented you all at the same time and the guilt had weighed on her for months.
"I always want you."
You shake your head before wincing and returning your head back to its awkward resting position. "But did you want me then? When I was little like Baby Jaume and when I was in your belly?"
Alexia moves from her chair to kneel in front of you. Her hand comes up to cradle you. Either her hands are big or your face is tiny because they cover your entire cheek.
"I love you," Alexia says," You're my Bambi and I've always loved you."
"But did you want me?"
"Bambi..."
"Mami...Mami, I..."
Alexia doesn't want to lie but she also doesn't want to tell you either. There were moments, that first week she found out she was pregnant when she didn't want you. She hadn't been overjoyed at the prospective of you. She hadn't wanted her career to be derailed by something as silly as a child.
She doesn't want to tell you the truth because she knows that it will be damaging to you. You're not old enough to be told things like this. You're not mature enough to be told this kind of information and not have it linger and fester within you for years.
But Alexia's always valued honesty. She doesn't like lying but she had lied to you all your life. She doesn't want to lie again now even if it's about something like this. Adults cannot fault other adults for telling their truth but you are neither an adult nor can you understand what this means for you.
"I want you now," Alexia says instead," I want you when I go to bed every night. I want you when I wake up every morning. I want you when I score a goal and when I win trophies. I want you, Bambi."
You sniffle and scratch more insistently at your skin, your wrists this time.
"I miss you sometimes, Mami," You say," But coming back to your house is scary."
"Thank you for being honest, Bambi. You don't have to come home if you don't want to." Alexia forces down tears. "When I next see you, we should go and see Abuela and we'll explain things to you, okay?"
"Okay, Mami."
"Is your train done?"
Your train actually is done so Mami gives it and her mug to the lady who works there to finish off and you both walk outside.
"They should be done in a few days," Mami tells you," And then when I next see you, I'll give you your new train."
"Okay, Mami." Her hand is in yours and you think that is enough for today, pulling your hand away as Jenni turns the corner and lets you run to her.
"Hey," She laughs, swinging you up into her arms," How did it go? Was it fun?"
You don't answer, burying your face into Jenni's neck.
"I..." Alexia says," I think next time when should go to my Mama's...Conversations are...difficult sometimes."
Jenni nods. "I see," She says," Next week, maybe?"
The words are complete autopilot. Alexia hates what she's said the moment they're out of her mouth but they're completely out of habit and she doesn't even think before she speaks.
"We'll see," She says," I'll have to check my schedule." She clamps her mouth shut the moment she says them. "I mean- No, I meant-"
You look resigned, like you are so used to this that it barely effects you but Jenni looks furious. She hefts you up higher in her arms.
"Say goodbye to your Mami, Bambi."
"Bye, Mami."
"Hey...Wait, no, Jenni. I didn't mean-"
"Bambi needs to have a nap," Jenni says," She takes one right after ballet. We changed her schedule for painting today. I should get her home."
Alexia wilts, slouching her shoulders and curling in on herself. "Adios, Bambi. I love you!"
Jenni is already walking around and you don't offer your own I love you in return.
Jenni's steady steps feel nice as she walks you back to Tia Alba's. Your itchiness increases and you scratch more harshly at your neck.
"Ma-Jenni?"
"Yes, Bambi?"
"Can we have cuddles tonight?"
"Of course we can. I love cuddles with my favourite little girl. Are we having them on the sofa after bathtime or in bed together?"
Before Ma-Jenni came home, you slept with your Tia Alba. Now you sleep in the same bed as Ma-Jenni. She's big and strong and she holds you just right. She doesn't let you go the whole night. You go to sleep in her arms and you wake up in her arms.
"Bed cuddles please."
"I love bed cuddles."
You grin. "I love bed cuddles too!"
You scratch at your neck again and Jenni gently pulls your hand away. She frowns, swiping at your skin with her thumb a few times.
"You've got a bit of a rash there, Bambi," She says," We'll have to keep an eye on that."
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