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#i learned how to use color a little more
buxiee · 11 months
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MABEL!!
february, 2023 vs. january, 2022!!
i really liked this glow up ^^ (we just ignore that i still do’nt know how to shade)
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reksink · 9 months
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Two Experiments of Color, Two Young Bugs
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skunkes · 8 months
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original colors
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beware my wine rants
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spamtoon · 2 months
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i would take their poison
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Sketch + Line Art for those Clicking Under the Cut(tm) (archival purposes honestly)
#moshi monsters#sweet tooth moshi monsters#experimentation i am COG AWFUL at digital dear goodness i was playing with coloring and transparency and all those fun digital doodads.#next time i probably wont have black outline or i'll do it differently. or i'll try well. not doing this. it sure was a process im#i'm an amateur everyone who masically only doodles. does the sketch look better than the final. kinda! but thats okay because im learning#and y'know what. sometimes in life you just need to draw faves no consequences#for how saturated a character they are i kinda feel like i pastelled things too muc and trapped myself with my convoluted layer setup but m#it was looking WEIRD with everything at full force#maybe the sparkles look dumb maybe the hair looks dumb and out of place and why i kinda made the lollipop a little funky too#uhh. first digital piece posted... ever?#the arm is SO fucky i am not that was. thats not what perspective is spam#yes this is what i spent a good chunk of today doing after i started working on coloring it and then. decided to go for it.#cooolrs a little inaccurate on the horns and such but man one of the biggest art things was like#i dont have to have everything at their perfect hex codes all the time. this would look way worse if i just. used their standard colors#yeah this is. instead of looking like its forward and to the right it kinda just looks like they have a Bigger hypno-lolly#especialy becase. i did not bother on the gloves and platforms i the sparkles work with 2 kinda sorta but you know#im practicing! i'm learning! i'll get better and learn how to do things more effectively!#anyway. sweet toof#though hey their arm looks even more fucked in the line art and sketch SO#note to future self have a Consistent Line Art Size so that if you feel like the line art looks like shit during coloring you dont have to#gamble on what size it was while changing it#sketch lollipop looks better i should have kept it small. but its fine. we'll get em next time boys (tm)#yes i know my gif post was so fancy and then the drawing is just THIS
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abyssalhuntersnerd · 2 years
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My beloved goldfish son... Do you know how much I love you-
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iloveyoumorethansoup · 10 months
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To this day I think one of the best friendships I ever had was my color guard friend. We got super super close cause we were both in love with our best friends and refused to tell them. They were one of the only people who would listen to me go on and on and on and talk to me about what was going on without losing interest partway through cause they’d heard it a thousand times. Bestie would let me talk their ear off all the time. And we’d turn right around and I’d do the same for them
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oozywoozycon · 2 years
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take a shot every time there’s a close-up pan of austin butler’s crotch
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everyothermouse · 2 years
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I enjoy my guitar 1 and spanish 1 electives, enjoy some bracelets I made for my at home guitar and some spanish notes in the form of tol talking about buggy
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onlygodknowsimgood · 6 months
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When I was young, I never really understood my parents insistence to only use olive oil imported from Palestine. It took a long time and a great distance in a process that was neither cheap nor convenient. The oil came in old beat-up containers that did not look appealing to me at all. In my head, if they wanted to support distant family back home, they could just send them money and save us and them a big hassle. We could just use the nice looking olive oil containers from the nearby store. Yet, this was never an option in our household. The only olive oil we used at home was from Palestine.
‎As I grew up and started a student part-time job, I worked with olive oil a little. I knew all about olive oil imported from Spain, Italy, and other countries. I knew which ones were better and more expensive. I also learned to tell, based on the pungent taste, which ones were extra virgin. I was tempted to use my employee discount to bring home one of the fancy bottles and use at our kitchen. I could not get myself to do it, and I did not exactly know why. I felt like it would be disrespectful to my parents even if it didn’t make sense to me. It did not feel right. It was not an option.
‎After living in Palestine for a year during the olive picking season, something changed. The olive picking season in Palestine is holy.
‎Palestinians relate to the weather based on how it would benefit or harm the olives. There is well-known unspoken rule about treating olive trees with respect. There is a day off from work just to pick olives. On public transportation, it is not unusual to hear someone on the phone telling their friend to stop by for their share of this year’s olive oil stored in what used to be a Coca-Cola or a liquor bottle. A driver will stop in the middle of the way to give his brother- in- law a jar of olives that are so close to one another that they start to crush showing their insides.
‎In Nablus, the owner of the Nabulsi soap factory takes pride in how picky he is about getting his olive oil. He insists on filling a cup to let me smell how authentic it is and smirks as he sees my diasporic facial expressions transform in appreciation of its strong smell running through all of my brain cells.
‎I started noticing how olive oil is an essential part of so many dishes. “Palestinians drink more olive oil than water” I would jokingly say and they would laugh in agreement. Olive oil is truly an everyday ritual.
‎They fantasize about its color when it’s fresh and remind me that it starts to change as it reacts with oxygen over time. They dip their bread into olive oil, just like that and without any additions, and enjoy it more than the sweetest of all foods. I can guarantee that every lunch invitation (عزومة) I received during the olive-picking season was a chance for my hosts to share their olive oil using Msakhan (a traditional Palestinian dish).
‎I now have a deeper understanding of the psychology behind the burning of olive trees by Israeli soldiers and why farmers moan at the scene as if they lost a loved one.
‎Wherever you are, if it’s accessible to you, make sure your olive oil is Palestinian. Your ancestors would want that.
- Dima Seelawi
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cat 5 cables
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ms-demeanor · 6 months
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Why reblog machine-generated art?
When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.
When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.
When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.
When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.
You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.
And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.
My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.
People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.
I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?
The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.
I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.
However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.
Also because it's just patently untrue.
But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.
It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.
I liked it.
I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.
Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)
Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?
My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.
What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.
And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).
There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.
I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.
Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.
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DPXDC prompt: Dead on main. No trick only treat.
~~Сhildhood friends and deals~~
The Justice League has to summon a ghost from another dimension to address the threat. They don’t know what price the Ghost King will take but there’s little time to bargain. Another spirit threatening them has already seized all the computers on their base. John doesn’t know what else to offer. A summoned ghost starts to look bored. Gold, jewelry? A favor from a member of the League? Like the Ruler of All Dead needs it. No one dares to make another offer, and the King is in no hurry to set out his demands. Maybe try to pull off a soul sale scam?
Suddenly, Red Hood breaks into the hall, walks up to Phantom and shakes his shoulder vigorously. Red Hood: You, get Technus out of here right now. I need access to the files and fast. Phantom: That’s rude, dude. Where did you grow up? in the cave? No "hello, no how are you, Danny", really? Red Hood: I’ll pay the usual price. Phantom: Deal.
What is the price? John sees Batman and gets in his way. The usual price, his guy said. Means Jay was already out of the deal alive and well. This hyperprotective bat would only piss off the ruler if he interfered.
The King quickly deals with his subordinate using a thermos and remains to watch working Hood. Red Hood: What do you want? I’m busy. Danny: You and I have a contract~ Red Hood: All right, all right. Jay throws M&Ms right in the face of the ghost. But king doesn’t look angry. He opens the package and starts sorting the candies by color. Phantom quickly eats up all the green ones and passes the red ones to Hood. Jason takes them without any questions.
Strange. John has never seen a summoned creature share its reward with a human. And the son of a bat looks too comfortable with it. Wait, since when do super-powered beings think that candy is a decent wage?John makes one of the most likely deductions using his experience. Constantine: Batsy, how long has your son been sleeping with the King of Ghosts? Batman: He…what?!
~~~~~~~
Dick *knocking at the door*: Little Wing, you hate ectoplasm and everything what is neon green, so why? He’s dangerous! Jason who turned on the music to not listen to his crazy family: ~He’s poison but tasty~
Dick: NoOOoo
~~~~~~
Jason: And now everyone thinks that I sold my virginity to you for a bargain or something, because interdimensional creatures like you aren’t supposed to help for nothing. Like you’re playing favorites. I’m gonna fucking kill John. Danny: Well, I wouldn’t say no to that. Jason: What? Danny: I mean, to k-kill John, yeah. How dare he.. Jason: Omg, you’re still so terrible liar, Fenton.
Danny: Sorry :(
Jason: No. Say it again.
~~~~Twelve years ago~~~~ Maddie wasn’t thrilled to learn that Danny was trying to make friends with Todd’s son. Their neighbor was terrible. And his son was definitely a street rat and probably a juvenile delinquent. Maddie: Danny, honey, there’s got to be a reason this boy is talking to you. Even kids from the crime alley are always looking for a bargain they can make or a fool they can fool. Danny: But Jason is so cool! He knows so much about books and alleys and.. Maddie: But you don’t want to be a fool, do you? Danny: Okay, Mom, I get it.
So, if Danny wants a cool friend, he’s got to offer a bargain.
He didn’t have a lot of pocket money for every month but Jason needed it more anyway. And his lunch that Jack was picking for him was big enough for two and only bitten on Tuesdays. Nice. Jason: Do I understand correctly? You will pay me and give me food, and I, what? Protect you from bullies? Danny: No! I’m not weak, I don’t need to be protected. Just..maybe we could sit together at lunch and walk each other home sometimes? Jason: Nay Danny: But why? You want something else? Jason: Money’s fine but your homemade food is…strange. Danny: I can bring sweets if you want. Jason: Deal. 3 pop tarts for a joint lunch, a party size bag of M&Ms if you waste my time out of school.
~~~~
Sometimes they share sweets when they hang out but more often Jayson takes them home to save in case his parents have money problems. Sweets have a long shelf life stored and he may not be afraid to poison himself. Over time, candy becomes their currency and a secret language for all occasions. Need help without unnecessary questions? M&Ms. Problems with learning? Skittles. The question is about family? Snickers. There will be a serious conversation? Pop Tarts.
Jason: One snickers and a pack of gum. Danny: Yeah, Jason? What do you want? Jason: My mom wants to meet my friend. Come to lunch on Sunday. Danny: Okay, you managed to pay for my expensive services. Jason:…and you just lost the gum from the deal.
~~~~~~
Jason threw a package at Danny: Three pop tarts. We need to talk. Danny: All right? Jason: Why are you avoiding me all week?! Danny: Well, it’s just..you’re Wayne now. Jason. Still Todd. And what about that? Danny: You can hang out with the cooler guys now, I didn’t want to embarrass you. Jason: Bullshit! I’m still the street rat, and you’re trying to avoid our contract. me. And I don’t even need money from you anymore. What the hell? I thought you are my friend. Danny: And I am!
~~~~~~
Robin: What’s a schoolboy doing in an alley at night? Danny: Um, I…nothing? Don’t tell my parents, Mr. Robin sir. Robin: It will cost you so many Chunky Bars, you have no idea. Danny:...Jason? Jason: N-no. Danny: Damn yes. What are you doing in green shorts on the street at night?! Jason: Cosplay. Danny: Oh yeah? Then I’m just your hallucination. Don’t hesitate to ghost me. I’m going home, Disgrace In Pixie Boots, bye. Jason: fu%&c$#u
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magnetothemagnificent · 11 months
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The world is so hostile to tweens.....
Like we joke about how our schools growing up would ban the latest toy trends, but that reality genuinely horrific when you think about it. Like maybe 1% of the bans were based on safety, but the rest cited reasoning like
-"kids were bartering for collectibles" (kids learning about economics and product value)
-"kids were wearing them and the colors were too flashy" (kids experimenting with self expression and fashion)
-"kids were playing with them during lunch and recess instead of using our rusted safety hazard playground" (kids utilizing their free time to do what helps *them* unwind).
Play areas specifically geared towards children and especially towards teens are constantly being shut down. "Oh kids today are always on their phones!" Maybe because
-there are barely any arcades left and even less arcades that aren't adult-oriented,
-public pools and gyms are underfunded and shut down,
-"no loitering" laws prevent kids and teens from just hanging out,
-movie theatres only play the latest films and ticket prices are only rising,
-parks and playgrounds are either neglected or replaced with gear only directed at toddlers and unsuitable for anyone older
-genuine children's and young teen media is being phased out in favour of media directed only at very small children or older teens and adults.
-suburbs and even cities are becoming more and more hostile to pedestrians, it's just not safe for kids to walk to or ride their bikes to their friends' houses or other play destinations
Children's agency is hardly ever respected. Kids between the ages of 9-13 are either treated as babies or as full-grown adults, with no in-between. When they ask to be given more independence, they are either scoffed at or given more responsibilities than are reasonable for a child their age.
This is even evident in the fashion scene.
Clothing stores and brands like Justice and Gap are either closing or rebranding to either exclusively adult clothing or young children's clothes, with no middle ground for tweens. Tweens have to choose between clothes designed for adults that are too large and/or too mature for their age and bodies, or more clothes they feel are far too childish. For tween girls especially it's either a frilly pinafore dress with pigtails or a woman's size dress with cleavage. No wonder tween girls these days dress like they're older, it's because their other option is little girl clothes and they don't want to feel childish.
And then when tweens go to school, the books they want to read aren't available because they cover "mature" topics (read: oh no two people kissed and they weren't straight or oh no menstruation was mentioned or oh no a religion other than Christianity is depicted), so kids are left with books for way below their reading level. No wonder kids today are struggling with literacy, it's because they can't exercise and expand their reading skills with age-appropriate books. Readers need to be challenged with new words and concepts in order to grow in their skills, only letting tween read Dr. Seuss and nursery rhymes doesn't let them learn.
Discussions about substance use, reproduction, and sexuality aren't taught at an age-appropriate level in school or even by children's parents, so they either grow up ignorant and more vulnerable to abuse, or they seek out information elsewhere that is delivered in a less-than-age-appropriate manner. It shouldn't be a coin-toss between "I didn't know what sex was until I was 18 and in college" or "my first exposure to sex as a tween was through porn" or "I didn't know what sex was so I didn't know I was being sexually abused as a kid."
Tweenhood is already such a volatile and confusing time for kids, their bodies are changing and they're transitioning from elementary to middle to high school. It's hard enough for them in this stage, but it's made worse by how society devalues and fails them.
We talk about the disappearance of teenagehood, and maybe that's gonna happen in the future, but the erasure of tweenhood is happing in real time, and it's having and going to have major consequences for next generation's adults.
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cleo-fox · 8 months
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Surrender
Summary: Finding your soulmate is supposed to be a romantic, life changing experience.
No one tells you what to do when a). your soulmate is the homicidal maniac who led the successful takeover of your planet and made himself king and b). you kind of still want him anyway.
(Soulmate AU where Loki won)
Pairing: Loki x Female Reader
Warnings: Smut, 18+, Minors DNI, dirty talk, praise kink, oral sex, teasing, orgasm delay, sex, vaginal fingering.
A/N: look, I was intrigued by the idea of a Loki Wins AU and also a soulmate AU and this just sort of happened. I may write more of this concept because it gave me IDEAS. This is also available on AO3.
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The mark on your wrist begins to burn the minute he walks into the room.
At first you think it’s a coincidence or a mistake—there are guards walking with him, perhaps it’s one of them. But then he flinches, his right hand going to his left wrist and your heart sinks to your knees. It could still be a coincidence, you tell yourself halfheartedly.
He scans the room and when his eyes land on you, it’s like the tumblers of a lock clicking into place and you know.
He’s much taller than you thought he was—that’s the only conscious and coherent thought you manage to have as he approaches you. Being the subject of his gaze is overwhelming in a way that you sort of expect, but it still makes you want to sit down and close your eyes. He looks you over, his gaze lingering briefly on your nametag from work.
“Show me your wrist,” he says.
You don’t think he’s using his powers, but you comply automatically, extending your arm toward him, wrist turned up. There’s a frisson of electricity that buzzes along the back of your hand when he touches it—if there were any remaining doubts about who he is and his relationship to you, that feeling surely puts them to rest. You know that he must have felt something too from the way he looks at you sharply, as though he thinks you’ve done something intentional to cause this. You can only hope that your wide eyed bewilderment convincingly conveys your innocence.
His expression betrays nothing as he examines the mark on your wrist, which is now glowing a bright gold that would be pretty if the circumstances were different.
It’s funny, you think. You’ve been waiting for this moment your entire life and all you can think is that you wish it wasn’t happening.
He releases your hand and looks at you in a calculating sort of way. “Come with me,” he says finally.
You do, of course. What other choice do you have?
*
The next several hours are a blur.
You are shuffled from place to place. Usually there is at least one guard—you’re not sure why. The idea of you being able to do any damage to him is laughable and escape doesn’t exactly seem like an option. Where could you go that he could not find you?
It’s a depressing thought; you try not to think much about it.
You know exactly when the news breaks because it coincides with your phone basically becoming unusable due to the flood of notifications, calls, and texts. You put it on airplane mode to compose a short message to your family and friends. Your reassurances feel a little trite given the circumstances: I’m fine, I’ll call when I can.
You can’t exactly type what you’re really thinking, which is more along the lines of I’ve just learned that my soulmate is the homicidal maniac who led the successful takeover of our planet. I’m doing about as well as you’d expect.
You turn airplane mode off long enough to send the email. Once it sends, you power down your phone. It doesn’t seem prudent to leave it on, at least not right now—right now, it only serves as a reminder of a life you know you’re going to have to leave behind and you’re not at all ready to confront that particular loss.
They eventually take you to what you assume are his rooms. You’re surprised by how traditional the decor is—you had expected a cold sort of minimalism, but there’s more wood and warm colors than you would have thought. You are informed that there are clothes for you in the closet; you nod and say nothing, though you wonder how they managed to pull an entire wardrobe together in the span of only a few hours. Magic, perhaps.
You are finally left alone, though you’re fairly certain that you would find guards stationed outside if you were to look.
You take one of the elegant velvet throws from the bed and wrap it tightly around yourself before settling on the couch next to the window. You’re not exactly cold, but it feels like a necessary armor between you and this unfamiliar place.
You stare out the window for a long time. You’re too high up to people watch and you’re not sure that you could handle that anyway—it would be yet another reminder of the fact that your life has changed in a massive, earth shaking way that you can’t even begin to understand. Instead, you stare at the tiny cars on the city streets below, snaking their way to destinations that feel so far out of your grasp that they might as well be on a different planet altogether.
*
It’s late when he finally shows up—so late that you’ve actually gotten ready for bed, donning one of the silk nightgowns that had been left for you. You can tell it’s more expensive than any sleepwear you’ve ever owned in your life. You’re just glad that it’s modest—you had half expected to find that all your pajamas were bustiers, thongs, and thigh highs in some sort of ill considered attempt to seduce you. But this is elegant and understated, with a matching robe that you cinch tightly around your waist.
You sit on the couch, the throw still wrapped snugly around you. He looks at you, the corner of his mouth curled up in a slight smirk.
“I hope you don’t intend to stay there the entire night,” he says.
“I hardly know you,” you say before you can even contemplate whether it’s wise.
He looks…amused isn’t quite the right word, but there’s a subtle tilt to the corner of his lips—not quite a smile, but maybe somewhere in the vicinity.
“Give it time,” he says, and something about that makes you shiver.
*
You intend to sleep on the couch, at least for these first few nights when everything still feels so raw and strange.
Or that was your plan, anyway.
Loki doesn’t say anything else as he prepares for bed and you stare resolutely at the window so as not to invite any more conversation or prompt any invitations to join him in bed. Eventually, the lights go out and you are left alone with your thoughts in the dark.
The room is much colder at night.
You’re not sure if it’s on purpose, though you wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Perhaps he likes it like this. Perhaps it’s to lure you to him, to tempt you into seeking out the warmth of his bed and body.
You pull the blanket more tightly around your shoulders. Eventually, you allow your eyes to drift shut.
You wake some time later in the middle of the night. The room feels even colder, the velvet of the throw and the silk of your nightgown and robe a scanty defense against the chill. You burrow against the couch cushions and it’s sort of bearable.
But you also have to pee.
You hold off for as long as you can, but you eventually summon the will to leave the couch and seek out the bathroom.
The bathroom is even colder—perhaps it’s all that glass and marble that makes the difference. You’re wearing your robe and you’ve still got the blanket wrapped around you, but your teeth are chattering by the time you wash your hands. You run the water as hot as you can stand, but it only does so much. If you were braver—if it wasn’t your first night here, you would run an extra hot shower and stay under the spray until your fingers and toes pruned and the chill was chased from your bones.
Instead, you hustle back to the couch, burrowing against the cushions, throw and robe wrapped tightly around you. But you still can’t seem to shake the cold. You huddle on the couch, shivering, trying to calm your body.
Time passes and you don’t grow any warmer. You wonder if you can steal another throw from the bed—surely he won’t miss one—when a voice speaks from the darkness.
“Come to bed,” Loki says.
You clear your throat. “What?”
“I can hear your teeth chattering from here. Come to bed and stop being absurd.”
You hesitate, staring into the dark. You consider the cold, the slight kink in your neck from the way you’ve been sleeping on the couch, the late hour, the way that sleep pulls at your eyes. A bed is appealing. Maybe more appealing than it should be.
You find yourself getting to your feet and slowly making your way across the room.
You pause on the other side of the bed—your side, you suppose, though calling it that still feels too intimate. You can just make him out in the dark.
“You’ll stay on your side,” you say, like making it a statement will make it so.
“Well, you hardly know me.” His voice is clipped, more bitter than you expect as he echoes your words from earlier.
You can’t help but scowl. “I’ve known you for less than twenty-four hours and it’s the middle of the night. I’m not doing this right now.”
He laughs. It’s sharp and brittle and unexpected, but it’s a laugh all the same, and something about that helps, if only a little.
You don’t say anything else as you climb into bed. You find that the blankets are warm—warmer than you expect—and heavy. There’s a part of you that expects yourself to be too nervous and on edge to fully relax, but the coziness of the blankets piled around you is oddly calming, even with Loki mere inches away. You hunker down underneath the blankets, situating yourself on the pillows.
He doesn’t say anything and it’s not long until his breathing becomes steady and even.
And after a while, yours does, too.
*
Consciousness creeps up on you slowly the next morning, a far cry from the jarring alarm on your phone that usually disrupts your slumber. You are warm and cozy, cocooned in the blankets, safe from all of the bullshit that had happened yesterday.
It’s such a peaceful, easy awakening that it takes you a moment to realize that you aren’t alone.
It takes another moment for you to realize that your cheek is pressed against Loki’s chest. And to make matters worse, not only are your arms wrapped around his him, your right leg is also flung across his waist, like you can’t bear to be parted from him for even a moment.
But before the panic sets in, there is a barely perceptible moment where your body just enjoys the feeling of being pressed against him. It’s quick and you’d deny it if asked, but the rush that you get from giving into the pull of your soulbond for even that brief moment is nothing short of incredible.
But it’s just a moment and your mind quickly turns to the matter of extracting yourself without drawing his notice. Ideally, he’ll just stay asleep and you won’t have to deal with any awkward fallout. If you move very slowly and carefully, perhaps he won’t notice.
You carefully start to move your leg from his waist.
“To be clear, you’re on my side of the bed,” he says.
God fucking dammit.
You abandon all subtlety and quickly peel yourself away from him.
“I must have rolled over in my sleep,” you say, incredibly conscious of how stupid that sounds.
He smirks, which is somehow worse than if he’d said anything.
“It won’t happen again,” you say.
It does.
This is your new routine: you start every evening on the couch, wrapped up in your robe and throw. You wake some time in the night, teeth chattering. Sometimes, Loki will tell you to come to bed. Other times, you quietly give up and slip under the covers on your side of the bed.
But every morning without fail, you wake tangled around him.
Sometimes, he’s spooned up behind you; more often, though, you’re the one clinging to him. It’s as though your body has a homing device that leads you over to his side of the bed in your sleep, dutifully ignoring all of your stern warnings about who stays where.
The worst part of it is that you’re fighting your own instincts. On a very basic, physical level, you yearn to be close to him. There’s a part of you that revels in these unintentional moments of closeness, that wants to allow yourself to enjoy the feeling of him, to allow him to put his hands on your body, for you to put your hands on him.
The fact that he wakes up noticeably hard most mornings does not make this any easier.
This is a problem that you’re not entirely sure how to solve and the second week in, your desire for information finally outweighs your desire to avoid social media and the deluge of emails and texts that you know are waiting for you on your phone.
You turn your phone back on and immediately delete all of your social media apps. You don’t know what they’re saying about you and you don’t care to. You turn off all of your notifications, even the little number icons that show you how many unread emails and texts that you have. You want absolutely no distractions.
You open a private browser window and pull up Google.
Newly connected soulbonds are the hormonal equivalent of pouring out a bunch of gasoline and striking a match. Soulbonds are intended to be consummated. You know this. There are people who wait it out for one reason or another, but that’s very much the exception—it’s a physical and emotional test of endurance. And you’re beginning to understand why.
The internet is not very helpful. You already know what happens when you don’t consummate a soulbond promptly—increased arousal, restlessness, vivid dreams, and so on as time goes on. You’re more interested in mitigation. You find a few blogs that have entirely irrelevant suggestions like cuddling on the couch or holding hands. “While you’re waiting for intercourse, why not try some outercourse?” one post muses with a level of earnestness that causes you to immediately turn off your phone and fling it across the room.
You’re going to have sex with him at some point. That’s inevitable. On a very basic level, you want him—it’s more or less coded into your DNA. But that is at odds with the reality of who he is and what he’s done. It might feel good to wake up tangled around him, but it only takes a minute to remember the battle of New York and it nearly extinguishes the desire burning within you.
But only nearly and only for now.
*
The third week is when things start getting increasingly difficult.
Loki seems content to wait things out. You can feel the burn of his gaze on you, but he doesn’t push, doesn’t prod.
You, on the other hand, find yourself slipping into a heightened state of arousal that is becoming impossible to ignore. Midway through the week, you finally give in and try touching yourself in the shower in the hope of some relief and you come so quickly and so hard that you have to clap a hand over your mouth to keep from crying out and your legs very nearly buckle from the force of it. A few twitches of your fingers has you sprawled on the shower floor and coming again, harder than before. You repeat this trick a few times but even as strong as it is, it doesn’t really help—you’re back to where you started within minutes.
Worse though, is the fact that it’s his face that you see when you come. Every. Single. Time. You imagine him over you, his gaze dark and intent as he watches you come; slack jawed and hissing in pleasure as he pushes into you; growling in approval and impatience as you take his cock into your mouth. The images come entirely unbidden and stick in the forefront of your thoughts like a burr clinging to wool.
When you see him later that afternoon, his gaze lands on you in such a way that it feels like he knows everything you’ve done and everything you’ve seen, from that moment in the shower to the shameful thoughts you had as you came.
The dreams start shortly after, and they are objectively worse.
The dreams are far more vivid than just images. In the dreams, he’s touching you, coaxing you to peaks you could never have imagined, pressing into you, taking you hard and fast and achingly slow and everything in between. The dreams leave you out of breath and shaky, aching for a touch that you know that you should not want, but do with every fiber of your being. By some miracle, they only seem to occur while you are on the couch and not when you’re in bed, but that luck won’t hold forever.
Perhaps more importantly, you know it’s only a matter of time before you give in. Deep down, you’ve known this from the moment the mark on your wrist started to burn. Your resistance is eroding like a sandcastle at high tide and it’s only a matter of time before you crumble.
But not yet. Not yet.
*
Five weeks after your arrival, you wake sweating and out of breath from another dream.
You take a few deep breaths. It was similar to the ones you’d had before. Thinking about the details makes your core ache and your clit throb so you try to keep them out of your mind.
You’re half surprised that you’re not tangled around Loki, given the content and subject of your dream, but that makes sense when you realize he’s not in bed. Instead, he sits on the couch, staring into the middle distance. Perhaps he is struggling with the same kinds of dreams.
The idea of you making Loki too hot and bothered to sleep is more appealing than you’d like to admit. You hastily dismiss the thought before it can bring any more heat to your already too warm skin or add more fuel to the flickering desire that seems to have settled permanently in the cradle of your hips.
You slip out of bed and go to the window, folding your arms across your stomach as you stare out at the sleeping city.
“You were calling out in your sleep.”
More heat prickles at your skin.
“Hm,” you say, trying your best to sound casual.
“What were you dreaming of?” he asks.
He’s only asking because he already knows the answer. You know this. But the lie still slips from your lips: “I don’t remember.”
He laughs, a quiet and dangerous sound that stokes the fire in your belly. “Have you forgotten, darling, that I am the god of lies?”
You can hear him walking toward you, but you keep your back turned. Has the room always been this warm?
He waits until he is directly behind you to speak again. “Will you lie again when I ask if you were dreaming of me?” His voice is so close, full of depth and a little husky. 
“You flatter yourself,” you say.
You can hear the smirk in his voice, feel the whisper of his breath on your neck. “You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?” He pauses for a moment. “But you were calling out for me.”
Your lips are dry. You want to deny it, but it feels useless. Worst case scenario, he’s still mostly right: you were dreaming of him and you can’t even really deny crying out for him because you were asleep and you don’t know for sure.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he continues. His voice drops. “Every time I close my eyes, I see you writhing in pleasure beneath me.” He pauses. “Or I see myself between your legs, worshiping you with my mouth, bringing you to ecstasy over and over before I finally take you.”
Your heart is pounding and every nerve in your body feels as though it’s connected directly to your clit. You are warm—too warm—and you can feel your pulse pounding in your throat.
“What were you dreaming of?” he continues, his voice barely a murmur.
“Nothing,” you say.
He clicks his tongue. “Try again, darling.”
You say nothing and after a moment of silence, he seems to decide that it’s time to switch strategies.
“You must be so wet,” he murmurs, his tone low and soothing.
Your stomach and your cunt clench. If he starts talking dirty to you, it’s over.
“We’re not meant to go this long like this,” he says. “We both know that. It’s been five weeks. Your poor cunt is probably aching for me, just as I ache for you.”
Your breath is coming in shaky gasps. You need him. You can feel your resolve starting to slip.
“Yield to me.” His voice is rough with wanting, like this is just as hard for him as it is for you. “I know you feel it. I feel it, too. You yearn for me, you crave my touch. Let me make you feel good, darling, let me ease that ache. Yield and I will give you everything.”
You draw in a shaking breath and slowly turn to face him. He’s looking at you with an intensity that you expect, but it takes your breath away nonetheless.
The remnants of your resistance are lost to the wave of him and the only thing that’s left in its place is a raw need like you’ve never experienced before.
You don’t know what to say, so in the end, you settle for his name. Just his name, said quietly with all the desperation and longing that has been making your life hell these past few weeks.
You get a glimpse of the fire in his eyes before he’s on you.
There’s nothing gentle about this kiss. It’s the kiss of two people who have been deprived of each other for too long, your teeth bumping against each other, tongues twisting and tangling. You end up pressed against the wall next to the window, your leg wrapped around his waist, his hand supporting your thigh. He presses his hips against you and you moan into his mouth at the feeling of his hard cock dragging against your swollen, sensitive clit. He draws back slightly to look at your face as he slowly grinds his hips against yours, his free hand moving to palm your breast over the silk of your nightgown.
You moan again, your head dropping back against the wall. The soft, slippery friction of the silk of your nightgown against your nipple and the soaked lace of your underwear rubbing against your clit is enough to make you go cross eyed, a slow tease that only fans the burning embers within you. Your body is overheated and too tense, but Loki is blessedly cool in a way that somehow both soothes and inflames.
“You’re drenched. I can already feel that,” he says, his voice thick with desire as he moves against you. “I could make you come like this.”
You whimper, rocking your hips back against him. “Please.”
He shakes his head. “Another time. Tonight I want to feel you when you come.” He drops his hand from your breast, trailing down your stomach and moving in between your legs. His fingers slip beneath your underwear, and you let out a needy whine as he strokes the slick folds of your sex. “Is this all for me?” he asks, his voice slipping into a low growl.
You barely manage a breathy affirmative.
“Sweet thing.” His thumb rolls over your clit as he slides one finger into you, and your back arches automatically, your breasts jutting out. “We’re going to have to do something about this, aren’t we?”
“Please,” you breathe.
“How can I resist such a sweet plea?” he says, sliding another finger into you and curling it just so. “Or such a wet and needy cunt?”
“Don’t stop,” you say.
“I ought to make you beg me for it after everything you put me through.” His eyes darken as his thumb presses against your clit and you moan. “But perhaps I can be generous. I can feel how much you need to come on my fingers.”
You nod, slack jawed and panting.
“You’ve been waiting for this,” he murmurs. “You’ve tried to deny yourself, but you need me, you need my touch.”
You whimper, your hips rocking.
“Say it,” he says, stroking your clit.
“I need to come,” you moan.
“A good start,” he says, his voice a stern purr. “But not quite what I asked, my love. Try again.”
A twinge of irritation manages to work its way to the forefront of your mind. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly in a state to be playing twenty questions.”
His eyes light up with a predatory gleam that heralds the arrival of something that you know will end enjoyably for you.
“Oh, darling, that attitude won’t do at all.” His fingers are immediately and conspicuously absent and you very nearly cry out in frustration. But before you can, he is sweeping you into his arms and making the journey to the bed in several long strides. He sets you gently on the bed and looms over you, green eyes flashing as his hands stroke up your thighs. You lift your hips and he pulls your underwear off, tossing it to the side.
“Let’s try that again, shall we?” His voice is a growl. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need to come.” You know it’s the wrong answer, but this particular game of cat and mouse and the predatory gleam in Loki’s eyes are making you even wetter and god, you need him.
His eyes flash with a barely concealed delight. “Try again.”
You spread your legs rather conspicuously, hiking your nightgown up to your waist. “I need to come.”
He’s looking at you intently, lips slightly parted. “You’re trying to distract me with that pretty cunt, you wicked thing.”
“Is it working?” you ask.
He lowers his head to kiss the inside of your left knee. “It would work much better if you answered me properly and told me everything you need.”
You think you have an idea of what he wants to hear, but you’re not quite ready to give up the game yet. Instead, you pull your nightgown up and over your head and toss it to the side. His eyes are dark as he looks at you, his gaze lingering on your breasts and trailing down to the apex of your spread legs. You wonder what it would take to make him lose control, to take you in the way that you both need.The thought sends another flood of heat to your aching core. 
You lick your lips. “Will you make me come, Loki?”
Another wolfish grin. “Closer. But not quite. Try again.”
You let your hand slide down your stomach and between your legs and you part your sopping folds so he can see the full extent of what he’s done to you—every dripping inch. The look he’s giving you now only heightens the feeling.
“Should I make myself come?” you ask and you’re immediately rewarded with an almost feral look and a sharp smack to your ass.
“Don’t you dare,” he growls.
You put on your most innocent expression, even as his visible hunger makes you ache. “I thought you’d like seeing me touch myself.”
“Oh, there will be time for that later,” he says, his eyes still dark. “I’m particularly interested in seeing what prompted those intriguing little noises I kept hearing while you were in the shower. But every tremor of pleasure that wracks your body tonight will be from me alone. Now,” his eyes glitter and his hand replaces yours on your cunt, his long fingers spreading you open, but not touching you, his expression rapt with undisguised greed, “tell me what you need.”
Your capacity to tease and resist him was well and truly exceeded when he smacked your ass and was further obliterated by the monologue he just delivered. “I need you to make me come, Loki. I need you so bad.”
His smile is filled with dark promises and a hunger that you have every interest in sating several times over.
“Good girl,” he says.
And his fingers slide back into you as his mouth envelopes your aching clit.
You moan as your hips lift and your hands tangle in his hair. He mumbles something that sounds like “perfect” against your clit, first teasing you with the tip of his tongue and then pressing it flat against you and rubbing in slow circles. Meanwhile, his fingers have found that soft, aching spot inside of you and he presses against it in slow, firm thrusts that make you tremble.
You initially think that you’ll be quite quick to come because you’re already so wound up, but Loki seems determined to find the edge and keep you there for as long as possible—and he’s really, really good at it. He falls into a rhythm where his tongue strokes your clit once, twice, three times and withdraws; his fingers pick up the thread, stroking your walls once, twice, three times and withdrawing, only for his tongue to resume where he left off. In this way, he keeps you balanced on the edge in a perfect kind of torture. It feels so good, but it’s not quite enough to get you there just yet.
You make liberal use of his name—it’s a plea, a curse, a benediction, a moan, a sigh. Instinctively, you know that he likes this, but it’s not enough to distract him into letting you fall even a moment before he wants you to.
The ache that’s been building in your hips for the last couple weeks is growing, burning bright and warm. Your body feels electric in the best way, your nerves humming and buzzing and straining for release.
“Loki,” you moan, partly as encouragement and partly because you want him so badly.
You’re so close. Your entire body is tense and trembling; all you can think about is how badly you need to come, how much you are aching for your release.
So close.
“Loki, please,” you moan, truly desperate now. “Please let me come. Make me yours—”
You’re not sure if it’s what you said, the desperation in your voice, or pure coincidence, but in that moment, he shifts his rhythm so that his mouth and fingers are no longer alternating, but are instead moving in sync. And this is what you need to tip you over, to allow that wave to finally, finally crest and then break.
Your orgasm hits you hard, pulling a loud moan from deep within your chest and making your entire body quake. Sparklers are dancing along your veins, champagne bubbles fizzing along your muscles, stars bursting behind your eyes. You have never felt anything like this before—you are satisfied but also aching for more, falling apart and being remade over and over again.
It’s only when you’re decidedly in the blissful wave of the aftershocks that he dares to lift his head and he looks you over like you’re something wonderful. Before you can raise your hands to reach for him, he’s crawling up to you, claiming your mouth in a kiss that feels deeper than the ocean.
He slides his hand in between your legs and you whimper, shivering at the sensation of his thumb stroking your sensitive clit. But somehow, he finds that particular angle and pressure that’s just enough, but not too much. You moan and he slides a finger back into you, rolling in the same rhythm as his thumb on your clit.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Keep going for me, darling. I want to watch you come this time.” His voice is so firm and authoritative and it strikes sparks up and down your spine.
“Fuck,” you gasp, your hips rocking with his hand.
“You’re doing so well getting ready for me,” he purrs. He lowers his voice to a rough growl. “I can’t wait to fuck you until you’re trembling and coming all over my cock like the wicked, filthy girl that you are.”
It’s the combination of his words and his voice and his perfect hands that does it this time. A rolling, fluttering shudder fizzes through your body, building to a peak that has you letting out a guttural moan as you clench around his thrusting fingers.
“Yes, that’s it,” Loki says as he watches you through hooded eyes. “You are gorgeous when you come undone.”
He kisses you slowly, fingers moving steadily until the final shudder rolls through you.
Somehow, through all of this, he’s remained fully clothed. There’s an aspect to this that’s appealing—it makes everything feel particularly decadent and a little forbidden—but your palms are practically itching with your need to touch him. You need him inside you, but you also need him close, bare skin on bare skin.
Your hands sneak under his shirt and you suck in a sharp breath when you feel the heat of his skin underneath your palms. You tug his shirt off him and make quick work of his pants before drawing back to look at him.
He looks like art. It’s a silly thought, but there’s some truth to it—there’s an almost ethereal quality in the sharp angles of his face and the elegant symmetry of his musculature. 
Your gaze drifts down to his cock. He’s long, thick, and hard, the tip flushed and slick with pre-come. An ache courses through you—something about seeing the full evidence of his arousal makes everything seem more real, makes you want him with renewed ferocity.
You want to touch him and so you do, your fingers curling around his shaft.
“Can you feel how much I need you?” he asks as you stroke him slowly. He is remarkably composed, though you catch the slight hitch in his breath and it sends a thrill through you.
“Will you show me?” you ask.
“Every day,” he says.
It’s an answer you’re not expecting. You were speaking strictly in the immediate, physical sense. This feels deeper, more meaningful. You’re not quite sure what to say, so you kiss him and he kisses you back with an intensity and thoroughness that makes your toes curl.
He rolls over you, his body covering yours. It’s almost overwhelming how good his bare skin feels against yours. You take his cock in your hand again and stroke him, slowly rubbing the tip from your clit to your entrance, coating him in your slick.
You expect him to just push forward when you guide him to your entrance and you’re almost disappointed that he doesn’t—you’ve both waited so long for this and your need for him is burning inside you like an inferno.
But instead he pauses, his eyes locked with yours.
“Will you have me?” he asks. There’s vulnerability in the question, a softness in his green eyes that you don’t expect. It feels like a loaded question, though not necessarily in a bad way.
You don’t hesitate. “Yes,” you breathe.
Something like relief flashes briefly in his eyes before he leans in and kisses you. You tilt your hips up again and this time, you feel the blunt head of his cock slowly press into your waiting warmth.
You’d read people describing first times with their soulmates and it had always sounded so hyperbolic and silly. They’d throw around words like euphoric and transcendent and all you could do was try not to roll your eyes.
But the moment Loki is fully seated inside you, you finally get it. Every overwrought, overused cliché seems to occur to you all at once—puzzle pieces falling into place and locks and keys and halves made whole and all that bullshit—and it all makes sense in a way that it hadn’t before.
Loki’s eyes are stormy above you, to the point that you think you may have angered him, but then he kisses you with a ferocity and possessiveness that steals your breath and makes you tighten around him.
“Mine,” he growls against your lips. “Mine.”
There’s a lot of emotion in that word. There’s history in that word. It’s the sort of thing that the two of you will probably need to unpack later. For now, though, you wrap your legs around him and meet his demanding, hungry kisses with your own.
“I’m yours,” you murmur against his lips. “Take me.”
You expect him to respond to that plea with a frantic pace. But instead, his first thrusts are slow, like he’s savoring it. Your body yields to him instinctively, your muscles drawing him in and then tightening further as he withdraws. You are so slick, so ready for him that it almost feels a little obscene.
“You are exquisite,” he rasps as he sinks into you, his head bowing to kiss and nip at your neck. “I have been aching for you.”
“Yes,” you breathe. “Please.”
You’re not entirely sure what you’re asking for—more of this, more of him—but he seems to know anyway. He kisses you deeply as you wrap your legs around his waist, rolling your hips up to meet his.
In one fluid motion, he rolls you over so that you are on top. He looks up at you, an irrepressible smirk curling at the corners of his lips.
“Go on,” he says, his voice low. “I want to see you take your pleasure from me. Claim your throne, my love.”
A shiver works its way up your spine. This is a man who single-handedly conquered the entire planet and he’s telling you he wants you to ride his cock until you come. It is raw and sexy and undeniably hot and the way he’s looking up at you makes you feel beautiful and powerful.
You lean forward, bracing your hands on the mattress, tilting your pelvis until you find the right angle, the one that makes your stomach tighten and your breath stutter. 
A smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. “Right there?”
You let out a shaky breath and rock your hips. “Yeah.”
It takes a moment for you to find your rhythm, but you find that you want—or perhaps need—to go slow and steady. Loki watches you, his hips rocking with yours as he lets you set the pace, his hands sliding from your hips to your breasts and back again, like he can’t get enough. His gaze is intent and intense and you get the sense that he’s cataloging every movement, every gasp or sigh, furrowed brow or bitten lip.
The coil in your hips is starting to wind tighter and you know it won’t be long. 
As though he knows, Loki slides a hand down your body, palm gently pressing against your lower stomach. A fantastic pressure begins to blossom in your hips and you whimper.
“You’re doing so well,” he purrs. “So tight and wet. You’re perfect.”
“Getting close,” you breathe.
“I know, I can feel you,” he says.
You’re at a point somewhere beyond words, riding that wave, chasing bliss that you can almost feel. A choked whimper falls from your lips.
“That’s it,” rasps Loki. “Be a good girl and come on my cock.” He flicks his thumb against your clit and you completely unravel.
It was good the first two times, but having him inside you as you come sends you to another plane of existence entirely. Your orgasm seems extended, the feeling of his cock against the spasming muscles of your cunt creating more even rippling pleasure. And the noise that he makes, the filthy praise that falls from his lips, the way that his fingertips dig into your hips just makes it all better.
He rolls you over onto your back just as you’re starting to feel boneless, and pulls you into a deep kiss.  He thrusts into you, a little faster than the pace you had set, but still slow and steady.
“I want to feel you come again,” he breathes. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited for this, how good you feel?”
You shudder as his cock drags again against that spot inside you. He repeats the motion and you keen, tangling your fingers in his hair.
“That’s it,” he rasps, bringing your leg up over his hip to press even more deeply inside of you. “Come on, darling. Let me feel you.”
You wrap your arms around his neck, meeting his hungry, demanding kiss with your own. You roll your hips with his, chasing the flickers of bliss that he’s steadily stoking to an inferno once more.
“Please,” you mumble against his lips. “Need you. Please.”
He groans and increases his pace just enough to make you whimper. The desire inside of you is catching fire.
“I…fuck, I—” Your hands are gripping his shoulders, your body shaking as you approach your end.
Loki’s eyes are wild, his teeth bared. You can tell that he’s close, that he’s chasing the same incredible feeling that you are.
“I want you to come for me,” he grits out. “And the second I feel your tight cunt start to tremble around me, I’m going to come inside you.
You moan, fingernails digging into his shoulders. You are unbearably close.
“Do you want that, darling?” he says. “Do you want me to come inside you? Do you want your perfect cunt filled with my seed?”
You are almost beyond words, but not quite: “Yes. Please.”
Despite how close he is, he still gives the impression of being entirely in control. He lowers his head so that his lips graze yours and his eyes are all that you can see. “Then come for me,” he says.
Two more deadly smooth rolls of his hips and you do. A guttural, plaintive sound falls from your lips as your whole body trembles with the force of your orgasm, your cunt squeezing around the girth of his cock. He groans, mumbling something in a language you don’t recognize before he, too, starts to unravel.
His face is rapturous when he comes, his head tipping back and his mouth falling open, brow furrowing. If you weren’t so distracted with the rippling shocks of your own pleasure, you would try to commit it to memory. Instead, you simply try to enjoy the feeling of him emptying himself inside of you, the stuttering thrust of his hips, the soft groan that falls from his lips. Finally he stills, resting his head in the crook of your shoulder. You can feel his heart pounding against yours.
You feel…it’s not different, exactly, but there’s a kind of ease and connection that just feels right. The restless ache inside of you is finally quiet and you feel loose and languid and pleasantly sleepy.
Finding your soulmate isn’t necessarily the same as falling in love. Sometimes it all happens in the moment. Sometimes it’s years in between.
For you, though, you can pinpoint the exact moment that seed was planted: Loki raising his head to look at you, his hand curled against your cheek. His gaze is careful, reverent, like you are as warm and golden as the dawn just barely beginning to streak the morning sky.
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joelsgreys · 6 months
Text
strawberry
Daddy Dom! Joel Miller x Sub! Female Reader
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summary: You feel ashamed for using your safe word with Joel during a session—he assures you you’re his good girl no matter what.
warnings/tags: 18+ only, MINORS DNI. (TW) daddy kink, lots of dd/lg lifestyle elements, reader is collared (day collar) age gap that is self indulgent, reader is mid to late 20’s and Joel is in his 50’s but tweak that to your imaginations if you like. SMUT; p in v sex, rough sex (that reader asks to try), spanking, possible overstimulation (if you squint??) Joel basically fucks reader too much and too hard. USE OF SAFE WORD. aftercare and lots of fluff, references to a pop culture film that i haven’t seen in forever but it’s fine. PLEASE BE MINDFUL OF TAGS AND WARNINGS. if this isn’t your thing, no worries just scroll on by.
MOODBOARD FOR AESTHETIC PURPOSES ONLY, READER HAS NO PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION.
word count: 2.4k
a/n: this is totally self indulgent, all for me as someone who has dabbled in the lifestyle before. if this is not your thing, no problem at all but kindly keep any negative comments to yourself. huge shoutout to the lovely @swiftispunk for inspiring this with the snippets of her own upcoming series that i am oh so excited for, darling han thank you for not only inspiring this, but for listening to me talk about it and encouraging it! and also to sweet mya @cavillscurls because truth be told her own fic brought back so many memories of a time in my life where i was genuinely so happy, in love, and felt safe with a partner. okay, i am gonna run away to the gym now to listen to 1989 tv (again) and pretend posting this is not nerve wracking as hell.
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He’s fucked you plenty of times before.
But never like this. No, never, ever like this.
He’s relentless.
His thrusts are coming quicker, sloppier, harsher.
It doesn’t hurt, but it’s intense. Too intense.
Joel Miller is truly testing your limits tonight.
No, he was pushing you past your limits.
Because that’s what you’d asked him to do.
“Alright, sweet girl. This is the last time I’m gonna ask you before we get started. Are you absolutely, one hundred—no, one thousand percent sure that you wanna try this out tonight?” he had asked you beforehand, skimming the strap of your light pink, lace lingerie with his index finger, his feathery soft touch sending a plesant little chill down the length of your spinal column. Of all the sets you owned, it had to be Joel’s absolute favorite. Normally, it was him who would pick out what you would wear, but tonight he’d decided to let you choose for yourself and oh, you did not disappoint. He fucking adored you in the color pink; loved how sickeningly sweet, precious, and innocent you appeared in the hue as you did the filthiest things to him, with him. When you nodded eagerly in reply to his question, a sigh fell from his lips, the doubt written all over his face as he remarked, “I really don’t think you’re ready. I think we should wait just a little a while longer.”
“I’m ready,” you’d insisted, stubbornly. “I promise. I wouldn’t be asking for it if I thought I wasn’t. But I am, I promise, promise, promise I am.”
“Daddy knows what’s best for you, sweetheart—”
Fingers curled around his bicep, you’d batted your eyelashes, giving him those eyes that brought him down to his knees for you a lot more often than he cared to admit, those eyes that made Joel feel like he was learning his role all over again, despite over two decades of experience under his belt. He used to pride himself for his ability to stand firm against pouting lips, fluttering lashes, and pleading gazes. And then you come along and suddenly it’s like he is in his thirties again and he’s navigating this kind of dynamic for the first time. Even after a year and a half with you, he’s still trying to figure out how to completely unwrap himself from your little finger.
“Please? Pretty please with a cherry on top?”
Christ, you made things so goddamn difficult.
“You really think you’re gonna be able to handle it? You think you’re gonna be able to handle me when I get real rough with you, baby? Hm?”
Without missing a beat, you replied, “Yes, Daddy. I can handle it. I know I can.”
You had been so certain that you could.
Confident, even. So confident that when he began going over the rules and reminded you to use your safe word if you needed him to stop, you’d giggled and stated, “I’ve never needed to use it before and I don’t plan on using it tonight.”
Oh, how very wrong you had been about it all.
You’d overestimated yourself, and underestimated Joel. Severely.
His hips snap roughly into yours without an ounce of mercy, over and over, again and again. Beads of perspiration start trailing their way down the sides of his face, the tip of his nose. His chest is flushed, red, and also slicked with a thin sheen of sweat.
You’ve already shattered, unraveled, come undone all over his cock several times—every time with his granted permission, of course. Because you knew better than to come without Daddy’s permission.
Your cunt is swollen, sensitive, too sensitive and at a point where it could start aching if he doesn’t let up soon. However, it seems like Joel’s only getting rougher and rougher as he chases another release.
“Joel—Daddy,” you manage to correct yourself at the very last second through a slew of frantic little gasps for air. “Daddy, please! Daddy please—”
His large hand tightens around both of your wrists pinned to the mattress above your head. Surely he must think you’re begging him for more, when the reality is you’re about to start begging him to stop because it’s just too much and you can’t handle it; but there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to stop, the part of you that doesn’t want to disappoint the man who means the whole, entire world to you.
The man you belonged to, the man you loved.
Even through the haze, you try telling yourself that it’s all mind over matter, mind over matter, mind—
“Stop,” you whine, squirming underneath him. “I—can’t take it anymore, Daddy, I can’t take it—!”
Releasing your wrists, Joel pulls himself out of you and you breathe out in relief, until he flips you over onto your stomach without warning. You let out an audibly loud gasp when his hands reach down and take your hips, pulling them up off his bed, putting you on your hands and knees. He brings down one of his hands on your ass in a stinging slap. “That is just too bad, ‘cause Daddy ain’t done with you yet, darlin’ girl. Not even close to bein’ done with you.” Wrapping his other hand around his base, he grins to himself as he glides the head of his cock up and down your slick folds. When it grazes your clit, you jerk forward, away from him, and he tuts, bringing you back to him, his fingers digging into the pillow soft flesh of your hips. “Oh no baby, you ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
“But Daddy, I just can’t—”
You’re cut off by your own cry when you feel Joel’s length stretching your walls all over again. It’s just too much.
And you really, really can’t.
He leans over you and presses his lips to your ear. “You asked for this, didn’tcha? Asked to be fucked like a big girl, huh?” He bucks forward into you, eliciting another strangled cry followed by a string of pathetic whimpers. Bringing his palm down in a second strike, he demands, “Answer me when I’m takin’ to you. You wanted this, said that you could handle Daddy bein’ rough with you, ain’t that right now?”
“Strawberry.” You say the word so quietly, you can hardly hear it over the ringing in your ears.
Joel spanks you for a third time, in the exact same spot—so hard, there was simply no way you would wake up without a mark in the morning. “I need’ya to speak up. You’re such a big girl after all—”
“Strawberry!” You grasp fistfuls of bedsheets and the signal for it all to end tears itself from the back of your throat. “Strawberry, Joel! Strawberry!”
It’s only a millisecond that he freezes, if that.
“Fuckin’ hell,” Joel curses under his breath, pulling out of you. The bed shifts as he climbs off of it and scrambles to pull on his sweatpants before he’s at your side—you’re still on your hands and knees, an unmistakable look of panic on your face. He puts a gentle hand on your back. “Baby, are you alright?”
Your heart is pounding, your breathing labored but you manage a small, tight nod of your head. “I-I’m fine. I just—” Stopping, you grip the sheets tighter, warm tears brimming your eyes. Shame over what you’ve just done is already creeping in and sinking into your bones.
“Are you hurt, sweetheart? Did I hurt you?”
Joel’s voice is calm, but you can hear the concern that laces his tone.
“No.” Your own voice is small. “No. You didn’t hurt me.”
“Is it alright if I move you?” he asks. When you nod your head, he reaches out for you and helps you to sit on the side of the bed. Dropping to his knees in front of you, he takes your hands and his and feels his stomach sink when he realizes they’re ice cold; he begins rubbing them between his own to warm them up. “Baby if I hurt you, you need to tell m—”
“I promise, you didn’t hurt me,” you reassure him, swallowing the thickness rising in the back of your throat. You clock the skepticism in his dark brown eyes and a tear slips out, rolls down your face, and splatters onto your bare thigh. “I’m not lying, Joel. I swear.” Tugging one of your hands out of his, you reach up and instinctively clasp it around the blue sapphire pendant hanging from the delicate, gold chain around your neck—he’d presented you with his birthstone last year, not only as a symbol of his ownership of you, but also as a beautiful reminder of your commitment to one another. “You believe me, don’t you? You believe I’m telling the truth?”
Joel’s expression softens. “‘Course I do, baby.” He cups the side of your face gently, brushing away a second teardrop with his thumb. “But I’d really like to know what happened so I can figure out how to best help, okay? Can you tell me what happened?”
Embarrassed, you try turning your head away, but he holds your cheek in his hand, gentle but firm.
“S’okay. You can talk to me,” he encourages softly, his gaze meeting yours once again. “Tell me.”
“It was just too much,” you mumble, meekly. “And too intense.” Heat floods your face as you admit to him, “You were right. I just wasn’t—I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
In an effort to lighten your mood, Joel lightly gives your cheek a delicate pinch and chuckles.
“Daddy’s got that real annoyin’ habit of bein’ right ‘bout a lot of things, don’t he?”
“I’m sorry.” Your bottom lip quivers. “I’m so sorry.”
His smile falters. “Sorry for what?”
“For using the safe word—”
Joel’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Y’know you ain’t supposed to apologize for needin’ to use your safe word, right? That ain’t how it works, darlin’.”
Dropping your necklace, you place your hand over his on your cheek. “But I feel bad,” you confess. “It makes me feel like—like I let you down, you know? And that’s the last thing I want to do. I just wanted to be really good for you.”
“Oh baby.” Joel lifts himself from the floor. He sits on the bed and pulls you onto his lap, brushing his lips against your temple. “You are such a good girl for me, sweetheart.”
“But I couldn’t take it,” you sniff. “I had to stop.”
“And that’s okay,” he assures you. He wraps you in his arms and gives your body a gentle squeeze. “It ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed ‘bout. You’re still really new to a lot of this stuff, y’know? S’why I told you I didn’t think you were ready.”
“I should’ve listened to you.”
He winks. “You should always listen to Daddy.”
You offer him a tiny, watery smile. “I know.”
“And say we try this again one day and it’s just not somethin’ you like or that makes you feel good—or maybe you never wanna try it again at all,” he says with a nonchalant shrug. “That’s okay too. You are still my good girl no matter what—my perfect girl. Always. You understand me?”
“Really? You promise?”
Joel holds up his pinky.
“Oh, you’re being really serious,” you tease him.
“Sure as hell am, darlin’.”
You lock your finger around his and he pulls you in for a sweet kiss.
“I love you, Joel,” you murmur against his lips. You giggle again when he clears his throat and smacks your ass lightly, playfully. “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, baby.” Joel pulls away and touches the tip of his nose to yours. “How’s ‘bout we get in the bath and get all cleaned up? Hm?”
“A bath?” You instantly perk up. “With bubbles?”
“With bubbles. And I’ll even let you throw in one of those smelly ball things you fuckin’ love so much.”
You swat at his chest. “Hey! My bath bombs smell really good, thank you very much!”
Joel doesn’t particularly like emerging from a bath smelling like a petunia, but for you, he’s more than happy to bathe in a sea of them, glitter and all.
You trace his collarbone with your index finger.
“Daddy? After our bath can we just cuddle in bed? Maybe watch a movie?” He raises an eyebrow and you smile sheepishly, adding, “Please?”
“‘Course. Pick any movie you want, sweetheart.”
“And can we have ice cream while we watch too?”
He pins you with a stern look. “Alright, now you’re just pushin’ it and takin’ advantage.”
You jut your lower lip. “Please, Daddy?”
There’s no arguing with that, not tonight.
Joel decides to let you have your way. “Alright.”
The two of you spend quite some time in the bath; normally a bath together ends with him inside you all over again, but tonight, all he’s doing is running a soapy wash cloth with your favorite shower gel—japanese cherry blossom—all over your body as he sits behind you, lips pressed against your ear. Joel washes you slowly, carefully, and all the while he’s whispering sweet, tender praise.
My good girl.
My perfect girl.
I’m s’proud of you.
I’m the luckiest man in the whole world.
After the bath, once you’re both dried and dressed in comfortable clothes—him in a clean pair of gray sweatpants and you in nothing but his t-shirt, Joel gives you the remote and instructs you to pick out a movie to watch.
“Make yourself real comfortable, baby,” he says to you, kissing the top of your head. “I’ll be back with that ice cream.”
You shoot him a hopeful glance. “Strawberry?”
“You tryin’ to be funny with me, darlin’?”
“No! That’s just my favorite flavor, silly.”
Joel grins to himself as he leaves the bedroom.
He knows that. Of course he knows that.
It’s why he always keeps a pint of it in his freezer.
You hop into bed and pull the blankets around you as your scan through the guide for a movie—you’d just decided on The Notebook when Joel appears again, a bowl and two spoons in his hands.
“You picked The Notebook again, didn’t you?” he asks without even looking at the flat screen that’s mounted on his wall over the fireplace.
“You said I could pick any movie I wanted.”
“Was just hopin’ you’d pick one we haven’t seen a thousand times,” he chuckled, sliding into his bed next to you. Joel places the bowl of strawberry ice cream in his lap and hands you a spoon. “C’mere, my sweet girl. Come closer.”
You snuggle up to him, and the two of you dig into the frozen dessert as the movie begins to play.
“Baby?” Joel speaks after a while, just as Allie and Noah share a passionate kiss in the pouring rain.
“Hm?” you ask, your fixed eyes on the flat screen, your mouth full of ice cream.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Swallowing, you look up at Joel, meeting his gaze.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” you answer honestly.
“‘Cause if there’s anythin’ else I can do for you…”
You purse your lips together and let out a tiny hum as you mull it over for a moment.
“You can hold me closer?” you finally suggest.
Joel shifts in his spot. “I can definitely do that—”
You stop him and point to the empty bowl.
“After you go and get us some more ice cream?”
He exhales an amused snort through his nose and shuffles out of bed, taking the bowl with him.
“Don’t get so used to bossin’ Daddy around,” Joel warns you playfully over his shoulder.
“Too late.”
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divider credit to @saradika 🍓
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