#i UNDERSTAND that it can be hard for family for instance to flip a switch with their trans loved one...

[uncanny-tranny]

It's really frustrating being trans sometimes with cis loved ones because other cis people will go, "oh but it's such a huge adjustment for them! They're grieving for your pre-transition self/they aren't used to the change yet/it's hard on them!"

It's just so frustrating that people forget that trans people's feelings on this matter, too. Cis people aren't the only ones who have adjustments to make. Frankly, as much as I sympathize with cis people in this position, I can't help but be really jaded about it because so often, cis people jump to the defense of other cis people and they will seemingly forget to or refuse to give the same grace to trans people.

#trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #ftm #mtf #nonbinary #like at what point is it 'they aren't used to it yet!' and it morphs into 'that person is actively refusing to acknowledge you' #i'm at a point now where i have been out as trans for half my life. at what point is this willfully refusing to see *me* #it's just amazing that it doesn't matter what the trans person could do because it's their fault for bringing 'burden' onto cis people #i UNDERSTAND that it can be hard for family for instance to flip a switch with their trans loved one... #...but i can't help but notice that so often it's because they *refuse to try* #why is it that cis people can do almost anything to trans people but trans people must be perfectly understanding and perfectly... #...content with whatever cis people in our lives have to say about how hard it is on THEM... #...like that's insulting to me. imagine being so willfully incompassionate... #...i'm worried about if i'm safe in my own workplace or in my gym or in a medical setting... #...i feel like we need a sense of scale about who is most affected by transness in this scenario... #...because i would RATHER be grieving over somebody's transness than worrying if i'll be hatecrimed... #...there's a difference in the experience between a trans person and the cis people in that trans person's life learning to adjust to... #...that person's transness. which is why i don't think it's comparable to say that cis people have it just as hard in this case #transphobia #transphobia tw

[justmeinadaze]

Aftercare (Steddie Ask)

A/N: This an ask by @corrodedcorpses <3. She wanted something where the reader didn't know what aftercare was so the boys showed her after an instance with her boyfriend or a partner. It intrigued me! You always give me interesting ones, mama, that I can connect with! Lol I seriously didn't know what aftercare was until I started reading smut. All my exes never did it and I always felt like ugh after they would leave.

I hope I did you proud!

Warnings: Light smut (she said I could :D ), more so Steddie looking after her, there are mentions of the aftermath when her boyfriend leaves (bruised wrists, welts from a belt), Steve mentions her bleeding and Eddie gets protective, reader is stuck in a little/submissive headspace

Word Count: 2555

Steve tossed Eddie some movies on the couch as he shuffles off his Family Video vest and slams his body exhaustedly onto the adjacent sofa.

“You’re films you requested, my liege.”

“Cool, man. Thank you.”

“No problem. Where is Y/N?”

Eddie’s eyes shift towards the closed door of your bedroom. “With her idiot.”

“I thought they broke up.”

“Yeah, well, I guess not.”

The door suddenly opens, your boyfriend adorning a huge grin. “I’ll see you later, Y/N! Have a good night, boys.”

They both respond with an aggressive hm as Steve gets up to follow him out and lock the door behind him. “Fucking prick.”

“I can hear you; you know!”

“Good because I wasn’t hiding it!” 

“Hey, sweetheart. You want to watch a movie?!”

“Not tonight, Eds! I don’t… feel so hot.”

They glance at each other at your change of tone. They had known you since high school and since you guys had agreed to move in together, you all had learned each other’s little quarks. You always seemed to have a smile on your face especially around them but in every one of your relationships, you appeared to become more and more lethargic. 

You confided in them once that you felt like there was something wrong with you. 

“Maybe I’m not meant to be happy in a relationship.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, you are, honey.” Steve couldn’t believe what he had heard. 

“Any man would be lucky to have you, princess.”

“Please, you have to say that because you’re my friends.”, you giggle.

Eddie rose from the couch as both boys headed to your room. It was oddly darker than normal and Steve flipped the switch to turn on your white Christmas lights you usually had on above your bed. Your clothes they remembered you wearing that day were tossed around on the floor but you appeared to be clothed insomething since they could see the light reflecting off the silk against your skin. You were laying on your side as the blanket covered you up to your waist. You seemed incredibly small and it scared them a bit. 

“What’s wrong, Y/N? You’re feeling sick?”

“No, Stevie. Just… tired.”

“Y/N, did that fucking asshole hurt you?” You both turned to look at Eddie as Steve followed his eyeline. Your wrists were starting to swell where you had pulled at the handcuffs that were currently hidden in your dresser. “I’m gonna fucking kill him.”

“No! No, no, no.” You quickly got up, running after him as he started heading for the front door. “No. It’s… it’s not what you think.”

“Honey, you’re bleeding.” 

You try to look at your behind, wincing as you sigh. “He hit me a bit too hard. NO!” Eddie starts to head for the door again as you grab his arm. “I…I wanted this. Fuck.” The metalhead’s arms shoot out to catch you as your knees buckle. “I feel really heavy and…”

“A little clingy?” As you found yourself still stuck in your little girl headspace, Eddie’s protective grasp around you had you feeling safe. You couldn’t help but nuzzle your face into his chest as you nodded. Both men look at each other with a mutual understanding of what’s going on.

“What fucking prick doesn’t do aftercare after something like this?”, Steve asks.

“What’s that? After care?”

Both sets of eyes widen at your question. “Y/N, you’re telling us, you want to do things like this but no one has ever taken care of you after?”

“Well, that stops today.” Eddie lifted you into his arms and carried you towards your bathroom. “Harrington, take over really quick, I have some first aid stuff in my room. I’ll be right back.”

Steve sits on the edge of your tub as he looks up at you with admiration. “Do you think you can stand for a shower or do you want to take a bath?” He sees something flash through your eyes that seems like trepidation. “Hey. You’re still in that headspace?” You gently nod your head. 

“That’s ok, sweet girl. That’s perfectly alright. Did you want to ask me something?”

“If…if I take a bath, will you sit with me?”

He tenderly smiles as he pulls you into his embrace. “Yeah, honey, I can do that. You can ask me and Eddie anything you want to, okay? We love you.” You grin with giddy pride at his last sentence. “This is gorgeous by the way. Did you buy it?”

Your hands fly down to run along the silk nightie you had forgotten you were wearing. “I did. It came with these cute panties and stockings. I don’t like those though. The mesh feels weird on my feet.”

“Hm, I bet. What do you like?”

You shrug as he lifts the garment over your head. “What do you like?”

“Honestly, I’m not a big fan of extras like stockings.” The pads of his fingers glid up your leg to the middle of your thigh. “I like to be able to feel my girl’s skin.” He grinned as you blushed. 

After turning off the water, he held your hand as he guided you into the tub. You flinched as you slowly lowered your behind into the warmth, your eyes darting to his after you were seated, waiting patiently for him to join. 

A pleasure filled sigh left your lips as he gradually removed every item of clothing he was wearing. You had seen both of them without a shirt numerous times but seeing him now was sending a different kind of electricity through your body. When he removed his boxers, your breath caught in your throat. He was much bigger than you expected him to be.

“Wow. Didn’t take you long to get naked, huh, Harrington?”, Eddie grinned as he entered the bathroom. Steve made a face at the boy before climbing in behind you, pulling your shoulders back so you could lean against his chest. “I got my first aid kit laid out on your bed with some comfy clothes. I was thinking after we take care of you here, if you’re feeling up to it, we could order a pizza and watch a movie.”

You smile up at him as he takes a seat on the corner of the tub so he can face you both. 

“Is it ok if I ask you some questions?” You nod your head to the metalhead’s question as Steve delicately runs his palms over your arms. 

“You said you wanted this. Wanted what exactly?”

“I like…being controlled.”, your eyes look down in shame.

“Princess, look at me. There’s no judgement here. You’re safe with us, ok? Can you repeat my last sentence back to me?”

“I’m safe with you.”

“Good. Good girl, baby.” His words with the proceeding smile made your body shiver. 

“Now you like to be controlled but it seems like the idiots you’ve been with haven’t been doing it right if you don’t know what aftercare is. It’s extremely important after playing like that.”

Your eyes meet his as your bottom lip trembles. “I just thought there was something wrong with me. That’s why…I feel like this after…like I’m broken or something.” 

Steve’s arms wrap around you as he pulls you closer to him, kissing the top of your head. Your gaze shifts between them as you feel the love they have for you radiating off them. You ARE safe.

“He hits me too hard sometimes. It makes me feel like trash especially when he just leaves after.”

“You’re not trash and you’re NOT broken.”, Eddie growls. “I fucking hate that guy. Fucking every guy you date is a fucking imbecile. I swear—”

“Can I kiss you?” His head straightens up as his brown eyes look at yours in confusion. “I’m sorry. Was that…to much? I just… seeing and hearing you both be so protective and caring…watching your lips move…I just wanted to kiss you.”

The metalhead smiles as he all but jumps into the bath making you laugh as he carefully straddles his knees on either side of both your legs. His palms grip your cheeks as he brings his lips to yours. It was a delicate kiss; careful to not cross a line but you desperately wanted more as soon as he pulled away. 

“How are you feeling now, Y/N? Starting to feel a little better?”, Steve asks, smiling as you nod your head. You were feeling so much better in fact that you grew bolder, leaning back to place your lips on his. When you pulled away, his kisses trailed up your jawline and down to your shoulder.

“How…how do you guys know about this stuff?”

“Aftercare? Because we’re fucking gentlemen.” You laughed at Eddie’s statement making them both grin seeing the personality they were used to slowly pushing through. “Sweetheart, even if you weren’t into the rougher stuff, who wouldn’t want to hold you and spend time with you after?”

He kisses your forehead before rising to his feet, water cascading from his now soaked attire. 

“Really? At least take off your clothes before stepping out so you don’t trench her floor.”

“I think you just want to see me naked, Harrington.” Eddie winks as he slides his shirt over his head and yanks down his shorts with his boxers, tossing them to the far corner of your tub. 

Jesus. How could both your friends be so well endowed and you have no idea. The metalhead reaches for your hands but pauses before you can reach up for them. 

“Is this okay? Do you feel comfortable touching me while I’m naked? I can go grab boxers or here! Maybe Steve’s will fit—”

Your palms grip his as you pull yourself up. “Eddie, it’s fine. I trust you.”

The man smiles as he reaches for a towel and dries you first before himself, tossing it to his friend to utilize as he guided you back to your bedroom. He sat on the bed as he placed you in front of him, turning you around so he can see the wounds on your behind.

You hear his breathing stutter as you feel the pads of his fingers trace down your sides. “I’m sorry. I just…you’re really fucking beautiful. I mean…I always thought you were…gorgeous…I just—”

Turning back to face him, you kiss his lips again, this time with much more vigor than before. 

“Wait, wait. F-fuck.” Eddie pants as his tongue runs along his lips. “I can’t…we can’t…not right now, Y/N. Let us…let us look after you tonight and then tomorrow…we’ll see how you feel.”

You nod as you adjust your body back to the way he had set it, finding Steve leaning against the bathroom doorframe. 

“What do you think, Ed? Maybe, we can at least reward her for being so honest with us.”

“I don’t see how that would be a problem. Just don’t move her to much so I can finish cleaning and bandaging these cuts here. Baby, what did he hit you with?”

“Belt.”

Eddie grumbled under his breath as Steve fell to his knees in front of you. You hiss as the man behind you starts his task, your hands promptly shooting out to grip the other boy’s shoulders. 

“Hey, whoa. It’s ok. I got you.”, he coos as his own palms grip your waist. “I got you, honey. Is it alright if I touch you while Munson does his thing? I can wait if you want me to.”

You adamantly shake your head as you run your hands through his hair. “Please, touch me.” Grabbing one of his huge palms off your hip, you take his fingers and guide them through your folds. “Here.”

Steve sucks in his bottom lip as he feels how wet you are, bringing his fingers to his mouth.

“Fuck me…you taste so fucking good. Eddie, you have to taste her.”

They gently shuffle you forward so the metalhead can kneel down behind you, opening your legs a bit wider as his face presses between you to push his tongue into your entrance.

“Eddie…”, you moan before the other boy follows his lead; mouth wrapping around your clit. 

The metalhead leans back as reaches for the bandages to cover your cuts on your ass. “Y/N, princess, seriously… fuck those other guys. Fuck… I’ve never tasted anything so sweet before.” He hurriedly finished what he was doing before sliding his own fingers between your puffy lips into your entrance. 

His forehead leans against your back as you whimper at the feeling of his massive digits stretching you open. You turned to look down at him when you heard him spit, wetting his hand as he stroked his length. 

“Is…is this ok?” Eddie slightly smiles when you nod, your fingers tangling in Steve’s hair as tongue flicks against your much more aggressively. “You’re so fucking tight, pretty girl. Jesus.”

Steve’s head suddenly leans against your tummy as you watch him fold into himself.

“Fuck me…”, he pants as you notice the sheen of his cum on his belly. 

He glances up at you for a brief moment before diving back into your cunt with much more determination. You groan their names, your legs giving in as you cum. Steve catches you, slowly guiding you to your knees as Eddie keeps fingering you through your orgasm. The man reaches for tissue on your bedside table, cleaning himself as the metalhead grunts and spirts of his seed land on his thigh. 

He thanks him as his friend hands him the extra tissue he pulled for him. It takes them a few moments before they realize you’re lying on your side against the floor. You feel your body lightly jostle as panties are slide up your legs. Steve lifts you by your arms to a sitting position so Eddie can throw his shirt over your head. 

“How are you feeling now, sweetheart?”, he whispers as you lean your cheek against his shoulder. 

“Safe…calm…” You nuzzle your nose into his neck. “Loved.”

Steve grins, his eyes shifting between you both as he leans up on his elbow. “Good. Because we love you. Now…you can tell that prick that he needs to do this with you every time.”

“What? What prick?”, you ask genuinely confused. 

“Your boyfriend.”, Eddie answers in sullen tone.

“Oh. I… I thought that… was this just a one-time thing? I don’t want it to be.”

“Honey, I don’t want it to be either.”

“Me either and, baby, trust me. We can give you want you want without making you feel the way you’ve been feeling.” You giggle at him as he winks, pulling your head to his lips. “Now, again, I know Harrington just wanted to see me naked but I would like to at least put on some pants so we can watch some spooky movies and eat some food.”

Steve whines as he rises to his feet and lifts you off the floor as Eddie follows. “Does it have to be scary? Can’t we watch like Sixteen Candles or some shit?”

“I like how you asked that like you didn’t bring me those movies from your store.”

“Stevie brought me Fatal Attraction a few days ago. I still haven’t watched it.”, you grin.

“Oooo… sex mixed in with a thriller. Everyone wins!”

#steddie #eddie munson #stranger things #steve harrington #joseph quinn #fan fiction #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson smut #joe keery #steve harrington smut #steve harrington fluff #daddy steve harrington #sir eddie munson #steddie x y/n #eddie fanfic #steddie ask #steve stranger things #aftercare #aftercare is important #steddie x reader #steddie smut #steddie x you #steddie fluff #steddie fanfiction

[wetbloodworm]

some notes on the bit where mortimer confronts achlys thinking he’s his brother and more about achlys and asim Talking About It afterward

i like the idea of mortimer confronting him in public because it’s more fun if achlys has no time to prepare. has to just flip a switch and be maverick. also more fun because i want asim to be here for this and achlys would 100% try to keep him far away from this train wreck if he had a choice in the matter

i have this image of achlys seeing mortimer approaching and being like ‘oh fuck’ before turning to asim to very quickly be like ‘hey this is about to be extremely weird and I’M about to be extremely weird and insufferable but please please please just roll with it. also my name is maverick. also i’m sorry.’

mortimer basically half wants an answer for why his brother just up and left down and cut off contact with everyone, half wants to vent because maverick has always been the favorite and he’s always been flighty and irresponsible and mortimer has always been left to clean up his messes and he’s TIRED OF IT and this would be the PERFECT CHANCE to finally get to tear maverick a new one about being a shitty little brother if. like. this was actually maverick he was talking to.

achlys is a very good actor, especially when it comes to mimicking his hosts. somaphors are mimics in general, but also when a somaphor eats a soul, they get all the memories that person had. so he knows how maverick spoke, how he behaved, the internal machinations of why he spoke and behaved the way he did, inside jokes, all that stuff. achlys is good at putting all these together to pretty flawlessly Become a person. the biggest roadblocks are his own personality and opinions etc clashing with a host’s and him having to ignore that in favor of not getting caught. for instance, when being confronted by an upset loved one, achlys would LIKE to be understanding and kind and somewhat gentle about the fact that he is, in fact, cutting off contact. he wants to explain, even if he’s lying. but the problem here is that maverick wasn’t understanding or kind or gentle. maverick was kind of a selfish spoiled brat who didn’t like getting called out on his behavior and was perfectly fine causing a scene in public, and that’s what achlys has to mimic. he can tweak the behavior a little bit, but it’s a delicate balance of trying to make it seem natural for the person he’s mimicking vs having his behavior register as unusual beyond explanation.

in a way it’s a good thing that asim is there, because achlys is able to use him as an excuse somewhat for toning down maverick’s natural bitchiness. achlys doesn’t introduce asim as his boyfriend because he doesn’t want asim to have to pretend to be dating this little bitch of a man that’s very different from his actual boyfriend, but rather introduces him as a friend, and hopes to excuse being just a bit softer and less shitty as not wanting to be embarrassed in front of his friend.

so the ‘kind of a death’ in the family i mentioned in the previous post was the brothers’ Uncle Cash. cash was the hunter that had worked with asim ten years ago to capture achlys, so when achlys escaped the first thing he did was hunt down cash and eat him. cash’s body was found basically in a coma because of this, and discovered to have no brain activity, as is what happens when the soul is ripped out, so. kind of dead. while he wasn’t a GREAT guy or especially warm or close to the family, it was still hard on his sister, the brothers’ mom, whose favorite son had also gone missing around this time and only later explained he was fine but wasn’t coming back. so the family was having a rough time of it.

achlys... never really told asim that he ate cash’s soul, or that maverick was his nephew. so when mortimer mentioned ‘what happened with uncle cash’, the name is an immediate red flag to asim. not the most common name, and especially if achlys is involved here, it’s not an illogical jump to wonder if it’s the same guy. so he speaks up at this point here to be like ‘what happened to uncle cash :|”, to which mortimer quickly explains like oh he died right around the same time this bitch up and left, someone found him in a coma and he didn’t wake up, the timing just really fucking sucked. asim puts the pieces together pretty easily and is NOT HAPPY with achlys who has to keep acting like maverick here but internally he’s fucking sweating

after the initial confrontation, mortimer and maverick agree to have the rest of the conversation privately later on and make plans to meet up later (mortimer doesn’t fully trust maverick to keep these plans and gives a ‘show up or i’ll fucking find you again’ threat). as soon as he’s gone achlys drops the act, feeling a bit drained and guilty and icky about the whole thing. and then he’s got to deal with asim who uhhhh understandably Wants To Talk about what just transpired. which is potentially even less fun lmao

achlys trying to gently be like ‘so that was Sudden and A Lot, i think it might be a good idea if we both took like just a little time to process things before we get into it?’. asim countering with ‘i want to yell about this right now’, achlys sighing like ‘no yeah i figured’

achlys tries to be only a LITTLE defensive during that conversation, because he KNOWS it sucks. it was shitty and uncomfortable and he knows that this is the first time asim’s REALLY acknowledge the whole ‘my boyfriend steals bodies’ thing. it’s reasonable for asim not to like that and it’s reasonable for him to be upset having it laid out in front of him. achlys gets it! but also, like. achlys would like to not HAVE to steal bodies to exist in a realm with Literally Anything in it, he doesn’t do it HAPPILY. but it is what it is, HE is what he is, and there are consequences to stealing bodies that he has to deal with sometimes. sorry asim had to be here for it this time but achlys doesn’t really know what to tell him.

asim frustrated b/c he WANTS to yell about this but achlys is trying to be understanding and have a calm discussion so ughhhh he can meet him at that level. just says it was fucked up watching him pretending to be a dead guy to someone that guy knew. achlys like i know but i mean what other option did i have, i can’t just go ‘oh no i’m not actually your brother, i’m the thing that ATE your brother and stole his identity, sorry about that!!’ which, y’know. fair point.

asim not quite knowing how to articulate ‘i love you but i hate that you do this, i want you to be here but i hate knowing people were erased from existence to let you be here’ in a way that’s not hurtful. achlys getting the gist of it and like, it sucks, but he gets it.

after they wrap up that part, a pause. and then asim hardening a bit to be like, so, uncle cash, huh? and achlys sweating again. right, that. fuck.

considering he has less of an excuse for that one, achlys a little less composed here, just like. okay listen. that one wasn’t NECESSARY in the same way, no, but like. listen! he trapped me for a fucking decade!! i was trapped for ten years because of him! i was angry!! asim like WE DON’T MURDER PEOPLE WHO MAKE US ANGRY and achlys countering WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO FOR TEN YEARS BUT BE ANGRY AT THE PERSON WHO DID THIS TO YOU MURDER STARTS SOUNDING REAL APPEALING!!!

so asim does feel guilty about achlys having been trapped considering he had a part in it, but he felt (mostly) justified at the time and also he’s just not fully comfortable as excepting that as a reasonable excuse. eating someone’s soul to take their body to exist outside of purgatory is one thing, he hates it but he can get the reasoning behind it. eating someone’s soul as a form of revenge? even less cool. can’t rationalize that one.

achlys meanwhile is of the opinion that if someone put asim in a sensory deprivation chamber and locked him in his own body, took away his bodily autonomy, for a whole decade he too might start to feel more favorable towards murder in one very specific instance.

like he gets that murder isn’t cool. he gets that. but also achlys can’t stress how terrible being trapped was, how even if cash did it partly to remove what he perceived as a dangerous monster from the world he had other selfish motives and also did it in a really cruel way. it would’ve been more humane to kill him, but cash didn’t see him as something deserving of humane treatment. the Good and Merciful thing to do upon being freed would’ve been to leave cash be, yeah, but 1) achlys wasn’t feeling Good or Merciful, he was feeling furious and frankly traumatized from the experience and he wanted to make the person who did this pay, and 2) cash had trapped him once and achlys didn’t want to even risk the chance that he could trap him again. other people might know the technique he used and achlys might have to contest with that, no guarantee he’d be safe from every other hunter out there, but there was one confirmed person who could and would trap him again if he had the opportunity, and achlys wouldn’t let him. so achlys took him out first. he doesn’t regret it. he’d do it again.

i think asim would also be upset that he found out about this through a stranger rather than achlys himself. like he wouldn’t approve either way but the fact that achlys didn’t tell him isn’t helping. achlys like i get that but how am i supposed to tell you that?? WHEN was i supposed to tell you that? when we first met up again and neither of us trusted the other? later on as we started to work things out? even later, just out of the blue, hey by the way i did a revenge murder, just thought you should know??? how does that come up! why would i think that’s a good idea! to which asim doesn’t really have a good answer, just, i don’t know!! it just! it doesn’t feel good coming from a stranger!!!

there’s not exactly a satisfying conclusion to this conversation. it’s not as heated as achlys initially worried it would be but it’s still not fun and asim feels real uncomfortable about things still by the end. especially as the conversation goes on, though, asim DOES try to see things from achlys’ point of view, and DOES try to be a little more rational than emotional about this. he generally ends up feeling like ‘i can understand why you did/do the things you did/do but i still don’t like it, and people still died, and that’s hard to be okay with’. achlys gets that, and as long as asim gets where he’s coming from he doesn’t know what else he can expect.

one underlying anxiety that achlys has had throughout all of this, that he’s had for a while, is that asim will hate him for what he does and what he is. that asim won’t want to be with him anymore, won’t want to be around him at all. maybe that asim will go hunter mode again and think he deserves to be taken out for the safety of humanity, though that’s less concerning to him than asim just not wanting him in his life.

so after they’ve talked though a lot of stuff, achlys hesitantly broaching the subject, like, so. uh. where does that... leave us, exactly. asim thinking on that for a moment, though in his heart he knows the answer immediately. because he loves achlys, and he wants to keep him in his life, and he just wants to be selfish about this. he’s willing to feel guilty about the lives achlys will affect and take in order to continue existing in this realm as long as he gets to keep achlys. so him sighing and taking achlys’ hand, squeezing it, and telling him he will probably still need to process this some, but like. they’re okay. he can’t approve but they’re okay. which is all achlys can really expect or ask for at this point so he’s very relieved.

later on there will be the second meeting between mortimer and achlys but that’s a post for another time, this already got longer than anticipated

#achlys tag #asim tag #mortimer tag #somaverse tag #(somaverse was previously named dreamverse)

[titleleaf]

much ado with red and white, please!

Yesssss YESSSSSS it's body horror consent issues hours on titleleaf dot tumblr dot com

much ado with red and white (Shakespeare's Histories, Henry IV/Prince Hal hanahaki disease noncon, CW for discussion of incest and consent issues

Where the fuck do I start with this one -- I love bullshit medieval medicine and I extra love bullshit medieval medicine explanations for fantastical or imaginary conditions. There's an incredible fic for Webster's Duchess Of Malfi that takes the fandom omegaverse trope and refracts it through the lens of Early Modern medicine and constructions of sex/sexuality, for instance. Translating the unrequited-love focus of hanahaki disease into an Early Modern-does-Medieval context is a lot of fun, and I drew on then-contemporary writing about melancholy and unrequited desire to get the wheels turning here.

The idea that an unrequited craving can be dangerous or have some permanent effect has fascinated me since I was a kid (Rapunzel's mother just wanted some damn lamb's-lettuce!) and I think I brought to the table here too the story of Amnon and Tamar from 2 Samuel, this intensely selfish desire that flips like a switch to disgust and contempt as soon as it's satisfied. On the one hand it's possible to read Amnon's contempt in that exchange as being driven by shame as soon as sexual frustration is no longer there as an obstruction, kind of a very dark form of post-nut clarity, but on the other it's just the basic-ass grim case of a man who really only wants one thing from the object of his desire and has no respect or regard for them otherwise. Henry isn't in quite that position -- his love for his son isn't exclusively or even primarily sexual -- but him pursuing temporary relief is going to wreck him in the long term.

Incest isn't a metaphor for anything and need not be a metaphor for anything but Shakespeare handed me a blank check for all of my favorite things -- complicated relationships between adult family members, childhood baggage with implications for foreign policy, guilt, anxiety, paranoia, poorly-understood desires, the royal family as a criminal enterprise. Hal's relationship to his father has been not just shaped by but actively distorted by monarchy -- in some ways hereditary divinely-appointed rule is this grand, magnified version of the "natural" state of things under patriarchy, but the reality of exile and usurpation and inheritance and allegiance all within one big already-dysfunctional family just kind of shatters any potential for relationships without a shitload of baggage. Henry's feelings regarding his son are cross-contaminated by the whole range of things he feels regarding Richard II (and about his own bygone youth, health, and posterity) and Hal has to navigate that minefield. Dying from Unrequited Pining Disease because you oops accidentally killed the guy you're pining for and it turns out your son is not, in fact, an adequate substitution... oops.

I looooove body horror and botanical grossness -- hanahaki disease first and foremost looks gorgeous, it's super aesthetic and tailored to fanart and moodboards and whatnot, but fusing it to the idea of the king's body having a parallel relationship to the land he rules (fruitful or sterile, health-giving or sick) is really fun.

I forgot how fucking mean it is to have Hal straight-up go "I'll do this only if you step down and let me become king, I don't want to do this, it's disgusting to me" and Henry being like oh yeah totally totally I'll do whatever you want, I'll give you whatever you want, just let me fuck you, and then not even doing it. There's a third part of this fic series that I need to finish up and post already where he gets some comeuppance for that, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hal is trying to make the best of a really really really bad situation.

It was really hard to figure out a plausible textual background for Henry's own understanding of incest, sodomy, and specifically parent-child incest between two persons of the same sex -- he doesn't understand it as destructive or damaging for many of the reasons I or any other modern person might do but in terms of sexual sin and lechery. Robert Manning of Brunne's early 14th century poem Handlyng Synne outlines incest as one part of the seven-part sin of lechery, and it's very explicit about the degree of closeness being part of the problem, here, have a very shitty translation:

Þe þryddë synnë ys þe werst | The third sin is the worst,

Þe clerk[es] calleþ hyt 'yncest,' | the clerks call it 'incest',

 whan men take kyn yn felawrede | when men take kin in fellow-rede

And wyþ hem doþ doun flesshëly dede; | and with them doth do fleshly deed

Þe ner[ë] syb she ys hys kynde, | the closer-related a family member she is to him,

Þe morë plyȝt shal he þere fynde | the more plight shall he there find

There's a whole constellation of fucked-up sexual-sin concepts floating around for both Henry and Hal, but they actively obstruct either of them being able to articulate what's going on between them (Henry having displaced his desire for a more distant kinsman into a nearer one, even) or why it's damaging. Henry's trying to make a deal with what he's doing like it's different from other sins only in severity and it's not going to work out amazingly for him.

I forgot I use the idea that semen is the same kind of life-essence found in bone marrow in this fic and having spent the week elbow-deep in rendered bone marrow, it's especially narsty. Henry ejaculates a horrifying amount across all three of these fics since it seems so intuitively linked to the idea of somehow consummating an unrequited desire but it's all absolutely ghastly.

The title of this fic comes from one of my favorite pieces of Shakespeare writing, Katherine Duncan-Jones' paper on contemporary receptions of Shakespeare's Venus And Adonis -- taken from the letters of William Reynolds, a deeply unwell Elizabethan citizen and prolific correspondent with lots to say about religion, sex, politics, his monarch, sex with his monarch, and the content of Shakespeare's verses:

(It's just a funny off-handed summary of the content of Shakespeare's elaborate wordplay, to me. Like saying Hamlet has lots of stuff about flowers and recorders and shit.) I write about a lot of characters who've fully bought into the whole white-skin, rosy-cheeks, red-lips paradigm of beauty and incidentally a lot of characters with easily-flushed faces, both Richard and Hal among them. Pale sick skin and flowers, jizz and blood, it's all happening in this fic.

#ska writes a thing #incest cw

[asktheheirofslytherin]

I think I'm transgender and have no idea what to do. As I'm basically in love with you I want your advice. My parents are relatively accepting as is my sister, but my extended family is not.

Allow me to extend my congratulations on the gender - and I am, er, flattered at the declaration of devotion. I do favor loyalty to myself and the cause.

Now for the logistical details you seek.

Being transgender, from my observation (recall I am very much comfortable in my assigned gender so those who have experienced this directly, I do invite you to weigh in on the matter if you would like), does not have to be like flipping a switch in which one day you are "closeted" and the next you are "fully out." Many people have indeed taken this approach, but the transition can be done incrementally, and if you are still at the "thinking but not certain" stage, perhaps increments could help you determine your own identity easier as well.

No one mandates you must disclose your gender to anyone. If your extended family may not be accepting, you do not have to discuss it with them as of yet. Perhaps it is best to let this knowledge stay with your parents and sister, and a few close friends for the time being. Use them to experiment with various pronouns and names with you. Get the haircut you have always wanted. Buy the outfit you have been been dreaming about for weeks, months, perhaps years. Put it on. Wear it grocery shopping. Wear it to Diagon Alley. Experiment, sink into your newfound gender like a warm bath after a long duel. Explore it, create a map as you go. After all, even I, a cisgender male, still has a very different relationship to my gender than say, Lucius, another cisgender male. I can only imagine there are a number of aspects of your gender yet to be discovered.

At this point, you will have a better understanding of your personal identity. You can continue to grow your inner circle of those "in the know," building up as many supportive allies as you can, whether in real life or on this "internet." A bonus: the more confident and self aware you are, the more strength you will have to stand up to your detractors.

The day will likely come when you throw the last caution aside and fully present yourself to the world as you truly are. And it shall be glorious. Hard? Yes. In some instances, with some people, it may be extremely hard, but remember: no battle is won without hardship - and this is the fight for who you are.

Best of Luck,

-Lord Voldemort

#voldemort #trans #advice #gender #transgender #coming out #trans followers plz feel free to give op advice! #im still in the endless waffle loop of am i a she/they or just a gnc cis girl #but i got the haircut #and the outfit #and while even if i settle on they as something thats sticking around #i dont consider myself trans #so my perspective is limitied #but good luck op #and really #congrats on the gender #happy for you and your journey of self discovery #<3

[treatian]

The Chronicles of the Dark One: Magical Loopholes

Chapter 18: From Then to Now

The picture was still tucked into his pocket by the time he got home. He'd thought to throw it away at the shop but hadn't been able to bring himself to. It had only dawned on him as he drove home that crude as the image was, it was the only picture he really had of his Belle, and maybe it was the Seer, or maybe it was just a feeling inside, but he had the sense he needed to hold onto it. At least until he remembered to get a camera from the shop and take a few pictures. Nothing fancy, just small photographs he could hold onto and cherish when she was gone. He wanted images that captured her not as her father knew her, but as he knew her, as he wanted to remember her…like she was now.

When he got home, he half expected her to run down the stairs or emerge from the kitchen, to throw her arms around him so he'd get a whiff of cleaning solution again. Instead, the house was quiet, and he turned to find her in the family room, laying out on the couch a book in her hands. She was dressed but still so tantalizing he had to swallow hard to remember she was not a dream or a fantasy. Her skirt was short, her legs laid out perfectly, leaving almost nothing to the imagination as her chest rose and fell as she glanced up at him and smiled. And her smile…gods! Was the sun even shinning? Was the earth spinning? A smile like that could make a man forget everything, including his own name. Yes, if he had a camera, he would have taken a picture of this moment and saved it for all his life.

But then the room darkened. Or maybe it was just the fact that her smile disappeared that made him feel that way. Bright as she made him feel when she smiled, that was how dull he felt when it went away, and she let out a sigh. She dropped her book onto her chest before rubbing her forehead as if it hurt and his own heart set to racing then. Her head…a headache? He hadn't taught her about medicine here yet. Was she injured, or was the withdraw from her previous medications causing a problem?

"Belle, what's wrong?" he demanded, unsure about when he'd moved into the room.

But then she laughed, a chuckle that sounded perhaps a bit crazed as she shook her head and muttered "Nothing" before pulling herself up and marking her place in her book with a marker he hadn't even known was in the house. Laughter and the ability to have the sense to mark her page…those weren't indications of pain. So then, what had spoiled her smile?

"I found my favorite book, and I've been reading all afternoon," she explained, waving it in the air. "But I lost track of time. I haven't made dinner yet."

This woman…

In the past five seconds, he'd gone from panic that she was hurt, to joy that she'd found something to occupy her time, to irritation that she felt guilty over not having dinner ready for him on the table when he returned. She had the ability to make him experience every feeling on the spectrum of human emotion, and sometimes he forgot that not all those feelings were happiness and sunshine.

"You know that's not a requirement anymore," he muttered with a heavy sigh.

"Yes, I know," she snapped back in the same tone they'd taken with each other over the subject earlier that day. "But I refuse to sit here all day and do nothing, especially when I need the practice! I am perfectly capable of making meals."

Fine! Fine. He wanted to argue with her, to insist that she wasn't a servant, that if reading her book all day made her happy, then that's what she should do. But he knew that tone. She wasn't going to change her position. Neither was he, frankly, but they'd already argued about it once that day. So perhaps they should try and keep it to once a day, at least until he could find some other way to occupy her that didn't involve taking her to town or taking her to bed…though he certainly would have been happy to do the latter.

"Which book?" he asked, managing a smirk as he tried not to look at her legs. He was glad, truly, that women were so liberated in this realm. Normally he didn't notice such things, but with her…he really needed to use his magic to get her some longer skirts, at least until this honeymooning phase of their relationship wore off.

"La Belle et La Bete," she answered as he grabbed the book out of her hands and sat next to her on the sofa. He flipped it over a few times in his hands. It felt familiar. It even looked and smelled familiar, like her library at the castle. It was probably one of the things she'd found that belonged to her in his own house, and he'd never even noticed it.

"That's my favorite part, where she meets prince charming," she explained when he opened it up to the place she'd marked. "But she won't discover that it's him until chapter three."

He didn't have to fake a smile anymore. Suddenly he was genuinely amused. He remembered this book. She'd favorited it as well as Her Handsome Hero in the castle, and he'd read them both to get an understanding of her. He remembered this one because when she'd first introduced it to him, she'd mentioned the girl had her name. Now he saw it with new eyes, new understanding. All their lives, everything they'd said and done in their previous realm, they were stories here-fairy tales. Her tale was Beauty and the Beast, and he was amused at the thought that if she was Belle, the beauty from the tale, then that made him…

"What?" she demanded.

He shook his head. It was a silly idea, especially considering the way their story had ended. Some Prince he'd turned out to be. "You know that everyone outside of Storybrooke thinks this woman is you?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well, um, I'm pretty sure that Belle wouldn't forget to make dinner. Actually, I'm pretty sure she would never make dinner or do any other chores. I didn't fall in love with a prince or a monster. And it would have taken me more than three chapters time to realize I loved you."

I love you. Those words were never going to get old. They were also never going to get any more believable than they had been that first dreadful time she'd kissed him, and yet…

If his curse had broken, and it had, then it meant the love was true. He had proof that she loved him even if he couldn't understand how or why. He'd been awful to her in that time at the castle, a terrible beast indeed. How had she ever managed to love him? How had she ever realized she did?

He closed the book in his hands. "When did you?"

He hadn't meant to ask the question out loud, not of her. It was a mystery that he felt determined to answer one of these days, but it had never dawned on him to ask it out loud. He hoped he'd muttered it quietly enough that maybe she hadn't heard but then-

"On the road, with the Queen," she answered softly, like she was sorry or even embarrassed she had to give him that answer. He was sorry for her. How in the hell had Regina seen it before he had? How might their lives have been different if he hadn't been so blind, or if he'd been braver, or kinder or gentler…

"But I loved you long before I actually knew that I did!" she responded with an optimistic and teasing hint in her voice, as if she were tempting him to ask again. So, he put the book down on the freshly polished table in front of them and looked over at her again.

"When?"

He watched as she smiled, and her gaze got distant. He felt like he could see her thinking, see her remembering days of old when she'd been one way, and he'd been another. To him, it all seemed terrible. It seemed like she should hate him, scorn him, never utter special words that made him feel like he was glowing. But she smiled, and he knew that somehow, by some miracle, that wasn't how she saw it. What he wouldn't give to see it through her eyes and understand.

"A while…" she finally stated with a shrug.

"I thought you hated me for the longest time."

"I did," she admitted sadly. "But I never feared you. You tried to scare me, but I knew you would never hurt me. Well…I didn't know, I suppose, it was just an instinct, the same one that told me there was more to you. I knew it even when I hated you. I was just too consumed to act on it, not until Robin Hood…"

Ah, yes…that little act of rebellion. She seemed certain that he would never have hurt her, but thinking back on how angry he'd been when he discovered that…no. No, now that he really thought about it, he'd never had a thought to hurt her. He'd been angry. He'd wanted to scream and yell at her. He'd wanted to scare her as she'd suggested. But he'd never thought to hurt her. How had she known before he had?

"You know it's not like a light switch that you can throw on one moment and off the next. The knowledge of it is, I suppose. You know one minute what you didn't a minute before. But love, it's something that grows and builds over time. It's…layered," she sighed with a smile.

"Where have I heard that before?" he joked. He could still imagine the day he'd first heard it perfectly. Her dress, the look on her face when he'd given her the rose, the pain in his chest when he'd told her he never expected to see her again.

"What about you?" she asked, shifting herself so that she could be closer to him. "When did you start to love me?"

Well, if he'd known that he loved her, then things never would have gone as far as they had. But…she hadn't asked when he'd known. She'd asked when he'd started to love her. He sighed and closed his eyes as he thought back, back to a simpler time. Like paging backward through a book, he tried to find a time he hadn't thought or felt about her as he did now. Before their kiss, before Samuel, before Gideon, before the Queens of Darkness, before Robin Hood, before he'd taken her from her father…the first time he'd seen her in her bed when her father had summoned him to heal her. He couldn't remember not feeling something for her in all of those instances. He just hadn't been aware that what he was feeling, that the chords of curiosity that bound them together, might evolve and grow into this.

"I think I always did," he realized.

"Really?" she asked, sounding surprised and even excited. "Was it love at first sight?"

"When I first saw you…"

It might have been. He hated to admit it, to think that he the Dark One ever felt something as childish as "love at first sight," but that night he'd first seen her in her bed and known she was special, familiar even in her unfamiliarity…yes. That might have been love at work. He just hadn't known it! And he was fairly certain that given the potion he'd given her for her memories, she didn't know that moment existed either. She wasn't thinking about that night in her bedroom. She was thinking about when he'd come to claim her, in her father's war room.

She'd been a curiosity at first. He'd known she fit into his future somehow but hadn't known how and he'd been desperate to get her away from her father and fiancé to figure out how. But then he'd been struck by something more than her beauty. Her bravery, her fearlessness, her courage…they'd called to him somehow.

"When we first met, I admired you for standing up to your father and that oaf you were engaged to. I thought you were courageous for talking to me. I don't think you realized the moment I set foot in that room no one else wanted to be there. They were all afraid of me, and then there was you. This small, meek Princess, willing to talk when no one had called upon you. No one expected you to talk, much less take my deal. It was admirable and heroic beyond belief. I was intrigued. You caught my attention in a way no one else ever has."

His eyes were still closed, a memory of her in his mind in her yellow dress consuming him when he felt her shift closer and lace her fingers with his.

"What about when I dropped my chipped cup?"

He felt himself smile as he had on the night it happened. Once he'd gotten past the blush on her chest and caught himself drawn into her beauty, he'd resisted, or at least tried to resist getting pulled into her. And as for the cup…

"I was entertained. When you live as long as I have, you learn that most things are unimportant. To see someone so worried about breaking something as silly as a teacup was humorous.

"And I was just glad for the company in the beginning. You were right. I was just as lonely as you suspected, I imagine…maybe more. I just didn't know it."

"When I freed Robin Hood?"

"Oh no!" he tightened his fingers over her own as those thoughts threatened to invade again. He was still trying to figure that riddle out from earlier. He'd been so angry, so upset that he hadn't seen anything remarkable in her at that moment. She was lucky he hadn't thought to kill her. Though, maybe that was why. Maybe it was whatever he'd been feeling for her that had saved her.

"I was far too…upset with you to feel anything else."

"But you didn't hurt me," she insisted quickly. "You could have killed me, but you never raised more than your voice against me when others would have without a second thought."

Even the suggestion of such a thing, the reminder that Regina could have killed her, that the Queens of Darkness had raised more than their voice against her on his behalf…it made his chest tighten.

"The thought to harm you never crossed my mind."

"And you saved me from that terrible sheriff."

He had to bite his tongue to keep from snarling at that particular memory. It wasn't one he liked to remember because he knew he shouldn't have let that man live knowing what kind of a bastard he was. If he had known he'd loved Belle then…he wouldn't be on this earth now. In fact, it was probably only his thoughts of Belle, of getting her out of there safely and quickly, that he'd neglected to kill him. But he wasn't about to lay weight on her.

"I wouldn't say that I 'saved' you so much as put you in that situation, but…he was lucky. If I had known that I loved you then, he most certainly wouldn't be alive today. As it is, he should hope he never crosses my path again." Because if he did, he'd rectify that mistake.

"But you spared Robin Hood."

Yes. Yes, he had, but not because of her. At least not entirely because of her. He'd spared him because the Seer told him to. Because somehow that man was going to be important to Regina in a way he hadn't figured out yet, and he had to live. But disappointing as that had been, Belle had certainly brightened that moment, that loss of revenge in his life.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. She blushed as he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. "And you embraced me like you didn't care who I was or what I had done. Like what I had tried to do was nothing. It was as if you saw me as more than the beast that I was."

"That's because I did," she whispered quietly. And it still amazed him to this day.

"I couldn't remember the last time someone had touched me that purposefully before, with heartfelt gratitude, certainly without being repulsed by my appearance alone. And I knew-"

"That you loved me?"

"That you were different," he corrected. He hadn't been on a path of love at that point, not to his knowledge, but he'd known he'd been dangerously close to something. "That you made me feel and think things I hadn't for a long time. Things I never had felt or thought before. I thought it was guilt and that I could get rid of it by giving you a library-"

"My library was a bribe!" she accused through a small laugh.

"Your library was created to make me feel better, or so I thought. But when I gave it to you and knew that you saw me clearer than I saw myself, I realized it was more than that. I had an unexplainable urge to make you happy. I'd never had that feeling before in my life. That should have been my first hint."

But it hadn't been. And what an idiot he'd been for that.

"Is that why you let me start going to the market after I asked?"

He nodded, recalling that conversation and what he'd felt when he'd told her "no" the first time all too easily. He hadn't been able to bear her broken heart. "The look on your face after I'd turned you down…watching you across my table, miserable as you were, it was too much for me to take. I didn't like saying 'no' to you, and when I knew that I couldn't say 'no' any more…I knew we'd become something more than what we were supposed to be."

She sighed, her smile growing now with each memory as if she'd been just as eager to get into his head as he was to get into hers. "Did you love me when I found that blue dress?"

The dress…the dress had been earlier than the market but after Robin Hood.

"Most certainly, I just didn't know it. And I was too stunned to even consider what I felt for you at that moment. I don't know if you realize how perfectly exquisite you looked in that plain dress. It suited you far better than your previous attire. You were…"

He didn't have words for how beautiful she'd been when he first saw her in it. He'd waited all afternoon for her to find that dress, he hadn't been able to keep his thoughts to himself when he thought of her wearing it, and when she finally had…she'd been stunning. She'd looked like she found herself. And he was embarrassed to admit that more than one of his nighttime fantasies had involved stripping her of it slowly, piece by piece…

"I thought I was going to die when those women kidnapped me…but you came! I was so worried you wouldn't-"

"No, there was never a chance of that," he assured her when her voice broke in terror. True, he'd tried to find a way to get around making the trade that he'd had to make for her, but she was always going to be okay. He was always going to make sure she was safe. "Even then, you had me…"

"Then you saved me when I fell off that ladder."

Oh, that moment. The first time the Seer had put images in his head of her in his future. That was it. That was the moment he'd began to fear that there might have been something there between them that needed to be contained or controlled. Oh, he hadn't thought of those images in years. Unable to see how they could possibly have been true when she'd been dead, he'd convinced himself that they were fantasies. He'd made her feel like a man, and he'd excused those images as hormones running amuck in his human body. If only he'd listened to the Seer, he might never have believed she'd died.

"I'd hardly say I saved you. You wouldn't have died, but you were lucky I was there. I suspected then," he admitted, trying to get that vision of her in white out of his head. "I suppose that was when I knew. I would have been devastated if something had happened to you, and I would have used any amount of magic, any means possible, to fix you. Then after I had to let you go to the market, after you brought that boy back and I saw you chase him away to keep me from a terrible fate…I knew.

"I didn't know if you did, but I knew we both cared for each other in a way that I couldn't allow. I knew you were more of a danger to me than some of my greatest enemies. I knew I had to send you away. If I was right and there was something there, I couldn't risk the connection growing any deeper, but it was too late. It took me a long time, I selfishly kept delaying the inevitable because I liked having you close, but I finally managed to dismiss you, thinking that would be the end of it.

"But I should have known better. I knew you better than that even then. Still, when you came back to me…" he placed a hand over his heart where he could feel it beating in excitement even now. Seeing her on the road to his castle that day would remain one of the happiest images he had in all his life. "My heart soared. It felt lighter than it had in centuries!"

She smiled when he reached out to touch her, to brush some of the hair that hung loosely over her face over her ear so he could touch her face. He had many memories, a lot of emotions surrounding those days in the castle, but if he wanted her to remember any of them through his eyes, it was this one.

"For the first time in my life, I forgot about why I couldn't let you come back, about why you were a risk. The sight of you coming back on the road when you didn't have to, when you could have just…"

She could have left. She could have gone away so easily, found a job, fallen in love, raised children. But, instead, she'd come back to him. She'd come back to him then just as she had now, and he couldn't have been happier if he tried.

Across the room, the clock chimed. She twitched a little and took a breath as if to say something, probably that they should eat. But before either of them could suggest it, she rose up on her knees, leaned forward, and kissed him.

And he was too worked up, too lost in old memories and regrets to let her go so easily after one kiss. He imagined it was all those years ago, imagined doing what he wished he'd done then. He let his fingers tangle into her hair, opened his mouth to slide his tongue over hers, and then gave a greedy tug forward to pull her closer.

She didn't resist. She barely even broke their embrace as she settled her weight over his lap and wound her arms around his neck to deepen the embrace. And it felt surreal, knowing how their tale had ended in the Enchanted Forest, that it would be in this place now; that he'd be the one to keep her safe, to provide a place to escape, that she'd let him kiss her and touch her and make love to her as he did. But here they were. Together again. He'd be damned if he ever let anything happen to her again.

They both pulled away practically at the same time, and after meeting her eyes once, she drew him in to put his nose into her neck so she could hold him. "Thank you," she whispered into his ear.

He'd be damned if he ever let anything happen to her…but he'd also be damned if he didn't tell her every day, every moment of their lives, what he should have told her all those years ago.

"I love you," he muttered back. "I love you so much more than I ever thought possible."

Finally, after what felt like too long and yet too soon at the same time, she released him. She placed a couple of swift chaste kisses against his lips, then smiled. "Dinner?"

"Dinner," he nodded.

When she moved off of him, she reached back for his hand, and they moved off to the kitchen together. All things considered, he couldn't think of a better way to spend his evening than being wherever she was.

#Rumbelle #Rumple #Rumpelstiltskin #Dark One #mr. Gold #Belle #ouat #ouat fanfiction #fanfic

[pengychan]

[Coco] Mind the Gap, Pt. 21

Title: Mind the Gap Summary: Modern Day AU. Tired of Ernesto’s snide remarks, Imelda decides to put him in his place and her husband is more than happy to help. It was supposed to be a one-night deal. Things quickly get out of hand. [OT3, mostly porn and humor. Plenty of instances of Ernesto being Dramatic, Imelda getting Sick Of His Shit, and Héctor trying to be the peacekeeper. Don’t expect anything serious.] Pairings: Ernesto/Héctor/Imelda Rating: Explicit.

Art by @swanpit​.

[All chapters are tagged as ‘mind the gap’ on my blog.]

A/N: Aaaand with baby Coco home, the family is complete! Or is it.

***

“Look at her, Ernesto! Isn’t she the most beautiful baby girl you’ve ever seen?”

Ernesto hasn’t seen many baby girls in the first place, truth be told, but still enough to be able to tell Coco is, most definitely, not the most beautiful among them. Quite the contrary, really, and Ernesto finds himself wondering how did... that somehow pop out of Imelda of all people. 

Madre de Dios, he wants to say, what have your genes created?

But of course that is out of the question, unless he wants to leave Héctor with a broken heart, find himself with a broken nose, and possibly deal with a broken neck the second his words are relayed to Imelda. She’s probably as blind to her daughter’s sheer ugliness as Héctor is, after all, motherhood and all that. All mothers claim their baby is the most beautiful around, including Ernesto’s own. 

To be fair, she did have good reason to say so. 

“Hah! Speechless, aren’t you?” Héctor laughs in delight, patting his back and starling him out of his thoughts. He manages a smile. 

“Hahah, yes, that’s… yes. Speechless,” he laughs, eyeing the tiny alien bawling in her cot. Her head rather reminds him of the elongated skulls he saw in some museum when he was a kid and his mother dragged him along to visit some distant relatives in El Chaco. The only trip outside Mexico he’s ever made, and most of it was boring. “She sure is, er. Special.”

Thank God Héctor isn’t looking at him at all, his face squished against the glass. “Coco, look up!” he coos, tapping the glass. “This is your tío Ernesto, see? He’ll also be your godfather. Look!”

Ernesto finds himself chuckling. “She cannot hear you nor possibly understand whatever you’re saying, Héc--” he trails off when Coco stops wailing and blinks up at her father first, and then… at him. When her features are not distorted in a wail, she’s just a little easier on the eyes. Not that it says much, but regardless, Ernesto smiles a little. “Hola, Coco,” he says, entirely forgetting what he just told Héctor over a newborn having a chance of hearing them from beyond the glass. “It’s nice to meet--”

Coco bursts crying again, more violently than before. Héctor makes a sound that may be a laugh, a coo, and a sound of distress all rolled into one. “Aww, your face scared her!”

“What--” Ernesto stammers a moment at the sheer insult. “My face! Scare her! Have you seen he--” survival instinct kicks in and he manages to change the sentence midway. “A-- a mirror lately?”

The comment may have made him pout a moment normally, but this time, Héctor laughs. “Hahah! Well, I guess she did have a bad day, being born and all. Imelda was amazing throughout it, but did you have any doubts she would be?”

“No. Not really,” Ernesto replies. Not having to lie is a nice change of pace. 

“Still, it must be a lot for a baby. She’ll settle. She’s perfect, isn’t she?”

“Of course, of course. So, uh… Imelda is well, yes?”

“Sí, sí, I told you. She is resting now, but they should discharge them both--”

“Héctor!”

“Oye!”

“Here you are!”

“Make way, make way for the tíos!”

The yells are their only warning before two tall, thin and identical young men skid across the polished floor and slam against the window, only instants after Héctor and Ernesto hastily jump out of their way. They press their faces against the glass, which thank God seems built to withstand the impact with overly enthusiastic relatives. 

“Where is she? Where is she?”

“Which one?”

“Oh! The one there on the right!”

“That’s her!”

“We can tell because she’s scowling.”

“Just like Imelda.”

“She’s beautiful!”

“We’re going to teach you so much!”

“When is she coming home?”

“Our parents are already on the plane to come here, get ready…”

“Oh, and congratulations to the papá!”

“Right! Well done!”

Héctor laughs, clearly delighted, and returns the boys’ hug. “Ah, gracias! That’s not Coco, though. She’s the one over there, see?” he adds, putting a finger to the glass to point towards the right crib. “Three up and two across.”

“Oh,” Óscar - or is it Felipe? - finally says. 

“Ah,” Felipe - or is it Óscar? - echoes immediately. There are a few moments of silence during which Ernesto silently steps backwards to the door, then they begin chattering again at the same time as though the pause never happened. 

“Hola, Coco!”

“We’re your tíos! Not the other baby’s!”

“We’re going to teach you so many things!”

“Like setting off your mamá!”

“And the melting point of copper!”

“So that you don’t have to find out on your own.”

“Like we did.”

“And it was messy.”

Nice save, Ernesto thinks, snickering just a little as he steps outside, leaving Héctor and the twins to… admire Coco through the glass. He sits on the first seat available, trying to ignore the sensation he just intruded into a celebration he has no right to be part of. But that is not right, he is wanted there. So he ignores it, and takes out his phone to see a text from his mother. 

All well? Is she born? I spoke with Imelda’s parents, they said they were coming right away.

Ernesto smiles a little. Yes, all is well. I think. Are babies supposed to be ugly as sin?

Don’t be nasty, mijo. She will look just fine in a few hours. No baby looks their best after going through the birth canal.

Except me.

Of course. You were handsome from the start, she writes back… though after seeing how downright delusional Héctor is, Ernesto is beginning to have doubts over the reliability of that statement. But he doesn’t like to think he was that ugly at any stage of his life - on the chubby side at one point, yes, but never ugly - so he just takes word for it, and texts Imelda instead.

Cute baby, he writes. He figured she may be asleep, but the reply comes within moments. 

Liar, she writes, and this time Ernesto laughs out loud, startling a nurse passing by.

***

“Oh, she is beautiful, Imelda.”

Allergic as she is to the mere concept of agreeing with her mother, Imelda has to… well, to agree. Several hours after birth, Coco’s features look… like those of a baby who has not just been squished from all sides while being delivered. Her tiny head is round, her skin no longer grey-ish and mottled, and her tiny hands are clenched into fists as she suckles at her breast.

What remains unchanged was the unspeakable, somewhat frightening love warming her chest to the point she almost thinks it will spill out if she so much opens her mouth to reply. “She’s healthy,” she finds herself saying, stroking the thin black hair on her head with a finger. “It’s all that matters.”

Her mother nods. She is the only one left - her brothers are back in the new shop to look after the shoe orders, Ernesto could not remain much longer without arising questions, and her father has pretty much dragged Héctor back home to sleep a few hours. 

“She is. You must be proud.”

“I am.”

“... I'm proud of you.”

The sound in Imelda’s brain sounds very much like that of a record screeching to a halt. She looks up, wondering if she’s just heard wrong. “... What?”

With a huff, her mother turns away. “You heard me.”

“Are you having a stroke?”

“Clearly not.”

Imelda ignores her and reaches for the button by the side of her bed. Later, she will admit to herself she may be just a little high on the painkillers they gave her to deal with the tearing. “Can we have a doctor here, I think my mother is having a--��

“Imelda, por Díos,” her mother groans, rubbing her temples. “That button is not an intercom.”

“... No?” Imelda asks, just as a nurse pops her head through the door. 

“Hi! You rang?”

“By accident-- all’s well, thank you,” Imelda’s mother says quickly, causing Imelda to chuckle. At her breast, Coco makes a small displeased sound at the slight misplacement before she settles in again. The nurse leaves, and Milagros turns back to her daughter and granddaughter with a sigh. “Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. You know I’m allergic to being wrong.”

Well, to be entirely fair, it makes two of them. Imelda raises an eyebrow. “Wrong,” she repeats. 

“Yes. You know I did not approve of you taking the course in… managing…”

“Business management.”

“Yes, that. And I did not approve of you moving to Mexico City on your own, or starting to make shoes of all things, and I did not approve of your choice of… well…”

“Héctor.”

“... Sí. You know I thought no ill of him, he was always a good young man - a bit of a troublemaker, you have to give me that, though I know he never really did anything terribly wrong - and with the tragedy of his parents... well, I only didn’t think he was in a stable enough situation, or quite suitable to be…” A pause, and she sighs. “... Well. You proved me wrong time and time again. And I am proud.”

Ah. Imelda opens her mouth, but words refuse to come out for a moment.

I wanted to hear this. I always wanted to hear this. I just didn’t know it.

“... Not even a little put out?” she asks instead, raising an eyebrow. In return, her mother rolls her eyes. 

“I am absolutely pissed over being wrong all along, thank you for asking,” she informs her, but the scowl melts into a smile and she reaches to gently brush Coco’s thin hair with a finger. Abuela Syndrome, Imelda supposes. It’s almost eerie, like a switch was flipped. “... I worried so much that you’d stretch yourself too thin, break, and that I couldn’t mend the hurt. It’s what mothers do, try to keep our children safe, but we cannot always do it. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way, the sixth or seventh time I had to take your brothers to the emergency room.”

The remarks make Imelda smile a little. “You’d need a jailer to keep them out of trouble.”

A chuckle, and she nods. “Oh, I had to give up. They’ll learn their own way. But you know what you’re doing, Imelda. And if you don’t, you figure it out. If something doesn’t work, you make it work. That’s who you are. Never let anyone tell you what you should or should not do.”

Maybe she did have a stroke, Imelda thinks, trying not to let her mind wander over just how much she wishes she heard those words before, when she was younger, running on sheer spite and terror to fail and have to crawl back to be told that they told her so.  

“... Not even you?” she finally asks. 

“Por Díos, especially not me.”

And Imelda laughs this time, hard enough for her nipple to slip out of Coco’s mouth. She lets out a wail of protest, and Imelda immediately shifts her, letting her latch on the other breast, which she does immediately. Well, she got the hang of this pretty quickly, at least. There will be no struggling to make her daughter eat, thank God. She’s seen women tearing their hair out over it, with babies who seemed intent on starving to death before they latched to anything.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she finally says. “For me and her both.”

“As long as you’re happy.”

“I am, mamá.”

They’re quiet for the next several minutes, and Imelda watches her daughter suckle, still reeling a little for the unexpected conversation. Somewhere in-between the surprise and the exhaustion, the boundless love for the baby in her arms and the man she made her with, the pride for the life she’s built and the nervousness of the task ahead, her mother’s words seem to echo… along with her own.

“This cannot work,” she told Ernesto, and Héctor, and herself.

If something doesn’t work, you make it work.

If this were more accepted, she had thought.

Never let anyone tell you what you should or should not do. As long as you’re happy.

But there is Coco now, her daughter to think about, first and foremost. Maybe she could make it work, maybe she could shoulder the stigma and disapproval if the truth ever came out - no, she knows she could shoulder it - and maybe deep down she feels it would be worth it… for her. But for Coco… the risk it could wind up harming her daughter in any way is too much to bear.

It’s what mothers do, try to keep our children safe, but we cannot always do it. 

But I can. I will. From this, at least. She won’t be mocked on my account.

You know what you’re doing, Imelda. And if you don’t, you figure it out.

I already have. I figured out it had to end, and it’s for the best. 

You make it work.

No, not this. I cannot.

Imelda holds her daughter close, hums to her, and does her best to block out her own thoughts.

***

“All right, all right, we’re all set! Come in!”

Héctor hits the record button and steps back, grinning widely. Dante and Pepita can clearly tell Imelda is about to come in, and Dante is leaping across the room in boundless excitement, which makes Héctor very glad he’s put a baby gate in the doorway… plus another baby gate on top of it, because Dante can jump ridiculously high. Not that he thinks he would ever intentionally harm the baby, but he is a large clumsy dog and they’d rather take no chances. 

A chuckle, and steps. “Coming in,” Imelda calls out, and she gets to the door first, the rest of her family not far behind, a sleeping Coco strapped to her chest. Dante lets out a howl, his entire butt wriggling frantically, while Pepita makes no noise: she just leaps on Dante’s head first and then on top of the baby gate on top of the other baby gate. She leans in to rub her head against Imelda’s shoulder, purring loudly, then pauses to sniff at the baby. 

Coco lets out a gurgling noise. Pepita purrs louder, and Imelda smiles, scratching her behind the ears. “I think we have the first seal of approval,” she says, letting Pepita hop on her shoulders, and she kneels down to let a frantically whining Dante sniff at Coco through the bars.

“Are you certain that is going to hold up?” Imelda’s mother speaks, eyeing the baby gates with no small amount of uncertainty. But the gates are never tested: Dante sits down, the excited tremors dying down, and tries to lick the tiny tuft of black hair on top of Coco’s head. He’s as calm as Héctor had ever seen him, eyes huge and absolutely adoring.

Well. This is going… pretty great. When Imelda settles on the couch, Coco in her arms - she squirms a little and makes tiny noises like a meowing kitten, making Pepita blink, Dante tilt his head and Héctor want to cry - both pets join her, sniffing at the new member of their family so delicately. Dante’s tail is thumping rather violently against the cushions, but Héctor figures that as long as Coco remains on the other side of the dog, it won’t be a problem. 

There is a tap on his shoulder, and he turns to see his father-in-law standing by him, holding out a hand to take his phone. “Go sit with them,” Gerardo says. “I’ll take the video.”

Ah, of course-- of course, he should also be in videos with Coco, so that she can look back at them and see him there with her instead of just hearing as a voice out of sight. Although it’s not like he plans to leave anytime soon, so she’s going to see plenty of him. 

His parents were gone in the blink of an eye while he was in another town, any video of them together they ever had destroyed, but it won’t ever be the case for him. He will be there.

“... Thanks,” Héctor mutters, and hands over the phone before getting on the couch, struggling a little with Dante for the spot on Imelda’s right side. In the end they reach a compromise - Héctor sits, Dante lays his head across his lap so he can keep sniffing at the baby - and he puts his arm around Imelda’s shoulders, leaning his cheek on her head. “She’s here,” he says, very quietly and trying very hard not to start with the waterworks again. 

Imelda nods, her finger gently tapping the tip of Coco’s nose, causing their daughter to blink... and Pepita to immediately bop her nose with a paw as well, causing Coco to let out a squeal. 

“Pepita! Don’t-- don’t do that--” Imelda tries to keep her voice stern, but it cracks almost immediately. She laughs hard enough to tear up, and so does Héctor.

“She’s not hurt, is she?” Milagros frets, and their laughter seems to put off and reassure her in equal measure. “Oh, I am not sure so many pets in the house are good for a baby…”

Wait until four chihuahuas join in, Héctor thinks, but he has enough sense not to say out loud. He just stops laughing with a chortle and leans in to kiss Coco’s little head, trying not to think how it suddenly struck him - the realization someone is absent from Coco’s homecoming, and how plain wrong that absence feels.

***

Frankly, as he wakes up sweaty and with a rather painful erection, Ernesto is not sure whether he should be glad his dogs refuse to sleep anywhere but on his bed these days or curse them for it. 

On one hand, Zita licking his face has pulled him out of a very pleasant dream which involved one of his favorite types of sandwiches, with Héctor beneath him and Imelda on top of him with what, in the remarkable clarity of his dream, had felt like that slightly bumpy strap-on she kept for great occasions. And being pulled out of a pleasant dream is never fun.

On the other hand, if Zita hadn’t awakened him, he would have probably awakened later with a sticky mess in his boxers and a peculiar sense of humiliation that came with his every single wet dream involving Héctor and Imelda later. Which was to say, every single wet dream lately since they all involved Héctor and Imelda. 

I can have Héctor, they said I can sleep with him.

And he has been tempted, sure enough, but every time he tried to work up the courage to suggest any interesting activity they could do together when alone… he simply couldn’t do it. Not like that, not just the two of them; the sense of absence  would be too much to bear, and take away any enjoyment he may find in the act.

… Maybe, all things considered, the dogs should have minded their own business and let him have his wet dream in peace. Ernesto drops his head back on the pillow with a groan, reaching to scratch zita behind the ears as she settles on his chest. He should probably head to the bathroom, to take care of the problem either with his fist or with a cold shower, but instead he waits it out, reaching for his phone. 

He should check his notifications on Instagram, since he appeared on TV it’s been going off the charts and it never fails to make him feel better. Maybe he should take a selfie with Zita on his chest, the photos along with his dogs are those that get the most attention, closely followed by anything in which he just so happens to be shirtless. 

Except that before he can open the camera, a text notification flashes - Héctor. 

Hey. Just wanted to thank you again for your help the other day. 

Ah. Ernesto stares at the text a moment, then looks at the time. Almost three in the morning.

What are you doing still up?, he types with one hand, still stroking Zita’s head while she noses at his chin.

Coco was hungry.

Oh, of course. That’s what babies do, scream at night for milk. Or to be changed, or to be held, or just to hear their own voice. Ernesto is… rather glad this part of Coco’s life is not his problem. He almost begins typing a response, but he sees Héctor typing as well, so he waits. And waits. And waits. 

The typing ceases, then resumes, ceases again. Finally, after a couple of minutes, he’s typing again. You know you can come upstairs anytime you want, he finally writes.

Not anymore, Ernesto thinks, the notion so bitter he can almost taste it. Isn’t Imelda’s family going to be there for the next couple of weeks?

They won’t think anything of it if you come over. They know you’re my best friend. 

That is true, of course - if he goes to visit them, it will seem perfectly normal. He is going to be Coco’s godfather, after all. Still, Imelda was so concerned at the idea anyone may know what has been going on… it only makes sense to be cautious. He hesitates, and thank God Héctor writes again before he has to think up an excuse. 

How about tomorrow morning? The in-laws are going to take a look at Imelda’s new shop. The twins will show them around, we’re almost sure they won’t cause incidents. I’ll text you when they leave. 

That sounds like… a reasonable compromise. 

All right, sounds good. Ernesto pauses, and writes again. I’ll take the dogs, he adds.

Of course, they’re going to love her. Dante and Pepita do already. They try to get in whatever room she’s in. 

Of course they would, Ernesto thinks with a small smile, and puts the phone down. Another of his dogs - Clara, by the feel of it - noses at his arm, and he reaches to pet her as well. He probably won’t get much sleep before morning but, at least, his problem went away without the need for a cold shower. 

“You behave tomorrow,” Ernesto tells Zita, and Zita licks his face.

***

“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Héctor’s statement is followed by the click of a camera - a proper camera he just bought, not just his phone, which apparently he decided was not worthy enough to take photos of his baby. Ernesto, who was clearly focused on trying to hold up Coco’s head the way Imelda showed him, scowls. 

“What-- you’re supposed to warn me before you take a photo of me! We’ve talked about this!”

“I wasn’t taking a picture of you, I was taking a picture of Coco.”

“With me in it! Let me see-- egh. Delete that immediately.”

“No.”

“I look awful!”

“But she looks cute!”

“Héctor, give me that camera-- Héctor! If you share that on Instagram or anywhere else I swear I'll make your wife a widow and your daughter and orphan!”

As her husband laughs and almost dances out of reach, taking full advantage of the fact Ernesto cannot give chase with a baby in his arms, Imelda chuckles. “The photo looks fine,” she says, looking down at Ernesto’s dogs. They are standing on their hind legs, pawing at their owner’s trousers, clearly desperate to have a good sniff at the newcomer. Coco is responding to their whining with squeaking noises of her own when she’s not trying to fit her entire fist into her mouth, but her gaze stays fixed on Ernesto.

Well, she likes her honorary tío. 

“Oh, put her on the sofa!” Héctor exclaims, holding up the camera. He seems determined to use up all the memory card’s space, and Ernesto already had to politely decline an offer to see several photos of her first diaper change at home. “Let them go to her!”

Within a minute, Coco is right in the middle of a snuggle pile consisting of a dog, a cat, and overgrown guinea pigs that Ernesto somehow pass off as dogs.  She stares with mild surprise as her father dances around her to capture all angles, and Ernesto laughs, sitting next to Imelda.

It fills the room, that laugh. She missed it. And now that no one else is there and she can try to pretend, for a moment, that this could actually be their normal. The three of them and Coco, under the same roof, unafraid, hiding nothing. 

If only it were that simple, Imelda thinks, and tries to block out the part of her trying to tell her that maybe, just maybe, it may work. They could make it work. 

And it is frightening, really, how close she comes to believing it.

***

Additonal art by @whattimeisitintokyo​ that made me nearly spit out a lung!

***

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#pixar coco #ernesto de la cruz #hector rivera #imelda rivera #coco #mind the gap

[shy-magpie]

RQG 157

these things get long and are by definition one spoiler after another, so live blog under the cut

pre episode nonsense:

My hopes for this episode are mostly just the obvious: For Zolf to pull out of his spiral; for Azu to talk to someone about how she's doing; for Hamid to find his footing with the Kobolds (loving that they are devoting a proper arc to using unearned privilege/power rather than pretending it doesn't exist); more Cel lore; a Wug; and for someone to shake answers out of the Brorb. Not sure Alex is going to let us get to know the kids individually which makes sense as juggling 7 new NPCs would seriously cut into everyone else's screen time. I think we will get more of Skraak & Hamid working through their issues, and Skraak's helping the kids through recovery. If we are very lucky maybe Zolf & Skraak will talk rather than just have Zolf resent the Kobolds for putting Hamid in a place to fall into old habits. Okay lets hit play!

Episode live blogging:

Intros are quick: Zolf sounds low, Ben sounds higher energy than he was.

Oh the Brorb drawings come better when the other half is distracted but not thinking about the real topic.

Krakens are through out the globe, unknown numbers, not true instances of Shoin, network is down.

Cel and I both react to having Shoin be the one to come closest to a truly non physical form.*

Krakens are cloned brains in robot bodies. Specifically said Daleks not Jurassic Park.

Shoin thinks he sent a ransom note using the Kraken as a threat against the world.

Does not handle it well when Zolf hones in on that no one knows who he is, much less trembles at his name.**

Hamid follows Zolf's lead and twists it towards boasting about beating the Infection. The talking half doesn't seem to know how he did it as clearly as the drawing bit. Unfortunately its strictly surgical which would be hard to reproduce at scale even before you consider the side effects.

Quick huddle with the rest of the team:

Cel always wanted to go to London?

Zolf wants to ask more about how the infection works so they could prevent infection. Wilde thinks he is suggesting using Shoin's solution, I get Alex has to catch people up but I don't like Wilde being a paragraph behind me or underestimating Zolf.

Bryn wants to review the diary. Alex confirms the diary says he had a possible  way to "end it" as a whole.

They go back and Cel feigns being extremely impressed that Shoin might have a way to stop the infection. I think having time to regroup cut him off from his memory of the infection again. Alex spells out Shoin loses coherence whenever they bring up the infection/the time period around when he was infected.

Heal check time. Zolf crit fails. Azu got a 29 and can see where his theory was better than his surgery. It may be an aphasia (issues to with communication. can't get to certain words, some can't be spoken even if he understands the concept; others he can't understand if he hears them even if he uses the word/concept himself. Brain trauma, memory problems more severe the more recent you get, sounds like unable to store short term memory properly so anything longer ago than a week but after surgery likely lost.)

Cel switches to the simulacrum. He verbally dismisses it as a waste of time. His hand keeps drawing based on the previous question re:stopping the infection.

Alex calls for a sense motive. Zolf & Azu see the latest drawing is a landscape using technical notation. Its a barren mine. Yes! it's the entrance to Svalbard. Cel can see its a circuit. Alex makes us/Lydia wait until after he's done with the simulacrum stuff.

Shoin thinks using humans as your base design to improve from is the wrong approach, gives some credit to Francois Henri for taking a different approach.

The circuit maybe to transmit something, it needs an organic component. Cel couldn't roll much better then that so they probably need to kick it towards the Harlequins to set a team on.

Shoin is moaning about paying the bills. Took on the contract to provide Simulacrum fluidics to Damascus for the money.

Drawings change shape get less technical and focus on the cavern entrance. Ben catches it sounds yonic, Alex was trying to not go there but did he really think you could go from cave imagery to seed imagry without stopping there?

Hamid tries to get more on how he caught the infection.

Bryn and Alex spell out that to get answers you ask a real question he won't answer verbally but will answer with his hand, with a decoy to keep the talking him distracted while the hand answers.

Decoy question is about Harrison Campell.

Concept drawing of a person, overwhelmed by an image of a huge figure with lines going from the small to the large? Is he suggesting they plant someone they prepare to be infected, and have them infect it back?

Proofs? Minor changes between the proofs and published version of early Campbell books.

Another review session upstairs. Hamid's red string wall got cited as being useful! Cult of Hades/Wellington may have been the one to hire Shoin to make parts for Damascus. Zolf and Hamid talk briefly, about work and as dry "stick to the subject" as possible but they are talking productively.

Oh Ben finally gets in that the interrogation is hard on Zolf's knees because he has to keep his legs out of the cell. He snaps a little at Cel when they comment on cell vs Cel. Carter suggests "naughty box" which nicely derails that point of tension. Cel refers to Shoin as being more pleasant to talk to than Carter. Not sure if that undermines the tiny Cel/Carter ship or fuels it with tension.

Cel asks who hired Shoin to make Sim parts. He can answer directly. Well directly for him, it seems to be mostly justifying stealing Tesla's work on the basis that Tesla wasn't going to implement his theory. Hamid snipes him with a shot praising Edison to get him back on topic. Shoin says Edison was being backed by a big investor. Is it to much to hope this is Alex finally consolidating the factions? If Hades is Edison's investor (leaving Edison & co as effectively their minions, rather than a faction of their own) and the factory owners we can cut down on sides considerably.

He goes on about how he spied on Henri, religion as money maker. Shoin was directly approached by Hades lot. Shoin made sure his bits won't work since he didn't want competition. Wellington was his contact with Hades. Wellington always had a pair of cloaked figures.  Vinegar + squizard = funny? Could be useful.

Do not follow what is going on with the hand.

Shoin is still unstuck in time and thinks he is going to connect them. Cel unplugs the speaker on his villain speech. Cel induces a dream state by powering him down

~break~

Cel suggests  painlessly killing him. Zolf seconds the idea because its immoral to keep him like that.   Hamid points out the longer the keep him around the more likely it is for someone to be infected. Wilde rules they should kill and seal it off.

Cel & Zolf have an argument about having the Kobolds handle the remains. Cel calls Zolf out on his inconstant stance on whether the Kobolds can be infected because if he doesn't believe that then he is risking them.

Wilde is moving on? Cel suggests letting the Brorb die, putting it in a bag of holding, keeping the bag in the anti magic field.

They can't just call Einstein because using unofficial channels is bad when irregular behavior is a sign of infection(?)

Alex's unhealthy attitudes about productivity are called out when he refers to the time Wilde spends thinking/planning before getting their transport arranged as "working" (with the inverted commas) rather than considering it part of the work.

They work out possible paths if teleporting is off the table.

And the boys are snapping at each other again. Zolf, you can't flip out every time you are reminded that Hamid doesn't have the experience or expertise of a seasoned sailor. Yeah you did leave the team without your skills and maybe the kid was a bit green for a field promotion; but you know what? He did a fine job, and the other choices were Sasha, who wouldn't lead, and Bertie, who shouldn't. Just because stepping down was the right thing to do, doesn't mean you get to lose it when you are confronted with the mere allusion to the idea it had consequences.

Barnes tells Hamid why going over the pole is a really bad idea. That Azu's suggestion is carrying Hamid has troubling symbolism.

Zolf actually comes more or less to Hamid's defense by pointing out that all their options are bad options, so having a go at Hamid's idea in particular is unwarranted.

I'm not going to bother listing out options. They will pick one or won't need to pick one. If we have been a very good fandom Alex may reward us with Earhart coming back as their preferred transport.

There we go, Hamid suggests her, Zolf seizes on the idea compliments Hamid on it, and immediately takes it to Wilde. Thank God he isn't so far down he can't do that. If he isn't compulsively shooting down any hope (especially from Hamid) then he really is on the upswing from the low brought on by quarantine stress.

Lydia isn't happy that there isn't going to be an American chapter. Then again we wrote off Svalbard, so don't give up!

Its the Northwest Passage and its so weird realizing that not everyone has it as a cultural reference. Wonder if it's an Oregon thing or a US thing.

Yes it would have been cool, but I think Alex is not going to let us have cool new story arcs when we haven't played with the ones we have at home.

Einstein and Earhart are our two best transport options. I am a happy fan. Especially if Zolf has to use his family and Earhart’s reaching out to him near the end of the journey to appeal to her. I mean we did get more on Zolf's relationship with his family than I expected after Paris, so I'm not going to sulk if they don't pursue this, but it would be nice.

Conflicted as a fan, its hard to remember that this taking months extra is a bad thing when the end of the series is feeling too close for comfort.

Zolf, look at you leveraging your experience with moving even when things feel hopeless!

Cel I love you, kraken as submarine is brilliant. Air kraken is suggested by Carter.

Hamid plays with the ideas while Alex goes "why?". Because you are going to have to work a hell of a lot harder than that if you want Hamid to see it as a no win situation rather than proof he needs to redouble on cheerful creativity. Feeling like he had no options led to the worst parts of Hamid's life, the things he is truly ashamed of; having few losses outside of those, he is going to make Kirk's Kobayashi Maru hang ups look amateur.

Zolf is heading to the beach.

Cel is checking on their village.

Hamid wants to contact Einstein himself, Zolf says he should talk to Wilde about that. Hamid wants Zolf with him for that meeting. Zolf either doesn't want to be a safety blanket, wants Hamid to get used to dealing with Wilde directly, or completely missed Hamid offering a chance to work together because he is incapable of seeing Wilde as an opponent. He does say some nice things about being a team.

Hamid tells Cel to say hi to Jasper for them. He is good at the people side of leadership. Remembering names and relationships, knowing how to show he cares because it's important to Cel without overstepping. If Zolf can learn to let go of the rank stuff, they could be an unbeatable team of co leaders.

Zolf nods at Azu. Azu smiles proudly back. Alex jokes about not liking giving them time to heal because they coordinate.

Hamid offers hugs to both Cel and Zolf. Because this entire character is a "fuck you" to toxic masculinity and he is not afraid to openly show affection to his friends.

Cel gives him a great hug.

Zolf hesitates but gives him a pat on the shoulder. Hamid's has high enough charisma to make that not awkward. Good kid, accepting that Zolf is reaching out as far as he can.

Hamid talks to Skraak. Hamid is worried about taking the kids. Maybe Skraak can convince them to stay & help Jasper with science. Because RQG loves us and wants us to be happy, they are considering a fantasy some of us harbored since "science" as a serious possibility. Could solve the issue with Alex not wanting the kids to take up too much screen time too. Skraak is the perfect character for Hamid to have as his second. He believes in Hamid, and can be confided in, but isn't going to take an ounce of self pity or bullshit.

Alex that village better be okay. Smoke? Controlled burn. Ben lightens the mood. The tank is still guarding the village. The barricade is up but they are guarding about as well as a village of level 0(1?) characters can be expected to.

They are having a party and there is a bon fire. Because Alex knows we wouldn't have trusted him if there wasn't a little scare with the smoke. !puns

The village is visibly healing since the weather is fixed. They thank Cel but know better than to ask.

Jasper! Jasper is looking good. He stepped in as a leader of the village. Cel and I could burst with pride. Jasper thinks Cel is coming to stay, Cel tries to explain they are going to help save the other villages around the world and mentions that Jasper would like the Kobolds.

!puns

* One day I need to hunt down the right corner of SF because there has got to be a decent amount of trans humanist fiction for trans humans out there somewhere.

**Not sure if I should feel bad for hoping this gives him a safe target for his destructive tendencies. Ideally Zolf would get past that point without indulging his dark side lest he reinforce bad coping mechanisms. Ideally Zolf would have weekly therapy without the fate of the world on his shoulders too. Its the more personal version of looking forward to a fight after Hamid's been stressed because he seems to find cooking baddies cathartic.

#Rusty Quill Gaming #live blog thingy #RQG 157 #RQG Spoilers #RQG Season 4

[keanuvibe]

Bodyguard (John Wick x Reader) Pt. 6

A/N: Hi! I return with some good old fashion smut :) I love y’all, thank you so much for supporting this fic honestly.

Words: 4.5k

Warnings: swears, smut

The burning taste of alcohol scorched your throat as it went down. The buzz of an old box TV sat on a shelf near your seat, but it was drowned out by the bar life that hummed around. You didn't bother to take part in socializing; you weren't planning on staying too long, just enough to get drunk and then leave. You couldn't be too hungover anyways, as the gala is tomorrow evening. You only slipped out because you needed time to yourself before the possibility of being murdered by your cousin tomorrow. You didn't understand why your father couldn't just give Santino what he wants, and not put your life on the line. I mean, you did agree to the situation; they gave you the option to say ‘No’.

The past week has been interesting, to say the least. Firstly, you and John slept together. It was everything you’d hoped, and it definitely wasn't expected. Certainly not back when you first met; his handsome figure sitting so proper in the living room. Often, you find yourself thinking back to when you'd first met. He was so quiet, reserved, seemingly collected. Ruggedly handsome and such a mystery as well. That was back when you saw him in nothing but suits. You've fallen so incredibly hard for this man. Someone who you probably wouldn't have glanced at twice on the street. 

Next, the events leading to the gala had begun to cause you anxiety. The possibility of being killed isn't something you want to face. However, your parents are taking heavy precautions. Your mother had you fitted for a dress, tactical in case things went awry. 

Tuesday - 3:45 PM

“Look at you! So stunning.” Your mother cooed, spinning you around so she could see the dress you’d put on. The seamstress stood to the side, arms tucked behind her back and measuring tape around her neck. 

“And the fabric is-”

“Bulletproof up to close range, knife proof, and waterproof.” The seamstress spoke, cheerfully finishing off the sentence. You looked over to her, nodding quietly before looking back at your reflection. The dress fit well, it resembled a fit and flare with a heart shaped top and slit up to the top of your thigh. The design made it easier to move and access hidden weapons, while also looking classy and sexy. It did accentuate your breasts nicely, and the slit for your thigh showed a delicious amount of skin. The curve of the article gave you a nice hourglass shape as well.

“Aspetta che John ti veda in questo.” [‘Wait for John to see you in this.”] Your mother giggled, sitting back onto a small couch. You blushed a deep rouge, scoffing at her comment. 

“What? I know you like him, darling.” She responded to your attitude with a smile, sarcastically rolling her eyes. 

“Mom- I-” You began, but stopped yourself as the seamstress undid the zipper, allowing you to slip out of the article. The woman then took the dress into another room, leaving you and your mother alone. You quickly slipped back into your clothes before turning around to face your mom.

“What, baby?” She questioned, sipping a glass full of champagne. 

“I have something to tell you.” You murmured, sitting next to the woman. You looked up to your mother and she gazed back at you, blinking her long eyelashes. For as long as you could remember, your mother always had her makeup on. In fact, she's always been put together; even at five in the morning. 

“Go on, then.” She waved her hand, encouraging you to continue. Nerves fluttered about your stomach and you shifted in your seat. 

“I-” You stuttered, casting your eyes to your lap. “I think I have a crush on him.” Your mother's hand placed itself onto your shoulder as she scoot closer. 

“I know, la mia bellezza.” Your mother chuckled. “It was easy to tell after a few months.” [‘My beauty.’] She murmured, softly moving some strands of hair that had fallen in your face. The room was quiet, save for a small radio that played classical piano music. 

“I-I don't know what to do.” You paused, “Mom, what if this life isn't for me? I appreciate you let me have the store fronts, but I don’t want them anymore.” You spoke, looking towards the woman. Your mother pushed a glass of champagne into your hand and forced you to sip it. 

“I know you don’t want to be apart of this, really. We gave you those fronts to try to keep you around. The fact Santino dragged you further in… We’re sorry.” The woman murmured, looking down to her lap.

“I’m going to stay, and help you. But afterwards… I’m moving out. I found a place further down in the city. John helped me find it, actually.” You spoke, a little excitement added to your voice. Your mother looked back up, a small grin crossing her lips. She nodded, leaning in and kissing the top of your head softly. 

“I support you. Your father might be harder to convince, however.” The woman answered, setting her glass down.

--

Right. You nearly forgot you told your mom about liking John, and confessing the want to leave. You already put a deposit down anyways. With your father’s money, you can afford to live on your own. He'd put enough away in a savings account, starting when you were just a baby.

 John helped you find the place too, searching the old fashion way; through ads in the paper.

“This one has a lot of natural light.” John held these newspaper for you to see. You grabbed the sheet from his hand and studied the small black and white photos.

“How can you even see that?” You squint, prompting John to chuckle.

“It says it in the description, little one.” He humored, a cheeky grin crossing his face. You blushed, chuckling to play off your embarrassment. 

“There’s plenty of closet space. I could keep a few things there.” He spoke, standing up and adjusting his position to hover over your shoulder. You felt butterflies soar through your stomach at the comment and nodded furiously. 

“Yes, please do.” 

--

On top of all the other stuff, your father gifted you new weaponry;  A pistol set with an ankle strap, and a new set of knives. It felt nice that he cared, but you've never actually been apart of one of your fathers missions before. Sure, you've done some dirty work and left a few bodies behind; however, this mission is different. More dangerous, on top of being risky. 

 The scrape of a bar stool next to your own echoed throughout the space, but you didn't bother to glance at the person. The bartender was quick to take their order before the figure cleared their throat.

“This is the bar we were first introduced. Our fathers had a meeting here.” Santino’s voice chilled you to the bone and you froze, stuck staring into your drink. You heard the light of a match as he lit a cigarette and took a puff, smoke blowing directly into your face. 

“You remember, no?” He then asked. You finally looked up, greeting his smug expression. 

“I do.” You answered, taking a large swing of your whiskey. “Why are you here, Santino?” You finished. 

“May we not speak like civilized humans? We are famiglia after all.” ‘[Family.]’ He answered cooly, taking a puff from his cigarette. You rolled your eyes, gesturing to the bartender for another refill.

“You think no more of us than you do an ant on the street. We are not family; We are merely, devastatingly, blood related.” You spat, facing your cousin fully. He seemed a bit taken aback by your outburst, but quickly shook it off with a laugh and a sip of his own drink. You two fell into silence as you turned back towards your drink. You swirled the dark liquor around before gulping down the liquid. 

“Where's your boy, hm? No play toy tonight?” The man asked after a few moments. You knew he was talking about John. “Do your parents know about your activities?” Anger bubbled deeply in your chest. How did he know that in the first place? You two were very strict about no affection until behind closed doors. 

“I stepped out without him.” You tried to keep the rage under control, taking another hefty sip from your drink. Santino clicked his tongue at your answer. 

“Shame, I’d love to meet the guy whose been killing all my men.” Your cousin murmured. You furrowed your brows, confusion lacing your brain. 

“We've only had a few instances with your fools, what do you mean?” You asked, looking back towards the man. He looked at you, realization crossing his features. A short laugh escaped his mouth.

“You don't know?” He grinned mischievously.

“Tell me.” You demanded, your hand balling into a fist. The obvious amusement radiated off your cousin from your situation. What the hell could he be talking about, and why has John been ‘killing all his men’?

“Your… boyfriend, has been sneaking out at night, cousin. Into my warehouses, slaying the men in his way. I know he's seeking me. John Wick could never touch me.” Santino’s last comment was snarky, cold, and spoken with a deep seeded hatred. You felt shock cross your body upon learning new information. Why hadn't he told you?  He could've been killed and you would've never known. Drunk words were to be had when you get home. 

“Well. That sounds like a problem for you.” You responded. Though you were upset at John for keeping this a secret, you were grateful he'd put such a large dent into Santino’s resources. Your cousin scoffed, finishing off his drink and setting the glass back onto the bar. He threw a twenty dollar bill next to the cup before turning to face you. You watched carefully as he placed his ring-clad hand over your shoulder, leaning closer to your face. 

“See you tomorrow, (Y/N).” He spoke lowly. His hand pat your shoulder a few times before he removed it and exit the bar. Though you didn't look at his face when he’d spoken, the sinister feelings behind it stuck with you; even after he’d already left.

--

Stumbling through your bedroom door, your fingers searched the wall before finding the switch and flipping on the light. You groaned at the brightness, too drunk to be dealing with it. You felt a little dizzy from the dark liquor you'd drank, but managed to walk to your bed, sitting on the edge. With a little effort, you began tugging at the zipper on your dress in an attempt to remove the article. Going to bars used to be fun, you could carelessly get wasted and sleep with some random guy. Now you couldn't leave the house with fears of being killed. 

Stripping off the dress, you sighed, laying back onto your bed and shutting your eyes. A quiet knock on your door triggered a low groan to escape your lips as you sat up, wobbling your way over to the door and tugging it open. Your drunk eyes met the sight of John. He looked down at your figure and raised his brows as the scent of alcohol hit his nostrils.

“Sneaking off on me again?” He questioned, pushing your figure back into the bedroom and shutting the door behind himself. You stumbled back from his minimal force, and whined at him.

“Don't p-push me.” You drunkenly spoke, folding your arms in frustration. “You're the one in trouble h-here! Mr. I’ve Been Sneaking Out To Kill Santino’s Men.

“That's a long name.” John deadpanned. His eyes scanned down your body, causing you to remember you'd stripped off the clothing you had on. 

“Don't change the topic.” You walked past him to get to the bed, bumping his arm on your way. He quickly reached out, grasping your bicep and pulling you up to his chest. You tried your best to let the drunkenness fill you with courage as his dark eyes stared you down. You'd never seen John look at you like this before; angry. 

“I am protecting you.” He whispered lowly and through his teeth, “I’m doing what I have to, to keep you safe.” His eyes traveled down your nearly naked body; goosebumps covered your skin as he did so. You felt like prey to an animal, like a delicious looking gazelle to a lion; a ferocious, dark haired lion. 

“What're you staring at?” You slurred, furrowing your brows. The grip he had on your arm shifted pressures as his mouth collided with your own. The man let go, instead grabbing under your ass and picking you up. He swiftly turned around, tossing you onto the bed with force. You studied his face as he slowly approached your weakened figure, noting how dark his eyes had gotten. You'd made John so mad, he was no longer John. You'd caused John Wick to emerge. 

“Don't move.” He spoke deeply. The sound of his belt buckle echoed throughout the quiet room and John whipped the slim article from his pant loops with a Crack!. The man set the belt into your bed, grabbing your ankles afterwards and pulling your body to the edge of the bed roughly. A little whine escaped your throat as he grabbed your wrists, holding them together above your head before tying the belt around them. 

“You want to act bratty? Like you're the boss?” He questioned, raising his brow and spreading your thighs roughly, “Let me remind you who’s in charge.” John finished. He placed his thumb over your still clothed clit with a firm pressure, rubbing slowly. A moan left your lips and you squirmed your hips at the sensation. His free hand came down quickly, grasping your hip tightly and holding it down so you couldn't move.

“No moving.” He murmured, running his finger along your panty line. The feeling tickled, but you tried your best not to move in fear of his punishment. He hummed in appreciation, gently pushing your underwear to expose your core. He let out a soft groan at the sight, running his pointer finger up your slit, gathering the wetness up. You let out a pathetic whimper as he tapped your clit on the exit. 

“So gorgeous.” John praised, running his hand along the curve of your waist. You felt a blush crawl up your cheeks and turned your face to the side to hide it.

“Look at me.” He commanded, his fingers grasping your chin and moving your head. The man studied your expression. He saw the lust hazing your eyes, the alcohol too. There was another emotion hiding behind the other two; fear. It made him smirk knowing he was back in charge  and he stood straight again, beginning to loosen his tie. You watched as he took the item off and approached your figure. He leaned down, placing the tie over your eyes and quickly knotting it. 

“Can you see?” He asked. You could tell by his voice that he'd moved back to the end of the bed. You shook your head ‘No’ as a response. Johns footsteps padded faintly and you hear him shuffling around before his large hand grasped your ankle. It caused you to jump, not being able to tell when he was going to touch. 

“I won't hurt you.” He murmured, fingertips dragging up your leg. You shuddered at the sensation, your senses heightened at the loss of your sight. Johns fingers shocked you once again, hooking into the hem of your panties and pulling them down. The cool air hit your hot core and you shivered at the temperature shock. 

“I missed you.” He whispered, leaning down. His face sat close to your heat and he gently kissed the skin of your inner thigh. You felt his scratchy facial hair scrape the delicate skin near your pussy. The hotness of his breath coated your clit, and just as he was about to give you what you wanted-

“Please!” You blurted, squirming your hip. The silence was deafening, however John finally spoke up.

“I told you not to move.” You felt chills expose your skin at his comment. The man was swift to move away from your core. He grabbed you and flipped you over so you lay on your stomach instead of your back. His fingertips dragged along the length of your leg, starting at your achilles and ending at the curve of your ass. He gently grasped the flesh, squeezing it before a swift Slap! stang soft skin. You released a short cry at the sensation, whimpering afterwards as the man's hand gently massaged the skin he’d just assaulted. A second slap came down moments after, prompting you to cry out again. The overwhelming sting from the sharp slap tingled across your ass and you let out a defeated whimper. 

John’s large hands ran along your back, meeting the clasp for you bra. In a single swift movement the man had undone the article. The sensation of little kisses littered your back as he made a clear pattern down to your ass. His beard scraped the still raw skin, but the little pain it brought felt good. 

“Are you ready to behave?” He then asked. You nodded, vision still blocked by his tie. You could hear as he moved around again before he gently flipped you back over, pulling you to the edge. The quiet noise of his zipper echoed the quiet room, followed by the drop of an article of clothing. John’s calloused hands found themselves wrapping around your ankles, holding your legs up in the air. The gentle, yet excited, breaths that left his throat sounded throughout the room and you let out a quiet whine. 

“I know baby.” John answered to your plea. He reached his hand down, rubbing your exposed clit with a firm pressure. He gathered your wetness onto his fingers before giving himself a few pumps using the slick. An excited knot formed in your belly at the sensation of his rubbing, prompting you moan softly. His fingers left your clit but were replaced by the tip of his cock, caressing the bundle of nerves. Wishing you could see his face, you huffed from frustration. Your arms were still tied together above your head with the belt, and your vision still blocked by the tie. Seeing John’s pleasure only added to your own. 

In a single swift thrust, John had fully entered your heat. A cry left your throat at a loud volume, the satisfaction of finally being filled overwhelming your senses. The man started moving slowly, allowing you time to adjust to his large size. Pleasure coursed through your veins, and despite the man's rule, you began to move your hips with his. He removed his hands from around your ankles, resting your legs over his shoulders, before moving them down. He ripped your bra off, hand quick to grasp onto the flesh and fingers eagerly playing with your nipple. More waves of pleasure navigated your figure, the familiar warm feeling beginning to grow in your lower belly. 

Keeping his rhythm, John leaned forward and connected his lips with your breast, littering hickies across the soft, fleshy skin. Moans echoed the room, you being too drunk to care about keeping them under control. His thumb expertly rubbed your clit, only added to the fire within your belly. His mouth connected with your nipple, only doubling the pleasure you were feeling. John adjusted the position of his hips slightly, causing the head of his cock to rub against your g-spot. 

“Oh- Oh- I’m going to cum,” You breathed, the pit in your belly close to exploding. John took your words as a challenge thrusting harder. With a cry, your orgasm erupted throughout your body. Your finger and toe tips tingled as your muscles repeatedly flexed and relaxed. John let you ride out your orgasm, thrusting deeply before he too finished. His large body slumped onto your own, both of you breathing heavily. The man took a few moments before he lazily untied your hands and blindfold. 

“Whoa.” You spoke as soon as he took the fold off. He smirked, leaning on one elbow so he could face you.

“So, are you going to obey now?” He questioned, finger running up your body and between your breasts. You nodded swiftly, biting your lip. Although, once in a while you’ll have to misbehave. You two laid there quietly for about ten minutes before getting dressed in pajamas. Once clothed, you returned to your bed, both of you climbing in. Most of the time John stays until you are asleep. Then, not to raise suspicion, he returns to his bedroom across the hall. It was the only way you got away with ‘sleeping together’. John still didn’t know that your mom knows about some things. Thankfully, your father still doesn’t. You didn’t know when to break the news; speaking of bad news. Santino. The bar.

“John?” You questioned, turning to face him. He currently laid on his back, a book in hand. 

“Yes?” He answered, pausing his reading to look at you. He studied his handsome face, before speaking up.

“The bar I was at- Santino showed up. We- We spoke.” The words faintly floated from your lips. John sat up, his focus picking up on you. “You’ve been leaving at night, taking out certain camps with Santino’s men?” It was spoken like a statement, but lingered as a question. 

“Yes. I have.” He spoke, not breaking eye contact. Even though he was the one in trouble, his gaze made you feel like you were the scolded child. 

“W-Why didn’t you tell me?” You huffed, “I could’ve helped.”

“(Y/N), stop.” He spoke, but more commanded. You held your mouth open, but no words escaped. “I did it because I can’t see you getting hurt. You’re-” He paused, “You’re clumsy.”

Your cheeks flamed a hot pink at his words, embarrassment coursing through your veins. So, maybe you were a little… clumsy when it came to combat. You allowed yourself to get hurt by only two men in the alley- who you could’ve easily taken in your glory days. You’ve allowed your guard to lower, and so has your skills. You’d just stopped caring about it all; Up until John showed up. 

“Okay. I-I appreciate it.” Your voice floated out in a whisper after a few moments of silence. He nodded, returning to his previous position and continuing on with reading. You stared at him for a few more seconds, sighing before giving up and laying down. 

“What else did he say?” John questioned. You shrugged, your thoughts rummaging through your memories of the conversation. 

“Where's your boy, hm? No play toy tonight?”

“Your… boyfriend,”

“John Wick could never touch me.”

“He’s definitely threatened of you.” You spoke. It sounds like something a man trying to cover up his cowering confidence would say. John nodded; a little smirk growing on the corner of his lips. You got to admit, it was a little sexy to see him turned on by fear. But, there was also the fact Santino knew about your relationship with John; he could tell your father. 

——————

The next day came and flew by, the evening presenting itself faster than you would've liked. Now, here you stood in your bedroom, mother zipping up the gown from the seamstress’s shop. You studied yourself in the mirror; your hair had been styled in a low bun out of your face and perfect for combat. Your makeup was elegant however, you donned a smokey eye with black and brown shadows, as well as a dramatic set of false eyelashes. The dress your mother finished zipping made your breasts look perfect, and it showed off your body nicely; as well as the slit up to the thigh.

“You look stunning.” Your mother smiled. You just now noticed she’d been staring at you through the mirror too. You gave her a sad smile before turning your attention away and towards putting on shoes. Tonight was the gala... Tonight, there is a good chance you’re going to die. Anxiety hadn’t left your gut all day, however knowing John was to be at your side gave you a little security.

“Where is John?” You asked, turning around and looking at your mother. She blinked at your sudden question before answering. 

“He’s just outside the door, waiting. We’ve got to leave in five minutes.” She spoke, pushing your purse into your hands. You nodded, swiftly gathering the rest of the things you'd need. You made sure your weapons were secure in their strapped on spots. The ankle strap was hidden by the long length of the dress, and the thigh strap was hidden on the inside of the slit. Taking one last deep breath, you exhaled loudly and stepped towards the door, opening it with determination. John looked at you as you exit the room, a little smile he was trying to contain covering his face. 

“I’m ready.” You spoke, a hint of faux confidence covering the words. John nodded, leading you out of the home and towards the car. Your family would be taking separate cars to the event, for safety and get away reasons. It was just easier this way. John guided you into one of the vehicles, following in afterwards himself. He gestured for the driver to go, then hit the button to raise the divider. His other hand creeped onto your exposed thigh slit, and you bit your lip at the sensation of his calloused fingers gliding across smooth skin. 

“How are you feeling?” John asked quietly. You took the moment to admire how stunning he looked as well. He had gelled back his hair, and combed his beard. He also wore one of his all black three pieces. 

“Nervous.” You spoke, your eyes returning to his face. He nodded, leaning down and capturing your lips with his own. You sighed into the kiss, some nerves beginning to calm down. He broke the kiss first, the hand that had been resting on your thigh giving it a squeeze. 

“I’ll be beside you all night. I’m not going anywhere.” John’s words felt like a warm blanket, and you leaned into his side, wrapping your arms around his one. The man's head rest on top of your own, the two of you falling into a comfortable silence. The comfort didn’t last long however, as the car began to slow down, eventually coming to a stop. Your gaze moved to the window, noticing the large building that the gala was hosted in. Herds of people were standing outside, shuffling in and out of the building. Many reporters were also outside, taking pictures of famous people in attendance. John untangled your bodies and climbed out first, opening the door for you. You took a deep breath, gathering your purse and making sure your straps were secured before sliding out yourself. John held out his arm for you to wrap your own around; which you accepted. 

“Are you ready, baby?” He spoke softly. You nodded, letting your bodyguard take the lead.

---

Master List

#john wick x reader #john wick x you #john wick fanfic #john wick fanfiction #keanu reeves x reader #keanu reeves x you #keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu reeves smut #john wick smut

[herohawks]

I just wanted to let you know that I just saw the tattoo artist/actor AU and I’m now following you. I need more of this content please and thank you. I’m excited for reveal if Dabi past/family whenever that happens. I’m also very curious about Dabi relationship with his siblings in this.

part 0 / part 1 / part 2 / part 3

I went ahead and wrote what I headcanon Natsuo and Touya/Dabi’s relationship would be like in this AU. Will definitely get to Fuyumi and Shouto, too! Just too sleepy rn...

It’s long, so I put it under the cut <3

Natsuo: As the second eldest Todoroki sibling, Natsuo is able to witness first-hand the rise and fall of Todoroki Touya. Growing up, Natsuo had initially been jealous of Touya. His older brother commanded all of their parents’ attention: Enji and Touya would be gone weeks at time, no doubt enjoying all the father-son activities Natsuo isn’t privy to. In the rare instances that Touya is home, their mom would dote on him - any request, big or small, would be granted. Mochi for lunch? Sure. Video games past curfew? Why not. 

Whenever Touya is home, he almost always locks himself in his bedroom, snapping at Natsuo to go away when he asks if he wants to play. Natsuo hears Touya crying a lot, through the door. Crybaby Touya is the nickname Natsuo secretly gives his older brother. It must be a hard life, being the favorite. 

Sometimes, though, Touya will agree to play with him. Natsuo learns very early on that Touya hates to play-pretend, so he makes sure to steer clear of those kinds of games. Touya likes quieter activities, like coloring and drawing. They play soccer sometimes, but they have to be secret about it because their dad doesn’t like it when they roughhouse. 

As they grow older, the chasm between them yawns wider. Touya, who’d always been reserved in comparison to Natsuo’s boundless energy, becomes even more withdrawn, snapping and snarling at everyone and everything. He picks fights with Natsuo about petty things, scoffing and making snide remarks. It’s like walking on eggshells being in the same room as Touya. He still cries a lot, usually when he’s arguing and his frustrated tears spill over. Natsuo starts calling him Crybaby Touya to his face, usually leading to the two of them scuffling on the ground until Fuyumi cries to their mom to break their fight up.

By the time they’re in Jr. High, it’d be a stretch to call their relationship “close”. Touya doesn’t go to school like Natsuo does; he has a private tutor because he’s special. Touya used to ask Natsuo about school a lot, what it’s like. Natsuo had told him about class, how he’s made so many friends, how nice his teacher was, the things he’s learned - he tells Touya everything and anything because despite it all, a part of him still likes having his older brother pay attention to him. It’s the only time they can interact without it dissolving into a fight. Touya always seems a little sadder after their conversations though. 

It’s around the time that Touya is entering high school that their relationship slips  like sand between his fingers. It’s like a flip has been switched and Touya actively tries to become the worst version of himself. Fuyumi is naive and Natsuo shields her from the worst of it, but he knows their older brother is hurdling full-throttle on a self-destructive path. 

It’s always Natsuo who finds Touya splayed out in the hallway, reeking of cheap booze and stale sweat. He shakes and mutters nonsense when Natsuo hefts him up, dragging him to the bathroom or bedroom with an arm slung across his shoulders. Depending on the damage, Natsuo may wipe him down with a cool washcloth to clean the worst of it, helps Touya strip into cleaner clothes if he’s coherent enough. 

He sees the baggies, the pricked skin of his inner elbow and legs and wonders why Touya? Touya has everything: dad’s attention, the looks, the fame. It’s the life many can only dream of. Why is he so set in ruining it? Natsuo tells himself This is the last time I’ll help him. Let Mom or Fuyumi find him next time. But everytime he hears the telltale sound of uncoordinated limbs trying and failing to sneak down the hall, Natsuo is up and halfway to his own bedroom door, bracing himself for what he’ll find when he opens it. 

Then, the Todoroki Touya Scandal hits. 

Suddenly, the media focuses on the Todoroki family. Micro-analyzing every little thing they do or say. Natsuo isn’t prepared for the onslaught of sudden attention from strangers and peers alike, bombarding him with questions he doesn’t know the answer to. He doesn’t know why Touya did that. He doesn’t know if it was consensual. He doesn’t know anything. Natsuo’s relatively private life is abruptly put on display and Natsuo has no idea how Touya has survived this long under all the pressure. The things Touya has said and done for years are starting to make more sense. 

After that, it’s like Touya takes this as explicit permission to dig himself an even deeper hole. With a force that surprises even Natsuo, Touya throws himself headfirst into scandal after scandal. The tabloids begin running out of witty one-liners for their headlines - that’s how much Touya’s destructive behavior becomes the norm. It’s like he’s trying to prove something but Natsuo doesn’t understand it, can’t even begin to try. 

And just as the scandals reach their peak, Touya vanishes. Natsuo has no idea where he’s gone and doesn’t have the first clue of where to look. Touya has always been an intensely private person but Natsuo comes to the startling realization that he doesn’t really know his brother at all.

Fuyumi holds onto the hope that Touya’s out there, living some happy, secret life. Natsuo is more pessimistic, but keeps his opinions to himself. He’d blame Touya at first, for leaving. But with their father at home more now, focusing on Shouto and grooming him to become a better version of Touya, Natsuo knows the only one to blame for Touya’s demise is Todoroki Enji. 

So for about five years, there’s absolute radio silence. Then out of the blue, Touya calls him. A simple: “Sup, little brother.” And Natsuo promptly hangs up, thinking it’s a sick joke. Fuyumi calls him later, crying, and says that she and Touya talked. That he’s changed a lot and Natsuo should call him. 

Natsuo does not call him. He texts him instead, tells Touya how fucked up it was that he up and left with no warning, how hurt Fuyumi was, how scared and confused Shouto had become, and how heart-broken it left mom. Out of all the Todoroki siblings, Natsuo has the hardest time forgiving Touya. Mostly because he had thought he knew Touya the most, only to have the truth blindside him. 

The problem is this: Natsuo is stubborn and hard-headed, just like their old man. When Touya reaches out, Natsuo is quick to shut it down, not trusting that Touya won’t disappear again. He doesn’t think he can forgive Touya so easily like Fuyumi, or Shouto who doesn’t really remember Touya much at all. 

The second problem is this: Touya wants to mend his relationship with his siblings so much that the task seems almost insurmountable. When Natsuo pushes him away, Touya (well, Dabi now), accepts it, doesn’t think he’s worth forgiving anyway. It’s actually Hawks who points out that it’s because Dabi loves and cares so much that he can’t bring himself to bridge that gap, to push harder for the result he wants. 

It takes a long time for them to build a relationship again, but once they overcome the hurdle of actually talking, they start to repair their relationship as brothers.  Natsuo is probably the most skeptical when he hears that Dabi-Touya is dating Hawks, of all people. For a guy who hated the acting industry so much to leave it behind, it’s ironic that he’s dating one of the most well-known A-Listers right now. But, when he meets Hawks, it’s hard not to like the guy. The guy’s the polar opposite of Dabi which is hilarious. Hawks is chatty and genuinely kind; he really wins brownie points with Natsuo when he offers to give Shouto a ride to & from school when Fuyumi can’t. 

It’s through Hawks that Natsuo sees Dabi has become truly comfortable with who he is, and can finally forgive Touya for leaving them all those years ago.

#phew #i went overboard i think #but im super excited to flesh out fuyumi and shouto's relationship with dabi too <3 #thank u for sending me this ask :') #tattoo/actor au #dabihawks #bnha #dabi #hawks #hotwings #touya todoroki #bnha headcanons #so-many-sad-duck

[e-grill]

Korean BBQ - My Experience

What is Korean BBQ?

Korean barbeque is taking the u . S . A . With the aid of typhoon—most important cities boast at the least one Korean barbecue restaurant, and components like kimchi (kim-chee) and gochujang (move-chew-jang) are making their manner onto mainstream restaurant menus. While this fashion of cooking and ingesting is nothing new, it’s eventually turning into famous in North America.So, what's it? 

It’s a unique revel in wherein cooking and ingesting take center degree. At Korean BBQ restaurants, everyone gathers around a grill inside the center of the table. The server brings plates of uncooked meat and lots of aspect dishes—known as banchan (bon-chon)—then absolutely everyone can start cooking and consuming their own food.

 It’s excellent as it’s all approximately getting your buddies and own family around the table to cook dinner and devour collectively. Plus, each person gets to be a part of the amusing—no person is caught in the kitchen doing all of the paintings.

How to Make Korean BBQ At Home

A few easy recipes, beneficial products, and specific elements make it clean to create a restaurant-first-class enjoy right in your own home. Here’s how to do it:

The Grill

A conventional Korean barbecue eating place has a table with a charcoal grill in the middle—plus huge exhaust fans above the tables. An electric Korean BBQ grill for your house lets you easily create the enjoy around your table.The grate on our Indoor Outdoor Portable Grill covers the electric coil, so it reduces the quantity of smoke—it’s the right manner to installation your very own Korean barbecue! To make sure you've got the first-class revel in viable, make certain to hold the grate clean, use most effective thawed meat, and to grill in a well-ventilated region.

The Meat

The meat is the star of the display, on the grounds that that’s what’s being barbecued. There are lots of options—red meat, chicken, and red meat—and that they’re all scrumptious, however bulgogi is mainly famous. It’s a marinated sirloin that’s reduce into thin, chew-sized pieces with a couple of Professional Shears. We like to apply a Korean Barbecue Rub on sirloin: it gives the meat a smoky, barely spicy taste that’s definitely delicious.The exact news is that the suitable cuts of meat—like skirt steak and sirloin—tend to be the least steeply-priced, they’re full of taste, and considering that they’re so skinny, they grill speedy. You’ll never must fear about whether or not the beef is uncommon, nicely done, or anything in among, as it’s usually going to be gentle and clean to consume.

The Side Dishes

When you’re doing Korean barbeque at home, you could make or buy as a whole lot as you like—all of it depends to your choices. You can consume the banchan (side dishes) by way of themselves, mix them into rice, or use them as fillings in lettuce wraps—there’s no wrong manner to do it! The key's to stability your facet dishes—have a few sweet, salty, sour, and savory options, in addition to exclusive textures.Kimchi is one side that no Korean barbeque can be without. It’s fermented cabbage (or other veggies) with plenty of spices and garlic that has a tangy, salty, and slightly sweet flavor. 

You don’t must make your personal—you can locate it within the produce segment of most grocery stores. Give it a attempt—we understand you’ll like it!Another should-have is gochujang—a spicy chili sauce that’s a staple in Korean cooking. 

You use it just like hot sauce, and in recent times, it’s simply as clean to discover.We additionally want to make a few homemade facet dishes like Quick Pickled Radishes, Korean Kale Salad, Korean Potato Salad, and Korean Scallion Pancakes. They’re all clean to make, and they taste exceptional by way of themselves or as toppings.

Best Korean Grill – Buyer’s Guide

When you're choosing a indoor korean BBQ grill then you might face a lot of problems selecting the perfect one for your home as they're perfect in relation to consuming healthy and brief meals.

So, here is the consumer’s manual in your convenience so, that you may pick without problems in keeping with your choice.

Sizes

When we communicate about sizes you received’t get that a lot versatility as these styles of merchandise are to be had in trendy sizes. Grill size is calculated in line with the grilling plate and in maximum Grills which include this Korean Grill you will get 60 to 200 rectangular inches of grilling plate, which in step with me is enough and you could cook meals without problems for a family of 4.

What when you have a larger family then there are  answers for you. The first one is, you may cook the food in more than one batches or flip by way of turn that might additionally offer you with the versatility in cooking an expansion of food. In addition, some other choice is that you can purchase a 2nd Grill for cooking the meals in a single batch due to the fact most of the circle of relatives choose to have a meal in a single go subsequently this may be the pleasant option for you when you have this kind of circle of relatives. By doing that, you won’t get that much versatility in the sizes on Grills.

Power of a Grill

Now coming to the strength utilization of a grill this can vary from one Grill to every other as they all require less or extra power depending on the scale of the Grill. With that being stated, the usual strength usage of a Grill variety from 1500 to 1800 watts. But if extra power provided it'll cook dinner food greater speedy and correctly. Other than that, If you are shopping for a small grill that consumes low power this is also ideal as you can provide that grill with excessive energy and make meals in badges. Therefore, it'll be cooked extra quick in place of shopping for a grill that consumes extra strength but affords less performance.

As we've reviewed before, the strength utilization and deliver can vary from one grill to some other, so the final verdict about strength utilization is you should purchase in keeping with your want. Eventually, you could consider how tons strength you could supply in one cross.

Heat Control Options

This is a critical option however the disadvantage of this option is it is not to be had in a few Korean Grills. On top of that, these kinds of Korean Grills operate on a hard and fast temperature setting that takes place to be 450 Fahrenheit or 232-degree Celcius. If you need to prepare dinner a meal that requires low warmth, you can’t do this in preset temperature grills. Thus, every so often it's far less beneficial. So, for my part, the fine and best alternative for you is to get a grill that offers you with a temperature controlling dial. Then, you can have your desired meal very quickly.

Furthermore, each grill has a one of a kind setup and ranges of controlling warmness temperature, consequently now it is as much as you to buy such a grill consistent with your choice. Lastly, the very last verdict about such flexible grills is that Korean BBQ grills will provide you with feasibility to control your food temperature and have your favored meal at the cross.

Automatic Shut-down Switch

There is a prevention approach in such styles of Grills. Now: you is probably questioning that prevention approach in what feel? Well, to answer that these types of Grills are installed with automatic close-down switches so they might prevent your meals from over-cooking. Personally, nobody likes an overcooked meal as they provide you with a disrupted and unbalanced flavor. For instance, if you have a sensitive stomach then that food also can disrupt that.

Moreover, when you may cook dinner meals and neglect them, you then don’t ought to fear. The computerized shut-down option will turn-off the grill automatically whilst the grill remains on. By doing so, it'll prevent your meals from over-cooking and preserves the taste of your meal. As a end result, this is the correct characteristic furnished by such an inexpensive product.

Indication Light

A Koran bbq grill is ready with numerous capabilities that can be very beneficial together with this on and stale mild indicator that lets in you to decide whether the grill is on or off. Hence, it's going to shop your electric power and reducing your invoice. In addition, if you accidentally hold the grill on after cooking, then you definitely might recognize which you have kept the grill turned on through the mild blinking with the switch. So, I might advise you purchase a grill that is provided with this set of functions.

Not handiest that, however there's additionally some other first-rate feature located in this kind of product. An auto heating indicator permits you to determine whether or not your preferred food has reached the max heating degree.  Further, this selection will warn you, so that you can realize the precise temperature on which meals is being cooked. Therefore, it makes this an appropriate and perfect characteristic for numerous families.

#korean bbq grill koreangrill indoorgrill

[roguesurvivor]

Narcissists By Rebecca Fischbein

When Lisa* met Adam* in graduate school, she thought she’d hit the dating jackpot. “He was very wealthy, very charismatic, and at first he was very charming,” she says. “He was constantly showering me with gifts, fancy dinners, and romanic nights out. He was playing by this 1950s courtship rulebook.” But over time, Lisa says, Adam became condescending, controlling, and cruel. He criticized her working-class background and tried to mold her in his image. He learned her insecurities and trigger points and used them against her. He made her write him an apology letter every time they had an argument. Ultimately, he became physically and sexually abusive. It took Lisa years to escape him.

“I was in my mid-20s, a hopeless romantic, painfully insecure,” she says. “Here was a guy who was charming and handsome and going to help me fit in. I was so eager to please.”

Though Adam has not been clinically diagnosed, to Lisa’s knowledge, he exhibits classic characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which the Mayo Clinic defines as “a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others.” What we tend to think of as “narcissism”—vanity and extra-heavy doses of self-confidence—is a spectrum, and people can tip more heavily toward one end or the other. But someone with NPD is more than just self-interested and self-obsessed.

“It’s a lifelong pattern that a child started in childhood to cope with a certain family environment,” Elinor Greenberg, PhD., the author of Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration and Safety, says. “In adulthood, they overvalue achievement, they do not understand love, they have low emotional empathy.”

Julie L. Hall, a journalist and the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free, characterizes narcissists as individuals who, to repress feelings of shame and inadequacy in childhood, take on an exterior persona designed to insulate themselves from criticism. “They miss out on numerous developmental milestones,” she says. “They do not form a secure sense of identity and self-esteem. They do not learn good emotional regulation, they do not learn to self-reflect, they do not learn emotional empathy. They do not develop a complex, mature sense of their own universe or the emotional lives of others.”

People with NPD are not able to see other people, which means they do not make for good romantic partners. Many can become abusive, emotionally or otherwise. If you’ve inadvertently entered into a relationship with a narcissist, it can be hard to figure out what’s going on at first. Here are some signs to help you out.

They put you on a pedestal (at first)

Narcissists see everything in black and white, including people. People are either “good,” which means they’re idealized, or they’re “bad,” which to a narcissist essentially means they’re garbage. If a narcissist is pursuing you as a romantic partner, that means you’re in the “good” category, and you’ll likely find that they shower you with compliments and charm to win you over. They’ll make you feel wonderful, special, and, ironically, seen right off the bat.

“Narcissists become infatuated. They tend to idealize a potential partner or love interest,” Hall says. “It can seem like you’ve met your soulmate, like, ‘Wow, I connect so much with this person.”

Narcissists may also try to alter themselves in an effort to mirror your personality. “They may suddenly share the same interests as you, and agree with you and your core values,” Hall says. “These are not necessarily things the narcissist is or believes, but they’re trying on your identity, and showing you what they think you want to see.”

But once you get deeper into the relationship, a switch gets flipped. “In the beginning, you’re getting all the wonderful things from them and they don’t even notice your flaws,” Greenberg says. “As you come closer, and they’re not just in chase mode, suddenly they’re going to see all these things about you they didn’t see before, that bleed through their image of you as perfect and special.”

Many of us idealize our partners in the beginning but recognize that everyone has flaws, and eventually the idealization gets swapped out for love and trust. But with a narcissist, there’s no substitute. “You flip into ‘all bad,’” Greenberg says. “That’s when they start their construction project.”

They try to “fix” you

Greenberg describes narcissists in search of a romantic partner as “looking for piece of cheese with no holes.” And since everybody has holes, that mission is doomed from the start. Once the narcissist sees those holes—which can be as minor as, say, you unloading the dishwasher in a way they don’t like, or mispronouncing “bagel,”—they can either “fix” you or dump you.

“You’re like a building under construction to them,” Greenberg says. “They feel like the Prince in Cinderella.”

Lisa experienced this with Adam. “He knew my background and upbringing and gave me tips on how to hide it,” she says. “One time, I mentioned I learned piano as a kid and that I wished I could go back and learn it. He said he would get me piano lessons for my birthday, because, ‘I think it would look better for you if you were a classically trained musician.’”

She adds, “It was like The Princess Diaries, where I was going to be this middle-class, out-of-place kid, and he was going to build me into this perfect little partner. I was this blank slate that he was just going to make his masterpiece.”

They have no boundaries and a sense of entitlement

One of the defining characteristics of any personality disorder is a lack of boundaries, emotional or otherwise. People with NPD are no exception.

“They often feel entitled to violate boundaries most of us accept and abide by,” Hall says. “Sharing intimate details about other people you don’t know about, wanting to get more committed really quickly, promising things or wanting promises from you like commitment, marriage, having kids together right away. Things that are really premature before you’ve had a chance to get there.”

Hall says narcissists just feel entitled in general. They can’t abide by the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. “A narcissist walks around with very unreasonable expectations,” Hall says. “They feel entitled to get things other people shouldn’t get.”

Narcissists can have big “May I speak to the manager?” energy. They might mock or criticize other people behind their backs. They may be rude to or yell at servers. And they walk around believing and/or telling people they’re better than everyone else.

Lisa says that Adam, for instance, would wear a necklace with a formula engraved on a tag. He claimed he invented it, and that it was the “formula for the universe.”

“He said, ‘I solved the universe. This solves everything. And when someone questions my power, I just remember I’m more powerful than them,’” Lisa says.

They don’t hold back in a fight

It’s healthy for couples to argue sometimes. But when narcissists get into spats with their partners, their lack of empathy can lead to a nasty fight.

Greenberg says narcissists often do not have “object constancy,” which is the ability to maintain positive feelings for someone even in times of conflict. “Object constancy is what keeps people from abusing their mates,” she says. “People with object constancy can remember that they love you even when they’re mad at you.”

But narcissists can’t always do that. “If you’re in a fight with someone with no emotional empathy, who can’t remember they love you, they will hit below the belt,” Greenberg says, “All bets are off. They can say vile things to you.”

Narcissists love to argue—winning an argument is another way for them to prove that they’re better than other people—and they know how to push your buttons. They also tend have extreme emotional reactions. So if your partner is frequently hurtful, even over minor infractions, that’s a red big flag. And what comes after a fight can be a red flag, too:

They never apologize

Narcissists are incapable of self-reflection, which means that they rarely recognize when they’re in the wrong. So if your partner tends to sling throat-cutting insults at you during a fight and doesn’t ever meaningfully apologize for it, well, you might want to reassess the relationship.

“Being able to see that people have good and bad qualities, able to see that in themselves and other people, that’s something an NPD person can’t do,” Hall says. “They’re unable to look at things from an emotional perspective beyond themselves.”

If they do apologize, it can be more of an insult in of itself. “Sometimes narcissists throw out faux apologies with the narrative that you’re really too sensitive,” Hall says. “They’re unable to see things from your point of view, or validate your feelings as being legitimate.”

They turn their exes into villains

Here is a big one: If your partner or prospective partner has a narrative in which everyone they ever dated was “terrible,” “horrible,” and solely responsible for the destruction of the relationship, that’s a massive red flag. Sometimes someone does date a couple of assholes, but generally most people are able to reflect upon the ways in which both parties contributed to a relationship’s demise. Narcissists can’t accept criticism, can’t see the middle ground, and can’t self-reflect, which means they’re unable to recognize their part in a breakup. To protect their fragile egos, they are “good,” which means the ex must be “bad.”

“They often have a really negative assessment of previous relationships,” Hall says. “They pathologize and villainize their exes. The other person is a ‘jerk,’ an ‘asshole,’ a ‘disappointment.’” Basically, they don’t learn from relationships, and they’re constantly externalizing anything negative.

They gaslight you

With no boundaries, empathy, or checked egos, narcissists delight in manipulating people. It’s one of the ways they can feel superior than others, and it’s another method of proving to themselves that the rules don’t apply. It’s hard to tell if someone is gaslighting you—the very nature of gaslighting, i.e. psychological manipulation to make someone doubt their own feelings and lived experience, is set up to slowly chip away at your conviction so you think you’re the problem. But if you start to sense that your partner is manipulating you, get the hell out.

Lisa says Adam would frequently gaslight her. “We would be out at a bar or restaurant or something, and I would see him put his hand on the small of a woman’s back, and touch her ass or something,” she says. “In the car ride home, I would say something and he would freak the fuck out.”

He would deny it, they would argue, and in the end, Adam would manage to convince her that she was in the wrong. “The rule was that every time we got into an argument, I would have to write him a letter giving him an outline of how the argument began, who said what, and that I was sorry,” Lisa says. “At the end [of the letter], I’d be like, ‘You’re right, I didn’t see that, I must have been drunk.”

Narcissists do not truly understand or care about your emotional experience, your pain, and your personhood; moreover, they always have to be Right, and if you oppose them or call them out on their shit, that means you’re Wrong. That means they can pretty much do whatever they want without remorse, and they may do what it takes to convince you that their misdeeds are your fault.

If you’re dating someone who exhibits a number of these signs, consider confiding in someone you trust—friends, family, a therapist—and cutting ties. Narcissists can sometimes mitigate their worst impulses through therapy, but people who lack empathy have to do a lot of work to gain it, and they inflict psychological and emotional damage upon others in the meantime. You deserve better.

#really liked this artcle

[9uk]

Let Me Stay Close To You : prologue

⌲ summary : you were finally free from the worst nightmare of your life in high school. the doors of college welcomed you with open arms, you were set on living your best life in here, away from the toxicity back at home. that shimmer of hope in restoring your life, was somehow effortlessly crushed by a tap on your shoulder. “Hey Y/N, why don’t you say we catch up for a moment?”

⌲ pairing : bully!jungkook x reader

⌲ word count : 3.7k

⌲ genre: a whole lot of angst, angry jungkook!!1!!11!!!

⌲ warnings : mentions of abuse and violent acts (blood and cuts)

⌲ a/n : hehe look foward to part 1, where things will start to transpire between jk & oc :> and namjoon would appear!

prologue > part one

People always found you an easy prey to bully. And that was because you were nice. Too nice. Well at least for their liking.

When they took your notes or stationaries without asking, you’d only smile. When they flip your lunch in the bin or purposely stain your skirt, you’d just skip your meal and quickly wash up. You wouldn’t even rat out at them or cry in the corner for their bullying acts. One of the ‘they’, included the handsome popular, Jeon Jungkook. He was the guy who was good at all sports, studies average, had a line of girls queuing for him, had his usual awesome circle of friends and he was flooded with money, being the youngest heir of the JEON Entertainment.

Life seemed to be going pretty well for him. 

He was nice, to those that benefited him, to his friends, to pretty girls and so on. He exceptionally loved to pick on you, you don’t know why, but he just does, even though you’re a little unreactive to his attacks. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that your family was of no merit status, you enrolled into this elite high school purely from results of distinction and flying colours—making you an easy target. It was like you were his favourite victim. How you beared with all of his petty actions made you almost seem like a masochist. And it all started from the day you accidentally tripped him, (or more like he did not watch where he was going) he ended up falling to the ground with his lunch smashed on his face and the whole school witnessed the tragic event, trying their best to not burst out laughing at the embarassing moment for the notorious and powerful student. As a person of high popularity, it obviously tarnished his reputation ever since he started his annoying insults and bullying even though you had apologised profusely.

“Y/N, watch out!” You would turn to the direction of the sound, only to feel sharp pain at your cheeks, a rubber band shot right at you. And you hear Jungkook and other students laughing.

You would wince a little, as your skin starts to sting hard and Jungkook’s laughter falls slightly as he realised you were hurting. He only bullied you to how much you can take, and he’s never crossed the line. But the line is subjective. 

Jungkook would fiddle with your hair with his pencil from behind in geography class, copy your homework and at times he would snatch the cup of berry yoghurt drink you would bring everyday to school for your lunch and drink it all at one go, leaving only a soft thanks. 

Many instances like this.

But you did not mind, you paid no attention to his mischievous acts to not let him get what he wanted, which was what all bullies wanted—their victims to be affected by them. 

You gradually became someone Jungkook frequently vented his frustrations on. Seeing how submissive and forgiving you were to what he did to you, made his blood boil at times. 

“Hey, finish this essay for me.” Jungkook would slam the incomplete homework onto your table and place his hands in his pockets. He searches your face for any displease but your visage of kindness never falters. You only agree without hesitation. “Okay.”

The word flicked a switch in his nerves. You were like a robot, turning blind to his existence and simply following his orders. Your willingness to comply to every single thing he says is ticking him off, irritating him at its maximum. 

“Okay? Is that the only word you fucking know?!” The bomb in him finally explodes and he slaps the back of your head. “Answer me.” Jungkook tugs at your ponytail and demands an immediate answer.

 “No, but what do you want?” It was like, you finally spoken up. And it elicited a smirk from his cunning face. 

“What do I want?” He cocks a brow playfully.“ I want-” 

“Whatever my reply is, you’ll hit me, anyways.” You cut him off and look down, far too tired to deal with his bullshit. You found no point in rebutting to his words or actions, the outcome would still be similar in a way or two. You were already prepared for a slap to arrive on your exceptionally daring cheeks. Or maybe even a punch in the face.

 Jungkook tongued his cheeks at your witty reply, and for not letting him finish. He feels a scorching wrath swirling in the pit of his stomach and sends you a look that could burn a hole right through walls, “I’d suggest you leave before your stupid face catches my fist.” To which you stood up and made your way out of the classroom, away from Jungkook. You could sense when he was really mad, and you would know best when to leave him alone. 

Jungkook sweeps the stationaries and papers off your desk in rage and they fall, clamouring to the floor. He just couldn’t understand how you’d always seemed to have the upper hand even though he was the one clearly possessing the dominance between the both of you. He had no form of control over anything in his life—his money didn’t come from his bank, his grades were a total flop, his every movement was restricted and watched over by his parents and the media— his life was just so out of place. And meanwhile you? You had just escalated his need of having you squirming under the very tips of his fingers. Jungkook didn’t know why he was feeling this way—it was sickening.

 Why were you so obedient to his ridiculous commands? It didn’t seem like you were afraid of him at all, either. You were really a one of a kind in his life—he had never met anyone like you at all.

When he interacted with you, he could truly be himself without holding back or resisting the urge to yell threats or throw violent fits. It was perhaps because of the fact that these behaviours were not condoned at home or in the eagle eye of the public, he unleashes the true nature in him onto you—someone that he didn’t need to impress—and in an exceptionally ruthless way.

For you it was a rather usual day at the school of bullies (or rather, bully) and being the introvert you were, you silently listened to music with your head in your folded arms. Peace was one of your major goals in the process of getting through this hellhole. And music brought you happiness, blocking away all the hushed murmurs and gossips, the loud mixture of squeals and ramblings of rambunctious cliques. You weren’t so much of a fan in raising the roof. While the rest went for recess, you stayed in class for a moment of silence. Or so you thought. 

Jungkook digs his pockets frantically. “Ah, my phone. I left it in class. Follow me to get it would you?” Jungkook nudges Yugyeom. It elicited a roll of the yes of his friend, but Yugyeom still accompanies him like the good mate he was. “Fine.”

You peeked and noticed the classroom door had opened. Followed by voices. You would have ignored them if they were talking amongst themselves but you were the main subject of their blabbering. But also, it’s not like you really cared either way.

“Wow, isn’t that like the lamest girl in our level?” Yugyeom tucks his hands in his pockets and nods at your direction, casually picking on you.

You keep your head in between your arms, refusing to look up but listen as you discreetly lower the volume of the your phone. The least you could afford to do was to not be such an oblivious idiot to their words.

Jungkook takes a quick look at you, wonders why you stick out like a sore thumb practically everywhere for a second, then heads to his bag to collect his phone.

“Oh look, she even brings a Nintendo DS to school. How cute.” Yugyeom swipes it carelessly off your table, inspecting the game console. Your head flew up to your pink gaming device being touched by the fingers of a stranger, and not purely just any stranger—but Kim Yugyeom. You tried to snatch it back but Yugyeom was faster than you in every way, swinging it away from your reach. 

“Give it back you asshole!” You shouted, tone clearly displaying your annoyance. The sound of your voice immediately grabs Jungkook’s attention away from his bag, his head whipping to your direction at the volume of your voice, never heard before. 

You must be really pissed in order to have yelled like that.

A devious smirk crawls onto his features instantly.

The usual you would have not cared, letting them push your buttons but you would never go into a outburst. However, and very unfortunately, the Nintendo console was a present from your late bestfriend, the only thing you could hold onto in his remembrance. The thoughts of the sweet boy you grew up so close to never fails to have your eyes start stinging with tears but you hold them back. As always. 

Yugyeom gives a sacarstically impressed pout at your outrage, too calm even after you retorted fiercely back at him. “Woah, she’s feisty.” Yugyeom calmly comments—almost scaringly too calm.

The calm before the storm.

“Kook-ah, let’s have some fun before we go for lunch, shall we?”

Though on the inside, discontentment pricks at his gut. No one shouts at him, Kim Yugyeom, son of the head boss of Kim Industries, raised with a sliver spoon in his mouth, almost everyone bend their heads upon his presence—let alone the loser who lacked both money and power. He still has the precious console in his possession, and you were beyond fury when he is unresponsive to your complains. “Give,” You clench your teeth. 

“It,” You ball your hands into tight fists.

 “BACK!” 

Before you know it, before he knows it, before everybody knows it, the sharp edges of your knuckles are flying across Kim Yugyeom’s face with a harsh and unforgiving strength. He flies in the direction of your hit and knocks into some of the classroom desks, toppling over and onto the ground. You had just punched Kim Yugyeom. You sighed in burnt out anger, regretting your impulsive decision to punch a rich asshole in the face—for your ass was about to get sued by the second largest company in town and all of your efforts in swallowing your pride and succumbing to all of their vicious acts had gone down the drain. Solely in a swing of your arm. Because you weren’t having it that day. And so was the person witnessing this from the corner of the classroom.

 Despite the refreshing reaction from you, Jungkook is enraged from the sight of his bruised friend. He grabs your wrist and slams you back onto the lockers at the back violently till they ruttle. You wonder why the bad boys in high school movies did this to their crushes. First of all, it actually really hurts. Second of all, you were no crush to Jungkook, and in the very sad reality, his punching bag. The loud clang of the metal locker doors did not make you flinch one bit as you were too, overwhelmed with anger. He saw no fear. You were so lost in your own damn little world, like always.

 The locking of your gazes were so intense and filled with rage, Jungkook was a little shocked at the way you were acting. He’s never seen you this riled up before. Slowly, you calmed down and you feel emptiness surge throughout your whole body as the rage dissipates. Yugyeom was still on the ground, checking his elbows and wincing upon the tragic fall, letting his bestfriend finish the job.

“The nerve of you?” It comes out softer than he expects, perhaps because of the effect of your quick change in entire demeanour on him. He grips your wrist even tighter and kicks you in the shin.

“Do you know that you’re such an eyesore?”

Jungkook shoves at your shoulder hard, you almost feel like it dislocated.

“Do you know that your fucking ignorance makes you intolerable?” His eyes grew darker with every crude remark spat onto you, the strength exerted in his strikes and the vein popping out at his neck clearly expressing the amount resentment he has for your existence.

 You are able sense that he meant every word, each sentence hitting you to rock bottom. 

You were back to the normal Y/N, not showing any sort of emotions, keeping them locked up in a cage, in a place far away from your heart. 

He narrows his eyes at you. Jungkook was getting annoyed, at how his actions and words didn’t even make you have the slightest tremble.

Despite his threatening form, you remained your calm composure and simply tweaked a smile.

“I do.” 

What comes after those retaliating words was a sharp stinging slap on the face. The skin-on-skin contact between his hand and your face enchoed through the classroom, the slap was so brutal it sent your cheek burning and his hand print stained red on the skin. Tears start to well up in your eyes, not because of emotions but the physical pain and you held them back. Like always. 

You’ve been through worse, get a hold of your damn tears.

You would tell yourself.

“Stop living,” Jungkook shows no remorse on his face and proceeds to grab your hair so tightly your scalp might rip apart.

“In,” He smashes your head to the side and something cut your forehead—the broken lock that had a piece of metal protruding. Jungkook is completely blinded by the rage and scars surging throughout his body, he doesn’t notice this and he keeps throwing you against the lockers.

“Your,” 

Cut.

“Own.” 

Cut.

“Fucking world!” By this time, thick blood starts drooling from the wound down to your cheeks.

“Yah yah yah, that’s enough.” Yugyeom managed to get up and reaches out to restrain his friend in time. But he wasn’t doing it for the sake of you, he was stopping his bestfriend from landing in jail for murder, or something of the sort.

Jungkook scoffs and you slide down to the ground in an exhausted defeat. Your frontal lobe was probably out in open air now, with the skin of your forehead having teared apart.

The game device is on the ground, probably broken from the rampage earlier on.

Everything feels too numb, and cuts and bruises were nothing.

“Yah, wasn’t that a bit too much?” Yugyeom looks at Jungkook while wincing at the bruise on the corner of his lip as he recalls your bloody head.

Jungkook keeps his eyes to the front, “You said you wanted to have fun. And you just got punched..real bad. By a girl.” Jungkook chuckles to lighten the mood. Yugyeom rolls his eyes. “I’ll pay her back for it someday..” He feels a dull strike upon his ego.

 “But I guess that lame thing really meant something to her so I probably deserved it.” Jungkook looks at his friend in suspicion. 

Since when did he become this understanding?

“Whatever. I already did the favour for you.”

Yugyeom’s brows are knitted together hard, in what seemed like confusion and worry, his eyes searching the ground for answers. He scratches the back of his neck in rapidly in frustration, as he analyses the situation earlier on.

“But it isn’t of you to be that violent. She fucking bled!”

 Jungkook halts his steps.

“What?” 

“Dude, she was bleeding like mad! We never got to the extent of picking on her to.. to that state!” His expression falls at the fresh memory of the harsh blow on your head. 

“Were you too caught up with your thoughts or something?” 

“I...Uh, didn’t know.” Jungkook furrows his eyebrows. A spark of guilt shocks him into realisation, followed by strong currents of shame washing over his whole body. For the first time, he feels apologetic, the need to check on the condition of your injury surges through him and his legs are moving on their own accord back to the classroom of that fatal accident. When he arrives to said destination, your slouched form against the lockers is long gone, the classroom had no one except a thick layer of tension lingering in the air from the incident earlier on. Instinctively, he dashes to the school’s sick bay. 

Jungkook tells himself that he is this concerned about you because he is the culprit of the sharp slice on your temple, and nothing else. He still hates you deep to the core and had already planned out a series of insults he could carry on to spit on you once you would return to school. Make fun of the ugly bandage you were going to have wrapped around your head, maybe. As he views you through the rectangular glass panel fixed on the bay’s door, he catches you smiling assuringly at the anxious nurse tending to your injury. 

It was the first time he saw you smile. 

His muscles unknowingly relaxes at the sight.

“I’m fine, it’s nothing.” 

He can make out the words you mouthed and that rip on your head with dried up blood, for sure did not seem fine at all. 

He was a monster. He was a monster to you, that is.

“I just fell.” 

There’s a pang of remorse in his conscience-stricken heart. 

The school nurse’s eyes widened in disbelief. Just for a brief moment, he contemplates to stop bullying your weak and pathetic form. There should be plenty other people out there to release his anger onto… he wasn’t even sure. You were the nicest and most cooperative victim so far in his journey of putting people down to feed his ego and have some sort of control over at least something in his life. And that is also why he doesn’t ever stop provoking you. Your perfect ignorance ignites his passion in tormenting you, for you weren’t an easy prey to intimidate, yet at the same time you effortlessly comply to his outrageous demands—he found it enticing.

The nurse wipes her forehead with the back of her hand dramatically, in some sort of despair to figure out how the hell was she going to fix you up with an injury this serious. Stitches was the final resort and it was going to be a huge hassle for the both of you, she explained. You simply chuckled at her over worrying and flustered form for you as she fondles hastily around the trays of medication in panic.

 It was certainly entertaining to see someone worrying this much about you. 

Jungkook watches your teeth slowly show and what seemed like a shy giggle falling from your lips. 

It was the first time he saw you laugh.

Light starts to fill into his dark eyes and his heart does that thing again.The thing it does when he sees his first love in 3rd grade. The feeling is long forgotten and you were the cause of it gradually lighting up again. He has no idea when he started feeling these tingling sparks in his heart whenever he sees you, but he knew love was nothing but trouble. Jungkook hates to admit it, but he cares for you more than he actually shows it. And he begins to loathe himself for doing all these stupid things to you. 

Indeed he wasn’t in his right mind. That morning his eggs were burnt, he broke his glass of milk, he wore mismatched socks, his mom nagged at him more than usual, his hair didn’t stay the way he styled it—rough morning for a boy who’d never been through hardships.

That’s why he was further more tilted when he realised he left his phone in class, only to come across you, who punched his bestfriend across the face. And Jungkook’s revenge got a little out of hand for his liking when he snapped back to his senses, he felt genuinely sorry for hurting you this time. That badly. He usually just did stupid tricks to you or yell insults at you—and today he made you bleed. 

Maybe it was time he put a stop to this.

“Look shithead, I’m sorry for creating that ugly-looking cut on your head the other day. But hey, I’m just a tiny bit sorry okay? You still belong in the trashcan.” Jungkook repeats the apology differently for the twenty-fourth time, staring at the reflection of his own cocky face. He lets out a huff of frustration. He didn’t understand why he was practicing for a stupid apology. 

Perhaps it was because it’s you.

 Someone he’d never thought he would be saying sorry to. 

Why was it so difficult? “Fuck it,” He muttered under his breath and ran his fingers through his hair, stomping out of the bathroom. 

The loud ringings of the bell throughout the school signalled the start of hell. It was a typical Monday half the school dreaded, the other half being overly-enthusiastic nerds who worked their asses off. One of aforementioned group of people being you. You, whom was constantly buried in cheesy romance novels, to which half of them were filled with his nasty scribbles and doodles, and whom he still felt like he owed a sincere ‘I’m sorry’ to. 

He hops off the black Mercedes Benz and takes his time strolling into the school building, knowing you always arrived on the dot— to probably not want to spend any more time than neccessary in this shitty system (and with him).

As he rehearses his lines once more, Jungkook trudges into the classroom with confidence. A minute late, to be specific, a strategy of making sure you were in there already.

The words memorised painstakingly in his head seem to slowly fade into a sheet of blank, and his brows knit in confusion automatically—at your empty seat.

“I’m sorry.”

But you weren’t there anymore.

#jungkook #bts #jungkook angst #jungkook scenarios #bts scenarios #jungkook fluff #jungkook smut #bts angst #bts smut #jeon jungkook #bangtan #bangtan scenarios #jungkook fanfic #bts fanfic #bully!au

[chibivesicle]

Ogata’s behaviour is contradictory during the course of the hunt for the gold.  Why?

In light of the recent events in the Karafuto arc, we readers witnessed the full meltdown of Ogata on the ice flow from chapters 185-188.  One of the first things that comes to many people’s minds was “Why did Ogata give up so easily? Kiro is fighting to his very last breath and Ogata just rolled over.”.

These are my thoughts on why Ogata oscillates between caring about himself and behaving recklessly.

Warning, this is not my usual style for this meta post.  Sometimes I get a bit personal to explain things.

So what is a good way to approach Ogata’s varied behaviour’s throughout the series?  I decided to make a several categories and then list various instances when he behaved in certain ways.  Please keep in mind that this is not meant to be a comprehensive list.  I’m sure I could add more but these are really all of the major points that stand out to me.

Below are the following three categories:

There are times were he accepts his fate that he could die:

1.) When Sugimoto breaks his arm and has him pinned down. 

2.) When he gets shot in the arm in Barato and falls off the fire/bell tower.

3.) When he gets pinned down and beaten by the unknown 27th division solider in Edogai’s house.

4.) When he eggs Asirpa on to shoot him with the arrow.

These are times when he behaves in a risky fashion indicating that he has little concern for his life:

1.) Standing up when he reveals his position to Tanigaki knowing it is a trap.

2.) Setting the herring mansion on fire to find the hidden skin.

3.) The sniper battle with Vasily where he uses himself as bait.

These are times where he behaves in a cautious way or fights to live:

1.) Poking Sugimoto in the eyes to escape being pinned down and running away with the broken arm after Asirpa saves him.

2.) Shoot out with Tsurumi and the 27th after Tanigaki shot him.

3.) Fight with Tsukishima in Edogai’s.

4.) Escaping the coal mine with the miners in Yuubari.

5.) Figuring out the fake Ainu in the Silent Kotan arc.

6.) Pretty much anytime he goes hunting for the greater group. 

7.) Shooting the deer on the mountain pass, saving the entire group from hypothermia.

8.) Bringing his rifle into the bath area of the onsen.

If we look at all of these different events Ogata switches back and forth between fighting for his survival in life threatening situations, to acting recklessly, to just accepting his fate that he is about to be killed.  So why would Ogata be swinging between these different extremes in regards to his actions in life threatening situations?

I think it is safe to say that based on Ogata’s life experiences is a very hurt and damaged individual who has pushed his emotions and feelings aside so that he could cope during his childhood.  He then brought these habits into adulthood and has never faced them or would think about learning how to heal from all of this psychological trauma.  Ogata has a very low opinion of himself, he sees himself as an individual missing something and that he likely wonders why he exists when he was born into a crappy family situation.  He likely thinks, “Why was I born into a place where I was not wanted?”.  He’s been rejected by his mother as she hopes his father will return for her, not for them.  He is rejected by his father who thinks he was disgusted by his mother and that’s the only time that we know where he comes clean about his actions to someone besides Asirpa on the ice flow.  He confesses the truth to Hanazawa in a long monologue and Hanazawa calls him a monster.  He then confesses the truth to Asirpa in another monologue and she can only simply say that she won’t kill him despite his confession.

We know that he was bullied for his personal background. He likely put on airs that it didn’t bother him in the 27th,  but the bullying likely hurt him a lot. The fact that Koito talks about his background and adds in that he didn’t like his attitude makes me think that members of the 27th got meaner to him when they couldn’t illicit a rise out of him as he coped by pretending to not care of it didn’t matter.  I think Ogata was one of those people that “bothered” other people just by being himself and it made everyone meaner to him.

Since the beginning, he has always tried to project an air of self confidence when interacting with others and as long as he has had his rifle [security blanket]. These actions helped him as a defense mechanism and prevented others from getting close to him.  But based on everything that we know by this point in the manga, it is safe to conclude that he suffers from depression and likely has suicidal tendencies.  His suicidal tendencies are not in the context that he wants to kill himself but that he is more than okay with someone else killing him in particular instances.  He doesn’t value his life highly b/c he thinks no one cares about him at the moment.  We know he was loved by his grandma b/c she brought him and his mother home and that shows that grandma Ogata was a strong woman but she wasn’t able to raise him the same way that a mother and father could.

So, let’s go with the idea that Ogata is suffering from depression; is there a way that we could explain his moodiness/shifts in how he feels about himself throughout the story to date?

Depression impacts different people different ways, so there is no universal way to categorize these things.  A reader can only approach understanding a character such as Ogata from that reader’s own experiences in life.

My personal hypothesis is:

Ogata is a high functioning individual with severe depression in addition to having a fear of rejection and intimacy with occasional suicidal tendencies.

Why do I propose this hypothesis? 

Based on my own life experiences. 

And this is where writing this meta hits close to home so to speak.  I will do my best to try to explain things, as I’ve been thinking about how to approach this topic in the most careful way possible. I keep coming back to the only way I can understand Ogata, is by connecting my own experiences with what I see his character doing.

I suffer from depression and I will deal with it my whole life. I once had a friend who doesn’t suffer from it ask me “When will you get better?”; I struggled to explain to her that you don’t get better.  You just always have it present in your life. My personal experience has been you swing between times when it is laying low and you don’t really notice or feel it.  Other times you are stuck in the mire of it; you spend half your time wondering if you should try to pull yourself out or just sit there waiting for it to lift.

Ogata’s depression:

When I’m severely depressed several things happen; 1.) My moods shift between feeling numb where I don’t feel much of anything or having strong mood swings where I’m very excitable and agitated to becoming view sad or angry.  2.) As a result I may become very fixated on certain things and be exceptionally productive at work and get lots of stuff done.  On the flip side, I may have to force myself to do simple tasks outside of everything but work.  Medically speaking, I am a high functioning person with depression; my work either continues as expected or my productivity goes up as a way to avoid thinking about anything else.  Most people won’t even notice that i’m depressed.

This type of behavior is okay in the short term, it allows you to maintain the status quo but it is not sustainable.  And this is where Ogata’s behaviours make a lot of sense to me.  When Ogata is working towards a goal (usually sniping/mission related) he is at his absolute best, he’s brought his “A” game and he will do whatever it takes e.g. rescuing Tanigaki before the end of the 3 day time limit, allowing the team to rescue Shiraishi and survive crossing over the mountain pass, giving the group the upper hand at the onsen by having a firearm within reach.  But he’s able to do this when he feels like he can do this or this is a good distraction from thinking about other things.  Likely, at other points, he’s in this weird state where you are numb, you are somewhat engaged but you really don’t care about what happens to you . . . it is hard to describe but it has a certain feeling of being detached from what is happening around you even though you are involved in it.  Sorry, I can’t explain this any better . . .

In my experience being depressed isn’t a constant state, you move between different feelings and depending on where you are at you will react differently.  This makes so much sense as we see Ogata responding to similar situations e.g. life threatening ones in such different ways.  Sometimes he just lays there and takes it, sometimes he gambles (with his life) for a huge gain, and other times he’s hyper conservative and cautious doing whatever it takes to survive.

When he gambles with his life, I often wonder if he gets an adrenaline rush? When this happens, he perhaps feels more alive than normal and it temporally pulls him out of a more depressed state or it makes him feel more than normal.

Ogata’s fear of rejection and intimacy:

The second aspect of Ogata is that he has an extreme fear of rejection by others.  This came from several different conversations on Discord as well as general observations of his behaviors.  In the context of the manga, it fits in with the theme that he is seen as a scammer and a betrayer.  He betrays Tsurumi and the 27th with Tamai and Co.  He betrays Hijikata (who used Sugimoto and Shiraishi as bait) and Sugimoto by shooting him at Abarashi.  But another way to look at this is he was always afraid of being rejected and replaced. 

He’s bounced between all of these different groups and factions.  This gives us insight into the fact that in part he’s looking for a place to belong with good leadership/mentor/father figure, some rifle nerd friends and maybe just some friends.  But he’s likely afraid that he will find people he likes and if he likes them he’s terrified that they will reject him.  The 27th already rejected him when he was in it with the yamaneko nickname/bullying.  He’s likely afraid of being rejected and bullied b/c his previous experiences have trained him to trust no one. 

So he does two major behaviors to avoid rejection; 1.) he keeps his distance [aloofness] 2.) he’s sarcastic and sassy to make it look like he isn’t hurt or offended.  We see the best example of his distance when he is forced to join Sugimoto and Asirpa’s groups both times.  He serves the important function of picking up the rear which is a protective position but also allows him to hang back and disengage.  So he is protecting the group, but he’s also protecting his own personal space and isolation.  He tries his hardest to not participate in the group despite Asirpa’s repeated guilt trips to say “citatap” and “hinna”.  To really make sure others don’t get close to him, he makes sarcastic remarks or may blurt out an honest or truthful statement in a blunt way but almost expects to get ignored or is so used to being ignored he figures he might as well say it.

When Sugimoto singles him out during the last supper at Edogai’s house, he deflects Sugimoto’s statement in a very over the top fashion for him.  He usually makes minimal facial expressions or hand motions but there he completely hams it up.  My only explanation for his behavior is that he is hurt by Sugimoto’s statement so he instead tries to use his sass and sarcasm deflect that pain.

Ogata’s fear of rejection makes a lot of sense to me; I have struggled with relationships over the years.  I was a victim of bullying when I was younger and used the similar approach of sarcasm or the idea that it just didn’t bother me which only inspired people to bully me further.  It creates a tough situation, you try to ignore the pain but people get egged on and then try to push you further.  Sadly, I my current job has a lot of bullying and I find myself trying to cope with all of these things by myself with little support.  I think since I see many aspects of my life in Ogata’s own, that as I read chapters 164, 165 and 169, I cried b/c the pain he was feeling was all too real.  Why? Because all of the members of the 27th are adults.  You aren’t children or students anymore you are adults and these adults are bullying each other in the workplace, in the case of Golden Kamuy, the military.  But when you are so used to being on guard to bullying that you push everyone away.  And when you push everyone away you begin to reject others before they can reject you b/c it is safer.  Is this a good idea in the long run?  Oh hell no.  But is it safe and comfortable to do?  Oh hell yes.

So, there is more than enough evidence that Ogata has been bullied and he is so afraid of rejection that he tries to disconnect from everyone else in the 27th.  And this is where the complication comes in with Yuusaku trying to form a friendship with Ogata.  When Yuusaku tries to connect with him, he rejects him without realizing it.  Ogata tells him how he copes with killing in a truthful and honest statement; that “he doesn’t feel pain”.  We know that he does feel pain but his survival mechanism is to push it down and tell himself he doesn’t feel anything.  Plus, if he is depressed than he likely does have much more numbed feelings. [Again, this is where my personal experience is being applied to Ogata.]  I still get really emotional when i re-read the scene between Yuusaku and Ogata.  Yuusaku wants to connect with Ogata;  Ogata sees the hypocrisy of what Hanazawa expects from Yuusaku.   Fearlessly inspire young men into battle, but, leave those soldiers to deal with the after effects of the trauma of warfare.  Even though Ogata says he doesn’t feel anything, the fact that he sees the contradiction in Yuusaku implies that he knows he’s in pain too but he just can’t see it or refuses to acknowledge it.  So to have Yuusaku try to comfort him by stating that “people like that [you] simply can’t exist.” is an inadvertent/accidental way where he rejects Ogata’s survival method at this point in time. 

After Ogata’s fever dream, he connected Yuusaku and Asirpa to be people of a similar mindset and background.  Now, we still don’t have all of the information about Asirpa’s no killing policy.  She is complicit to an extent in the death of people in the hunt for the gold, however, we do not know if Wilk told her that she could not kill or if she decided on her own that she would not kill another human.  As they have traveled through Karafuto together, it has become clear that Ogata began to connect with Asirpa.  They would go hunting together, he appreciated her saving Sugimoto’s miso for him etc. 

He has learned about Wilk with Asirpa and he has filled in the blanks with what he knows from Hanazawa and Yuusaku.  Is this hypothesis of his correct?  I would guess not, since Asirpa has more true leadership potential and independence than Yuusaku displayed.  But it makes a lot of sense that Ogata saw a child of a father who had certain expectations and ambitions for a “chosen” offspring.  He thinks that Asirpa was set up to be a flag bearer for the Ainu and other native people’s independence movement.

But the problem is that Ogata started to care about Asirpa as a person and see her as someone who might be his friend.  I think he saw her crush on Sugimoto as something that could develop into how his mother felt about Hanazawa so he does his “best” to persuade her from crushing on him further.  He also got mothering from her, letting her spoon feed him on numerous occasions and accept all of the birds he shot for dinner her to prepare.

So now Asirpa is the person who has a weird combination of traits of the mother he never had and the purity of his brother.  Therefore, all of these emotions mixed up would be confusing for anyone.  Asirpa is a person who hasn’t judged him, has said nice things about him and he has repaid her kind behaviours with his own polite ones back e.g. citatap and hinna only loud enough for her to hear.  Ogata is a straightforward character.  If someone does something for him, he will return the favor (even if Sugimoto doesn’t know that he saved his life).

But I’m talking about how Ogata has a fear of rejection; how does this fit in with Asirpa?  This fits in perfectly with what happened between the two of them.  Ogata figures out that Asirpa knows what the code is.  He likely has decided that this will be the test of their relationship.  If she trusts him and accepts him, she will give him the code willingly.  This might be the first time that he feels accepted by another person.  Why does this happen now? 

Because he knows that Sugimoto is alive and if Asirpa knows that he is alive, Ogata is terrified that she will abandon and reject him to return to Sugimoto.

Over the course of several chapters he first tries to get Asirpa to tell him the code b/c he wants some of the gold and that he isn’t greedy.  This line of reasoning isn’t good enough, so he then omits some of the details to tell her that Kiro is the one who lead to Wilk being shot but he wasn’t directly involved.  But during this whole time Ogata loses his normally cool and rational behaviour and begins to become very upset and panicked as Sugimoto gets closer.  This is what leads him to make up his almost believable lies but he pushes it too far.  He had all of the elements he needed to sway her, he had enough information but at some point he added in his own wishes and desires for himself/his parents and it creates a ball of emotional confusion.  And that ball of emotional confusion is his undoing.  Asirpa figures out that he’s lying and just like Yuusaku, she reacts in what is the worst way possible for Ogata.  She tells him that she can’t believe anything about him and doesn’t trust him at all.

And that ladies and gentlemen, is the point where he snaps.

At some point during his panic to try go get Asirpa to tell him the code to find the gold, he went from caring about getting the code and the gold, to getting Asirpa to tell him the code b/c he wanted her to trust and accept him.  Or maybe this happened earlier on Karafuto after his fever dream or at some point during their travels.  Maybe this was after the encounter with the lynx. 

The meaning of all of this is that when Ogata is asking Asirpa to give him the code, he changed it from being about the gold to being about Asirpa trusting and accepting him as friend and person. 

With the above premise, it means that Asirpa telling him that he’s a liar and she doesn’t know him at all is the absolute rejection of him.  He just heard what everyone in the 27th said when he was bullied.  And then he snaps, that’s it.  He’s been rejected yet again and he then blurs Yuusaku and Asirpa where as he begins to confess to Asirpa he has another monologue and turns Yuusaku’s words against Asirpa [and Yuusaku] there as he is all but begging her to kill him.  Ogata is a complete mess by this point, his emotions are all over the place, he’s not sure what he wants, he’s in pain, he’s panicked, he’s hurt, he’s confused, and it was all the result of Asirpa not trusting him.  All of their bonding was for nothing, he is worthless as a person and he just gives up . . .

This all makes sense b/c for the entire series Ogata has been seeking someone to accept and love him [not romantic love, familial].  Asirpa was his first chance to maybe feel this and it turned out all wrong.  Somewhere in Ogata’s mind he keeps telling himself he doesn’t deserve this because he’s broken.  You can’t connect with people because there is something wrong with you. Not Sugimoto, not Kiro, not Tanigaki, not Koito but you, Ogata Hyakunosuke.

With that rejection he just gives up and is so depressed and desperate that he wants her to kill him.

By realizing that all Ogata wanted was for someone to care about him, it makes so much sense that at this point in the story he just gave up. 

He’s reached rock bottom with his depression. 

He feels so worthless and terrible that it just doesn’t matter anymore, he can’t see anything, he’s in shock.  He’s suicidal b/c nothing matters.

More importantly, he’s exhausted himself from trying to cope all of these years and not having a healthy way to deal with his pain and emotions.  Everything he has been trying to avoid has caught up to him in the worst way possible.

So returning to the original question; why did Ogata give up so easily?  He lost the reason and will that he had to care to keep fighting.  It all makes sense to me - when you try to use a short term coping mechanism and you carrying it far into adulthood it isn’t a matter of if will it catch up to you.  It is a matter of when it will catch up to you. 

#golden kamuy #gk meta #ogata hyakunosuke #chapters 185-188 #chapters 164-165 #chapter 169 #depression #rejection

[stuffandnosense]

Seeing Stars

Description: A diplomatic mission gone wrong leaves Lance blind. Post S7, established relationship Plance. Warnings for permanent injury and recovery.

(This is entirely the Pidgance Positivity Discord’s fault. XD Love you guys!)

***

Lance only remembers a few things about the day they told him his eyes would never work again...that it wasn’t just the bandages around his head keeping him in the dark.

He remembers Pidge holding his hand, his mom’s arm around his shoulders, one of his dad’s large hands warming his back, moving in circles.

“We’re right here, son. We’ll be right here for you.”

They’d waited until he wasn’t so out of it, until he was otherwise recovered enough to understand, but it took time for him to get it anyway.

“Wh-what...what do you mean? I mean...there has to be some way to fix it, right? Like...some kind of replacements, o-or…”

Pidge squeezing his fingers, her shoulder bumping his. The waver in her voice is something that’s stayed with him. “I...we’ve been looking, Lance. But the nerves are too damaged for anything like that...for any technology out there right now. But I won’t stop looking. I’ll never…”

Something about the way she sobbed then got through. That was when he knew it was real, and it was like a switch flipped. Part of him went right back under again.

“Lance…? Lance?”

There are only snatches in his memory of the days after. His mother stroking his hair and singing to him. Pidge wrapped around him in his hospital bed, or kissing the new scars on his face. His niece and nephew reading to him. His friends talking at him about anything and everything, just so he wouldn’t be alone.

Maybe the thing he remembers most are the handful of instances waking up to someone’s outburst of anger, or sorrow...the hushing voices and hurried footsteps of one or more someone elses ushering them out into the hallway before he could hear too much. Allura and Coran, Hunk and Pidge, Veronica and Marco, Keith and Shiro…

“They should have told us their planet still had a volatile faction! A key member of my team is compromised, and for what?”

“There are crazy people everywhere...and they didn’t know. This isn’t the Paluvians’ fault.”

“I swear if you try to tell me things just happen...we’re not in a war anymore, Shiro! Not really. That’s not an excuse.”

“Keith...keep it down...of course it’s not. I hate this as much as you do.”

“I know...just…” A tired huff, as the voices faded into the hallway. “He’s my friend.”

“I know…”

It was nice to know they cared enough to feel that way. Not that he hadn’t already known. But sometimes hearing it just made everything hurt more. He didn’t really need everyone else reminding him of the things tumbling over and over in his own head anyway, after all.

But they knew that. That was why they tried so hard not to get upset in front of him. He already knew he couldn’t fly like this. He couldn’t shoot. He couldn’t...be a paladin. Not like this. And maybe that would be easier to come to terms with if there wasn’t the constant hum of Red in the back of his mind, looking for him to let her in.

He didn’t try, those first several days. He didn’t...anything. He didn’t talk. He ignored Red. The most interaction he remembers having with the world was nodding every now and then at whoever was talking to him or forcing himself to swallow food he couldn’t really taste, so whoever sounded worried would stop sounding that way for a little while.

But maybe, if he had to pinpoint when his memory begins to fill in, it’s the night Pidge finally convinced ALL of Lance’s family to go for the night and let her stay with him. She’d been there from the beginning but they’d never really been alone until then. Not that it would have mattered when Lance wasn’t really talking to anyone anyway.

He was facing away from the side of the room he’d determined the door was on, and she laid down behind him. He could feel one shoulder pressed into his back and imagined her staring at the ceiling in the silence until she broke it.

“I’d like to say this isn’t a payback for somehow managing to get Veronica run me off yesterday without saying a word to her, but that would be a lie.”

The bed moved as Pidge turned over and pressed her forehead between his shoulder blades. “Your family thinks you just need more time. They don’t want to force you, and it’s not like I do either but…” She trailed off, and when she started again her voice was tight with unshed tears.

“Lance, you don’t have to be okay. I know that’ll take time.” Her fingers tightened in his shirt. “But I need you to be HERE, not…not wherever you are. Please.”

It felt like swimming up through an ocean of dark water to answer her, but she was crying into his back and how could he not try?

“I’m...I’m sorry…”

The crying behind him abruptly stopped. “Lance…? No…don’t be sorry. That’s not what I meant to—just…” She tugged on his shirt, trying to get him to turn over. “It’s okay. Don’t be sorry.”

But by then he was crying, and once the floodgates had opened it was hard to stop them. “I’m sorry, Pidge. I’m sorry…”

“Hey...hey, just come here. Come on.”

When he buried his face in her shoulder he recognized the feel of the fabric against his face, but it was long minutes after before he’d calmed enough to question it.

“This is my jacket, isn’t it?”

***

The last thing Pidge remembers from the state dinner on Paluvia is the concussion and heat of the explosion and Lance shoving her and the ambassador behind him.

She woke up in a hospital bed back on Earth herself, two days later, with deep scratches and patches of second degree burns along one arm and leg. She learned the Paluvian ambassador sustained similar injuries, but was otherwise fine.

Lance was the one who took glass and shrapnel to the face. And while Allura, Coran, and her father had long since rebuilt a teladuv to make bringing the coalition’s allies to Earth easier, healing pod technology was taking longer to replicate.

Even if there had been a healing pod to put him in, his eyes were too damaged for even Allura’s alchemy to heal. Like she couldn’t grow Shiro a new arm, she couldn’t grow Lance new eyes. It didn’t work like that. And Allura had been at that dinner, too. She’d been a little farther away from the blast and mostly unhurt, but still too weak to use her alchemy for days after.

By then scars had set. Pidge was left with discolored skin from a more severe burn on her leg and lines from deeper wounds on her right arm that scarred. Lance would carry scars around his eyes and across one cheek from the shrapnel that took his vision and burn scars across his left arm and side.

She remembers being in Lance’s room one day, maybe a week or two after she’d woken up. Lance was still comatose and somehow Matt, Shiro, and Keith were all there at once. Lance’s mother had gone to find something to eat, and it was just the four of them at the moment. Matt looked at Lance, then around at the rest of them, and tried to lighten the mood.

“Well...we could start a club.”

Shiro actually snorted from his seat in the corner with a book.

Keith just crossed his arms and leaned into the wall with a huff. “Somehow I don’t think that’s gonna make him feel better.”

Matt winced and shrugged. “Hey, eventually maybe. We’ll wait a while on that one though…”

Pidge smiled at him for trying.

They tried everything before Lance even woke up. Ryner tried to help, too. Pidge and Shiro went to her with Lance’s medical scans, but in the end there was nothing to be done.

“Okay, so there’s not enough to work with for any of your standard replacements...but...Ryner, your technology works off of interfacing with the mind. Isn’t there anything else...?”

“I am sorry, Pidge. Being able to interface with our biotechnology using thought and finding a way to feed visual information directly back into the brain without a working optic nerve are two very different things. I’m afraid we don’t have that capability yet.”

“But—”

“Even Galra technology can’t do that. Our replacements are meant to compensate for standard birth defects or more superficial injuries, and when the Galra replace body parts they do it purposefully and carefully, despite how brutal it seems.” She blinked at Shiro. “I apologize for bringing it up, but…”

Shiro shook his head. “It’s all right; it’s the truth. Thank you for looking at the scans.”

“Of course.”

Shiro rested hand on Pidge’s shoulder then. “Katie...I think we’re coming to the point where we have to face facts.”

She isn’t proud of how she jerked away from him. “No! We have to keep looking! There has to be something we can do. I...W-we can’t let him wake up and not have an answer for him. We CAN’T…” She isn’t sure when she started crying, but the next thing she knew she was outside on a bench on the Garrison grounds sobbing into Shiro’s uniform jacket.

“There has to be answer…”

“Pidge, sometimes there’s NOT an answer; at least not the kind we want to hear. I know that’s not what you want me to tell you, and I’m sorry. But I think this time the answer is he’ll have us.”

Maybe that was why it hurt so much when Lance wouldn’t let her or anyone else do the one thing they could do, those first few days after they told him. They still did it - they all took turns keeping him company, reading to him, talking to him - but there wasn’t much response. Not until the night she managed to get him to herself. When he finally cried.

As much as it hurt listening to him sob, it was a sort of relief, too.

“This is my jacket, isn’t it?” he mumbled finally.

“And?”

He snorted. Pidge kissed his cheek. “You were in a coma for weeks; I missed you.”

“I’m so sorry, Pidge,” he whispered.

“Stop saying that.”

He shifted back enough just enough to let his head rest on the pillow beside her. So she could see his face. It was still strange to look at his eyes expecting that bright blue that used to cut straight through her. Now there were only faded gray circles in slightly shrunken white orbs.

When Lance didn’t answer her soft rebuke she reached up to his face to trace the new discolored lines across his face.

“I don’t know what you’ve been thinking the last few days, or if you’ve been listening to us at all.” She let her thumbs brush gently over his half-dropped eyelids. “But you need to know that you’re MORE than this. More than what you can do, or your pretty face.” She kissed his nose. “And it IS still a pretty face, by the way.”

Lance huffed in surprise, but he did laugh. A little. Once. It was something.

He swallowed and reached carefully for her face, to trace its features in return. “What about your pretty face? I-I...I can’t see it anymore.”

Pidge wiped away the fresh tears from his cheeks as they fell. “I told you...I’ll never stop looking for a way, okay? And until then I’ll be right here.”

“...and what am I supposed to do?” It came out so quietly, broken. It hurt her heart.

“Lance...be you.”

But the look on his face said Who am I? He didn't even have to say it aloud. She wondered if those were the thoughts that had tormented him when he shut down, as she leaned in slowly and brushed his lips with a thumb so he knew she wanted to kiss him.

He let her, leaning in just slightly himself and stopping, maybe afraid he’d bump into her. He held on so tightly as she kissed him she almost felt guilty stopping.

“I fell in love with you for your heart,” she reminded him. “THAT’S what makes you, you. And I can’t even tell you all the things you could do with it.”

She pulled him back into her chest and wrapped her arms around him. “But we don’t have to figure it all out tonight.”

***

Lance remembers much more from after that night. Things changed, if slowly.

He started to eat more because he actually started to feel hungry again. He got out of bed. Everyone seemed more at ease because at least he was talking back to them.

It took longer to get to where he is now - tackling rehabilitation willingly and trying to figure out where to go from here. Shiro has been another much-needed voice of reason.

“I know what it feels like, Lance...for your whole life to go upside down on you. I was younger than you when doctors sat me down and told me I wouldn’t live past 30 or 35 maybe; that most of my muscles would be useless long before then. Everything changed. I know it wasn’t exactly the same as what you’re going through right now, but I know it’s not easy. I also know you can still do whatever you want to do.”

“Not whatever...I can’t do what I really want to do, can I? I could learn to fight hand-to-hand like this, but I can’t shoot. I can’t fly…”

“You and Hunk were already planning to train with Allura for diplomatic work; what happened to that?” Shiro asked gently.

“That turned out great, didn’t it? That’s why I went to that dinner. Besides...I was doing that because it would help the coalition to have paladins on the diplomatic team. If I’m not a paladin anymore, what’s the point?”

A huff. “The point is that you’d be good at it.”

Pidge agreed. So did Allura. So between training to live with his blindness, his tablet is loaded with audio books full of things to read - about the planets in the coalition, about diplomacy in general...anything Allura, Shiro, or Coran can think to give him. So he’s ready to start training in earnest once he’s able to manage relatively on his own.

Hunk studies with him as often as he can, but something feels off until Lance asks asks him what’s wrong and latches onto his arm to keep his friend from leaving until he answers.

“I just...I should have been there that night too, man. If that thing hadn’t come up with the Balmerans, I—”

“Stop it, Hunk. I don’t want to hear you or anybody else feeling guilty, okay? I mean it.”

That’s when he realizes that Pidge hasn’t talked to him about any of the paladins’ missions since he woke up. Not once. The others will sometimes, but she hasn’t said a word. She’ll talk to him about anything else, but not that.

Pidge comes most days to his family’s makeshift apartment near the Garrison - in a few blocks or so of homes that have been cleaned up and partitioned off into living spaces, the streets cleared of rubble from the Galra occupation. His parents determined they would stay here to be close to him while he recovered, and when they made that decision his brothers and sisters decided they weren’t going anywhere, either.

Once he was released from the hospital, he came here. He could have stayed at the Garrison - and maybe that would have been easier, getting back and forth to therapy - but he wanted to be with his family and no one had complained.

Pidge snuggles close to him on the worn couch that he’s been informed is hideous. When he runs his hands through her hair he realizes it reaches past her shoulders now. Lance moves on to her face, tracing every curve and shape of it. She doesn’t question what he’s doing; she knows it’s how he sees her now.

“I don’t want to forget…” he told her the first couple of times. After that he didn’t have to. She just leaned into his touch.

This time, when his fingers brush against the corners of her eyes, he finds dampness there. “Pidge...Pidge, this isn’t your fault.” He knew it. Quiznak. “Nothing that happened is your fault, do you hear me?”

She ducks into his chest. “You were protecting ME…”

“Pidge...it’s...it’s been...please tell me you haven’t been thinking that this whole time.” Her sobs are his answer. “Pidge, no.” He squeezes her tightly. “No no no no, you can’t, don’t do that; please don’t think that. It’s not.”

“But I can’t just magically stop feeling like it!”

“Pidge…”

She pushes up, out of his arms and off of the couch. Lance gets to his feet to reach for her, but he ends up swiping at empty air.

“Pidge, wait! Katie!”

Her voice comes from almost to the front door; he can hear the tears still in it. “I-I’m sorry. I should go for now.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Later, Lance, okay? I’m sorry.”

The door opens and closes and he almost goes after her. But he remembers the days after he found out. When no one pressured him to accept it. When they just let him be. Even Pidge gave him those few days before trying to bring him back into the world.

But had anyone given her that kind of time?

***

He tries to sleep that night, but the pressure in the back of his mind eats at him; the presence that’s never gone away. Like Red is trying harder tonight, and more annoyed than usual to be coming up against his walls.

He wonders if she can sense his distress over Pidge. Maybe that’s it.

But why is she still in his head at all?

After hours of tossing and turning he throws a pillow across the room. Something clatters to the floor as he clutches at his aching head.

“Don’t you get it! I’m not your paladin anymore!”

He thought he was angry. He thought it was just frustration, but there are tears on his cheeks again. He thought he was all right. When will he be done crying?

“I can’t be your paladin anymore. Find somebody else,” he sniffs. “One of the MFE pilots or something. What about James? You know what? You should go with James. Keith would hate it. You have my entire blessing or whatever on that one.”

Silent annoyance from Red.

“No, I don’t hate Keith! It’s old habits die hard at this point. Inside joke. Whatever.”

How was Red supposed to know he was joking when Lance hasn’t talked to her in months?

“That was true before what happened; you’re just being salty. And you’re the one who won’t get it through your thick metal head that it’s over!”

He slams the door in his head that he’d cracked ever so slightly to say it. Red deserves better than this. He knows that. If he knew what else to say, he would.

But it hurts too much. Maybe if he makes her angry enough she’ll leave him alone.

Lance still can’t sleep. His mind still feels like a metal door being scratched at. So he gets up, and dressed, and takes his cane out into the brisk night air.

The streets here are cleared enough to practice, and even if they weren't that’s what the cane is for, anyway. He’s getting the hang of it, and being out here with the fresh air is better than being cooped up inside, anyway. Granted, he hasn’t actually been out here much by himself yet, but he’s got to do it sometime.

He isn’t sure where he’s going until he turns up a driveway a couple of streets over, following a mental map he didn’t know he remembered. Shiro lives in a converted garage apartment here, with its own entrance, the rest of the house is split into two other apartments - Hunk and his parents, and Keith and Cosmo with the addition, sometimes, of Krolia. All of them could have stayed at the Garrison too, if they’d wanted, but it’s nice to feel just a little bit normal.

Lance is relatively sure it’s Shiro’s door he finds his way to, if he’s even at the right house. He hopes so as he knocks on the door before he can stop himself.

When the door opens within ten seconds or so he’s pretty sure he has it right; Shiro’s been a light sleeper as long as he’s known him.

“Lance? What are you doing out here by yourse—” A sound like a hand running through hair. “I shouldn’t say that, I’m sorry, this is probably good practice for you, but in the middle of the night…?”

Lance winces. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine, come in. Are you okay?” Shiro shuffles back to let him through the door, and guides him by the elbow to a seat once he’s inside. Something that feels like some sort of futon; he doesn’t know what it looks like. He’d never been inside here before. He’d mostly been to Hunk’s place, before.

“I don’t know, I just needed some air. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“It’s really okay, Lance. Besides, I don’t sleep much as it is. You’re always welcome here.”

“Thanks…” He fiddles with his cane as he folds it back up, not sure why he came.

“You uh...you want some tea or something?’ Shiro asks. “Still can’t cook to save my life, but I can make a decent cup of tea.”

Lance chuckles weakly. “Yeah...sure, thanks.”

A few minutes later Shiro has handed him a warm mug and settled on the other end of the futon with his own. He doesn’t say anything and Lance is sort of grateful for that. There have been a lot of people talking with him and at him in the last few short months he’s had so far to adjust, and it’s nice to just sit. He gets through the entire cup of tea before either of them says a word.

“Shiro...why won’t Red let me go?” he whispers.

A beat of silence. “What?”

Lance swallows hard. “Red won’t stop trying to talk to me. Like she doesn’t get it. I don’t know what to do anymore; this would all be a lot easier if she’d just...stop.”

Shiro shifting in his seat, clearing his throat. “Lance...the lions aren’t stupid. If she’s still there, there’s a reason.”

“Like what? I don’t understand.”

“Then maybe you should let her in.”

***

Shiro folds out the futon for him and lets him stay for the rest of the night instead of having to go back home. Lance leaves his parents a message and tries to get some rest. His head still hurts, but at least some of his thoughts are quieter now, after talking to someone, even if he doesn’t really have an answer.

Maybe it’s drifting closer to sleep and the idea that he should try harder to let himself really talk to Red running through his mind that nudges the door open again. He falls asleep groggily thinking something like I’m sorry in her general direction, and then he’s dreaming of flying. Back at Red’s controls like nothing happened.

It can’t be like that ever again, but it’s nice. He’s had this dream so maybe times - flying through the stars. Remembering what they look like. What it was like to be up there. And if Red herself has something to do with it this time, he isn’t angry anymore. Maybe this was what she wanted. Just...to say goodbye.

But if he’s dreaming, how can he be thinking this clearly about it?

Lance sits up with a harsh intake of air. His eyes are definitely open, but instead of dark murky nothing he’s still seeing sky. Dark, starry sky but...sky. Through Red’s viewport. Through her eyes.

He almost sobs as the presence nudges at his mind again, warmer and more gentle than earlier in the night. He can almost make out words in the feelings. I am sorry too, Paladin. Come fly with me.

The view sweeps down, sending him stumbling as he tries to climb out of the futon. Clouds parting, the Garrison, houses, THIS house. He can feel the vibrations as Red sweeps near the ground in the street outside. He can see her floodlights sweeping the house from her point of view.

Lance forgets his cane as he makes his way quickly to the door and bursts out into the yard. His cheeks are already wet again, but this time he doesn’t care.

He stops when he sees...himself. The bright lights show him the scars he’s never seen before. The nearly colorless eyes Pidge and the others have to look into now. His stomach clenches, but...Pidge was right. It’s not so bad. Maybe he, Shiro, Matt, and Keith should start that club after all. Might be fun.

He hears the door bang open again behind him before he remembers to focus again on what Red is showing him. Himself, the house...Shiro.

“Lance! What…?” But after a moment of shock-wide eyes, he’s grinning.

And Lance can see it.

He sobs. “You’re smiling.”

Shiro reaches out to squeeze his shoulder, not needing to question how Lance knows that and still grinning as other doors slam open.

Red shifts her gaze just enough to take in Keith and Krolia rushing out onto the lawn fully clothed and ready for a fight if there is one. Hunk is stumbling groggily out his own door beyond them in his pajamas.

Keith looks back and forth between Lance and Red several times before he starts smiling, too. “Lance, you…?”

Hunk whoops behind him. “Dude! I knew it!”

Red drifts lower and opens her mouth; Lance can see the top of her jaw coming up in front of her eyes. Shiro squeezes his shoulder again. “Go on; what are you waiting for?”

Good question. Lance only hesitates a moment before bounding inside. He doesn’t need any help finding his way up into the cockpit he remembers so well, and when he sits down in his seat it really is like nothing happened. Almost. It’s the same view he always had from here; he just can’t see his hands reaching for the sticks. He realizes he doesn’t really need them anyway, but it feels better to take hold of them.

On the ground his friends are still watching; he lets Red hover for a moment, just looking at them until they start waving for him to go.

Lance laughs. “Okay, okay.”

The stars seem brighter than ever as they make it above the clouds. Lance finds himself shouting with joy as he and Red go through maneuvers, just to get used to each other again. Just for fun. They fly for themselves, and no one else. Until dawn breaks and pink and orange light sweeps the sky.

“I’m sorry, girl,” he tells Red again. “I should have listened.”

It’s all right, she tells him. He wasn’t ready. He needed time.

Because this doesn’t fix everything. Far from it. But that’s all right. Maybe he needed to accept the rest first before he could be happy to have this.

Later he’ll go home. Red will be able to show him the rest of his family, and part of him aches for that. But right now, there’s one person he desperately needs to see first.

Red seems to purr an affirmative in his mind, and Lance chuckles.

“Let’s go get her.”

***

Pidge wakes to Green nudging gently at her mind, telling her she might want to look out her window soon. She groans and rolls over, pulling the cover over her head. Her head hurts; emotional hangover is definitely a thing.

“Can we fly tomorrow, girl? We don’t have drills scheduled and today’s just...not good.”

But seconds later bright floodlights are cutting into her room between the dark curtains that had otherwise been doing a decent job of staving off the early morning sun.

“Geez, are you that eager?” Pidge climbs out of bed and fumbles to the window, her eyes still squinting as she reaches to tug open the curtains. “Seriously, just go back to the...hangar…”

It isn’t Green hovering outside her second-story window. It’s Red.

“What…?” She rubs at her eyes, just to be sure she isn’t crazy. As she focuses Red’s mouth opens, and Lance is...right there. On the ramp. Smiling at her.

“Lance…?” Her voice goes up a few pitches.

She doesn’t ask how. She knows how. They’ve all done it before. But not this...casually. Not this easily. None of them would be as comfortable as Lance looks right now, just standing there in his lion’s mouth flying her without being anywhere near the controls.

“Hey, Pidge.” He’s trying to be cool, but it slips after only a second or two. He blinks once and he’s crying. “You’re so beautiful...I-I thought I remembered...you’re more beautiful than I remembered.”

Not just flying his lion. Seeing through her eyes.

Pidge swipes at her eyes, and she’s not sure whether she’s laughing or crying. “I-I’ll come down, hang on.”

“Wait! Just stay right there for a minute. Where I can see you.”

In the end she just throws pants and sandals on with the shirt she’d been sleeping in and sweeps her hair into a short ponytail, and Red hovers closer to the window to let her hop onto the ramp. Lance stumbles back and lands on his rear when she launches herself at him, but they’re both laughing and it doesn’t matter.

“I’m sorry I ran off yesterday,” she says after he kisses her.

He smiles as he caresses her face; she realizes they’re inside Red now and he can’t see her anymore. But that doesn’t hurt as badly as it did yesterday.

“Don’t be,” he says. “I’m sorry; I know it’s going to take time for you to be okay, too. If you ever need time or...space or anything, just let me know. We’ll figure it out.”

“Thank you...and I guess we have more to figure out now; somebody can still fly.”

Lance gives her a dopey grin. “Yeah, how about that.”

Pidge giggles as Red’s mouth closes behind them, giving them more privacy as the lion takes off into the clouds. She tugs Lance forward by his shirt to kiss him again.

“But we don’t have to figure it all out right now.”

Lance just hums against her lips, content.

#plance #plangst #vld fanfic #vld lance #vld pidge #vld shiro #voltron legendary defender #voltron #fanfic #angst

[sidenotelife]

First 113 days of intern year

I’ve been an intern for 113 days now. sidenote - this post was going to be titled first 100 days of intern year, which sounded like a better benchmark, but it took me a while to try to sort out my thoughts on the beginning of intern year and after 13 days I decided to post this even though I couldn’t sort anything out. Anyways, I only know that it’s been 113 days because I’ve been keeping a running gratitude diary on twitter of my residency wins. I thought this would help me when I had a particularly bad day to read through all the good things that have happened, but I was also hoping this would help me focus on the wins (no matter how small) during a time that I was sure would be full of L’s. Here are a few of my faves:

Residency day 22 win: has time for pedicures with 2 yo son pic.twitter.com/X0nNArI2RC

— ken noguchi (@kensidenotelife) July 17, 2019

Residency day 27 win: nurses don't completely hate me

— ken noguchi (@kensidenotelife) July 22, 2019

Residency day 55 win: got fired by my first patient. She said she’s going to the other hospital in town but jokes on her I rotate through both hospitals 😅

— ken noguchi (@kensidenotelife) August 20, 2019

Residency day 💯 win: starting to understand that days when I feel bad about myself for all the mistakes I made are actually the best days because those are days that I actually learned

— ken noguchi (@kensidenotelife) October 11, 2019

I feel like I just got here, and to be fair I did just get here, but I’m also 10% done with residency. Isn’t that crazy? Thinking about these first 113 days, I think my developing fear is that I will finish this 1095 day journey and I will still be unprepared to do certain things. I know that I won’t graduate from residency as the fully-formed doctor that I will become over time, but I think the training process is a little unique in family medicine because the range of what a family medicine doctor can do is much less standardized than say the range of what a graduating pathology resident should be able to do. Some family med docs do c-sections, some do sports medicine, others prescribe suboxone. I feel like this adds a lot more pressure on every learning experience. If I don’t see the patient with meningitis leading to brain herniation, did I miss my only chance? I worry about this too, because of the older attendings that talk about the 80 hour work week phenomenon and how we’re getting less reps, less exposure to rare things, less total training.

At the same time, a thing I already struggle with is challenging myself to try new things that I’m not good at. I can already see myself gravitating towards certain types of patients. Like for instance, in the ED I felt a lot more comfortable with working up an abdominal pain patient than a lac repair and I can’t help but feel that I saw a few too many patients that came in with abdominal pain. And I like doing procedures, they just make me nervous and I just dread the feeling of failing at a procedure. 

sidenote - I was talking with this MFM doc and I was telling him I wanted to be an MFM before picking family medicine. He told me there was another MFM doc there that did a year of family medicine and then switched to OB-GYN to do MFM. After that I couldn’t help but wonder if I would do the same thing. I probably wouldn’t, if only because wife’s head might explode, but I can see the appeal of specializing. I long for that feeling of being really competent at one thing and really confident that I’m good at that thing. To me, that’s the best and worst thing about family medicine. You’re a jack of all trades. In one sense the intellectual challenge of having to know a little bit about everything is appealing but also quite stressful. I’m already feeling overwhelmed being on the labor and delivery floor trying to develop all the OB knowledge and skills to function as a maternity care provider and then the next day flipping around and working through acute knee injuries, maneuvers for relieving vertigo, and fine-tuning heart failure meds. That said, as I go through my first couple rotations, it’s only made me more glad that I went into family medicine because of my short attention span. I just have trouble getting into the real nitty gritty details and I’d rather leave those finer points for someone else to work through. 

One last thought, I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book Talking to Strangers. The synopsis is that it’s really hard to accurately predict people we don’t know very well. He goes through examples of people being misperceived including the innocent person who looks guilty like Amanda Knox, and the guilty person who looks innocent like Bernie Madoff. The overarching point is that we have certain archetypes we expect all people to fit in. A person that is fidgety and doesn’t make eye contact is guilty. A person that is self-confident and smiles is innocent. These expectations are usually right, except when they’re not. sidenote - I think this idea has major ramifications for healthcare, since it’s basically what we do all day. We meet people for the first time, make judgements on what they tell us, and spit out some sort of actionable task. I think there’s something important to analyze here but I will get to this at a later day. For now what I wanted to say is that in my egocentric world the thing this book made me think about is how I present myself as a stranger. Over the past 113 days I’ve had to make a lot of first impressions, which is not exactly my strength, and it’s been draining. It’s like I feel self-conscious about presenting myself well so that I’m not misunderstood but this makes me tired and makes me less able to present myself well. First impressions are exhausting. 

see you on the other side,

from ken