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carmybears · 2 years

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Assembly Required

or - The Inherent Eroticism of Swedish Furniture

This started as a joke and quickly spiraled out of hand

pairing: carmy berzatto X female!reader

summary: What's a new apartment without a trip to Ikea? Building Ikea furniture with Carmy and christening a new apartment

word count: 3.8K

warnings: explicit content, 18+; oral sex (f receiving), unprotected p in v sex (wrap it before you tap it), praise kink, hair pulling, dirty talk, mentions of carmy's gold chain, established relationship

There’s nothing quite as humbling as assembling Ikea furniture.

For such a young man, Carmy had already accomplished a lot more in his life than he ever really expected he would – not just graduating culinary school but excelling in it, working in some of the finest dining establishments in the world, winning a James Beard award, and reopening the family restaurant essentially from the ground up. But god help him if the assembly instructions for this Ingolf dining chair weren’t just going to get the best of him.

Over the course of the past several months, you and Carmy had been in the whirlwind process of moving in together. Deciding to get a place together was one of the easiest decisions he had made since returning to Chicago – he already essentially lived in your apartment, so it only made sense to find a place for the both of you when his lease was up. Apartment hunting had been something of a chore, and he shuddered to think of some of the places you’d seen in listings before stumbling across a shockingly spacious 1 bedroom with a decently renovated kitchen, a surprising amount of natural light, and a relatively easy commute to both the restaurant and your office.

House Hunters, eat your heart out.

As your move-in date came ever closer, every spare moment of your time together had become dedicated to preparing for the move. Many nights, the two of you had shared stories about your own respective days at work over piles of clothes to donate or cardboard boxes lined with packing paper and bubble wrap. Not exactly the sexiest of dates, but he knew that he’d have you all to himself before long.

The day of the actual move went surprisingly well, despite the long hours you’d spent moving boxes from one apartment to the other. Carmy already had very little stuff to actually move, and you’d talked him into hiring professional movers to take the furniture and heavier items to the new place. It left the two of you with plenty of time to methodically move from room to room, unpacking as many boxes as you could before absolutely running out of energy at the end of the day, collapsing on a hastily made bed. It was only at sunrise, when the light began to stream directly into Carmy’s eyes, that you realized you needed to buy curtains.

Well, you needed more than just curtains. In fact, you needed several pieces of furniture and had planned to use Carmy’s second consecutive day off as an opportunity to drive out to the Ikea in Shaumburg and check several items off of your shopping list.

You arrived shortly after opening, and Carmy sipped a gas station coffee lazily from a paper mug as the two of you wandered side by side through the store, occasionally sidetracked by a display featuring items you most certainly did not need. If he hadn’t been with you, he wouldn’t have necessarily enjoyed the shopping process – He had always chosen his furnishings based more on function than form, which he supposed was how he had ended up with a tattered, striped couch that you deemed “fit for a frat basement” and insisted was not allowed in your shared apartment. Still, seeing your eyes light up as you strayed away from his side to pinch the fabric of a throw blanket between your fingers or inspect a set of glassware was surprisingly endearing to him as you leisurely meandered your way through the labyrinthine showroom.

You returned home that afternoon with a bounty of flat packed treasures – four ingolf dining chairs, a Fjallbo coffee table, Hemnes dresser, plus whatever other odds and ends you had thrown into the bright blue and yellow canvas bag. The rest of the day had been spent assembling furniture, a growing mountain of cardboard and Styrofoam amassing along the outskirts of the living room with each item you constructed. The coffee table and dresser had come together with little difficulty, although now Carmy was suspecting that he had met his match as he struggled to comprehend just where exactly he was supposed to be placing a screw in the first of four dining chairs that remained to be assembled.

“You look stumped. Lemme take a look,” you offer, crawling across the new area rug to him.

“Take it,” he relinquishes the instruction sheet to you readily. “I think it’s scrambling my brain just lookin’ at this too long.”

You study the instructions for a moment before pulling the miscellaneous pieces closer to you, brow furrowed in concentration as you pick up the allen wrench and begin the assembly process

He watches in admiration as you work, the chair starting to take form before his very eyes as you hum along to the song playing on the Bluetooth speaker you had set on your newly assembled coffee table. You’re dressed in an Original Beef of Chicagoland t-shirt that you’d stolen from the back office at the restaurant shortly after the grand opening of The Bear, and your crossed legs were bare, save for a black pair of athletic shorts that left very little to the imagination. For a moment, he’s entranced by your thighs, the thought flitting across his mind how he wouldn’t mind being in between them right about now, when he notices a garish mark near your inner thigh.

“Hey, what’s this?” he asks, fingers automatically reaching out to brush across your skin where an angry looking bruise has formed.

“Hmm?” you glance away from your work, down to your lap. “Must just be from moving around all these boxes. It’s no big deal.”

“Sure it doesn’t hurt?” His hand rests on your bare thigh a moment longer and it’s practically Pavlovian the way his mind starts to wander, thinking of all the ways you still have yet to christen the new apartment.

“Yeah, it’s fine.” You’re hardly paying attention to him, your eyes glued once more to the page. “Do you see a screw laying around somewhere?”

His mind is lost in thoughts of you – your skin against his, your breathy moans in his ear – when he sees you looking at him expectantly. “I’m sorry, what?”

“A screw, Carm. Do you see one laying around here somewhere?”

Without waiting for an answer, you rock forward onto your knees, crawling all around the half assembled chair. He starts to look halfheartedly, idly picking up random pages and pieces of cardboard in search of the missing screw, but mostly he’s just eyeing your ass as you crawl around.

A part of him thinks that maybe he should feel just a little bad that he’s not being more helpful in your search – it had been a long weekend after all, and you still had a long way to go before you were fully unpacked and settled in. But on the other hand, he could easily count on one hand how many times the two of you had been intimate in the past two months – busy work schedules, packing lists, and the occasional bickering about what furniture to keep or sell always seemed to get in the way whenever you two had time alone. Or plain exhaustion – can’t forget about that.

Eventually, you give up, sitting back up with your palms pressed to your knees as you let out a groan of frustration. “I can’t believe we’re missing a fucking screw.”

“I think I know where you can get a fucking screw,” Carmy mumbles, not quite sure what devil on his shoulder has clouded his better judgement.

You look at him incredulously, immediately clocking the innuendo. It’s not like you two don’t talk dirty when the occasion calls for it, but damn Carmy can’t help the blush that creeps up his neck as he realizes how crude his thoughts sound when spoken aloud.

“Sorry, I’m as surprised by that as you are,” he apologizes quickly. With fidgeting hands, he starts to rifle through the debris on the floor again, struggling to meet your eye.

When he hears you start to laugh, he steals a look back over at you, noticing that the tension has left your shoulders as you melt into his side, squeezing his bicep reassuringly. He looks down at you and allows an uncertain smile to cross his face as he admires the way your eyes crinkle in laughter as you try to catch your breath.

“That has got to be the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said me,” you wheeze. “Please say more.”

You don’t give him the opportunity to say another word because you place your hands on his cheeks and pull him into a kiss, still giggling when your lips first make contact. As he wraps an arm around your waist to draw you closer, you melt against him, kissing him in earnest now. Something stirs in the pit of his stomach and he wants more – especially when he feels your fingers twist and tangle into the curls at the nape of his neck. He pulls you flush against him and you groan into his mouth, planting your knees on either side of his hips. You’re all warmth and softness in his lap, and he swears the very blood in his veins turns molten as he realizes how badly he wants you underneath him.

With a swift arc of his arm, he clears the miscellaneous debris from the rug before easing your back down to the floor. His lips are working their way along the line of your jaw when you hear the clatter of something small and metallic skittering across the hardwoods. And just like that, the spell is broken.

“Do you think that was the missing screw?”

“Hmm could be,” he mumbles into your skin, pressing his lips into that spot at the base of your neck that usually makes you squirm. Instead, you’re craning your head to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of the screw among the small mountain of trash, saying something under your breath about how you should check it out.

He inches away from you as you begin to prop yourself up on your elbows underneath him.

“The chair’s really that important right now?” he asks, just barely leveling the twinge of annoyance in his voice.

“We need someplace to sit, Carmy,” you counter.

He snorts just a little at your reasoning. “I can think of someplace better for you to sit right now.”

His remark earns him an eye roll from you, but you pause for a moment in hesitation. He takes that moment as leverage, gripping your hips tight in his hands and drawing them up to meet his, groaning in the back of his throat as your bodies make contact.

“You feel what you do to me right?” he asks, shamelessly incapable of stopping himself from rocking his hips against yours in a desperate search for friction. A small whine escapes the back of your throat and his gaze softens as he looks down on you. “I’ve been missing you like crazy.”

He strokes your cheek, fingers grazing down your cheekbone and along your neck, where he can feel your pulse fluttering rapidly. He knows you well enough that he swears he can see your thoughts happening in real time as realization washes over your features.

“We’ve just been so busy,” you offer weakly. “It’s been hard to make the time.”

“I know, I know,” he presses his lips to yours briefly. “Just be here with me right now, baby. I’ll build you all the chairs you want after.”

You nod furiously, balling his shirt up into your first as you pull him back down to you in a searing kiss. He slips an arm underneath you, pressing you ever closer as his fingers slip underneath your shirt, gliding against soft skin until you’re breathless underneath him. He feels you clawing at his t-shirt and together you both move in a flurry to discard your clothing onto the ground beside you. He’s planting open mouthed kisses onto every accessible inch of feverish skin until he has you bare underneath him.

Your fingers are fiddling impatiently with the zipper on his jeans, pushing them lower down his hips until he kneels back on his heels to finish the job for you. You sit up too, pulling his shirt over his head in a hurried motion before grabbing his arm and coaxing him over to the couch with you.

“Floor not good enough for you?” he asks, leaving a trail of kisses over your collar bones as he presses you down into the cushions.

“I’m just already sore,” you protest, your fingers tracing idly across his shoulder blades.

“But I haven’t even done anything yet,” he croons into your ear, bringing a hand up to knead at your breast.

“Shut up, you know what I mean.”

And he does know – the subtle aches in the back of his legs and in between his shoulders have been present all day after the grueling hours of moving in the day beforehand. That’s not going to stop him now though, not as your legs fall open under his hands. His dick twitches at the sight of your pussy, evidence of your arousal glistening at the apex of your thighs and he’s like a man enchanted.

“This all for me, baby?” he asks you softly, reaching out to stroke your folds, wetness gathering on his calloused fingers as you squirm into his touch.

“Yes,” you gasp, pleading with him as you grasp his wrist in a feeble attempt to guide his fingers where you so desperately want him. “Carmy, please.”

You don’t have to ask him twice as he sinks two fingers into your snug walls. He studies your face as he touches you – the way you bite back a groan as his fingers stretch you out, admiring the way you tilt your head back, baring your neck to him as the pad of his thumb brushes roughly against your clit.

“Fuck,” you groan. “Carmy.”

“You look so fuckin’ pretty like this for me, baby.” It’s true, you do. He thinks you’ve never looked prettier than you do in this apartment, with your proudly thrifted couch, half-built Ikea furniture and granite countertops that he could fuck you on every night if you wanted. With his free hand, he palms heavily over the front of his Calvin Kleins and makes a mental note that the kitchen is next in line for christening. But he has something he wants to do first.

You whine when he removes his hand from between your legs, but before you can protest, he’s maneuvering your thighs closer to the edge of the couch and angling your hips toward himself as he sinks to his knees in front of you.

He can feel your thighs trembling already in anticipation around him and you’re swearing under your breath before he’s even had his first taste of you. He starts with a few furtive licks, allowing the smell and taste of you to invade his senses before delving in deeper, lapping at your drenched pussy with languid strokes of his tongue. Wrapping one arm around your thigh, he pulls your leg over his shoulder, causing a shift of your hips that has the tip of his nose nudging against your clit. He steals a look back up at you just in time for you to cry out in pleasure, hands reaching down to tangle in his hair. Increasingly frantic, you tug at the roots, guiding his mouth where you want him, hips grinding senselessly into his nose and wanting mouth.

“Oh my fucking god,” you groan above him as his lips close around your clit, humming softly. He glides two fingers back into you, thrusting them in and out of you in time with the tight circles he’s making around your clit with his tongue.

“Carmen,” you sob his full first name – not Carmy, not baby, not Chef – Carmen. “Don’t fucking stop. JesusfuckingChrist don’t stop.”

He doesn’t stop – wouldn’t dream of it. Even as your thighs clamp together around his head, he’s dizzy with the taste of you, groaning into your pussy as he pushes his tongue into you, big nose pressed into your clit in just the precise way that has you falling apart for him. You’re babbling incoherently as you cum on his face, and he doesn’t hesitate to lap up every wave of pleasure that rolls over you until you’re squirming, oversensitive under his lips.

“Too much, Carm,” you beg. “Please.”

He nuzzles a kiss into your inner thigh, lips pressed right above the bruise he noticed earlier, before crawling back up to you. Your chest is heaving against his as you limply wrap your arms around the back of his neck and he drags his lips along your throat.

“Absolutely insane that we haven’t done this in so long,” you pant, curling your fingers tightly in his hair to angle his mouth back toward yours. He swallows the groan you make when you taste yourself on his tongue and his dick twitches in his underwear at the sensation of your fingernails scratching at his scalp, raking down his back.

“C’mere,” you mumble against his lips, and in an awkward tumble of limbs, you both maneuver so that he’s laying prone on the coach with you sitting at his hips. He can feel the heat of your core so easily through his briefs that he thinks he may go insane. You drive a merciful hand under the waistband of his underwear and grab his aching cock so firmly in your hand that it makes his head spin just a bit as your thumb grazes over the tip. You pump the shaft expertly once, twice and he’s not even quite sure that he’s speaking English anymore.

“Wanna be inside you so bad, baby.”

“Sure you don’t want me to return the favor?” You’re easing his underwear down his thighs, all the while looking him directly in the eyes, your gaze heated. He knows right then and there that he wouldn’t last 5 seconds in your mouth.

“Another time,” he rasps, reaching toward you in a desperate attempt to feel your delicate fingers or the soft curve of your hips – he’ll take any little bit you have to give him. “Just want you now.”

You rock your hips against him, coating the length of him in your wet heat; a low groan in the shape of your name escapes his throat. He wants to chastise you for teasing him, but before he can find the words, you sink down onto him with a soft “Oh.”

There’s a moment of stillness and he drinks in the sight of you, eyes fluttering shut and lips thoroughly kissed and swollen. He can’t help the way the words tumble out of his mouth – “I love you.”

“But I haven’t even done anything yet,” you grin cheekily.

And that’s when you move.

You’re hot and wet around him and he’s absolutely mesmerized by the sight of his cock disappearing into you repeatedly as you move above him.

“Fuck, you ride my dick so well, baby,” he praises, cupping one breast in his hand, kneading the soft flesh there in time to the rhythm of your hips rocking against his.

There’s a slight tug at the base of his neck as the hand you’ve leveraged against his chest catches on his golden chain, your fingers curling around the glistening metal as if to tether yourself to him. Something flips like a switch then and he needs more of you.

He grabs your hips roughly on the next thrust, pulling you back down onto him so that he’s buried to the hilt. You cry out and grasp at the back of the couch for balance but let him continue to guide your hips, doing everything you can to keep up with the rougher pace he’s setting for you.

“You good?” He checks in, praying the answer is yes.

“Fuck, Carm,” you groan, digging your fingers into his arm and he can feel the stinging sensation of little crescent moons pressing into the skin. “s’good.”

He can feel how badly your legs are shaking as you match his every move. Heat pools in the bottom of his stomach and he knows he won’t be long now. Maintaining the pace as best as he can, he slides a hand between your bodies, swirling his fingertips around the swollen bud of your clit in a way that makes you swear out loud.

Your thighs clench hard on either side of him and it’s all he can do not to fall apart immediately. You’ve all but collapsed onto his chest and your breath is hot on his neck as you whine to him that you’re close.

“I gotchu,” he promises, fingertips still working in time with his hips. “Come for me.”

And you do.

The sensation of your pulsing walls around him is all at once too much and not enough as he digs his heels into the couch, thrusting erratically into you several more times, chasing his high. With a throaty groan, he screws his eyes shut as a wave of euphoria washes over him. For just a few brief seconds, it’s as if there’s nothing in his world but you.

Limbs heavy and bodies absolutely spent, you lay facing each other, just barely able to fit laying side by side on the couch. If he had the foggiest idea which box a throw blanket had been packed into, he would have pulled one up and around your shoulders. Instead, he settles for curling himself around you, skin still flushed and heated from moments before as you tangle your fingers idly in his hair, gazing at him through heavily lidded eyes. He kisses the tip of your nose and runs the pad of his thumb across your cheekbone as your eyes flutter shut.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he jostles your shoulder lightly.

“Mmmh,” you harrumph. “I know, I know. We should get cleaned up.”

“No, I was gonna say we have some chairs to build.”

The smack he receives to the chest is well deserved. Nevertheless, you allow him to coax you from the couch to a warm shower. Afterward, as you finish dressing and preparing for bed, he pads back out to the living room, sifting once again through the pile of cardboard until the glimmer of something silver catches his eye.

You step into the room just in time to see him setting the lost screw atop the coffee table.

“A project for tomorrow,” you promise.

“Tomorrow,” he agrees, pressing his lips to your forehead.

He thinks of all the tomorrows you have ahead of you – together in your shared apartment, in your shared lives. And he can’t help but be excited for every single one.

#carmy berzatto smut #carmen berzatto smut #carmy x reader smut #carmy berzatto x reader smut #carmen berzatto x reader smut #carmy berzatto x reader #mine #pardon a cheesy ending and the fact that I got lost in the exposition sauce #would you believe the exposition was longer before i made edits?

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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bao3bei4 · 11 months

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ON THE TSHIRT METHOD TO WRITING ESSAYS IN YOUR OWN TIME:

i have had a couple people mention to me that they would like to write essays too, but they are a little out of practice. so i thought i should gather some scattered thoughts into one place. this is not a systematic guide. i am young and inexperienced and still working out things for myself, but this is my basic process and some things that have helped me, summarized.

my biggest single piece of advice is to write with your proverbial pussy. you are not writing for a grade so don't act like it. forget rigor, forget academic style, etc. read what you're interested in, and write following up on the threads that you're interested in. don’t sweat the details. just do you.

if you still need more advice..... here’s a long winded post.

step zero: if you have no clue what you want to say yet

read. and read a lot.

but be realistic. be kind to yourself. your attention is a precious resource, and it is getting eaten up by shit out of your control all the time. if you’ve had a busy day, you may still have the brain power left to read. i almost never do. lol. so make sure to carve out time on a day off, if possible. otherwise you might end up completely fried, reading the same sentence over and over, and ending up scrolling on your phone LMAO. <-- painful lesson also to this end, if you haven’t picked up a denser book in a while, start with shorter articles, especially ones written more recently. if your attention wanders, try getting a physical book instead. the most important thing is just starting things you’ll actually read. i’ve seen a lot of people (and been that person) who was like. “oh i’m going to start with THE canonical text in a subject i’m interested in” which makes sense right? but that book is inevitably long and dense and convoluted and boring. you can come back to it later. this shouldn’t feel like a chore!

genuinely this is the most helpful thing you can do is just. read anything. it may be difficult at first (or always), but it is still the easiest way to engage with the foremost experts from around the world and the entirety of written history on any subject you are interested in. there’s not really a substitute to this.

note: you may say that people can and do come up with brilliant ideas independently of their access to written works. this is true! but if you are one of them, you should skip this section/post, because you already know what you want to say. okay that was a little too facetious. let me revise: when i say that, without reading, it will be hard to come up with more complex ideas than what you have now, that isn’t necessarily pejorative. maybe your current ideas and impulses are original and meaningful and complex. if they aren’t, however, you don’t have to resign yourself to it. your experiences in real life are the most valuable thing you can bring to the table, but it can be very difficult to articulate and contextualize them without community—whether that be irl, or the simple textual company of other writers. you can let other people help you and teach you. basically, this is a long winded way of saying something extremely simple: reading is not the only way to gain knowledge, or even the best. but it is an extremely consistent and relatively egalitarian way.** **scihub and libgen and sometimes the public library are your friends. (my local library’s book coverage is spotty) who cares about piracy. LMAO.

you may surprise yourself by how nicely you fall into little spirals. you read one thing. and you are enamored with the way the author approaches their subject. so you end up reading everything else they’ve written, and then you start on the authors they list that inspire them in their interviews. maybe you just read one article that’s a little dry but it cites something else that seems far more interesting. read that next. and so on.

if you are struggling to read that’s okay. you have options. start a book club (or just get a friend who also wants to read more). if that sounds like too much work, pick a friend to keep updated on all your new facts. you just want to get used to reading something, and telling someone your favorite parts again. skim books. skip the boring parts. drop them entirely and find a more interesting one. no one’s going to quiz you. this is for your own enjoyment.

also important here: read books that make you want to write. sometimes this is because the methods and/or prose of the author are so exciting, you want to do something just like that. sometimes it’s because the content is so exciting, you want to say something about that too. sometimes they speak so powerfully to your own life, you want to tell people this is me!! i see this!! there are books i just enjoy reading, sure, and i do read them. but you know how, like, a good movie makes you want to tell stories too? good theory should do that too, in my opinion.

step one: you have some ideas now.

these ideas don’t have to be set in stone. but you should have an idea now of what you might talk about. personally, for me, i have two interconnected types of essay ideas.

interventions. this is like [tumblr voice] Why Is Nobody Talking About This. i see some sort of hole. maybe i know how to fill it, maybe i don’t.

free associations. basically i read one thing, or some analysis of one thing. and then it reminded me of another thing. and i’m like. i want to tease apart their connections, their similarities, and their differences.

there are more types of ideas, i’m sure. but these are the ones i consistently have. with me, the second kind is more common. very rarely do i find that my thoughts are that original. rather, i’ve found that one of my strengths as a writer is being able to make connections that other people haven’t made, or haven’t made in depth before. IN MY OPINION.

so i find it quite flexible. maybe i watch a movie, and it reminds me of my own life, because i think two women in the movie could be sad queer freaks. and i’m a sad queer freak. or it could be that i think scum villain could be analyzed through the framework of freudian psychoanalysis. you get the idea.

at this stage of the process, i don’t have a thesis, necessarily. but i have a couple phrases i’m drawn to. i have a bullet point or two. i have vibes.

to use an example from this blog, one of my friends hui once mentioned that that one fan image was going around again. we were going ughhh it’s victorian not chinese! together and they said “you should write a meta on it.” i wasn’t sure quite yet what i had to say. but i knew a couple things.

this is, incidentally, because i had done some research into chinoiserie before, because i had cited the zuroski book for a paper i had to write for an english class some years before on pride and prejudice and its use of descriptions of material culture, an essay that in turn was inspired by my random yet deeply felt conviction that jane austen hated me personally and wanted to kill me. this is why i encourage reading a lot. i think.

to work on this stage, make lists. lots of them. i have a .txt file where i keep every essay idea i have. a lot of them are a sentence. or they're lists of books or theorists i think i could make something out of. or they're theses that feel true, but i’m not sure why yet.

it took me a while to get to this point. just like with writing fic, there was a period when i first started where i was like. i only have one idea. i’m going to write it, and then i’m never going to write again. and then i had just one more idea. after a while. eventually you will find you have so many ideas and the world is full of possibilities. it’s a muscle you have to flex. like reading. and telling people about what you’re reading.

actually, i feel like there was a step 0.5 here that i completely skipped.

step zero point five that i skipped: how to generate ideas

my very truly complete “first time writing something semi-academic that was original” (with a loose definition of the word original) was literally just me reading literary criticism of one book, and saying “i think this author’s thoughts can be applied to this other book” and found some textual evidence that supported that the process could be replicated.

this is like, writing with training wheels on. eventually i got better at it (see aforementioned chinoiserie essay. i hope you agree.). but that was a good place to start for me. it made the proverbial blank page less intimidating, knowing i had a scaffolding.

i suggest trying this. see how it goes for you. read around until you find some piece of criticism, or just some theory about how something works, that you like. and using your newfound hammer, go look for some nails.

note: i know this expression is meant to like. be a negative thing. but you do have to start somewhere. it’s okay if it sucks. it’s just for your practice and your enjoyment.

be cautious of stances. weak writing (in my OPINIONNNN) tries to unilaterally defend or condemn a behavior. what you need to do is treat your writing as a bit. and then you need to run with it. you need to take it farther than what is reasonable. if this bit is truly actually deeply true, then what does it mean about yourself? it’s like using a new set of pronouns as a joke or something. you know what i mean? (that was an example of what i’m trying to communicate here)

what else is key to look out for... look for oppositional pairs or tensions. look for perverse incentives and vicious circles. look for embarrassing ideas. that is, what would be extremely embarrassing if it was true? (or to admit that it was true) you may go—tshirt, here you’re just describing things that are sexy. yes, exactly, that’s the point. you want things that thrill.

just keep reading and making notes until everything echoes with something else. now you’re ready for step two.

step two: refine your ideas further.

let me do this by demonstration. once more extending my earlier example of my chinoiserie essay, i knew that i really wanted to take zuroski’s points and basically... steal them. this is called “citation,” i guess. but i thought the following insights were useful to me:

british women were invested in chinese material objects

they incorporated them into their own subjectivity

past a certain point, they no longer “consumed” these signifiers, but these signifers became theirs

critique of one was able to stand in for critique of the other

and from being on fandom twitter, i already had the following insights:

people deliberately blurred the lines between china and england when it came to fans and tea

people also liked talking about victorian modesty when it came to china

so it seemed like victorian england and china had a privileged relationship, in a lot of people’s minds in fandom.

so it didn’t really seem a stretch to say... how can we look at one history, and apply it to our present?

it was a bit of the combo of the two: i saw something i didn’t see people were talking about, and it reminded me of something else i’d read before.

something that helps me a lot is tweeting about my essay ideas. if you have me on my private account, you already know this. it forces me to explain myself to someone who doesn’t know what i’m talking about in a very succinct way. oftentimes, i tweet something out while i’m brainstorming, and then i steal the phrasing back into my essay. see? tweets can be writing too.

this is microdosing on step zero’s “read something and practice telling a friend about it.” now you’re writing something and telling a friend about it.

step three: okay now you can like. open a google doc

make an outline. i know i know i know. i’m sorry. you can start just barfing thoughts if you want, but eventually everything that was on the top of your head will be out. and now you can start thinking about structure. the reason the outline is important is because it makes clear the logical progression from one idea to the next.

i know i usually bounce around in my writing (a tendency which has been magnified here because this is so casual LMAO), but i always want to make sure that my points are substantiated. if we want to talk about how a causes b, we should prove a, we should prove the causal link, and only then can we infer b, for instance. it doesn’t really matter what order that happens in (or even that we set about it that way), but the more complicated your idea is, the longer checklist you need. it’s just a checklist. that’s all.

as you start writing, you’ll probably need to read some more. you’re going to want to say something you think is true, but you’re going to realize that you haven’t proved it (or you can’t). go look to see if someone else has proved it.

maybe you’re right. add that evidence in. maybe you’re wrong. now your essay has a new direction. there is a living thing beneath you. actually, on that idea—

i tend to structure my outlines (if i’m not sure yet what my point is) by pasting a bunch of quotes in a document, and reorganizing them until they make sense, they seem to flow. and then i start explaining why, until i realized i have begun to walk off in a new direction. always embrace that new direction. eventually you will find that you have not been taking twists and turns, but actually you were dizzily walking along a straight path. (unless you have been unfocused and you are trying to say too many things at once. ask a friend to read your essay if you’re not sure which is the case.)

quotes are the smallest unit of your analysis. work with evidence. or, at least, i do. it makes writing an essay like solving a mystery. the idea of just spontaneously generating something new fills me with terror. rather, i want to autopsy something, trace its steps, and then discover how it came to be dead. this may not be true for you. but it’s true for meeeee and this is my post.

tl;dr

0. read something and tell someone about it/post it out

0.5. come up with a bit and run with it

1. think "why is no one talking about this" or start free associating

2. come up with weird connections and tell someone about it/post it out

3. collect all of your posts and ideas into a gdoc and organize them.

anyway i like reading posts like this because i’m incredibly nosy. so i tried to write out the sort of thing i like to read from other people. i don’t suggest you actually try to replicate it (if anyone would even want to.) practically basically i just encourage you to try any single part of this that you think was interesting or relatable or helpful. personally, i suggest reading a book and posting your favorite lines from it. if you do this a couple times, i think you will find the seeds of an essay waiting for you in your own posts.

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howdoesagrapewrites · 11 months

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what wld lovesick pav and gaya be like w a s/o who tries to be like, healthy in their relationship? like they're not the "i wanna get away bc this is unhealthy" type, but the "i will actively tie you both down and make you communicate your feelings and wants in a healthy way until we can all reach a mutual agreement" way

like the two reach the stage where they don't want their love to leave the house at all- but they kinda quickly shut that down and are like "nuh uh. i have a life, so either we talk it out and find something that works for me and you two or i stay out five minutes past the curfew you set just to make you squirm"

𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙠 𝙞𝙩 𝙤𝙪𝙩

Cw: poly!reader x lovesick! Pavitr Prabhakar x lovesick!Gayatri Singh, explicit talk about mental health

Notes: all I can think about is the reader spraying then with a water bottle like a poorly behaved cat

>You went out of the apartment to get the grocery shopping done, your partners had been behaving oddly, they were always very affectionate and loved being around you, but lately you feel like they have been neglecting their personal life in order to be together

>You left the house when they were taking a nap, you didn't feel like you were sneaking out, just that you were doing chores while they slept

>You think about this as you examine the red apples deciding if you should buy them or not

>Your phone vibrates and you answer to a preoccupied Pavitr, you apologize for not telling them, but you didn't want to disturb them, when you're about to hang up, he hits you with "just wait, we're on our way"

>You're a little confused and annoyed by having to wait for them at the market without being able to continue the list of home necessities, but you tried to be understanding, and thought that maybe when you got home, you could start a conversation about what you've been thinking the whole afternoon

>When they arrived, the outing went smoothly, and happily, like you're used to

>After you finished organizing everything on the shelves and pantry, you started the conversation in a pretty straight forward manner, you didn't want to dance around the subject and talk about issues like they're anything aside a from a completely normal part of every relationship

>You said you wanted to talk, and they were visibly nervous, however, complied

>"So I've been noticing that you don't want to leave the house, and that you get really upset when I do leave, and it concerns me, I won't force you, but I'm your partner too, I'm here for both of you."

>I think these two would be one of the easiest characters to pull into therapy and get them to work through their issues, something that's surprising considering they would never accept this if you were dating individually

>The challenge here is definitely Pavitr, because like I've said a million times already, he's extremely delusional

>So it'll be hard to even make him realize there's an issue with his obsession, also you'll need to reassure him that you're not rejecting his feelings, but rather just want to work through a more positive and healthy way of expressing and processing those feelings

>"But I love you, why don't you love me too?"

>"Of course I do, Pav, but love isn't supposed to hurt"

>Gayatri has a more clear vision of where these issues stem from and will be more cooperative with communication with time

>At first she's closed to the idea, but when she sees how much you care and that you genuinely want to help her, she lets her guard down

>If you respond positively and don't show signs of fear or disgust when she tells you about her feelings, you get to hear, the most gruesome parts, but far from scared, you're proud she feels safe to verbalize and recognize toxic behavior

>I think Pavitr would use mindfulness as a coping strategy for the yandere tendencies, and Gayatri would turn to writing

>Some of Gayatri's pieces are morbid, sure, but it's better than having her do it, you praise the effort

>Sometimes they still relapse and snap at you or get too possessive, but you're having none of it

>You set clear boundaries and as hard as that is, they understand that they'll lose your trust and love if they are unwilling to be better

>I think there's a solid 8/10 chance of fixing them

#atsv x reader #atsv pavitr #pavitr prabhakar #pavitr x reader #gayatri singh #pavitr prabhakar x reader #pavitr x gayatri #gayatri x reader #spiderverse pavitr #yandere pavitr #yandere pavitr prabhakar #pavitr prabhakar x you #pavitr Prabhakar x Gayatri Singh #gayatri singh x reader #pavitr headcanons

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chastitywifeguide · 2 months

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understanding the assignment

chastity has many flavors and it is important to understand exactly what flavor of chastity your slave needs in order to best exploit his desires to suit your own wants and needs.

think of chastity as the bare minimum from which additional things are added. no one, absolutely no one, is simply just into chastity. it’s always chastity AND ______.

you dont even necessarily need to be into any of these things yourself. keep in mind many of these things can often be done without actually engaging in it yourself or engaging in it in only ways you yourself want to engage. i will try to explain each and give examples. ill also preface this by saying i’m not an expert in all of these things im discussing. I may be incomplete or maybe the way i engage in it isn’t how you engage with it so take what you like and change what you want.

it is vital to find out exactly what his AND is and how to exploit it. common ANDs are:

1, chastity and denial:

• Denial of full orgasm. This does not mean that you deny sexual intimacy. On the contrary, there will be plenty of sexual intimacy, but he is denied orgasm. The thrill comes from constantly being aroused without the release of an orgasm. • This is the easiest one to do, the most universal, and likely the most important but also the one that is easily done wrong. By default, anyone interested in Chastity is interested in denial. This is obviously on a spectrum with some people only wanting to be denied for short periods of time And others wanting to be denied indefinitely.

you should be keeping your slave locked and denied an orgasm for as long as possible. How do you know when Is too long? Well, when he begs for release.. you’re probably half way there.

2, chastity and humiliation: very common. Use his status as a chastity slave to humiliate him. I’d say this is usually done through small penis humiliation (SPH) and/or emasculation. Tell him how small his penis Is and how its isn’t big enough to satisfy you anymore. If he has a larger penis then tell him you think it Is shrinking due to prolonged charity. Have him use a strapon on you that Is bigger than him and comment how it Is so much better and there is no reason to unlock him ever again. If you do unlock him for sex, tell him that he had his chance but the dildo was better and you may never unlock him again! Emasculate him by making him wear a micro cage. Tell him how cute his penis is when it Is small and locked.

3, chastity and domination: making him your slave by enforcing rule’s and punishments. Domination occurs in both the bedrooms and outside the bedroom. In the bedroom, you should be taking control. You should be initiating sex and dictating what kind of sex is being had. Tell him things. Use your words to demand he go down on you. Outside the bedroom make a literal list of rules that he must follow. have him sign it and then hang it up in your bedroom. He should be massaging you nightly, doing all the chores, making you a bath, etc all without you having to tell him because those are THE RULES BITCH!

4, chastity and feminization/sissification: a lot of guys. More than i think you could imagine, have this fantasy and chastity is often a gateway to this. Essentially you’re going to leverage his charity to “make” him do typically feminine things. Chastity by default will already make him assume a more stereotypical feminine roll. He no longer has a penis (it’s now yours!). Which means he no longer gets to fuck you the way a “real man” should and you will assume the more masculine roll (you’re the one with the penis afterall)! This will eat away at his masculinity to begin with and it will be your job to continue to chip away at it. This can be done by taking all stereotypically feminine things and making him full-fill them. His penis is locked so now you’re his only hope for sexual release. He’ll be the one left without an orgasm at the end of sex. He’ll be the one on the receiving end by taking your strapon. He’ll be the one that sucks the dick (strapon). he’ll be the one that wears the lingerie. he’ll be the passive one as you assume the masculine roll. You’ll tell him to get on the bed and bend over. You’ll be the one that gets to see his cute outfits and have him give you head. You’ll be the one that does the fucking. You’ll be the one that always orgasms first. Keep it going outside the bedroom too. Have him wear panties/lingeire under his work clothes, paint his toe nails to match, etc …

5, chastity and cuckolding: very simple but a big jump for many. Essential you lock him in chastity and then have an open marriage where you’re allowed or encouraged to fuck other guys. Many are into it. Many aren’t. Better make sure he’s actually into this one before continuing.

6, chastity and BDSM: other than the chastity cage locking his penis up, you could engage in a spectrum of bondage and sadism. Could be as simple as using handcuffs or tying him to the bedpost while you ride his face to something more intense. I wont go too far into this because i wont be the best at explaining it all but some things you could try are tying him to the bed and playing with his cage and using a vibrator on his cage until he cums or gets close. Once he gets close then stop and repeat. You could also tie him to the bed and have him wear a strapon. You could then ride the strapon. This will drive him wild being so close and “fucking” you without actually being able to do it. Super humiliating too.

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possessionisamyth · 10 months

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exactly one person asked for a men's list when it came to my cooking headcanons list for the ladies so here ya go!

Chris Redfield- Actually a decent home cook because he was old enough to want to give Claire some of their mom's cooking when he could. Unfortunately, any time he tries a new recipe for the first time he burns it. The second or third time things come out fine, but the first time he does something new he's opening windows to let out the pan smoke or returning to coals in the oven.

Barry Burton- His wife does all the cooking as he's hopeless in the kitchen, but since they got married she's never had to wash a single dish. He always made sure there's a working dishwasher in their house for when he's away too long to do his usual chore.

Albert Wesker- Can make the fanciest looking food in the world. We're talking Michelin star $100 a plate in appearance only. His dishes have zero flavor. They taste. No one understands how this happens.

Leon Kennedy- Breakfast King. I know the line in damnation is too overused, but breakfast is actually the easiest way to start learning how to cook. Box mix pancakes, bacon, sausage, and eggs, all require him to put something in a pan on low to medium heat with some oil and poke it around until it's done. There's little effort exerted in monitoring since that's half his real job anyway. Of course it translates to cooking. He's perfected the timing. Everything else is take-out though.

Carlos Oliveira- He had no idea how to cook until he got out of Raccoon City and went home to his family. He tried learning from his mama, but she'd always take the knife or pan from him, so he learned from a sibling and is pretty good at it. He makes a lot of marinades, so the blender is his friend.

Luis Serra Navarro- Absolutely under no circumstances does this man belong in a kitchen. He will concoct the most wretched smelling health food that's full of vitamins, minerals, and "a healthy dash of vinegar for flavor". He's wonderful to have at the dinner table, but never at the stove. Makes a real tasty cup of coffee though.

Jack Krauser- For some ungodly reason, this man can take someone's most hated foods and make them taste good. No idea what the hell he does to it as he will kick everyone out of the kitchen until he's done, but he's just like that. Barely cooks not because he hates it, but because he has to be in the mood.

Piers Nivans- He's the king of the grill. Will lecture anyone in earshot about the important difference between gas, charcoal, or wood when it comes to maintaining the flavor of the meat. He also believes salt and pepper are all you need for a great burger which must be cooked to medium at the hottest lest it lose it's tenderness.

Jake Muller- Salads, smoothies, and overnight oats, he's the one making meals that are able to be eaten fast or on the go. Fruit counts as a dessert to him. He does enjoy experimenting by eating the "weird" or most unfriendly tourist foods while he travels so he has something to brag about, even though he could never figure out how to cook any of it himself.

Ethan Winters- He tries his best. He'll help Mia in the kitchen with food prep or clean up. He makes good dips for chips, has a delicious cookie recipe, and researched how to make baby food for when Rosemary stopped being breastfed. This somehow translated into him figuring out how to make very good custards and parfaits. Although, he got super frustrated trying to figure out how to make bread and has given up the fight.

i will happily do this again for any characters not on either of my lists since i love cooking and baking, and this is fun to think about

#resident evil #chris redfield #barry burton #albert wesker #leon kennedy #carlos oliveira #luis serra #jack krauser #piers nivans #jake muller #ethan winters #headcanons

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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raineandsky · 6 months

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The Villain's Housekeeper

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4) (part 5) (part 6) (part 7) (part 8) (part 9) (part 10) (part 11)

tw death mention

The courtesy the villain has decided to show the hero has been incredibly weird. A relief, of course, but weird.

They avoid the hero most days now. The time they used to spend watching the hero break their back for them is now spent as far away from the hero as humanly possible. The hero kind of understands, though—since their damning little slip up in the bedroom last week, the villain’s demanded they stop doing the chores until their arm is better. There isn’t much to watch anymore.

And when the villain disappears out the front door for the night, it’s always with the same instruction now: “get a decent night’s sleep, don’t lie on your arm, and for the love of god don’t make it worse.”

No chores to be done in their absence. No rules. Just… rest. Get better. It’s a breath of fresh air.

Anyway, the lack of random work to do gives them more time to snoop. Okay, so it’s not no rules, but one very easily breakable rule. A rule they couldn’t care less about breaking—snapping clean in half, if they can. The agency taught them how to pry and leave no trace. This is the easiest, most rewarding part of their stay here. It's more of a routine than anything now, trekking through their notes.

The villain’s office is a mess, to put it lightly. It makes it just that little bit harder to restore when they’re done, but it doesn’t matter too much—they get information. A list of missing villains, heroes on hit lists, plans. Plans to infiltrate and extort and seduce and kill. God, everything the agency’s ever wanted is in here. The hero commits it all to memory, and by the time the villain gets home they’re already asleep on the sofa downstairs.

The villain always comes back in the early hours of the morning, and today is no different. The only difference is that the front door batters against the opposite wall and the villain staggers rather loudly into the kitchen.

The hero is up in an instant, sleep torn from them abruptly. They trail after the villain, glancing instinctively to the floor for blood, but the tile is clean. The villain sinks into a kitchen chair like it’s the last thing they’re ever going to do.

“[Villain]...?” the hero says into the silence. The villain barely responds, their gaze burning into the table as they lean their face against their palms, their elbows propped up on the table.

“We’re dying,” the villain says flatly. “We’re dropping like flies, and [Supervillain] is still trying to send us all to our deaths to save herself.”

It’s not hard to feign surprise; this wasn’t mentioned in any of the paperwork the hero’s seen. They pull a chair out and settle opposite them. “What do you mean?”

“What do I—” The villain’s tone is scathing for a moment, but they bite back the end of their sentence with a sigh. “Heroes are killing us. I’ve found more than one person face-down in some back alley. People I know—allies. Friends.”

The hero’s throat closes up for a long, long moment. “I– I’m sorry,” they say testily, but they come out as more of a choke. The villain doesn’t seem to hear them anyway.

“Every so often [Supervillain] sends a new batch of villains into the thick of it, to try and take down some of the heroes wiping us out. Those who do survive are few and far between, usually screwed up beyond repair. And [Supervillain]— she’s—”

The villain sucks in a shuddery breath. The hero waits patiently.

“[Supervillain]’s chosen her next round of sacrifices,” the villain says with a breath of a humourless laugh, and a knot twists in the hero’s stomach. The villain fixes them with an empty stare, and the hero shoves down the urge to glance away. “I’m one of them. I’m— I’m being sent to die.”

Perfect, some part of the hero’s mind murmurs. A safe haven, all to yourself.

But despite everything, the villain’s been kind to them. Even though they humiliated them and forced their hand, the hero’s not in the claws of the superhero yet because of them. And they’re going to die. The villain’s going to leave one day, and they won’t come back. The hero’s brain almost can’t wrap around it.

“She— I’ll be setting off… for good next Thursday.” The villain’s face morphs into hopelessness.

It’s Tuesday now. Nine days.

The villain clears their throat, though it doesn’t seem to dislodge the anxious rasp residing there. “I, uh— I’m sorry,” they say unexpectedly. “For being a villain, for making you dance for my entertainment to stay alive, for— god, for everything. I’m sorry, [Hero].”

The hero can only blink at them for a moment. Sorry? “That’s, uh… it’s okay,” the hero says dumbly after a moment.

“No, it’s not. The least I can do is fix what I can before I… y’know.” The villain’s eyes lock onto the hero’s so intensely that they can’t find it in themself to look away this time. “I’m so sorry.”

You saved my life. You let me stay here. You let me hide from your enemy. You let me hide from mine. You ignored the benefits of turning me out for what? Companionship? Necessity? Something else entirely?

The hero can’t say that to their nemesis. The villain already sounds insane saying all this. They don’t need to feed into the absurdity of the evening. So they simply force a smile, of sorts, onto their face, and say, “I forgive you.”

(next part)

#creative writing #writblr #writers on tumblr #writing #writing community #heroes and villains #hero x villain #the villains housekeeper #tw death mention #can. can you guess when the next part is gonna be >:)#if you wanna skip for the triggers but still wanna follow along lemme knowww #i can give you a rundown of parts sans trigger if you wanna keep up with the series :) dont want anyone missin out!!

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thcfountain · 17 days

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Summary: The local news and media outlets have dubbed the serial killer haunting their town as 'THE SWEETHEART KILLER'. But in this little town, evil recognizes evil and love is formed in the darkest places.

Part One of Two. Part Two.

Tags: murder, oral male receiving, handjobs, implied sex but also detailed sex, horror, manipulation, implied bullying, talk of self harm, talk of suicide, talk of depression, degradation kink, cum swallowing, implied god complex.

Word count: 2,349

banner cred. Join my tag list.

tag list: @to-be-written @th4t-em0-k1d @cheyyyr @somewhere-diamond @ravieisunhinged @blackveilomens @sprokat @jilliemiw86 @cookiesupplier @emmmm127 @thatchickwiththecamera @itsafullmoon @meekahy

PROLOGUE.

He's a good boy with shit luck.

You could have asked anyone in that little town and they'd all tell you the same thing - Noah Sebastian was a good boy with the worst string of luck they'd ever seen.

His bad luck train had started in high school. Back then, he'd been a quiet boy who kept to himself and that had made him the easiest target for bullies. Ask anyone, they'd tell you about the times they'd seen John Marks push him around and sneer, calling Noah crass names and giving him the occasional, unwarranted black eye.

But then one day Noah stumbled out of the local woods, shaking like a leaf, fear written across his face. It wasn't uncommon to hear gunshots in hunting season, but this was far from hunting season and Noah swore up and down it had been an accident. He'd been lured out there by John and a fight had ensued for the gun - John's father's gun, the one that had never once been properly put away.

When Noah took the stand and pleaded self defense, of course everyone believed him, why wouldn't they, when they knew exactly how malicious John had been in real life. And even though it had been self defense, every day for a month after the trial, Noah showed up at the Marks’ residence, begging for Mrs. Marks’ forgiveness, bringing her flowers, doing menial chores here and there as if the loss of her son had been pure tragedy and not an accident in the woods, where he had planned to kill Noah.

Bad luck followed Noah to college, to a girlfriend that he followed around like a puppy, waiting on her every want or need, no matter how ridiculous. She was a sad girl, prone to self mutilation, writing despairing notes in her journal on a daily basis from a young age. It wasn't really a shock to anyone but Noah when they found her hanging.

Poor Noah, what despairing luck that boy had. What trauma it had brought him.

He came back home with a body covered in tattoos and the necessary degrees to teach kindergarten. The kids loved him and the way he managed to make them excited to learn and their parents sang him praises.

Wonderful Noah. Sweet Noah. The man who can do no wrong.

Of course, everyone who knew him had been so ecstatic when he found the man of his dreams, Oli - a man who was just as kind and sweet as Noah. They got married so quickly and the chapel had been packed with people who had come to celebrate the lovebirds on their joyous day.

Oli integrated himself into the town and into everyone's lives easily, opening a bakery in town. Noah's class loved him, the little old ladies who stopped in on early mornings for fresh pastries thought he was such a gentleman.

Everyone knew that if you were in need, Noah and Oli would always come to your rescue.

Such a sweet couple. Such kind-hearted men. Poor sweet Noah deserves this happiness after all that previous misfortune.

And then tragedy began to strike the entire town. The newspapers dubbed the serial killer that plagued them as ‘THE SWEETHEART KILLER’.

A man who eluded authorities at every turn. Loving couples kept turning up dead in their own homes.

At least we have sweet Noah protecting our kids during the school day. At least we have kind Oli, selling us sweets and making us laugh when we need it most.

PART ONE: EVIL RECOGNIZES EVIL.

That first kill, all those years ago in high school, had left Noah feeling almost orgasmic. He was surprised, when he had walked out of the woods after shooting John, that anyone had believed his story. He kept expecting them to see how turned on and excited he had been by the murder, kept expecting someone to realize something wasn't quite right.

But they never did and he had gotten away with it.

He chased that high all the way up to college, where he carefully chose his next victim. A woman who was easily manipulated into taking her own life.

He got away with that one too and it emboldened him.

He'd been a kindergarten teacher for a few months the next time the urge, the desperation to kill hit. He had picked a target at random - a beautiful man at a seedy bar who was just passing through town, someone no one would really look for or miss.

Except somewhere between the bar and the shady motel at the edge of town he and Oli had realized they had both picked each other for the same reason. They had both intended to make a victim out of the other.

Evil recognized evil and a dark romance was born and sealed in blood as they killed a homeless man that night together.

The rush of it brought them back to Noah's place. Clothes had been ripped and torn off each other (and the next day burned) and they hadn't even made it to the bedroom before Oli had shoved Noah against a wall, fucking him mercilessly - drawing out cries of pleasure that Noah hadn't even been aware he could make.

They had recognized in each other something they couldn't share with anyone else in the world. A need for violence and bloodshed. They got off on it and that had been the start of their whirlwind romance.

They had agreed to be good, of course, in the beginning days of that romance. They satiated their dark desires in the bedroom with knives and whips and toys meant to make each other bleed. For a while it had worked, their sexual depravity and consensual violence towards each other had staved off their joint desires to kill.

For a while, at least.

PART TWO: URGES.

Not long after their marriage in that little white chapel in town, the urges had crept in on them both. Neither could deny that those little promises of being good, of how their first kill together had to be their last, had faded. It was like an itch that couldn't be reached (well, that metaphor was lost on Noah, who Oli had excitedly learned, could bend in almost inhuman ways, contorting himself at times, or even easily putting his legs behind his head when Oli fucked him.). The more they tried to ignore that itch, the more annoying it became.

“You know,” said Noah, broaching the topic softly and curiously in the same manner that one might bring up the desire to adopt a pet, “one of the kids in my class is being abused. He comes to school black and blue some days and no one does anything about it. I know CPS has investigated at least once but the parents are so good at playing the loving, wholesome couple,” he gives Oli a dark and knowing look, his words full of unsaid implications.

“It sounds like it would be in that child's best interest if his parents were out of the picture,” replies Oli, who fully understands what Noah wants but won't say.

They chose a day in which they knew the boy wouldn't be home, away on a playdate because his parents couldn't wait for a night of silence away from him.

Of course they had invited Oli and Noah in, they trusted the two completely, knew them as upstanding and loved members of the community.

Noah held a hand over the woman's mouth, muffling her scream as he forced her to watch as Oli slit her husband's throat.

When both the man and woman were dead, their blood splattering the living room walls, the carpet, the furniture, the two snuck out in the cover of night.

They stumbled into their home, drunk on their own adrenaline and the overwhelming urge to fuck, just like that first time together.

Blood stained clothing quickly became discarded between open mouth kisses that barely left either of them with time to breathe.

Noah drops to his knees on the soft carpet of their living room, he's already semi hard, but it's not his own arousal he seeks to indulge in this moment - not quite yet anyway, and Oli knows what's coming and anticipates it with a hitch of his breath.

He watches as Noah's tongue darts out, licking his lips teasingly as he looks up at Oli with dark eyes, gazing through feminine lashes before placing a soft kiss to the head of Oli's cock. Slightly wet with saliva lips part just enough for Noah to take an experimental lick across Oli's slit, earning him an intake of breath, almost bordering on a gasp, from Oli.

Noah knows what he's doing - he knows how to slow things down enough to tease his husband and so he trails kisses over the length of Oli's cock and back down again. His breath tickles Oli's skin, draws a shiver down the Brit's spine before suddenly and without warning, Noah takes him into his mouth.

Oli almost chuckles, he knew that no matter how much Noah liked to tease, he also wasn't very good at being patient. He hollows out his cheeks, sucking on the head of Oli's cock or swirling his tongue over it until he hears that first moan resonate deep in Oli's chest and feels Oli's fingers tangle in the hair at the base of his skull. It isn't long before his nose is pressed to Oli's pubic bone and then as quickly as it happens, he pulls back, opening his mouth and letting Oli's dick free. He licks his lips and looks up at Oli mischievously.

“Little fucking tease,” whispers Oli, his voice lust heavy and soft as he lines his dick up to Noah's lips. “Finish what you fucking started,” he growls and Noah's mouth open obediently, seconds before Oli snaps his hips forwards and begins to fuck Noah's mouth.

This high is now his and his alone, head thrown back as he fucks Noah's mouth at an unforgiving pace. “Such a good fucking slut for me,” Oli babbles out praises half coherently as the telltale feelings of pleasure curl in the pit of his stomach. He chases that high until he starts to cum down Noah's throat.

It's unexpected, coming without warning and Noah pulls back, choking on cum and saliva immediately, catching the last ropes of Oli's cum across his face.

He looks up at Oli, his own cock leaking precum, painfully hard, with tears in his eyes that crest down his cheeks. He's covered in saliva and cum and his mouth drops open in a soft and needy whine as he palms a hand over his erection, wordlessly begging for Oli to give him release.

“Look at you, covered in my seed and the blood of our victims and begging for me to let you cum,” Oli looks almost godly in that moment. He feels like it too. He's played judge, jury, and executioner tonight and now his husband sits on his knees as if in worship, as if he's practically praying to Oli to cum.

Grabbing a discarded, blood covered shirt, Oli pushes Noah to lay back against the floor and Noah obeys. He wraps the still sticky, not yet dry, blood covered shirt around Noah's cock, using someone else's blood almost like lube, and begins to move his hand up and down in a twisting motion. Whimpers leave Noah's lips and Oli watches in dark curiosity as blood gets wiped off on Noah's cock this way. Noah bucks his hips upwards and his own cum spills out, coating the already ruined shirt.

Later, when he's gotten Noah cleaned up and settled into a warm bath, Oli struggles with a dangerous desire to keep the blood and cum ruined shirt as a trophy, but ultimately decides against it, adding it to a burn later pile.

PART THREE: ONE YEAR LATER.

They sit on their couch together, Noah on Oli's lap, wrapped up in his arms as they gaze over the local paper together.

“Sweetheart Killer strikes again,” muses Oli before peppering kisses to Noah's cheek and neck. “What a dangerous town we live in, where they can't even catch a single predator.”

Noah tosses the newspaper to the floor and twists around in Oli's arms until they're face to face and Oli's hands rest securely on Noah's ass. “I heard that the FBI is setting their sights on our little town in hopes to stop this serial killer.” He teasingly grinds down against Oli's crotch, earning a sly smile from him.

All pretense and game is shaken off as Oli slides one hand down the front of Noah's shorts now, giving his soft cock a teasing touch. “I bet we could earn new monikers in different places,” he says, pulling his hand out of Noah's shorts and tapping his index and middle finger against Noah's lips.

Noah opens his mouth and obediently sucks Oli's fingers, swirling his tongue around them as Oli talks.

“Why don't we shoot for the stars, see how notorious we can become, baby?” He asks and then pulls his saliva covered fingers out of Noah's mouth and dips them back into Noah's shorts. Wet fingers caress Noah's slowly hardening cock. “Make this country think there's an influx of active serial killers, make them fear us, make them pray that we never find them and deem them not worthy of their lives.”

There's a gleam in Oli's eyes, one that Noah misses as he presses his forehead to Oli's shoulder, shuddering with pleasure at the feel of Oli slowly jacking him off in his shorts. The idea of spreading out their territory is terrifying and fascinating all at once and it doesn't take much before Noah cries out, cumming in his shorts and over Oli's fingers.

“I'll take that as a yes,” Oli chuckles, kissing Noah's head. “Why don't I plan us a vacation, a romantic getaway?” and Noah grins, knowing they're about to take this metaphorical show on the road.

#noah sebastian fanfic #noah sebastian x oli sykes #Oli sykes fanfic #noah sebastian #oli sykes #murder romance #horror thriller fanfic

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aibidil · 6 months

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we gotta stop telling moms* to learn to ask for and accept help

this is a pseudo-mental-health bullshit way of subtly individualizing a multilayered structural and societal (often classist) problem wherein people in general, parents especially, mothers specifically, and neurodivergent mothers to the extreme, are left to fend for ourselves in ways that are frankly unprecedented in the history of human beings

I'm sure there are people who struggle to ask for help. (I've never been one of them.) What I'm saying is, even if they could learn to, it wouldn't solve anything!

Let's look at the assumptions behind "you need to learn to ask for help!"

That there's someone to ask. Who tf are we meant to be asking? If you live in a culture where families have scattered, you might not have any family nearby. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a partner, but if so, I feel like we can already assume you're asking for help from them, and them from you. (If you're not, that's a whole separate issue.) But often the overwhelm isn't such that an equitable division of labor between two parents can solve the problem. I have one non-partner family member nearby whom I can ask for help, and that actually feels pretty lucky.

That people you ask will agree to help. I recently messaged the entire school community list begging someone to drive one of my kids home on Wednesdays, figuring that many people must be going in that direction anyway and surely someone would be willing to stop the car and let my kid out at the end of my street. When I didn't get any responses from the wider community, I sent a smaller plea to the parents in my kids' classes. Nothing! Nada!

That our problems are such that others can (easily) help. There's a tragic het script that's like "I don't bother to ask him for help because I end up doing more work to get him to help than it would've been to do myself" (and yes that's fucked), but that's not even what I'm pointing to here. There are so many ways that the structures of our society make it so that people can't get help from others. School pickup, for example: most schools have policies that only parent/guardians or someone given prior permission can pick up students. If a parent is unexpectedly in a jam, this makes finding help a lot trickier and probably involves calling the school and trying to grant last-minute permission. Helping a kid with homework, for example: No matter what I do, teachers email/call me. This means that if I assign this task to my partner or some other person, I have to constantly be an in-between who is like, the arbiter of information. Going to the pharmacy: once I went to the pharmacy to help a neighbor with a kid who had been vomiting for 12 hours straight, and it was so difficult. First I had to pick up their insurance card, write down the kid's name, dob, etc. I still didn't know half the answers to things they asked me as I painstakingly eventually managed to pick up this kid's prescription.

That you have money to pay for outsourcing. Often, when it comes down to it, the only way our society seamlessly allows for help is through monetizing the tasks. It's possible to hire housecleaners or a nanny, for example. You can pay for grocery delivery. But (even if you're totally fine with becoming an employer, which I've never been) is that financially within reach for most people? No!!!

That the tasks that are hardest for you are tasks that can be outsourced. With adhd, my biggest chore struggles are getting myself to water the plants and getting myself to fill the pill organizers. These are not the easiest chores to get help with! I mean, even laundry would be easier, as you could chuck it all into a giant bag and hand it over to a service to be washed. But plants? They're all over my house and on different watering schedules. The pill organizers? That's controlled substances (Adderall, baby) and it's confusing with multiple times of day, etc -- who is going to take that on? Even my partner is too worried to get it wrong.

That, even if you have money, the service you need exists. I really want help with food preparation, but I have MCAS and specific dietary needs. Also, I don't want help with dinners (my partner does that) so much as I want help with snacks/lunch. I know what I would make if I had the energy to. There are no services in my area that could help me. I guess I could hire a personal chef, but I can't even begin to afford that and even then, many wouldn't work bc they're not all willing to work with different dietary needs. I tried finding something I could order by mail, but there's nothing that's a great fit and it's all too expensive for me.

The problem is not that moms don't know how to ask for and accept help. Every time we say that, we reinforce the idea that the problem is an individual one, that the fault lies with moms. It's a structural one, and it doesn't. Many of us are well aware of how to ask for help. If we aren't asking, it's because we know it's futile.

*The choice to gender this as "moms" is a conscious one, even though it also applies to some men and nb people. In my view, it really is a gendered problem that overwhelmingly affects women who are mothers. Because of that, generalizing to "people" or "parents" seems to me like it would be watering down the problem, at best, or erasing the gendered component of the problem, at worst. We also shouldn't say "you need to learn to ask for help" to dads, nonbinary parents, and non-parents—but we generally don't say that to those groups anyway! The vast majority of the time, I see this being said specifically to mothers. Moreover, the response that dads get to asking for help is often different. A dad asking for help strikes people as going above and beyond and is therefore more likely to trigger people to actually help him. Think about dads whose wife goes out of town and all these people bring him casseroles. Our society is often really good at giving some help—but only in extreme cases (emergencies like acute sickness or hospital stays, grief, ….a dad alone with kids for some reason, etc), and moms asking for help with mundane things simply does not count as a justification for help in most people's minds.

#idk what to tag this #parenting #mothers #motherhood #feminism #individualism

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josefavomjaaga · 2 months

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A letter from Masséna to Soult, Paris, 28 Frimaire An IX (19 December 1800)

You no longer write to me, my dear Soult; where does that come from? Are you angry with me? Have you forgotten that I am your good friend? Write to me often, that will prove me different. What are you doing? The First Consul, to whom I have often spoken about you, does justice to your high military talents, and has never spoken to me about them except with the greatest interest. Farewell, my friend, never forget that I am sincerely attached to you. I embrace you. Masséna

At the time of this letter, Soult had (more or less) recovered from his wound that he had received during the siege of Genoa, had been released on parole from Austrian captivity (i.e., he was not allowed to go to war) and thus was employed in the military administration of Piemont.

I remember that Thiébault (who adored Masséna and despised Soult) in his memoirs claims that Soult, after Genoa, slowly distanced himself from Masséna - according to Thiébault, because he had gotten all advantages out of his relations with Masséna that he could, and now no longer needed him. In particular, Thiébault claimed that Soult later was furious about not being mentioned enough in the book Thiébault had written about the siege of Genoa. - Make of that, what you will.

N. Gotteri in her book on Soult does not mention Thiébault's claim. To the contrary, she lists several letters during the second half of 1800, that Masséna, Lefebvre and Oudinot (all in the entourage of First Consul Bonaparte now) had written to Soult, reassuring him of their friendship and of Bonaparte's interest in Soult. According to Gotteri, Masséna, Lefebvre and Mortier had even tried to convince Soult to come to Paris, but Soult had refused and preferred to stay with the army, where he was at home.

Maybe he regretted that decision later? Or maybe he still did not feel at ease about his personal situation (his broken leg, only released on parole)? Or, maybe the easiest explanation: Louise was with him at the time. He may just have been too busy doing household chores to keep up an extended correspondence.

#napoleon's marshals #jean de dieu soult #andre massena #paris 1800

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joyboyish · 1 year

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ok thats it!!! straw hats hand writing hcs

luffy -

makino taught him, ace, and sabo and he was bored of it bc it wasnt fighting until ace made it a competition. luffy wanted to be the first one done every time but literally no one could read it so makino was like "uh hahah so! what if the competition was who could make it the neatest! you write slower and hold the pen a bit harder haha!" it was a desperate attempt. it worked though but a bit too well because luffy still writes super slow and holds the pen super hard so its neat and "makino likes it this way" (she doesnt but she can read it so) its super messy but readable

zoro -

he was taught to read and write in the dojo, similarly to luffy he made everything a competition, and he was like "if i can do it better than kuina than im already on my way to beat her!" but when she died she just kind of. gave up. he stopped caring about how it looked and just writes super quickly to get it over with. he only really writes when absolutely necassary or when he writes down new training routines but its super messy and hes the only one that can read it

nami - this bitch is EXTRA!!!!! she writes in the most over dramatic cursive, its swirly, theres huge curls and underlines, shes just THAT BITCH. but she writes her maps in a neat readable hand writing so theyre organized

usopp - very neat. he only really writes like chores lists or new combinations of ammo for his sling shot and him and robin have arguably the hand writing thats easiest to read

sanji - when hes writing to women or to someone whos gender isnt yet specified (in case theyre a women), similar to nami he writes in cursive, he writes significanly more extra and dots his i's with hearts, but if its a man he writes in chicken scratch with tiny threats on the side

chopper - he signs his name with his hooves dipped in ink, but when he needs to write down something for a crew members medical files he has robin help him, because hes not really used to using his fingers all that much

robin -

very neat hand writting. she wants everyone to be able to read her historical findings or even use it as a way to write down all of the crews adventures. she interviewed those who joined before her so she can get all of their adventures down, she hasnt really gotten anything but one word responses from zoro though

franky -

big bold letters, his a's are stars, his hand writting is so fucking big i cant stress this enough

brook -

he has that fancy old people script that looks straight out of the declaration of independance. he writes so fancy and usees super big words

jinbe -

he writes in a neat script, he also uses big words but their like... big words that make you sound smart not ones that make you sound insane yk? yk.

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qldqueerboy · 4 months

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There is a lot on your plate to accomplish today. On careful examination of what has to be done on your list of chores and in what order you have assigned them to be completed lacks the lustre to physically motivate or inspire you into action. The trick if there is one today in shaking off this stagnate energy is to make an agreement with yourself to start with the easiest chore on your list and work up to the most difficult. It just might work.

#The Modern Oracle #oracle cards #oracle deck #oracle card reader #oracle card reading #message for the collective #divination #fortune telling #fortune teller #divination with oracle cards #card reader #card reading #gay pagan

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absurdthirst · 2 years

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Aftermath {Werewolf!Pero Tovar x F!Reader}

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: Mentions of dub-con, monster fucking, pregnancy, mentions of masturbation, oral (female receiving),

Comments: After the man named Pero shows up and declares that you have been claimed by the wolf, things change. Until the next full moon comes around again.

A/N: Part of The Wolf Series

DEAD DOVE - DO NOT EAT: This is a monster fucking fic. If you can’t handle the fact that non-con is a part of this, please roll on by.

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

It’s strange. Having this man, this virtual stranger around you. You were used to your relative isolation of just yourself and your garden. You hadn’t thought about how different it would be to know that there is a set of eyes on you, watching you closely.

Your response to his claim over you had been very anti-climatic. You didn’t know how to feel about it, what to do about it. It was as if you were talking about someone else, another circumstance rather than your own. You had simply stood there, watching him carefully and wondering what he was thinking. His eyes were bright and tinged with that yellow that you were starting to understand was the wolf.

After a few moments, he pulled his hand away. Turning and walking away, disappearing into the trees without another word and leaving you staring after him, jaw slack with shock and maybe a little disappointment.

Had he really just….left? You half expected to wake up in your bed, haunted by the dark brown eyes of the stranger who had been on your doorstep. Staring at the brush and woods that he had disappeared into for far longer than you should have before you shook yourself out of your stupor.

Maybe he had meant that the wolf had claimed you. Not him. The puzzle rolls around in your head over and over again as you turn and go back into your cottage, needing to dress, although you could walk around in your shift without worry. No one else was here and it wasn’t like you were expecting him back now that he had walked away. Maybe he had meant that the wolf would show up during the next full moon.

You dress, the simple dress is nothing more than functional. Meant to be as easy to work in as possible. The chores of living by yourself were long, from hauling water and chopping wood, to weeding the garden and braiding ropes of onions and garlic to dry. Pinning your hair up, under a scarf to keep it neat and start your day.

Since there is no meat to preserve, you decide that bread will be a good breakfast for you to have. Your stomach is slightly queasy, rolling and churning beneath your skirts. You tell yourself that it’s just in your head. You are feeling ill because he’s told you that you should feel ill. After all, your ma had been sick the entire time that she had been carrying the babe that had taken her in childbirth, God rest her soul.

You had just missed your menses, which could be attributed to stress, or your ordeal. Although you know in your heart that it’s not something you would consider an ordeal. Not the way that you continuously think about that night.

Bolting down the bites of bread, you decide that you will start with the woodpile. The day will be warmer again, making it easiest to chop and stack at the steadily growing line of wood that will keep your cottage warm and cozy during the upcoming winter.

“What the hell are you doing!?” The shout comes from the edge of the woodline, right as you bring your axe up and makes you jump.

The man, Pero, his eyes dark and his frown fierce as he rushes towards you has you stepping back and nearly dropping the weapon in alarm.

He’s dressed. That’s the first thing that you manage to register. No longer are you seeing swaths of skin, his flaccid cock or the dark hair around his groin. He’s dressed in breeches that have seen better days, worn leather boots that have been broken in and molded to his feet. The linen shirt is worn thin, nearly translucent and patched in several places. He looks like he is missing something. Perhaps armor.

He was a soldier…..You can see it in his gait. The way that he moves as he continues towards you. You imagine that scowl on his face and sword in his hand as he rushes across a field towards an enemy.

His horse stays where the reins are dropped, the bags and bundles over back of the large stallion seemed to be numerous. Instead of studying that, your attention is focused on the frowning man in front of you as he reaches down and snatches up the axe and hoists it up to show you as if you had not just dropped it.

“What are you doing?” He demands again, shaking the tool in his hand as if it had personally offended him. “You should not be cutting wood.”

You blink, unsure of why he is so angry about you chopping wood. It is something you have done nearly everyday of your life since you were old enough to lift the axe. “Why?” You ask softly, not wanting to upset him. You warily trust him, but he is still a stranger.

“The baby.” He growls as if you are daft for not thinking of it yourself. It’s true that you don’t know much about children or carrying one, but the women in the village that were consistently popping out little ones for their husbands were doing chores around the house right up until the day they gave birth. Including chopping wood.

“It- I am not weak.” You protest, making him frown even harder at you. You don’t understand why you doing the chores you have always done matters so much to him. “I have to live. To cook, to wash clothes. I need firewood. To add to the pile for winter.”

“I will do it.” Pero tells you, his tone flat and brokering no argument. “I will chop wood and haul water.”

With that, he turns back to walk towards his horse, whistling for his onyx colored to come forward. The beast obeys him, trotting forward as if it’s happily meeting his human and ducking his head down and butts it up against his shoulder.

You hear him grumble to the stallion, words that are too low for you to hear but is must be some kind of affectionate complaint because he pushes the large head back but his hand is running over his muzzle before he grabs the reins and leads him into the clearing.

“Okay then.” You huff to yourself, still unaware of what in the hell is going on. But obviously he wasn’t going anywhere.

****

Twenty-eight days. Twenty-eight days since the morning after the full moon and waking up to find a naked man on your doorstep. Twenty-eight days since Pero Tovar had swept into your life and completely turned it upside down.

He lives in your clearing. Not inside, no, he’s not even asked to sleep inside the cottage you live in. Instead, he has set up a shelter for himself just off to the side of the cottage, close enough that he can protect and yet far enough away that you didn’t feel stifled.

It was a clean little area, you had to admit that. The small shelter that he had put up for his horse was better than his own accommodations. He slept under the stars and the canopy of trees on a bedroll by the fire that he kept going at night, often up later than you were. He was awake when you went to bed and he was awake when you woke up in the morning. Eyes watching as you went into your cottage or emerged from it.

He didn’t say much but things were changing around your little cottage. Your woodpile was getting bigger every single day, more wood than you would have ever been able to cut by yourself. More dead fall dragged to the edge of the clearing by his horse, quickly chopped into manageable chunks and limbs cleared. You saw him split some for boards, no clue what he planned to do with them.

Every morning water was sitting at the door when you woke up, already drawn from the river. In addition to the way that he had completed so many little tasks around your little home. The shutters that had been broken last winter were fixed and ready to cover the windows in another barrier against the snow and cold. His mere presence had detracted a number of animals from using your garden as their personal food source, saving your vegetables from being nibbled on.

Still, he did not make demands of you. The silent way he went about working around your cottage had you wondering if he ever planned on talking to you much. Beyond asking you how you were or what you needed, he didn’t speak much. His words saved for the horse that was never too far away from him while he had started to build a much more permanent building off to the side of the clearing near his area. A barn.

You had never imagined a barn, your little shelter for the chickens long since disassembled for firewood one year since you had no longer kept them. Maybe he had felt it was best for his horse, since the temporary shelter he had built for the large stallion was not meant for cold weather.

The swinging of the axe or the beating of a hammer is constantly ringing out in your clearing. Driving you crazy with the rhythmic sound and the view.

He works shirtless. Honestly the way that he moves makes you think he would be more comfortable simply being naked while he goes about building. Sweat and sunshine making his skin glow with a golden hue that has you craving to taste it. It’s kept you from paying attention to your weeding of the gardens more often than you would like as you stare.

Still, he doesn’t touch you. Has not once laid his hands on your stomach since that morning weeks ago. You wonder if the rough hands that deftly handle the axe and hammer, turn gentle or commanding with his companion, would touch you any differently. You wonder how they would feel on your bare skin, grazing over your flesh and soothing the burning ache that seems to constantly be under the surface.

Your sexual appetite is growing. Perhaps it’s because you have a shirtless man who is constantly putting on a show for you to enjoy. Perhaps it’s because of your pregnancy - you have confirmed that you are expecting. Your menses never arrived and the nausea persists in the mornings along with a new tenderness and swelling of your breasts.

You dream of the wolf, of Pero. Sometimes the images are combined, the wolf becoming Pero or perhaps Pero becoming the wolf. Both of them touching you, tasting you, taking you. You have woken up feverish with an ache between your thighs so great that it makes you whimper. Wishing for relief that isn’t from your own hand. Since Pero had arrived, there has been no revisiting that spot, no trips down to the lake to bathe in the cool, clean water. Although he has hauled plenty of water for baths and washing.

You want. You don’t know exactly what you want - well you do, but you can never admit that to the only other man for miles around. To voice something so wicked, so forbidden, seems like it would be impossible. You want to be taken again, to feel the fur at your back and the snarls of the wolf while he uses you.

From your spot in the vegetable garden, pulling weeds and some of the carrots that are ready, you don’t see where Pero has started heading your way. Too lost in thought and feeling feverish from the heat that is blooming inside your veins. Until the shadow falling over you had you peering up from your knees, looking into the dark eyes of the man who has been your companion over the past twenty-eight days.

“The moon is full tonight.” You blink, a fissure of fear and anticipation zips down your spine. You hadn’t been watching the moon, hadn’t been outside after you had said your goodnights to Pero and gone inside your cottage. You knew that it was coming up, but you hadn’t realized it was so soon.

“Oh.” You continue to stare up at him, wondering if he will order you to stay inside the cottage, to bar the door. Something you hadn’t been doing since the second night he has been camped outside your door. Despite every bit of common sense screaming at you to be wary, you felt safe with him. “Tonight?”

He nods, still staring at you. His eyes are dark and you still cannot tell what he wants from you, if anything. His intensity is slightly unnerving and yet it never makes you look away. Always staring back at him until something breaks the spell that is cast between you. Flickers of yellow, of him, always show up when the two of you stare at each other.

“Okay.” You bite your lip, hating and loving the way that your cunt immediately starts to throb, gushing with arousal at the mere thought that the beast might be released tonight. You wonder if he can smell it now or if that is something that he could only tell when he was changed into the werewolf.

“Don’t come outside until after I’ve changed.” He warns you seriously, his hands on his hips. “I’ve never been around someone, other than Bastard when I have been changing.”

Bastard. Your eyes widen when you realize that he named his horse Bastard. Your lips threaten to curl up but you fight it, instead you just nod. “Of course.” Like you weren’t dying to know how it looked, how it sounded when he changed. You have hundreds of questions, none of them being answered so far. “Okay.” You murmur softly, watching him turn and walk away again, taking up his work again before the sun sets.

****

Pacing in your cottage, you try to ignore the rising tension. He had urged you inside nearly twenty minutes before the sun had disappeared over the horizon. You wondered if he would change right as the sun went down or if it was when the moon shone down on him. You feel as if he doesn’t have control over when he becomes the creature.

Wearing a grove in the boards of your floor, you keep looking towards the door, the bar up but the thick oak door firmly shut against the outside. All that stands between you and seeing what would happen if you were outside when he changed.

It was telling that you were already in your shift, stripped down. Bare beneath the thin muslin. If it didn’t give you away, you would walk out naked again. To see if the same thing from nearly four months ago would replay if you step out that door and face the creature who had planted its spawn in your womb.

The sunlight slips over the horizon and the twilight starts to darken the cottage. The light giving way to darkness and the shadows looming from the flickering of the hearth. Your ears straining to hear anything beyond the crackling of the fire.

There’s nothing. The silent sound of your feet on the wood and the rapid beat of your heart is all your heart as the minutes tick by, twisting your hands together as you wait. You wait. Until you hear it.

The loud grunt, a cry, has your head whipping towards the door. Stepping closer to it almost involuntarily as your heart speeds up. You hear cracking, a sickening crunch and a nearly inhuman sound of pain. It sounds horrible, making you pause before you take another step closer. Drawn to it, as a loud growl rips out and travels through the walls of the cottage, straight to your ears.

Long minutes pass, each one filled with sounds, grunts, cries, snarls. Until there is a loud thud and silence. By this time you are up against the door, your hand on the lever to let yourself out. Frozen and nearly faint with adrenaline, feeling like you first had when you spotted the beast four months ago.

A howl makes you jump, a gasp breaks out of your mouth and your entire body trembles at the loud, calling of the wolf. It’s close, right outside the door and if you just pulled on it, you would be face to face with the creature. The werewolf that has haunted your dreams for months.

This is it. Once that door opens, things change. Again. Now that it’s here, you are half afraid that you are going to chicken out. That you are going to turn around and dive back into your bed and hide until the dawn breaks.

You hear a new sound, a scratching, loud and against the seam of the door. Followed by another sound, making you envision claws, the ones that had been dug into the earth by your head, scraping down the thick barrier between you and the beast. Sniffing and shuffling outside that you can’t see, making you wonder if he’s trying to get into you.

Taking a shuddering breath, you rip the door open and stare with wide eyes out into the night. Coming face to face with the wolf.

If you had thought he was massive that night, from a distance by the lake, then he was enormous now. He filled the doorway, took up space to where there was no getting by him. His head was large, making you understand how you had felt like it could have torn you apart with those teeth.

Yellow eyes bore into yours, watching you with the same intensity that Pero does, and you want to think that you see the man underneath the creature, but you can’t. You don’t see anything but the massive wall of muscle and sinew, claws and razor sharp teeth. Making you swallow and you hazard a look down to see if you can find that particular part of his anatomy that has been on your mind.

It’s no more than a few seconds before your eyes are locked with his again, your entire body feeling as if it is on fire. You wonder if it is always that big in this state, or if it is hard again. He’s obviously smelled you like Pero had said he smelled you the night that you were at the lake, although you are not breedable anymore.

There is a rumble in his chest, one that makes your heartbeat spike again. Pick up in reaction to the very primal noise. Unsure of what it means as the slight shift of the creature brings him closer. He’s crowding you, towering over you and it’s only a reaction to that when you step back. Pull away from him.

He growls, low and deep. Making you freeze again like you had the night that he had been trying to line his cock up to sink into your smaller body. Your cunt clenches and you feel the rush of heat in your core. Making you wish you could slide your thighs together for friction, but you don’t dare to move again.

Until he ducks his head, barely fitting his wide shoulders through the door of your cottage, your eyes widen when you realize he’s coming inside. Realistically, you know he’s been in this space, you had woken up in your bed and there was no way you had walked yourself into your home that night. You know he had carried you into your cottage and laid you down on your bed instead of leaving you on that mossy forest floor.

Inhaling harshly, you take another step back, giving him room and watching as he seems to grow even larger as he pushes into your space. Luckily the cottage had a high pitched roof so he could avoid hitting his head, although he didn’t stretch to his full height. Instead he dropped down to all fours and prowled closer. Edging towards you slowly as a predator stalks prey.

You don’t know what makes you wetter, the fact that you know how he feels inside you, or the fact that it could happen again. Shame would be the prevalent feeling in your body if it weren’t spiked with adrenaline and still the slight edge of fear. You’ve wondered about the beast for months, obsessing over it since Pero’s arrival and now it’s here.

His eyes still pin you down with their gaze, making the shallow breaths you are taking ring loudly in your ears. Until he is right in front of you. His head is still to your breast, the mass of him an immovable object between you and the door.

He doesn’t pounce, doesn’t attack you. There is no chase because you are already caught. Instead his nose comes down, presses against your belly and there is a loud sniff. Making your eyes widen in wonder. Can he smell the baby now, can he smell your arousal? You know he can but his nose presses against your skin through your shift and moves every few seconds. Seemingly inhaling the scent of your body and the offspring in your womb.

Another growl, low and rumbly against your skin. And a small whine? You don’t know where to put your hands, even though you want to touch the fur. To see if it was as soft as it looks. If the ears were sensitive like the few hounds you pet when you are in town. Instead of finding out, you hold your hands at your side, curled into fists, watching as he does exactly what he wants.

Minutes tick by, the sounds of his exploration of your stomach and your heartbeat are the only things that you can hear. Nothing else exists beyond that. This werewolf nuzzling your stomach and poking at it with its snout as if it were the most common thing in the world.

Until his head ducks down, bumping at your legs and pushing you back. Growling at you and nearly knocking your feet out from under you. You don’t know exactly what he wants, but you don’t want to fall, so you slowly sink down to your knees, wondering what is happening.

The second your knees are on the wooden planks of the floor, his head hits your shoulder, knocking you flat on your back. Making you sprawl out on the worn smooth wood and gasp when you see him looming over you. This is different, you can see him. See the yellow eyes when his mouth lowers, his tongue sliding out to press against your pulse that is hammering in your throat.

Claws click and scratch against the floors, braced on either side of your head and you’d be lying if you didn’t acknowledge that the little whimper that escapes you is mostly arousal. Only a tinge of fear coloring it.

You don’t move, don’t breathe as the wolf continues to peruse your body. Sniffing and poking, making your bite your lip when you feel him at your crotch. The wet slide of his nose dragging against the material and pressing up against you. Pushing his head down until your cunt clenches and you whimper again.

His head comes up, yellow eyes finding yours again for another second before the great beast throws his head back, rearing up to his haunches and howling as loud as he had that night when he was driving his cock deep into your core.

When he lowers his head, the flurry of movement makes you yelp out. Thrown off guard by the quickness in which he moves, down your body and suddenly the way that your cunt throbs is answered.

Your cry is loud, surprised and yet needy when you feel his teeth on the thin fabric of your shift, ripping it open and the massive shoulders wrench your thighs apart. You shiver, goosebumps breaking out over your entire body when you feel his hot breath against your equally heated cunt, cooling the wet folds and making you whimper.

His tongue, oh fuck you hadn’t expected his tongue. You should have, but your eyes spring open wide and you give a strangled cry when the wolf’s rough tongue swipes over the sensitive cunt that is aching between your thighs.

His growl makes you close your eyes tight again, trembling when he makes another pass, licking your little bundle of nerves. The breadth of his tongue managing to engulf your entire sex with its wide strokes. Making your hips jerk up and your knees try to close around his head but the shoulders wedged between them makes that impossible. Gasping at how wickedly good this feels even though it’s not the punching drilling of his cock you had craved.

It’s indulgent, like the wolf is licking clean every bit of meat and gristle from a kill, that’s how targeted his tongue is. Over and over as it laps at your cunt and makes pleasure race down your spine and make your hole flutter and clench around nothing. Wishing you dared to speak out and beg that he stuffs you full.

Until that tongue pushes inside you. Back bowing up off the floor in surprise and your hand striking out blindly and landing on thick, soft fur under your fingertips. Making you whine when your fingers curl into the tufts and the wolf growls, pushing his tongue deeper and feeling like he’s touching the back wall of your cunt. Just like he had been hammering against it with that cock buried inside you.

The beams of your roof are all you can really see, black dots spotting your vision every time that tongue curls and twists inside you. Stealing the air from your lungs and causing the softest squeaks to push from your lips while he tastes you. Growls vibrate your core and you feel it deep in the pit of your stomach, tightening that knot that is growing even tighter.

Your hips rock down on their own, chasing the deep plunge of his tongue when he folds it back. Trying to fuck yourself on a werewolf’s tongue. Needing the sweet, sharp snap of release. Your next breath is sobbing, shuddering as you exhale. Trying to keep yourself from yanking on the creature’s fur. Not sure how the beast would react to it.

His shoulders shove your legs apart wider, his tongue pulling out of you and lapping at your cunt even harder. Licking into you like a starved hound until your entire body stiffens.

Your vision goes white, the scream that echoes in your ears is sharp, short. Seeped from your lungs and then extinguished by the pure pleasure that pours from you. Flooding your veins and making your entire body shudder and buck up against the wide tongue still lapping at you frantically. Pushing you through it until your entire body slumps on the floor of your cottage and with a low whine, the creature pushes his tongue back inside your fluttering walls. Nails scratching against the floor while he curls it up again and huffs into you, apparently pleased with the slick that you are flooding his taste buds with.

Long seconds pass before you slowly come back to yourself. Panting and trying to uncurl your fingers from the iron tight grip you have in his fur. Joints aching as you slowly release them from the locked position and gently petting the soft, short hair that covers his head and ears.

Only when his tongue pulls out of you again and swipes at your cunt one last time do you look down. Yellow eyes staring intensely at you for a moment, a hint of something you want to say is pride in their depths before he is looking away again, his head lowering and scrubbing along your stomach above your mound. Rubbing against your womb and that deep, rumbly sound starts up again.

It’s surreal, laying on the floor spent from an orgasm with a werewolf nuzzling against your belly. Perhaps scenting you with himself, or just trying to get close to the thing he had planted in your womb months ago. The aftermath of that night still resonates through you, just like the slow clench of your cunt from the aftershocks of your pleasure.

MasterList

#pedro pascal #the wolf series #werewolf au #werewolf pero #pero tovar x reader #pero tovar x you #pero tovar x f!reader #pero tovar smut #pero tovar fanfiction #pero tovar imagine #monster fucking #tw monsterfucking #monsterfucking #tw dubious consent #tw dubcon #dead dove do not eat #tw pregnancy

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hillbillyoracle · 1 year

Text

What To Do In Tornados

I’ve lived in tornado country pretty much my whole life and to be honest they still freak me out. I also remember how anxiety inducing it was when I first moved out and had to deal with them on my own. So like a message in a bottle to my former self, I wanted to compile what I’ve learned over the years in a skimmable format in case there’s anyone else out there today who could use it.

Difference between a watch and a warning?

Tornado watch means you have time; think of a wrist watch. Tornado warning means one is incoming, no more time. This is the one I use to remember it.

Or if you prefer the Weather Channels very memeable explanation - tornado watch means you have taco (tornado) ingredients - picture a taco bar. Tornado warning means you have a fully assembled taco (tornado). This is what my partner uses.

So there are possible tornados in the forecast:

Make a plan about where you’ll go if you get a warning. It should be the most interior room in your house, well away from any windows. Here we have a walkout basement and I go to the most interior part of it. When I was in an apartment, the most interior room happened to be my bathroom and hallway. If you live in a dorm or other communal setting, they should have a plan in place so make sure to find out what it is.

Take pictures of your rooms and car in the event you need to file an insurance claim. Having pictures of what you own, it’s condition is helpful for filing insurance claims if you need to. Especially if you’re a renter. This is easiest to do when there’s no storms in your area so you aren’t nervous or pressed for time.

Make a power outage plan. A lot of the threat that comes with tornados is not from the tornados themselves but the damaging straight line winds around the tornado. Whenever there’s high winds, there’s a chance to lose power. Consider how you’d eat, drink, go to the bathroom, and stay warm in the event of a power outage. Less necessary but still helpful - consider how you’ll entertain yourself, especially if cell towers go down or you need to conserve your phone battery. Consider what chores - like laundry or dishes - would be good to have out of the way before hand.

Grab snacks and food that doesn’t need refrigeration. If you’re able to make a grocery store run, grab some food you can eat that is shelf stable and doesn’t require cooking. A good rule of thumb in my experience is three days worth. Most power outages I’ve been through have been fixed in that time and you can more safely evacuate then if you need to go somewhere with power. If you’re like me and have a lot of food allergies (gluten, dairy, soy) - consider baking items ahead of time that can keep well at room temperature like cookies, scones, and breads.

So you’ve been issued a Tornado Watch:

Check the forecast; you might have lots of time before the storms will be in your area or you might have very little.

Make a plan if you haven’t already. Or check your building’s plan if you live in a dorm or communal setting.

Make sure everyone involved knows the plan. Don’t assume people you’re with know. I have made that mistake before.

Charge your phone and electronics. If you don’t currently have a thunderstorm in your area, go ahead and charge your phone, power bank, flashlights, and anything else you’ll want to take with you your safe spot.

Gather supplies to take with you to your safe spot

Minimum:

Shoes

Phone

Form of ID*

Leash/Harness/Cage for pets

Explanation of minimum:

Shoes are important because if you need to evacuate, there’s likely broken glass and other things on the floor that can injure you. If you can’t safely move through it, then people will have to come escort you out which means waiting longer + more risk.

Phone is important for calling for help and receiving alerts. Also many can double as a flashlight in a pinch.

*ID is helpful accessing emergency housing and medical services if you have to leave your home. If your ID doesn’t list your residence or you don’t have/want to have ID documents on you for safety reasons, consider grabbing a copy of your lease or some mail addressed to you there. You can still access services without this, it just helps speed stuff up.

Keeping pets on a leash or cage helps keep them safe in the event you need to evacuate with them.

If you can:

Tote bag

Helmet

Flashlight

Power bank + cord

Weather radio

Water bottles

Some pet food + bowl

Snacks

I put all my supplies in a little tote bag. It’s my storm tote (conference bag I’m never gonna use for anything else).

Helmet is pretty self explanatory. One more way to keep your head safe in case anything falls on you.

Flashlights help you move around your house if it’s safe to stay in if the power goes out. In the event your house is unsafe, it helps you safely evacuate. If you’re trapped, it helps you signal for help.

Power bank + cord helps you recharge your phone if the power goes out. When you’re checking alerts and watching streams, the battery can deplete quickly.

Weather radios of any kind is helpful. Cell service often goes out so the way you’ll get your information then will be primarily through radio. If you’re reading this not in a watch and want to get one, look for ones that will wake you up if there’s a warning in your area. Midland has several. I have a small Sony radio I take with me to my safe spot.

Water bottles are helpful because they’re highly portable and in the unlikely event you get trapped in your house, you’ll have water to keep you hydrated while help gets to you.

Pet food is so you can feed your animal without leaving your safe spot since warnings can last a long time. I’ve seen some areas be warned for 1-2 hours before if a storm is slow moving enough. But it’s also so you’ll have some food for them in the event you need to evacuate.

Snacks are similar to pet food. It’s you food. Just helps you shelter in place.

So you’ve been issued a Tornado Warning:

Put on your shoes

Put pets on harnesses and a leash or in a cage

Go to your safe spot and don’t come out until the warning has expired

Especially if the warning is PDS or has some other enhanced tag, try to bring something to cover your head and body with - like a mattress. A thick blanket is better than nothing in a pinch.

#tornado #wx #weather #tornado warning #tornado watch #prepping #safety

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calunalilly · 4 months

Text

2ND EDIT: Thanks so much for the asks so far! Have crossed out the prompts that are covered so far, and added a couple more that I've been thinking of :D Keep them coming! Hope you're all enjoying them so far <3

Well, hello! Sooooo.... you all know by now how obsessed I am with Last Tango in Halifax by now, right? How Caroline and Gillian are in LOVE, right?!?

Well... for Femslash February, I'm opening up ficlet prompts. Anything and everything (mostly), you prompt it, and I'll do my best to write something for it for our two lovely ladies 😂😂

Thought it might be easiest to come up with a prompt list, so either feel free to choose one of these or come up with one of your own. I AM READY ✍️✍️✍️ also feel free to reblog, although if by some miracle I become overwhelmed I may have to close it before the end of Feb. Anyway, THE PROMPTS!! Just send me an ask 🥰😘

1. Prompters choice (you tell me!)

2. Hand holding

3. Lipstick

4. Sharing clothes

5. Bath/shower time

6. You come back here right now...

7. Prank

8. Kissing in the rain

9. Let me take care of you

10. Nightmare

11. Sex dream

12. Miscommunication

13. One more word on this and I'll kill you

14. This reminded me of you...

15. Pep talk

16. Go to sleep!!

17. If you do that one more time...

18. Slow dance

19. Where did you get that from??

20. Bad flirting

21. Let's pretend

22. Locked out

23. Broken down car

24. Cooking

25. Someone has a cold...

26. Sleeping in

27. Movie night

28. Jealousy

29. Tea and biscuits

30. Clothing malfunction

31. Unfortunately that is the love of my life...

32. Batteries not included

33. Headache

34. Shopping

35. Household chores

36. I've got a secret...

37. The dog ate it

38. There's an app for that

39. I saw it in your eyes

40. Let's got for a walk

41. Strip poker

42. Thunderstorm

43. Embarrassing moment

44. Board games

45. Did you just wink at me?!

Got more suggestions? Hit me! Want to combine any? Go for it! Want to see something where they're going round IKEA arguing about flatpack furniture? JUST ASK. I'm excited!!

#nicola walker #sarah lancashire #last tango in halifax #gillian greenwood #caroline mckenzie dawson #writing prompt #dialogue prompt #fanfic writing #ao3 #lets have some fun #femslash

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lordgrimwing · 7 months

Text

Illness #03

Fëanor thinks he's saving his siblings.

Finarfin started crying. He flailed his little fists and wailed in frustration as he squirmed on the blanket his mother left him on. Indis usually carried the baby in a sling, but she'd injured her back last week and Finwë insisted she had to take things easy until she felt better. Finarfin did not like the new arrangement and fussed miserably most days until someone finally held him.

Indis closed her eyes. She stood in the kitchen, cleaning a chicken for the family's dinner, her hands greasy with the bird's fat. Maybe this time, if she just waited a few minutes, he would finally give up and come to terms with the new arrangement.

"I'll get him."

Indis turned around as the back door swung open. To her surprise, Fëanor came in from outside, bits of straw stuck to his overalls and hair. At fifteen, Finwë's son from his first marriage wasn't the easiest boy to get along with. He quarreled with his parents and the oldest children and was prone to flights of fancy that at times left his father grumbling about the state of his sanity. The last several days were particularly challenging. Despite all that, Indis could see how much he loved his littlest siblings, especially baby Finarfin.

Fëanor hurried through the kitchen and over to his little brother. She watched with a faint smile on her lips as he cued at the chunky baby and scooped him up in his arms, blanket and all. Finarfin quickly quieted as Fëanor bounced him across the room in his arms.

“Thank you,” Indis said, but the pair were already out the door, the black-haired boy paying her no more attention now that he had the baby.

She sighed and turned back to the chicken.

***

Two hours later, with a stew simmering above the fire and the sun dipping down toward the trees, Indis opened the kitchen door and stepped outside in bare feet.

“Lalwen!” She called.

Her youngest daughter went out earlier to see if any of the chicks hatched yet, but she suspected she’d gotten distracted playing with the animals or following her brother around as he did chores. Indis indulged the five-year-old and left her to whatever distraction she found (all the better if she was with Fëanor so she could help keep an eye on little Finarfin while their big brother worked), but it was time for her to come back inside and do her own chores. Finarfin was likely ready to nurse too.

“Lalwen!” She called again. “Fëanor!”

The yard was quiet.

She frowned. Finwë left a list of things for Fëanor to do while he took the next two oldest into town with him for the day to show them the finer points of selling horses. It was a long list. She’d looked at it while he scribbled instructions across a page from his leather-bound notebook and commented on the length. Her husband insisted it was about time his son learned more responsibility with managing his time, or else he’d always be falling behind and never make something of himself. He’d softened his voice after that and admitted these were mostly small projects around the homestead that always managed to be less important than something else but still needed to be wrapped up before the season changed. He assured her it was a reasonable day’s work for one person.

“Fëanor!” She yelled, brow furrowing.

He gave no answer.

She frowned, she stepped down into the dirt, the path to the barn so well worn that nothing grew in the tracks left by many feet. She walked into the barn. The air tasted thick with dust left from when Fëanor swept and refilled the hayloft. She sneezed. Beyond that sharp sound, the barn was silent, the horses turned out in the pasture further out in the clearing, and the broke yearlings in town and hopefully not coming back. She saw no sign of her children.

She turned away and went to the chicken coop. She thought perhaps she’d find Lalwen there, but there was no sign of her other than a hen with ruffled feathers irritably guarding her new chicks.

She hurried to the far side of the house next. There was a basic forge and blacksmithing shed used for repairing equipment when there wasn’t time to take broken things into town or when the damage was so mild it didn’t warrant a trip. Finwë mostly left that sort of thing to Fëanor once it became clear how eager the boy was to use the forge. Of all the places where he might get distracted and not heed his parents’ calls, the forge was most likely.

A cat looked up from its perch on the paneless window and mewed when she entered but otherwise, the shack stood empty, the forge cold.

Indis turned in a circle, surveying up to the tree line for any sign of the children. Worry began to simmer in her belly. She ran around the front of the house and found only more of nothing. She shouted and only her own voice answered, bounced back by the trees.

There was no sign of Fëanor or Lalwen or Finarfin in the late afternoon light. The children had seemingly vanished.

***

“I’m hungry,” Lalwen complained, kicking her bare feet against the dirt floor of the hunting shack in boredom. “Mama’s making soup. I want soup.”

Fëanor looked up from where he was trying to coax Finarfin into eating some of the hardtack gruel he’d boiled over a low fire in the rusted cast pan pot left in the shack. He’d swaddled the baby tightly in his blanket, but still, he squirmed and cried and refused to eat. “We don’t have soup tonight.”

He’d tried getting a cottontail rabbit with his sling when he filled the pan and his canteen in the nearby stream. He’d thought he’d catch something earlier, while they were riding on Annie. She was the gentlest of the mares, surefooted on the mountain, and let the kids ride her bareback whenever they wanted, but she didn’t foal the last three years and he knew he had to get her away too. She was outside now, tied with a long line to a tree near the stream so she could graze and drink.

He’d thought that from her back, Lalwen riding in front of him and Finarfin sleeping in a sling, hastily made from his blanket, on his back, he could hit a rabbit or a few of the plentiful squirrels that usually chittered in the trees this deep in the forest. He had good aim with his sling and a pouch full of stones, yet the small animals stayed frustratingly hidden. It wasn’t until he’d gone to the stream that he finally spotted a rabbit, her whiskers bouncing as she chewed on the lush plants bordering the water. He’d set the pan down silently, exchanging it for the leather cord and a medium-sized rock. He’d swung and thrown and he was sure his aim was true, but the rabbit, scared by some change in the wind or his small movement, fled away into the brush, leaving him again with nothing to feed the children or himself.

He shouted at the rabbit, cursed her keen senses, cursed her quick legs. Then, he fell to his knees, weeping and beating his frustration into the soft ground. This wasn’t how things should be going, he was better than this, he’d snuck away to go hunting with his sling dozens of times and never had such ill luck. Why did everything become so hard now?

After a minute, he pulled the fractured bits of his pride together, collected the water, and hurried back to the shack, cursing himself for leaving the children alone for so long while he wallowed in self-pity.

So, no, Lalwen couldn’t have soup tonight, none of them could. The best he could do was crack open one of the old cans of hardtack left in the shack and boil a handful of biscuits until they were edible, stirring occasionally with a stick. The resulting gruel turned out as appealing as it was bland, but he made himself choke down three handfuls in hopes that that would convince his little sister to do more than prod the cooling sludge. It was still hot enough to hurt his throat as it went down. She did eventually take a tentative lick, only to make a face and throw it away in disgust. Even hungry Finarfin was turning his little nose up and refusing to let him put any in his mouth after the first try.

“I wanna go home,” Lalwen whined over the crying baby. “This isn’t fun anymore.”

“We can’t go home,” Fëanor said with sudden passion, clutching Finarfin tightly and smearing gruel across the blanket. His chest seized at even the thought of going back to what awaited them at the house.

Finwë will do terrible things to them.

He flinched.

Lalwen looked at the fussing bundle in her brother’s arms. “Ara wants to go home, too."

"We can't." An air of desperation slipped into his tone. "It's just us now."

He took Findis and Fingolfin away with the yearlings.

The little girl frowned, her round face scrunching down in worry. "We’re lost?" She whispered, eyes growing wet.

"No, no I know where we are," He said, moving Finarfin, still fusing, to one arm so he could open the other to Lalwen, inviting her to settle next to him. "We're going to be okay."

Keep them away, hidden, safe. Don't let anyone find them.

She snuggled into his side, tears quietly falling from her chin to make a damp spot on his shirt. She reached her hands out for the baby, and he gave him to her carefully, helping her wrap her arms around the bundled blanket. The baby squirmed and cried as he got jostled about. For some reason, Finarfin quieted when he looked up into her face.

A worm of jealousy corkscrewed in him at the way his sister succeeded where he failed.

Horrible boy with horrible thoughts, his father’s voice mocked.

“I’m scared, Fëanor,” Lalwen admitted from the safety of her brother’s arms.

“Go to sleep,” He directed. “Everything will look better in the morning. We’ll go riding on Annie again.”

Outside, a horse whinnied. Annie, also wondering where her herdmates were, no doubt confused by why she was spending the night out here instead of in her comfortable stall. He leaned his head back against the rough wooden wall. Everything would look better in the morning. He closed his eyes.

Another horse whinnied.

His eyes shot open.

***

Finwë reined his horse to a stop next to the narrow stream. The missing horse, tied on a long rope that was just waiting to get tangled around her legs, came over to greet her herdmates. Just a bit further through the trees stood a dilapidated shack. Built by some bygone hunter, it saw too little use now to remain in good repair. Moss and vines grew over the sagging roof and walls. Darkness hid the holes chewed by rodents and rot that made the crumbling structure only nominally better than the open woods during a summer night like this.

“Stay here,” He ordered as he dismounted, Fingolfin following him down from his own gelding. “Get that mare untied and ready to go.”

“Okay,” The twelve-year-old murmured as his father strode quickly for the small hunting shack.

Finwë could guess at what was in that shack. With his missing horse tied up outside, Fëanor must be inside, hiding from whatever he'd done this time. But if the children weren't with him or if they were hurt. . .

Fingolfin didn’t need to see that.

They’d ridden hard across the mountain for many hours. The light was already fading when he got back from town, Findis and Fingolfin equal parts excited and worn out from the day’s labors. They’d expected dinner. Instead, they found Indis with four fresh horses saddled. She said Fëanor and the two youngest children disappeared several hours ago. She’d searched for them in the surrounding woods, going so far as to set loose two bloodhounds from the kennel and put them on the children’s scent, but even the dogs couldn’t find their trail. It was as though they disappeared into the mountain.

He took charge of the situation immediately. People in town might have suspected some kind of animal, a wild cat perhaps, got them, seeing as they live so far up the untamed mountain, but he knew these lands and more importantly, he knew his oldest son. There was something not quite right in Fëanor. He had no doubt that the insolent teen ran off with Lalwen and Finarfin. The only question, or at least the only one they needed answered as he directed Indis and Findis to follow the stream running past their home, was where. He’d taken Fingolfin and the two best horses and headed up the mountain, suspicions for why already heady on his mind.

The light was too low for tracking, so they rode to the places he thought Fëanor might hide the children: the ring of fallen trees, brought down for some forgotten reason decades ago, to which the boy used to sneak when to avoid chores; the thicket he’d found when he’d scrambled under the thorny bushes after a wounded rabbit and discovered no one else was willing to brave the thorns to make him come out; and many more such places, each taking the searchers further and further up the mountain in the waning light. Finally, they found Fëanor, and Finwë prayed to whoever would listen that Lalwen and Finarfin wouldn’t be far away.

The shack itself looked quiet and deserted, but the lingering smell of woodsmoke assured him that this was where the runaway stopped. No sounds came from inside. The door was a flimsy, rotting thing, and it hung half broken from its hinges after he threw it open.

The horses whinnied behind him.

Inside, the shack was just as dark as the forest, but he could clearly see his missing children. The vice on his heart loosened. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if Fëanor had abandoned them somewhere, or hurt them. His two youngest were asleep, Finarfin in his sister’s arms, and both of them curled up against Fëanor’s side. Or they were, now the teen was scrambling to his feet, overalls falling off one shoulder, looking up at his father with wide eyes.

“Come here,” Finwë said from between clenched teeth as he stared down his son.

Fëanor made no move, only looking at him from across the small room, chest heaving beneath his shirt.

Finwë reached out to grab his arm and pull him away from the children. His fingers brushed the shirt sleeve and Fëanor jerked away, stumbling back from him toward the opposite corner of the shack.

“Don’t touch me!” The teen screamed, his voice high and piercing.

Finwë could deal with him later, all that mattered now was that he wasn’t standing over the small children. Finarfin, awoken by the noise, began to wail and twist in his blanket, causing Lalwen to stir. He crouched and reached out to scoop them up in his arms.

“You’re alright,” He hushed gently, soothing a hand down his daughter’s hair and then the soft fuzz on his youngest’s head. “Come to Papa.”

A flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. Then Fëanor threw himself against his shoulder, knocking him off balance. He fell back, grappling with the wiry teen.

“Don’t touch them!” Fëanor screamed. He kicked the back of Finwë’s knee, dropping his weight and pulling his father down with him.

They landed halfway out the door, Finwë on top.

“Pa?” Fingolfin called nervously from the other side of the shack, worried by the yells and sounds of fighting.

“Stop this,” Finwë snarled at the writhing boy under him.

He was big enough to keep Fëanor down, but that wasn’t stopping him from trying his best to get up. The teen twisted his shoulders and bucked his hips, trying to throw the other off of him. All the while shrieking nearly unintelligible words, spittle flying from his lips. Finwë caught one of his hands as it clawed at his chest. The other hand scratched a painful line up his neck to his face before he caught it. Fëanor continued to struggle frantically.

“Pa?” Fingolfin said, his voice laced with fear as he rounded the edge of the shack, too worried to wait any longer.

Fëanor twisted to look at his brother. “He’s gonna hurt them!” He babbles, the force of his writhing weakening. “He’s gonna kill you all too! He’s gonna kill you all like Ma!”

The younger boy stood frozen in place, watching.

Taking advantage of his distraction and the way he’d half turned himself to face his brother, Finwë rose up and flipped him over the rest of the way, so he was lying on his stomach instead of his back. He sputtered on a mouthful of decomposing leaves and dirt. The screaming finally stopped, though now he could hear the two frightened children still inside.

“Give me your boot lace,” Finwë said to Fingolfin as he knelt on Fëanor’s back to keep him down, pinning his hands above his head with one hand. The teen’s breath rattled out of his chest. Finarfin wailed from the shack. He held out his hand impatiently. “Now.”

Fingolfin sat down and obediently unlaced one boot. Trembling fingers made him fumble several times. As soon as he freed the long cord, he stood and brought it to his father, looking down at his wheezing brother with fear. Relieved of his burden, he drew back, loose boot scuffing in the dirt.

“Bring the horses up here,” Finwë directed him and he gladly fled back the way he came.

Finwë adjusted his grip, prepared for a fight as soon as he moved Fëanor’s hands so he could bind them behind his back. The fight, though, appeared to finally have gone out of him and he lay unresisting in his father’s hands. Deftly, he bound his arms tightly behind him before climbing off his back.

Fëanor gasped in a ragged breath and coughed.

Finwë stooped down and pulled the boy’s ankles toward his hands, securing them with a quick knot to keep him down. He did not trust him to not run the moment he was left alone. Satisfied the boy wouldn’t be going anywhere quickly like that, he walked back into the hunting shack.

“Papa!” Lalwen exclaimed, tears running down her face as she ran into his arms.

Finarfin cried where she left him in the bundled blanket, distressed by everything and no doubt hungry as he hadn’t eaten since noon.

“There now,” He said, kneeling and holding her tightly to his chest, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head. “I have you. Don’t cry, papa has you.”

She continued to cry, as any small child would after all that happened.

“He said we have to go away and we would play and everything would be okay,” She said, hardly intelligible through the tears. “But he said we weren’t lost but you couldn’t find us. And I just wanna go home!” She wept.

He picked her up, her skinny legs automatically wrapping around his waist and arms clinging to his neck as she buried her face in his chest. He hushed her, keeping a hand on her back as he stepped over to Finarfin. He let go of her so he could scoop up the baby. He soothed both crying children until they both quieted, Finarfin even falling back to sleep despite his hunger. Only then did he go back outside.

Fingolfin waited with all three horses, the mare Fëanor stole wearing a makeshift rope halter and tied to the saddle horn of Fingolfin’s horse. They stood a few yards from his brother, still lying on his stomach, though he’d turned his head to breathe easier. His eyes kept flicking down to the older boy, clearly struggling to not stare at him. He looked up when his father appeared, his features relaxing when he saw his siblings.

“Lalwen, Finarfin,” He whispered in relief.

“Let’s get going,” Finwë said gently, nodding at his son to get on his horse.

Fingolfin climbed up and looked down again at his older brother. “You aren’t,” He asked hesitantly. “Leaving Fëanor here?”

Finwë shook his head. “I’ll deal with him once you three are home and in bed.” He looked down at Lalwen. “You and Arafin are going to ride with Fingolfin.”

He handed the baby to Fingolfin and then lifted Lalwen up and sat her in front. Once she was settled, he helped the twelve-year-old turn the blanket into a sling so he could carry his little brother against his chest, leaving his hands free to guide the horse and steady his sister.

Noticing the trepidatious look on his face, Finwë said, “Just focus on keeping them safe. We’ll go down the easy paths.”

The boy nodded.

Finwë turned and strode over to his eldest. He crouched and untied his feet. “Get up,” He said.

Fëanor refused, staying limp on the ground.

He grabbed the boy’s hair, laced with detritus from their struggle, and pulled his head up. “Get up or I will drag you.” He hissed.

Without a word, Fëanor twisted and worked his legs under himself so he was kneeling, face pressed against the ground. His back tensed and his shoulders twitched, but try as he might, he couldn’t raise his head. Finwë grabbed the back of his overalls and pulled him up enough for him to stand on shaking legs. The rich dirt had turned to mud on his face.

“Move,” He ordered, keeping a tight hold on his forearm and marching him over to his horse.

Fëanor kept his shoulders hunched and eyes downcast, refusing to look at anyone.

Finwë mounted first, keeping hold of the loose end of the cord binding the teen so that he could not run away. Fëanor made no move to follow his father up.

“Come here,” He said, looking down on him. “Or I will drag you all the way home.”

With a jump, and a yank on the back of his overalls to pull him further, he had him draped over the front of the saddle, his legs dangling over one side and his head over the other. He wrapped the free end of the cord around the saddle horn to be sure Fëanor could not slip off and run away. The position looked uncomfortable, but he frankly did not care.

“Let’s go home,” He said to the others, nudging the horse into a bouncing walk.

***

Indis waited in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

Finwë returned almost an hour ago with her tired children. She’d hugged and kissed all three of them, even Fingolfin, though he protested and complained that he hadn’t been lost. She knew it was only a token protest made by a boy who thought himself too old and grown up to need such reassurance from his mother but who still wanted it. She took them to their rooms and tucked them all into bed, hardly able to bring herself to look away from the two youngest. If only they were all still babes like Finarfin and she could hold them all in her arms again and never let them go. But they were too big for that now and she had to leave them in their bed to sleep. Even little Finarfin was so exhausted that he hardly stirred when he was set in his cradle.

The fire cast its flickering light across the room.

Another shrill scream breaks the quiet night. The cry is faint, coming all the way from inside the barn, but still sharp enough to make her squeeze her eyes shut and rub at her temples. How she hated the sound. She hoped it would not be enough to wake the children from their needed sleep.

The backdoor opened. Finwë walked inside, his footsteps heavy, worn down by all that happened today. He paused for a moment when he noticed her waiting for him, then came over and sat across from her.

“How are they?” He asked, looking into the fire.

“Asleep,” She answered, looking at the stress lines around his eyes and mouth.

“How’s your back?”

“A little sore,” She said honestly. Running through the forest and then spending several hours on the back of a horse had not done her any favors. “But I’ll be alright.”

He nodded, his hands squeezed together in his lap.

“And Fëanor?” She pushed.

She’d seen him tied and slung over one of the horses when they got back. Silent and unmoving, apathetic to his family’s reunion. Finwë led the horses to the barn while she took her children inside.

He leaned back in the chair, releasing a harsh breath. “He could have killed one of them.”

Her eyes widened. “He would never—” She began.

“He might,” Finwë interrupted, his voice rising with emotion. “Even if he did not mean to, he could have killed them. He has no idea what he’s doing. He’s in there,” He threw an accusing finger toward the barn, “screaming at nothing. He’s babbling nonsense and cannot see anything beyond his own delusional beliefs!”

She stared, wide-eyed. “He’s,” She could not go on.

“He’s mad,” The other supplied easily. “He hasn’t been right for years. We saw it! We saw it and let him be and now look at what he’s done. He’ll kill one of them next time. I know he will.”

“But he loves them,” She protested weakly.

He stood and began to pace. “I’ve let this go on far enough. Your love for him stayed my hand time and time again when he showed this madness. My own love for him and his mother clouded my judgment too, but no longer. We were lucky today. He might have killed them. This will go no further.”

“What do you mean?” She pleaded, clasping his hand between hers and he walked by. “He’s our child.”

“He’s mad!” He spat but did not pull away. “He’s dangerous, and he cannot stay here. There is a place in Rawlings, a lunatic asylum, that will take him. We’ll go tomorrow.”

“No!” She said, standing to face him. “He is our child. You will not send him away to be minded by strangers. We are a family. We look after each other.” Her voice shook.

“Can’t you see how dangerous he is?” He said, taking her by the shoulders and holding her in place. “He is like a wild animal and it is only a matter of time before he strikes out again. We cannot trust him.”

She put a hand on his chest. “You cannot give up on him so quickly. There is a problem, yes, but we see it now and can watch for it so that next time it does not take up unprepared.”

His chest heaved beneath her hand.

“We cannot give up on him before we even try.”

He looked down and sighed. She knew he was calming down from the fierce emotion that had gripped him at the thought of his children being hurt.

“You’re right,” He sighed, shoulders slumping. “I am being hasty. I spent so much of this night worrying for Lalwen and Finarfin. I should not make such decisions while I’m like this. Thank you for speaking reason into me again.”

“Always,” She said tenderly, touching his cheek.

“We will sleep, and tomorrow I’ll see if he’s ready to be any more reasonable.” He took her hand in his, pulling it slowly from his face.

They walked together to their bedroom and changed into their night clothes. Under the covers, he held her close and buried his nose in her hair. She curled into his chest and tried to ignore the screams.

#cw: mental health disorder #cw: child abuse #cw: child endangerment #feanor #finwe #fingolfin #indis #finarfin #lalwen #house of finwe #the silmarillion #look #old gods au #grimwing writes

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