#i can’t even imagine how complicated these patterns would be

[cleo-fox]

Overtime

Summary: Sometimes, working overtime isn’t all that bad.

Pairings: Loki x Female Reader

Warnings: Smut, 18+ minors DNI, sex, cunnilingus, teasing, light bondage, office romance.

Series: Overtime (I don't have a masterlist for this, but if you enjoy these idiots, check out Daylight, a sort of sequel).

A/N: This was largely written prior to season 2 and posted right before episode 4, so it’s not entirely canon compliant and the parts that are may be compliant by accident.

Also, @give-me-a-moose and I were on a similar wavelength about Loki angrily reading romance novels and I would strongly recommend checking out her fic The Imagine Nation if you too are enthralled by this idea.

You don’t think that Mobius intended to keep Loki’s desk behind yours.

“It’s temporary,” he tells you apologetically. “He just needs somewhere to go for now, until I figure out what to do with him.”

“You’re talking about him like he’s a stray cat that you found,” you say.

“You won’t even know he’s there, I promise.”

“You’re still doing it.”

Mobius sighs and puts on his most sincere, earnest expression—the one that he always uses when he’s about to ask you for a stupidly massive favor.

And it’s only because you almost never, ever see this look from him that you back down.

“Okay, fine,” you say. “But he’d better be on his best behavior.”

Mobius puts his palms together and tips them toward you. “Thank you. You will not regret this, I promise.”

You sigh and shake your head. “Just remember this next time you’re budgeting for raises.”

But then—in a move that you certainly don’t expect—Loki ends up sticking around. And, in the subtle way that the stray you’ve been feeding slowly turns into your cat, Loki’s temporary desk becomes his permanent desk. And strangely enough, Mobius’ assurances turn out to be more correct than not: Loki does a lot of fieldwork and is often away; when he is at his desk, it tends to be because he is working on more complicated missions, the ones that require poring over mountains of files looking for patterns and trying to untangle the slippery mess of time itself.

Your work is decidedly less glamorous than Loki’s—almost no fieldwork, lots of files. Endless files. Some days you feel as though you must have seen every file in the TVA’s extensive library and then you’re immediately proven wrong by another wing of filing cabinets that you swear wasn’t even there before.

Although he is generally well-behaved as your desk neighbor, Loki’s presence has a way of distracting you. Even if you didn’t know who he was, your gaze would still naturally drift his way, lingering on those regal cheekbones, that ink black hair, that cunning smirk. The way that the fabric of his dress pants clings to his thighs certainly doesn’t help, to say nothing of how his forearms look with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He can make your heart start to race with no more than a casual glance in your direction and god help you if he gives you one of those devastating smiles. Luckily, you don’t think he takes that much notice of you. You have the sort of pleasantly dull exchanges of coworkers who don’t really know each other and he is almost painfully polite to you. It’s a strong departure from the way he interacts with others—with others, he is bold, charming, sarcastic, talkative, a far cry from the more subdued, almost courtly tone he strikes with you. It’s a difference that is so stark that you can’t help but attribute it to some sort of negative feeling on his end.

“How’s it going with Loki?” Mobius asks you during a one-on-one meeting a couple of months after Loki’s temporary desk becomes his permanent desk. “He’s behaving himself, right?”

“It’s been fine,” you say, “though truthfully, I don’t think he likes me all that much.”

“What? Of course he likes you,” Mobius says. “Why wouldn’t he like you? You’re lovely.”

You shrug. “I dunno, he’s just different with me than he is with everyone else. Like…overly polite. It’s like he thinks I’m going to send him to the principal’s office or something.”

“Let me get this straight,” says Mobius. “First you were worried that he wouldn’t behave himself and now you’re worried that he’s too well-behaved?”

Privately, you realize he has a point. Outwardly, though, you’re not going to admit it. The sardonic tilt of Mobius’ mouth suggests that he knows this.

“No, I just…I don’t think he likes me all that much,” you say. “And he’s entitled to that. People don’t like each other all the time, it’s not a big deal.”

This is also a little bit of a lie—you do wish he liked you. Loki is so magnetic it’s hard not to want his attention. And with the matter of your silly little crush, well…that doesn’t help either.

Mobius sighs. “I think you’re overthinking this. He likes you, sometimes it just takes him a little time to warm up. He’s a bit of a prickly guy.”

You bite down the urge to point out that you’ve seen him warm to other people almost immediately. This conversation has already gone on longer than you want and you are edging dangerously close to having to admit that you care so much because you have a big stupid crush on him, which is obviously unacceptable.

“Well, the point is that it’s fine,” you say quickly, trying to project an aura of cool confidence. “I don’t have any complaints, he seems like he’s settling in, so let’s move on. Did you have any feedback on my recent report?”

The furrow between Mobius’ eyebrows deepens just slightly, the only indication that he doesn’t fully believe you. But for whatever reason, he decides to let it go and follows your change in topic without further comment.

This is one of the reasons you like Mobius as much as you do: he always seems to know the right moment to push and the right moment to bend.

You’re not sure if your relationship with Loki would have changed had it not been for the problem of Charles Berlitz.

The joke around the office is that after Mobius convinced Loki to work for the TVA, he needed something new to obsess over and Charles Berlitz was the next best option. It’s hard to say exactly who Berlitz is, as he has a tendency of showing up, well…everywhere. He is quite literally in every timeline, at least as far as anyone can tell. Sometimes he is an author, penning serious, scholarly essays on outlandish theories like the Bermuda Triangle and the Philadelphia Experiment. He seems to have a fondness for all manner of schemes—he was responsible for introducing both homeopathy and multi-level marketing to no fewer than sixty different timelines. His ability to peddle bullshit naturally led him to politics—pick any rebellion, coup, or campaign on any given timeline and there’s a good chance you’ll also find Charles Berlitz.

Scammers and con artists are not atypical in your line of work, but what makes Charles Berlitz an enduring mystery is that he has never been found. You can have reputable documentary evidence that Berlitz was present at a certain time and location, but if you show up to investigate, he is never there. There have been some glimpses over the years—a shadowy face in the back of a crowd, the hem of a cloak disappearing behind a corner—but nothing concrete or substantive.

“Our ghost in the timeline,” Mobius had said in one of his more poetic moments at an all staff meeting, his voice overly hushed and dramatic. You had seen Loki roll his eyes and you had to fake a coughing fit to hide your laugh.

Time moves differently at the TVA, so it’s hard to say how long Mobius has been working on this case when he makes a breakthrough, but it’s not terribly long after your conversation about Loki. A campaign button had been found in an apartment that Berlitz rented for two years in the French Quarter. That particular campaign button could only have existed in one specific timeline and its distribution was limited. You aren’t entirely clear on all of the details, but Mobius seems to have a plan.

And unfortunately, that plan involves you giving up most of your weekend to work.

It’s near quitting time on what passes for a Friday at the TVA. Loki has been in today and you can hear him starting to pack up. Technically, he’s got twenty minutes of work left, but you’re not about to tell him that.

You doodle absently on your notepad. Technically, you’ve also got twenty minutes of work left, but realistically: nothing is happening.

“Oh, great, you’re both still here.”

In general, this phrase has never meant good news for you and when you look up, you see Mobius with a sizable armful of files.

Also not a great sign.

Mobius plunks the stack of files directly on your desk. “There’s been a development with Berlitz. I need you both to review these now.”

“It’s Friday,” says Loki, affronted. “Surely it can wait until Monday.”

“No can do. I need this done by Sunday at the latest,” says Mobius. “This is an all hands on deck situation.”

Loki glances pointedly at the office around you, which has already started emptying out for the weekend.

“All hands on deck, but most hands are already in the field,” Mobius concedes. “Which is why I need the two of you—” He points to you. “You because you’re good—” He gestures to Loki. “And you because you’ve got desk duty.”

“I beg your pardon—” begins Loki.

“He’s grounded,” Mobius says to you in an exaggerated stage whisper.

This is not surprising to you: you had heard a rumor last week about an incident that had occurred on a mission to the inauguration of Richard Nixon and you suspect that these two events are likely connected.

You look at the pile of paperwork on your desk. You could probably get through it on your own in a couple of hours, but if Loki’s helping, maybe you still have a shot at having Saturday to yourself. You bite back a sigh. “What do you need me to find?”

“Anything that mentions anyone from the Lucchese crime family or Nero Variant N2815,” says Mobius. “I’ll go get the rest.”

Your heart sinks. Farewell, Saturday. “There’s more?” you say.

“It’ll be triple overtime, I already got it approved!” he calls over his shoulder

You sigh and glance at Loki who is scowling at the pile of files as though they’d wronged him personally.

There’s a long moment of silence before you speak. “Is there any truth to the rumor I’ve been hearing about the Nixon inauguration?” you ask.

“If it involved a hot air balloon, then yes,” he says rather tonelessly.

“Well.” You pause as you stare at the pile of papers. “At least it was worth it.”

That at least earns you a hint of a smile.

*

Several hours later, your stomach is growling and you’ve developed a rather impressive crick in your neck.

You lean back in your chair, stretching your neck to the side and rubbing the knot that is pulsing in your upper trapezius. Office work has done nothing positive for your posture in general, but tonight’s work has you hunched over more than usual and your neck is aching.

You and Loki have made good progress, but your pile of finished and sorted files is scarcely comparable to the full cart that Mobius had brought in. Back when the evening was new and you weren’t quite so tired, you’d been optimistic about possibly having half a Saturday free from work; that hope has slipped away the longer the evening has dragged on. Now you’re hoping that you’ll still have a bit of Sunday to yourself and even that feels unlikely.

Your stomach growls again. You should probably eat something—you’d worked through your regular dinner hour in a fit of misplaced optimism. The cafeteria is closed this time of night, but there’s a vending machine not far from your office that has shitty coffee and mostly edible sandwiches.

You stand and stretch, stifling a yawn as you turn around. “I’m gonna grab a coffee and some dinner,” you say. “Do you want anything?”

Loki looks up at you from the file in front of him, blinking somewhat dazedly and running a hand through his messy curls. “I’d like to stretch my legs a bit, if you don’t mind the company.”

You honestly didn’t expect him to want to join you. It’s a pleasant surprise, certainly, but also a little nerve wracking in the way that interacting with Loki always is. He’s so handsome and aloof and you’re not quite sure how to talk to him without acting like a total fool.

But you’re also not about to say no, either.

“Of course,” you say, “I don’t mind at all.”

The TVA is unusually quiet at this time of night—the steady hum of fluorescent lights and the murmur of distant voices is all that accompanies the tap of your shoes on the linoleum. It only heightens the jittery, nervous feeling you get from Loki—like your stomach is filled with drunk, lightning struck butterflies.

“Are you finding much?” asks Loki as you enter the hallway together.

You shrug. “A bit. Mostly on the Nero variant. I’m not having as much luck with the Luccheses.”

“I’ve got all of their property transfers, I think,” he says. “Renato Lucchese never met a vineyard he didn’t like.”

“Or racehorses, from what I understand,” you say. “I think that’s how he lost most of his money.”

You arrive at the vending machines. Loki looks at the vending machines and then back at you, a somewhat puzzled and troubled expression on his face.

“This is what you meant when you said you were going to get coffee and dinner?”  he says.

You shrug. “Yeah, what’s wrong with this?”

He points at the coffee machine. “Mobius calls that machine Satan’s coffeemaker, does he not?”

“Yes, but I know how to trick it into giving me something that’s almost palatable,” you say.

Loki gives you a rather dry look. “Something that’s almost palatable?”

“I mean, I’m just trying to manage your expectations. It’s still pretty shitty coffee, it just tastes less burned.”

He looks at you for a long moment before tilting his head toward the hallway. “Come on, let’s go.”

It’s your turn to look skeptical. “What are we doing?”

“We’re going out for dinner.”

*

He takes you to a twenty-four hour diner called Frank’s that’s maybe a five minute walk from the TVA. It’s one of those places with yellowing Formica tables and big booths covered in red faux leather patched with the occasional square of duct tape. It smells like coffee and grease with a faint odor of cigarette smoke despite the prominent no smoking signs.

“I wouldn’t have thought this kind of place was your style,” you say as you sit down in a booth next to the window.

“I’ve expanded my horizons,” he says, sliding into the seat across from you.

An older woman with greying blonde hair approaches your booth. She wears a nametag reading “Connie” in big capital letters, a sticker of a pink cat stuck on the space next to her name.

“How y’all doin’ tonight?” she says as she hands you each a laminated menu. She looks at Loki. “You want your usual?”

“Please,” he says.

“You got it.” She turns to you. “How ‘bout you, hon, can I get ya started with something to drink?”

“Coffee would be great.”

“All right, I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

You raise your eyebrows at Loki as she walks away. “You eat at diners and you have a usual order. My expectations are being completely upended.”

He returns your pleasantly amused expression. “And you have vending machine coffee for dinner. It’s a revealing night.”

“I mean, I don’t actively seek it out,” you say. “It’s a convenient option that I exercise only when I have no other choice.”

“No other choice?” A sly smile curls at his lips. “Do you not have the entire array of space and time at your fingertips?”

“Well, first of all, we aren’t supposed to use TemPads for personal errands without a supervisor’s approval.”

“Technically.”

“No, actually. It’s in the personnel manual. Like verbatim.”

He raises an eyebrow. “You would put yourself through the egregious physical suffering of vending machine coffee simply to appease the capricious whims of our cruel overseer Miss Minutes?”

You bite back a laugh. “You know she’s not actually our boss, right?”

“I can’t discount that possibility. She wields a concerning amount of power within the organization.”

Connie is back with your drinks—coffee for you and tea for Loki. “Sunday Special?” she asks Loki as she sets a metal teapot and empty mug in front of him.

“Please,” he says.

“You got it.” She looks at you. “Didya get a chance to look at the menu or do you need a minute?”

You’re feeling a little daring. “I’ll try the Sunday Special as well.”

“All right, two Sunday Specials comin’ right up,” she says, collecting your menus.

“So, what’s in a Sunday Special?” you ask Loki as you take a sip of your coffee.

“Boiled fish eggs, mainly,” he says, pouring the hot water into his tea mug.

“Liar,” you say promptly.

He raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t even look at the menu, how could you know?”

“Places like this don’t serve fish eggs,” you say. “Way too unusual and definitely the wrong price point.”

“I suppose you’ll just have to see,” he says with a playful glint in his eyes. The easy charm that you’ve seen him use with the others is on full display and it’s enough to make you giddy. Maybe he doesn’t dislike you after all.

“Well, if it’s fish eggs, you’re picking up the bill,” you say, “and I’ll be getting something else instead.”

“You’d really hold me responsible for your impulsive dinner selections?”

“Yep. And I don’t even feel bad about it.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you could be so unforgiving.”

“Well, you don’t know me all that well.”

“To be fair, you keep to yourself quite a bit.”

“A little bit,” you say. “But also to be fair, you haven’t really asked.”

“On work time?” he says, widening his eyes in mock horror. “That would mean write ups for both of us, I couldn’t let that happen.”

“I think I know enough about you to know that getting in trouble is not one of your primary concerns.”

He gives you a sly smile, like you’ve caught him out and he likes it. “That’s a diplomatic way to put it.” He takes a sugar packet from the dispenser on the table and tears it open before pouring it into his mug. “Well, we’re on break now, so you can safely tell me something about yourself.”

You drum your fingers on your coffee mug. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, this can’t be the only part of your life. Who are you outside the TVA? What did you do before this?”

That giddy feeling comes to a screeching halt and you take in a long, slow breath. It’s a simple question, one that most people can answer to some degree. For you, though, it’s a bit more complicated.

“Well,” you say. You take a sip of your coffee, mostly to give your hands something to do. “I don’t actually know—I chose not to remember when they gave me the option.”

You’re surprised by how gentle his eyes are when you look up. “My apologies,” he says, “I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay,” you say and you really do mean it. “You couldn’t have known.”

Usually, you say something like this and then gently redirect the conversation, but something about the way he’s looking at you makes you want to continue. Like maybe he understands difficult things and doesn’t mind hearing about something that others would shy away from.

“When they told us everything and said they could fix our memories…” You clear your throat and focus your gaze just above his shoulder. “It’s weird, but I just had a feeling that it wouldn’t be good for me to know…that something really bad had happened. So I asked Mobius to check for me, just to be sure…” You swallow, blinking hard.

You remember how sad Mobius’ eyes were, how he’d gently placed a hand on your shoulder and said, “I think you’re making the right call, kid.”

“It’s not really okay, is it?” Loki says softly.

You shrug. “I mean, it’s…it is what it is.”

“You’re a terrible liar, you know.”

“It’s not a lie—”

He raises a skeptical eyebrow and you remember that he is, in fact, the god of lies.

“It’s more like…I can’t really miss what I don’t know, but at the same time, the reality of that absence hurts a little. So maybe not exactly okay, but not exactly not okay, either.”

There’s a lot of kindness in his gaze and you have to look away because it makes your head spin and your breath catch in your throat. “I’m not really sure if that makes sense,” you say.

“It does.”

There’s a silence between you, but it’s not uncomfortable.

“Do you…do you think you’d want to forget if you had that option?” You’re not entirely sure what prompts the question and you regret it almost as soon as it leaves your mouth. “I’m sorry, that’s probably too personal.”

He shakes his head and there’s a warmth in his eyes that you don’t expect. “I rather think I owe you one.” He pauses, running a finger around the rim of his mug. “Sometimes I do,” he says finally. “It can be quite painful remembering.” He worries his lip between his teeth. “But I’m not sure who I would be without the knowledge of my past, either.” His gaze flicks back to you. “What’s it like for you? Do you feel like you know who you are without those memories?”

It’s a good question—one you’ve never been asked. “I mean, it’s hard to say for sure. I think I do,” you say. “Sometimes I wonder if I was different in my timeline. Maybe I was kinder because I had different experiences that made me more empathetic. Maybe I wasn’t—maybe I was worse. Maybe I had a villain arc.”

He chuckles. “That doesn’t seem likely.”

“I dunno, maybe it explains the vending machine coffee and my fish egg related threats,” you say and you feel almost giddy when he returns your smile. “Or maybe I’m the same and all those experiences that shaped me are just scars I can’t see.” You shrug and take a sip of your coffee. “At the end of the day, though, that timeline is gone. I’m all that’s left. It’s sad, but it’s also freeing, in a way.”

He nods. “Mobius has said much the same.”

You smile slightly. “Our philosophies are similar, I suppose, though I think there are probably more bits of his past self in his present self than he realizes.”

Loki grins. “It’s the jet skis, isn’t it?”

“I mean, I just don’t think most normal people spend that much time expounding on the reliability of the Yamaha engine versus the pure, raw power of the Kawasaki.”

Loki holds up a finger. “But have you gotten the lecture about Yamaha’s braking system?”

“I think I have that memorized at this point.”

“‘The perfect choice for families.’”

“‘You just tap the brakes. Just tap them. Perfectly smooth stop every time.’”

“‘Reliability meets affordability.’”

“‘You can’t say no to that.’”

You think you probably could have riffed on this for a bit, but you’re interrupted by the arrival of Connie with your dinner.

The Sunday Special turns out to be a fairly traditional breakfast—eggs, hash browns, two fluffy pancakes, sausage, toast, a little bowl of strawberries.

“Definitely lots of fish eggs in this meal,” you say to Loki after Connie leaves.

His smile is small, but genuine. “You haven’t looked under the pancakes yet.”

You feel it then, but you don’t fully understand until later that this dinner has unlocked something important between the two of you. After months of awkward, stilted conversation, it’s like you finally understand how to talk to each other. And you’re surprised to find that even outside of your big stupid crush, you actually like Loki. You like his sly smiles and his dry humor and how easily the two of you fall into a routine of playful banter. You click in a way that surprises you, in a way that makes you mourn the lost potential of all those awkward, stilted months and feel giddy about the possibilities ahead.

Dinner is over too soon and you walk back to the TVA feeling revived from the coffee and the conversation. 

Disaster awaits you back at the office, though: you’d left a stack of the Nero variant files on your desk and evidently the construction was too precarious, as the entire pile had tipped off your desk and spilled to the floor, contents scattered everywhere.

“Fucking hell,” you sigh, running a hand through your hair. You’re not sure whether you want to laugh, cry, or scream. Possibly, it’s all three.

“Here.” Loki is bending down on the floor to gather the files. You studiously try to not ogle his ass or thighs. Or at least not obviously. “Clear off some space on your desk—I’ll help.”

Twenty minutes later, you’ve set up an entirely new system—Loki has dragged his chair over to your desk and the cart of unsorted files sits between you, like a surly metallic chaperone. And even later when you’ve sorted out all of the files from the floor, he remains parked at the end of your desk, a stack of new, unsorted files in front of him. Admittedly, it’s a lot more efficient for you to work like this: privately, though, it gives you a warm glow that has nothing to do with workplace efficiency.

“I’ve invented a new game,” he says some time later. 

“What’s that?”

“Every time either one of us finds documentation showing Renato Lucchese losing money on a racehorse he was told was not a good investment, I get to have a drink.”

You look up at him. “Look, I know you’re a god and everything, but I am pretty sure that will kill you.”

He sighs and tosses the file into the Lucchese pile. “I think it would add a little excitement to the evening, don’t you?”

You raise your eyebrows and look back at the file in front of you. “You mean this isn’t your idea of a fun Friday night?”

“My idea of a fun Friday night includes far fewer files and a lot more debauchery,” he says, taking a new file from the cart.

You glance at the clock. “Well, it’s only eleven. I don’t usually start body shots until after midnight.”

“What are body shots?”

For one horrifying moment, you think that you’re going to actually have to explain this to him, but then you get a good look at his expression.

He’s teasing you.

“You’re an ass,” you say, swatting him on the shoulder with the file you’re holding.

He wags a finger at you. “That’s workplace violence. I’m going to have to report that.”

You lean back in your chair and return to your file. “I’m pretty confident that you’ll be put off by the amount of paperwork that process requires.”

He shakes his head as he returns to his own file. “Uncontrolled bureaucracy is how bad actors escape accountability.” There’s a brief pause. “And…there’s another racehorse.”

You continue on like this for the rest of the evening, occasionally chatting and Loki proving definitively that the Renato Lucchese racehorse drinking game could not be played without resulting in a fatality. It’s nice, though. Yes, it’s sorting files and yes, it’s not the most intellectually riveting task you’ve ever done, but spending time with Loki is nice. It’s because of this that you find yourself trying to stay awake, pushing past your looming exhaustion.

But around two, you can’t quite fight the heaviness of your eyelids any longer and you doze off in the middle of a report on the sinking of the Lusitania.

“Hey.” Loki is gently shaking your shoulder. The way he says your name in that deliciously deep voice makes you want to swoon and you’re glad that you have the ready made excuse of sleepiness to explain any embarrassing behavior on your end.

“I think you’d better call it a night,” he says gently. “Get some sleep and come back with fresh eyes.”

“What about you?” you say. “Are you going to do the same, or are you just all talk?”

He smiles at you and it warms you to the very tips of your toes. You could bask in that smile like a cat in a sunbeam.

“I’m starting to fade a bit myself,” he says

“Very convenient,” you say and he grins at you.

“Come on, I’ll see you back home.”

Part of you wants to protest—there’s really no need for him to walk you home—but a larger, louder part of you wants to let it be, prolong the magic of tonight for just a little longer.

There’s a comfortable silence between the two of you as you walk out of the office together. 

“What time do you think you’re going to come in tomorrow?” he asks as you approach the residential wing. “It’s probably sensible to coordinate our efforts a bit.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” you say. “I was thinking nine, but that will be dependent on how much coffee I have.”

“Yes, about that,” he says. “I cannot stand idly by and watch you torture yourself with vending machine coffee.”

“Well, the cafeteria will be open, so I was going to torture myself with cafeteria coffee, which is at least thirty percent less over brewed.”

He clicks his tongue. “You’re not making a compelling case for yourself.”

“To be fair, it’s quite late and I’ve been staring at files for hours.”

“All the more reason to get decent coffee,” he says. “We’re going out for breakfast.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Oh, we are?”

“Consider it an intervention,” he says. “I’ll come collect you at eight.”

You’re not quite sure if this is just his natural confidence and swagger coming through or if he’s flirting with you and this counts as a date.

“Where are we going?”

“I know a place.”

*

The place in question turns out to be a food cart in Central Park in 1998.

“Should I even bother asking if you have supervisor approval for this?” you say, looking skeptically at the time door glimmering before you.

Loki scoffs. “I don’t have a supervisor.”

“You do. It’s Mobius.”

“That can’t be right, we’re peers.”

“You’re absolutely not. Did you read any of the onboarding materials?”

He ignores your question. “I don’t see why I’d even need a supervisor, honestly.”

You snort. “Need I remind you of what happened at the Nixon inauguration?”

He spreads his hands in front of him. “It’s not my fault that I’m the only one with a sense of humor.”

“I’m not entirely sure that was the problem,” you say. “Gerald Ford is never going to be the same, from what I understand.”

Loki waves a dismissive hand. “He’ll be fine, the tail isn’t permanent. Now, are you coming or not?”

You roll your eyes at him and make a halfhearted complaint about proper protocol, but you know that you’re walking through that time door and not looking back. You knew that before he even posed the question.

The food cart is owned by a man named Samir who has a wide smile and booming laugh. He talks to Loki like he’s a friend and he tells you that you have the prettiest eyes he’s ever seen. You are fairly certain he’s exaggerating, but you stuff a few extra bills into the tip jar anyway.

“I can’t believe you fell for that,” says Loki as you walk away, each carrying a coffee and a brown paper bag with a breakfast sandwich.

“Fell for what?” you say, batting your eyes at him. “I do have beautiful eyes.”

“I’ve heard him say that on at least thirty separate occasions.”

“Yeah, but this time he really meant it. I could tell.”

He rolls his eyes and leads you to a park bench overlooking a wide, grassy field. The leaves are just starting to change and the air has a little bit of a bite to it. 

You sit down on the bench and take a sip of your coffee.

“It is good coffee, I’ll give you that,” you say.

“See,” says Loki, “you can’t go back to that vending machine sludge after this.”

“I mean, if it’s eleven o’clock at night and I’m on a deadline, I can.”

“Darling. You have a TemPad.”

“Loki. Read the personnel manual.”

He wrinkles his nose. “It’s not really my genre.”

You roll your eyes and take out your breakfast sandwich. “What is your genre?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Is that a serious question?”

“Of course it is,” you say. “I love talking about books.”

He gives you a slight smile and takes a sip of his coffee. “A little bit of everything, honestly,” he says. “Philosophy. Magical theory. History. Politics. Anything from Asgard, really, though it can be a bit more challenging getting some of those titles.”

“I’ve had pretty good luck with the Library of the Sacred Timeline—have you checked there yet?”

He frowns. “I’m not familiar.”

“Oh, you’d like it—it’s on the eighteenth floor. It’s intended to be a collection of the greatest works of literature from as many branches of the timeline as possible,” you say. “It started as a research project, but people liked it and it just kind of evolved into this huge collection. They’ve actually got a pretty sizeable collection of books from Asgard.”

It’s like you’ve told him that his personal paradise had been located on the eighteenth floor this entire time. “Will you show me?”

He is practically vibrating with the sort of anticipatory, manic energy that you typically would associate with Christmas morning right before you tear into presents. It’s sweetly endearing.

“Of course.”

Ten minutes later, you’re leading him through the winding hallways on the eighteenth floor. You’re not surprised he hasn’t heard about the library—it’s a bit out of the way and the eighteenth floor is so poorly designed that it’s not terribly easy to find.

The design of the library is a sharp departure from the rest of the TVA. The shelves and floors are made of the kind of dark mahogany that you typically see in the kind of estates that look like something directly out of a Jane Austen novel. Worn oriental rugs muffle your footsteps on the creaky wood floors and the air smells faintly of dust and paper.

There’s a subtle change in Loki when you walk through the doors—almost like a muscle in his shoulders finally relaxes and he seems truly at home for the first time since he arrived.

You touch his hand. “This way.”

You lead him into the stacks, back to the far corner, right after the books from Alfheim.

“You can borrow whichever ones you like,” you say softly. “There’s a sign out sheet at the front desk.”

He nods, though you don’t think he really hears you—he only has eyes for the shelves, his gaze sweeping across the spines like they’re old friends. You’re about to excuse yourself to give him a little privacy when his brow furrows and he exhales sharply. “Oh, you can’t be serious.”

“What is it?”

They have the entirety of the finest Asgardian literature at their disposal. Untold centuries of the writings of our greatest minds—” he plucks a book off the shelf, “—and they choose to include this?”

The title looks fairly innocuous—a red, leather bound book with the title The Cloistered Heart embossed in gold script on the front. You take the book from him and open it. “What’s the problem with this?”

“It’s inconsequential fluff, literary pablum of the highest order.”

This is the Loki that you’re more familiar with and a smile curls at your lips. Almost on cue, you flip the book open to a chapter titled “The Wedding and Bedding of Aloisa.”

You bite back a laugh and look up at him. “It’s a romance novel.”

“Precisely my point,” he says. “To think that this is on the same shelf as Nielsen and Auber.”

“That’s kind of how libraries work,” you say, flipping further into the book. The phrases “throbbing length” and “eager moans” draw your eye and you have to tamp down another laugh. “Oh, and it’s a sexy romance novel.”

“It appeals to the lowest common denominator, yes.”

“What, so you’re too good for a bodice ripper?”

He scoffs. “I prefer to do the bodice ripping myself, not read some overwrought description of it.”

You are glad you’re looking at the book because you’re pretty sure you’d disintegrate if you had to make eye contact with him while he delivered that line. “Oh spare me,” you say lightly, snapping the book shut and drawing it to your chest. “I’m gonna read this.”

He blows out a puff of air. “It’s a waste of your time.”

“I’ve got lots of time, I can afford to waste it,” you say cheekily. “Besides, I’m curious to see what kind of book turns the god of mischief into a pearl clutching prude.”

Loki sputters. “Prude? Darling, let me assure you, I’m no prude—”

“I’ll leave you to browse,” you say with a grin as you turn away from him. “Come find me at the front when you’re ready to go.”

You’re a few chapters into the book when Loki rejoins you at the front of the library, a small stack of books tucked under his arm.

You close your book with a snap. “This book is a delight. I think your real issue is just that you’re no fun.”

He scoffs. “I’m very fun.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

You bicker playfully back and forth as you check out your books and leave the library. A quick glance at your watch tells you that you spent much more time there than you’d planned. You can’t quite bring yourself to worry about that, though, not with the memory of Loki’s wonderstruck expression burning so bright in your mind.

There’s a bit of a lull in the conversation as you wait for the elevator.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

“For what?”

“For showing me that.”

“Of course. I’m sorry you didn’t know about it sooner.”

He looks at you, lips parting slightly like he’s about to say something. His tongue swipes briefly over his bottom lip and you would swear that his gaze drops to your mouth for just a second.

For just a second—one heady, slightly irrational second—you think he might be about to kiss you.

The ding of the elevator arriving breaks the spell, startling you just a little. You run a hand through your hair, trying to give off the impression of composure even as your heart beats wildly in your chest.

Loki gestures to the elevator doors. “After you.”

There is a group of analysts in the elevator already, chatting animatedly and completely obliterating any chance you may have had at recapturing that moment.

You try not to dwell too much in contemplating what ifs or timeline branches—often, it feels too much like work, something Mobius might assign you.

But you know that the possibility of that moment—what if the elevator had been a hair slower, what if those analysts had taken a different route, what if you were braver—you know that’s something that’s going to haunt you for a while.

*

You wouldn’t give up that time in the library for anything—it’s one of those moments that feels formative, something that you’ll return to again and again for one reason or another.

But it’s also true that it’s time that you probably could have used for sorting files and as Saturday ticks on, you can’t help but wish you had a way to pull another hour out of somewhere.

“We’re not going to be able to make this deadline, are we?” you say with a sigh.

It’s getting late into the evening and the cart of files still to be sorted still remains depressingly full, despite the fact that you’d brought both lunch and dinner back to your desk so you could continue working.

Loki eyes the remaining files. “I think we might. We made good progress today.”

You rub your eyes. “My brain feels like it’s about to leak out my ears.”

Loki takes the file you are working on and sets it back in the stack of unsorted files. “I think that might be a sign it’s time to turn in,” he says.

“There’s still so much left.”

“There’s still tomorrow.”

You reach for the file. “Well, let me just—”

He pulls your hand away from the pile. “You can come back to it in the morning. Besides, if you’re this tired, you’re not going to do good work anyway.”

He squeezes your hand and drops it. It’s brief enough to still be friendly, but unusual enough to make you wonder and send your mind racing back to that moment by the elevator.

You shake the thought away. It’s late and you’re tired.

You heave a world weary sigh and slump back in your chair. “I hate it when you’re right.”

To his credit, he only smirks a little. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.”

Once again, there’s no reason for him to do this, but once again, you’re inclined to let him.

You pack up for the evening and walk out of the office side by side. You’re trying very hard not to think about the fact that this is likely the last night that you’ll do this, that tomorrow the assignment will be over.

As you near the residential wing, you start to hear distant shouts. If you inhale deeply, you catch a very faint whiff of explosives—you’re not sure what kind.

“I think someone brought work home,” you say with a sigh. 

This happens from time to time—things get out of hand in the field or something happens when retrieving an asset or a target and all hell breaks loose at the TVA. Mobius had once referred to it as “bringing work home” and the name had stuck.

“Wasn’t there an incident in this wing not long ago?” asks Loki.

“Yes.” You sigh, running a hand through your hair. “I had to call off the next day—I got no sleep that night.” You listen carefully, trying to determine the source of the noise and the status of the problem. “But maybe it’s almost over,” you say with an optimism you don’t fully feel. “Sometimes these things are resolved really quick.”

Your heart continues to sink the closer you come to your home. The acrid burn of explosives only increases and you think you catch the low, dull roar of something not quite human.

And indeed, when you turn the final corner, you are immediately stopped by an electric blue barrier being monitored by a hunter. G-21–you’ve worked with her on a couple of missions before.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” slips out of your mouth before you can stop yourself.

“There’s an ongoing incident in this area,” says G-21 and you almost want to laugh because no shit. 

“How long do you think it’s gonna be closed off?” you ask.

She shrugs. “We’re at a code 54 right now, but it’s probably gonna escalate.”

With pitch perfect timing and before you can even try to remember what a code 54 means, there’s an almighty crash and a low bellow.

“Go!” she yells before running toward the commotion amid frantic calls for backup.

Loki is grabbing your wrist and pulling you into a run.

Your standard issue work shoes are comfortable enough on a day to day basis, but you certainly want to have words with whoever decided that leather soled shoes with absolutely no grips were a good choice for a building floored almost entirely in linoleum. In a low stakes situation, it’s meant occasionally you wipe out in the cafeteria and hurt nothing but your pride. In this situation, it means that Loki’s firm grip on your hand is the only thing keeping you upright.

But there’s a small mercy in that while you can still hear distant crashes and shrieks, whatever is happening down that hallway doesn’t seem to be following you and eventually, you both slow to a brisk walk and Loki drops your hand.

You haven’t even had a chance to consider where you are going to sleep tonight. You could probably curl up on that terrible couch in the office and just plan on getting up early enough to run back to your place for a quick shower and a change of clothes…assuming the incident resolves by then—

“You can stay with me,” says Loki, as though he can hear you trying to sort this out.

“Oh, that’s okay, I’ll just—”

“If you say you’re going to sleep on that terrible couch in the office, I will personally take you to the most boring governmental proceeding I can find and leave you there until you come to your senses.”

“Sounds like a great place to fall asleep,” you say.

His eyes glint, but his tone brooks no arguments. “You’re staying with me tonight.”

You sigh, but you can’t think of a counterpoint. “When did you get so bossy?”

“Darling, I’m a prince,” he says with a bit of a wry smirk. “It’s my birthright.”

Loki lives on the opposite end of the residential wing and his place looks quite a bit like yours—he’s got an extra window in the kitchen but the floor plan is otherwise the same. A lot of his furniture is standard issue, but there are little details that make it seem more personal: an area rug with a bit of fraying on the edges, a painting of what you think is an Asgardian landscape, a vase filled with dried flowers so delicate they look like they might disintegrate if you were to touch them. And books—so many books. Books on shelves, stacked on the coffee table, tucked into the little rack that you know is meant to hold magazines. Hardbacks, paperbacks, leather bound, dog-eared, well-worn and brand new. It’s no wonder he was so excited about the library.

“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to the couch. “I’ll get some things for you.”

You sit down and he disappears down the hall. You idly examine the books stacked on the end table next to you. Many are quite clearly from Asgard and it sparks a pang of sympathy—it’s like his homesickness is on full display in his living room and there’s something sweet and sad about seeing that vulnerability laid so bare.

He returns a few minutes later with a pair of pajamas, a toothbrush, and a hand towel.

“Here,” he says, handing you the pile. “Bathroom’s just down the hall. I’ll make up a bed for you.”

“Thanks.”

In the bathroom, you realize that the pajamas he’s given you aren’t the standard set you can order from the TVA. These are made of a dark emerald silk that ripples over your skin like water, and somehow, that makes it feel a thousand times more personal than if he’d loaned you a standard set. They don’t fit quite right on you, but they’ll work well enough for tonight.

You brush your teeth and attempt to get through as much of your evening routine as you can before collecting your clothes and exiting the bathroom.

When you return to the living room, you expect to find that he’s made up a bed for you on the couch. These living units only have one bedroom—it would be quite reasonable to have you sleep on the couch.

You do not expect to find a pajama clad Loki stretched out reading on the couch, a blanket over his lap and his head propped up on a pillow like he intends to sleep there.

You exhale slowly. “Please tell me you are not giving up your bed.”

“Don’t be absurd, of course I am,” he says without even looking up from his book. “The point of this was to prevent you from sleeping on a couch, not simply put you on a couch in a different location.”

You wish you had something to throw at him. “You don’t even fit on that couch.”

“Luckily, my knees bend. Besides, you’re a guest,” he says, as though that settles it.

You roll your eyes and plunk yourself down in the armchair across from the couch, setting your pile of clothes on the floor. “I’m not moving until you give up the couch.”

He finally looks up from his book. “You’re really going to do this?”

You examine your fingernails, flicking away an invisible speck of dust. “I’m not the one being unreasonable. I’m simply meeting you at your level.”

“If you think that I’m being unreasonable and you’re also saying you’re meeting me at my level, does that not mean you are admitting that you are being unreasonable?”

“It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning. I’m not arguing semantics with you.”

“Fine.” His eyes glimmer as he sets his book down and slowly rises to his feet. “But you’re still not sleeping on the couch.”

“Oh, you’re going to be so disappointed when you realize how wrong you are,” you say. You think you see your opening and you try to play it cool.

He’s walking toward you, leaving your path to the couch wide open. In your head, you can see exactly how this works: you’ll spring from your chair and dart around the coffee table before diving onto the couch like a baseball player sliding into home plate, soundly defeating Loki. Easy peasy.

Instead, what happens is that you spring to your feet and Loki moves with inhuman speed, grabbing you around your waist and pinning you to the front of his chest, stopping you in your tracks almost immediately.

“I suppose I should have expected that,” he says. Your back is facing him, but you can almost hear the dry, sardonic look he’s giving you.

“Probably,” you say. “God of mischief and all.” You struggle fruitlessly against his iron grip. “You can let me go now.”

He laughs. “I’m afraid I can’t. It was clearly a mistake to trust you. I won’t be making that error again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say, trying again to squirm away from him. “Let me go.”

“The interesting thing about all of this is that you’ve made a rather substantial tactical error,” he says, continuing as though he can’t hear you.

“You’re bluffing,” you say with more confidence than you feel.

“Fascinating theory,” he says, “but I don’t think it’s going to work out for you.”

With that same ridiculous speed, he’s suddenly spinning you around and lifting you, tossing you easily over his shoulder.

“Hey!” you shout in protest.

“I warned you,” he says, his voice full of mirth as he carries you toward the bedroom.

This is not exactly how you’ve imagined being carried off to bed by Loki.

Though, admittedly, you do have a nice view of his ass.

“This is ridiculous,” you say.

“You brought this upon yourself.” He’s walking into the bedroom and a moment later, he’s lifting you from his shoulder and tossing you unceremoniously onto his bed.

You scramble to your feet and try to lunge toward the door, but he’s clearly expecting that. Before your feet even hit the floor, he catches you around the waist and hauls you back to the bed. Your back hits the mattress and you try to leverage the momentum to propel yourself back onto your feet.

He catches you immediately and you find yourself back on the bed again.

“I don’t mean to be patronizing,” he says, failing to bite back a laugh, “but it’s adorable that you think you can outmaneuver me.”

That is deeply offensive and the only way you can earn my forgiveness is by letting me take my rightful place on the couch.” You can’t quite keep the laugh from your voice.

He grins. “Not a chance.”

You attempt to dive off the opposite side of the bed, only to have him grab you by the ankles and pull you back. You manage to dislodge him and lunge in the opposite direction, only to be immediately thwarted.

It becomes increasingly hilarious the longer it goes on and soon your sides are aching from laughter. Loki is laughing too, but it doesn’t seem to affect his strength or speed at all.

Eventually, he wrestles you back down onto the bed and you are fairly certain there’s no way out of this one—he’s got your wrists pinned above your head and his legs locked around yours. You’re both a little out of breath.

“Yield,” he says.

You shake your head. “Never.”

His gaze flicks to your lips and back to your eyes. “Yield.”

“No.”

Something has changed. There’s an electricity and intensity that crackles in the air between you, possibilities blooming in both of your gazes. It feels a little like that moment by the elevator, but you’re afraid to hope, afraid to even wish because the idea of him wanting you still feels as impossible as capturing smoke with a net. 

But the way he’s looking at you, the way his gaze keeps drifting between your eyes and your lips…that’s not nothing.

“Yield.”

You lick your lips, your heart beating wildly. “No.”

Is it just your imagination, or did his breath hitch when you licked your lips?

“Yield.”

God, he’s so close and you want him so badly. 

“No.”

He looks again at your lips and this time, he closes the distance between you.

They call him Silvertongue—you’ve heard the jokes, you’ve rolled your eyes at all of them. But as he kisses you, you realize that there’s an element of truth there because only seconds in and you’re ready to sign away your soul to live under the power of Loki’s tongue. The slow, warm slide of it against yours, the way he guides your mouth against his, the way he lets out a soft sigh as he tastes you—you would give up everything if it meant you could stay like this.

“Yield,” he breathes against your lips.

“No,” you say.

He deepens the kiss, catching your lower lip between his teeth and gently tugging until you whimper and arch against him.

He still has your hands pinned against the bed, his grip unyielding when you try to wrestle them away.

“Let me touch you,” you say when he draws back. You want to touch him everywhere—run your hands along every muscle you’ve admired from afar. 

“Then yield,” he says with a grin, his eyes flashing with devilish intent.

You consider this for a moment. You could give in—there aren’t really any stakes at this point and you’re pretty sure you’re both going to end up sleeping in his bed tonight anyway. But that glint of mischief in his eyes also promises some intriguing possibilities if you stand firm.

“No,” you say.

“Such a pity,” says Loki, though his expression is one of hungry delight.

His hands slip free of your wrists then, but they stay pinned to the bed by some invisible force.

“Cheater,” you say. 

“I think this is only fair,” he says, his hands sliding to your hips. “I’m clearly the victor, am I not entitled to my prize?”

You shiver. “Your prize?”

“Yes.” He kisses down the column of your throat. “My lovely, lovely prize.”

“How can I be your prize if I’m also your competitor?”

“You think too much,” he mumbles against your neck.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Generally, it’s not.” He sits back on his heels between your legs, looking you over with satisfaction. “But in this case, it’s distracting you from more pressing matters.” His hands creep under the hem of your shirt, stroking the small of your back, thumbs tracing teasingly along the waistband of your pajama pants. 

“Have I mentioned how much I enjoy seeing you in my clothes?” he asks. There’s a husky depth to his voice and a hunger in his eyes that sends a flood of arousal to your cunt.

“You have not,” you say.

“A casualty of too much thinking,” he says solemnly, his thumbs gently grazing the skin at your hipbones. “You look utterly delectable. I almost want to leave them on.” His eyes glitter with mischief. “Almost.” His hand strays to the bottom button on your pajama top. “May I?”

You nod. “Yes.”

He slips the button free and slowly makes his way up until your shirt is open. He carefully pushes the fabric aside, baring your breasts to his sight and touch.

You’ve never felt more beautiful seeing Loki stare at you, lips slightly parted, eyes wide and hungry. He trails one hand up your stomach and rib cage and slowly brushes a thumb over your nipple. You gasp and the sensitive skin puckers and stiffens as he palms your breast, rolling your nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“Gorgeous,” he murmurs as he lowers his mouth to your breast, his tongue and lips taking up the role of his hand, while his other hand moves to cup your other breast. You whimper, wishing you could run your hands through his hair. “That’s it,” he purrs, “I want to hear all the sounds you can make, my love.”

You rock your hips forward and arch your back as he lavishes attention on your breasts. It’s the most delicious kind of torture, having him so close, but not being able to touch him.

He’s taking his time, which you both love and hate. He feels so good, but you need him to touch you, you need to touch him, you need him inside of you. You wait until you can’t take it any more and breathe his name like it’s a prayer.

You wonder if this is what he was waiting for because with little more than a brief smirk and a wicked look, he starts kissing his way back up your chest and neck. You whimper when his lips meet yours and you can feel him grin as he kisses you. He fits his hips against yours, angling himself so that his cock rubs up against your clit just right and you moan into his mouth. You can tell that he’s big and part of you wants to savor the anticipation even though you feel like you might go mad if he doesn’t fuck you now. You rock your hips against him, trying to feel that friction.

His large hands frame your face, one hand sliding to cradle the back of your head so he can draw you deeper, the other trailing from your cheek to your throat.

Both hands soon stroke down your sides, lingering teasingly at the waistband of your pajama pants. He hooks his thumbs underneath the waistband and you lift your hips. He slides your pants down maybe an inch and you can feel him smiling as he kisses you. You lift your hips again and your waistband creeps down another inch.

“Loki.” His name falls from your lips with a sigh.

“What is it, my love?”

“Touch me,” you breathe. “Please.”

You lift your hips again and this time, he pulls the fabric fully down and off your legs. He guides your legs apart and stares appreciatively at your bare cunt, his teasing expression replaced by a rapt awe.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs. 

You believe him.

His hands stroke your thighs, seemingly in no hurry, despite your pleading whimpers and the way you arch against the mattress. He draws his thumb gently along your slit, barely grazing your clit.

“Do you know what an utter distraction it’s been sitting behind you?” he asks, tracing your clit in the slowest, lightest circle.

You arch upward, hands still bound by his magic. “Tell me,” you breathe, your hips rising to chase his hand.

“Every time you stood up, I could only think about bending you over the desk.”

You manage a sly smirk. “And here I thought you didn’t like me much at all.”

His thumb presses a little more against your clit and you moan.

“I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you,” he says, rolling his thumb in a slow circle. “I kept you at arm’s length partly as a matter of protection.”

For who?”

“You,” he says. “I’m not fully redeemed in some eyes and you being involved with a dangerous variant—”

“You’re not,” you say.

“Some would disagree.”

“Well, they’re wrong,” you say. “You’re not a dangerous variant. You’re Loki Laufeyson and I want you just as you are.”

There’s something unreadable in his expression and it makes you wonder how many people have told him that he can just be himself.

“You should be careful saying such lovely things to me, you know,” he says solemnly.

You raise an eyebrow. “Oh really? And why is that?”

“Because it makes me want to do very wicked things to you.”

You’re surprised you’re not shaking, you want him so badly. “What kinds of wicked things?”

“Oh, all manner of wicked things.” He presses a kiss to the inside of your knee, his tongue swiping briefly against your skin. “Things with my mouth...” His thumb rolls over your clit again, his index finger teasing your entrance before retreating. “…my hands…” He drags his gaze over your naked form before locking eyes with you. “My cock.”

A shiver works its way up your spine. “So if I talk about how I think you’re really clever and funny and I find it unbelievably sexy, what sort of wicked thing would that merit?”

The intensity of his gaze makes you shiver again. He crouches down and presses another kiss against the inside of your knee, slowly moving upward. “If you keep talking like that, I’m not going to let you leave my bed for days.”

“You know that’s not a disincentive, right?” you say, sucking in a sharp breath as he nips at the soft skin of your inner thigh. “I’ve wanted you for such a long time, Loki.”

“I’ll make it weeks if you’re not careful.”

“Again, not a disincentive.” You gently tug at your bound wrists and find that they’re still firmly secured. It’s exhilarating, even though you really wish you could run your hands through his hair, especially if he ends up where you think he’s going.

“What else should I tell you?” you muse as he continues his agonizingly slow path along your thigh. “You know, half the reason I kept to myself was that I wanted you so much I was certain that I’d make a fool of myself.”

That earns you a few circles of your clit with his thumb, but his progress up your thigh remains slow. You have a theory about what might move the needle, though.

“I know you like to act like you’re this sort of barely reformed villain, but I think there’s more good in you than you’d like people to believe.”

This time, he moves up to the crease where your thigh joins your hip, close enough that you can feel the heat of his breath ghosting along your labia. His tongue traces a line along your skin and you briefly wonder if you’ll be able to hold it together enough to deliver the last part.

“And,” you say, trying to keep your voice steady, “yesterday and today made me want you even more because I feel like I finally saw who you really are and you’re even more wond—”

Your words abruptly give way to a breathy moan because his perfect, skilled tongue has finally found its way to your clit.

You had a plan from here, but whatever it was has dissolved into nothing under the skilled caress of Loki’s tongue. You suspected he would be good at this from the way that he’d kissed you earlier, but you could not have imagined that it would feel like this.

“Oh my god, Loki.” Your thighs are already quaking. You tug again at the invisible bonds on your wrists, but they hold fast. Something about the way the bonds are keeping you gently stretched along the bed combined with how his large hands have your thighs spread open seems to heighten every sensation. There’s no wiggling away from him or adjusting yourself so that you feel more or less of the onslaught of his tongue on your cunt. You are completely at his mercy and you’re not entirely surprised that you fucking love it.

He slides a finger into your aching channel and your cunt shudders around the thick intrusion. The warm, roiling center of your orgasm starts builds in your hips with every stroke of his tongue, spinning faster and faster, like ocean winds whipping up into a hurricane. Your back arches and his tongue presses flat against your clit, and suddenly you know that this is going to be what takes you over the edge.

Loki seems to know it too, at least from the way that he presses his tongue more firmly against you, one arm slung across your hips to hold you in place. His other hand slides two fingers inside you, rocking and curling against that aching, tender spot.

You whimper, your hips bucking wildly. It’s so good and so much and you are almost there.

You look down at him then, his hair wild, hollowed cheeks flushed pink as his tongue works you over, his eyes closed like he couldn’t imagine anything more blissful than being in between your legs while you come undone.

This is ultimately what tips you over the edge. The storm that has been forming inside you is finally let loose and you arch your back and cry out in a wordless scream as your climax crashes into you.

Only then do the bonds around your wrists release and your hands fly down to grab his hair as your body shakes with pleasure.

It takes a moment for you to get your breath back and reacquaint yourself with the concept of speech, but when you do, you find Loki looking up at you, his expression pure mischief.

“And to think you wanted to sleep on the couch.”

“It wasn’t that I wanted to sleep on the couch, it’s that—” Your voice cuts off as his tongue starts stroking your clit again.

“It’s what?” he asks in between strokes, his smirk obvious in his voice. The lingering ripples of your orgasm are coalescing around the path of his tongue, tightening that coil in your belly again.

“Fuck—you’re not playing fair, you can’t just—” You lose your sentence to a low moan that rises up from your chest. “You can’t just—fuck, yes—you can’t…oh god, yes, just like that.”

His laughter rumbles against you as your hips start rocking against his mouth. How are you already so close?

“You can’t just—fuck—win an argument by—”

You’re trying to say that he can’t expect to win an argument by making you come and you think he might understand this based on how determined he seems to be to prove you wrong. His fingers curl again until he finds that soft, tender spot that is so often the key to your unraveling.

You have stopped trying to complete that sentence—you moan, your hands tangling in his hair, urging him on as the swell of your climax rushes up, inevitable as a tidal wave looming over a seaside village.

You cry out as it crests and breaks, falling down over you in a rush of tingling pleasure that feels like champagne and fireworks all at once.

“Now, what was it you were saying, my love?” he asks as he releases your clit a moment later. “Something about how I can’t just win an argument by making you come? I couldn’t quite hear you over the sound of you coming completely undone on my tongue.”

“Oh, you think you’re so smart,” you say, giving him a stern look as he crawls up your body.

“You know what I think?” he says, settling himself on his side next to you. “I think you liked submitting to me.”

You shiver before you can even think about hiding it and his smile turns decidedly vulpine. 

“You did, didn’t you? You liked having your hands bound and being completely at my mercy while I licked your pretty cunt until you came undone in my mouth.”

“You are enjoying this far too much,” you say.

“I am enjoying it the correct amount.”

You realize your hands are now free to explore his body and you tug at his pajama shirt. “I think you’re wearing too many clothes,” you say.

He gives you a wicked grin as he lets you pull his shirt over his head. “Yes, perhaps it’s time we even things up.”

You pull the shirt away and rake your eyes over him greedily, your hands following the path of your gaze. He is as perfect as you imagined, unfairly beautiful in the dim light of the bedroom.

You hook your thumbs into the waistband of his pajama pants and lower them an inch, a cheeky parallel of how he teased you earlier. His lips curl into a sharp smile when he realizes what you’re doing.

“Interesting strategy.” There’s a bit of a growl in his voice, a rough desperation that makes your cunt clench. “But I think you forgot that I have the upper hand here.”

He raises his hand and with a twist of his wrist, his remaining clothes dissolve in a shimmer of green and he is bare before you.

Your breath catches in your throat. His cock commands your immediate attention, nudging up against your thigh—he’s big, as you suspected, but completely bare and rock hard, he somehow seems longer and thicker than he had when he was grinding against you.

He pulls you into a slow kiss as you reach for his cock. You wrap your hand around him, delighting in the silky hardness of him, the way he throbs in your hand and the low groan he makes as your hand moves from base to tip and back, the way his hips thrust along with you. Your cunt clenches in anticipation.

After a moment, though, he places his hand over yours, slowing your movements.

“I need to be inside you,” he rasps.

“Yes,” you breathe.

He rolls on top of you  and you’re not sure that you’ve ever felt anything quite as wonderful as the heat of his bare skin and yours pressed together. This feeling means intimacy, a closeness that you’d longed for but never expected even in your wildest daydreams.

He pulls you into a kiss, slow, soft, and languid, like you have all the time in the world and he intends to take it. It’s decadent and dreamy and perfect.

But the heavy weight of his bare cock resting against your stomach combined with the ache between your legs—an ache that would be so perfectly soothed by the hard column of flesh currently throbbing against you—proves to be a force too powerful to resist for very long.

You cant your hips against him, snaking one leg around his waist, hoping he’ll get the hint.

He does.

He braces himself on one hand, the other sliding between your bodies to rub his cock along your slick folds. He positions himself at your entrance, waiting for your breathy plea to begin to ease himself slowly into you.

He fills and stretches you in the most wonderful way, but even more than that, he feels like home. The thought strikes you quite suddenly and you’re not entirely sure about everything it means, but you know it’s good and right.

He pauses for just a moment, seeming to savor the feeling.

“You feel better than I ever imagined,” he says.

You quirk an eyebrow at him. “You imagined?”

He gives you a hungry smile as he leans in to kiss you. “Like I said: it has been an utter distraction sitting behind you.”

His rhythm is slow and easy, like he wants to take his time learning every inch of you and memorizing how you react to his touch. His mouth moves over yours in a slow kiss that’s somehow both languid and demanding, his tongue gliding in and out of your mouth in the same rhythm of his hips rocking into you. His cock bumps up against that sweet spot inside of you that his fingers had teased earlier, each stroke inching you closer to bliss.

He shifts the angle of his hips so that his pubic bone grinds against your clit and it feels so good you almost see stars. You can feel your orgasm building, your cunt growing slicker and tensing around his thrusting cock.

He draws back to look at you, eyes hazy with a loose, dreamy kind of pleasure.

“Do you have any idea how good you feel?” he breathes.

You are shaking. “Loki, I’m gonna come.”

“I know you are,” he purrs. “Let go for me, let me feel you, my love.”

With two more thrusts of his hips, you unravel.

He groans as you tremble around him, but mostly, he watches your face, rapt by the way you throw your head back against the bed and gasp his name like it’s the only thing that will save you.

“You’re beautiful when you come,” he breathes. “Absolutely stunning.”

He waits until you catch your breath before he kisses you again, slow and sensual. His hips are still rocking in that beautifully slow rhythm and you don’t know how it can still feel so good.

He keeps moving against you, his touch and his low murmurs of praise invoking a symphony of sensations. He presses deeper and your body sings with every thrust, your muscles tensing and tightening around him like you never want him to leave. Your climax swells again and you come with a whimper, your whole body shaking as he fucks you through it.

You want him to come, want to hear the sounds he makes and feel his sweet, hot release burning inside of you.

“I want you to come for me,” you breathe.

He grins at you. “Oh, I will, but not yet. You’re not done yet.”

You whimper. “Loki—”

“Two more, my love, two more and then I’ll come for you.”

Somehow, you give him three. By the second one, he’s panting and his words have become rough, his voice a growl as he utters some of the filthiest praise you’ve ever heard. The third builds quickly after that and you know instinctively that you’re going to take him over the edge with you this time.

You fight to keep your eyes open against the tidal wave of pleasure blooming again in your hips. You need to see him come undone.

As in everything else he does, he’s unfairly beautiful—he throws his head back, letting out a low groan that you can feel all the way to the tips of your toes. His cheeks are flushed, a few ink dark curls plastered to the light sheen of sweat on his forehead. You can feel him emptying himself inside you, his release hot and hard won.

It seems to last a long time and it’s another minute before his hips slow to a halt. He kisses you, so soft and sweet it would almost seem chaste were it not for the fact that his cock is still throbbing inside of you.

After a moment, he slowly eases out of you, rolling over onto his back, his arm snaking around your waist and pulling you to him like he can’t bear to be parted from you even for a moment.

You curl up against his side, your legs tangling with his. He takes your hand, lacing his fingers with yours before resting your clasped hands on his heart.

You could fall in love like this, you think sleepily to yourself.

You don’t know it then, but you’re right.

*

Time moves differently at the TVA, but a couple years later, there’s a ring in a box on your desk.

Loki likes a spectacle and you’d daydreamed about a traditional wedding, but when you talk it over, you both agree that you want to do something different, something quiet, something just for the two of you.

“I do think we should tell Mobius beforehand,” you say to Loki.

“Isn’t the point of eloping that no one knows until after it’s done?” says Loki.

“Yes, but I feel like we could make one exception,” you say. “If we’d done a full wedding, I would have asked him to give me away.”

Loki’s gaze softens a bit then and he pulls you close. “All right. But we only tell him right before we leave. The man can’t keep a secret.”

But Mobius doesn’t seem terribly surprised when you tell him—in fact, he seems far more concerned about your wedding gift.

“I didn’t have a chance to wrap it yet,” he says. He’s retrieved a large picture frame that had been propped against his desk, though he keeps it turned away from you. “So…this also requires a bit of an overdue confession for context.”

You raise your eyebrows. “A confession?”

“A confession,” says Mobius.

“Will I be angry about this?” asks Loki at the same time you say, “Is this like a go to jail confession or a misdemeanor confession?”

Mobius gives a good natured chuckle, shaking his head slightly. “God, the two of you. Always so dramatic. No wonder you ended up together.” He takes what feels like an unnecessarily long drink from the coffee mug on his desk. “It’s not bad, I promise.” Another sip of coffee. 

Loki sighs. “He always does this,” he says to you. “Have you noticed? Whenever he has something that you want to know, he stalls and drags it out just to torment you.”

“Okay,” you say, “but you jumping in to bicker with him probably doesn’t help.”

“I’m not bickering,” says Loki. “I’m simply pointing out that he’s stalling—”

“What was it you were saying, Mobius?” you say brightly, nudging Loki with your elbow.

Mobius’ eyes twinkle. “See,” he says to Loki, “I always liked her. It’s a good match.”

You don’t have to look at Loki to know he’s rolling his eyes, though he also makes a point of surreptitiously pinching your ass, a detail you hope Mobius doesn’t notice.

“Anyway,” says Mobius, taking a deep breath, “it was pretty clear to me from the start that you liked each other. And you also seemed absolutely determined to get in your own way.” He points to Loki. “Especially you with your whole stilted Asgardian prince thing.”

Loki frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Mobius sighs. “Anytime you like someone, it’s like your brain gets a factory reset and you get all overly polite and courtly.”

Loki scoffs. “I don’t do that at all.”

“You do. It’s deeply weird. You’re like a mannerly robot.”

Loki turns to you. “Darling, tell him he’s being absurd.”

You reach over and squeeze his hand. “You did call me ‘my lady’ a couple of times in the early days.”

Loki sighs and looks back at Mobius. “What was your point in mentioning this?”

“Well,” says Mobius, “you seemed pretty determined to get in your own way, so nothing was happening. And eventually I got sick of all of the pining, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

“What do you mean?”

Mobius pauses, a hint of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “There wasn’t a breakthrough with Berlitz that weekend. What there was was a surplus in the overtime budget and a high priority indexing project for Archives.”

Your lips part as your brain slowly puts the pieces together. Mobius’ eyes twinkle.

“Wait,” you say, “you lied to us?”

“I did not lie,” says Mobius, his demeanor suddenly becoming very serious. “That would have been wrong.” He nods at Loki. “Also, it would’ve tipped him off and that would have ruined the whole thing. I simply failed to mention that the cart of files that I gave you needed to be sorted for indexing for the Archives department and I peppered in a couple of unrelated things about Berlitz.”

“But the office was empty that weekend,” says Loki.

Mobius snaps his fingers. “Right. I did make some adjustments to the schedule that weekend.”

“And the disturbance that prevented her from returning home on Saturday night?”

Mobius spreads his hands wide and grins. “All me, buddy. Paid G-21 five hundred bucks for that one.”

Loki pauses for a moment and then looks at you. “I don’t think I can be mad about this. I’m genuinely impressed.”

“I mean, I can’t argue with the results, but Jesus, Mobius, you could’ve just set us up on a blind date,” you say.

“Ah, but that’s not as fun,” Mobius says. “Plus, it wouldn’t have made for as good a wedding gift.” He turns the frame around and hands it to you both.

It’s both your timecards from that pay period, neatly framed side by side. Your eyes well with tears and Mobius smiles.

“Honestly, I’m just relieved it’s not a jet ski,” says Loki.

“He's deflecting,” you say to Mobius in an exaggerated whisper.

“I know,” he whispers back.

But you can’t help but notice that Loki’s eyes are brighter than normal.

“Okay, now get out of here,” says Mobius. “You’ve got a wedding to get to.”

Twenty minutes later, you’re wearing a simple white dress and standing with Loki in front of a time door, your hand clasped in his.

“Technically, we don’t have a supervisor’s approval for this,” you say with a wry smile.

He looks at you, eyes dancing with mirth. “I had Mobius sign off on the paperwork while you were getting ready.”

Your heart swells and your smile is so wide that you feel like your face might split in two. “Then hurry up and marry me, Laufeyson.”

He grins and tugs you through the time door.

-------

But wait! There's more: I don't have a masterlist for this, but if you enjoy these idiots, check out Daylight, a sort of sequel.

#loki smut #loki x reader #loki x reader smut #loki laufeyson smut #loki x female reader smut #loki x female reader #loki laufeyson #loki fanfiction #loki fanfic #tva loki x reader

[currently-reading-a-book]

A Tale of Two Minds

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Summary: The seemingly shy Dr. Spencer Reid is interrupting you at the library, but don't let his quiet demeanor fool you...

Genre: smut

Warning: crime scenes; talking about murder, heated kiss, made up facts (let me know if I forgot something)

Word 1118 Count: words

A/N: As always, any criticism is very welcome. Sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes. English is not my first language. Not proofread.

Anyway, enjoy :)

✧ 🎀 -------------------------------------------------------------- 🎀 ✧

The building was huge. The dull grey walls ran through the whole building, seeming to never stop. You could easily get lost in one of the many departments of the FBI. An outsider would declare this building old and labyrinthine. However, for you, it was home or the closest place to one. Of course, you only have limited access as you’re just a trainee. You could only get inside the school side of the building, but you only needed the library to feel safe. Every possible minute of your free time you spend there. Being surrounded by piles of thick complicated books, trying to study every field of knowledge that exists. 

The sternmost part of the library was your favorite. Nobody was there and you could enjoy your peaceful solitude. This was also the part where unsolved closed cases were located. Reading through them, trying to find a repeating pattern, and making an accurate profile. Hoping the police can then find a suspect that fits the criteria. With this method, you have quite a success and solved relatively a lot of cases. That is actually how you got into the special program of the FBI. It all started when you were solving a case of strange murders your local police couldn’t solve. It turned out the priest took justice a bit too personally. You analyzed the victimology of the murders and started to make a profile. The police just needed forensic evidence, which luckily was found quickly. 

As you were nearly done with your profile on a murder case, in deep focus, someone disturbed your beloved peace. 

“You know sitting on the ground could raise your potential of getting sick by over 18%.” A shy voice stated.

Letting out a breath, you snapped your head around just to see a guy with long blond curly hair. You lowered your glance a bit and saw his ID Card. Your eyes shot open. You're on your feet within a few seconds. “This can’t be true, can it?” you thought.

“You’re Dr. Spencer Reid!”, you said, a bit too enthusiastic.

He backed up a bit, startled by your elation. He hesitantly nods his head. Of course, you heard of him, like everybody did. Maybe you liked him a bit too much, like not everybody did. 

He worked at the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) of the FBI and was also a professor at the academy. One of his most impressive traits was undoubtedly his intelligence. It was hard not to be impressed by the breadth and depth of his knowledge, which set him apart from others. You would often hear amazing stories about how his mind solved cases. He was incredibly skilled at what he did and a huge role model for many, also for you. Working with him was always a dream for many and again of course you dream about it too, maybe even more than others. “Suddenly, you remember your position. You’re a forensics student and he was an agent, even a doctor to begin with. Another point would be that you had a crush and didn’t want to scare him away.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was too excited,” you slowly admitted, locking down.

Embarrassment was written across your chubby face. He took a step closer, gaining confidence. He smelled incredible, masculine yet fresh and pine. Just like you imagined.

“I see you’re trying to solve the “Lucifer Case” and have you gotten any further with it?”, he asked, trying to break the awkwardness.

You look into his eyes, trying to read him. Confused why he would show any interest in you, you try to find out any motive by analyzing his body language, but you can’t find anything too convincing. A moment later he was standing beside you, looking through the files spread around you on the floor.

“I was just about to finish my profile before you interrupted, Doctor Reid”, you told him quietly. Your shyness got the best of you. 

“Oh, please call me Spencer, Y/N”, he responded promptly, “and I apologize for interrupting you.”

Your cheeks heated up. Looking at him shocked, he looked back smiling. Too astounded to notice that he had called you by your name, which you hadn’t told him yet. 

“Wait, how do you know my name?”, she questioned him embarrassingly late.

His smile got bigger. Even though he was close before, he reduced their distance some more. Now your back was pressing against the bookshelf, unable to escape his intense gaze. 

“Your reputation precedes you, Miss Y/L/N.” he hushed seductively. 

You swallowed hard, staying quiet. “What could this mean?”, you thought to yourself. Everybody in the study facility always said Spencer Reid was a shy nerd, but now you’re standing in the library with him towering over you.

“I was very impressed by your profile of the Cryptic Puzzle Killings,” he whispered into your ear, “it was a genius profile.” His voice was sending shivers down your spine.

“Doctor Reid,” you stuttered, but then interrupted you.

“it’s Spencer, remember?” You couldn’t think straight anymore. “I was holding back too long, I couldn’t resist any longer Y/N, please forgive me for my bad-mannered roughness,” he muttered as his lip brushed faintly over your neck. This was the moment your breath stopped. Am I dreaming? 

“Tell me if you want to stop,” he muttered as he placed sloppy kisses around my neck.

“No, don’t stop.” That was the only thing you could say; his hands feeling too good on you. How he griped your hips pressing your hips more into his clothed erection. Feeling his touch like hot burns all over your body.

“I needed to use this opportunity,” he breathed .

As you wanted to reply to his confession, all of a sudden, another voice was calling for Spencer.  Your cheeks flushed even more at the thought of getting caught with Spencer at this situation.

“Spencer, I said I would talk to her!” A stern voice was speaking with such authority. 

Spencer quickly stepped back, taking all his warmth with him. You were looking around, overwhelmed with the situation, trying to figure out what was happening. Still feeling hot after your heated situation with Dr. Reid. Spencer was now around two meters apart from you, smiling at you shyly. His duality will kill you someday. 

“Hotch I am here,” he quickly yelled back.

Whispering a quick apology to you before the tall black-haired guy showed up before us. His firm eyes looked into yours. He was standing in front of you with a straight face. Frankly, he seemed like a strict guy who didn’t understand any jokes. You’re starting to get the feeling that you did something bad. Your mouth got dry.

“Are you Y/N/Y/L/N?” the man asked you.

You nodded your head skeptically. Unsure of what consequences it might bring.

“I am Aaron Hotch, Supervisory Special Agent and Unit Chief of the BAU,” he continued, “And I am asking you Y/N to join the team of the BAU.”

Your head began to spin. 

#criminal minds #criminal minds smut #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fandom #criminal minds x reader #x reader #reading #books #one shot #smut #imagine #y/n #spencer reid #spencer reid smut #dr spencer reid #bau team #spencer reid fandom #spencer ried #spencer x reader #spencer x y/n #spencer x you #criminal minds fanfic #reader insert #x female reader

[jessamine-rose]

♱ Dance with the Devil ♱

Against my will, I was inspired to write more for WHB. Istg some of these characters aren’t even my biases but their paraphilias are too creative. I hope you all enjoy reading this <3

Characters:: Sitri, Leviathan, Astaroth, Glasyalabolas, Paimon, Amon, Marbas, Gabriel, Minhyeok

Note:: Nsfw, pls take note of each character’s paraphilia before reading, noncon for Gabriel, MH-2 spoilers for Minhyeok, MINORS DNI

♡ If you like black tea, you are a perfect fit for Sitri. He often brews your favorite drink for the purpose of enjoying your satisfied smile, your bittersweet kisses, the melody of your palpitations as he makes love to you. If you ever send him a recording of your heartbeat, he will save it on his phone and listen to it religiously in your absence. Just don’t be shocked if he uses your gift for impure reasons; his imagination can only do so much.

♡ Leviathan enjoys the sensation of your hands around his neck, but what more if you were to experiment with his kink? Does he get more excited when you use your bare hands? Does he prefer the metal chill of rings or the soft lace of gloves against his skin? Would he come faster if you dig your fingernails into his throat—and if yes, what if your nails were longer, sharper? There are so many factors at play and you have all night to find out~

♡ Astaroth’s kink is perfect for literature lovers!! If you write erotica, he will gladly proofread your work, going so far as to enact the scenes and his suggested revisions. Another time, you asked him to read you a “bedtime story” and he complied after much pestering. He accepted your book and read it aloud in his soothing voice…then upon reaching a raunchy scene, he looked up from the page, met your cheeky gaze, and joined you in bed <3

♡ Once you were done kink-shaming Glasyalabolas, you decided to indulge him. His paraphilia is creepy, to say the least, but you knew what you were getting into. The best method? Play dead. You can’t resist the occasional moan or involuntary shudder, especially when he is touching you, but it certainly does wonders for his arousal. You’re his Ophelia, his Sleeping Beauty—beautiful, voiceless, and completely at his mercy.

♡ The only thing Paimon enjoys more than your blood is the sight of your body decorated with cute bandages!! Once he’s had enough of you, he will treat your wounds and present you with a set of printed Band-Aids. Here, would you like a pink one for your finger? What about a heart pattern for your thigh? A smiley face on your neck? Even better, what if your Band-Aids match the stickers on his horns? Take your pick~

♡ Sometimes, you wonder if Amon gives you tasks which he knows you will fuck up. There are telltale signs—his constant gaze, a hint of a smile, empty reassurances which somehow lead you to his bedroom. It begs the question: How would he react if you were to make a mistake in bed? Would he still smile after you “accidentally” touch a sensitive spot or ruin his orgasm? How will he react once he realizes you’re doing it on purpose?

♡ If Marbas were to cite an example for the term “heaven and hell,” it would be your moments of intimacy. He encourages you to restrain him to the best of your ability—tying complicated knots, using strong materials, testing his new set of regular restraints—then use his body as you’d like. It’s difficult to say who enjoys it more, especially when you are relishing the sight of him beneath you, totally submissive and desperate for your touch.

♡ Considering your history, your sadism towards Gabriel is warranted. So once he is defeated, in a church no less, you waste no time in humiliating him. If he refuses to yield, it only takes a few minutes to bend him over the altar and force him to face the image of his God. How does it feel to be watched by the passive, artificial faces of his creator and fellow angels? At any rate, the stained glass casts such pretty shadows on his defiled body~

♡ Of course Minhyeok knows your underwear preferences. The color, the style, the type of fabric, every detail. So when he finds a black lingerie set in your closet, he recognizes it as a new purchase—but for who? The next thing he knows, he is visualizing the lingerie on you and  calling you for answers. Whether or not he understands your invitation, that specific underwear will frequently disappear from your room.

♡

Sitri fic ๑ Lucifer fluff ๑ More headcanons

Fun fact, a day after I wrote Glasyalabolas and Sitri’s headcanons, they came home in my gacha pull. D-Did I summon them?? (´⊙ω⊙`)

So far, my favorite devils are Leviathan, Sitri, Astaroth, and Satan but the other characters’ paraphilias are…….interesting to write about, to say the least. Cheers to more hornii xD

Tag a WHB enjoyer!! @sparkbeast20 @2af-afterdark @d34dlysinner @pinkaditty @og-in-a-bog @h2o2-and-baking-soda @paradivis @potol0ver @obeythisass @gr0tesquerom4ntica @dobaekki @binar-es @ushitoshiii @yanmaresu @beelsjuicytitties

#whb #what in hell is bad #whb x reader #what in “hell” is bad? #whb sitri #sitri #sitri x reader #whb leviathan #leviathan #leviathan x reader #astaroth #astaroth x reader #glasyalabolas #glasyalabolas x reader #whb paimon #paimon #paimon x reader #amon #whb amon #amon x reader #marbas #whb marbas #marbas x reader #gabriel #gabriel x reader #minhyeok #mdni #g/n reader #spicy warning #jessamine-writing

[eleajay]

Charlie’s wings

Saw somewhere on Hazbin wiki that Charlie has wings as well? I dunno, but hey! An excuse to let me draw her some wacky designs! Sure why not lol

(Btw the Chinese in p1 says “referenced swan wings” on the left and “referenced hummingbird wings” on the right.)(And p4 is the back of the wings.)

So my headcanon is that Lilith has 1 pair of wings, with the outer being pure golden and inner black with golden stripes, the pattern similar to Adam’s, since I think Lilith was supposed to have wings basically identical to Adam’s had she not been cast out of heaven, so her demonic version of the wings just coloured the inner side black.

Charlie, on the other hand, had never actually summoned her own wings before. She loved her parents’ wings back when she was little, but couldn’t quite summon her own due to her young age. As she grew up and grew rebellious, she became more or less a bit distant from her parents, and since wings aren’t exactly required in her everyday life, she kinda just forgot about it altogether. After the battle with Adam tho, she was reminded of how having wings could have saved her from falling and having to wait for dad to catch her, so she just decides to ask Lucifer to teach her how to summon the wings.

Lucifer had thought her wings would either be 1 pair like Lilith, or be 3 pairs like him. He even thought it might be 2 pairs, but never did he imagine it was going to be 1 on the right and 3 on the left. The imbalance made it extra hard for Charlie to learn how to fly, but she did eventually (don’t ask me how I’m not an expert in aerodynamics and if it doesn’t make sense I’m just gonna call it hellborn magic like how Pegasi in MLP are able to fly) So, she’s not very good at flying and she won’t resort to it if not absolutely necessary, but she sometimes pulls them out just standing on the ground to scare off bad people, ldk.

Also my headcanon is that there’s actually a spell to summon your wings and hide them back, it’s not very long or complicated, but it’s not in any demon language, or any human language for that matter, it’s in angelic language. Charlie couldn’t learn it when she was young, because dad and mom never speaks angelic tongue and all the demons she grew up around don’t know it either. Lucifer and Lilith were from heaven, and they have been using the spell for like, ten thousand years, they’re so fluent with it they can use it silently. (think silent spells in Harry Potter I guess?) While Charlie can’t really do that with certainty yet, when she tries to use it silently it sometimes doesn’t work.

#Hazbin Hotel #Hazbin Charlie #Charlie Morningstar #Hazbin Lilith #Lilith Morningstar #Hazbin Lucifer #Lucifer Morningstar #my art

[mvltisstuff]

solitude - e.b

summary: the only people who hear hen and chimney out about jonah are y/n and buck, but little do they know the hell it’ll rain down on them.

evan buckley x reader

a/n: ok but like imagine all four of them working tgt bc this storyline was actually rly good… this is literally just buck, y/n, hen and chim acting like the mystery gang for a day!! 3.4k wc 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

“claudette and perry both had no other symptoms before full cardiac arrest,” hen starts, scanning over the patient charts left by the new paramedic. “he’s administered nebulized albuteral during transport.”

“hen, look,” chimney points to the computer screen. “he’s been at four different locations, chicago, miami, dallas, and denver. now he’s hitting up LA.”

the station sirens buzz in their ears, alerting that they could be discovered any second. hen shoves the files into her jacket as chimney logs out, and they shuffle out quickly attempting to go unnoticed. hen looked for any details in the files that she could, trying to confide in karen.

clearly, there was a pattern of extreme suspicious in jonah’s patient files. these patients had no reason to be going into arrest when they were not showing previous symptoms. hen was the best paramedic there, in medical school. she just hoped that everyone would see the obvious wrongdoings. it was painfully evident that he was a dangerous person to be placed in the system.

hen and chimney banged repeatedly on buck and y/n’s apartment, knowing that they’d be the ones to believe them. y/n’s taken note of jonah’s behaviors, but she tried not to think anything of them, just as magical saves.

“hi?” buck says, answering the door. “are you two ok?”

“we need to talk to you and y/n,” hen tells him, inviting chimney and herself in. both y/n and buck hadn’t expected visitors, so they were clearly not dressed in presentable clothing.

“hey, hen, chim,” y/n comes down the stairs. “what’s going on?”

“you two need to look at these,” hen slaps the folders down onto their kitchen counter. buck takes one as y/n reads the other.

“what’s wrong with them? aren’t these just patient files?”

“and why are they all jonahs?”

“buck, you saw claudette before she died.”

“y-yeah, i did. she was fine, though. there was probably something underlying the inhalation,” buck grows more confused at the paperwork and the accusations from his friends.

“look,” chim points. “he’s administering drugs that have nothing to do with patient conditions.”

“meaning… he had no reason to push any meds at all,” buck speaks slowly, starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“protocol dictates that the only treatment used in that situation is respiratory, and we looked at claudette’s autopsy report. there were incredibly high amounts of potassium in her system that would’ve been present in the tests we did on scene,” hen informs the group in front of her.

“so is he some murderer paramedic?” y/n asks, looking up from the file. “i believe you, but how do we even get this to question? do we bring it to bobby?”

“i don’t know where we go from here,” hen starts. “but he needs to be out of the LAFD before he purposely kills someone else.”

buck, y/n, henrietta, and chimney had all piled over to athena’s house. they presented the activity of greenway to bobby, explaining that he has documented his cynical moves.

“i’m not approving any of your suspicions, but we have to be careful with these accusations against him getting out,” bobby tells his workers.

“listen, cap,” chim says. “he’s got a history of this. we can’t confirm what was in that syringe, but it sent claudette collins into cardiac arrest.”

“he’s been bouncing around to different cities the last few years, way too many to be looked passed.”

“so he’s just killing people for mercy?” athena asks, holding bobby’s hand and intently reading over the patient files.

“it’s way more complicated than that. when jonah was a kid, he played the hero. he’s reliving that by trying to play god and bring them back,” y/n adds, standing beside her boyfriend. buck doesn’t want to overthink this, but he’s so conflicted about the whole situation. he knows bringing up something like this is incredibly risky when dealing with a person like jonah. if things were to go awry, then he’d feel like it was his fault for not believing it.

“we tried getting news footage, but it’d be more suspicious that way,” buck tells bobby.

the group was sent away to leave bobby and athena to their own investigation, letting them work this out on their own. in the driveway, they stood by the two cars they used to come here.

“come back to my house,” hen suggests. “we can look some stuff up there on jonah and pick out any details we can get.”

“i can grab my laptop that has the proper software on it. it’s back at my place, though, i’d have to grab it,” chim states.

“ok, guys,” buck begins. “don’t you think we might just have to leave this alone? there’s only so much we can do with this.”

“who else can deal with this, though? we have the resources and the upper hand with this, buck,” hen replies back at his worries.

“look, buck,” y/n places a reassuring hand on his arm. “i’ll go with chim to get his computer, and then we’ll be over. just try and hear her out some more because this is something way deeper than what we might think.”

buck agrees, allowing himself to listen to hens convincing. she rants on about more details, slowly but surely opening up his mind to the possibility. as she portrays her concerns to him passionately, her sentence is brought to a halt when her phone rings through her car’s speaker. the unknown number is thoughtless to henrietta as she presses the green button. “hello?”

“i heard you’ve been asking people about me,” the cold, dark voice echos through the car, causing buck and her to tense up.

“jonah?” buck whispers, to not let him hear.

“got the weirdest call, something about an investigation about that dispatcher. did you four file a complaint against me?”

“jonah, i don’t know what you think is going on, but-“

“i think that you never gave me a chance. to show you what i’m capable of,” he speaks eerily into the phone, making bucks eyes widen. “so i’m gonna do that now. i’m going to show you, henrietta and evan.”

the phone beeps, signaling the hang up from the other end. “what was that?” buck panics. “hen, what is he showing us?”

“he said us four, right? he’s gonna show us four?”

“so are we next?”

“next? who’s first?”

buck heart drops to the floor, frantically reaching for his phone and dialing y/n’s number. his shaky hands slowed it down, but the prolonged ringing was painful to hear. if jonah was going to show them what he can do, he’s going to go for that group first. as evil of a man as he is, he’s amazingly smart. he’s not going to begin with buck and hen, he’s starting with y/n and chimney before going down the line. the sweet sound of y/n’s voicemail goes into bucks ears, his heart thumping against his chest. “hen, go to chimneys apartment. now!” he yells, and she presses on the gas, redirecting the two of them in his direction.

buck called y/n repeatedly, completely petrified of losing the one person he’s loved more than anything. he would be so defeated if she was hurt because of his disbelief. he called chimney, maddie, karen, and anyone who might be able to reach them. unfortunately, no one had good answers for them.

he sprinted up the stairs of the building, hen rushing behind him. the door was unlocked, and the room had an unfamiliar feel to it. the orange lighting and silence was strange to the two, searching for her best friend and his girlfriend. “chim?” hen shouts out. she gives buck an unsure look, one containing an expression of fear and confusing all mixed into one.

before buck can even turn, the thick footsteps behind him rush up. he looks at hen, ready to pounce and run out, but the man is too quick on his feet. buck is injected with a needle right where his shoulder and neck meet, twinning with hens own needle in her skin. the syringes are pushed down, forcing an unnecessary liquid into their bodies.

they recognize the feeling all too well. the fading of their hearing turning into ringing. the scene in front of them disintegrating into black dots. their bodies became heavier and heavier, before turning light again as they thumped to the ground below.

the two awoke at the same time, feeling like they were suffering with sleep paralysis. their arms were restrained behind their back and their eyes were dry and tired. their ankles were connected to the legs of the chairs, but the sight in front of them was worse than any demon that could haunt them.

jonah towered over chimney on the table, pushing more probable toxic fluids into his veins. hens heart was beating obnoxiously fast, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the drugs or from the scene that was unfolding. chimney lay shirtless and almost lifeless on the table with alarmingly slow beeping coming from the portable machine.

y/n was laying across from him in the opposite direction, the two being smushed together. she had matching IV’s in her arm and patches on her chest, the only remaining article was her bra. buck could swear he was screaming, but nothing was coming out. his face was still, but his eyes were full of tears and panic at seeing y/n unconscious. everything was completely out of his control. he glanced over at hen, complete terror in her eyes while trying to calm jonah.

the room they were placed in was unfamiliar, almost completely darkened beside the light above his two victims. or in jonah’s mind, his patients. jonah craved validation from people around him, but also from himself. he remains hungry for the feeling he had the day he saved his bus driver. he was a hero, and he had to make sure everyone knew it.

as soon as the flatline ricocheted in the room, jonah scooped up the paddles and shocked the two until the beeping commenced again. “look who decided to join us,” jonah teases. “i was too generous with the propofol, you two were out longer than i expected!”

“why are you doing this, jonah?” hen begs to know the answer. bucks dying just to give him a piece of his mind, but hen has regained more of her strength.

“you know, you can get anything on the internet these days, like medical equipment, drugs. the real answer is that you gave me no choice, henrietta. snooping around and checking up on me when we are supposed to be on the same team.”

“we are not, on the same team,” hen mumbles. “we don’t put our patients in danger.”

jonah moves over to y/n. “one sec,” he says while pushing another dose of adenosine.

“no,” buck manages to push out.

“jonah, please, you’re stopping her heart,” hen cries out.

“don’t worry, nothing a little epinephrine can’t fix, right?” he nodes with a ring of excitement in his voice. an maniacal, twisted voice. as soon as his hands move to the paddles next to him, buck frantically shuffles in his chair. he places them to her chest, her body flailing up before restoring a normal heart rhythm. “woo!” jonah screams. “nothing like it, huh? the rush of watching someone walk right up the deaths door and snatching them right back. it’s like being god.”

“we are not god,” buck replies to him, regaining some of his fight. “i swear to god, let them go right now-“

“alright, alright,” jonah says. he grabs the needles and bottles while pouring the drug into it. he injects it into both y/n and chimneys skin.

“jonah, please don’t do this, jonah!” hen yells.

“oh, my bad, i thought you wanted me to let them go…” he tells them, slyly.

“you son of a bitch, you lay another hand on her an-“

“and you’ll what? you can’t do anything, buckley,” jonah steps closer to the restrained people. “you both need a partner like me. someone more your speed.”

hens eyes land on the movement on one of the tables. chimney twitches and his eyes are squinting from weakness in his brain. he’s playing around with the machine while getting a good grip on one of the electric shock paddles. “you are not my speed. you’re sloppy, and even if i wanted to commit these heinous crimes, you think i’d let myself get caught?” hen starts to mock the man in front of her while trying to distract him to give chimney time. bucks eyes have never separated from y/n, his soft gaze was planted on her aching body, lacking life in all forms.

“you might’ve been a hero once, jonah,” buck begins to play along with the distraction act, knowing they can’t take anymore of the brunt of it than y/n and chimney have. “but now, well you’re nothing but a fucking murderer,” buck hisses out at him. as jonah begins to move over, hen gives chimney a convincing look as he presses a button on the vital machine.

“no, i’m not,” jonah laughs sarcastically.

“then why is chimney not breathing?” buck spits at him as jonah whips around, looking at the flatlining man on the table. he runs around, and chimney silently hypes himself up to act. it’s now or never, it’s live or die, and it’s jonah’s turn to taste his own medicine.

chimney shoves the paddle into jonah, causing him to shiver and collapse on the floor in front of him. “chim!” hen gasps. “oh, my god. are you ok?” chimney grunts his way over and off the table, stumbling to the ground while he crawls over to hen. he starts pulling at the ropes around her feet, letting them go as she is able to maneuver her hands out of the ropes. she wobbles over to buck, who is then released and limps over to his girlfriend.

“y/n? hey, baby, c’mon wake up,” he shakes her in a desperate attempt to bring her senses back and wake her from this nightmare. when he eyes finally begin to slowly open, he releases a heavy breath.

“buck, please tell me she’s ok!” hen says, comforting chimneys panting self.

“she’ll be ok,” he leans down, pressing his lips to her forehead.

“b-buck,”

“hey, hey, it’s ok, we’re all ok.”

the red and blue lights are hard to miss behind them, reflecting in the windows and onto the walls. they hear the ruckus of the officers clattering their way into the room, placing chimney and y/n on a stretcher as buck and hen follow out. jonah is summoned away to the new reality of the back of a police car. buck finally sees another familiar face, running over to bobby as he pulls him into a strong hug. bobby’s anger is fueling in his system, not being able to control himself before his fist is connected with jonah’s face.

“hey, cap,” chimney says, clearly on some new type of drug that will actually help him. “nice punch.”

“i am so sorry, you guys. im just so happy you’re ok,” bobby rants out in pure relief at his team. hen climbed into chimneys ambulance, as buck stood in complete denial about the situation. “hey, buck.”

“she died, bobby,” buck says, glaring into the distance. “her heart stopped and now she’s pumped up with all this stuff and i couldn’t save her and he almost murdered her-“

“listen, kid,” bobby grabs bucks shoulders, trying to ground him. “she’s ok, what she needs now is you next to her. we got him, he’s going away for the rest of his life. now go get checked out, please.”

buck releases yet another exhale as a matching teardrop falls down his cheek. buck walks off, grabbing onto y/n’s hand as she’s lifted into her own ambulance. he still looks at his girlfriend in complete disbelief that she’s alive, and that he is too.

the hospital air was dry and they knew it like a best friend. the smell, the feeling, the white lights that make you think you’ve died when you wake up. they’ve walked in and out of so many hospitals, almost having no fear that they’ll never come out. until buck sees y/n in the bed is the first time he’s completely shaking in the one next to her.

“c’mon, doc,” chimney complains. “i’m fine, i don’t need to stay here.”

“it’s good that you feel good, but it’s just overnight. we want to keep an eye on you and y/n to make sure nothing changes in your blood levels,” the doctor explains.

“it’s ok, chim. just listen to her because she’s right,” hen reassures him before starting her own complaint session.

“i’m glad you feel that way, because we’re keeping you too for further tests. you as well, evan. it’s to make sure he didn’t put anything else into you guys,” hen groans and looks at her three friends.

“we’re in for a hell of a night, y’all.”

chimney and y/n were placed in one room together, needing the same type of observation as hen and buck were having a slumber party in the other. they were watching whatever crappy reality shows they could find until their boredom got the best of them. hen and buck snuck out in their twinning gowns and IV lines and made their way to the room holding their favorite people inside. when they walked in, they said, “guys, we’re breaking out of this joint.”

“and how exactly do you plan to execute that?” chimney asks, slurping on an almost empty juice box. buck moves over to sit on y/n’s bed, caressing her hand as she smiles at him.

“you two almost did die,” hen says. “you know, i never really liked him.”

“not much of a fan myself,” chimney replies in his always lighthearted spirit.

“well some people thought i was crazy, but you guys were ready to go to battle with me. with no proof, you listened and were on board from the start.”

“um, i definitely was not on board from the start,” buck interjects.

“well look at us now buck! we’re stuck together for life,” hen smiles.

“hens always right, that’s the thing between us. she’s the genius and we were the comic relief,” chimney adds.

“you guys are way more than that. chim, you’re the best friend i’ve ever had. y/n and buck, i can’t imagine my life without you two. you’re like denny’s siblings at this point and i’m one hundred percent bringing this up at your wedding.”

“well, you know what they say about parents at weddings,” y/n hints. “they always pay for it.”

“ooh! got her there,” buck laughs and looks at hen. “you know i love you guys, you’re my family.” he lifts y/n’s hand up, landing a kiss on her knuckles.

“if we weren’t in a hospital room right now, i’d say that was quite romantic, buck. i’m proud of you,” chimney pokes fun at the couple on the other side of him before looking back at hen. “we did a great job raising them, don’t you think?”

“i’m just really happy you’re ok. i cant do this without you, y/n. you’re my whole life,” buck speaks softly to his girl, looking deep into her loving eyes.

“you’ll never have to do anything without me,” y/n says. “you’re stuck with me, love.”

#911 #911onfox #bobby nash #eddie diaz #evan buckley #evan buckley fanfic #athena grant #henrietta wilson #evan buckley x reader #evan buck buckley x reader #evan buckley x you #evan buckley fluff #evan buckley one shot #evan buckley fanfiction #evan buckley fic #evan buckley 911 #evan buck buckley #evan buckley x y/n #may grant #maddie buckley #chimney 911 #911 chimney #911 buck

[angelasscribbles]

Victim of Love Chapter 6: Quagmire

Series: Victim of Love

Fandom: The Royal Romance

Pairings: Liam x Riley (for now), Drake x Riley

Word Count: 1,404

Rating: MA

A/N: This is not sweet, canon Liam. Things are complicated. He might be a little selfish in this one.

Warnings for this chapter: None really. A very heated argument lol.

Song Inspiration for series: Victim of Love by The Eagles

I see a broken heart

You got your stories to tell

My other stuff: Master List.

Drake was afraid that lunch with Liam was going to be awkward, all things considered. But it wasn’t. They quickly fell back into the old, familiar patterns of their friendship. The teasing, the bantering, and the habit of telling each other everything.

Well, almost everything.

Drake squirmed uncomfortably when Liam asked about his love life. He decided to evade rather than lie, “Probably less complicated than yours.”

“Probably,” Liam mused as he lifted his water glass to his lips, “I haven’t seen Riley in weeks and last night, she wouldn’t even let me touch her!”

“What?” Drake almost choked on the forkful of potatoes he had just stuck in his mouth. That news made him happier than it should have.

Liam set his glass on the table and pushed it away with a sigh, “She’s angry. I don’t blame her, all things considered, but-“

“What is the story there?” Drake had paused chewing, eyes locked on his best friend as he waited for answers.

“As I told you, the council wouldn’t approve her nor would my father.”

“Because she’s a commoner?” He remembered Liam had told him that much at the wedding.

Liam nodded, “Yes.”

Drake placed his fork on his plate and leaned back in his chair as he regarded his friend solemnly, “And there was nothing you could do? No negotiations? No loopholes? I mean…clearly, she’s a duchess now…”

There were always loopholes.

Liam shrugged, “If Riley hadn’t existed, then my decision would have been easy. You’ve seen my wife. She’s not exactly hard to look at and she was raised for ruling. She handles the role well.”

“So what? You wanted to have your cake and eat it too?” 

“Is that so bad?”

Drake’s mouth fell open, “I mean…it doesn’t seem fair to either woman.”

“I’m surprised at your reaction, it’s nothing you don’t do.”

“What isn’t?”

“Sleeping with multiple partners.”

“That’s true but I’m not in a committed relationship.”

“Are you saying that if you found the right woman, you would give up all the others?”

Emerald eyes swam through his head as he nodded, “I would.”

Liam scoffed, “I’m not sure I believe that but regardless, you know that marrying was never about love and the commitment and duty part is all about Cordonia.”

“So you two have agreed on an open relationship?”  

“Oh, heavens no!” Liam reached for a roll, “Can you imagine the scandal if the queen had an affair?”

Drake’s brows drew together in confusion, “But you’re having an affair!”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“First of all, because I’m the king. I can do what I want. Second of all, I can’t produce a child with the wrong parentage. She can. Even if I impregnated someone else, the public wouldn’t care. But if the queen had an illegitimate child? No. That can’t happen.”

“But-“

Liam waved his hand dismissively, “I know, I know. It seems unfair, but it’s the way of the world. I don’t make the rules.”

“You’re literally the king, you ass.” Drake shook his head half in amusement and half in disbelief.  

“Even that has it’s limits.”

“So, your wife doesn’t know about Riley?”

“I wouldn’t say that….”

“And Riley is okay with your marriage?”

“I wouldn’t say that either,” Liam sighed, “It’s….complicated.”

The door to the private dining room opened and Drake choked on his food again as Liam sprang to his feet.

Riley went willingly into Liam’s embrace, but her eyes zeroed in on Drake as she returned the hug. Turning her head to the side so Liam’s kiss landed on her cheek, she greeted them both with, “Good morning.”

Liam chuckled, “it’s afternoon, love. This is lunch.”

“For you,” Riley scoffed as she took a seat at the table, “first meal of the day is breakfast no matter what time it’s served.”

“Riley tends to burn the midnight oil,” Liam explained as he retook his seat.

“I’m a raging night owl, he means,” she smiled at Drake and his heart somehow managed to plummet and soar at the same time.

Drake cleared his throat as he reached for his water glass, “I wasn’t aware you’d be joining us.”

“Liam insisted,” she paused as a server placed a dish in front of her then spoke to her plate as she pushed the food around with her fork, “sorry I was late. I was a bit hung over this morning.”

“I want you two to get to know each other!” Liam interjected.

Riley’s eyes lifted from her plate to meet Drakes; her gaze laden with amused irony.

“Ah…I….” Drake had never been struck speechless before, but then he’d never been in such an awkward situation.

He was saved from answering when the door to the dining room opened again. The queen strode into the room, fury etched on every feature of her face, “I knew I’d find you with her!”

Riley’s fork clattered to her plate as an exaggerated sigh escaped her, “Just fucking peachy…”

Liam was on his feet again, “Darling, you’re supposed to be resting-“

“How can I rest when I know she’s here?” the new arrival leaned around Liam’s body to glare at Riley, “It’s bad enough when you disappear for days at a time to Valtoria, or she follows you to Paris but here you are carrying on under my own roof!”

Riley turned in astonishment, “Are you serious right now? After what you did to me?”

“What I did to you? You’re the one fucking my husband even though you know I’m pregnant and shouldn’t be placed under any undo stress! Have you no shame?”

“Me?” Riley pushed away from the table and strode toward the other woman, shoving past Liam as she went, “You’re the one that married the man I loved even though you were supposed to be my best friend!”

“I was your best friend, Riley! But I was sent here for a specific purpose, and I fulfilled that purpose!”

“Oh really, Hana? Don’t pretend that you gave a shit about what your parents wanted…you married him to punish me for not returning your feelings!”

Hana stumbled back like she’d been hit, “That’s an outrageous accusation!”

Riley scoffed, “It’s the truth! Two nights before the coronation you tried to get me to run away with you and when I told you that I was in love with Liam, you-“

“Riley, please,” Liam reached for her arm in an attempt to defuse the situation.

She jerked her arm out of his grasp and spun on him, “Fuck you Liam! You didn’t even try to fight for us and out of everyone you could have chosen, you picked my best fucking friend!”

Hana’s voice shook with outrage, “If you were my friend, Riley, you wouldn’t be sleeping with my husband!”

“If you were my friend, Hana, you wouldn’t have married the man that had already made promises to me! The man that fucked me in the hedge maze five minutes before getting engaged to you!”

Hana’s body jerked back at the revelation and a malicious smile spread across Riley’s face, “Oh, you didn’t know about that, huh?”

Hana’s face darkened even more as her eyes filled with angry tears, “I….you’re lying!”

“Sure I am,” Riley’s composure was back, “Keep telling yourself that because we both know he won’t tell the truth about a goddamn thing!”

Riley turned and headed for the door, “Fuck both of you! You deserve each other!”

Liam started to go after her, “Riley, wait!”

Hana stepped in front of him, “Liam! Are you serious right now? You’re going to chase after your whore? I’m your wife!”

Drake, who had sat watching the whole exchange with wide eyes scrambled to his feet. Clamping a hand on Liam’s shoulder, he told him, “It’s okay, deal with your wife. Stress can’t be good for the baby….I’ll go after Riley.”

“But…you barely know her…”

“You’re right. I just met her. But it doesn’t seem like she’s in the mood to deal with you right now, does it?”

Liam’s shoulders slumped as he blew out a breath of frustration, “You’re right. Thank you, Drake.”

“Sure,” he said as he headed for the door.

Don’t thank me. I don’t deserve it.

He threw a glance over his shoulder as he exited the dining room. Liam had Hana wrapped in his arms.

Drake shook his head as let the door fall shut and took off down the hall after Riley.

#victim of love #angelasscribbles #trr au #drake walker #drake x mc #drake x riley #the royal romance #trr #the royal romance fanfic #choices fic writers creations #cfwc fics of the week #choices #liam rys #choices stories you play

[gintrinsic-writing]

Sometimes the heroes traveled through the portals without a hitch. This was not one of those times.

Sky stepped through the other side, shivering as the portal’s strange, cool aura dripped from him like water, and knew immediately that something was wrong. He glanced around, taking in looming canyon walls and sandy hills. Cacti, clusters of flowers, and thin bushes dotted several slopes like eccentric tufts of hair.

Sky had only a moment to realize that none of the others had come through the portal with him when the Master Sword suddenly pulsed in his hand. Letting instinct guide him, he spun around and raised the blade, expecting to see an enemy. Instead, he met the bright, golden eyes of a frightened stranger.

“You—!” the stranger began, fumbling awkwardly for the scimitar at his side. His dark hands shook when he finally held the weapon out. His grip was all wrong. “How did you…? How?”

Sky lowered the tip of the Master Sword and took a few steps back, trying to look less threatening. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He imagined that the man must’ve witnessed the portal before it vanished; it was a strange sight even for those accustomed to magic. Sky looked the man up and down, noting the geometric patterns on his green, black and gold clothes, as well as the intricately worked band of gold that held his red hair back from his face. Sky was positive he’d never seen this man before, but something about him seemed… familiar. “Have you by chance seen my companions?” he asked, knowing how the portals could affect time. It was possible the others had already been through the area. “There’d be eight of them. They, um, look a little like me.”

For some reason, that made the man swallow nervously. Sweat beaded along his hairline. Sky was suddenly reminded of Groose. “Eight?” the stranger croaked. “Eight more of you?” He muttered something else under his breath. Sky thought it might’ve been a prayer.

“Yes, but I assure you, we’re no threat to you. We—“

The man laughed humorously. “I know what you are,” he said with a sneer. “And I—I don’t know how you came back, but I swear by Din’s strength, I’ll destroy you again.”

Sky felt his awkward smile slip away. “Wh-what?” He took another step back just as the Master Sword pulsed again—less of a warning, more of a reassurance. He decided to trust Fi, hesitantly sliding the Master Sword back into its sheath. “I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. I’m not sure who you think I am, but I certainly don’t know you.” He held out both hands, palms facing the stranger, who made no effort to lower his own weapon. “Please, I promise I mean you no harm.”

“I know that blade,” the stranger said with a fierce scowl. His confidence was ruined by the way he continued to tremble fearfully. “You can’t fool me, Link.”

Sky blinked. Then he blinked again. “I… Sorry, who are you?”

“Of course you don’t remember. Why would you? Why would a demon remember the name of a mere man?”

“Demon?” Sky shook his head, but the stranger wasn’t finished.

“Well, this time, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing you ever know. I’m Ganondorf, and I won’t let you bring darkness back to the world, corrupter of Courage!”

Sky had a feeling this was about to get even more complicated.

#I might add more to this later #love me some Good Ganon content #actually want to write a full fic about a good or at least morally gray ganon #lu fic #linked universe #lu sky #ganondorf #gintrinsic writing

[thefanciestborrower]

I think one reason I like vore so much is because of how beautiful the human body is. We’re so intricately designed inside and out, and while the outside gets a lot of recognition, people forget how spectacular the inside is as well. The roof of our mouth is so sensitive and ticklish, with complicated patterns weaving and interlocking as if carved by the hand of an expert artist. Our teeth are strong and crushing sure, but they’re also so very gentle. We can hold a single grain of salt between them without crushing it, and feel temperature in a way not even our fingers quite match. Tastebuds are fascinating tools used to distinguish between foods that might otherwise look exactly the same. These little sensors can detect the presence of the tiniest amount of minerals and herbs, and tell exactly what they are. The tongue itself is so very strong and powerful, while also being incredibly dexterous. Then there’s our throat. A wonderfully constructed piece of our body that specializes in funneling food down to its designated location. It keeps solids separate from the air we breath, and is perfectly constructed for its job. Our stomach is an amazing piece of equipment. It produces a highly caustic chemical that could easily eat away at our body, but it protects us from it, using it as a tool we could not survive without. Our stomach can expand to hold about a quart of food and turn all of that into vital nutrients we need to survive. Heck, the gastrointestinal tract even helps to produce about 50% of the dopamine in our bodies, which is fascinating to me 

And when you take all of that and imagine what it would be like to observe it firsthand well, I can’t be the only one who thinks that would be amazing. The inside of your body is just as brilliant and beautiful as the outside, and vore allows me explore and express this feeling of admiration for our design as humans

#hhhh thinking thoughts today everyone #soft vore #safe vore #I just....wow #humans are wonderfully designed creatures #and I think we tend to forget that #but vore lets you explore that and share it with others #and I think that’s beautiful

[dragonrider9905]

In Defense of Hunter and Echo’s Disagreement

So I was doing some thinking…I really like how just like last season, this season has some complications and no simple answer to some things. I know lots of us like taking a side and we defend it passionately, such as the Hunter vs. Crosshair conflict from last season (I have lots of thoughts about that too but I’ll refrain from that for now) but I noticed a pattern happening again this season with Hunter Vs. Echo.

Before we get further, let’s take a Tech step and try to see why the characters are taking their positions. Personally I like that they’re making us think rather than always being like “oh so and so is so right”. Both are right and both are wrong in a way.

Hunter wants to give Omega a peaceful future. He wants her to have a good childhood. One that isn’t constantly in danger. Crosshair LIED and said they were dead….they were off the Empire’s radar. If they could lay low out of harms way, because he’s tired of living day by day not knowing if he or his family will get hurt or killed. He’s a leader so everything weighs on him. Also….as much as I would love to see in the show that the Batch knew 99….it’s not canon. At least not yet. Here’s hoping. Anyway….if they didn’t know 99… then that would mean the Batch has never known loss. Think about this for a moment. No bad missions. 100% success rate. No brother lost in the field. Losing Crosshair in Season 1 would have been their first tragedy. I imagine that would have scared Hunter. He’d realize they are breakable, they aren’t invincible, they can shatter and just think, he would do anything to keep them all safe.

Echo on the other hand….he wants a future for Omega too but he’s looking past the present moment. He’s an Arc and he and Tech are probably paying more attention to what is going on in the galaxy so he knows there is no way they can’t fight. He doesn’t want a temporary peace. He wants one that lasts. And he’s alway been one to do the right thing. The Empire is bad? Then by heaven he’ll bring it down. Echo’s been through hell and back. He lost his batch mates one by one…..not to mention his twin. Fives. His other half. He’s worked through grief. He’s familiar with it. He knows there is a cost to anything good but its worth it. He’s come out stronger because he didn’t let it conquer him. He’s ok questioning Hunter because again he’s an Arc. He was taught to question. Plus his comfortability with Rex (ie helping plan strategies etc.) shows he’s comfortable challenging people. He isn’t picking on Hunter. He’s just speaking his mind.

The Batch also have a brother centric ideology. I will have to talk about Crosshair in a different post because this theory is very consistent with him as well in a different way. They fought for the Republic …. They never were like the refs in their enthusiasm for the Republic. Brothers was their cause. Not the Republic. Sure they struggled with helping the Separatist Senator from S1, but Hunter and Tech put that away rather quickly. Echo was the one who was so strongly adamant against him. Crosshair makes a comment about what difference does it make if it is the Republic or Empire. They even were going to give the Empire a shot by going on the Onderon mission. When it became clear that it was wrong, they left. Their mottos were all brother centric. They were loyal to each other not anyone or anything else really.

Then you have Echo. He was a Reg. He fought for the Republic. A cause. (I’m not saying he’s not brother centric at all. What I’m saying is he shares the Batches sentiments but there’s more). He knows what it’s like to fight for a cause bigger than himself. To be willing to die or weep for his brothers who fall because they believe in a cause. He’s willing do devote himself to an ideal.

I guess all I’m asking is please before bashing one side or the other to be considerate of where they both come from. They have their own struggles, differences. But at the end of the day they love each other and would die for each other. At the end of the day the Empire is the main evil for setting two people with good intentions against each other because they are trying to find the best path in a confusing time. We have the gift of retrospect. This is new to them. Please be generous to both the characters as they go. They both will be right at times and both be wrong. It got heated between Hunter and Crosshair fans because people forgot that the Empire is forcing them into difficult situations and decisions. There isn’t always a clear answer in the time.

The Bad Batch is giving us some grey space and I love it because I love the complexity of it. But it can be frustrating especially when we want it to be simple so we can just take a side. But the conflict is good and healthy. It is good to have a challenge. Sometimes things come out stronger after being tested and I hope that’s the case for these two. The conflict is healthy to see because Echo and Hunter aren’t disrespectful to each other. They get frustrated, sure, but they don’t want to hurt each other. They want to be heard and valued. Watching them work through these difficulties should be good. But this really shows how our experiences shape us. The best of people may make wrong choices. The hero isn’t always right. And when heroes don’t agree? Makes things sticky. But intriguing. Even they have room to grow because they are only human.

Anyway, thank you to those who took the time to read my rambling thoughts. Happy Bad Batch Eve!

#the bad batch #star wars #tbb crosshair #tbb echo #tbb hunter #tbb tech #tbb wrecker #star wars the bad batch #tbb omega #brotherhood #disagreements #they’re trying #the bad batch season 2 #Hunter and echo are bros #they are the mom and dad of the batch and I can’t see them split #custody of the kids would be challenging and messy #echo please don’t leave

[aurevell]

2022 Fic Year in Review

For the first time ever, I tracked my word count in a spreadsheet, which means I get to see the overall patterns in my writing now that the year is over. This includes fun with charts and graphs, as you can see below:

Total words written: 182,526

Worst writing month(s): February-April

I wrote literally 0 words from February 6 to June 1. Ongoing knee pain made 2022 a rough year. The chart above shows my fun little "wow fuck my knees actually" break for physical therapy woes.

Best writing month(s): June-July

Once I committed to AU-gust, I outlined in May and started churning out words in June and July. My June wordcount alone was 53,804, and I at some point wrote 7,522 words in a single day, a harrowing feat I have since blocked from memory.

Total fics published: 37

This includes The Striking Complication, a longfic I finished in early 2022. It also includes 30 fics (~2k-5k each) for AU-gust and several continuations for them, plus two fics for my long-haired Steter collection. In October, I wrote a Stetopher Week sickfic, a werecat Stiles AU and a Sterek horror fic I’ve been wanting to finish forever.

My longest work was The Third Sacrifice at just over 21,000 words. 

My shortest work was We’ll Have Words Tomorrow at 1,145 words.

My most popular work by kudos and hits was When It Counts, because I’m apparently not the only one who’s a sucker for tongue-tied!Peter Hale.

My favorite fics were:

When It Counts (Steter) - Surprise, surprise. Can’t overstate how hard I cackled while writing this.

It May Simply Lie in Wait (Sterek) - Haunted houses are my favorite, and I basically wrote this just for me.

a small span of quiet (Steter) - A super fun miscommunication fic, and I adore established Steter.

The Endgame (Steter) - My favorite of the AU-gust sci-fi fics. I wish I had sequel ideas, because I want to know what comes next.

The Third Sacrifice (Sterek) - Horror, my beloved. This was a very self-indulgent romp through some monster-infested woods.

Stuff I Want to Work on in 2023

My dreaded nogitsune fic. I posted it as a ficlet for AU-gust, but I want to do a full version even though it's fighting tooth and nail. Waiting to see if it'll cooperate or get buried in my fic graveyard.

A mob AU sequel, which I told myself at the start of 2022 I would definitely work on, and yet here we are.

A second (smaller) AU-gust??? I am really considering it. They say the mind forgets trauma, and I’ve already mostly forgotten the seven layers of hell this year’s event put me through. If I did the 2023 challenge, I'd probably tweak the rules for myself.

In Conclusion

Tried some new fandom events. Met some AMAZING tumblr mutuals, followers, and commenters who made me feel much more connected to the fandom. Wrote some fun stuff I never would have imagined without help and inspiration. 2022 was a fun year for writing, and I can't wait for what 2023 brings 🥳

#2022 #fic year in review #ao3 wrapped #late as usual #hilarious that i'm posting this now #when i plan to write absolutely 0 words till like feb #my sister's visiting and i'm still in Holiday Mode Lite (tm) #my only wip right now is the sweater i'm crocheting

[scully-xo]

Quantum Files part 5 of 7

Fictober, part 5 / My version of fictober: No beta readers. Quick drafts. Incomplete, though outlined. Next chapter to follow in a few days. Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober2022

AO3 Link

X-Files/Quantum Leap crossover, rated T, words 929/7934, Canon Divergence, Pining, Slow Burn (kind of)

Chapter: 1 . 2 . 3 . 4

***

Chapter 5

Another few weeks of leaping, though the excitement gave way under another pressure. The need for answers in his own life. Samantha. Had he given up too quickly? Had his parents? What did they know, that they didn’t tell him?

The dreams morphed. Dreams, not nightmares. Every time he woke, it felt like experiencing memories instead of random firing of neurons, making up a story in his head.

Samantha called to him for help. He was frozen, but it felt like it came from outside. Like someone was making him unable to help. A craggy-faced man who smoked cigarettes talked with his mother. His father said something about a decision and closed the door in his face. They had to be memories.

Was Samantha abducted by aliens?

And Scully… Scully was quieter. Rarely smiled. The shadows under her eyes deepened. Sometimes when she visited she just slept. Laid beside him, arm folded under her head, closed her eyes. She couldn’t lean on him, but he pretended she could. He sat just so, the light from her projection next to his. Wavelength and cell. He’d have to ask her about it one day, how it all worked.

“I got accepted to medical school,” she said suddenly.

“That’s… that’s great.” She wasn’t looking at him. Her voice was flat. Was it just exhaustion or was there something else underpinning her words? “Is that what you want?”

“Yeah. Ever since I was little.”

“Why physics, then, instead of biology?”

She turned, then, to look at him. He imagined her hand brushed against his leg, instead of moving through it. “I think… I didn’t want to understand just how the human body worked. I wanted to understand why.”

He nodded. The future. She’d be a doctor. A surgeon maybe, operating on people’s brains. Or exchanging hearts. Connecting the very things that made us who we are. And what did his future hold?

“You’ll be a great doctor, Scully.”

She smiled, but it faded. Shadows clouding her eyes. “Why?”

He tilted his head at her. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t even bring you back, Mulder, I–”

“What does that have to do with being a doctor?”

“If I can’t do this right, how can I hope to do the rest?”

He laid beside her, their faces inches apart. Yet miles and years, too. It would have to be enough, for now.

“You didn’t have all the details, Scully. I can’t imagine how complicated–”

“I don’t care that I didn’t know everything before this started. I’ve had weeks, months to sort it out. I should have solved it by now.”

“Hey.” He wanted to take her in his arms. Fold around her. But he remained where he was, refusing to break the illusion that she wasn’t really there. “Take it easy on yourself. Not even Singh or Gallagher knew this was going to happen.”

“You don’t understand. I have to do it. Everyone else—” Her eyes squeezed shut, face contorting into a grimace. “Mulder, I…” Sighing, she opened her eyes, blinking away her tears. “They’re shutting down the study.” She choked out the words, like it hurt to say them.

His heart dropped. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago he thought he could do this forever? Now that it was a possibility, he couldn’t stand waiting another second. Ignoring his instinct to yell and scream, to shout to the sky at how unfair all of this was, he clenched his jaw and sat up.

“It’s just Mario and I now, Mulder.”

“They’re just giving up? After keeping all of this from you?”

“They’re-they’re getting heat from the administration. The experiment uses a lot of power and they want results. They’ve held them back so far, but… The others have left, as requested. We’ve been doing our best…”

“Scully.”

“We’ve only got time for a few more leaps, Mulder. I’m sorry.”

He bowed his head, tracing the pattern of the rug underneath him. Swirling orange circles in a field of blue. It reminded him of her hair. Her eyes. And, though her projection was exactly as he remembered, it was merely a good copy. A perfect one. But it wasn’t the real thing. 

He laid back down, moving as close as he could without breaking the illusion. “You’ll manage. You’ll get me back. I believe in you, even if you don’t.” He reached his hand out, splaying his fingers wide. She mimicked the gesture, the gap between their hands distorting the closer they got to each other. 

“I don’t want to leave,” she said. Her eyes shone, then they closed. A tear escaped, running sideways down her face. Though it fell, it would never reach the floor of the apartment that was his current home. 

He willed himself to stay calm, at least for her sake. “Stay a bit longer. You need to rest. Then we’ll think of something.”

She was wrestling with something, but eventually she gave in and nodded and closed her eyes. 

Did she struggle with the same thing as he did? The need for her to be close. To talk to her. They didn’t have much time left. Even though he pretended to hope for her sake, it would be fitting, for him, to lose the one person he felt he finally had a connection with. His person. Did it count as murder, if he leaped into someone and stayed there?

She slept for an hour. Then she was gone, once again. It was unfair, but it couldn’t be any other way.

She couldn’t save him while she was here.

#xf fanfic #msr #mulder and scully #scully x mulder #canon divergence #quantum leap #quantum files #slow burn #pining #i write

[philhoffman]

This week’s Monday Philm was a very special one — Love Liza (2002), with the commentary track featuring PSH, his brother/writer Gordy Hoffman, and director Todd Louiso. I’ve been digging commentaries lately and this is the one I was most excited about, and I doubt another one could ever make me laugh and cry so much.

This is probably my most personal and complicated PSH film. The last time I watched Love Liza as a Monday Philm was the hardest one ever. It was the anniversary of Phil’s death and my last unseen PSH feature film performance. I saved it for last because I knew it would be special, and it was, and it’s become part of the painful and raw and emotional blur of that whole week.

The only time I’ve seen Liza between then and now was on Phil’s birthday in July — I had a PSH mini-marathon with a friend, got home in the middle of the night, made pancakes for myself, and watched it alone in the kitchen at 2 am. I believe there is no better viewing experience for this movie — it cemented in my mind that this is a personal film. As Phil said, theater is communal, but cinema “is just for you.” Love Liza and everything it represents — artistically, personally — is so close to my heart I can’t imagine trying to explain it yet, still.

That being said, the commentary track is fucking brilliant and illuminating (and hilarious). So much goes into every film that the audience may never know, and hearing a few of the core creators (who are close friends and brothers) discuss their baby like this, just hanging out, is the coolest thing in the world. I absorbed so much more about the film, Wilson’s arc, how Phil viewed him and other characters in the story.

Just a few highlights from my literal four pages of notes:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Gordy’s voice before but wow — it’s different than Phil’s, a bit lower and slower, but their patterns and intonations are EXACTLY the same. Phil has such a unique inflection on certain words so it was trippy hearing Gordy speak in an identical way. The jumps, their whispers. Siblings!!!

Phil loved the basketball scene lmao: “It’s like in the middle of this suicide, gas-huffing movie, this guy just doesn’t know how to play basketball.”

It’s very special and hard and moving and comforting to hear Phil talk about grief and how Wilson experiences loss and navigates it, which he does throughout the commentary. “Of course [his grief] is gonna be too much... If something like this happens and if someone loves a person that it happened to as much as Wilson loves Liza, his grief is going to be too much.”

Phil broke a car and accidentally cut himself on a broken window and lost his voice and nearly got hypothermia and almost caught on fire during this month-long shoot. King!

In the middle of the movie, Phil’s cell phone rings (it has the dreamiest, most relaxing ringtone I’ve ever heard?) and a few minutes later he says it was Mimi calling: "[That was] actually my girlfriend, who’s eight months pregnant. And she’s in New York and she’s awesome and beautiful and I miss her a lot, so I’m just saying this right now to like completely immortalize it on this DVD, how excited I am. It’s just like, the most exciting thing in the world.” They must’ve filmed this in early 2003 — Phil became a dad when Cooper was born a few weeks later ❤️

The way PSH puts his hand(s) on his face in many of his performances is one of his most recognizable gestures but I really thought about it tonight. The way he’s putting all of himself out there, to be vulnerable and raw and captured on film for everyone, and his instinct is to hide himself, even in that small way, to cover his face and take a moment for himself/the character before letting us back in.

There’s a short transition between scenes where no one really says anything but you can hear Phil softly breathing, a lot like the start of Jack Goes Boating, which is always the sweetest sound cue. Then he says “sPoOky.”

Every time they mentioned another actor in the film, Phil was like “they were great they were so nice I had a crush they were a sweetheart <3″

He told Todd he wouldn’t film the final scene more than twice.

Seriously cannot overstate how much fun this was. “No more new PSH movies” is something that’s been heavy on my mind lately, but this track was like spending two hours hanging out with Phil and his buddies, watching a brand new film. It wasn’t a press junket or an interview or anything public — just him being himself, doing the funny voices he used with his friends, his humor, making fun of himself one minute and offering honest artistic insights the next, all his different laughs and wheezes. “I’m chewing on a coffee stirrer... 'cuz I’m so nervous telling you about my mooovie!” Just when I think it’s impossible to love him more, I realize I’m twice as in love with him than the moment before.

It makes me that much sadder, too. Hanging out with this side of him, thinking about the loss his family and friends still experience every day, not being able to shoot the shit and laugh their asses off with him anymore. So many people have had that awful, painful, Phil-sized hole in their hearts for almost nine years and counting. But, I don’t think any of us who are lucky enough to know Phil in any way would trade it for anything.

At the very end of the DVD, Gordy says you can email him if you want to read the screenplay, he’ll send it to you. Then Phil says, “And if you wanna just come over and hang out with us, and talk about it some more, we’re at www...” and bursts out laughing <3

#tldr I laughed I cried I had many epiphanies... #monday philm #love liza #philip seymour hoffman #psh #* #they talk abt when Wilson smashes the window and Todd says he doesn't like watching that bc he was worried Phil was gonna get hurt #and Phil says 'oh‚ I'm okay though! :)' and cracks up with this deep free laugh #my love my love my love my love

[romanaisalive]

blood too red

Whumptober 2023

No. 6: “Do or die, you’ll never make me; Because the world will never take my heart.”

Recording | Made to Watch | “It should have been me.”

Witches Seven, original fantasy. Rae is blaming herself for Achlys' capture, unfortunately nobody is willing to sign off on that opinion.

Warnings: referenced captivity, war background, complicated relationships

“Go ahead, say it,” said Rae, staring far ahead.

The plains stretched far before them. If she squinted she could just make out the outline of the mountains on the horizon, standing there cold and unmoving.

“Say what?”

Regina was sitting a few steps above her, digging her fingers into the dirt next to the stairs. The scraping was hurting her ears.

“It should have been me.”

Silence. She knew Regina agreed - they were friendly, but mostly for Achlys’ sake. Regina couldn’t stand Yuriya, and considering she was dating him it put them on opposite sides from the start. She didn’t make things better herself, she was highly suspicious of Regina when she and Achlys first started dating in a way she could admit now was unnecessarily overprotective. Regina wasn’t without her own quirks, none of them were, but she was never going to hurt Achlys.

She was better for her than herself, in some ways. They grew up with the understanding that Achlys’ role was to protect her and while that worked in a battle situation it made for an… interesting dynamic on both of their sides, no matter how much she tried. It changed a bit when they were leading their own covens but ever since they reunited and formed the Coven of Seven they fell back into old patterns with alarming ease.

Old patterns which Regina was openly despising. She couldn’t blame her.

So, she knew Regina agreed but with that she wasn’t sure if she was going to say it. Achlys had a hold on them even now.

“She wouldn’t want you to say that,” said Regina after considerable silence.

That wasn’t a no.

“I know,” she said. “She would set herself on fire if that would help me but that doesn’t mean she should.”

Regina hummed noncommittally.

“How unexpectedly self-aware of you.”

“You think I like it?” Her voice was unexpectedly bitter.

“I don’t see you protesting it much.”

“We’re at war.”

“And that makes it better how?”

She closed her eyes.

“It doesn’t.”

Regina huffed but didn’t press the issue. Maybe she was as exhausted as she was, she couldn’t imagine a case otherwise where Regina didn’t press any issue.

She begrudgingly respected her for it.

“I don’t hate you, you know,” said Regina suddenly.

She blinked.

“Could have fooled me.”

“I hate your partner. That’s different. I really wish I would, believe me, but Achlys loves you a lot and I can’t say I don’t see how.”

She didn’t expect Regina to leave her speechless after all they lived through but apparently this was that kind of morning.

“I don’t hate you either,” she said in the end. “You’re good for her.”

Regina hummed again and they lapsed into silence.

“Okay, you two.” Thayer’s voice made her jump and Regina yelped behind her. “Stop moping around and help me with this test. We need to get our girl back.”

“A minute,” said Regina. “I’ll go for a flyby, faster than lunch.”

She unceremoniously changed into an eagle and did so.

She stood up and looked at Thayer. He looked back at her, slowly shaking his head.

“She won’t validate your self-blame, you know,” he said matter of factly. “Nobody will.”

She sighed.

“Just show me what to do.”

“I’m serious.” Thayer came down on the steps, put his arm around her shoulders and practically dragged her into the tower. “And if someone does I will mercilessly snitch on them once we get her back. You included, for the record.”

She shook her head but couldn’t help a slight smile.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime. My dumbasses.”

She startled even herself when she laughed.

#whumptober 2023 #no.6 #it should have been me

[onebluejey]

            When I say ‘I wish I could be more creative’ I mean it weird. From the outside, I am. I go to art school for fuck’s sake. Art of all kinds is such a huge part of my life and who I am. And I know I'm good at it. Great, even. I’m great at drawing. I'm great at painting. At writing. At crafting. I'm pretty okay at guitar. I think I can sing (I know I can) (I'm good) (I'm just too dysphoric about my singing voice to ever use it) I am surrounded by art at all times (art school, remember) (bookshelf is an entire wall) (majority of floor space in my room is covered art supplies and half-finished projects (I’ll never finish them) (fuck, I want to) I am Always listening to music (its own whole thing) (I’ll get back to that)

            But I can’t help but feel like a fraud. Not in the usual sense. Not in the ‘I’m not talented enough to belong here, to have my work shown at this level’ (of course, I do feel that. We all do. But I’m talking about something else) I can do nothing without some kind of reference. ‘Working from imagination’ is not something I’ve Ever been good at, even as a kid. I want to. I really do. It’s frustrating as hell to want to draw, to paint, to write, to make something, but have absolutely no idea as to what or how. I know I have an imagination. A very good one at that (by that I mean I can visualize 2D and 3D objects in full color, texture, and detail. When I have music in my head, it is in the original singer’s voice with full instrumentation) If I were to have an idea, I could perfectly visualize it. Fully render it. But there is no idea. There never is. I feel like I must be broken in some way. God, I want to Create. Not just copy. The problem is, that doesn’t seem like the kind of skill you can learn. God, I want to learn.

And the most obvious and most frustrating example is music. My relationship with music is something so complicated that I still don’t fully understand it myself. It has to do with the neurodivergency, I’m sure, but I’ve never met anyone like me. I Always have music in my head. Always. As far back as I can remember. Until recently, I thought everyone did. And in full detail, as I mentioned previously, which I also believed was a universal experience until recently. Typically, it’s just a short clip, repeating endlessly until it switches to another song. It can be distracting. Because of this, and maybe because of other things (who knows) I am actively listening to music at most times. Almost always if I’m out doing anything. If I can control the music, if I can make it full songs, and have those songs constantly changing, I can think more clearly, pay better attention. (People have a hard time understanding that) (I have a hard time explaining it/convincing them) It fills up the pattern seeking part of my brain, which lets me do things other than search for patterns.

This would be fine, but for the part where it stops me from creating music of my own (at least I think it’s that) (God, I hope it’s that) (otherwise it’s back to the problem from two paragraphs up) (and that possibility hurts more) (hurts a lot actually) I want to be in a band. I’m perfectly happy playing someone else’s music. (Really! I am!) (it’s more about the playing Song with friends than it being My song) I don’t want to be the main guy (be that frontman or prime writer/lyricist) But I would like to make my own shit. I’d love to write music. I have no idea how anyone writes music. My head is too filled with melodies to make a new one. Lyrics are their own problem as well. I don’t know what the fuck I Could write about. I’m aroace. That knocks out a lot. I’m not fucked up enough to write about that either. Shit hasn’t been easy, but it’s never been That Bad. And I’m good now. No angst, no feeling of inferiority or of not being enough (for someone, for myself, for life, etc.) I’m happy! I’m doing well! I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know what I’d want to say. I feel like I could work on lyrics with someone else, like I could edit and add on and shit, but I don’t have someone else, at least not yet. And I’d still feel like I couldn’t take the credit because the Ideas wouldn’t be mine. And I am a firm believer in cringe is dead, but I feel like anything I’d come up with would be pretentious bullshit, and/or shit that makes things seem worse than they are. I don’t want to sell a false version of the tortured artist. I want to write lyrics. I want to write poetry. I want to write. But I have nothing. I want to learn. I don’t know how. I don’t know if I can. God, I want to.

When I say ‘I wish I could be more creative’, I put the emphasis on the ‘could’, because I can’t help but feel like I can’t.

#<]:)

[blue-eyed-bloodstains]

Look out of the nearest window. What do you see? Details, please. well it’s still dark out right now, sunrise isn’t for another hour but I see illuminated in the lampposts our driveway and the silhouettes of his Jeep in front of the house, and our neighbor’s house as well as the outline of her car parked next to hers and her front porch steps

When you think of the word “posh”, what springs to mind? British lol especially skits from Michael McIntyre (brit comedian)

When you have chocolate, do you eat it room temperature? yeah always

Or are you like me and stick the bar into the fridge first? nope only if it’s like chocolate ice cream from the grocery store

What’s the most shocking thing that’s happened in your part of town? umm no idea to be honest? ours is very small and quiet up along the backroads for the most part so anything shocking would be probably be in Reading or surrounding towns

Which brand are your headphones/earbuds? I have a pair of white Apple earphones and yes, with the chord attached 

Do you see planes fly over your house at all? all the time, our small airport is about 5-10 mins down the road so planes and occasional choppers flying overhead pretty low

Are there any constellations you recognize just by looking at them? yeah I always know Orion, I’ve never really gotten how to recognize others but we can see a lot of em here

Which room of your house/apartment do you spend the most time in? living room

Which insect do you find the most beautiful? butterflies, some fuzzy caterpillars too I love the patterns

Did you have crafts/woodwork at school growing up? I had shop once in 6th grade, loved it. I had art class in middle school 7th grade where one of my best girlfriends taught me how to draw basic anime characters and we did paper mache, made a clay pot, did some weaving...

If so, what was the best assignment you did for it? I loved it all, I love art and making things. especially when I learned how to do shading with drawings and oil pastels

Do you have a friend who likes to tell you everything? yeah

What was the last thing you got very excited about? not much lately, it’s been hell breaking loose lately You can go to any city in any country you want. Which city do you go to? London or somewhere in Italy

Do you like gardening? If so, what do you grow? I’ve never done any but I’d love to grow white roses and homegrown veggies and fruits

Do you enjoy puzzle games? If so, which one’s your favourite? yeah, I love crosswords mostly 

Is there a substance you avoid at all costs? If so, what is it and why? I mean I’ve never done any hard drugs and never really even wanted to so...I guess any substance where you’d have to shoot up. I hate needles, I’d never wanna get desperate enough to need to use them on myself constantly

What would you love to live next door to? a liquor store or bar

What gives you nostalgia? lots of things

What’s the best thing about fall? the colors 

What’s the worst thing about fall? certain dates that happen during...

Do you get cold easily? Or are you constantly hot? complete opposite. I’m constantly overheating due to an illness of mine so it’s very hard to deal every day especially with certain temperatures 

When you think of a classy drink, what comes to mind first? martini

Do you prefer eating out or cooking your own meals? eating out, I can’t cook 

Which language do you think is the most complicated to learn? every language has it’s difficulties so any of em

Is there a place that you might call your second home? his arms

How do you imagine your later life to look like? no fucking clue anymore...

What is a job you would never in a million years want to do? ask Mike Jobs lol there’s a show specifically to answer this 

Is there a piece of jewelry that you feel naked without? my engagement ring

Do you ever “go commando”? yeah sometimes

Do you ever try to make words out of number sequences you see? no

What’s the sweetest thing someone’s done for you? loved me...

Which wild animals are a common sight in your area? what isn’t, actually? lol we have a lot of wildlife and cattle around here given the farmlands...it’s PA, man. 

What’s the weirdest building in your city? the Pagoda given the design but it’s beautiful, especially at night with the red lights lit up 

How do you keep in touch with friends usually? texting/messaging

Do you get a lot of visitors? not a soul

Do you recognize friends’/family’s vehicles by sound? in the past one or two yeah, but right now my fiance’s Jeep. always.

Which Disney villain is your favourite? Scar

On a regular day, what do you usually do at 3 o'clock in the afternoon? if I’m not dozing, usually watching tv and scrolling on my phone

What’s something new you’ve just recently learned? not sure

Which possession would you not want to inherit from a relative? their reputation.

What is something you would never dare to do in public? anything that draws attention to me

Would you/ did you have a hen night/bachelorette party? haven’t gotten there yet, still haven’t been able to even plan the wedding...somewhere down the line maybe

Has anyone taken you on holiday somewhere? If so, where? yeah, my fiance to VA back in 2016 to where he was stationed while in the Navy and back in 2021 to LA I got to go on a work trip with him finally since I never can otherwise

Have you taken somebody on holiday? If so, where did you taken them? no I don’t have the money

Who do you see as an iconic star? too many to list

Have you ever been to a vineyard? yeah

Are there any swans around where you live? I haven’t seen any but who knows, possibly

Does anyone in your inner circle struggle with addiction? try my entire family, including myself

Has anyone told you lately that you have a nice smile? nope and I never believe it or see it when they do

How did you spend your last birthday? was just three weeks ago and spent it here alone...DoorDashed myself a nice steak dinner from Outback, that’s it..

#survey #bored #random #about me

[foucaults-trebuchet]

draft: what are we to animals

earlier today a roommate woke me up to deal with a baby mouse that had wandered into his basement room. he was super fuckin neurotic about it, trying to logically exhaustively check every area the mouse could have gone. i crawled under the bed and tried to hold and calm it, but he subsequently shoved both of us with a broom and scared it away.

i tried to describe to my roommate how to think like a mouse. mammals all share this basic framework of psychology, we can all understand each other if we try. for a young mouse you have to understand a few basic alterations of the terror of being alive:

- prey animals cannot see the world as a picture like predator animals can, their retinas are adapted to perceive motion, they see in the first derivative - a young mammal has no ability to perceive the their environment in detail, like a toddler they see sounds and visual stimuli with no clear rules to bind them together, they need more experience to learn rules of this kind - rodents cannot perform second-order reasoning, and a mouse fundamentally cannot decide to make new hiding spaces to taunt you - prey animals have very high baseline anxiety and seek any source of calm slow motion they can find

this of course did no good. you can't teach men anything. but it made me think a lot more about how these intuitive skills hint at our ability to imagine other intelligences. we can deeply empathize with a lot more than just other humans, and anyone who claims we cannot is just an asshole. we can understand the internal psychological experience of other mammals we would usually consider lesser, like dogs, and we can also understand the experiences of mammals we would (or should) consider greater, like sperm whales. we are not unique in this respect. the canines and cetaceans can understand us too. not just that, they can develop cross-species languages and rituals to communicate with us.

in the braindead american eugenics inspired discourse on intelligence we tend to think it is impossible to have both an idea of being "more intelligent" and "mutually intelligable" as ways to talk about the interaction between two different patterns of cognition. according to traditional wisdom, a species that is more intelligent should possess concepts that a lesser species cannot comprehend. this does not seem to be how it works in practice, mammals share a fundamental set of concepts and reactions that can be used to communicate across species lines. there are things that we do not share with small rodents but when we start to define the boundaries of any specific aspect of human cognition we are forced to recognized we are not unique.

i have a chihuahua. people make fun of me for being the blond bitch with the tiny la dog. until they spend time with the dog. i trained her like a hunting dog and she devotes all of her 9cm^3 brain to developing social protocols and collaborating with the people around her. she's currently mad at me for leaving her alone too often and she has started staging protests where she grabs someone's attention and then pretends to die. she wandered out onto the street without a leash a few months back, and then returned after conning another family to pay for her rabies vaccine booster and becoming a short-lived instagram meme. she's also a fucking idiot. she can't figure out how to walk on wood floors and she has absolutely no idea how to interact with other dogs.

i shaped the dog's intelligence in an unusual direction for an animal of her size and position in inter-species society, but it turns out that 9cm^3 brain is perfectly capable of understanding human emotional reactions instead of other dog's responses. she has an extremely limited capacity to reason about theory of mind but it doesn't matter. we actually aren't very complicated and our emotional responses immediately follow from our environment. even our long-term plans and emotional priorities can be extropolated from our facial expressions in most cases. are you going to divorce your husband? my dog can tell you.

there are vectors of intelligences, different directions in which we can use our capactities to specialize. for a "lesser" species like canines we know they have different vectors of intelligence too. we know they are not foreign and can empathize us even though we are "greater". what makes us greater then? we can do a lot of philosophical faffing about but it's just the cubic area of the mammal brain dedicated to environmental perception and intuitive reasoning. the canine anterior cingulate cortex is fucking tiny and the hippocampus barely even exists. as primates we have an enhanced ability to be caught in our own heads because we have thousands of extra layers of processing abstract information when it has no direct relationship to the world. we also specialize ourselves into our own vectors of intelligence but the dimensionality of human specialization is so high it is more convenient to deny its existence and think about iq scores.

looming in the future is a wake-up call. 50 years the most transformative moment in society will not be the development of artificial intelligence, or the discovery of extraterrestrials, or even the moment that humanity establishes itself as multiplanetary. it will be the decoding of whalesong. we now know with strong confidence that the only difference between our primate brains and other mammal brains is the volume of different cortical structures. we also know there are other species with much larger brains that possess language and complex grammer that we struggle to understand. there are existing species on earth that are "greater" than us and even evaded us killing them by hiding in places we didn't have the ability to explore. they are smarter than us.

but we can still empathize with them. sperm whales have lived for milleniea in a world we only just invented. everything they travels across half the world and is heard by every member of their species. they propogate patterns of their grammar on a totally global scale, regardless of their location they understand how to phrase a statement so that it follows the patterns of the wider community. they cannot open their mouths without engaging with their own sphere of memes even for short-form statements. they live *inside* of twitter.

there is currently a project to decode whalesong into a human-comprehensible grammar but it may be necessary to rely on artificial intelligence to assist us in the translation. we can empathize with the whales, but we cannot currently speak to them and it is very possible that their grammars are just more complex than ours, similar to how my writing is more complex than my dog's performance art. i will not comment on what the consequences of talking to a higher species will be, because i cannot even hope to comprehend.

it is worth noting that everything here is just about mammals. our own branch of life and close ancestors. who the fuck knows what birds are thinking