#i have feelings and thoughts™ about these two

[autismprotocol]

TMAG Theory Board Update (EP 11-12)

Hi guys sorry about the late posting I've just started a new quarter of college and its been pretty hectic. also got into my school design BFA program so pretty stoked about that! Anyways lets get into the Episode Breakdowns because even though not a lot of lore related things happened I still have a lot to talk about

For the breakdown I'll separate each by episode in sequential order

What Happened in Episode 11: Marked

Celias Rude Awakening- we jump right into the weirdness straight away with Celia waking up on the side of the interstate. she indicates that this is not a weird occurrence and ends the scene by telling someone named Jack that she's "on her way." If you remember episode 8 after Celia and Sam talk to Gerry and Gertrude, she mentions stuff about wanting help with her own mystery. When Sam asks about it she says she's looking into Time travel, other dimentions and teleportation. Many people have theorized that maybe Celia is just a super heavy sleepwalker, but I think the she teleports random places out of nowhere. This could be a side effect of her reality hopping if this Celia is originally from The archives universe.

As for the identity of Jack I'm not quite sure about that yet. I cross referenced the name Jack with past episodes of TMA. The only thing that came up was Jack Barnabas from the statement about dating Agnes Montague (aka an avatar of the desolation and Jesus-like figure for the cult of the lightless flame) So Unless Celia is secretly Agnes of Agnes reincarnated , I can't find any way to link Barnabas to Celia. (if anyone has a theory feel free to send it my way.)

Sam Lore- this one is pretty minor story-wise but I thought it was interesting. Before the statement for the episode is presented we get some classic Sam and Alice Banter ™ most of it is pretty lighthearted but I noticed Sam mention something that could indicate he might be an amputee.

These could not mean anything and I find it weird that it hasn't been mentioned until now but thought it was kind of cool and I will probably be drawing sam with a prothetic leg in the future cause I really like this head-canon. It also begs to question if he is missing a leg. it might have anything to do with his past as a Magnus institute test subject but then again could just be a fun character detail added by Jonny and/or Alex .

The Statement- Getting into the statement we get another Ink5oul appearance. Also possible Ink5oul identifying as she/they. (and lets be honest being a fear avatar is pretty non binary core). I found this Episode gave me a feeling of a hybrid between the Vast, Buried and the Flesh some people are theorizing that is might be a new entity called the Deep but I think that the fear of the ocean could easily apply to the vast or buried. Not much to say about this story though pretty standard Magnus horror that also gave us a hint to what Ink5oul's goal could be/which entity they serve.

Post Bonzo- Gwen has a debrief with Lena after her first Externals Liason assignment and her meeting with Mr. Bonzo. Undoubtedly Gwen is still pretty shaken from her encounter, even arriving late to work due to sleeplessness. Gwen is able to ask Lena a few questions mainly she wanted to know who's name was written on the letter given to Bonzo

Lena is largely unhelpful but tells Gwen she should have worked it out by now and if not to pay close attention to the case load for the next couple of days. before the latest episode my guess was Klaus because that is the only person mentioned so far that the OIAR intends to kill. but more on that later

Marked- Now were getting to my favorite thing about this episode. This episode title can have two meanings. The first is the more literal interpretation. Tattoos are marking of the body and the case this episode was all about tattoos so easily a good name would be marked. But I believe this is a red herring meant to misguide listeners who have not consumed all 200 episodes of TMA because if you know the world of Magnus Archives the term Marked takes on a entirely different meaning.

In TMA the term marked is used to indicate that somebody has been influenced by one or more or the fears and are one their way to becoming an Avatar. I think this could be a coded way to tell the audience someone in the OIAR has been marked. I have two potential candidates

Alice Dyer- Alice has been having dreams about the Institute after her and Sam's adventure into the ruins. also she mentions feeling like someone's watching her (common to people influenced or fed upon by the Ceaseless Watcher/The Eye) My guess if she is marked it would be by the Eye.

Gwendolyn Bouchard: Probably the most likely culprit. The main way an entitly tends to mark people is through encounters with other avatars. Gwen has just had an encounter with Mr Bonzo last episode who I strongly believe must be an avatar of some sort.

What Happened in Episode 12: Getting Off

Aww Sam!!- Sam asked Celia out and it was adorably awkward. not much to say I just loved this interaction and I'm longing for a new Magnus brand office romance hopefully is wont be an agonizing slowburn that ends tragically like a certain pair of morons from Archives (I love you Jon and Martin but Jesus christ)

It's Bonzo time bitches!!- Probably one of the most gruesome Magnus statement I've ever listened to (good work Alex) Mr Bonzo completely annihilated some poor dude at his bachelor party. Based on the date of the Incident the I can confidently say that whoever Baz (the groom) was he was our mystery person the OIAR sent Mr Bonzo to get rid of. Along with some of the bloodiest imagery we learned a few things about Bonzo. The most interesting detail is that Bonzo has to be summoned by playing his theme song I think the CD of his theme song acts somewhat like the tapes did in TMA by materialising out of nowhere. Also fun fact you know that torn seam that is right down Bonzo's middle? that is actually is his mouth lined with rows sharp teeth so I guess I know that now (so fun) Moral of the story dont f*ck with Mr. Bonzo

Alice knows something: Theres been this recurring audio glitch throughout TMAGP thatnks to a few extremly observent fans we have started to relize that these glitches are not at all random and are actually letting the audience know when a character is lying (i actually reposted somones deepdive into all the istances of this glitch so far if you guys are intrested in knowing more) why i bring this up now is becuase since we know when any charater is lying we also know when they are being truthful if there is no glitch when they say somthing and at the end of this episode this interaction occurs

Alice goes ahead and makes a joke about this to annoy Gwen but the fact theres no audio glitch when she says "I know" means she does actually know who is behind the OIAR and is activly refusing to share it with Gwen or the others. What do you know Alice!?

and that's about it im already loving these next batch of episodes and am so excited to learn more (ERROR has to show up somtime )

thanks to everyone who resonded the poll on the last update I will continue to include drawings into the breakdown even if it takes me a little bit of time to post. anyways I wrote this all in one sitting and I'm about ready to pass out so thanks again and the ask box and comments are always open for discussion and theory crafting.

-Echo

#the magnus protocol #augustus tmagp #tmagp #chester tmagp #gwendolyn bouchard #jonathan sims #lena kelley #martin blackwood #norris tmagp #tmagp theory #ink5oul #tmagp fanart #tmagp spoilers #the magnus pod #magpod #tmagp speculation #magnus protocol #magnuspod #alice dyer #gwen bouchard #samama khalid #lena kelly #celia ripley #tmagp celia #rusty quill #alexander j newall #celia x sam #tmagp thoughts

[sadhorsegirl]

ultimately i do think one of the most romantic things about moiraine and siuan's relationship is just the absolute joy they must feel abt being fully understood by another human being for the first (and possibly only) time in their entire lives. throws up ❤️

#just when u thought my wot posting was over i make a dramatic return!!!! #two ppl who have been alienated from society finding love and compassion in each other.......im abt to lose it!!! #in a world where misscommunication is basically par for the course when talking to any other person #the sheer relief they must feel about being instantly understood by each other #i just think their relationship is Profound™ u know like real life affirming hope for the world bc ur beloved lives there level shit #siuan sanche #moiraine damodred #siuraine #wheel of time

[n4rval]

a little pause on art for finals(they are all late) but boy has brain been braining

more specifically on dings' dynamic as asriel and chara's weird uncle bc that's just something i don't see a lot

#talking to the wall #i personally like to think dadster came up to be because these two warmed up the idea of children on his lonely heart #he used to babysit them occasionally #when they Fucking Died™ mf was absolutely destroyed. back to his lonely cave of mourning and no funny children #unless ☝️ #but now we're getting into babybones territory we already have a lot of babybones content #and mad scientist playing god with DT yadda yadda you know the drill #asriel couldn't care less about the complicated sci-fi weird machine creepy shit he pulled off #in fact the guy gave him the creeps at first. made him cry once as a baby #but chara thought the guy was the coolest idiot. lab coat and super cool sci-fi shit?? you built WHAT?? #So Cool. That's their idol. Also they get to sleep late and do dangerous nerd shit their parents would never let them otherwise #eventually asriel warms up because he's also into shenanigans (and doesn't want to feel left out so he starts trying to prove himself) #by acting like a smartass #fine i'll help but only to laugh when you go bald or something 🙄 (has the time of his life) #they went bald. now them and G are both eggheads #how delightful children are. he misses these two dearly #and then their parents proceed to divorce. is love even real anymore. #should i even tag this #oh well #undertale #gaster #asriel #chara #please nerd with me dont let me shout into the void #thank you

[deeisace]

..

#sorry sorry I just woke up and im having yesterday-was-weird thought again #and they are going here so i don't have to talk to the person that they're um about yet #basically im glad that im in a good enough space now that um #someone ive ive had text-based sex with and uhhh sent an ill-advised video to in like oct when i was Feeling Bad™ and doing. hm. too much. #like 6 months post text-based sex/ill adised video now aha and we've not spoke at all since like january and that was 'how was hols' #they asked to meet up 'not for sex just as friends' or i forget exact wording but basically that #no-pressure museum not-a-date #and i said I'd think about it. because i am as everyone knows a fucking idiot. #basically im glad that im in a better place now than the last time someone like expressed an interest in me as a person #because while this did give me a day long wobble i didn't have a full weekend long actual panic about it #tho they are two v different situs #an ace poly friend asking to go out with me vs someone i uh virtually fucked aha um asking to meet up for (mostly) being-friends purposes #same several-hours-later 'oh god no what have i done bad bad bad no thank you actually no sorry i cant sorry' but less intense this time #but at least i only said ill think about it? #and not actually immediately said yes because it's nice to feel wanted #and then gone Maximum Regret™ because actually all of this is way too much i don't like it i don't want it thank you but im sorry no #weird. i guess i don't have such a high baseline stress level any more? since i'm not at uni n stuff #and someone over messages going no pressure you want to be irl friends (maybe fwb no pressure)? is um #is different. to someone irl going you want to go out acely? yeah? awesome lets hold hands here is the discord with a whole buncha people #i guess #but i am being equally aro-not-super-ace Autism™ about it aha #and i am. eventually. going to be like. thought about it and no sorry. eventually. #if they ask again #i am kinda hoping they'll leave it there and forget they asked so i don't have to navigate social stuff #im much better at navigating canals everybody leave me alone please thank you #(everybody over there leave me alone. y'know. you guys are fine.)

[miodiodavinci]

you ever end up typing a rant in the tags so long tumblr physically cuts you off and the post publishes with probably only 1/3rd of the tags

#had an interaction with The Leech™ and it left me feeling so frustrated and upset #tl;dr: i wanted to record today but she showed up and started talking so loudly my mic could pick her up through my bedroom door #and it hit me that it's fucked up that she's somehow just allowed to come and go as she pleases #(and is actively entertaining the thought of moving back in for a minimum of 2 months if she gets the surgery she's looking for) #(2 months to 2 years according to her words) #(despite the fact that she was literally evicted nearly a year ago) #(after 7+ years of sleeping on our couch and making our lives hell and generally dodging any attempt to get her to get a life and move out) #anyway after about 20 minutes of chatter i heard her go outside #find the plant i bought and planted myself this last week #(the first one i've ever had ! ! ! ) #(every other plant i've ever cared for has either been my grandmother's or a gift from someone else) #(most notably the two peace lilies from my dad's memorial service) #and dump. an entire bucket of water on it. left over from soaking her orchids she insists on keeping here. #spoilers: it's a desert plant that requires low moisture and well-drained soil #so i went out and got on her about that and she insisted she was just trying to help #(like how she was '''just trying to help''' when she nearly drowned both of the aforementioned lilies) #(because she literally kept putting in water until there was noting but standing water without soil in the pot) #and for a half hour after kept coming in to bother me about the plant #asking where i bought it and if she could have clippings and asking if i had the right soil or the right tools #and reminding me of how i tried to grow pumpkin seeds when i was six and they died #and INSISTING she knew more about caring for it despite the fact that i literally researched this plant for a solid week before #and jsu t #another instance of The Leech™ trying to jam herself into my life so she can claim she's a provider and i'm helpless without her #but also turn around and complain about how it's sooo hard caring for us and how it's //impossible// for her to get a life #if she's busy caring for us #fuck off and die actually

[mothmanchronicler]

feeling lost . wondering if you can know yourself when youre isolated ,, who am i when not in relation to others? i don't feel like anyone and now it feels impossible to connect w anyone it feels so hard and awful and weird and i m really trying !! but it's not getting any easier yet! shucks to that!!!

#i thought abt what i like about myself #and couldn't come up w anything that wasn't in relation to something i'm into #like oh i'm into sewing and riverdale and kimchi and then all this other stuff i'm no longer into #that at one point i kinda based my entire identity around #like farming ... bitch i used to be a farmer™ but i don't do that anymore #anyway just came up w one thing - i love that i'm queer #anyway the ocd really got me again but only for like two days #i was like oh i can't eat these bananas i just bought because they'll ferment in my stomach and make me sick #and they all when bad before i was like oh that's fucking insane just eat the nana #work is good and my new coworkers are nice #but i'm feeling v self conscious because i'm having a difficult time getting to know ppl #anyway it's fine !! kinda!! but i'm okay just thinkin

[lassieposting]

Been thinking a lot lately about romanced Astarion post-spawn ending.

Because like. The Funnest™ thing about cptsd is how much of it gets delayed. When you're trapped in a lengthy, ongoing traumatic situation, you do not have the ability to process and start healing your mental wounds. Your brain and body go into survival mode, and all that matters in the moment is that you somehow cope with the horrors. He wouldn't have been able to even begin dealing with the physical, mental and emotional toll of two hundred years of torture, brutalization and dehumanization while he was under Cazador's control; he is in constant danger, surrounded by sharks in the water, and survival means not letting them smell blood. He can't afford to fall apart, to show weakness. He is shockingly functional and competent in-game, partly because he has to be to work as a game character, but also partly because...it do be like that, to some degree. When death, for whatever reason, is not an option, you just have to shut down and keep going. People adapt in order to survive, and when we learn that showing an "injury" (physical or psychological) only gets us punished, we learn to hide it.

Early-game Astarion is terrified - of Cazador, of Godey, of being hunted down by his siblings, of being staked or sold off at the first opportunity by Tav and the other companions, of turning into a mindflayer, of another painful transformation, of losing himself when he's only just regained his autonomy after two centuries, of what Cazador will do to him if he ever finds him - the man is overwhelmed by fear. He's on thin ice as a vampire, and he's not going to give them any more reason to want him gone. Survival instinct is still in control, and in this new situation, crafting some fragile safety for himself means not only selling his body for protection, but also being useful. Clear-headed. Good in a fight.

Endgame Astarion finds himself in a completely different situation. The time-sensitive overarching threats - Cazador and impending ceremorphosis - have been dealt with. He has a loving, supportive partner he's really starting to feel safe with - Tav/Durge has proved that they're on his side, that their affection is genuine, that they don't just want him for the one thing he's been told he's good for. They've told him they're going to help him find a workaround for his sun allergy. He's getting fed regularly. He has time to stop, and breathe, and just. Recuperate.

For the first time in 200 years, he is safe.

And it will probably take a while to catch up, during which time he will seem to be coping really well, but at some point, his brain is going to realise that he's safe, and it's going to finally start processing the sheer fucking horror he's been through. Since I haven't seen anyone talking about this particular fun aspect of cptsd, allow me to offer u some thoughts on issues Astarion and Tav might end up dealing with in the months/years postgame, during the

✨ Delayed Trauma Response ✨

Memory Gaps: Astarion realising, as he opens up to Tav, that there are entire years or decades of his life from which he has only a handful of memories. Great big blank stretches where he has no idea where he was, who he was with, what was happening to him. Some of the gaps cover years at a time where he was so dissociated and shut down that he just didn't retain any memories of what was going on around him. Some are shorter periods of particularly horrific torture that his brain has deliberately blocked out to protect him.

Recovered Memories: At some point, years into the future when he's done A Lot of healing, he might find that every now and then, a fragment of those lost memories will unexpectedly come back to him. He'll catch a particular scent on the breeze, or overhear a specific phrase in the street, or cross paths with someone whose face is oddly familiar, and he'll get a glimpse of an acute horror he'd filed neatly away where it couldn't hurt him anymore. He very rarely remembers all the context to those flashes of his past. He might recall that he was punished, but not what he was punished for, or he might remember words spoken by a greedy conquest, but be unable to recall the man's face.

Dissociation: Tav knows going into this relationship that Astarion has basically made an art out of dissociating during sex. They also know, from their shared encounter with the drow twins, that he's not great at enforcing his own boundaries - he'll always say he'll speak up and back out if he stops having fun, but in practice he rarely does; he's not used to having the option of saying no to his partner, and being punished if he tries. So they know there's going to be some practice and experimentation and negotiation necessary there, to figure out the rough limits of his comfort zone. But once he starts really processing, there may be days where he just checks out completely. Tav will touch his shoulder, and he'll startle and apologise - "Terribly sorry, darling, I was miles away for a moment there." And Tav will gently point out that he's been sat in the same spot vacantly staring into the middle distance for hours. They've been checking in on him occasionally and this is the first time he's responded. It's unsettling, to say the least.

Lost Time: Astarion was very young when he was turned, physically mature but emotionally juvenile. He was basically an overgrown teenager, in the phase of life where elves are just starting to learn who they are and what they want, and figure out their place in the world. But he never got to do that, because he spent his formative young adult years in a world where everyone became an abuser, where his only means of surviving was to smile and charm and obey while even his basic human dignity was stripped away. He learned that communication is based on manipulation. He learned that the powerful can do whatever they like to the weak. He learned an incredibly toxic, abusive way of life, and that was his family dynamic, his everyday life, for as long as he can remember. Now that he's free and safe, he's realising that the world doesn't actually work that way and that he's now far behind even shorter-lived races in social/emotional development. He's grieving for the person he could've been. He's grieving for the life he could've lived. He's grieving for all the years he already lost, and the ones he'll lose in the future as he flounders to catch up. A decent chunk of his life was stolen from him, and that's time he will never get back.

Flashbacks & Night Terrors: Specifically the kind where your brain convinces you that an injury you had a long time ago is actually an injury you have (or are receiving) right now. There are nights where he'll wake Tav in a panic, because his back feels like it's on fire, he can feel every freshly-carved wound dripping blood and he's in so much pain he doesn't know what else to do. If Tav looks, they see nothing out of the ordinary - old, long-healed scars, same as always. But the pain and the fear and the distress are all very real to him, and all they can do is try to comfort him, cover his back with cool damp cloths or healing salves, remind him he's safe now and they're not leaving him.

Boundary Shifting: Sometimes, Tav can come up and hug him from behind, and he'll melt into them a little bit and go all soft and happy. Other times, he might flinch away or go rigid at the same gesture. A lot of the time, it really depends on how he's feeling on the day, but at least a little bit of it is deliberate - he's pushing to find the limit of just how much autonomy Tav is willing to give him. He wants to know at what point they'll stop respecting his "no". Will they accept it if he doesn't want a hug? If he wants to sleep in his own room tonight? At what point will understanding turn to anger at being rejected? From the drow twins four/fivesome, we also know he's got a tendency to push his own boundaries, and jump into things he's actually not ready for, and Tav would be the one holding his hand through the fallout as he tries to figure out what his own boundaries even are.

Frustration! So, so much frustration. He wants to be Over It already. He wants to move past everything that ever happened to him and never think about it again. He hates that Cazador still has a grip on him, even in death - he doesn't want to give the bastard the satisfaction of dwelling on all his punishments, his cruelties. Sometimes, that frustration is going to explode outwards at Tav - he'll get angry at them for coddling him, or find something small to start a fight over, or he'll set an unreasonable boundary and try to defend it because he's still learning what healthy boundaries look like. Sometimes, it will implode inwards, and that won't be about Tav at all, but they'll get the brunt of it all the same - it might come out as self-loathing or self-punishment, and he'll react by doing something stupid, like trying to drive them away, because having a secure, relatively healthy relationship is terrifying and the instinct is to destroy it before Tav can. There will be yelling and angry tears and deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms, and they'd have to work through that. Trauma is ugly, and Astarion is right at the beginning of a very long journey towards healing.

Abandonment Issues: Astarion wants the relationship to be one between equals, but he's kind of got Tav on a pedestal all the same. They saved him. They helped him get rid of Cazador for good. They chose him and love him despite a wealth of better (in his eyes) options, and all his baggage. They stayed with him even when he has very little to offer them. We know his vanity and obnoxious self-absorption is a fragile attempt to obscure the fact that his self-esteem is in the dirt and he has virtually no self-worth, and there are a couple of occasions in-game where it becomes clear that he's afraid of losing the one person who somehow considers him lovable. After seeing Sebastian and all the other conquests, he begs Tav not to hate him, saying that he did what he had to. If he has a rival for Tav's affections, and Tav informs him that they broke up with the rival to be with Astarion, he's shocked and the first thing out of his mouth is, "You ended things with them for me? Why?" And if Durge tries to break up with him for his own safety, his facade drops and he immediately asks if he did something wrong. So while he's not afraid to argue with Tav, if something happens - like an angry outburst - that upsets or angers them, and he thinks he's at risk of losing that one steady, stable person in his life, he might well cling and overcompensate to try and repair what he thinks is a fracture in their relationship. He'll fawn or beg or crawl into Tav's bed to "apologise" and "make it up to them" because, well, very occasionally it worked on Cazador. With patience and good communication and lots of repeatedly driving the lesson home to overcome 200 years of education to the contrary, he will eventually start to believe that "I'm really pissed off at you right now," does not equate to, "You are the worst mistake I've ever made and I am leaving you."

Panic Attacks: I feel like honestly he'd get some symptoms of these on a fairly regular basis, but he's never been given any option other than just trying to power through them. He's used to realising he's shaking, he's used to feeling like he's watching himself from outside his body, or like he can't breathe even though he doesn't need to. He's very familiar with the sickening fear in his gut, so intense it makes his head spin. He's not used to being comforted or reassured about them - he thinks they're normal. Tav disagrees.

Anyway, cptsd is messy and complicated and often looks very different from person to person so these will not represent everyone's but these are just some ideas for what the ongoing recovery process might make them work through, based on the aspects I'm most familiar with.

Projecting? Who's projecting? I'm not projecting. Shut up.

#bg3 #bg3 headcanons #bg3 meta #astarion x tav #astarion x durge #mom said it's my turn to project on the blorbo #astarion ancunin

[motherofagony]

FIRE WALK - one shot

joel miller x f!reader

pairing: au, no outbreak!joel x f!reader rating: explicit, 18+, minors dni word count: 6.5k summary: a chance encounter at a motel has you crossing paths with a stranger in a blue t-shirt. content warnings + tags: age gap (we'll say 15-20 years), very brief references to past non-con encounters (not with joel, no details just shitty men in general), soft!joel, alcohol, mentions of family trauma and ab*se, unprotected piv, fingering, oral (f + m receiving), A Scene With a Belt™, slight mentions of reader's clothing but no physical descriptions otherwise, love as consumption and women as fruit a/n: this was a brain-worm of a one shot, so i had to press pause on AHFE and get it out. consider it a dirty love letter to strangers with stories in shitty motels. and i have to give the biggest thank-you to @iamskyereads for stepping in and offering to be my beta reader in the final hour. she was so unbelievably thorough and thoughtful and kind. i owe you big.

New-age boogeymen hang two-way mirrors and jiggle motel door handles with broken hangers.

That’s what the news says.

August licks an unforgiving line of heat up your back, and cutoff denim and halter tops do nothing but give the sun more skin to burn. 

It’s sweltering, brutal as an Arizona summer is, and The Palms Motel promises a pool and a mini bar on their dirty marquee. You’ll take what you can get, can’t really afford to be picky with fifty dollars in your pocket, but at least maybe you’ll live like royalty tonight.

Some guy you met — Tom, Tim, Jim, whoever — pulls his convertible up to the front office. Your knees knock together over the speed bump, cartilage kissing bone.

It’s the closest you’ve ever come close to a chauffeur, but the chauffeur you see in movies doesn’t usually take liberties with trying to work his grease-speckled mechanic hand up the passenger’s shirt.

You met him at a gas station in Tucson, thumbing your way from northern Texas to put as much distance between you and your whiskey-breathed dad as you could. He’d torn your clothes apart at the seams with his eyes when he spotted you in the parking lot, swimming in blood-infested waters with sharp, sharp teeth.

There was no plan, no directions penned and cities circled on a folded map, just glass in your hair and a final straw.

He asked if you could buy him some booze — revoked license, baby, y’know how that goes — and you shouldn’t have, but when he flashed a leather wallet thick with cash, you knew you’d be stupid not to.

You hid behind a shelf inside the gas station while he idled in the parking lot and plucked a fifty from the wad, stuffing it deep in your bag. You grabbed some shitty malt-something from a fridge along with a 6-pack, flashing the slack-jawed cashier a wink. 

He didn’t try to hide the eye contact with your tits, but neither do most men. Sometimes you milk it in your favor, sometimes it just makes your lunch rise to the back of your throat.

And when you’re by yourself, it’s hot iron, ready to strike. A doe in their headlights, a buck with a nice rack. Skipping through the center of their bullseye.

You bought a little palm-sized bottle for yourself and tucked it safely next to the stolen cash in the abyss of your purse. These tiny cons got you by, made power surge deep in your belly. It made loneliness feel worth it, knowing you had an upper hand to lean on if you were ever in a bind.

He bitched about inflation when you came out with less than was reasonable for the amount you spent, and you just shrugged. Not your cash, not your problem. 

You bartered for a ride to the nearest motel, and now Tom-Tim-Jim is asking you over the purr of the engine if you need company for the night.

If you were feeling a little more you, you might’ve taken him up on it. Maybe he would’ve even paid for the room, maybe he wouldn’t get angry like your dad does. Maybe he’d be able to fuck you without hitting you.

You’re good at diffusing the temper in most men, can touch them in ways that make them grit their teeth, can be a good girl and go fetch.

But you’re not in the mood to bend, to give someone’s son — someone’s husband with a tan line around their ring finger — a place to wipe their shoes on. You don’t feel like wiping their dirt, your mascara from your eyes and saying thank you while they zip up their pants.

And you sure as fuck don’t fancy being on a milk carton.

“I’m alright, sugar. Thanks for the ride,” you say, dipping your chin to peer over your sunglasses. “I know where to find you, don’t worry.”

Yeah fuckin’ right.

He doesn’t try to conceal his disappointment, just sucks his teeth and squeezes at the exposed skin of your thigh. His way of saying goodbye to something he could’ve dripped sweat on, came in too early. You think your flesh might rot off in chunks. 

You open the door and swing your legs out in a way that’s a little too eager.

Tom-Tim-Jim waves solemnly with two fingers up and two bent, and then he’s gone in an aggressive rev.

The motel might’ve been a kitschy dream in its heyday. It’s not a total dump; more of a vintage skeleton of washed-out pink and umbrellas that’ve been ripped by weather and overuse. There are a million faded emblems of cartoonish palm trees. It’s almost endearing how tragic it is.

You can tell that it was popular and swarming with tourists at one time — there are dusty, water-stained pamphlets lining the wall next to the front desk that brag Named one of Arizona’s top destinations in 1996!

A mounted fan whirs and oscillates, but it might as well be someone blowing hot breath down your neck. 

There’s a tired woman holding down the fort at the desk with a name tag that claims Brenda, and she looks surprised to see you. You figure most customers are stopping in for a night’s rest on the way to somewhere more important, their final destination. But you don’t look like you have anywhere better to be.

“Hey, honey,” Brenda trickles, laced with an accent that’s more New Orleans than Arizona. “Need a room?”

“Yeah, just for the night,” you say, fishing out your wallet with confidence that doesn’t meet your eyes. “How much?”

“Forty-five a night, ‘less you wanna upgrade to the honeymoon suite.” She looks somewhere over your shoulder.

That’s nearly everything you have, but it sounds a lot like tomorrow’s problem. At least you’ll be safe tonight from the prowling stares of nighttime predators, and the leftover change will give you a decent vending machine dinner.

“Just a normal room’s fine,” you smile, sliding over the crumpled, stolen fifty.

Brenda types busily on the keyboard, asking for your name but nothing else. And when she hands you a plastic keycard, you finally relax your shoulders. Untangle the nerves in your lower back that are choking one another.

Room 17, it reads. Your oasis awaits!

You thank her, spin on your heel, and immediately bump chest to chest with something hard.

You’re eye level with a worn, cornflower blue t-shirt, ringed with a light stain of sweat at the collar. They’re grasping both of your arms to steady you, and you’re snagging the gaze of a tousled man with a bag slung over his shoulder.

“Watch where you’re goin’,” he murmurs, but it isn’t reprimanding or mean like you’re used to, just sickly sweet and Texan. Syrupy in a way that drips right down between your legs.

You don’t remember seeing anyone else in the lot when you’d pulled up. And the stealth of him entering soundlessly behind you sends a jolt of electricity up your spine, the clench of something that would be fear if it were any other stranger.

But he doesn’t look at you with intent to devour or to claim. Just eyes you like you’re anyone else. An equal. The bare minimum, but rare and shiny nonetheless.

“Sorry,” you breathe, and he’s releasing you a little too quickly for your liking. Leaving brands on the creases of where your forearms meet upper and elbow.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

So you don’t.

You brush past him on the way out, a polite nod. And that’s that. 

The heat is the kind that feels hotter, unbearable when paired with the shrill sing of cicadas. An endless buzzing that you think might be the sun sizzling on the concrete. If you stood in one place for too long, your flip flops might very well melt you in place.

Your room key clicks to unlock Room 17, and you push the door open to a heavy, humid space that smells vaguely of mold. You’re so grateful for the privacy that you can’t even bring yourself to wrinkle your nose.

Flip flops discarded, your toes sink into shag carpet — a dirty luxury that makes you moan. It’s only been two days since you left home, fled home, but it beats sleeping with one eye open on a bus stop bench.

You up-end your leather bag, dumping all of its contents onto the bed. Cigarettes, some loose film canisters, your toothbrush, a lighter. There wasn’t much time to pack, nothing worth bringing, and the less, the better. Nothing to weigh you down if you had to dip at a moment’s notice.

It takes you only a couple minutes and a light sheen of sweat to realize that the A/C is busted. Smothered, you try to crack open a window in the bathroom, but it’s no cooler than the hell you’re standing in.

When you let Brenda know, she just shrugs with an apologetic kind of half-smile.

“Most of ‘em are out these days, honey,” she says, and you decide then that it’s a small price to pay. “We got someone comin’ to look at it next week.”

You shoot her a smile, figure that she’s had enough rotten backtalk in her day. You scoop a set of flamingo-themed matches from the bowl on the counter and turn around, only to see a familiar blue shirt waiting his turn.

His eyes try not to roam, but he’s giving you a nod and stepping up without hesitation, asking Brenda for extra towels.

The way that she titters and blushes, you’d think he’d asked if he could spit in her mouth.

It irritates you, and you can’t say why.

The door chimes behind you as it closes, and you linger, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. When he emerges, a stack of towels so high it’s hitting his chin, you step in stride on the walk back. Tracing his footsteps, catching up with his shadow.

“You followin’ me?” you quip, a cigarette dangling from your mouth. The cherry ignites on every breath, smoke erupting in tendrils that hug each word.

He answers with a laugh, turns and squints back at you with one eye. Almost as if he was expecting you to ask.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, sweetheart? Could say the same to you.”

You stop in front of 17, hand over your brow to shield from the sun that’s winding its way down, getting ready to tuck itself in for the night. There’s nothing that touches your tongue that doesn’t sound exactly like a fuck yes. So you don’t say anything.

“Enjoy your sauna,” he chuckles over his shoulder, passing you with his towels on the way to Room 20.

—

Led Zeppelin filters out through the radio, half-static, half-electric. Your legs are crossed in the air behind you, and you’re posted up face down on the bed, kicking along to the beat while you flip through whatever Cosmopolitan someone left behind in a drawer.

Someone raps a few times on the door, and if it’s a repairman, they’re getting their fucking dick sucked.

You army-roll off the flowery duvet, abandoning a how-to on finding your g-spot, and you peer through the peephole.

Your breath hitches on a soft swear.

When you open the door, you see Blue T-Shirt standing there, skin creasing around his eyes slyly. An unopened beer hangs and swings from his restless fingers. He offers it up wordlessly, the butt of it pointed at you.

It’s ice-cold and slippery to the touch, erupting goosebumps on your forearm. Saliva coats your tongue, and you don’t think it’s the thirst for alcohol, but maybe the tall drink of water. 

“Um… thanks?”

“Figured you’d either be dead by now or parched,” he says smugly, and it’s velvet to your ears.

“Oh. Yeah, thanks. I got the fan to work at least,” you mutter, jerking your thumb vaguely behind you.

“Listen, uh —”

He’s rubbing the nape of his neck, and you catch the way the network of muscles flex from his elbow to the seam of his armpit. He looks like he’s in pain, struggling with the fit of a puzzle piece into something rough and jagged.

Something he shouldn’t be trying but has to see it through, exhaust it until it’s definite one way or the other.

You just squint, sucking in the corner of your lip between your teeth. You nearly grin, but it’s much more fun to watch than to connect the dots for him.

“A/C works in my room, so ‘f you wanted to… y’know,” he trails off, not even sure in his own offer. “No pressure. It’s hot as hell outside, don’t want you t’get heat stroke ‘f I can help it.”

This kind of approval you like. This kind that sizzles girl-honey between your legs, winning it from a man that’s playing to earn, not to cheat.

“I try not to make a habit out of going into motel rooms of guys I don’t know the names of,” you harp sweetly. But it might as well be a done-deal.

“D’you make a habit outta accepting beers from ‘em?”

You smile. Typically, yes.

“Joel.”

His hand shoots out, strong and suggestive. Fingers like alligator teeth that’ll grip you, hold you under until you thrash. 

And you pluck your cigarettes and gifted liquor bottle from the bed, arms full when you carry them down to Joel’s room.

—

You’re sprawled on the full-size bed next to his, head propped up on hand propped up on elbow.

You’ve been trading your little fist of bourbon back and forth, swapping stories in the same way. Somehow, you fall into it easy like old friends, and it’s nice to follow someone’s lead instead of keeping one step, three, seven steps ahead. Arm outstretched to the door knob, feet ready to break into a run at the change in tone, blackening of pupils.

Without meaning to, you’ve wordlessly agreed that the person in possession of the bottle has the proverbial mic, and they swig to help with details and theatrics. It’s counter-productive in flow, but it makes you laugh when Joel exaggerates the story he’s telling on purpose, reaching out to pass it back and suddenly yanking it back, remembering a shade of gray or a funny expression.

Your knuckles keep zapping each other, brushing a little longer than the time before. There’s no numbness to consensual touch.

Joel’s mid-40s. From Texas, like you. He came to visit his daughter Sarah at college, says she’s growin’ up too fast, doesn’t need her old man anymore. It’s a thrill to see someone talk about their own flesh with love, admiration for who she is and who she’s becoming. You find yourself leaning in, enraptured that there are no IOUs or fine-print that you know to come with a parent’s love.

Mentions of his stubborn brother Tommy who he works with and who just can’t stop getting into trouble. The unspoken guilt that maybe he could be the one to keep him out of jail if he tried harder. It doesn’t work that way, and you tell him so.

You tell him about your dad when he asks about your life, your story, and you don’t know why you do but maybe you know exactly why. No one ever gets close enough to ask, so it comes leaking out of the corners of your mouth.  

You’ve never told anyone, not even your diary, not even the guidance counselor who slipped a note to your fifth grade teacher and pulled you out of class. Shaky fingers, shaky limbs when they asked if they could roll up your sleeves just to see and you said no. 

Crying because you knew your dad wouldn’t let you go back. Not to school, not to your friends.

You omit the nitty-gritty details, but Joel gets the gist. Swigs his share of the liquor a little too angrily with tight lips. Not like your dad does, but you don’t miss the irony of it all.

He holds anger for you, on behalf of you. It simmers as he listens to you in patient silence, coming to a boil at the bad parts when he gets up and starts walking lines in the shitty carpet. Pretending to look outside in interest at his truck parked at the end of the lot, but gripping the curtains until you can see every expanse of bone in his hand.

You don’t need this from him. It’s a hurt you’ve wedged between the pages of a book and doused in flames of acceptance long ago. But it spreads from your toes to your ears, the burn of someone feeling like this. For someone like you.

He finally settles down in an armchair by the window, a funny corduroy thing that would probably light up under a blacklight on one of those crime shows. Legs parted, a warm stare on the way you take up space on the bed. Facing him comfortably, your vision buzzing around the edges. A loose smile shared as if this room was meant for the two of you all along.

“So, what’s your plan?” Joel’s humming, his words getting lost in an echo of the bottle neck.

You don’t have one. Can’t have one when you have nowhere to go but gone.

It stretches on and on between you — a mouth opened and closed too many times on possibilities. If you admit to it, you end up with pity or an upper hand dealt to a stranger. You can’t afford to owe anyone a favor, nor can you front the cost of needing one.

But you’re so tired.

“Dunno. I’ll figure it out.”

“You got enough time for that?”

And you know what he means. Enough time in the motel, enough time before you’re a thief at wit’s end, doing anything for survival. He doesn’t need to ask to know you don’t have a destination, some relative waiting for you in a California dream.

You’ve excused yourself to the bathroom, soft radio bleeding in under the door, arms braced on the sink, all glossy eyes.

You want him, bad. But he won’t make the first move, won’t take advantage of what isn’t his and what others before him took without asking. You’re a pawn, entitled to the first move. The rejection would kill you, but not knowing would be worse.

He could hold you soft, give you something to think about when tomorrow rips you both in opposite directions.

When you pull open the door, Joel’s frozen in mid-stride towards you, like he’s just made up his mind about something.

He straightens but he’s still. Afraid of moving too fast, saying too much, scaring you into flight. Out of the unlocked cage of his room — something he did on purpose, because he doesn’t expect anything from you and wants you to know he doesn’t.

You meet him in his dusty shag quicksand. You take his wrist in your hand, kiss the thrum of life in the dip where veins meet palm. An offering.

Joel looks like he’s in pain, like what you’re doing is excruciating and thorny. The front of his jeans strains. He’s searching you for any hesitation, any obligation because he did something kind. He knows what currency you feel the need to pay in, and this isn’t that.

“Please,” you whisper simply. And he nods, accepting, succumbing.

There’s a careful meeting of lips, wanting to do it the right way, in the right order. When you push your tongue in, used to the pace of animals, he just holds your face and slows you down. It’s languid, his mouth showing you what sweet and gentle can taste like. Your tongues take their time, and your hands slip beneath the hem of his shirt, all ribbed muscle with a sprinkling of hair.

He shudders against the lightness of your feather-fingers.

Joel’s hands are peeling your shirt off, his thumbs resting to press against pillowy hips. He’s not letting your lips go, something like impatience stirring in you. 

Doesn’t he want to fuck you hard? Fuck you fast and selfish?

Isn’t there a catch?

He’s taking his shirt off now, up and over. Carved by Michaelangelo, thrown up on a ceiling in a library book you read once. You’re touching him in reverence, but not letting yourself learn too much of him.

His eyes are molten. Joel walks you back to the edge of the bed, scratchy quilt tickling your thighs when you fall back on it. You start to pose yourself, angles that make you look more desirable, pliable. But he’s not paying attention to that, just unbuttoning your shorts, kissing the jut of every curve and permeating down to the bone, punching out a soft groan when he slides the denim off and sees the shining ambrosia that’s waiting.

He’s kneeling, tugging you down to meet his waiting mouth. And you’re just breathless, flinching when he pulls you apart, guiding your legs over his shoulders and wasting no time devouring you. Your legs, his bib.

Joel’s tongue flicks through the shell of you, teasing you in alternates of quick and slow, starving and full. It feels like a slice of heaven. 

You pitch out a tangled gasp, hands instinctively moving to knot in his hair. Anything to hold onto, a different kind of grounding.

“So wet f’me,” he vibrates lowly into you, all husk. “Taste so fuckin’ sweet.”

He sinks a middle finger into you, and you’re keening, hips canting and unable to stay glued to the mattress. You feel him smile against your cunt, just pressing his forearm across your lower half to keep you still.

Joel’s twisting and working into you, onto you, and you’re so fucking close from just this — a tiptoeing to the edge that grows longer, more erratic in stride. He sucks your clit — pulsing sensitive, so swollen — into his mouth and grazes it with the tip of his tongue just so. Baring his incisors and closing around you in a delicious scrape like a Venus flytrap taking its meal.

You think you see God behind the flutter of your eyes.

You’re close enough to warn him, to rasp it out in the symphony of moans. His free hand reaches up to roll your peaked nipple between his forefinger and thumb, and he stretches you with an added ring finger. You’re writhing. Possessed.

He’s watching you through thick lashes. Letting your heels dig into his shoulders as the drenched sounds of you fill the room.

“Joel, please — I’m gonna —”

“C’mon, pretty girl,” he just murmurs.

You feel that little pull at your navel.

And you’re tipping in a freefall, seeing stars. You clench down around his fingers, fingers that are still pumping against that spongy spot deep inside you. Your arousal gushes, wet and sticky against the scrape of his beard. He laps you up, the sight making heat creep up your chest and wrap around your neck.

When he lifts his head, he’s high on it. Pupils dilated like tiny, round moons. Your orgasm glistens on him, smeared over lips and chin. The fur of a peach peeled back far enough to sink teeth into.

It’s fucking filthy.

Joel places open-mouthed kisses from your hip up to the center of your breasts, a trail of your orgasm shiny on your skin in perfect, sloppy Os. His breath meets your throat where he nips at you, and you don’t have time to drag in a breath before you’re tasting the saltiness of yourself on his tongue.

Your fingers fumble on his belt, practiced with years of releasing the tension on the metal prongs, the slithering sound whooshing from the loops of pants. You’re good at it, like you used to be good at gymnastics until your mom stopped getting out of bed to drive you. 

There was always a little gold for contorting your body.

He detaches from you unwillingly, putting all of his weight on his knees and shins as he straddles the space of your thighs.

You’re pulling yourself up in a sitting position, pushing denim and boxers down past his hips. Letting his cock spring free, the head a dark pink and beaded with precum. You swipe the flat of your tongue against it, peeking up at him while you soak up the taste of it. 

When you push the length of him into your mouth, ridged hard with veins, Joel tips his head back, chin to the ceiling. He groans something brutish yet helpless, cradling the back of your head. You’re seated in the driver’s seat, all control. 

It’s new, different.

But then he’s moving his hips back, pulling himself from your mouth, wiping the saliva from your chin with a steady thumb.

“Don’t need t’do that,” Joel whispers hoarsely. “Not ‘f you don’t want to.”

Confused, you knit your brows. He laughs darkly, shaking his head.

“Didn’t mean it like that, it’s — it feels fuckin’ good,” he says, awestruck. “Would just rather make you feel good instead.”

Oh.

He doesn’t wait for an answer or a negotiation. The rest of his clothes pool on the floor in a pile, and he’s climbing back over you, an anchor or a buoy in a storm.

He lines himself up at the seam of you, puffy and so wet from before, nudging the tip of his cock at your warm center. A thumb coaxing the bud at the apex of you in lazy circles.

Joel’s sliding in slowly by each inch, filling you full until there’s nothing left and his patch of hair prickles the pearl of your clit. All you can do is whine and tense around him.

He’s resting tentative hands on either side of your face, indenting the weak mattress with handprints. He groans, but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t give in when you try to rock against him.

“This alright?”

You’ve forgotten how to do anything, hoping that digging your fingertips into his forearms is communication enough.

“I’m gonna need a yes, baby.”

You feel around in the dark for the tether back to your body, and it jerks you like a marionette, giving him a nod.

“Yes. Fuck.”

That’s enough. He’s rewarding you with a roll of his hips, and you feel like you’re on fire. It’s a stuttering, painfully slow pace at first, his mouth so close to your ear that every grunt is amplified. But it evolves into something eager, unsatiated, snapping up into you with a relentless sort of fucking.

He’s hitting that place so deep within you, letting you unravel and grow hoarse from the moans tearing their way up your throat. That pressure is roiling, the kind that you get only when you touch yourself but intensified by a million.

It just feels so right, because there’s nothing to prove. 

You’re ships passing in the night, strangers making a pit-stop on the way to nowhere. There’s no backstory, no history to make mention of. No shame in the morning when he inevitably rolls over and pretends to be asleep, and you scrub off the smell of him with your provided travel-size shampoo.

It’s not love, but it might be the closest you ever get.

The glow of him above you, a deity with his face screwed in agony. Chasing after you when he feels the tightening of your cunt, the easy glide of every thrust that tells him you’re close.

Then, you’re snapping like a rubber band. Gushing in a dripping mess that trickles to where your ass meets thigh. Crying without tears, overstimulated but blissful. Joel is quick to follow, like he’s been waiting his turn.

He’s trembling, emptying inside you in a warm flood. Groaning low and beautiful, gripping your hips to keep you flush to him.

When pulls out, tearing himself away, he’s slinging an arm over his eyes on the pillow beside yours. One hand on your leg to make sure you don’t go anywhere.

“So fuckin’ perfect,” you hear him mutter.

At some point you drift off, his arm draped over you. You open a bleary eye to a neon 2:49AM that casts a halo over the nightstand. Joel’s tucked you in, the thin duvet snug up to your shoulder. He’s not snoring but not not snoring, just breath getting caught in his throat in a satisfied, well-spent way.

It’s all too much, too pure to be real.

Before you let yourself change your mind, you slink out from under the warmth of your generous stranger. You step in your shorts one foot at a time, tugging them up gelatin legs too springy from coiling and uncoiling.

You promise yourself that you’ll take just one mental picture as a keepsake, and it’s this. A sleepy Joel who will be well on his way to a second cup of coffee on the way out of Arizona, maybe even nursing a little headache behind his right eye. And he’ll remember an apparition of some girl he fucked in a motel. The touristy thing to do, a sight to see. 

He might even tell Tommy, say you were a crazy little thing with too much baggage, but it was fun to stay up past his bedtime.

You don’t mean to do it, really you don’t, but you flip through his wallet that lays innocently on top of the TV.

If you take a little something, that’ll turn this into another one of your stories that you tell your kids born from a loveless marriage somewhere in the crevices of a future from now. It won’t pull on the tendons of your heart.

And it won’t mean anything. You won’t let it.

—

The next morning, there’s a soft knock at the door, and it’s probably housekeeping kicking you out for overstaying your welcome. Time to turn down the bed for the next lost soul. You imagine Joel’s long gone, hopped in his truck and back to a reality you’ll never meet him in.

Your fingers are slow to gather up your purse, and you’re shoving your toothbrush in from its place on the sink.

“I’ll be out in a second!” you yell in a voice that reeks of years of diner-flavored customer service.

More persistent knocking that borders on pounding. It shakes the chain in the deadbolt.

You’re yanking open the door, and there’s Joel, white shirt and jeans. And it isn’t that cushion of admiration from last night, no greeting with a chaste kiss on the cheek.

Just a wolf coming to claim his continental breakfast.

Fuck.

You try to shut the door, suddenly too ashamed of what you’ve done, and to someone undeserving. Someone that showed you kindness, empathy.

But his boot catches the door before it can close, and he’s inside, slicing through the space between you. It’s not quite anger, but it’s shadowy. Sardonic.

Your shoulder blades kiss the cheap wallpaper.

“You’re real funny, y’know that?” he starts, and he’s smiling but not really.

Shrinking small, so small that maybe you’ll disappear.

There’s a tick of silence. His thumb skates to your collarbone and then to the hollow at the base of your throat. He wants to squeeze but he doesn’t, his fingers wrapping loosely around the column to fix you there. Heat creeps up the back of your neck into your hairline.

The instinct to flinch bubbles up against your joints, but you can’t bring yourself to.

“Y’think you can fuck me,” he muses, disgustingly deadpan, “‘n steal from me.”

Dread weighs heavy like lead in your stomach. You can’t stop yourself from shaking your head, still playing dumb.

He bristles at that, thunderous. You both know it’s a lie; you’re a hundred dollars richer than you were last night. His fingers briefly flex around you in a way that you’ve seen before, and horror hits a fever pitch in you.

Tears prick your eyes, and you’re putting your palms on his chest and shoving, but he doesn’t give. Unstoppable force meets immovable object, and all that.

It’s not so much the blaring punctuation in a sentence, the ticking of dynamite ready to blow. He’s confronting you with proximity, with your own dishonesty. Wanting to shake you and tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Joel just leans in closer, almost grazing noses. You try to breathe around the lump of panic.

“The hell’s the matter with you?”

It’s disbelief, it’s hurt. In the same way, it’s understanding, incredulous. It’s him stepping back and loosening the hold around your neck like no one’s ever done; it’s softening and imploring.

He’s shoving his hands in his pockets, guilty and recoiling. Sorry he could even make himself look like one of them — a forced penance in the flesh.

There’s no answer that can justify what you did. Nothing simple about nothing personal. But truly… that’s all it was. A pie wafting steam on an open windowsill. Something to make you feel better about the void he’d leave.

“‘F you needed money, you coulda just asked.” 

He’s disappointed, desperate. In a tone that really says, I would’ve done anything you wanted.

A dam inside you gives, crumbling deep at the foundation and knocking the walls down around you. Words don’t come, but you shove your hand in blind into your bag, pulling out the loose bill and extending it.

Joel sees the regretful offering and your heart with x-ray vision. That you think of yourself as a doll, less valuable without her box. Used without tags. Free to a good home.

He shakes his head, the softness of a keep it barely peeking out of his mouth.

You’re skinning yourself raw, wanting another way out but having none. With half a mind to say that the next night could come with fangs.

You feel the stab of relief, and shame. So much shame.

Like a soothsayer, he foresees the coldness of a bench, the shrinking of you into the safety of an alley.

You drop to your knees in exaltation, thinking you know what’ll fix this. You can’t see through the watercolor blur of your tears, but you touch his belt with fingers that are cold to the tips.

But Joel knows what you’re doing, shaking his head no no no.

He won’t let you do it like this. He drags you up gently by the elbows. Pulls you into his chest, says stop stop stop. Kisses your hair, then your lips. You cry until he can taste the tears, until the front of his shirt is damp.

“I’m sorry,” you rasp out roughly. “I’m so sorry.”

He tells you to never say sorry to him again.

—

Joel pays for a room for two more nights, but only one — his with the working A/C.

You move your toothbrush and your bag over to Room 20.

You go to the pool, swimming laps around him in a tank top and your cherry-embroidered underwear, squealing and splashing in a flail when he swims underneath your legs and stands up to hold you on his tan shoulders.

Sunscreen streaks greasy on your stomach when you lay out together on the loungers after. Joel likes a cat-nap with his face under a towel, grumpy and tired from the sun. But he never snaps at you, never gets impatient when you ask too many questions while he’s dozing off.

You learn the pinched expression he makes just before he comes. That his right palm has hundreds of lines you can see best by lamplight. He misses the noise of Sarah in his house, of sharing the coffee pot with someone. He doesn’t like the small piling of toast crumbs left only by him on the kitchen table.

He learns that you apologize for wet, clean hair on his pillowcase, for laughing too loud. Things that don’t need a sorry. A collection of oversaturated manners that might take time to unlearn, but he promises to teach you.

He learns that you approach an orgasm with tentative toes in cold water, almost unbelieving that sex can give, give, give instead of take, take, take. He learns that you like the meeting of eyes when he’s buried between your legs, pushing your thighs apart to keep from suffocating. That when he does let you get on your knees for him, you know just the spot to caress with your tongue on the underside of his cock.

Joel’s belt is snaked under your stomach, across your hips, fists intertwined in the leather as he pulls you back, slams himself forward. It bites and creates indents in your flesh, and you don’t care. He gives you marks to love, to admire in your reflection, never ones that are ugly. Never ones out of hate over spilled milk.

There’s a dirty slap of skin, growing louder, competing with your moans. Your nails are tearing into the cheap sheets, and Joel’s so close but won’t come until he coaxes another out of you. A grand total of at least four by now, but you’ve lost count.

At long last, you splinter around him. Pitching off the cliff in a cry. Joel’s leaning — his chest, your back — and spilling deep, holding onto you for dear life. You hear him whimper in a strangle. Big, tough game that’s been taken down with an arrow in his chest.

Hot tears are flowing out of you, stuttering sobs close to follow, and Joel pulls out slowly. Seems to know why. And he rolls you over, into him, hand careful in slow strokes against your hair.  

You’ve never been good at goodbyes. Maybe that’s what this is.

Men like to say that women like you are insane, too analytical, too tear-streaked, too conscious of the way they look when they sleep. Because waking up with your mouth open, a drying corner of drool threatening your cheek is too human, not pretty.

Sometimes women like you are dead, rotting pomegranate flesh. Long forgotten in decay on the ground when the weight became too heavy to hold yourself up. And those men pick up your seeds and shove them squelching back into places where they don’t fit. 

The winters come bitter and harsh, but you’re always reborn in the spring. And without fail, you grow back fiercely into a tree reminiscent of Eden, low-hanging apples plucked and bruised and bitten into once and spit out in tart disgust. 

Women like you choke men like this with your pits, strangle them with vines, poison them with berries. They can consume, but so can you.

But then, in the ripe, cool shade of summer, you’ll have a visitor like Joel that will come with a basket and a blanket and they’ll stay and read books beneath you. They’ll enjoy your fruit, you’ll drip from their mouth and dry tacky like flypaper, and they won’t be able to imagine a day before you. 

They’ll collect all the pieces of you on a Tuesday morning and give you change to get a Coke after checkout. They’ll tuck you into the front seat of their truck, let you put your feet up on the dash, hand protective and calm on your thigh while the other steers you both back to Texas. A new home without shouting and bottles thrown.

And they’ll stay through every season.

#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller smut #joel miller x reader #the last of us fanfiction #the last of us smut #the last of us au #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller #tlou fanfiction #fire walk #my writing #joel miller one shot #motherofagony

[zmbiesuga]

TWENTY TWENTY VISION — m. atsumu x gn!reader

sypnosis: atsumu needs glasses, but why on earth would he make his & your life easier by wearing them?

warnings: i'm gonna beat the shit out of atsumu oh my GOD he irks me so bad, post-timeskip atsumu, eensy bit of angst if you squint super super hard, osamu mention, i can't write the miya accent™ for the life of me but i tried so sorry, petnames such as baby used, he calls the reader pretty

notes: inspired by the fact that i just recently got my new glass and haven't had a pair since i was 14 so seeing the world focused fucks with me a lil bit, ALSO, atsumu with glasses has been flooding my brain, osamu is farsighted cause i said so

"I'm not wearin' 'em."

"Atsumu, please, you need to wear them, you have astigmatism in both of your eyes! And you're nearsighted!"

Atsumu lets out a soft huff as he crosses his arms, as if he isn't the reason you've been having this argument essentially since you brought up him even getting his eyes checked.

It all started when Osamu had gotten new glasses, that's what Atsumu thinks anyways, that this is all stupid Samu's fault.

Osamu came over one afternoon for a harmless visit, with new glasses on. You had asked Osamu about them, and commented that you never knew he needed glasses to which he responded:

"Oh yeah, me and Tsumu both do, he just hasn't worn his since junior high."

You swear you've never seen Atsumu react so quickly, his head snapping to Osamu and immediately telling him to shut up through gritted teeth. The subject gets dropped instantly, but now you're giving Atsumu side-glances throughout the night until Osamu leaves.

After you two are settled into bed and Atsumu is almost asleep, until your voice rings out in the dark.

"Is that why you squint so much?" you ask in a voice barely above a whisper.

"...What are ya on about?" Atsumu asks, turning to face you with a soft expression.

"Is that why you squint so much?" you ask again, "Because you don't wear glasses like you're supposed to, so the world's all unfocused for you all the time, is that why?"

Atsumu's silence and stunned expression is all the answer you need.

"That's what I thought," you mumble before turning away from him, "your eye appointment is Saturday at four."

And that puts Atsumu where he is now, sitting at the island connected to the kitchen in your small apartment, staring down the thick black lenses as if he was trying to explode them with his mind.

"I said, I ain't wearin' 'em," he huffs again vehemently, looking at you with an unwilling expression, "and that's final. I don't need no stupid glasses, I can see just fine."

"Oh yeah?" you challenge, palms resting against the island as you stand on the opposite side of it, "If you don't need your glasses, read the paper on our fridge. Without squinting."

Atsumu's face goes a little pale, his eyes widening slightly. He looks over your shoulder at the paper held onto the fridge with a stupid magnet in the shape of a volleyball.

"It, uh..." he trails off, trying to not squint as much as possible, "...it...it doesn't matter what it says! I'm still not wearin' those glasses! I don't need 'em!"

"Atsumu that paper is no more than four feet away from you, and you can't even tell me what the bolded title says," you responded in an almost pleading tone, "baby, you need your glasses, so I am begging you, please put them on."

Atsumu's face softens slightly at your pleading voice, before it turns unwilling again as he looks down at his arms and mumbles something you can't quite make out.

"What was that?" you ask.

"...They make me look dumb," he repeats a little louder, looking back up at you, "they make me look like an idiot, and since my eyes aren't used to being focused, I feel like a baby deer learnin' how to walk."

"Tsumu," you reply gently, your own expression softening, "if you didn't like the way glasses look, why didn't you ask for contacts?"

"Because they scare me," he rebuttals, "which I know is stupid because they're an easy solution to my problem, but they rip and get stuck and...I don't know, that just scares me."

You stare at him blankly before taking a deep breath, "Atsumu," you start, "I'm not...trying to make you look stupid, okay? I just know that you need them, and you know that too. It might be awkward at first, but won't it be worth it to see the world a little more clearer? So you won't have to squint to read traffic signs or drive through menus? And, glasses aren't a permanent solution, we can work our way up to contacts, but you need to wear these for now."

Atsumu looks down at the glasses again, letting out another unsure sigh as he picks the thick rims up, and places them on his face.

It's weird at first, everything is clearer. The titanium fridge, that stupid volleyball magnet and the paper it holds, and more importantly...

You.

The way your entire face shifts into focus leaves Atsumu speechless. He knows how pretty you are, he doesn't need glasses to see it, but god do they make it better.

You give Atsumu a weird look, "What?" you ask puzzled, "Can you see better?"

"Yeah," he responds with a small smile, "I can see real good, pretty."

#love letters from leo #my dearest haikyuu #atsumu x gn!reader #atsumu x reader #atsumu drabble #atsumu fluff #haikyuu x gn!reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fluff #hq x reader #hq x gn!reader #hq fluff #haikyuu drabble #hq drabble #atsumu miya x reader #atsumu miya x gn!reader #atsumu miya drabble #atsumu miya fluff #wear your glasses or contacts kids

[seelestia]

in lieu of the boop fest: genshin men as boopers.

⎯ something made on a whim to commemorate the lovely booping chaos going on. may not be accurate but i tried!!! 🙏 which one are you?? tag yourself /j this is the silliest thing ever, forgive me. fluff & crack (and made with love).

the harbinger of dedication (???): boop them once and oh, it's on. boops you back and will not stop booping you back — it's an all-out war! or at least, to them. they take this whole matter as an opportunity and certainly don't mind tiring their fingers out just tapping the button on repeat. does it for the fun and to get a reaction out of you. also, probably eats (sends) super boops for breakfast, lunch and dinner. it's their bread and butter.

childe (of course), arataki itto, cyno (has a desire to max out his boop-o-meter till the end - a completionist's habit).

the menace (as simple as that): they have no need to be booped because they're the one booping you first and a lot at that too. oh, you got 99+ notifs? yeah, that's an act of love and it's from them. they hoped you liked the gift because they had fun giving it. grab a handkerchief because you're gonna have to scrub that smirk off their face, literally.

wriothesley, kaeya, shikanoin heizou, lyney (he apologizes by treating you to a meal afterwards).

confusion (awkward ver.): ...what. what is this? what does 'boop' even mean? why does it sound so oddly menacing when uttered out loud? and why are you smiling at like that? it's a trend, you explain and they — reluctantly and nervously — send a boop back. they have no idea what they're doing but at least, seeing that proud look on your face amounts to something. maybe, they did well? they then proceed to send you another one just for good measure. how cute.

xiao, gorou.

confusion (boomer ver.): their first thought was that they're getting hacked by a... feline virus? how interesting (please explain). with some explanation from you, they'll eventually understand the concept! a passive booper at best, but has a proclivity to treat boops as a “i'm thinking about you” button. so just know one boop equals to one time you crossed their mind.

zhongli, neuvillette, dainsleif (still confused at the end of it), diluc (secretly because he has pride).

the 'humble' reciprocator (dark horse?): all is in perfect tandem. you give one boop, they give one back. you give two boops, they give two back. you squint your eyes at them from across the room suspiciously, they chuckle into their hand in response. is that an act of mischief or demureness? you wonder what will happen if you boop them one hundred times? well, let's find out. (they will give back the exact amount, no matter what.)

kaedehara kazuha, baizhu, kamisato ayato (a true hybrid between being humble and a menace, he is. starts off nice until he spams boops when you least expect it... with a smile, of course!).

the bystander with the popcorn: thanks for the boop, you get one back. yes, only one, sorry. they'd rather not participate in the chaos and prefer to keep their inbox clean. no offense meant, you're free to have your fun so go ahead. they're just here to observe because in their humblest opinion, it serves them well enough as participating does. oh, don't look at them like that. you did get one back, didn't you? rejoice in the fact that you're one of the few — if not, the only one — they gave a boop to. treat it as an approval badge. it means you're special (to them).

alhaitham, tighnari, albedo, wanderer (he thinks he's above this childish and pointless act of booping... or is he?).

the victim™: is getting booped left and right without rest. suffocating and drowning in them even. lady luck is not on their side; they swore they booped everyone back to infinity and beyond — surely, it's all repaid and they can take a break now, right? wrong. they rest for 5 minutes and come back to 99+ notifs every single time. (if you relate, you might be a victim of affectionate bullying. feel free to riot about it.)

kaveh, thoma.

the loser at the start line: sneezes whenever the paw comes up on screen, yikes. A+ for effort, though!

venti.

— thanks for reading!

© seelestia on tumblr, apr 2024. please do not repost, plagiarize, translate, use for AI-related purposes or claim as your own.

#genshin x reader #genshin x you #childe x reader #itto x reader #cyno x reader #wriothesley x reader #kaeya x reader #lyney x reader #xiao x reader #gorou x reader #zhongli x reader #neuvillette x reader #dainsleif x reader #diluc x reader #baizhu x reader #alhaitham x reader #albedo x reader #tighnari x reader #shikanoin heizou x reader #heizou x reader #kamisato ayato x reader #ayato x reader #kaedehara kazuha x reader #kazuha x reader #wanderer x reader #scaramouche x reader #kaveh x reader #thoma x reader #venti x reader #seelestial.inks

[unclewaynemunson]

Okay i know we all love the trope of Steve being scared he's being Too Much™ in a relationship, but what about Eddie? Eddie, whose parents dropped him off at his uncle because he was nothing but a liability to them, and who has only ever known intimacy through random hookups in club bathrooms or dark alleys. Who doesn't have a clue where to store all the love he feels for Steve. Any form of gentleness, of romanticism, scares the shit out of him because it makes him so vulnerable and even though every fiber of his body wants nothing more than to hold Steve's hand or call him every night to talk about nothing or make him breakfast in the morning he is terrified, because what if Steve will laugh at him, get up and leave him? The mere thought of it makes him want to run.

And then there's Steve, who has actually been very comfortable with casual intimacy and showing his feelings, and who has been waiting for so long to have an actual relationship again and can't wait to do all the cheesy shit. Who surprises Eddie while he's at work at Thatcher Tire in full S2 Lovestruck-Steve mode, sneaking up to him from behind to scoop him up and twirl him around because he hasn't seen his boyfriend for almost two whole hours so obviously he misses him like crazy.

And Eddie just – starts crying, right there, full-on sobbing, with grease on his hands that he smears all over his cheeks because he has no thoughts at all left in his mind except for How can this possibly be real???

And Steve holds him more gently than anybody has ever done before, while he whispers sweet-nothings in his ear and patiently waits for him to come back to himself, looking worried out of his mind but very much not going anywhere.

They talk, and Steve gets to understand why Eddie got so overwhelmed, and Eddie gets to understand that Steve actually wants them to do all the cheesy shit together and that it'll be impossible for Eddie to be Too Much for him, no matter how Much he ever gets.

#don't mind me rambling about stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #fruity ficlet

[obssessivethorn]

Yuu Makes Constant References No One Else Gets

Since I started playing Twst Wonderland, I can’t help but imagine Yuu starting out by constantly making references to pop culture and memes from their world only to realize midway through that no one else around them will understand it 

Just imagine: 

In the early stages of the game, Yuu starts to gradually feel more comfortable around their friends, mainly Ace, Deuce, and Grim

At first, they slowly start to feel at home again 

They’d begin loosening up and speaking more like how they would in their home world 

In this case, that means more references and obscure humor 

Especially if we’re basing Yuu’s home world on our current day world

There are so many intricate inside jokes on the internet that wouldn’t make an ounce of sense to anyone who has never been exposed to that kind of environment like we have 

So, when Yuu first made an obscure reference in a conversation with the Single Braincell Gang™, they fall back into their closed off space

Because they’re not from here 

They have a whole other world to get back to 

If they can even get back to it 

And while Ace and Deuce may not be the brightest, the two had gotten to know Yuu enough to know that something was off with them. They just couldn’t place what

After the first few slip ups, Yuu had started talking less and less

They started letting Grim speak for the both of them more often, only speaking when others addressed them or when it was about a topic concerning Twisted Wonderland

From an outside point of view, nothing seemed to have changed. They still hung out with the other first years, laughed and teased their friends, and regularly asked or answered questions in class

But those closer to the Ramshackle prefect could sense the hesitation whenever they were about to say something 

“You should have seen Crewel’s face when Deucey asked that question!” Ace recounted the event between fits of laughter.  Yuu sat with the other first years at their (unspokenly claimed) lunch table, happily chuckling at their boys’ antics. They held Grim in their lap, being used as his personal high-chair like usual, subconsciously running one of their hands through the monster’s soft fur and munching on their own sandwich with the other.  “I wouldn’t have asked such a stupid question if I wasn’t so tired from you keeping me up all night with your complaining about that test we have today!” Deuce retorted, grumpily taking another bite of his egg noodles. Though he looked away from his friends, the flustered blush on his cheeks was still easily seen by the group.  The prefect let out another giggle, “I swear, Crewel looked exactly like that one meme with the lady surrounded by all those different equations-!”  “Huh? Is that a new one I haven’t seen?” Epel asked, his head cocked to the side in question. Had it been any other situation, Yuu might have found it cute. But their embarrassment was too strong for any thought like that to surface.  “Ah-! Nevermind, sorry. It’s an old meme from my home world.” They let out an awkward laugh before looking down and stuffing another bite of their sandwich into their mouth. Their face felt hot and they wished for nothing more than the floor to open up and swallow them, never to be seen in Twisted Wonderland again.  “Y-yeah, and then Crewel assigned Juice like, a hundred more pages of homework to make sure he understood the topic!” Quickly, Ace diverted the others’ attention back to him, no doubt after sending a look of pity to the prefect.  “Hundre-! It was only ten!” Deuce exclaimed, mouth full of pasta.  Yuu could only mentally thank Ace for saving them from the piteous stares from the others. It was no secret that home was a sore subject for the prefect. Any time they spoke about it, their eyes would glaze over with nostalgic longing. Ace and Deuce would often ask them about traditions or cultures back in their world, both out of interest and because the two knew Yuu loved telling them about it. 

Other times, however, aren’t grim reminders of how Crowley isn’t actually looking for a way home

Instead, they have these little moments with themself where they make references to things from their home world as an inside joke

Even if they don’t understand, Yuu’s friends still notice the tiny smirks or held laughs on occasion

But they’d never say anything about it, because it’s obvious how the small joke grounds Yuu and comforts them with the familiarity 

“C’mon! We’re all in this together!” Yuu hastily spouted, trying to stop Ace from running away from his cleaning duties, again. Before Ace could even respond, the prefect immediately let out a bout of laughter and grabbed the boy’s arm, yanking him down the hall while humming a song he’d never heard before between occasional giggles.

Yuu starts recording Grim who is knocked out on their bed. Light snores come from the fluffball. Yuu is heard sniffling behind the camera. “Oh meow meow get up,” they croak. Their hand comes up to lightly shake Grim, stirring him awake and now very confused. “Oh shit meow meow, I thought you was dead-,” Yuu giggles out, further confusing a very dazed Grim

“C’mon, Yuu, the question’s not that bad!” Epel said in between laughs.  “Yeah, Yuu! It’s just three more of these!” Ace could barely get the words out as he slowly collapsed in silent laughter. He slid further down in the library chair he occupied, hand clasping his chest in an effort to breathe yet still remain quiet.  “No, I’ve had it! I am disgusted!” Yuu continued to furiously pack their materials. “I am revolted!” They fumble in closing their notebook and quickly give up, letting the papers crumple up as they shove it into their bag. “I dedicate my entire life to our lord and savior Jesus Christ, and this is the thanks I get?”  The rest of the first years watch as Yuu slings their bag over their shoulder and promptly makes their way out of the library. Ace practically gasps for air. Epel finds himself in a giggle fit, unable to stop. Deuce is a mixture of confusion, amusement, and horror while he very obviously is still processing what just happened. Sebek can only look surprised, unsure of how to proceed. And finally, Jack is just as surprised but is holding back his own chuckles that threaten to spill. 

“Ace, you idiot! There’s a ‘b’ in ‘subtle’.” Deuce scolded. “What?! Where’s the ‘b’?”  “There’s a bee?” Yuu’s quivering voice quietly broke the tension. “Yuu!”

“Whoa, Yuu, I honestly didn’t know you could do that!” Yuu looked at him with a deadpan expression bordering on offended. ”Do you think I fuck around?”  (definitely more obscure but if you understand this i love you) ((Hint: Brennen Lee Mulligan in a Game Changer episode))

Any g-note plays and Yuu’s eyes widen in recognition

“Floyd, Jamil, Ace. You guys gotta get your head in the game.” 

Whether you wish to view it as romantic or platonic, the fact in undeniable that the cast is weak to hearing and seeing Yuu ramble on about things back from their world, specifically the first years or Heartslabyul boys

I personally really like the headcannon that only really the Heartslabyul boys, and maybe the rest of the first years, are in on Yuu being from a different world. It makes certain moments hurt just a bit more with the idea of little to no one knowing that Yuu is meant to inevitably leave. But i digress

Yuu could just be reminded of their favorite dish back home or a song they were obsessed with when they were younger, but the way they talk about it is mesmerizing to the boys. Their eyes light up with an aching mixture of nostalgia, longing, and joy. Recounting old stories or stupid trends they participated in never fails to crack just the slightest bit of a smile on their lips. 

For some odd reason, the way they describe their home world feels like taking a sip of a warm drink on a cold winter day. Comforting in all the right ways. Warming you from the inside despite the harsh environment surrounding. 

Not only does Yuu make it all sound like a fantasy at times, which is technically true given it’s a different world/dimension, but they somehow give the boy a strange glimmer of hope too. Like they too will have a chance to visit and experience the same joys. Only, there’s no chance of that happening. Right? 

#twisted wonderland angst #twisted wonderland #twst headcanons #twst #twst angst #yuu/mc (twisted wonderland) #yuu angst #twst crowley #grim twisted wonderland #ace twisted wonderland #ace trappola #duece spade #twst x reader #twst deuce #dire crowley #epel felmier #twst epel #sebek zigvolt #twst sebek #jack howl

[fuckyeahdindjarin]

Hallow'seams

A Seams Halloween special oneshot

{ Part IV: Notch | Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist }

Rating: A spicy T

Summary: Joel proves to you that he can be adventurous if he wants to be.

Warnings: Joel wears a slutty Halloween costume, fluff, mentions of drinking, spicy thoughts but nothing explicit, no use of Y/N

Word count: 1.7k

Notes: I was so looking forward to writing this Seams Halloween special that I floated back in the summer. Unfortunately, life™ happened - I've had a very rough month and honestly I didn't think I had it in me to do any writing for the rest of this year, but then this happened! I woke up thinking about Joel wearing a Gladiator costume and couldn't put it down. It's not as long or intricate as my original idea, but I hope you enjoy this anyway. I've missed these two so much!

Thank you for sticking with me and giving me so much love, I really don't deserve you all 🧡 Happy Halloween!

Joel pushes open the door to the High Street Outfitters, one booted foot steps over the threshold -

And he stops and stares.

Pumpkins of all sizes, some more crudely carved than others, seem to occupy every conceivable surface. Black cat and broomstick decals adorn the worn wooden walls, while hand-pulled cotton cobweb the ceilings.

When his feet unstick and move into the empty shop, he nearly topples a huge cauldron of what looks like homemade candy. Steadying it with his hands, he mutters under his breath. 'What the f-'

He would never admit it, but he nearly jumps out of his skin when you emerge from the studio with a dramatic flutter of the curtain divider. 'Oh hey, you're here!'

Stepping towards you, he presses a kiss to the corner of your mouth in a hello, and gestures. 'You really went all out, hmm?'

Your grin brims with pride, and he feels his lips stretch into an answering smile as you straighten up some of the costumes on a nearby rack.

'We found a Halloween shop nearby a few years back,' you explain. 'All their stock was still in boxes in the store room, so we took everything and ran with it. It's a lot of work every year, but the kids have so much fun with it, it's definitely worth it.'

Joel hums skeptically. 'Not just the kids have fun, from what I heard.'

You cross your arms and play coy. 'What have you heard?'

'That my brother hosts the rowdiest Halloween party in town for the adults every year, and tonight is their last hurrah before the baby comes.'

You chuckle. 'And I'm guessing you fought the costume and lost?'

'There’s no winnin’ when your sister-in-law plays the pregnancy card,' he grumbles with poorly concealed fondness.

You walk him towards the racks near the cashier. 'Here are the men's costumes. We run a pay what you want system for Halloween rentals, just pop your contribution into that pumpkin on the counter. You better hurry though, things start kicking off around seven tonight.'

Joel combs through the outfits half-heartedly, when a standalone clothes rack on the other side of the room, covered with a black sheet, catches his eye. 'And what's that?'

You hesitate, and stutter, 'Oh, um - you won’t like those.'

Arching an eyebrow, he stares down at you. 'Why is that, sweetheart?'

The endearing way you wring your hands and worry your bottom lip brings him right back to when he first met you. Your shyness has always provoked a reaction from him - an understanding at first, from the introvert in him. Then protectiveness, when he started spending time with you.

And now, knowing you the way he does, with you opening up to him over the past few months, he lets his mouth relax into a half-smirk, one hand curling around your waist to pull you into his side as he teases, 'Use your words, Pin.'

You huff, recognising the playfulness in his body language, but you still struggle to get the words out. 'They’re - um, damnit - they're adventurous.'

He sets his face in a mock stern expression. 'And what, I’m too borin' for them?'

Narrowing your eyes at him, which makes him grin, you deadpan, 'It's just - they're not your thing, ok? They're of the -' you pause, and gesture in air quotes. 'Occupational variety.'

Comprehension dawns on him, and he drawls, 'Ah, you mean slutty costumes.'

He can feel your skin heat at his words as you duck your head, and he teases, voice low and gruff by your ear. 'And will you be wearin' somethin' slutty for me tonight, sweetheart?'

Your breath hitches and your lips part, eyes glassy at the turn of the mood. 'Joel -'

He isn't a particularly spiritual man, but the longer he lives, the more he’s convinced that some people are put on earth for a reason.

And Lucy's raison d'etre is to cockblock him at every turn.

The door bursts open with a brash energy that is uniquely hers (with an uncanny resemblance to Ellie's), and your best friend doesn't skip a beat at the sight of the pair of you canoodling. 'Save the making out for later, Miller. We gotta go get ready Pin, c’mon!'

You hastily press a kiss to his whiskered cheek. 'Pick your costume and lock up behind you, ok? I'll see you in a bit.'

Lucy all buts hauls you out of the shop, throwing over her shoulder. 'See ya later, Miller! You better show up half naked!'

Curiosity getting the better of him, Joel pulls back the sheet from the clothes rack, and his eyebrows reach for his softly graying hairline. Leafing through the options, he pauses somewhere in the middle, and smiles to himself.

He’ll show you adventurous.

Maria and Tommy's Halloween party is easily the most anticipated event in the Jackson social calendar. Illicit incentives often swap hands for a RSVP, with those unfortunate enough to be assigned patrol duties on the night willing to pay handsomely for a swap in shifts.

While the kids are knocked out at home from eating their body weight in sugar, the Tipsy Bison is teeming with townsfolk. The normally dark interiors are decked out floor to ceiling in garish black and orange, as if people wouldn't get the memo.

Joel was apprehensive on his arrival, pausing for a moment outside the double doors of the establishment to steel himself. But as soon as he crosses the threshold into the warm and boisterous bar, so loud that his right ear rings, he realises that his worries are completely unwarranted.

No one even bats an eyelid as he wades through the throngs of partygoers, nodding politely at acquaintances who drunkenly shout his name and raise a pitcher in greeting.

It's pure madness - Halloween stopped existing for him twenty years ago. The last time he went to a Halloween party was their neighbour's barbeque. He still remembers the Gryffindor costume he bought Sarah, and how big she smiled swishing around in her robe, casting gibberish spells on her friends all night.

This, however, is a distinctly grownup affair.

When he put on his costume and stood in front of the mirror an hour ago, he could barely look at his own reflection. But now, compared to others in the room, turns out his choice is almost demure.

He only saw Gladiator once when it came out a couple of years before the outbreak, but he liked it, and when he saw the costume on the rack, he picked it out straight away.

The dark red cape sits on his shoulders and drapes across half of his torso - shirtless, of course - baring his right arm. He's a bit self-conscious about the skirt (he's sure there's a name for it but the packaging didn't shed light on this), which sits mid-thigh, fastened by a belt around his waist. He's even wearing the Roman sandals and leather bracelet, and a plastic sword hangs from his belt - the full monty.

The vain side in him thinks he can pull it off, but more importantly -

He wore it for you.

But you're nowhere to be seen, even after he grabs a beer from the counter, having circled the bar twice. Spotting a lone empty chair at a high table, he decides to perch (pulling down his skirt so his boxers don't show) while he has a drink and looks for you.

His keen eyes scan the room methodically. Sexy witches, slutty lumberjacks, misbehaving firemen, naughty nurses - together with the noise, everyone and everything seems to blur into one, and he almost gives up when something familiar crosses his line of sight.

Joel frowns.

Hold up. That toolbelt looks familiar. His eyes narrow as he squints at the worn faded leather.

It is his toolbelt. The toolbelt that disappeared from his garage workshop a couple of days ago that Ellie swears she knows nothing about. That little shit.

Then his gaze pulls back, like a camera zooming out, and he finds that the toolbelt is sitting on the soft swell of a pair of hips, over short denim cut-offs that he's sure he's seen before, and below a red flannel. His red flannel, knotted at the waist, that he knows you sleep in every night.

His chest rumbles with something primal, and he downs the rest of his beer in one big gulp before slamming the empty pint glass on the table and getting onto his feet.

You don’t see him coming, but you know without turning around the moment a pair of strong hands close over your hips in a possessive grip, pulling you towards the bathroom in the back of the bar.

He knocks a breathless laugh out of you when he pushes you up the closed door, the noise of the party muted by the thick timber as you grin up at him, preening at the way his dark gaze rakes over your costume.

A shiver runs down your spine as your own undoubtedly dilated eyes follow the solid outline of his right arm, which flexes as he rests his palm on the door behind you, then down his broad chest and the soft belly he’s so nonchalantly putting on display.

It’s absurd, you know - it’s just a tacky Halloween costume, but the seams of your eyes prickle as you muse how comfortable he is in his own skin.

'And what exactly are you dressed up as?' he asks, sliding his free hand under the toolbelt to squeeze your ass.

'A slutty contractor,' you answer boldly, dragging your index finger down his bare chest. 'Isn't it obvious?'

'And you thought stealin' my toolbelt for your little costume was a good idea?' he growls.

'Well, I didn't know you'd turn up as a gladiator of all things,' you tease, wrapping your fingers around the hilt of his plastic sword.

It should not make his pulse spike like this.

'Not only that, sweetheart. I'm a slutty gladiator, thank you very much,' he retorts, walking into you to slot his hips flush against yours.

You shoot him a loaded smirk that instantly has his boxers shrink by two sizes. Ripping his cape off his shoulders, you ask cheekily, ‘And what does my champion demand as punishment -'

Joel doesn't let you finish your sentence, swallowing the rest of it with a kiss so deep that it steals your voice and takes out your knees in one fell swoop.

Grinning at the way you're already bonelessly slumped against him, he winks, nose brushing yours. 'I can think of a few things, sweetheart.'

Note: Thank you for reading! I had so much fun dipping my toe back into the Seams universe, I hope you did too. This is me warming up with a view of returning to writing for the series proper, fingers crossed sometime soon! Comments/reblogs/asks are very much appreciated as always 🧡

Thank you @firefly-graphics for the adorably spooky dividers!

#fuckyeahseams #hallow'seams #seams halloween special #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x you #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x fem!reader #joel miller x reader #the last of us fanfiction #joel miller imagine #joel miller fluff

[anyasathenaeum]

Inexperienced!Choso Thoughts

A/N: I just really want to do [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] and [redacted] [redacted] this guy, okay? Shoutout to the anon who gave me this brainrot about Choso. It incorporates bits of this at the beginning. It's also not a full-blown fic, just some Thoughts™. Warnings: MINORS DNI, AFAB!reader, female terms and body parts are used, mentions of penetrative, unprotected sex (WRAP IT BEFORE YOU TAP IT, FOLKS), oral (m receiving), guided/taught masturbation, overstimulation, a tiny hint of accidental roughness, Choso being whiny (WOO!).

Inexperienced!Choso, who has no idea what all the new feelings in his body mean, why his whole body feels like it's on fire whenever he's around you and makes his cock so hard that it hurts. What's he supposed to do about it?

Inexperienced!Choso, who comes to you in the middle of the night, asking for an explanation of what he's feeling when he can't sleep because of the fire that courses through his veins and all the images of you naked and beneath him he has whirling around in his brain.

Inexperienced!Choso, who immediately takes it on board when you explain that his feelings are him being "horny" and indicative of his body wanting to mate with somebody and kindly offer to help him with the discomfort it's causing him

Inexperienced!Choso, who ends up cumming the second your soft hand grips his cock, making him whine and pant loudly as his cock throbs and twitches, his seed coating your hand.

Inexperienced!Choso, who accidentally pushes your head down as you're sucking his cock when he feels another orgasm coming, pushing his cock to the back of your throat as he cums and making you choke a little (he immediately apologized afterwards)

Inexperienced!Choso, who ends up fucking you over and over all night as his whines and moans echo through your room, filling you to the brim with his cum and giving you orgasm after orgasm until your brain and body feel like they're made of jelly and you're unable to move, let alone walk the next day.

Inexperienced!Choso, who overstimulates himself to the point of crying but still continues to thrust into you almost desperately, needing to empty himself into you as much as possible. His body wants nothing but to stay bound to yours, claiming you as his in the only way he knows how.

Inexperienced!Choso, who after that night, decides to be a good boy and do some research about having sex and how to make you feel even better the next time you two have sex because Choso cares about your pleasure.

Inexperienced!Choso, who ends up getting aroused while doing research (aka watching porn), and doesn't know what to do about it. You're not around to help him this time as you're out doing errands, so Choso just tries to ignore it (it doesn't work).

Inexperienced!Choso, who's whining and panting against you the moment you get home, his dick painfully hard and the tent in his boxers painfully obvious as he pulls you against him, his lips pressing against yours as he tries and fails at not grinding his erection against your thigh as he whines, "Please, please, (Y/N), please, help me. Need you. Need you. Please, need you so much it hurts."

Inexperienced!Choso, who listens to you with wide eyes as you ask him why he didn't just masturbate, cocking his head to the side as he repeats unsurely, "Masturbate? What's that?", making your eyes widen in surprise as you realize just how inexperienced Choso really is.

Inexperienced!Choso, whose large hand coated in spit slowly wraps around his cock, making him hiss and his cock twitch almost immediately at the contact. Your much smaller hand wraps around his hand as you lay next to him in his bed, talking him through touching himself and making himself feel good.

Inexperienced!Choso, who sees stars and lets out a loud moan the first time he pumps himself from base to tip, fucking into his hand as you guide him gently, pressing soft kisses to his jaw and neck as he follows your instructions.

Inexperienced!Choso, who's a quick learner and begins to thrust into his hand faster and faster, cries and whines of your name escaping him as your hand continues to rest on his as he fucks into it.

Inexperienced!Choso, who feels his orgasm hit him full force as you mumble the softest and gentlest words of praise in his ear as he touches himself, whispers of "That's a good boy, that's it, Choso, you're doing so well touching yourself like that. Good job," making the loudest cry yet escape his lips as his cock twitches and cum spurts all over his abdomen, painting himself in white.

Inexperienced!Choso, who despite having just cum, pouts softly as he looks as you, tugging on you slightly as he whines, "I don't like that I didn't get to make you feel good, though. That doesn't feel fair."

Inexperienced!Choso, whose eyes widen as you blush and lean back in his bed, spreading your thighs a bit so he can see just how soaked your panties are beneath that dress of yours. Watching Choso get himself off for the first time with your guidance and listening to his noises had your pussy aching for him.

Inexperienced!Choso, who immediately wraps his large hands around your thighs and pulls you down towards him, making you yelp at his sudden display of strength.

Inexperienced!Choso, who presses a gentle kiss to your clothed pussy before he tears your panties clean off of you, making you pout - you really liked that pair. Choso sees your pout and he immediately presses a gentle kiss to the inside of your thigh, "I'm sorry, (Y/N). I promise I'll buy you a new pair. Just... let me make you feel good, first."

Inexperienced!Choso, who despite his eagerness, realizes that he doesn't really know what he's doing, and so he looks up at you from between your thighs, his cheeks beautifully pink as he asks you, "Teach me how to make you feel good?"

#anya's athenaeum #jjk smut #jjk x you #jjk x reader #jjk #choso jjk #jjk choso #jjk choso smut #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujutsu kaisen choso #jujutsu kaisen x reader #choso x reader #choso #choso kamo #choso smut #kamo choso

[sabertoothwalrus]

hi !! just curious because i was looking at your adventure time episode guide and i love hearing other peoples adventure time takes !! how come you don't like finn's characterisation in together again?

I've talked about it before here and here!

But also I'm gonna say more and share some art I did in 2021 for a rewrite comic that I never got around to doing

So again to reiterate: Adventure Time is usually VERY good at making it feel like time passes, even when you're not watching. It's something about what they don't show that tells you everything you need to know.

Together Again did not do this.

It really really felt like they were avoiding showing Finn as an adult, as if they wanted to leave his post-show life ambiguous. Which, now that Fionna and Cake has shown us literally that, it makes Together Again feel even more wrong?? Like. imagine you have to pick a moment from your life that represents You™ the most. Together Again said that Finn, after living his whole life and dying as an old man, feels most represented by how he was at 17. I do not buy this. I am 25, and I cannot fathom identifying by my 17 year old self. I was a completely different person then, I was still cooking. I can imagine most people feel the same. And ok, so maybe Finn DOES for some reason feel stuck at 17? Explain to me why!! What needed to happen to him that made him feel that way?

And before you just say "it's because Jake died," there's still too much that was left out. How old was Finn when Jake died? What was Finn like, at that point? What else had they accomplished? What was he doing at the time that was on the forefront of his mind? Where/with who did they spend most of their time? Where were they living after the treehouse got destroyed?

It was like,,, it was like the story Together Again actually wanted to tell was about Finn's grief, and how poorly he copes, and how too much of his identity is tied to Having Jake, and how he struggles to move on. But that's not the story we got. I honestly think-- as interesting as it was-- everything with New Death and Tiffany and Lich just did a disservice to the focus, which was Finn trying to get over Jake.

I think Together Again should have gone like this:

Finn and Jake had always planned that whoever died first would wait in the dead world for the other to die so the two of them could reincarnate. Jake dies first. Jake would be able to "watch over" Finn as he lives the rest of his life, so Jake wouldn't miss Finn as much as vice versa, since he'd feel like he's still there with him. Eventually, Finn dies.

Finn's appearance would change with his emotional state. I thought it'd be interesting to show different phases of his life through the stages of grief.

There'd be a room where they could watch Finn's memories. Finn would walk Jake through the events of his life. We SEE exactly how Finn dealt with grief, with heartbreak, with love, with friends, with community. All the good and all the bad.

By the end of it, Finn is quiet. "Jake... when we reincarnate, will we.. lose all of this?" "Well, do you remember anything from any of your other past lives?" "No.. But that's the point. I don't want to forget you." Finn, despite their promise, despite Jake waiting for him all this time, declines reincarnating. He doesn't want to move on, because that would mean forgetting everything. He wants to say with Jake!! He JUST got Jake back!!

“What if— in the future— what if they forget about us? What if they don’t know about all the stuff we did?” We see Ooo in its current state. It’s changed, but it’s clearly been affected by the two of them. Every person they’ve saved, every civilization they helped build, every hero they’ve inspired. They’ve left their touch everywhere. “They’ll know,” Jake says with certainty. “We’ll know.” We see the future, with Shermy and Beth. We see the Finn Sword, and BMO with all their old belongings. Everything stays, but it still changes. Will happen, happening, happened. These have always been the themes of the show. They reincarnate, together.

#adventure time #together again #my art #finn the human #finn mertens #jake the dog #distant lands

[aclowntiny]

What Type of Kisser is Seventeen?

I am once again simply having Thoughts™. Warnings: 🤏🏻 suggestive in some places

S.Coups: Smiles and caresses your face before he brings you in. His lips command yours, and yet they’re soft, almost reverent at the same time. Will whisper praises and sweet nothings to you in between each one. He will speed things up if one of you decides to use some tongue, an arm sliding down to encircle your waist. Please play with his hair while/after you kiss he really likes it.

Jeonghan: Leans in so gently, testing the waters by ghosting his lips over yours and smiling when you immediately respond. Slow but knows exactly what you like, each kiss giving him more and more data. Teasingly swipes his tongue over your lips just to see how you respond. Whether it’s shock or taking him up on it, he’ll giggle about it when you’re separated again.

Joshua: Looks at you like you hung the stars in the sky before his lashes start to flutter, eyes falling closed. Joshua either takes you by your cheek, gently guiding your lips to his, or kissing him starts when he kisses your hand and moves all the way up your arm, neck, cheek, and finally his lips connecting with yours, sliding perfectly against them. Even manages to French you gently.

Jun: Acts like he isn’t good at using his tongue, but once he starts getting comfortable you’ll see that oh boy is that a lie. For someone not good at it he sure does it a fair bit 🤔 Accidentally gets a little messy, oops! Either giggling or giving you the most intense stare ever when you pull apart, it’s a coin toss.

Hoshi: Soonyoung is so happy and excited to be kissing you every time, he looks at you like he just got a winning lotto ticket. He’s not afraid to just go for it, all but yanking you into his lips, which eagerly take hold of yours. Explores a lot, but doesn’t always want to get too messy, just wants to feel every bit he can. His hands will be sliding over your hips or rubbing your shoulders, just one or two extra points of contact because it’s never enough for him, he just can’t resist. Likes to throw in little nips between collisions of your lips, your reaction to which always has him smiling that much more. Also enjoys pulling your tongue in with his.

Wonwoo: Leans in suddenly, but you usually have a little clue it’s going to happen by how he looks at you. Likes to brush your hair out of your face before keeping his hands there, yours resting flush against his chest. Not as much of a tongue guy, but every kiss Wonwoo gives you is so full of love it has your heart soaring. He adores your expression of pleasant surprise whenever he takes you off guard with a sudden kiss.

Woozi: Giggles a little at first, but kisses you so passionately it’ll turn into a satisfied smirk when he pulls away. Likes to have a hand on the small of your back to pull you in, maybe even run his nails down. Rather than a bunch of little ones, he likes to keep you for one long kiss, you two separating just far enough to get some air and them coming back all the way together. Everything you do blends together and you don’t know how much time passes, but neither of you seem to mind much, either 😉

DK: Always has to give your cheeks some appreciation first. Kissing Seokmin often starts with his lips traveling over your cheeks before finally falling onto yours, smiling into it when you pull him closer. He may accidentally get messy if you smile into it too because his heart races and he gets so excited because you’re adorable and he’s so lucky he gets to kiss you and oops, since when was it going at this pace?

Mingyu: Fast. Once he latches on, you’re in for a ride. Kissing Mingyu practically feels like exercise, but it adds a certain fire you haven’t felt before. The more you try to keep up, the more he’ll stay at it. Has the biggest smile on his face when you guys inevitably separate for air, especially if you look as messy as he feels. The whiplash you get when he kisses you like that then rubs your noses together when he pulls away 🤕

The8: Hugging Minghao turns into kisses, his arms sliding forward a bit from your back to your sides as you both lean in. He also likes running a hand through your hair as your lips connect. Every kiss is soft, taking its time to show you how beautiful you are and that Minghao would hold you forever if he could. Not much of a French kisser most of the time, that’s messy and a difficult kind of intimate he’d prefer to save for another setting. He’ll kiss your cheek after each kiss.

Seungkwan: Cups your face gently in both hands almost every time you kiss. Kissing Seungkwan also almost always starts with peck after peck before he finally captures you, unaware how eager it always makes you for him. You feel his surprise at how quickly you pull him in, but his hands tighten their hold on you ever so slightly. Every kiss with Seungkwan radiates love; even when he’s exploring your mouth you can feel him smiling into it. Rest your forehead against his afterward, he absolutely loves it.

Vernon: Lazy, sometimes even nonchalant kisses. “I’m bored, let’s kiss” vibes. He’s not usually very messy, but likes French kissing, so he’ll casually slide in there after a bit. Likes to have one arm around you as he kisses you or you two are laying together, one on top of the other. When you and Vernon pull away, he gives you a cute little smile like he didn’t just tongue wrestle you.

Dino: Pulls you by your waist into him as close as he can possibly get you, your foreheads touching before he turns and closes the gap between your lips. Passionate but slow, his lips moving thoroughly over yours as his hands slide up and down your sides. Lowkey highkey loves it if you make the move to slip your tongue along the seam of his lips. If you whisper any sweet nothings when you guys are done, spoiler alert, you are not done, Chan is going to attack you with another kiss you don’t understand he must.

#seventeen #seventeen imagines #seventeen reactions #seventeen x reader #seventeen scenarios #s.coups #jeonghan #joshua #jun #hoshi #wonwoo #woozi #dk #mingyu #the8 #seungkwan #vernon #dino #gender neutral reader