#it's a very rough couple of weeks where i have to prove to people that I'm in a burnout and do you see the problem with that sentence

[shikiswife]

Just looked up what Il deserto rosso is actually abt, and if I read her expressions in that gifset right - and I'm pretty sure I did.

I'm pretty sure I'll be watching it. Whether it's for catharsis or validation - I kinda need a movie like that rn

#personal #not in the best emotional state rn so I'm glad that I didnt get super sick at least #but i looked at the calendar and i should be in ovulation rn which is where I usually have the energy of a neurotypical #that ... is not happening #I'm at pms levels of energy and way of thinking #it's a very rough couple of weeks where i have to prove to people that I'm in a burnout and do you see the problem with that sentence

[ackermonie]

hiding away

request by @luna0713hunter : If…its not too much, may i request a gojo x female reader, where reader is dealing with some huge matters in her life and keeps on a strong face but one day when she's alone she breaks down and gojo finds her? something hurt/comfort,soft and sweet?

(The reader is one year younger than "toru and is a grade one sorcerer.)

Im sorry for the trouble,but im facing some major problems rn and i could use some comfort?

a/n: i hope im not too late, and i hope you’re doing better!! i’m actually going through a rough patch myself so writing this was comforting, so i hope it does the same for you!! i hope i did your request justice<3

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••

you’re strong. everyone knows so, you’ve proved so many, many times before, so it wasn’t unusual for the people around you to watch you maintain your position and keep a straight face when they know well just how much you’re enduring.

they must’ve either gotten used to it, or just plain got tired of trying to ask you if you need to talk or let something out, and you’re fine with that. in fact, that’s the whole damn point.

pressure eventually suffocates you more. you see your work eventually go south despite your constant attempts, and the higher ups only have you to blame.

and as much of a grade 1 sorcerer, you’re still human.

this was a test for your new breaking point. you were waiting, feeling the weight on your chest get heavier until you eventually have to explode, and you were oh so glad it happened when you were alone.

or thought you were alone, at least.

but it was dawn. you just received a couple of videos of a curse scene, blood everywhere, and the taunting, fresh crimson paints your failure in the cement.

you’re sat on your awfully empty bed, not bothering to reach for gojo’s side because you know you’ll be landing on nothing.

he’s been away for almost a week, held up somewhere in another continent, ripping you away from the only source of comfort you have.

you lock your phone, dropping it somewhere to your right, and your hands climb up to your face. you try your best to keep it in, to convince yourself that no, this can’t be where you break, but your brain spirals out of control.

and you can’t take it anymore. you just can’t. your body physically grows more shaky the more you keep your emotions locked in. you hide your face away from the emptiness around you, feeling the glass finally begin to crack, then it shatters all together.

once the first sob is out of your mouth, you can’t stop what follows. you bend down, silent tears involuntarily escaping past very heavy eyelids.

you think you’re finally at the point of hallucination when you feel the bed dip from your right. it wasn’t long after that a hand lands on your back while another tries to sit you up properly, and you, realizing that this touch is too vivid and familiar to be imagined, attempt to turn your face away. 

“no, baby,” you hear him say. “don’t hide from me.”

you shake your head, a sad whimper accidentally escaping your throat, and you try to push away from him.

he can’t see you like this. you can’t be like this.

“it’s just me,” he holds your hands down skillfully and moves you further towards him. “it’s only me, sweets. don’t hide from me.”

“i-i can’t!”

he tries to pull your face towards him, and you notice that his blindfold is off. you can’t help but gravitate towards the free sea within, helplessly letting him look deep within your soul as he asks.

“can’t what?” a thumb swipes at a soaked cheek. “talk to me.”

“i can’t…” you trail off, head shaking frantically as if to shake the emotions away. “i can’t do this anymore!”

“i know,” he nods, and your fingers wrinkle the material of his shirt. “keep talking.”

“i keep fuh-fucking trying, satoru,” you hiccup, eyes frantic, wide, exploding. “i keep trying over and over and fucking over again and it’s always fruitless. i end up getting blamed. i always end up-“

you stare at him, sadness and disappointment consuming you to the core as you spell the next words out loud.

you attempt a mocking shrug. “i always end up a failure.”

satoru’s lips turn downwards in some unexplainable emotion. “we both know this isn’t true.”

you shake your head, weak limbs once more attempting to pull away from the strongest arms, but they don’t budge.

“don’t turn away from me,” he says, but the softness of his voice makes more tears pool out of your tired eyes. “let yourself cry, y/n. at least allow yourself this.”

“i-i can’t, ‘toru,” you whimper. “i can’t just—“

“you can. you already are, and i’m right here. you can be as vulnerable as you want to be.” he nods when your features break once more, one heavy, massive sob breaking out of your chest. “i’ll always find you when you need me.”

he pulls your hands together at his nape, hands trailing from their and down to your waist where he pulls you on his lap, and that was your cue to loose the remaining of your composure.

he leans his back against the headrest. a hand is massaging your scalp while the other rubs up and down your back, and you let yourself cry in your lover’s arms.

“always, baby. always.”

#ackermonie writes #gojo satoru #jujutsu kaisen #gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #jjk drabbles #jjk x reader #gojo satoru x gender neutral reader #gojo angst #gojo hurt/comfort #hurt/comfort #jjk imagines #jjk fanfic #gojo imagines #gojo drabbles #jjk #gojo fluff #jjk fluff

[krikeymate]

Same anon here Btw! And I much prefer your take on the foster care/estranged older sister story thing Omg

I just thought of it quickly but damn the details on yours are much more intriguing I read it back a couple times.

Also we wouldn’t put Sam as Tara’s mom if Christina made herself more present lmao 😭😭😭

I'm glad you liked it!!

Part 1.

So, in order for Sam to take custody of Tara, she needs to petition the courts. She has to prove she's a suitable guardian! And well, she's not. She's got a criminal record, a history of drug use. She's got a life-altering mental health condition that rears its head in the worst way if she misses even a single dose. She works a shitty minimum-wage job and lives in a one-bedroom apartment. The girls aren't even acquainted. Ordinarily, this would be an open-and-shut no. Except... Sam has come into a lot of money with her parents' deaths, they both owned property, they both had substantial savings. And there's the question of how did this happen? After all, how could a child be born undetected, how did no one notice this child never went to school, how did she end up back with her mother, why was there no one watching the family from the beginning? Tara's social worker gets Sam in touch with a lawyer, and Sam sues a whole lot of people for gross negligence and failure to safeguard.

They give her custody.

Sam can't say her reasons are entirely altruistic, the situation comes with a life-changing amount of money. And a life-changing discovery as she clears out what used to be her home. Turns out her mother really was the absolute worst, all her life. She keeps it to herself.

Sam finds this parenting thing is much easier than she worried it would be. Feed the kid, make sure she's clean and clothed and safe. Take her to doctor's appointments, and social worker check-ups, and refill her inhaler prescription. And, ok, Sam knows there’s more to parenting than this, but it’s also the only thing she can do for the kid. Sam sleeps on the couch while she finds them somewhere new to live, and the kid spends most of her time curled up in a blanket under the bed. She tries not to react to the weird things she does, or the way she flinches if she shuts the door a little too rough. She tries not to wonder if this could have been her if she hadn’t been removed when she was.

The girl isn’t ready to be around others, but they tell her she needs an education, so Sam gets her a tutor, who also functions as a babysitter. It takes 3 months before Tara stops shaking when Sam goes to leave her with the sitter. That very first day had taken her by surprise. In the 5 months she had been with her, the girl had kept to herself, stayed quiet and out of reach. That day, Tara had attached herself to her leg and began to cry and Sam got to hear her speak for the very first time: no nonono no please no. She had to call off work sick that day to calm her down. Things changed after that. Tara became clingy.

Where previously she would watch Sam from afar with furrowed brows and suspicion (and sometimes even anger, she thinks), now she constantly hovers nearby. She’s always watching. She’ll willingly slip her hand into hers when they’re out and about. She crawls into her bed at night and sleeps at the foot, near but not touching. (The first morning after they moved, Sam nearly had a heart attack when she went to check on her sister and found the room empty. The girl was in her favourite place to be, under Sam’s bed.) Sam wonders why she ever sprung for a two-bed in the first place, then remembers, oh yeah, the social workers. Tara can still be taken back from her at any time, and she’s got to admit, she’s gotten used to having her around.

Tara’s a week from 14 when she makes Sam cry for the first time. Sam had been ranting – Tara had been so irritating lately, leaving her possessions where Sam would trip over them, being lazy, refusing to clean up after herself – and Sam couldn’t take it anymore. Mid-lecture, the girl screams at her to shut up and pushes her. It doesn’t hurt, she barely even budges, but the act feels so meaningful. Tara’s anger fades in an instant, apologies flying off her tongue, and Sam just pulls her in and hugs her tight. She’s so happy her sister feels safe enough with her to lash out and not fear the consequences. A week later she presents her with adoption papers for her birthday. It won’t change much for them, but the way Tara throws herself into her arms and says I love you for the first time tells Sam all she needs to know. She wonders how she almost passed on this.

#/mp #ask box #Scream #Sam Carpenter #Tara Carpenter #AU: foster this love make me whole again #fuck christina carpenter club #trigger warning #-> child abuse

[isfjmel-phleg]

While researching Ray, I read (most of) Justice League Task Force, which introduced me to a teammate of his whom I was curious enough about to read everything about.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the man who founded the Justice League. It's not who you might think.

...and he's kind of The Worst.

It starts with eight-year-old Will MacIntyre, who has just figured out that his father is a supervillain. Which accounts for a lot. Their family is constantly on the run, Will's mother is perpetually worried, and Will has given up on making friends--no point when every relationship must come to an abrupt end every few weeks. So he's an oddly detached, stoic child, caught up in his own head and full of silent resentment. He doesn't say a word or show any emotion when his father is finally arrested (by Golden Age hero Hourman, of all people) and leaves him with words he'll never forget: "Don't ever be like me, Billy Mac. Ever." Later, Will gets a visit from Hourman, who reinforces this idea; he has a choice of what kind of person he wants to be. And Will decides he wants to be a hero.

Actually, Will's father wasn't a supervillain. He was a small-time henchman. He wasn't cruel to his wife. And Hourman isn't quite worthy of the pedestal that Will puts him on. But this will be a running theme for Will: he develops perceptions of his world that aren't quite the truth and clings to them.

He develops superpowers at puberty--the ability to control electromagnetism. His senses are heightened, he can absorb and project energy, he can manipulate gravity, he can mimic flight and use electromagnetic fields to make himself seem invulnerable--as long as he's consciously thinking about it. So with these new powers, he devotes his life to reinventing himself. He studies science and martial arts and criminology, undergoes physical training obsessively, deliberately isolates himself and neglects his social life. He has a girlfriend at one point, but she dumps him because he's too wrapped up in projects he won't share with her to bother with her.

By the time he's twenty-one, he's a model Silver Age hero: tall, muscular, handsome, powerful, brilliant, and he knows it. He calls himself Triumph.

He then proceeds to found the Justice League. He's joined by some up-and-coming rookie heroes. The Flash. Green Lantern. Aquaman. Martian Manhunter. Black Canary. Superman. Their first mission together is rather rough. Triumph is exasperated with his inexperienced team's inability to keep up with his orders and his grand plans, and some of them take issue with his arrogance. He's very different from, say, Superman, who is notably humble and unassuming; Triumph is Always Right, always several steps ahead of everyone else, and thus is entitled to lead. And he does manage to save the day.

Unfortunately, what he does sends him out of the timestream. When he finally escapes, he hasn't aged a day past twenty-one, but ten years have gone by on earth, most of his JLA team have died or dramatically progressed in their careers, and not a single soul knows or remembers him. He got erased from history for a decade. He returns expecting to resume his former position of prestige without question, but the current heroes view him with suspicion, and fights break out. He manages to prove himself and comes to realize that he needs to work on improving his people skills if he's ever to get anywhere.

To his dismay, where he ends up is the Justice League Task Force, the team for younger, less experienced JLA members, led by Martian Manhunter (J'onn J'onzz). Will remembers J'onn as a peer, someone he used to give orders to, and he's annoyed at being in a subordinate position to him now, but he tries his best to fit in with the team. He starts to connect with Ray Terrill, who's just a couple years younger than him, in particular. Most of their relationship consists of exchanging insults, but they do develop a fondness for each other.

However, adjusting to a world that's gone on without him for ten years is difficult for Will. Grad schools reject his applications because his transcripts are out of date and he lacks the experience they require. He tries to reconnect with his old girlfriend, not to rekindle anything (given what the writer of these stories has said about his intentions for Will's sexuality, the relationship was probably just for appearances anyway) but because he feels he owes her closure. She's in a successful career now and doesn't recognize him (he looks like Will but he's ten years too young to be him!), and he can't bring himself to tell her the truth about himself. But he does find out that his investing in a home shopping TV channel ten years ago (remember, this is the 1990s) has since made him fabulously rich, so he now has the funds to further his career.

His efforts to be Nice and Cooperative don't last long. He clashes with J'onn a lot, questions him, refuses to follow orders. Why should he? He founded the Justice League! He should be leading. So he goes out and buys himself a new team on the side, a group of people devoted to avenging victims of violence. They engage in various Mission: Impossible-esque shenanigans, including Will's insistence on going after his father, newly escaped from prison. His refusal to open up to his team about the reason for this mission, or anything about his personal life, causes some problems. He has to confront his past, but he ends up getting his back broken in a fight and is left alone with no real closure in his relationship with his father.

He doesn't seek medical treatment for his back, just uses his powers to take the pressure off his spine as long as he's awake and can access the electromagnetic field. He doesn't tell his Task Force team about this injury. He refuses to help a desperate Ray who comes to him for assistance with an increasingly severe problem, and as a result alienates his friend from not only himself but the whole team. Triumph has a strategic reason for doing this, but treating his friend like a chess piece backfires. J'onn is not happy and proceeds to first fight and then fire Triumph.

Will refuses to take responsibility for this outcome. It's J'onn's fault that he isn't getting the respect he deserves. With no more team now, he tries to reach out to Ray but gets brushed off. So Triumph doesn't have much left. Lots of money, a broken back that privately causes him horrible pain, damaged relationships with the closest things to friends he's ever had, ten years of his life missing, and no more future with the team he founded. And this is where the demon Neron approaches him with an offer. Those ten years of his life back, in exchange for his soul. He gives Will a candle to light whenever he's ready to seal the deal.

Will agonizes over this choice. He knows he shouldn't, but the power and prestige that he believes is his destiny, his just due, is awfully tempting, and he keeps the candle ready in reserve.

Nevertheless, at Christmas, he turns up unexpectedly at a JLA party, apologizes to J'onn, and tries to make amends. J'onn forgives him, and everything seems fine again--until it comes out that forgiveness doesn't mean restoration to the team. Triumph's pride is once again insulted, and he blows up at everyone and leaves in a huff. Once alone, he's angry at himself for this failure to control himself and is ready to light that candle and start over. One of his Task Force teammates tries to convince him that he's really a good person, because he saved her life once. He counters that he did it because it wouldn't have looked good not to do, but eventually he comes to realize that that act was worthwhile, that his relationships with his friends are something he wouldn't want to give up. He's able to reconcile with them, including Ray, and he decides to abandon the candle and go back to J'onn for another apology.

Just as he's doing this, elsewhere his friends find the candle, mistake it for something else, and light it.

The timeline is reset.

Triumph is ten years older. No one on the JLA remembers him. They're having that party without him. The teammate whose life he saved is still alive even without his having been there. He apparently left no impact at all.

He walks away into the snow, just as the friends he lost are singing "Auld Lang Syne."

That was where his original writer left him, but years later another writer brought him back, soulless and evil, driven by sheer envy, trying to take over the JLA. They take him down by freezing him and keeping him stored away in the trophy room, along with a sign declaring him the founder of the Justice League. He is inadvertently killed some time later when the Watchtower is destroyed.

Not really a necessary coda for him--the story was tragic enough leaving him alone again with the consequences of his pride. But the character was highly unpopular with readers, and thoroughly villainizing him and removing him from the picture must have seemed like the thing to do.

There's really not a lot of material for this character. His solo wasn't very well-executed--tried to do too much with too little space. But writer Christopher Priest has a fascinating analysis that delves into what he had in mind, even though apparently it didn't go down well with a lot of readers, and what he had hoped to explore in Triumph's solo, and that's what caught my attention the most.

Will is so intent on building himself into a hero that he neglects to cultivate what would truly make him one: his humanity. He's so concerned with appearances that there's almost nothing sincere left in him. He's so caught up in his own cleverness and sense of personal destiny (glorious purpose?) that he can't see the people around him as anything other than pawns for him to maneuver. He's so afraid of feeling hurt and powerless again that he won't let anyone in, and it invariably ends with him alone. He knows just what a jerk he is, and he wants to change, but not enough to actually do it and stick to it. The lies he's told himself for so long are too much a part of him to give up. And just when he's finally making a breakthrough and realizing that human connection is worth the existence he considers humiliating--the consequences of his pride and its weakness catch up to him. The original end of his story reads a bit like a chilling reverse-It's a Wonderful Life in which he has to realize how little his existence has meant to anyone. He has gotten his wish, he has become what he has been crafting himself into nearly his whole life...and lost his soul, in every possible sense.

It could have been so different. But he wouldn't let it.

I've been rotating this story in my head all week now.

#comicsposting again #WM: broken bitter and alone #I've finally found a character so obscure that the current fandom apparently still hasn't discovered him #and quite frankly I'm okay with that #also: even though things end with Ray unable to remember Will the impact does remain #the dynamics Ray has with YJ make more sense in light of how he and Will used to interact #and unfortunately Ray takes on something of Will's attitude toward him in his interactions with Bart #and then there's the storyline from Ray's solo about a possible future in which he and Will and Bart as adults are friends of a sort #but that's a whole nother story

[topguncortez]

38,37,36,35,29 or 17 for Coyote and Val and Rooster and Dragon

(I just love them so much and i know it’s a lot so like chose 2 to answer from, thank you)

answers below the cut! :)

17. Who fell in love first?

Coyote & Val: She fell in love first and it terrified her. She hardly knew Javy, she had only been out on a handful of dates, and she fell so hard so fast for him that she waited to say those three little words first. She planned on saying it over some romantic dinner or something, but she just blurted it out one morning while he was taking a shower.

Dragon & Rooster: He fell first, and everyone knew it. He was not hiding it all, the only one who could not see it was Dragon. Rooster would say "love you" all the time and Dragon would just laugh it off, but then one day Rooster was like "I love you" and Dragon was like oh shit he really does.

29. What is their sex life like?

Coyote & Val: The king and queen of quickies (well. . . probably second to the Seresins). But they have three kids, so their sex life is pretty limited while the kids were growing up. It was a lot of "the kids are down for a nap, let's go to the car." or "meet me in the bathroom of the hard deck." It's passionate and they have a lot of laughs while rolling around in the sheets.

Dragon & Rooster: it's hot. it's dirty. They are both two very possessive, hot headed people. I mean, we all saw the way Dragon snapped at her sister, and how Rooster yelled at Mav. Most of their arguments end in rough sex on the floor or closest surface.

35. What movies do they enjoy watching most?

Coyote & Val: Disney movies, hands down, especially the not so famous sequels. Coyote knows all the words to Frozen 1 & 2. He loves cuddling on the couch with his girls and watching the Lion King 1 and a Half or The Little Mermaid 2.

Dragon & Rooster: Action and Marvel Movies. They once spent a whole week watching ALL the marvel movies, in chronological order. The two of them hardly saw the light of day and Mav swore their living room looked worse than a frat boys apartment.

36. How’d they meet each other’s families?

Coyote & Val: Not sure if anyone has caught it, but Val is the daughter of Admiral Bates, aka Warlock. She kept that lil secret under lock n key until they started planning their wedding. Javy nearly shat himself when she told him and Jake was somewhere in the corner of the rooming dying of laughter (how did the two most cocky, sluttiest flyboys end up with admirals' daughters?? no one quite knows). Val met Coyote's grandmother a couple days before he proposed. He took her up to northern Cali where he's from, and met the woman that raised him. It was his grandmother who told him to get his act together and marry Val.

Dragon & Rooster: well, Dragon met Mav during the Uranium Mission, and the two of them did not get a long. Dragon is a lot like Mav; she's young, has a lot to prove, constantly fighting against her sister's shadow to be better. But they somewhat started getting along after the Uranium Mission, and eventually Mav saw her as his daughter. Rooster knew Phoenix and her family before he even knew who Dragon was. The two of them were in flight school together while Dragon was at the academy, and Phoenix had taken Rooster home for holiday block leave since he had no where else to go (it was a bit awkward to explain when rooster came back four years later but with the other Trace daughter).

37. What do they like the least about each other?

Coyote & Val: Val doesn't like that Coyote has to always make a joke in every situation. Sometimes, it just annoys her and she wants him to shut up. But then at the same time, she loves that he is the constant sunshine in her life. Coyote dislikes that Val works herself into the ground. She doesn't know how to say "no" to taking on a task. She will work herself sick and won't let anyone hardly help her. She's stubborn as hell, something she gets from her father, but Javy loves her work ethic.

Dragon & Rooster: Like Val, Dragon is stubborn and Rooster hates when she flies recklessly, especially when she's in the air with Hangman. Now over the years, Hangman has become more reserved with his flying, but he still has that flyboy cockiness to him, that Dragon loves to bring out. Rooster hates listening to her flights when she's pulling nearly 8Gs, doing risky moves, all trying to beat her opponent. And on the other hand, Dragon hates when Rooster points out where she could've done better with her flying. She knows he's only trying to help, but she hates it. She would rather talk to her husband about what kind of mustard is better than about flying.

38. What was their most memorable date?

Coyote & Val: Their first date was the most memorable and that's because Javy was still on crutches and he locked his keys in his car. Val was all too prepared to just pick up take-out and go to his place, But Javy's grandmother said "you never have a first date at your house. it's tacky," and he took that woman's words to heart. He tried so hard to make it special, that he ended up tearing up in frustration as he tried to stick a hanger through his window to unlock his car. Val knew right then and there that this was the man she wanted for the rest of ever.

Dragon & Rooster: Most memorable date was probably when Mav let him take her up in his plane. She had been eyeing the plane every single time they were at the hangar, asking Mav all sorts of questions about it, and helping with it when she can. Mav was the one who tossed Rooster the keys and told him to take her up to see the sunset. Him and Penny stood on the tarmac and watched the two of them fly off, both of them knowing that soon they'd be married.

OTP asks!

#my asks #g's otp things #coyote and val #dragon and rooster #opposites attract things!

[trink-or-treat]

debriefing and press conference live from...flounder heights!

The usually quiet apartment complex wasn’t used for such events; but the quiet feel of the place was the calming contrast compared to the hyperactive, overwhelming feeling of Wahoo World.

The three organizers didn’t want to run the risk of having the debrief ruined by a wayward Booyah Bomb throw - Inkling kids had a lot of energy but getting accidentally splatted wouldn’t be amusing.

MEDIA: Alright, a good day to everyone. The press conference’s about to start. There will be a moment for public questions for the organisers here - Mister Patrick Adarna, Mister Sebastien Valravn and Mister Jeff Mayura. 

MEDIA: Thanks for holding this press conference. The first question we got is from Inkopolis News - what motivated you into running this event.

Adarna: *laughter* That’s a very good question. I think that it’s mostly nostalgia, trying to catch the same feeling that we had while we were young. Having a carefree period where you don’t have to go and worry about having to pay bills, about work, and whatever else.

For a couple nights, we wanted people to go...carpe diem. Is that how it’s said? That’s how it’s said, right?

But yeah. The ability to just go and seize the moment, to enjoy the good times while they’re here, to just get away from the stress. That was the main motivator for us.  

MEDIA: I see. Would you like to expand on why you’ve specifically chosen the Splatoween weekend to hold the event.

Mayura: Um...when rumor had it that there would not be a Splatfest around Splatoween, we felt like that was...a gap to go and fill in.

Couple years ago, there was some kind of carnival party held here and we felt like they did a lot of interesting stuff, but that we could go and improve some things. Having a shorter, but more focused event, was in my eyes, a good idea. We didn’t want the celebration to lose steam halfway.

MEDIA: You said that you didn’t want to lose steam, yet the event has been longer than a Splatfest - lasting almost a week. Were there any challenges for you? 

Mayura: Financing? *laughter*

Adarna: Oh god, yeah. Financing.

First of all, when we were planning the event, we were unanimously against charging for entrance - a lot of people in the Greater Inkopolis Area are living on tight budgets.

Like I said earlier, we wanted to have people let go of their worries, and making a popular event expensive to attend would go against what we’re standing for.

Valravn: Selling the event to advertisers was rather rough - some came naturally to us, like OCVO since Pat’s their morningman and all, but we had no major star power, no idols like Off The Hook or the Squid Sisters as spokepersons.

I think it was mentioned during the congeniality ceremony, but business people really didn’t believe in our project. We really did do wonders with almost no external backing, and I’m glad that we proved them wrong.

Aside from that, I think I was really scared that people would just lose interest halfway through the event. When we were deciding how long the event would be, the guys wanted something longer, while I wanted to just keep it to one night, maybe two. I’m glad they didn’t listen to me *laughter*

MEDIA: Rather than relying on idols, you had a mascot of sorts for the events, the Lord of Splatoween, who had that idea?

Valravn: I think it’s kinda unfair to refer to the Lord of Splatoween as a mascot - they’re an entity of their own. They got involved in the event because we asked them, but we really have nothing to do with all of this. 

Adarna: To make a long story short, the Lord of Splatoween has been hanging around Wahoo World for a long time. We’re not going to say what we had to do to convince the Lord to help us - we’re allowed our little secrets -  but they were hard negociations.

We’re insanely grateful to have had this opportunity to collaborate with them. And don’t worry - I’m 100% sure that you haven’t seen the last of them.

MEDIA: Now, a question from INK.TV - what were the attendance numbers. Did you reach your goal for the events?

Valravn: We’re still doing preliminary calculations about the exact numbers, but I’d say that they’re higher than what we were expecting. While we did have the backing of OCVO FM, thanks to our connections, most of the marketing relied on mouth-to-ear communications. People heard about the event, told their friends and the circle widened.

Mayura: Um, in the later days, we noticed a lot more...celebrities liveblogging and posting pictures from the event, and that’s how we knew we had it. That we managed to...catch lightning in a bottle. We’re extremely grateful for all these...um...influencers for the help.

MEDIA: At the start of the event, you said that you were not charging for entry, but were gathering voluntary contributions. Are these contributions going to fund future events? Like next year’s Splatoween event?

Mayura: Um, it’s true that we did gather close to half a million gold in voluntary contributions during the event, but let us be clear - all profits are going to go to Greater Inkopolis Area charities. That’s what we’ve stated at the start of the event, and we’re not changing our mind on this. We’re not gonna profit off voluntary contributions.

Right now, we’ve been in contact with several charities and groups and we’re looking to distribute the funding ethically. We’ll keep you updated on this.

Adarna: As for a Splatoween 2023 event, we can’t confirm it *yet*. We did go and say “See you next year” when we were closing, so we’re hoping to come back; but we’re not counting our pigeons until they’ve hatched.

Mayura: Mostly depends on what Splatfest organization has in mind - I don’t think they’d skip two years in a row.

Adarna: No matter what, I think that we’re gonna come back in some shape or form. We’re not the kind of guys that just go and give up!

MEDIA: Question from Inkopolis News once more, what was your favorite thing about the event?

Adarna: That might be a cliche answer, but I really liked the masked ball. Was impressive to see the efforts people put in their costumes this year. There was a lot of individuality, a lot of passion. Way to go.

Valravn: Agreeing with Patrick there, but I have a soft spot for both award ceremonies we had. We had something special going on with the congeniality award - because we wanted to nominate someone that encapsulated the spirit of our event and I feel like we nailed it with our choice.

Today’s ceremony was a little more light-hearted because we wanted to honor as much people as we could.

Adarna: Fun story - a couple people came to me when I was working as morning man after the ceremony to tell me that it was a shame I didn’t get any award for my OCVO broadcasting for the event. On one tentacle, I was super honored that people appreciated what I’ve done, but I couldn’t exactly tell them “Yeah, I’m on the organization committee, that would be weird to just award myself the prize.”

Valravn: He’s absolutely that vain, we just stopped him, by the way.

Mayura: *chuckling* Seriously, going back to the question here, I really had strong feelings during the balloon launch. It was something spectacular to behold, and personally, I felt really invested in it.

I lost someone really dear to me a couple years ago, and I felt that this entire ceremony was allowing me to let go off my grief. Sending something beautiful into the sky was a way to remember the person I’ve lost, without it being mournful, without it being sad.

MEDIA: Opposite question : is there anything that you would actually improve about the event?

Valravn: Early in the event, we were asked what someone should do if they wanted to go on ride that didn’t allow children on them, and I was a little baffled about what to answer. 

I’m a parent myself and there is absolutely no way I’m leaving my kids unattended if I can avoid it, but I realized that we really didn’t have much in the way of options in the case an emergency had to happen. Thankfully, we managed to organize something, but I’m extremely disappointed that we needed to be asked about it to figure that out.

A couple days ago, just after the ball started, I also noticed that we didn’t have a lot of events targeted towards children - we had a couple rides and games, but I felt that, as far as family events go, we could have done that way better.

MEDIA:  Finally, before we move onto your fan’s questions, anything you guys want to add?

Mayura: I think we all agree that our attendants were amazing. Seriously, we’re so proud of their involvement during the event, they were everywhere. No major incident happened and we’re just...so happy that it was the success it was. I’m...um, really hoping to come back next year. Like we said earlier, it’s all up in the air. We need all the stars to align, so cross your fingers!

Valravn: Seconding what Jeff said concerning the crowd - people go and say that Inklings and Octolings are impulsive and destructive but from what I’ve seen this weekend, everyone was on their best behavior.

Adarna: Aside from a couple Burst Bombs incidents...

Valravn: Aside from a couple Burst Bombs incidents indeed.

MEDIA: Well, there you have it. The organisation committee will answer your questions in the next few minutes, so do not be shy!

[strbrymlk]

12/15/2022

long time no see! it’s been a busy few weeks. let’s recap a little

i did my recital!! it definitely didn’t go perfectly, but i would still consider it a success. i had a wonderful group of friends and family that came to support me, and i am so thankful and grateful that they were there to listen to my playing. i’m glad that i had this experience, because it prepares me for next semester, and i know what to do to make sure it’s even better than this one!

i finished my fall semester! the whole thing had me in a chokehold until about five days before the end of classes. there were only a couple of finals that i was really nervous about, but it turns out i had no reason to be scared, and i did well on all of them. still waiting for a couple of grades, but i should be ending with almost all As. (one or two A-‘s im thinking, which i will take after this hellhole of a semester).

i had my jury for the semester! (this a final for music majors where you play what you’ve been working on over the semester, to prove that you’ve improved). i did well i think, given i played my recital pieces. i didn’t do very well on the sight reading, but i’ve since been told that none of the flute players really did that well on it, so i’m feeling better about it. my teacher also said that she thinks i did really well. i’m looking forward to reading the comments from the professors about everything.

i had one final hangout with my friends before we all had to head out. it was such a nice time, and i think we all missed each other a lot. we’ve agreed that next semester should be a little easier to hang out, and i think we’re gonna input set days in the month where we dedicate time to hanging out with each other. i hope it goes through, i missed those girlies so much this semester.

it’s my boyfriend and mine’s one year anniversary today!! i can’t believe i’ve made it this far with anyone, to be honest. i think we work really well together, and i’m excited for what the next year of our relationship brings <33

anywho, that’s been it! i am staying with a friend for the next few days before we meet up with some other friends! we go to japan on the 21st, and we’re all very excited. i hope you all are doing well! if you have finals, good luck! if you’ve finished, congratulations!! it’s been rough for a lot of people, so you should be proud of yourself regardless of the outcome! stay healthy <3

#motivation #university #diary #journaling #studyblr #little moments #strbrymlkthoughts #studying #studyblog #strbrymlkstudies #college student #college life #finals #studyaesthetic #study inspo #classical music #musician #music major #linguistics #clouds #to dos #to do list #university life

[absolutebl]

Some thoughts on last week’s BL episodes

RE: Cupid’s Last Wish

I’m completely with you on this one and would not blame you for not finishing. The highlights have been Mix and Jan’s acting—their ability to believably portray the same character has been really impressive to me, as has Mix’s ability in general to portray such a wide range of emotions with Win and make me feel right along with him. I think Win would have been even more unlikeable with a different actor.

Plus, I find Buddhism really interesting and I know it’s a big part of Thai culture. Growing up with Western media, there was always that religious tie-in with Christianity in supernatural stories about vampires/werewolves/fey. It’s super cool to me, then, to get a Thai version of that, where Buddhism and Buddhist monks are the religious tie-in to a supernatural story and seeing what kind of supernatural abilities a Thai person would ascribe to a Buddhist monk (like instantly knowing that the person in front of them is in the wrong body).

But these things definitely can’t save that show and I’m honestly surprised I keep watching each week. From the weird mukbang scene in literally every episode, to the director’s shocking inability to make either of these very handsome men ever come off as sexy on-screen, to the complete unlikability of Win, to the seemingly complete lack of comeuppance for the two meanies (are they a couple? are they brother and sister? I literally still don’t know), it’s just been a disaster. I find myself very grateful it’s only 10 episodes. (Can we just get to Vice Versa already?!?!?! 😭)

RE: KinnPorsche

I dunno, I’m very on the fence with this series. (The vomit-breath sex scene has really stuck with me in a bad way. What is it with Thai shows and showing people vomiting?! It’s not sexy!)

I’m a huge fan of highly likable but bad or at least morally grey characters. (One of my favorite TV shows of all time is NBC’s Hannibal, wherein Mads Mikkelsen portrays a vicious cannibal with so much class and charm that you wish you could be his friend.)

From the first episode, I thought we were going to get a love story between two charming but not actually very nice people, and I was intrigued as hell. In reality, what we got was “I’m not really like this; I’m just this way because my family makes me”, which has been a serious let-down for me.

It makes me want to go write my own love story between a mob boss who actually likes being a mob boss and the bodyguard who takes pride in being a skilled killer. (It would probably look something like Ciel and Sebastian from Black Butler but as adults and with less soul-eating and more dick-sucking.)

RE: Star in my Mind

I may be the only person, but I have really enjoyed this one. I like both of the main characters and the side characters as well. Despite the setting it doesn’t feel stale at all, and I think that’s because I haven’t seen the “I confessed to him in high school and now we’re meeting again” storyline before.

Most importantly, I’ve personally felt so far like all of conflict has believably grown out of the characters themselves, instead of feeling like a producer just baiting the audience. And I liked the pace of travel.

That said, that ended at the end of this last episode. The whole “I can’t stand violence” shtick was not telegraphed in advance that I saw, and it definitely felt to me like a gimmick to keep the main couple apart. It ruined what I thought was a really nice landing zone for the couple to resolve their (current) differences and get together for the first time at the end of that episode.

On the pronoun side, I’ve been a bit surprised Kluen is a กู/มึง guy. I’m sure the writers wanted to portray him as masculine, but those words are also vulgar/rough, right? He seems like a much too neutral kind of person for that. Very quietly confident, nothing to prove. (Honestly I’ve really liked Joong’s portrayal of the character. That, “In this, I’m an idiot” scene really got me.) I dunno, it just doesn’t seem to match to me, but that’s a very hot take from someone who’s still just learning about this stuff.

One last thing

The YouTube recommendations got me turned on to a Vietnamese BL that’s currently running called “Biển Lặng” (directly translates as “Calm Sea” but official English title is “The Promise”) that you might check out if you have time. It’s just six episodes of 20~25 minutes each, which I think they’ll release as a single “movie” video once all episodes are out, but I’ve really enjoyed the first four episodes.

The main character, Tân, is an adorable disaster of a human that has somehow charmed me and I’ve really found myself rooting for the main couple. It’s a stepbrothers premise, though, and I’m getting the vibe that there’s probably not going to be a happy ending, so some things to be aware of.

Hope you’re having a great week!

Hi Hi!

I pretty much agree with you on everything.

I did watch the first two eps of The Promise, then gave up on it and am now waiting for @heretherebedork's report on how it ends.

[lindsaystravelblogs]

Tuesday

Covid Crisis

Heather had been feeling a bit ‘fluey’ for a couple of days and yesterday morning, she did a RAT test. Disaster! She was positive! All our plans are in jeopardy. Numerous emails back and forth with our fabulous travel agent, Bev Edwards, and our not-particularly-helpful insurer, NIB, resulted in us continuing on, but exploring what options we had if she was still positive when we needed to board the ship - we would not be allowed on!

Today, I also tested positive (surprise, surprise, locked together all day in a car, what else could we expect if I didn’t already have it).  More disarray!

Our insurer said we had to get a formal certificate that we really had Covid before they would consider a claim so we headed a couple of doors up the road to a clinic where we were subjected to another pretty rough RAT, but at least we now have some proof - at a bit over $AU100 each.

Heather is still sniffly and coughing and has some muscle pain. I have very muffled hearing - makes It very difficult to communicate - and some mild muscle pain has developed during the day. We both have a vile taste in our mouths, but Heather’s is starting to abate. Despite this, we really aren’t too bad.

We simply don’t know what happens now. It is unlikely that we will be allowed to board, but there are a couple of landings along the expedition and we may be able to join the expedition somewhere along the route - if/when we both test negative.

We really don’t know when that might be and what we might do in the meantime, but we are pretty confident that we will be fine for the Greenland expedition even if the Iceland one falls over completely. Either way, it is likely that Covid is going to prove very costly. We think we probably caught it on the plane from Bergen.

We are feeling a little lost at present, not knowing what we will be doing over the next two weeks, but we will persevere. We feel almost dirty, like pariahs, avoiding even remote contact with other people, despite the fact that we have done everything in our power to avoid the plague. We took every precaution, we have had four vaccinations, we wear masks, we avoid contact with others wherever possible.  Nothing was our fault, but it feels that way anyway.

(Wednesday morning update!)   Neither of us are any worse this morning (although Heather’s horrible taste is back again) so hopefully, we will recover quickly.  We are taking some heavy antiviral tablets our fabulous GP (Justin) gave us before we left – just in case we caught the virus.  They are supposed to relieve the symptoms and avoid the more serious consequences of the virus and they seem to be working pretty well at present.

We have been advised that we can’t join the expedition part-way through so we either test negative by the morning of 2 August or we will miss the expedition – but should be good for the next one to Greenland.  And NIB’s travel insurance is very limited.  (Even then, we can expect them to deny and dispute anything we claim - but that is the way with all insurers.  They grab your money and weave enough weasel words into the contract to ensure they don’t have to pay out.  Not that I am a cynic!  It is more that I have experienced this a few times before.)

Tuesday

Today was mostly just driving. We went to the Holmavik clinic at 9am and were out of there with our pieces of paper, but short $200-odd, by about 9.45. It was then basically a 432-kilometre drive to our digs for tonight and tomorrow night - the Laxa Hotel in the middle of nowhere but overlooking a lake that is renowned for its bird species, particularly ducks. We have seen thousands of ducks along the way, but always a long way away. The only two we have really identified here are the Eiders and the Mallards. I am sure we have seen numerous others, but it is quite impossible to stop for a closer look or a photo when we see birds because the roads don’t allow for it. The roads are 2.2 metres wide (max) if sealed, with maybe 300 mm verges when you are lucky - one lane either way. When you have a bus or big truck approaching, there is not a lot of room to move over, particularly onto the fatal verge - and if you do, there is that 3- (or 100-) metre drop from whence the road has been elevated. Or maybe straight into a solid rock cliff.  A tad hairy on occasions, but 1200 clicks down the road and we are still alive. Max speed limit is 90, average practical speed closer to 70, and you have a headache after a couple of hours simply from concentrating on the 50 metres ahead.  My eyes sting and start to blur as the day wears on simply from concentrating on the road immediately in front of us.  I do sneak the occasional peek at the splendour around us, but it has to be a very quick peek if there are other vehicles around.

All of this limits your opportunities to take photos. It is often 20 kilometres or more between places you can actually get off the road safely. Oops, the birds I wanted to photograph are now 18 clicks behind me.

Despite this, the views are truly spectacular. On the one hand is the majesty of the mountains, the snow, the waterfalls, the raging rivers, the cliffs and the scree, the pasture and the lava, all simply magnificent, almost breath-taking. On the other hand is the quaint, the novel, the unexpected, the twee even – sweet little farms hidden in crevasses in the valleys, painted in brilliant eye-catching colour, with farm buildings huddled close, maybe an antique tractor or two and sheep dotting the surrounding ground, often barely visible in the sheep-high grass.  The sheep are never sheep-coloured as we see them in Australia.  They are much paler and range from pale cream through the entire spectrum of browns to solid jet black.

The skies have been mainly grey, but not threatening.  We have had numerous showers, all light and gone within ten minutes, and it is a delight to see a patch of snow or a farmhouse or a freshly-mown paddock highlighted occasionally by bright sunshine.  Mowing is obviously an important source of stockfeed or income from the sale of fodder because we have seen tens of thousands (at least) of plastic-sealed sheep lunch-boxes in white, black or yellow – I wonder if the colour of the plastic denotes anything, maybe the type of grass or moisture content?  More likely the owner’s aesthetic sensibilities or the price per tonne of plastic covers.

We stop quite often when the occasional pull-off allows and we visited Godafoss just off the road toward the end of our long and tiring drive.  It is a spectacular waterfall, huge and very loud.  Foss means waterfall and you can probably guess what God means.  It is said that in the year 1000, the king had to decide if Iceland was to become a Christian country and when he made his decision, he gathered up all his idols and related paraphernalia and threw them into the waterfall – hence Godafoss.  Strange, we heard the same story at a different waterfall when we were here 3 years ago.

Sadly, despite careful scrutiny, we have not seen any trolls yet.  I have looked under several bridges to no avail and we keep our eyes peeled just in case some try to slink across the road in front of us.  Some people here really believe in them and we have heard that most people are unwilling/afraid to misbelieve in them.  If a road is being built through an area or past a tree where trolls are suspected of living, the road is diverted to avoid the risk of invoking their wrath.  There are lots of similar examples – but until we see one………!

We ate in the hotel restaurant that night. We felt we deserved it after such a long and sometimes stressful drive.  We both ordered fish, ling and cod, but the highlight of the meal was probably the bread.  It was a nice crusty bread, but was endowed with a light sprinkling of salt on top. Nothing comes with salt here apart from the brekky bacon (when it is on the menu) and we were really hanging out for something more savoury – and the bread hit the spot.  Nearly everything has a slight sweetness about it and we are not much into sweet things.  At breakfast next day, Heather tried some beetroot juice with fresh ginger and loved it but I missed out on that one.

[ratralsis]

Worth it

I'm having a rough few months, financially. Feel free to slip me a couple of dollars if you can, but don't feel bad if you can't: https://ko-fi.com/ratralsis

And on to what I wanted to write.

Years ago, when I was but a young college student (I have no idea what demographics I reach with this blog, but I don't THINK it's a lot of high schoolers? Prove me wrong, I guess), I made the decision that I was going to spend my final fifteen months in college doing whatever it took to lose weight and get into better shape. I'd been steadily gaining weight each year since I'd finished high school and it was getting to a point where clothes were hard to find, seats were hard to fit into, and my back and knees were giving me chronic pain.

My weight was not crazy high. At my heaviest, I was 255 pounds. A lot of people in the world are heavier than that and are perfectly fine and, let me be clear, I'm perfectly fine with them, too! I'm a big believer in the idea that you can be healthy at any size. But I can't. Or at least, I couldn't. I wasn't healthy, and I wasn't happy, and I decided to do something about it.

So I dieted. I exercised. And I lost about a pound and a half a week for months. I started in September (I graduated in the beginning of December the next year, hence my fifteen months, because my college class schedule was odd), and when the summer break began, I had to go home and wait before I could come back for my final quarter and finish my final classes and graduate. I did not walk with a hat and robe and all the other fancy accoutrements, because I already had two Associate's Degrees and had done so then and didn't want to do it again.

My college years were odd.

Anyway.

So I had to go home, and that meant no more access to the gym at school, where I'd been running on an elliptical every day because an elliptical is easier on my joints than a treadmill and I don't like stationary bikes as much.

So I approached a friend of mine from my old college, the one where I got my two Associate's Degrees, who'd spent his whole life studying martial arts. Around the same time I'd started my fitness journey, he'd started one of his own: he'd begun a 100-day program called IRON BODY TRAINING under the tutelage of his master, a local carpetlayer in a small town who happened to be the grandmaster of a style called, according to the friend, "Slide-In Black Panther Kung Fu," but which Google tells me might actually be called "Black Panther Combat Gung-Fu." In other words, if you Google that second phrase, you might find the grandmaster of it! I won't tell you his name, though! You're on your own!

All I'll say is that he looks EXACTLY like all those fuckin', like, strip mall dojo masters who can't do martial arts for shit, just another slightly paunchy middle-aged white guy with gray hair and a goofy smile, but I met the guy years after this story and he really actually is an insanely skilled martial artist. I mean… is he deadly? I don't know. I just know he was very skilled and very strong when I met him and he would regularly travel around for competitions and exhibitions. It might be that he's just a good performer who tricked me. I won't claim one way or the other.

What I will say is that the IRON BODY TRAINING that my friend was doing was pretty serious. It was a 68-minute routine that relied on a lot of isometric poses and body-weight exercises mixed with difficult yoga poses.

It isn't the hardest workout around if you don't want it to be. It's as hard as you want to make it. That's the fun of the isometric exercises involved, where you need to tense your muscles as hard as you can while you do them. You get out what you put in. And, since I suddenly had like eleven weeks stuck at home, I asked my friend to teach it to me. He agreed, on the condition that I commit to it. See, the IRON BODY TRAINING is a 100-day program. You do the exercises every single day for the hundred days, and you have to follow some additional guidelines:

No intoxicants or stimulants, that is, no alcohol or caffeine No other recreational drugs No sweetened foods (that is, no chocolate, candy, milkshakes, etc.) No fried foods No red meat No sex of any kind, even the kind you can have by yourself

A lot of people get to that last one and feel the need to make a joke about how they could do the rest, but not that. Whatever. As my friend put it, it's not like the IRON BODY POLICE will come and take away the powers granted to you by doing the IRON BODY TRAINING if you break the rules. But he had followed the rules, his master had followed the rules, and he made me promise to follow the rules. So I did.

I remember asking him a couple of times about the finer points of the rules. For example, could I still drink a protein shake after a workout if it was chocolate-flavored? I was having a hard time finding protein powder that WASN'T sweetened. And what about sugar free chewing gum? That's still sweet, too. He told me that those were fine for the simple reason that avoiding them would have been harder than it was worth. So, if you think those are breaking the rules, I did break the rules. Sorry.

I could tell a lot of stories about doing the hundred days and how I was going crazy for a burger and a latte by day fifty and then day on day 101 I bought both and they made me sick because the flavors were so disgustingly overwhelming, but that's not actually the point of all of this.

The point is that, after learning the full IRON BODY TRAINING, I wound up working a temp job at an Autozone warehouse. And it was a very physically taxing job! It hurt my back!

There was one exercise in the IRON BODY TRAINING that was really good at stretching and working out knots in my back, though, so I would do it while on my breaks (trying to at least do it where nobody was watching, of course) or at home after work. I don't know what it's called outside of the IRON BODY TRAINING, and I don't feel like explaining it. I'm sorry. You'll just have to wonder, I guess.

And I told my friend this. I told him that I had started doing some of the IRON BODY TRAINING exercises to stretch out my back and feel a little less pain on the job. And he thought about that, and then he said, "Then it was worth it for me to learn it."

It wasn't enough for him to learn it and do the training himself to improve as a martial artist or improve his own physical health. He had to teach it to someone else (me), and that someone else (me) had to use it to improve their (my) life in some way. Once that had happened, it was worth it for him to have ever learned it to begin with. That's what it took. Him learning it led to it helping somebody.

And that, I tell myself on a regular basis, is my baseline, too. I complain sometimes about my writing not reaching nearly as wide an audience as I'd like, but I stick with it, because if I've made life a little better for even one person, then it was worth it. That's what keeps me working on my novel, too: the idea that, once it's finished, it might reach a single reader who cares.

Yep. That's where I was going with this. I wanted to try to encourage anyone out there who's working on something that doesn't seem to be doing big numbers that maybe it's worth it even if you have a small audience.

I'm not so foolish as to say that making a difference in a million people's lives isn't more impressive than making a difference in one. I'm just saying that making a difference in one might still be worth it. So go for it. You never know.

#ratralsis writing #text post #long post

[chicleeblair]

Dawn of Redeeming Grace[8/23]

Chapter Eight: December 24, 1990 || FFN

Rating: NC-17/Explicit

Pairings: Meredith Grey/Derek Shepherd

Six weeks after Derek left to take the NIH job, Meredith is ready to use the holidays to prove she has this working mom thing on lock. Sure, he neglected to tell her he'd be bringing a guest, but whatever, 'Tis the season for truces. Even Ellis Grey took the day off. But with every moment of family togetherness, a return to the trenches seems more impossible. Can a few days of peace put their relationship back on track, or has she fallen for the illusion of a snow-globe, destined to either settle or shatter?

Dawn of Redeeming Grace || FFN

Here we have a Shepherd family Christmas, before the distraction of the lambs. There’s some underlying bitterness at Amelia, who’s still a teenager, but won’t show even the modicum of excitement—except when it comes to things like

Far be it from me to say that Grey’s Anatomy has some…contradictions in its backstory. Specifically, I’m talking about Addison saying she took Amelia to get her ears pierced. We know Addison and Derek didn’t meet until med school, making Amelia at least fifteen. Ma Shepherd just doesn’t seem like the type to have cared all that much about when the girls got their lobes done. I’d say twelve or thirteen, especially since all the others had gone off to college by then. (Theoretically Nancy or Liz could’ve stayed home for college, but I doubt that.) Also, in 15x21 “Good Shepherd” it’s revealed that Amelia was in jail during Nancy’s wedding—which I just don’t think was after Derek’s--I take that as Shepherd dramatics and call it juvie. It ensures she doesn’t have a record, but also makes sense. Her OD happens after Derek’s a doctor, but she’d still only be nineteen, and to be where she is in her career there are only a couple of years of leeway, and the implication is that her OD happened between nineteen and twenty-one.

Addison is very type A, but she’s also more adaptable than a lot of people around her. (*cough*Derek*cough*) That’s how she can be friends with Nancy and also looked up to by Amy. She can do trashy Chinese food for Thanksgiving and Emily Gilmore-esque parties for Christmas. She’s climbing a ladder in stilettos. Ultimately, she’s doing it for other women—OB was a primarily male field for a disturbing amount of time—but the Queen of Passive Aggressiva doesn’t wear the fight on her sleeve. At this point, she’s not too far out from the Societies at Yale—I’m thinking Book and Snake, the first to accept women. Skull and Bones didn’t until 1991, a full twenty years later. Now I have to figure out if I think Maggie was tapped. Socially, she’s likely more aloof and sharper than once she’s done a residency in New York hospitals.

In spite of being the last Shepherd sister introduced on the show, Kathleen is complex.(Married to a diplomat according to the wiki. Pro/Con for being Lucas’s mom?) Meredith says her kids seem sane, but she’s a snot to Amelia—in spite of being a shrink. I make her eldest, almost an adult when their dad dies, which gave her a totally different childhood, and a rough young adulthood. It makes sense to me that getting past that to Martha Stewart if she can diagnose you with a mental disorder makes her look down at anyone who hasn’t done that—Shepherd arrogance.

Another weird thing, is that Mark’s birth year is given as 1968 and Derek’s as 1966. Both deaths happen after the Season Five Year Jump.* Since everything to that point has made it seem like they were in t he same classes/year, this is troublesome—particularly because making Derek older adds an imbalance that excuses Mark’s immaturity and Derek’s bossiness when I think it’s better if that’s just their personalities. Best might even be Mark being older—I’ve liked doing interesting things with it, like having Derek admit he thought he’d be getting a chance to escape being a duo at Bowdoin (in It’s Heavy, It’s Heady). I don’t know if the writers did this purposefully, or didn’t check Mark’s birthdate when Derek died. (It also closes the gap between Mark and Lexie a little, but does two years make a difference when it’s between eighteen and sixteen?)

*The last half of s3 and beginning of s4 were established to be set in 2007, putting s1 in 2006. Because of the writer’s strike, the year begun at the end of s4 carried over to s5, but from there on the on-screen year always coincided with the airdate. The skipped year in s11 balances this out—but it messes up anyone going with a 2007 start date.

#grey’s anatomy #Anatomy Belonging to a Grey #dawn of redeeming grace #dorg #Meredith Grey #Derek Shepherd #MerDer #bisexual Meredith Grey #Meredith Grey/Derek Shepherd #fanfiction #fanfic #Carolyn Shepherd #Ellis Grey #11x12 #fix-it #au #alternate universe #Derek lives #christmas #holidays #fluff #smut #backstory #novel length #long fic #update #Amelia shepherd #fanfic friday #sisters shepherd

[no-droids]

Out of a Trillion

gif credit: @bestintheparsec​

Part Fifteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 12.6K

Warnings: uhhhh so there is a bit of SMUT in this one, not too much and I imagine if you’ve made it this far then that won’t be too big of a deal LMFAOOO uh some ANGST and my attempt at HURT/COMFORT and also violence/blood/injury description, so look out for that!

A/N: I started writing this before the season finale aired and I know we all want a bit of goodness and softness after it, but hopefully this will be okay!  I’ll start working on the next part tonight

***

Everything changes and yet somehow nothing does.  

From that point on, it’s like… like you’re both just suspended in this perpetual state of wondering, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  You know he said it’s up to you, but what the fuck?  Look whenever you want?  That’s way too much fucking pressure, he’s out of his mind.  You’re not equipped to handle that, who does he think you are?  Someone that can just… decide things?

And it’s not like you’re afraid of the commitment, or that you don’t want to look.  You do, but every single time a moment comes, it just never… feels right.  You don’t know what you’re waiting for, what feeling or meaning you’re expecting to magically present itself to you, but you can’t shake the idea that there should be more to it than just randomly deciding to open your eyes at some point, shouldn’t there?  Din said there was no ceremony, nothing fancy, and he gave you permission to look because he said he’s not allowed to ask outright, whatever that means.  It’s a standing offer because you guess he isn’t allowed to prompt it for some reason, but unfortunately, that leaves you in just about the shittiest position possible.  Now everything falls to you—initiation, execution, and consequence—and Maker knows you’ve never been that great making decisions under pressure.

But you do want to look.  Sort of.

Sort of.  Because… well, this probably won’t make that much sense, but you’re afraid.  Mostly for him.  What if he’s making a mistake?  It sounds stupid, but you’re afraid of what this means for him, the sheer perpetuity of this decision he’s now expecting you to make for the both of you.  This isn’t your creed, not yet, and you feel like there’s still so much to learn.  Not only about the Mandalorians and his culture, but about him.  To know is to love, and so you’ve taken to asking any nonsensical question you can think of whenever he’s around.  Though you weren’t expecting it at first, you’ve learned that he’ll always give you some sort of an answer.  Some of the highlights include:

“How old are you?”  (“I don’t know.  Probably mid-forties, but there’s no way to tell anymore.”)

“You don’t know your birthday?”  (No, I… think it was in the winter.”)

“What’s your last name?”  (“Djarin.”)

“Do you have any freckles?  Or moles, or birthmarks?”  (“No, none that I’ve ever noticed.”)

“Do you cut your own hair?”  (“Yes, but it’s been awhile.”)

“Do you have dimples?”  (“I don’t smile in mirrors.”)

“Are your earlobes attached or detached?”  (“What kind of question is that?”)

And so forth.

He also gives you so many fucking opportunities to look.  One right after the other.  You used to think Din was incredibly trusting with how often and voluntarily he decided to take his helmet off around you—he didn’t wait a single day once he first felt your hands on his skin to take it off in your presence.  You remember being blown away by his unexpected willingness to part with it after hearing so many tales of the Mandalorians from Kuill; stunned by the ever-present ability to just open your eyes at any moment and that’s all it would ever take.  One simple movement—life-altering, and so easy.

Now you find it nearly impossible, muscle memory just won’t allow it to happen naturally.  And yet somehow, avoiding it is like stepping around land mines.  He doesn’t trick you—he doesn’t set it up, he doesn’t surprise you or anything, but he’s… less careful.  When the kid is awake, Din acts normal—he walks around fully armored, he goes on hunts and returns a few days later with a quarry, teaches you more self-defense techniques in the cleared out hull while the kid watches and giggles at your pain from the safety of his floating crib.  But when the baby goes to sleep, he’s taken to lounging with the helmet off.  He only used to remove it to eat, sleep, or… do other things with you, but he never used to take it off just… because.  Now he does.  Now he’s less careful about darkness, less strict about how much light he allows to touch him.

Now he shares every single meal he can with you, sitting just off to the side so you’ll never see him on accident but providing the free exercise thereof should you ever decide to seek it out purposefully.  Now he interrupts you in the middle of your complaining about the bruises on your knuckles just to lift the rim of his helmet the slightest bit, lean down and give you a quick kiss, and then lower it back into position again before you can even catch a glimpse of the lips you only recognize by touch.  Now he keeps the light on when he goes to take a shower, he leaves the door cracked.

It’s starting to give you heart palpitations, you swear.  At one point, he lets you to see the entire back of his head and it nearly launches you into a fucking crisis.

It’s the middle of the night and he just got up from bed to use the restroom.  He’s quiet enough not to wake you on the way over, but then across the hull and with his back to you, Din flicks the light on in the small bathroom without closing the door.  Immediately rousing you after being so accustomed to the pitch blackness, you lift your head from the warmth of your shared pillow just enough to blearily make out the sight of him leaning a hand up against the wall and dropping his head down, and it takes you a second to realize that it’s actually him.

Soft, dark brown locks ending at his collar but somehow looking longer than you ever imagined when you’ve run your fingers through them.  Cascading in shaggy, natural curls—tall, broad shouldered and trim waisted, naked as the day he was born.  Your heart starts to squeeze in your chest and it just never stops, and for the second time in your life, you feel like he woke you up in the middle of the night just to show you one of the most beautiful things the universe ever decided to hide.  There are trillions of people in this galaxy and how many of them have ever seen a sight that would compare?  He’s just a man, you don’t think a single person would bat an eye.  But to you, he’s… his own monument.  Constructed in honor of everything dazzling that happens to lie just underneath something else.  A breathtaking view, even from this angle, that could only ever mean something to you.

Would you ever be able to know him?  No, that’s not phrased right.  What you mean is that… over the course of all your time together, you remember thinking that if he ever took his helmet off, he could walk right by you and you’d never be able to tell the difference.  He could be anybody.  There are trillions of people in this galaxy and how many of them have the same features?  Brown hair, brown eyes, sunkissed skin that only one person is allowed to kiss, not even the sun.  Would you ever be able to know him?

Staring at his back in the blissful silence of hyperspace and feeling like the Maker himself is letting you in on one of his proudest secrets, some wild thought suddenly occurs to you that… you think you would.  Somehow.

You can’t explain it and you’d never be able to prove it, but you feel like if you lined up every single person in this galaxy shoulder to shoulder, all however many trillions of them there are, then you could walk the entire length of it and somehow come to a stop right where he’s standing.  Every single time.  You feel like you could do it in the pitch black.  You could do it with your eyes closed.

And, he must just be so gorgeous.  Maybe not in a traditional sense (or maybe in one, you’d have no way of knowing), but mostly in just… the rawest sense imaginable.  Not like how symmetry and straight lines are gorgeous, but how a mountain is gorgeous.  Rocky, dangerous, steep, the product of constant conflict between two immovable sides.  He’s got scars littering his body, one of which you remember giving him yourself with a cauterizer on his lower back.  He holds himself like his shoulders could tell their own story if anyone ever asked them; built to endure, weighed down and made strong with a collection of burdens he chooses to strap to them, steel or otherwise.

You don’t want to close your eyes once Din slowly turns around to look at you, but it happens anyways and you’ve never been so disappointed in your own cowardice.

But then, in a way, it could just be your own self-preservation instincts taking over.  No matter how stunning and life changing the spectacle would be, why would anyone ever stare directly at a supernova?  For so long, you’ve told yourself that his face is something you shouldn’t ever see on principle, but in a way, you suppose it’s fair he put this decision on you because he always has, even from the very beginning.  He trusted you to keep your eyes closed for months on end and you never had a problem with it, so why is it so hard to open them now that he’s given you permission?

A couple weeks of that, and you start to worry that you’re unintentionally rejecting him.

It’s the last fucking thing you want, but how can you avoid it?  Din is… different, he notices.  He’s made a living off of finding things that inherently don’t want to be found—he knows all too well what secrecy looks and sounds like, he’s quick and observant and you don’t stand a single fucking chance against him in all the years of his practice.

But strangely, for as often as you feel like you can figure out what he’s thinking without ever seeing his face—realizing what his intentions are ahead of time and not feeling slighted when he phrases things a certain way or just chooses not to speak at all—you never truly realized how much that extended back to you.

He knows you, too.  He told you so.

For some reason, you didn’t even consider the possibility of it working just as well the other way around.  That you could choose to stay silent, and he’d know why.  You feel like the mystery of him just eclipses you in every single way that you don’t consider even yourself much of anything, much less something else to be contemplated and understood.  While you wouldn’t necessarily qualify the conflict as not being ready to commit, he seems more than willing to respect it regardless and nothing about the way he treats you or interacts with you changes.  Normally you’d say it’s like he forgot the whole thing ever happened, but it’s almost the exact opposite.  Like he was just naturally expecting it from you.

Are you truly so predictable, you wonder?  He said you’d say no.  Was he right?  You’re not saying no, you just… can’t remember the word for yes right now.  It’s right there on the tip of your tongue and the harder you work for it, the more frustrated you become with your own inability to find it.

But, instead of waiting, you think Din just decides to continue the conversation with the promise to come back to you when you finally figure it out.

Sometimes, especially when he’s gone, you find yourself thinking about what moment you’d choose, if you could.  Since you can never seem to find the right one naturally, how would it all go if you could construct everything yourself?  Where would it be?  Naboo?  No, that’s too cheesy.  One thing you and Din both have in common is your practicality, your respective propensities for wanting to tackle one thing at a time and not needing frills attached to something in order to find a deep connection to it, a personal value to it.  You weren’t even bothered when he didn’t claim you as a girlfriend to Peli, that’s how reasonable you used to be about labels.  Now you’re your own antithesis, trying to conjure meaning where there isn’t any just so you don’t feel like you’re the one who’s ripping it away.  You want this decision to feel as permanent as it is.  You want it to be a happy thing, something that happens when you’re both so in love that you can’t bear to have metal separating you any longer.

You think… you’ll just know it when the time comes.

***

“I have to leave,” comes Din’s hushed voice through the darkness, and even though it’s the first thing either of you have said in hours, it sounds frustrated.  Like it’s been bothering him for awhile and he’s just now finally telling you.  “I… fuck, I can’t stay here, I should’ve left a long time ago.”

You whine softly into the pitch black, turning your head into the pillow and curling your fingers into his hair.  “But it’s still so early…”

“It’s mid-afternoon,” he groans back, dropping his forehead down against your skin and breathing hot air along it.  “We’ve been parked here for hours, I don’t know how you can sleep so long.”

“I’m not sleeping,” you pout, before gently dragging your nails down his scalp and feeling his whole body shudder with it.  “Earlier I was.”

“Mhm,” he murmurs, leaning down to give you one last long, slow kiss.  You sigh when his tongue comes out and glides soft and hot against your lips, tightening your grip on his hair.

But soon he pulls away, lifting the covers from over his head and pushing up from between your spread legs.  “This one shouldn’t take long,” he gruffs, planting both palms next to your head and kissing you once more in the darkness, dipping his tongue into your mouth this time.  You moan softly and taste yourself on him, moving to wrap your arms around his broad shoulders, but he breaks the kiss and leans back before you can, preemptively avoiding the possibility of getting lost in it.  “I’ll be back around dawn.”

You’ve known it was coming for hours now, so you’re able to play it off way better this time around.  “Okay,” you breathe softly, dragging your palms up his bare chest as he lifts himself tall over your body.  The slight disappointment underneath is so masterfully hidden, you’re almost positive you’re going to get away with it.  “Be safe.  Please.”

But then… well.  Bounty hunter.

Din pauses for a moment like that in between your open legs, letting you slowly slide your hands down his ribs and over the lines of his stomach.  You wait for him to move, find his clothes so you can get around and make some food, wake the kid up from his nap in an hour or so.  Can’t stay in bed all day, no matter how much you wish you could.

Only, he still hasn’t moved and you start to become concerned.  “Din?”

But then he suddenly groans like he just can’t help it, grabbing both of your spread legs and easily lifting them up.  You make a sound of confusion as he maneuvers them until they’re pressed together and draped over one of his shoulders, and then his hips drop and push forward to slide himself thick and perfect into your blazing hot cunt.

Still drenched and swollen from cumming in his mouth so many times earlier, you gasp and he just groans louder, a ragged thing scraping out of his throat while you struggle through blind and unexpected euphoria to reach him.  But you can’t—Din hugs your legs tight to his chest and settles in just like this, turning his head to drag soft lips and a hot tongue over your ankle before he starts fucking you.  Right up against your g-spot, with your whole lower body in the way and preventing you from slowing him down.

You just have to clap both hands over your mouth just to keep quiet since you can’t reach him.  You feel his teeth sink into the meat of your calf, hips pistoning far beyond your reach and it feels so fucking good that you almost don’t hear his gritted words against your skin.

“I have to go,” he groans, repeating it over and over until his voice begins to pull tight and it just sounds like a plea.  “I have to go, I have to go, I h—have to… h-have to go, I have to, I have to, I have…”

*** 

When Din finally steps foot out of the ship, fumbling with his rifle and cursing quietly through the modulator, it’s the middle of the night some twelve hours later.

***

Steady…

Steady………

Fire.

—and… you blink as bark splinters.

Did you…?  You look down at the blaster in your hand and then back to the ginormous charred tree trunk for a few seconds, wondering if you’re just seeing shit.

No, it’s real.  You actually fucking did it.  You…

… hit the target.

All of a sudden, your ecstatic giggle echoes loudly throughout the foresty autumn wonderland around you, reds and oranges and yellows crunching under your feet while you start to dance.

“Hey!  See that, bug!?”  You call out, shoving the blaster into your waistband and shimmying up to your enthralled audience of one, who just so happens to be smiling as wide as you are as he’s scooped up into your arms.  “I hit the target, I hit the target,” you sing, beginning to sway the baby back and forth as he squeals, laughing while you bounce him.  “No demon powers necessary, little man!  I figured it out, I just have to use one hand instead of two.  You can retire now, you’re the right age for—”

A twig snaps in the distance somewhere to your left, and you quickly spin around while reaching for the blaster behind your back.

Except all you see is a blue Twi’lek standing out amongst all the fall foliage, his hands cuffed behind his back and stumbling a few steps at a time while a considerably taller suit of beskar shoves him forward.  You relax and immediately turn to look down at the ground, trying to bite your lip so you don’t smile too hard while they both approach.  You did it—finally, you did it, you’re on top of the fucking universe right now.

You wait for them to pass by and move up the open metal ramp to the carbonite chamber, but then Din apparently decides to pause when he’s directly behind you, yanking the quarry to a sudden halt.  

You know you should probably turn around to address them, but you can’t hide the happiness from your expression, it’s way too obvious.  Though, after a moment, you decide to shyly turn to face the two men while continuing to bounce the baby in your arms, hoping that his and your matching expressions of excitement aren’t too terribly inappropriate right now.

Din looks from you to the splintered bark on the tree, and then back to you again, before slowly tilting the helmet up in a way that feels… proud of you.

“Congratulations,” he finally says, and you can hear the genuine smile hidden in the modulated drawl.

“Thank you,” you beam up at him, feeling the blood rush to your cheeks.  “Was pretty awesome.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” he tells you, and you don’t know why, but the tone of his voice makes you go so warm.  It’s not like he’s openly flirting with you, but coupled with your giddiness and sounding like that in front of a bounty he caught in record time, it just makes your heart fucking throb for him.

“It’s alright,” you murmur, shuffling your feet through the crunchy leaves below and trying to play it as cool as possible.  You have company.  “I’ll be able to do it again.”

“Let’s see it, then.”  He tips the helmet over at the tree, and you look between him and the unfamiliar quarry for a second, not used to Din just… ignoring their existence entirely for you.  It’s not like the Twi’lek has said anything or inserted himself into the situation at all, but still.  Din has one hand latched onto the cuffs behind his back to prevent him from booking it, but other than that, it’s like he’s pretending he’s not even there.

“Uh…”  You immediately feel yourself get nervous.  “I can… try.”

He nods one single time in silent encouragement, and you slowly turn to face the tree once more.  The kid stays cradled in your arm while you reach for the blaster in your waistband, removing it and using your longest finger to flick the safety off with a practiced fluidity.  Then, extending it out in front of you and taking advantage of your newfound strategy of only firing with one hand, you line up the sight and pull the trigger.

You wish you could say it hits.  It would be so fucking cool and impressive if you hit the target like that, wouldn’t it?  But it doesn’t hit.  It misses, like usual.  Miserably.  And then an amused snort comes from behind you.

“Right stormtrooper, you are—” you hear an unfamiliar accent begin to snark, but the rest of it turns into a garbled howl the second Din jerks his elbow back to slam it in his face.

You whip around just in time to see a cascade of blood pouring down blue lips and sharp teeth—holy fuck.  You gasp and take a step backwards with the kid, not horrified by the sudden display of violence (not after Din spent an hour teaching you how to do that, too) but not quite expecting it at that moment, either.  But then, well… that’s the second time he broke a quarry’s nose for addressing you with disrespect.  There was that other one he choked, you’re pretty sure—though you can’t remember exactly what initiated that.

Din yanks the bounty up the ramp without another word, leaving both you and the kid there to process while he shoves him through the hull and towards the carbonite chamber none too kindly.  However, by the time he seals the quarry to his fate and eventually makes his way back to you, you just… 

Fuck, you feel so stupid.

You shouldn’t even bother, what’s the point?  All that practice and nothing to show for it.  If you can’t even hit a stationary target with the pressure of others watching, what makes you think you’ll have any hope at all in a situation where you actually need to shoot?  Are they gonna stand still for you?  Are they gonna be as wide as a fucking treetrunk?  You’re horribly embarrassed, so downtrodden in the face of a cruel taunt that you don’t even want to look at Din when he steps in front of you.

“Hey, just try it again,” he says without delay, but the damage has already been done.  It’s not his fault, you’re just… not the kind of person who is meant to shoot a blaster, maybe.  

“Ah… it’s alright,” you look out and smile sadly at the line of trees surrounding you, wondering how it’s possible that you only managed to hit one of them this whole time.  You don’t see it, but Din quickly touches the tips of his fingers to the side of his helmet twice before you look back at him.  “I hit it earlier.  I did, I promise.  You can see the mark if you look.”

His glove reaches out to brush your hair back, so unbelievably gentle after using the same arm to shatter bone just a few minutes ago.  “I know you did.  It was a perfect shot, you hit dead center.  I see it.”

“I did it with one hand, that’s why I tried the thing,” you mumble stupidly, looking down at your feet.  Dumb.  Dumb.

A strand of your hair is tucked behind your ear.  “Wish I was here.”

You glance over at him, feeling your expression suddenly go soft with a wave of affection.  It stops all the harsh criticisms, halting your negativity in its tracks and replacing it with just… soft, abstract things.  Mostly just warm, nonsensical fluff, but one clear and resounding thought breaking through.  You wish he was here, too.

“Maybe I’ll get good at it eventually,” you sigh, slowly handing him the blaster with the barrel pointed down and away from both of you.  Din carefully takes it from you, tucking it away somewhere on his utility belt while you gaze out at the designated target and victorious char mark decorating it.  “Or hopefully just okay at it at some point.  I guess I just need to practice more, right?”

“That’s right,” he tells you warmly, catching your free wrist.  “Try using this one when you do.”  And then a lightweight piece of metal is gently pushed into your empty hand.

Your expression furrows while you quickly look down at it, and—

You go utterly still at the gift, not even knowing what to think.

The first thing that you notice is the craftsmanship.  Brilliant, structurally flawless, the perfect size to fit your hand.  You don’t recognize the specific kind of metal that was used—definitely not beskar—but you think it might be constructed from the same material as Din’s old armor.  Dull silver, but with reflective chrome filigree accents around the handle, trigger, and safety.  It’s uniquely constructed and unlike any weapon you’ve ever seen before—no hard lines or edges, just a soft fluidity to the design that’s so aesthetically pleasing, it doesn’t really even resemble a blaster at all.

You can feel the visor silently studying your reaction while you continue marveling, noticing something new every time you look.  The safety is towards the back of the chamber, just like he said it’d be.  The sight is electronic, and you examine the way it’s built directly into the barrel.

Are those extra magnets on the inside?  Is this able to micro-adjust the plasma release for the best shot?  Holy stars, it must have cost a fortune.

“Din, this is…” you can’t decide where you want to look—the gorgeous crafting, the custom design, or him.  Standing so close to you, not saying a word while you search for the right ones.  “It’s so beautiful, I…”

“Was made for you,” he murmurs.  “Had to be.”

You look back down at the blaster to stop your eyes from tearing up.  He didn’t have to do this.  This is so… sweet, such a lovely thing to do.  Don’t cry, don’t cry—

“What is this?” You ask breathlessly instead, rotating the gun until he can see the symbol branded on the handle.  You recognize that it’s his signet, but you never bothered to ask him what it’s called, you never saw it as your place.  It’s an animal of some sort, one with a giant spike attached to its skull, and you’re glad you’ve never come face to face with one.

“It’s a mudhorn,” he answers quietly.  “They’re… dangerous animals.  Fiercely protective, preferring solitude.  The kid saved me from one a few days after I met him.  It’s… the mark of my clan.”

How fitting, you think, and an honor.  Perfect for him, and a bone-deep reminder of your two favorite people in the galaxy on your hip wherever you go.

“Thank you,” you tell him, hoping the sincerity in your voice sounds anywhere close to how you feel.  You haven’t even had it in your hand for longer than a minute and it’s already your prized position, the most important thing you’ve ever called yours.

Din nods and takes a small step back.  “Now hit the target.”

Feeling invigorated and renewed in every single way, you keep the kid tucked firmly in one arm while raising your blaster with the other.  The safety clicks off and your back straightens, chin lifting until something about the angle feels… right.  The trigger moves easily under your fingertip, and there’s almost no kickback considering how light the weapon is.  What you’re not expecting is the pure white beam of plasma shooting out of the barrel—unlike any blaster you’ve ever seen before—but then the immediate sight of it hitting the tree dead center sends a roar of triumph through your ears.  Fuck yes.

“Look at that!”  Din calls out over the kid’s happy squeal, and there’s nothing you can do to stop your loud whoop of victory.  Even though you know it only hit with the addition of those extra magnets to correct your terrible aim, that still feels so good—you feel so fucking powerful and dangerous.  You glance over to Din with a wide smile, but then his arm extends out towards the trunk directly next to the one with charred bark.  “Hit that one.”

You automatically swing the blaster in that direction and shoot.  A few pieces of wood split on impact and send sharp bits flying as soon as the bright white beam collides with it.

“That one,” Din tells you, and then bark splinters a half second later.  “That one.”  Bark splinters.  “That one, that one, that one—” hit, hit, hit, white plasma flying through the air and bark splintering in rapid succession.

He stops and spins around, pointing to a tree at the very edge of the clearing.  “That one?”

It’s furthest away but the trunk’s diameter is enormous.  As you lift the blaster, you know you’re likely to get it easily with this sophisticated weapon, even across the considerable distance.  So instead, feeling like nothing at all can touch you right now and wanting to see how smart the aim mechanism is, you raise up a few degrees higher before pulling the trigger.  Pale plasma launches from the barrel, and then one of the tree’s most prominent branches comes creaking and crashing to the ground right where you split it.

You’re beaming by the time Din turns back to you, the most excited you’ve ever been with your own progress.  He holds there for a moment while you lower your blaster and wait for him to speak, both of you looking at each other and not moving, until suddenly you hear his voice coming back to you.

Hit the target and I’ll marry you.

One of Din’s hands slowly comes up to the edge of his helmet, but before you can even process the implication behind the gesture, you’re immediately looking down at the crunchy leaves under your feet and clearing your throat.

There’s a beat of silence where you stare down at the dead foliage and wonder why the fuck you just did that.  Right in front of him, right to his face, too startled at how quickly you were being confronted with the possibility that you responded in an equally startled way.  It was instinctual, automatic and entirely out of your control, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to take it back.

But… you can’t take it back.  That’s the way things are, and after a few moments, you hear his boots begin to cross the distance to you.

“Come on,” Din murmurs gently through the modulator, carefully taking the blaster from your hand and clicking the safety back on again.  “We have to get going.  The fifth quarry is far.  Three day trip through hyperspace.”

He doesn’t sound upset or disappointed by your unintentional rejection, thank the Maker.  You want to explain yourself somehow, but it appears it isn’t necessary in the slightest.  His arm wraps around your lower back and he leads both you and the baby back up the open ramp of the Crest, squeezing you close enough to his side that you have to learn how to walk in a different way to stop yourself from tripping over his boots.

The helmet turns and presses to the top of your head while you focus on moving straight.  “Proud of you,” Din murmurs quietly, and your chest fills with enough air that you’d be worried about floating away if he wasn’t latched onto you so tightly.

He eventually releases you and walks over to the armory, pressing a button to unlock the doors while you hold the kid and watch him start to remove the multitude of weapons strapped to his body.

Maybe… maybe this isn’t the right time, but something brave surges up inside you.  After receiving the most precious gift imaginable from him, hitting all those targets and hearing him say that he’s proud of you, you’re buzzing with just enough energy that for better or worse, it makes you open your mouth and ask.

“Could I… come with you this time?”

Din nearly jerks upright and looks over at you immediately, but he takes a while in responding.  You hope he sees it in your eyes.  You hope he sees just how much you don’t want to be stuck here again when this is possibly the one time you’d be able to tag along.  It’s a bullshit quarry, one he could do in his sleep, and you’ve been getting increasingly restless while stuck on this ship.

When Din eventually does respond… well, judging from his shift in tone, you’re assuming he was just shocked at the question and didn’t take any of that time to actually consider his answer.

“No.”  Short.  Unfeeling, and not sorry about it in the slightest, before turning back to return the blasters you were using previously to the armory as if you said nothing at all.

Okay…  Um.  Not great, not what you wanted to hear, but maybe if you explain yourself better, he’ll listen.

“I just… I’m the only reason you have to get this quarry in the first place.”  Your voice is quiet, trying to let go of some of the concerns you’ve kept to yourself over the past two weeks.  Your fingers fiddle idly with the kid’s little woolen sack as he hangs out in your arms, wanting to plead your case but feeling slightly nervous now.  “You were out having a crazy expensive blaster made for me while I shook hands with Karga and agreed that you’d take more work for less pay.  I hate that I did that.”

“You had no choice,” Din mutters, turning around and striding past you while pressing a button on his vambrace to close the Crest’s ramp.  “My fault for being late.”  And… for as warm and comforting as his voice sounded earlier, it now just sounds… dismissive.  Aloof.  Half-listening, not really wanting to talk but forcing himself to.

“Well this time, I thought maybe… I might be able to help?  Maybe?”  Maker, you feel yourself going quieter the more he walks around the hull and ignores you.  “Karga said it was just a missing person, not even a criminal…”

“Karga says a lot of things,” he grunts with his back to you, voice completely monotone through the modulator.

Come on, speak up.  You’ve lacked a backbone for so long, you’ll never get what you want unless you say it out loud and let it be known.  You take a deep breath and straighten your shoulders, trying to put a little bit of spine into it.  “I can be useful.  I can fight now, I’ve been working on my—” 

“You think I’m telling you no because I don’t think you’re capable?”  He suddenly whips around, voice ringing sharp and challenging throughout the hull while you freeze.  You don’t move but everything about you suddenly feels like it shrinks.

“I-I didn’t—” But he cuts you off, taking a step forward.

“I know you can fight, a Mandalorian taught you how.  I know you’re useful, I know it’s just a missing person, and I know you hate it when I leave.”  He pins you with his eyes through the visor, his tone harder than you think you’ve ever heard it before.  “No.  Your job is to stay here, on this ship, with my son, where it is safe, and my job is to go get the quarry.  Quit asking.  I’m not telling you again.”

The baby makes a tiny little distressed sound in your arms and you blink a few times up at the cold metal, feeling all the good feelings from before just… drain out of you.

Okay, that’s fine.  Uh.  You… the cockpit is behind you, you’ll go up there and fly then.  No reason, just… he should get going.

“Okay, yeah,” you nod and tell the wall over his shoulder brace in immediate agreement, before abruptly spinning around and grabbing the ladder.  Din doesn’t move a single fucking muscle while you try to find your way up to the cockpit with the baby held to your chest and a dead stone sitting heavy inside of it, hoping your face doesn’t show the vulnerability you feel wanting to take over as you retreat.  Get to the cockpit first, get to the cockpit first, get to the—

“Sweet girl, I…” you barely hear murmured through the helmet from the floor, soft enough to sound slightly shocked, but you scramble into the cockpit and shut the door behind you before he can say anything else.

***

Silence didn't used to feel like this.

At first it was eerie, unnatural and stifling when you spent years in a wide open desert, wind swirling and dust pelting.  It suffocated you the first few times you jumped into hyperspace, a phenomena you read all about and considered mathematically fascinating before ever experiencing for yourself.  It was… foreign and strange, but you began to value it more and more as time passed.

Then, you started to get to know him and silence just became comforting.  Something you could bask in, knowing it was a comfort to him.  A choice he made because it just fit him best.  You felt safe in it, you felt like you didn’t have to be anything else but you.  You never had to break it just to avoid awkwardness, you became… closer to it, until you learned to fall in love with it.

But only when he was with you and it was his silence.  Not… everything else’s.  Now it’s haunting again.  Now the sheer lack of sound through hyperspace is a stranger to you, and the distortion of light surrounding the cockpit feels less about the sheer magnificence of manipulating space time and more about the fundamental disconnect it causes.  Gorgeous, but at its core, a severance.  Ripping the fabric of the universe apart, tearing a wound in it.

It’s been a few hours and nothing exceptional has happened since your conversation in the hull.  

You’ll admit that you’re a sensitive person, and because of that, you’ve always had a problem knowing if you were right or wrong when someone comes at you with a hard enough will.  You second-guess yourself, it’s one of your worst traits, and you feel like trying to squash that tendency without knowing the limit is partially to blame for why you’re holed up in this cockpit with the kid.  You’re quiet but in a different way from Din.  When he doesn’t speak, it’s because most of the time, he’s sure of himself and doesn’t need to.  When you don’t speak, it’s because most of the time, you’re insecure and don’t want to.

After being left alone with your thoughts for this long, you’re starting to realize that… he was right.  What were you thinking, wanting to tag along?  Wanting to hang out while he risks his life for this occupation, you probably sounded so fucking ignorant.  Maybe… maybe he didn’t have to say it like that, but his point is still very valid and you’re not sure if you’re really justified in hiding like this anymore.

The way he said… your job, though.  That still stings a bit.  This hasn’t felt like an actual job in a very long time.  Was that just an expression, or did he mean it literally?  You’re stuck on it, you’ve just been going over this for hours in your head, trying to figure out if you should be the one to apologize or not—or if this is just you overreacting from the start and no apologies will be necessary at all.

“Sorry you got stuck with me, kid,” you mutter sadly to the baby, watching him fiddle with his favorite metal ball in your lap.  He makes a little gurgle, purring in that weirdly adorable little way of his and it somehow feels like a reassurance directed to you that he’s just fine the way he is.

Maker, you haven’t heard anything from the hull in a fucking eternity; it’s like Din turned into a ghost, hasn’t even made a single footstep that you could hear since you last left him standing there.  You remember performing a quick flight check as soon as you got up here, lifting off as fast as you could and hoping the thrusters would rumble loud enough to cover your series of pitifully shallow sniffles at being yelled at unexpectedly by a very large and intimidating man, not really crying but not really able to breathe normal either.  The little monster was able to wiggle himself around in your lap as you were trying to punch in the correct coordinates for the fifth quarry with rapidly blinking, watery eyes, and then proceeded to give your belly the smallest hug you think you’ve ever been given and pretty much break your heart with it.

Lovely little boy, so sweet when he wants to be.  He’s sat with you this whole time, he even tried giving you his metal ball to play with but ultimately decided to keep it to himself when he realized you aren’t nearly as fascinated by it as he is.  You know it’s probably getting late for him, and you’ve been weighing the idea of handing him over to his father so he can at least get a good night’s sleep somewhere that isn’t your arms.  There’s no blankets in here, just your lap.

“I think I gotta go take you to your dad soon, tiny.  He’s probably missing you,” you tell him, trying to keep quiet enough that you won’t disturb Din in the hull.  There’s a good chance he’s already asleep.  “I think… he might still be mad at me.  Maybe you can give him the big eyes, soften him up a little?”

Right on cue, his enormous eyes start to droop closed, and you let out a tired sigh of exasperation.  That’s not gonna work, come on.  They gotta be open, booger.

You watch him slowly drift to sleep, his ears relaxing until they too start to droop, but when you try to take the ball from him and set it down on the console, his eyes immediately pop back open and the toy slips from your fingertips.  It levitates right back into his tiny hands as you watch, and then he closes his eyes once more while tightly cuddling the thing he loves most to his body.

Unbelievable.

He’s a child, and yet he’s…

“How are you so strong?”  You ask him, unable to even fathom.  “You’re the smallest, most helpless little thing I’ve ever seen and you’ve got such… strength.  You defy the universe for a piece of metal.”

He doesn’t hear you, you think he’s asleep again.  It’s just as well, you figure.  He needs to go sleep in his crib, it’s time.  You scoop him up and make sure the little ball stays tucked snugly in his arms, before finally standing up and stumbling over to the door on numb legs.

Only, when it slides open, you quickly stop short.

Because there, sitting on the floor and resting his helmet against the corner of this small little platform leading to the ladder, is the Mandalorian.

So much closer than you expected him to be.  So big, crammed into such a tiny place.  You didn’t hear his footsteps climbing the ladder, and you would’ve noticed it during the hours you’ve spent in the suffocatingly muted quiet of hyperspace.  He can be silent but not when absolutely nothing else exists and he’s got a thousand fucking pounds of steel weighing him down at any moment in time.  You took off almost immediately once you barricaded yourself inside the cockpit, so has he… did he follow you up in those last few seconds, right after you shut the door?  The ones when you were sniffling like a child and trying desperately to turn the thrusters on before you let the tears come?

His head lifts and his back straightens as you’re looking down at him with his sleeping son cradled in your arms, your eyes slightly redder than they should be.  You’re a mess and… he’s been here this whole time?

“Could you hear me in there?”  You whisper in sudden mortification, but Din just keeps gazing up at you through the impenetrable metal visor.  A complete mystery again.  Unreadable—he could be anyone.

When he doesn’t answer you, your heart twists with the possibility that he’s still upset with you, and you quickly turn to the ladder to figure out the best way to get down without jostling the baby.

“I’m sorry.”  His voice stops you dead in your tracks.  It’s so soft, nearly flipping in and out of the modulator from the lack of volume, the most cautious sounding thing you’ve ever heard coming through the filter.  “I… hurt your feelings.  I’m sorry.”

And…  Maker, if anybody else had said it.  If literally anybody else had said it, you know it would’ve sounded like the most sarcastic, dickish remark in such a delicate moment.  But, you also remember him telling you once that you were tenderhearted.  That the galaxy would never be as kind to you as you are to it.  This… comes out sounding like he’s trying to change that.

It comes out sounding like he’s trying to use his voice to hold you because he doesn’t think you want to be touched right now.  Like… like he’s doing everything he can to be as careful as possible here because you think he might be attempting to do something he’s never done before.  Apologize for saying something he didn’t mean.

“You don’t have to,” you quickly tell him.  He’s not good with words and apologies are difficult enough to phrase for normal people, you don’t want him to fret over it if that’s what this is.  “It’s okay, I know you’re not… you don’t have to.  It was stupid of me to ask.”

“It wasn’t,” he instantly counters, his voice finally seeming to find the floor when it was just hovering before.  Not loud—still gentle, still making sure the kid doesn’t wake up and you’re not frightened away, but a bit more grounded this time.  “It wasn’t… what I wanted to hear, and I didn’t take it well.  Not stupid.”

“It was stupid,” you return amicably, looking down at your feet.  “That’s not my… job, like you said.”

Din suddenly hangs his helmet down to his chest, pressing his gloves to the part that curves over his forehead and rubbing it.  “Shit.  I didn’t mean—”

“You were right,” you acknowledge, having spent the past few hours coming to the understanding that it’s the hard truth and he just phrased it poorly.  “I’m not… built for it, I’d only get in your way.  I barely just managed to shoot stationary targets with a blaster today, and that’s only with that aim corrector built into the barrel.  I’m here to be helpful, not—”

“What are you saying?”  He suddenly lifts the beskar to study you, sounding genuinely confused.  “What aim corrector?”

That… makes you pause.

“The, uh…”  Now you’re confused.  “The one that adjusts the plasma release on the gun you gave me.”

He doesn’t move an inch or say a single thing to you in response and you awkwardly shuffle your feet for a second, everything so quiet that you can hear every little snore that goes in and out of the kid’s tiny button nose.

You blink at him after way too long of that, not knowing why he still hasn’t said anything.  “There’s an electronic sight and like a bazillion extra magnets packed into the barrel, Din, what else could—”

“Sweet girl, that’s… that’s for the Philithiorium,” Din breathes out, like he’s absolutely blown away by you right now.  “That gas is less stable than normal canisters, it takes more magnets to focus the white beam without overheating the metal.”

You stare at him, not truly processing.  He’s saying that… you made all those shots today without any help at all?  By yourself?

Your eyebrows furrow and you blink a few times, but then his slow, heavy sigh echoes throughout the metal walls with disappointment… and you don’t think it’s directed towards you.

“You’re just… always so unsure of yourself.”  He sounds genuinely distraught as his helmet tips down to look at the ground.  “I made that worse today.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you quickly shake your head, your chest already beginning to loosen slightly by just being around him, hearing his voice, seeing the metal glint under the fluorescent light overhead when he’s in such a vulnerable position on the floor.  “It’s okay, let’s just… pretend neither of us said anything at all, okay?”

“Is that what you really want?”  He asks you after a moment of quiet, and for some reason, you hear something in your mind tell you that his arms look so nice right now, don’t they?  You could fit right there, perfect and safe again.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” you smile at him, feeling a bit of the ache trapped inside you continue to work itself out little by little.  You’ll be back to normal soon, it’s fine.

“No, I mean… do you really want to come with me?”  Din asks you, the words sounding cautious.  Confused, like he truly never expected the proposition from you at all.  “Or… do you just not want me to go?”

Oof, what a fucking question.

Why would he ask this?  It’s not pointed; it’s the softest, gentlest inquiry you’ve ever been posed.  Maybe in other circumstances, you’d say that him leaving doesn’t have anything to do with it, but… you’re certain that internally, it absolutely does have at least something to do with it and he was just able to know it before you did.  Which is probably why his sharp words seemed all the more cutting earlier.  It hurt because he said the truth first, verbalized a very deep insecurity you’ve been trying to hide from him and threw it right in your face when shutting you down.

Though, if it worked differently and you were the one who had to be away while he stayed here, you’d like to think you’d handle it way better than how it is now.  At least you’d have a real mission to focus on, new things to see and experiences to have.  You just feel… confined sometimes.

You take a deep breath and figure you’ll use sitting down as an excuse to think for a second.  There’s practically no room but you find it in the back of the cockpit near the doorframe anyways, doing your best to keep the kid level while you slowly lower yourself to the ground near him.  Not touching him, but close.

“I just… I lived my whole life stuck in one spot, wanting to see the galaxy,” you finally admit to him, staring at his chestplate but seeing the helmet tilt slightly in your peripheral.  “Sometimes it’s just… hard to see the galaxy and still be stuck in one spot, I guess.”

“…You want an adventure,” Din proposes quietly, and though there’s not a single hint of mockery in his voice, you suddenly feel like it’s really fucking dumb when he phrases it like that.  What are you, an eight year old?  Wanting to go on an adventure, see things you’ve never seen without any concept for real life?  Credits?  Time?  Resources?

You shrug a shoulder to make it seem like it’s no big deal.  Why is he even entertaining this right now?  “It’s stupid, I kn—”

“Like on Naboo,” he goes on, ignoring your harsh self-criticism, not allowing you the ability to even get it out once he heard the first couple words.  “Going through the forest, seeing that waterfall.  Someplace to find for yourself.  Explore.  Experience.”

You… you want it so badly that you think your eyes might tear up just hearing the words coming out of his mouth when he says them like that.  Like he… just inherently understands.  He knows.

He knows you.  He’s not good with words and yet he found the single most succinct way to put what you thought was a complex yearning without even trying.  You can’t even answer him, he hit the target dead on and you’re left with nothing to say that wouldn’t just be a miserable lie.

“Okay,” Din says after a moment, giving you a small nod.

You’re lost now.  “…Okay?”

“You’re never going on a hunt with me,” he tells you very seriously, no room for arguing.  “Ever.  And not because you can’t handle it, understand?”  He inhales, quickly adding on to his response before you’re able to analyze it the way you want to.  “But if you want an adventure, then… I can try and find a way to give you one.”

Stars.  He’s… too kind.  You somehow feel like it’s more than you deserve.  You were honestly hoping to just shadow him on a hunt, watch him work and stay well out of the way when he needs you to.  Helping if you think you’d be of any help; an extra set of eyes and hands.  You would’ve been fine even if he didn’t apologize for raising his voice at you, he doesn’t have to do this for you.

“Thank you,” you say for the third time today, feeling like each one has somehow multiplied in sincerity.

“It can’t be right now,” he quickly tells you, apologetic but earnest about it.  “I have to find the quarry, and I’m supposed to meet with Karga again in a week.”

You never did let him know about the other part of the deal you made with Karga, you admit.  Four pucks, no hassling, no hard time constraints.  That’s what you shook on, but you just never found a way to bring it up to Din.  Especially since you’ve been so preoccupied with hiding your growing disappointment from him whenever he has to go.

“If…” you pause, wondering the best way to phrase this.  Yikes, this is a toughie.  “Um.  If Karga… I don’t know, hypothetically, if Karga decided to loosen the time constraints back to the way they were before the Corellian bounty, would you… still need to meet with him again in a week?”

You don’t think he even bothers shuffling through all those words.  “Say what you mean.  Please.”

“That was part of the deal I struck with him,” you quickly explain.  “You can hunt on your own timetable again and he’ll keep giving you four pucks like before, no more or less after this one extra quarry.  It’s like a… replacement of sorts, for the one I kept you from getting the time before.  If credits aren’t an issue, you can take more than a week.  But only if you want to, you don’t have to.  It’s just there and you should know, that’s all.”

He takes his time responding, lifting his helmet just the slightest bit in… surprise?  Maybe?

“You never told me you did that,” Din finally murmurs.

“Ah.  Well.”  You look down at the sleeping kid in your arms.  “I didn’t want you to think I was trying to… keep you here.”

It genuinely is a struggle for you, and you think he’s just now realizing that.  As much as you know he gets frustrated with you for always wanting him to be here when he physically can’t be, you think it’s only now that he’s truly realizing the lengths you go to in order to stomp that part of you down whenever you feel it threatening to come up.  You allowed him to leave every single time without telling him he could stay, knowing that all that was left for you was babysitting and target practice for days on end.

“Will you come over here?”  Din finally asks, and the tone of his voice just punches you in the chest.  So soft, so distressed from having you so close yet so far from him and just… full of a quiet hope, like he’s fully expecting you to say no.

“Will we fit?”  You whisper after a moment, even quieter.

He doesn’t answer, he just reaches for you.  You do your best to scoot over to him without waking the kid, and then Din pulls you the rest of the way once he has a grip.  You go right into his arms, laying sideways across his lap and supported by his steel embrace.

Oh, it’s not comfortable but you’ve also never been more fucking comfortable.  One of his knees lifts and allows you to rest your back against it without worrying about falling over sideways and down the ladder to the hull, thank the Maker.  The beskar pauldron over his shoulder digs into your cheek, but Din immediately pushes an arm up to nudge his helmet off and make it better for both of you.  Your face automatically fits into the crook of his neck while he sets the beskar on the bend of his knee, and then he silently cradles you while you do the same to his little boy… who does the same to his favorite metal ball.

“Ni tar’tayl su,” he murmurs into your hair, the one phrase in Mando’a you do recognize, especially with how beautiful and elegant it sounds rolling off his tongue.  “Forgive me.  Ni ceta.”

You sigh your contentment and melt into him, well aware that you’d still be more comfortable in bed.  But when you’re pressed hard against his chest like this and the baby is fast asleep in your arms, you get to feel both of them breathing.  Din’s right lung is probably bigger than the kid’s whole entire body, but you like the radically different cycles they go through.  You think you count six full breaths coming from the brown sack in your palms for every one of Din’s and two of yours.  It creates the most beautiful little symphony that sometimes gets a little off track, but always finds its way back around again.

“How do you say…”  You ask, feeling his hand slowly move down the curve of your spine, mindless and hypnotic.  It catches the edge of your shirt and goes underneath, and even though it’s not his bare hand and there’s no skin to skin, it still feels so good.  Not sexual or sensual even, just… a comfort to you.  “In Mando’a, how do you say… out of a trillion?”

Din’s breaths pause for just a second, his portion of the synchronized rhythm faltering.  Soon it starts back up, and his head turns to press his lips against your hair.

“I don’t think there’s a word for it,” he admits, gently brushing a thumb across the baby’s forehead while he snoozes.  “There could be, but I don’t know it.  I’d use… out of a million million millions.  Dayn alanyc bal alanyc bal alanyci.”

Your eyes begin to drift closed, exhausted from keeping them open after shedding a few tears earlier.  Your first fight and you’re already completely in love with him again after a handful of hours of sulking and one conversation.  How is that possible?  You’re normally a very forgiving person and it wouldn’t have taken much to make you feel better, you just never expected him to… actually want it from you that badly, care enough about it to get on the floor and ask.

Din doesn’t move the entire night through.  You assumed he’d make everyone get up at some point and move to the hull, but he doesn’t.  You fall asleep against his chest, comforted by the silence once again.

***

The next morning, Din quietly climbs into the cockpit while you’re humming in the shower.  You’re too busy basking in the indoor rainfall to feel the ship pull out of hyperspace, and then jump back into it a few moments after.

***

“How long do you think you’ll be this time?”  You ask two days later, sitting on the extended flattop of Din’s old cot and swinging your legs back and forth.  The baby is currently sitting on your lap and trying to roll the metal ball down your knee so you’ll kick it in the air, you think, because he keeps dropping it at different moments and forcing you to stop moving your legs to prevent accidentally denting a wall.  Every time the ball clatters to the floor, he makes a sad sound and it immediately lifts back up into his tiny hands for another try.

Heavy boots clang against the metal floor as Din drops down from the ladder, having just landed the Crest on the surface of whatever planet you’re on.  “I’m not leaving yet.”

“Oh…”  You blink, surprised.  “Okay.”

“I wanted to do some more training with you first, if that’s okay.  You can say no if you want, but maybe not,” Din drawls, striding over to the armory and opening it.  He carefully removes your blaster from the front shelf, speaking with his back to you.  “You’re going to run.”

“Um.”  You take a moment to glance around the enclosed hull, before turning to look back at him with your eyebrows raised.  “What, like… in place?”

Din sighs and closes the armory before leaning back against the doors, rubbing the face of the helmet in exasperation.  “From me, sweet girl.”

Your legs stop swinging, and the baby grumbles and slaps three fingers against your knee.  “What?”

“We’re on Sanctuary II,” he explains, turning to grab his black bag from one of the storage shelves.  He unzips it and reaches back into one of the larger pockets on his utility belt, before grabbing a handful of credits and stuffing them inside.  “It’s a moon, the New Republic occupied it years ago and made it a safe world for refugees and orphans of the Empire.  You’ll have your blaster, some credits, a communicator, and a day head start.  You’re going to run from me.  Show me how much you’ve learned.”

Is… he for real?

Right now?  You don’t even know how to respond, you’re too surprised.  Even when Din approaches and carefully trades the kid for your blaster, setting the bag down next to you on the metal bed, you still haven’t answered him.

“If you want?”  He asks after a moment, and you quickly jerk your head into a nod and jump off the raised platform, almost knocking into him with your sudden excitement.

“Okay!  Fuck yeah,” you grin, but Din shakes his head.

“Rules,” he says seriously, and you quickly do your best to frown, trying to compose your thrilled expression to match his tone.  “One.  This is a safe world, but things can always happen.  You have a blaster now, but it’s for emergencies only.  Do not shoot me with it.  Do you understand?”  You nod, but Din reaches forward to grab your elbow.  “Out loud, please.  For me.”

“I will not shoot you with this blaster,” you vow obediently, carefully cradling the precious firearm in your hands.

“Do not shoot me,” he repeats while pointing a leather finger at you.  “Do not… shoot at me.  Near me.  Around me.  No, just—don’t shoot.  Unless I am… very far away.  Okay?”

Well, he didn’t have to phrase it like that.  You frown, but acquiesce regardless.  “I will only resort to blastering if it’s an emergency and you are not around.”

He nods a thank you for putting it into better words.  “Second rule.  Since you don’t have a ship, I won’t either.  We’re on foot.  I don’t doubt you can hotwire a piece of junk to do what you need it to do, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t.  Good?”

Entirely accurate and entirely fair.  “Good.”

“Three,” he says.  “I’ll have the kid with me, which is both good and bad news for you.  Good news is he’ll slow me down, bad news is I can’t promise he won’t also try to intervene at some point if you’re serious about putting up a decent fight.  What I can promise is that I won’t encourage it.”

“Reassuring,” you nod.  “Also not really a rule.  Please continue.”

“Four.”  He pauses for a second.  “I think I’m wanted by the New Republic.”

You nearly jerk back.  “What?”

“I can’t confirm it and I’m not proud of it,” Din quickly tells you, probably the vaguest possible explanation he could provide.  “I’m only telling you so that you’ll know your advantage and find a way to exploit it.  I can’t be seen by any officers, or they might arrest me.”

Is he fucking serious?  “I don’t want you to be arrested, Din, I—”

“I won’t be,” he assures you.  “They owe me one, I just don’t want to cash in yet.  Trust me.”

You… do.  Insanely, and against every logical thought flittering through your head, you do.  If you were ever going to bet money that someone would be able to navigate a safe world on foot without being caught by the numerous officers scattered across the surface, then you’d put all your credits on Din Djarin.  It… also shouldn’t really surprise you at all that the people seeking his incarceration also owe him a favor, should it?  It actually sounds right on par for him.  “Okay.”

“Fifth, and this one is important, so listen up,” he continues gruffly.  “You check in with me tonight over the e-comm, alright?  I don’t care where you are or how safe this planet is, if you don’t check in, I’ll come find you before the sun rises.  Say you understand me.”

“I understand you,” you tell him, your heart beginning to pound in your chest at the reality of this actually happening.  “I’ll check in tonight.”

“And if,” he goes on, “by some miracle, you manage to make it more than a full day, you check in with me tomorrow night, too.  Say it.”

“I will check in with you every single night for the full five days it’ll take you to find me,” you assert, the adrenaline starting to make you brash and giddy.  

Din tilts his helmet at you sternly.  It is a very, very stern tilt.  “Okay.  New plan, forget everything I just said.”

Your expression furrows.  “What’s the new plan?”

“That is the new plan,” he says, dead serious.  “Us.  Not doing this.”

“Oh, come on,” you grin cheekily up at him, poking his chestplate.  “I’m just giving you some motivation to find me quicker, that’s all.”

Din stares down at you, and… yeesh.  Tough crowd.

“Tell you what,” he finally grunts, sounding incredibly unamused with your jesting.  “If you can last that long with only a day head start, I’ll let you come with me to collect the fifth quarry.  You can even cuff the bastard yourself.”

You know it’s just because he’s rightly confident in his own deadly skill, but hearing him propose the possibility still shoots a thrill down your spine.  “Oh ho, you are gonna regret saying that, shiny,” you beam up at him, starting to hop back and forth on each foot with excitement.

“But if I’m able to find you, you can’t ask me ever again,” he finishes shortly, and you immediately go still in front of him.

“What?”

“If I’m able to find you in five days, I don’t want to hear about you coming with me on a hunt and you can’t ever ask me not to go on one,” Din tells you, his voice rough and gravelly through the modulator.  Not mean or harsh, but firm.  “From now on, it’ll be off-limits.”

You… take a moment, not knowing if you should feel scolded or not.  When you don’t immediately say anything in response, he sighs and turns the helmet away from you.

“Leaving is hard enough as it is,” he mutters, looking at the ground.  “Hearing you ask… makes it impossible.”

You slowly lower your gaze to the floor as well, feeling your heart constrict tight in your chest.  There’s a real pull under his voice, telling you that information even though it sounds like he doesn’t really want to admit it out loud.  It… really is a struggle for him too, then.  You understand.

“Okay,” you nod.  There’s not a single part of you that actually thinks you’ll be able to stay hidden from him for five days while stuck on foot, so this is essentially a given.  You’re not thrilled about the idea, but you’re going to do your best to respect it nonetheless, especially if he cares enough to put off hunting and allow you this experience for yourself.  It’s a better compromise than you ever imagined, and you’ll do everything you can to hold up your side of the bargain.

Din clears his throat and straightens his spine, turning the visor until it faces you head on once more.  “Final rule.  I reserve the right to break any rule we just agreed to, or any fucking rule in this galaxy to keep you safe.  Good?”

Your cheeks flush with heat, your stomach suddenly filling with butterflies.  He doesn’t do that.  Din says what he says or he doesn’t say anything at all, there’s no… taking things back, he’s already breaking his own code.

“What happened to The Way says no take-backs?”  You ask quietly.

“This is my way,” he answers you.  Quick, not even taking a moment to think about it, before pulling out a fancy looking wristwatch thing and clipping it on you himself.  “This is your communicator.  It takes more power than the one you have now but it’ll reach a further distance.  I have one just like it, they’re locked into the same frequency and timesynced together, and the batteries need to be charged every three days.  If you make it that long, I’ll remind you.”  Din grabs the bag while you slide your arm into it, helping you hook it around your shoulder with one hand while he cradles the kid in his other.  Your heart is pounding now, pumping with adrenaline as he pulls you towards the middle of the hull and then wraps an arm around you.

“Hey,” he murmurs, pulling you tight to him and pressing the helmet to the crown of your head.  His voice is barely a whisper through the modulator.  “Gar darasuum.”  For an eternity.

You find some way to wrap your arms around him, even with your blaster in your hand and the kid hanging out in his dad’s other arm.

“Dayn alanyc, bal alanyc, bal alanyci,” you murmur dutifully against the beskar chestplate, knowing your accent is probably butchering the words but hoping they still carry the same sentiment.

And then you’re squeeeeeezed hard enough to get a little air out of you, before you’re let go and he turns around, pressing a button on his vambrace so the ramp begins to lower.

It’s bright outside but not too bright, and everything is warm and gentle and breezy, right in the middle of a lush plain.  You inhale the fresh air into your lungs, looking out across the wide open field, having no fucking clue this is where your day would be leading when you woke up this morning.  Oh Maker, it’s gorgeous here.  Not like Naboo, where every single thing is picturesque and fit for an e-card, but in a soft, understated kind of way.  The sky is a canvas of swirling pastel clouds, pale pinks and yellows and blues, and the communicator on your wrist lets you know that it’s just after noon here.

You take one single step down the ramp, before immediately stopping and turning around to bite your lip at him.

“How am I… how am I supposed to outrun you?”  You ask, already clueless.  “You’re too good, better than me at everything.”

“That’s not true,” Din reminds you sternly, grabbing your hand at your side.  “You already know who’s after you, that’s an advantage nobody else has ever had against me.  You know how I think.  I don’t know how, but sometimes it’s like you can…”  He slowly shakes his head.  “See me.  Through the metal.”

“But… but that works both ways,” you point out, breathless at hearing him say that but needing to focus right now.  “You know me, too—you’ll know exactly where I—”

He shakes his head again, but quickly this time.  “Remember what I told you a long time ago?  What your best weapon is?”

You… do not.  He told you so many things, and you’re assuming every single one of them is going to come into play during this endeavor if you want to outlast.  You’re going to have to think back and remember all of them individually, find the time to figure out your best plan of action based on the remarkably little you know about how he hunts.

“You’re smart, remember?”  Din murmurs, squeezing your fingers.  “Your mind works differently, it sees things in ways I’ll never be able to, not even with this helmet.  So…”  He shrugs a shoulder like it’s the simplest thing in the galaxy.  “Don’t try to outrun, okay?  Just try to outsmart.”

You give him a nod after a moment, still not really sure about it, before giving his hand one last squeeze in return and eventually letting go.  

Outsmart.  Outsmart him, use what you know about him to be the most elusive quarry he’s ever hunted down.

As you make your way down the ramp, you’re already thinking.  His helmet tracks footprints, that’s a thing you know.  You’ll have to find someone to trade shoes with, then—yours aren’t too beat up, maybe you can find a local who’d appreciate a better pair.  Are you going to a city?  Would there be one in walking distance?  The wilderness won’t work, you’ll be too exposed and it would make you an easy target for either him or wild animals.  The weather seems clear here though, and you don’t think you’ll need to worry about rain or snow, but if—

“Oh—but when you do see me,” Din decides to add when your feet finally touch the grass, and you pause once more to turn around and look at him.  He stays quiet for a second, studying you through the helmet for too long.  Like the anticipation is getting to him already.

You bite your lip back at him and adjust the bag on your shoulder, tummy swirling with nerves and excitement.  He tilts the visor up, gazing down at you from the hull with the kid tucked in his arms.

“Try to outrun,” he says gruffly, before turning back into the ship and letting the ramp slowly close behind him.

#the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #mando x reader #mando x you #smut #angst #hurt/comfort #reader insert #the mandalorian #rough day #no-droids

[parkersbliss]

hey could i request a kaz fic with prompts: 001, 007 and 041? pleasee let it end in fluff i can’t bare angst after your last fic lol <3

yes ofc ofc, kaz fluff for you

Dead Man | K. Brekker

prompts: 001: “Why do you care?” 007: “Give me one good reason.” 041: “I cant stand the sight of you in someone else’s arms!”

Masterlist | Taglist | Prompt List

—

Kaz wasn’t a jealous person. That’s what he tells himself, but he believes it’s far from true. Then again, he didn’t have to believe it to be true. He seems to lie to himself a lot. He’s also noticed he seems to lie a lot more when you’re involved.

His favorite lie would have to be, I’m not in love with (Y/N). He definitely was.

But Kaz Brekker was too prideful to ever admit that. Being in love gave you a weakness, and Kaz was not weak. Far from it, actually. He was the most feared man in Ketterdam. There was a reason he was successful, and that was simply because he didn’t have a weakness.

Well, a weakness that people knew about.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Jesper asked, casting a sideways glance at you.

Kaz rolls his eyes, slamming his hands down on the table. “Unless you have a better one, I suggest you shut up.”

Jesper opens his mouth to object, but he shakes his head and shuts up.

Good, he knows better.

“Looking good is a Jesper talent, isn’t it?”

Jesper straightens his back and his jacket, brushing his thumb against his lip. “Why yes, it is.”

“Then I don’t see the problem. You just have to do it with (Y/N).”

You nod, bumping shoulders with the Zemeni boy. “Yeah, we could be a great power couple.”

Jesper laughs nervously, looking at Kaz and seeing the slightest hint of murder in his eyes. There was nothing wrong with the plan except the part where Jesper has to play your boyfriend when Kaz has the biggest crush on you known to man. Jesper knew better than to get in his way. He would really prefer to keep his life than get his head chopped off with a single look.

“You both know your target?” Kaz asked.

You and Jesper nod.

“Good. Get in, get the info and get out. No gambling and no drinking.” He points an accusing finger at Jesper. “I don’t think I have to explain that to you, (Y/N). Any objections?”

Jesper shakily raises his hand. “Yes, so why can’t you go as (Y/N)’s boyfriend?”

Inej looks to Jesper with raised eyebrows. “Are you serious right now?”

“I just think that they would make a more convincing couple!”

“Jesper,” Kaz said lowly, and he knows he’s in for it. “When I say you’re posing as (Y/N)’s boyfriend, you are posing as her boyfriend. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal,” Jesper squeaks.

Kaz pulls back, slapping his cane on the ground and leaning his hands on it. When Jesper doesn’t move, he rolls his eyes, “Well, get to it!”

“Right!” Jesper said, scrambling to get out of the room.

“He seems awfully nervous,” You said.

“I’ll go check on him,” Inej said, passing by you with a smile.

That leaves you and Kaz.

“You were a bit harsh on him, don’t you think?” You asked.

Kaz shrugs. “Not really. It’s Jesper.”

“I think you scared the poor boy half to death.”

Kaz raises a single brow at you. “I don’t see an issue. He still has half to go.”

You let out a soft chuckle, and Kaz swears his heart stops for just a moment. He could listen to it forever.

“Is there a reason you’re so adamant about him being my fake boyfriend?”

“He’s the best choice.”

“Right.”

“You beg to differ?”

You shake your head, “Not at all.”

Kaz knows you did, but he doesn’t say anything. “You should get ready.”

You nod, “Yeah, I should. I’ll see you after, boss.”

…

“Wow,” Jesper said, offering his arm to you. “You look dazzling.”

“I learn from the best,” You wink, looping your arm through his.

Kaz’s lips are pursed into a straight line, and Jesper will be grateful when he’s out of his sight and range.

“Inej and I will be across the street. You know what to do if it goes south.”

“Sure do, Boss,” Jesper replied, eager to leave.

Kaz nods, stepping back, and you both enter the club. He leads you towards the bar and takes a seat. You stand next to him, scanning the crowd for the target.

“Put your arm around my waist,” You hiss to Jesper when you spot him.

“I don’t know about that,” Jesper laughed nervously.

“Jesper.”

“Okay!”

He slips an arm around your waist, nervously looking around to ensure Kaz can’t see. When he’s sure he’s safe, he relaxes a bit more. Everything goes smooth as you wait for your target to come over. You didn’t want to lure him in case that made you both more suspicious. It takes longer than both of you want, but eventually, he makes it to the only open seat in the bar; the one next to you.

He orders a few shots and Jesper makes the first move. “Rough night?”

He groans. “You have no idea.”

“Try me.”

“I’m Archer,” The target said, but of course, you already knew that. He was working for a Mercher, who rumor had it - recently imported something worth millions. Kaz wanted to know what it was and if it was worth it.

“Roman,” Jesper grinned, sticking out a hand.

“And what about this pretty lady?”

You gave him your fake name with a smile as you shuffle closer to Jesper.

“Boss is treating me like shit,” Archer groans, taking a shot. Jesper offers to pay for more. The tipsier he got, the more he would spill. “We got this new import the other week, been on high security since. Doubled my hours, didn’t double my pay.”

“New import? What could be so valuable?”

Archer shrugs. “I have no idea. Not allowed to tell, anyway. Sorry bud.”

“That’s a damn shame.”

Archer leans in, alcohol evident in his breath and you almost choke. “Between you and me, I think it’s some new weapon from Novyi Zem.”

There it was.

Jesper raises his brows. “Do you know what kind?”

“Some kind of gun, or guns.”

Jesper leans back. “Huh. I assume he keeps them in the back.”

Archer shakes his head. “No, he’s too cautious with this. He keeps in the vault in the basement.”

“A vault? Must be worth a lot.”

“Top security clearance. He has it scan his eyes, then his fingerprint and a password to get in.”

“My god,” Jesper laughed. “That’s a lot.”

Archer takes another shot. “You’re telling me.”

You don’t say much, playing the part of dumb arm candy. Your eyes wander the club when you spot a familiar face. He’s walking towards you.

You take a deep breath, turning your head to Jesper. You lean in to whisper, “We got someone coming towards us. He knows us. We need to hide.”

“How?”

“Kiss me.”

“You are out of your mind,” Jesper hisses. God, if Kaz found out, he would be dead in seconds.

“It’s that or death. I promise I don’t bite.”

“Are you two okay?” Archer asked.

Jesper coughs, pushing you off. “Yes, the misses it just eager to get home.”

Archer nods. “I see. I should get going too.”

Jesper lets him. You already got enough information.

“Jesper,” You whisper, tugging on his coat.

He was a dead man either way.

He grabs your face, kissing you with his eyes closed. It doesn’t mean anything to either of you. It’s just the difference between life and death for now. He can see the person leave out of the corner of his eyes. He’s about to pull back when a cane slams the bar floor. Jesper jumps back.

He is so dead.

Kaz's eyes blaze with something much more than rage, and Jesper doesn’t doubt it’s for him.

“Kaz,” you breathe out.

“We’re done here.”

Jesper stands up from the bar, letting go of you. “Yes, we are.”

He practically runs out of there, leaving you with a very pissed-off Kaz.

“Are you okay?” You asked.

He ignores you and walks away.

“Kaz?” You shout, catching up with him.

“What?” He snaps, never looking at you as you walk back to the slat. Jesper was gone, probably hiding somewhere. Inej was covering for him, but Kaz pays no mind.

“We got the information. Why are you so mad?”

Kaz throws open the door to his office, standing behind his desk and finally looking up. “You want to know why I’m so mad?”

“Yes!”

“Because you kissed Jesper!”

“What?” You asked. You couldn’t understand why he was so mad about that. He was the one who assigned him as your partner. “Why do you care?”

It’s not meant to come off rude, you just didn’t understand.

Kaz purses his lips and looks the other way. He can’t bring himself to say why; he won’t admit his weakness.

“Give me one good reason,” You beg. “I’m not mad at you, Kaz. I just don’t underst-”

“I can’t stand the sight of you in someone else’s arms!”

That’s not what you expected. However, it makes your stomach do flips. You swallow the butterflies.

“Then why did you partner Jesper and me together?” You asked softly.

Kaz sighs, “I thought I could prove to myself that I wasn’t in love with you by seeing you with him.”

You snort. “And how did that work out?”

“It didn’t.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?”

Kaz can hear the mischief in your voice. He’s expecting rejection, but you sound happy.

“I think I’m going to admit that I’m in love with you,” he said, turning back around to face you.

“Well, that’s good,” You grin, grabbing his coat and pulling him the slightest bit closer. He doesn’t pull away. “Cause I’m in love with you too.”

#poor jesper man 😭 #kaz is just grilling him #kaz brekker imagine #kaz brekker one shot #kaz brekker fluff #kaz brekker angst #kaz brekker fic #kaz brekker fanfic #kaz brekker x you #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker #soc #six of crows imagine #six of crows #crooked kingdom #grishaverse #shadow and bone

[feysandfeels]

ACOTAR dudes and how much they care about their ✨aesthetic✨

Lucien: He cares, do you think his hair is shinny and silky just by Cauldron’s grace? no it isn’t. He has a routine and a secret conditioner that gives it a golden-like shine, he won’t share it with anyone, no Cassian, stop asking. He knows what colors work with his complexion and what silhouettes enhance his not buff but very defined muscles in a subtle yet you can’t ignore it way. He knows what works, but he’s the best at making it seem like he doesn’t know and it’s just how he woke up. Lucien has the what I just rolled out of bed and put the first thing on really vibe nailed to perfection

Rhys: He cares a lot and he knows you know and he doesn’t care. Self proclaimed Prythian’s hottest High Lord will drop on you his 15 step skin care routine, will facemask twice a week, homemade, with plants, herbs, roots and fruits courtesy of Elain’s garden, how do you think I don’t have wrinkles with all the stress and anxiety I constantly have; and will give you a closet tour of all his black suits if you ask.. and he will judge you if you think they are all black and the same. How dare you this is not “black” this is ebony, this other one is raven, my absolute favorite is midnight (duh), then we have sable and obsidian. That high fae given eyesight really got wasted on you. And also, Feyre where is my ink black suit?// I left it on the bed //no that’s not it, that’s my jade black suit, honestly woman.

Cassian: Doesn’t really care, but he looks nice and will make an effort when required. I mean he has a couple of suits, they hug his ass and that’s all he cares about. Used to have an all in shampoo conditioner, until Mor and Rhys  bullied him into getting a shampoo and a conditioner. Even Az was like Bro, c’mon. Each one of them got Cass hair products for winter solstice once. Now his man bun is as nice ass his other man bun. Tried asking Lucien for his secret, what secret this is just how I woke up. The definition of scrubs up hella nice. Perfect mixture of nice but rough on the edges with a 5pm shadow, hair down (or in the preferred man bun) and a delicious suit. Will always always roll up his sleeves. He knows what it does to the people. Ok whore. Very much into skin brushing. He said no to dead skin cells and yes to good circulation. Weekly massages. The body is a temple ok?

Azriel: He wants you to think he doesn’t care, but he does and he will spend time getting ready for the events, more than he will ever admit. Listen if Lucien is the 10/10 you would never guess that he actually pays attention to this, then Az is like the 8/10. A man of details and has a great eye for color and pattern combinations. No you will not ever catch him in a full bright colored suit, but he enjoys going for different textures and colors albeit dark ones. He looks particularly good in blue and green. Once Mor asked him to accompany her to an event and he came in wearing a merlot velvet three piece suit and no one has been able to stop talking about it.It’s been three centuries. My man served. He will coordinate with you in a subtle way like did they plan that or?? He knows the value of a good aesthetic, but won’t go raving about it, like a certain High Lord.

Helion: KING OF AESTHETIC. COMMITTED TO HIS AESTHETIC FROM HEAD TO TOE, TO HIS HOUSE AND PEGASUS(ES) AND CHARIOTS AND ALL. Not a hair out of fucking place. Sweatpants? I don’t know them. Ew. One must always dress to impress. What do I wear when I want to chill? have you ever worn a toga? It’s either a Toga or nothing, I happen to have nothing in my rooms. Will host parties where the dress code is bohemian chic meets royaltycore, and everyone is like ????????????????????????

Kallias: I mean yes I want to look good, yes I will dress up when the occasion calls for it. But generally speaking no one has ever achieved the balance between comfort and put together like Kallias. Also immaculate immaculate skin. Big believer in face rollers and gua shas. Gave each member of the Night Court their own set, they all deeply appreciate it. 

Tarquin: Of course I fucking care, but the Cauldron did not give me these looks for nothing so I won’t do much really. Sunblock and water. Will, however, try out new styles here and there, in the privacy of his own home and court and if they prove to be a success, then you will see him wearing that to the official Prythian meetings. Will do a 180 on you and appear proper af during the meetings, but in the parties he will show up wearing exquisite jewellery and a long skirt. Dude can rock a skirt. Dude also wears dresses. Looks nice. Will most definitely outshine you. Will neither confirm nor deny that once Az approached him asking him where he got that dress. Will always get the assignment when it comes to Helion’s parties.

Jurian: Pre-amarantha accessory used to be a I have a set of fighting clothes/armour whatever, and the nicer set of those for *political* occasions kinda dude. Post amarantha accessory is more like maybe I will invest in that nice jacket green jacket with gold details, fuck you vassa I did not buy it to match Lucien.

Tamlin: Will show up to the MET Gala in a “black” tuxedo regardless of the theme. 

#Did I just spend five hours with some friends discussing this? yeah well maybe I did #ACOTAR #ACOMAF #ACOWAR #ACOFAS #ACOSF #Lucien Vanserra #Rhys #Rhysand #Cassian #Azriel #Helion #Kallias #Tarquin #Jurian #feysandfeelspost #getting drinks and talking about acotar is a plan I'm always here for.

[joel-millerr]

The Chase - One Shot

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!reader

Rating: explicit

Word Count: 5k

Summary: You bet Mando you could last two hours on the run without him catching you. Reluctantly, he agrees to the bet.

Warnings: outdoor (rough & unprotected) sex, hunter and hunted type of vibe, mild choking, being gagged, size kink, mando talks a lot during sexy time, maybe slight dom/sub mentions?

A/N: this is just my take on the whole “bounty hunter and quarry” fantasy. also I basically wrote the smut and then added context around it. this is pretty much shameless smut  /// 

*Masterlist can be found here**

--

It started out as innocent banter.

“I definitely think I could last a couple days,” you told him, slouching in the passenger seat inside the cockpit.

The modulator scoffed at you. “No.”

“Are you doubting my skills?” You asked, eyebrow cocked.

He swiveled his chair around to face you. “That’s not it.”

“Then tell me what it is, Mando.”

Even though you weren’t able to see what his expression was, you could tell by his body language that he was getting annoyed. The way his hands fidgeted at his sides, the way he leaned his body back in the chair—something he did every time you tried to rile him up about something. Despite the fact that he hid behind the beskar, he was generally easy to read whenever he was irritated.

“I bet I can last two days.”

“You wouldn’t last two hours, let alone two days.”

Now that was a challenge you didn’t want to back down from. Anytime someone told you that you couldn’t do something, it scratched that itch inside you to do that exact thing. Your incessant need to prove people wrong sometimes got the best of you, but Maker, the satisfaction you got from it was worth the consequences.

“I’ll take that bet,” you said to him, feeling your stomach stir.

“I wasn’t—”

“Too bad, Mando. You challenged me and I accept.”

--

And then the rest was history. All you had to do was last two hours without Mando tracking you down and then you could die happy knowing you evaded the best bounty hunter in the parsec, even if it were for a short period of time.

You’re not sure what planet Mando lands the Crest on but it’s definitely one of the quieter ones because he’s landed the ship in a large clearing with only woods as far as the eye can see. It’s not a problem for you, though. Growing up on Naboo meant you were always exposed to forests and clear landscape. In theory, this is the best place he could have chosen, not that you’d tell him that.

“There are some ground rules for this,” he begins to say, standing in the galley of the Crest.

“I’m all ears,” you answer back.

Mando lets out a chuff of air that crackles up through his vocoder, like he’s still considering calling this whole thing off, but after weeks of still not finding a Jedi for the kid, you both need a little distraction.

“First thing, no guns.”

“Okay, that’s understandable.”

“Secondly, you keep the commlink open at all times,” he orders.

“Not a problem,” lips curling into a smile, you already feel the adrenaline pump through your veins, body itching to get this whole bet started.

“Thirdly, if you somehow manage to last the day, we check in once it gets dark.”

“Ouch,” you take a step back, slightly offended at his jab. “You have so little faith in me.”

“I’m not the one overestimating my abilities,” he jests. Who knew Mando could be so snarky?

“Do we call it off at night and wait till dawn?”

“If you want to make to things easier.”

Oh, so that’s how he wants to play.

“All right, Mando. We don’t stop.”

“I don’t know how safe this planet it, but you shouldn’t run into any trouble.”

“Okay, yeah Mando, let’s do this,” you’re basically shaking from the thrill of all this. You can’t wait to show off your evading skills.

“I’ll give you an hour head start. Put as much distance between yourself and the Crest as you can.”

“Don’t worry, Mando. This isn’t my first time running away from someone,” you say with a smug smile.

“Fine,” his voice terse.

Your turn your back to him and face the open ramp. With your heart banging against your ribcage and your palms damp with sweat, this might be the most exhilarating thing you’ve ever done.  

“Be safe, I’ll see you soon,” He says with a hint of mockery. He’s so confident in himself, it’s actually getting under your skin.  

Looking over your shoulder, you hit him with your own jab, “We’ll see about that,” and then you’re descending the ramp.

Once your feet hit the ground, you think of the best direction to head towards. In order to do this successfully, you’ll need to choose every single one of your movements very carefully because any slip up could end up hurting your chances to win.

You hear your named being called, so you turn around to look back at the Crest and see Mando standing at the top of the ramp.

“When I do find you, try to put up a fight.”

That sends heat right to the apex of your thighs. If you didn’t have enough incentive, that was the last nail in the coffin. You’ll make this as hard for Mando as you possibly can.

You shoot him one last devilish grin and disappear from sight, opting to go to your right. Once you reach the forest edge, you break off into a sprint, heading deeper and deeper into the foliage.

The forest isn’t too dense, but there are roots everywhere on the ground and you stumble on a couple of them, nearly falling flat on your face. The positive to having so many branches and roots in the ground means the chances of your footprints showing up in the mud are low but Mando’s got a heat tracker on his helmet, meaning he can still track your movements without actually seeing your prints.

The adrenaline keeps telling you to run, run as fast as you can, but the rational part of your brain realizes that no matter how much distance you put between you and Mando, it won’t matter unless you have a clear plan as to what tactics you’ll need to use in order to make sure he doesn’t find you.

Should you try to find the closest village?

Should you stay in the forest?

Think, think…

You continue to put some more distance between you two and when you feel as though you’ve made some progress, you check the clock on your commlink.

2:50PM.

In ten minutes, Mando will leave the Crest and begin tracking you. You’ll have to start making important decisions soon. When you entered the planet’s atmosphere, you tried to pinpoint a specific spot that might give you some kind of advantage. If your memory serves you correctly, you saw a small area that appeared to be some kind of canyon. Ideally, that might be the perfect spot to find some shelter. A hard surface means no footprints.

Now if you could only find out how far away you are from it…

As you take in your surroundings—which is basically just trees and more trees, you think about finding a high enough viewpoint for you to see where this possible haven could be. A few metres away you happen to see a tree that appears to be much larger than the rest of the ones around it. Its branches look sturdy enough for a human to climb and it doesn’t take you long before you’re heading straight for it. You haven’t climbed a tree in years but if there was a perfect moment to touch-up on your skills, it’s right now.

As you climb up the stump, the branches and leaves break apart, and the sky begins to get clearer and clearer. When you finally reach the very top, you’re so high up that you’re able to spot what you were looking for. It looks like it’s a couple more clicks away, but you were lucky enough to be already heading in that direction. The Maker must be on your side.

One more look at the clock.

3:01PM.

Shit, you have to start moving.

If you start to climb down the tree, you’ll end up losing precious time, allowing Mando to close some of the distance. It’s something you can’t risk. Eyes scanning the woodland between you and your hideout, you come to the conclusion that you’ll have to jump from tree to tree and pray you don’t fall and break any bones. It’s incredibly risky, and your inner self is warning you against it. If you do fall, you’re screwed, breaking a lot of the bones in your body. You’ll have to hope that these branches will be able to carry your weight.

Trying to balance yourself on one of tree’s larger arms, you crawl across it on your knees, knowing damn well if you stood up, you’d lose your balance and fall down, and it would be a pretty big fall. You’re easily fifteen feet off the ground, maybe more. Fuck, this might have been a horrible idea, but it’s frankly too late to turn back, you’ve made up your mind and you need to go through with it.

The jump from the branch you’re currently on to the adjacent one you’ll be jumping onto is about four feet, but it’s not the jump that concerns you. What concerns you is the sturdiness of that branch. Will the impact cause it to snap? Will it make too much noise, letting Mando hear it? All these questions are racing through your mind as you hear your heartbeat pounding in your ears. The longer you consider it, the more time you waste. You’ll just have to take the chance and hope everything works in your favor.

“Okay… I can do this,” you whisper, psyching yourself up.

As you slowly rise to your feet, your legs are buckling. You take one last look down, fully realizing that this idea is absolutely bonkers and jump.

When your body hits the branch, you latch your arms around it, landing on your stomach. To your surprise, the branch doesn’t break off, it barely even moves.

Success.

You continue to leap from branch to branch, until the rest of trees in your wake look too unstable for you to leap onto. Luckily, the tree you’re currently on isn’t too far from the ground, so you’re able to climb down it in under five minutes before reaching the ground. Keeping still for a moment, you wait to hear something.

A twig snap, leaves rustling, anything, but you don’t hear a single sound.

“Did you actually climb these trees?” You hear Mando’s voice through the commlink on your wrist, which startles you.

Is he already there? He’s already so close, how is he already so fucking close to you?

“Um, no?” You reply.

“That’s convincing,” he answers dryly.

If Mando’s already reached the tree you started climbing at, then he’s really not far behind. You’ll need to start sprinting again. Without trying to make noise, you begin to tiptoe around the forest, trying to be as quick and efficient as you can. It doesn’t take long until you see a break in the forest and somehow quicken your tread to the clearing.

Once you reach the wood's edge, you’re about to take a step into the clearing when you stop yourself.

Kriff, if you step into that open field, you’ll be sticking out like a sore thumb, which is a risk you cannot take. Instead, you’ll have to walk along the sides of the clearing, keeping to the trees and hoping you won’t be spotted.

“Are you really about to step into that glade?”

Your breathing hitches, everything inside you is burning up, adrenaline nearly making you shake uncontrollably.

He’s found you.

He sees you.

Keeping very still, you turn your head in every direction, desperately trying to see where Mando is but you can’t see a fucking thing. You consider making a break for it—which direction, though? Do you turn around and head back into the forest and hope that you’ll be able to lose him in the trees? Do you stick to your guns and continue to make for the mountains?

“Better make up your mind quickly, pretty girl. Time’s running out,” he’s fucking taunting you. Mando knows exactly where you are and is relishing in watching you struggle in deciding what to do next.

There’s something incredibly titillating knowing that he’s watching you, right now. Predator watching prey, observing your every move, waiting for the perfect time to ambush you.

“What are the chances I outrun you?” You breathe into the speaker on your wrist, chest puffing in and out heavily.

Mando doesn’t answer right away, mulling over your question. “Very slim.”

“But not impossible?”

You’re sizing yourself up. You know damn well there isn’t a chance you lose him, not when he’s got eyes on you, but you have an advantage on him. Carrying all that armor on his body makes his movements more abrupt, meaning he’s less agile and relies more on his weapons to catch a bounty rather than his own speed. All you need to do is outrun him, make yourself impossible to catch and then maybe, just maybe, you can reach the other end of the forest without getting snatched.

“What are you planning?”

“’Put up a fight’,” you repeat the last words he said to you. “That’s what you said, right?”

“Yes?”

“Well… Come get me.”

And then you’re racing into the glade, your legs moving as fast as you possibly can. The air whipping passed the burning hot skin on your face, lungs feeling like they’re on fire, you’re running so much faster than you ever thought you could. Maker, you didn’t even know you could sprint this fast. Taking one quick look back over your shoulder, you see Mando break out from the forest edge, racing after you. He’s a couple metres behind you, but he seems to be closing the gap between you quicker than your efforts to gain distance.

Starting to panic, you make a sharp turn to the left, hoping he’ll be caught off guard, giving you just a few more seconds to stretch out the distance.

“I’ll give it to you, you’re much quicker than I thought,” he pants.

You’re so close to the forest, just a few more sprints. With your legs burning and getting tired, these last few metres are either going to make or break you, but with the determination to prove him wrong, you refuse to give up. You can almost taste freedom… just one more step—

And then you’re falling to the ground. Face slamming into the grass so hard, your vision goes fuzzy, and your head is pounding, hearing a faint ringing in your ears. When you turn over on your back, you look down at your legs and see your feet wrapped up in grappling line. Still in somewhat of a daze, you try to unravel the coil from your ankles with haste before Mando can close in on you. The tall grass shields your view, stopping you from seeing anything until it’s directly in your face, which mean he can be just a few feet away without you even knowing it. If you have any chance at slipping passed him, you need to move very fast.

Just as the cord untangles from your legs and you jump to your feet, you see Mando standing in front of you, just a little further than arm’s length away. Standing in place, you freeze up like a prey animal being spotted by its predator. Maker, he’s intimidating, carrying himself with such confidence and gusto that it could make even the more fearless predator cower in his presence and because you can’t see his expressions, you have no idea what he’s thinking under that bucket of his.

“Well, you managed to last two hours,” he notices after checking the time on his vambrace.

Relaxing your shoulders and readying yourself to break off into a sprint for the woods, you cock your head to side and chuckle. “Technically, you haven’t caught me yet.”

He tilts his head ever so slowly to the side, chest puffing out. With caution, he takes a step forward and in turn, you step back, maintaining the little distance between you two.

“Don’t make this harder for yourself.”

“When have I ever made it easy for you?”

The visor’s locked on you. Both of you stand incredibly still, waiting for someone to make the first move.

“Don’t run,” he warns.

It’s impossible to ignore the stirring in your stomach. It’s time to face the facts, you’ve already been defeated. There’s not a chance in hell you can possibly win this. You fucked up, somehow. Maybe you shouldn’t have started climbing trees, maybe you should have gone left instead of right. None of those things matter anymore. The only thing that matters how is what your next move is.

“Isn’t this what you really wanted?” His voice hitting low in the register.

Oh?

Does he mean what you think he means? Your pussy gushes, and you’re hit in the face with reality.

You would have to be a fool not to notice the way Mando looks at you on the Crest, and how you look at him. There’s clearly chemistry between you two, maybe even infatuation. It’s been three months since you started travelling with him which means there’s been three months’ worth of sexual tension. Both of you felt it, the electricity in the air whenever you were alone together. The air would get thick, your heartrate would quicken, and you’d wait for him to make a move, but he never did. Whenever you felt like that day was finally the day he’d let go of his devices and fuck you senseless on his ship, he’d retreat to the cockpit and lock himself up for hours, leaving you to take care of yourself in the fresher. It was enough to get the job done, but you wanted him, and you know he felt the same.

So, yeah, you’d be lying to yourself if that idea hadn’t crossed your mind. Getting him in his element, force him to come after you, and when you finally gave in or rather, when he found you, he’d be so caught up in the moment that all the sexual tension that had been building up for the last three months would climax at this very moment. What you couldn’t have anticipated was Mando figuring all of this out and actually calling you out on it.

Slacking your jaw, you lick your bottom lip, staring at the ‘T’ of his visor, realizing that this whole bet was just a façade—that the real reason you started this whole wager was to rile him up.

Mando body shifts, his fingers flexing at his sides.

“Been wanting it for three months, Mando,” you challenge.

He makes a guttural noise in his throat, and now you know you’ve got him. It’s taken three months to get you where you are now. Three months of walking around the Crest, swaying your hips purposely in hopes he’d look at you as you walked by. Three months of not so innocent touches on whatever part of him you could touch. Three months of soft moans and groans, trying to get his attention.

All your hard work is finally going to pay off.

Mando tries to close the gap between you, taking a step towards you. Being the brat you are, you step back.

“You’re really going to make this difficult?” He asks—very much a rhetorical question.

“Come get me, Mando,” the words slip off your tongue, once again trying to entice him.

A game of chicken.

Who’s going to make the first move? Is Mando going to charge for you? Do you let him? Do you turn and try to run away?

In a flash, Mando leaps forward and you’re just quick enough to dodge him, whipping your body towards the forest’s edge and taking large strides forward. You barely make it three feet before there’s more grappling line squeezing your ankles together. Once again, you land on your stomach with just barely enough time to cover your face with your hands.

Now, you know there’s no way you’d be able to get up in time and still somehow slip through his fingers, not that it was ever the point of this bet. You thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of being on the run and having Mando chasing after you but you’re way more interested in what’ll happen next than actually winning.

It’s takes a few seconds for you to get your bearings, and as soon as you begin to push yourself upright, you’re being shoved back into the ground by Mando using his bodyweight against you. He straddles either side of your legs, pushing them together.

“If this is what you wanted, all you had to do was ask,” Mando’s voice suddenly whispers in your ear, pressing himself into your body. He bucks his hips against your ass, his erection nuzzled between your cheeks. Propping himself on his elbows so he doesn’t suffocate you with his weight, one of his hands grab hold of your waist, digging into your flesh.

Trying to arch your back, you push your ass out to grind against his cock even more. Maker, you want him so fucking badly. Being fucked in an open field where anyone could see you, it’s daring and intoxicating.

Your hands fumble to your pants, trying to unbutton them and slide them down your thighs. Mando senses your urgency and swats your hands away and then his body leaves you momentarily, just long enough for him to tug your trousers down to your knees. It’s rushed, and you’re already panting underneath him, the anticipation eating you up from the inside.

A leather gloved hand grazes your lips, then he’s pushing two fingers in your mouth. The tastes of earth and salt lingering on your tongue.

“Bite,” he instructs.

You oblige and the glove comes off, discarded just inches away from your face. Without skipping a beat, his naked hand travels down your side, and with your ass in the air, he palms your stomach, keeping you in place and forcing you to arch your back even more. The pool of arousal in your stomach is making you squirm, getting more impatient as the seconds go by.

Mando takes his time trailing your lower belly, fingers barely grazing your skin. Your breathing is completely erratic, panting heavily into the ground. When he finally cups your sex, your breath hitches, a sharp inhale escapes your lips.

“Stars, you’re fucking soaked already,” he admires, and then two calloused fingertips are rubbing tight circles on your clit.

Writhing underneath him, you can barely keep still. The pleasure is overwhelming, something you’ve been waiting for for so long, you can’t believe this is really happening

Your hands grab at his waist with haste, trying to remove his pants but because you can’t see what you’re doing, you’re just aimlessly grabbing at him. He sees you struggling and lifts himself off of you. Hearing a small scuffle, he presses his body into your back again, and you feel his freed cock between your cheeks. Maker, he’s huge… is it possible for someone to feel this big when he hasn’t even stuck it in you yet?

“Are you sure you want this?” He asks breathlessly, his own pants scratching low in his helmet.

“Y-y-yes, please,” you croak, your throat already bone dry.

Gathering as much of your slick on his hand as he can, you feel him smear it all over his length and with your ass still shoved up against him, he teases your entrance with his tip. Hands grabbing at his hips with urgency, he actually fucking chuckles and then starts burying himself inside you.

Stars, he’s fucking huge, it almost burns how much he’s stretching your walls. Your eyes wrench shut so hard; you’re seeing stars. It feels like all the air is being knocked out of your lungs, you can’t even make a sound as your jaw fucking drops. He buries himself deeper and deeper—kriff you’re not sure how much more you can take. Your body freezes once he’s fully inside you, teasing your cervix with his head.

“F-f-fuck, you’re tight,” he breathes out once he’s filled you to the hilt. Steadying himself on his palms, his cuirass leaves your back, but he doesn’t move. He just sits there, giving you time to acclimate to his size. “I’ll try to be gentle—”

“No,” you say, cutting him off. “Please, j-just, fuck—do what you want,” you’re basically sobbing already, and he hasn’t even begun to fuck you.

He slowly pulls out and when you feel just the head still inside you, he slams into you so hard, you jerk forwards and cry out, your whole body stilling from being so full.

“You have to be quiet, someone might hear,” he tells you gently, pulling out again ever so slowly.

In an effort to stifle your moans, you bite down hard on your bottom lip, and when he bucks his hips and crashes into you again, you’re unable to stop the shriek that escapes you. Balancing himself on one arm, he grabs the discarded glove by your face and stuffs it into your mouth, gagging you with it and then begins really fucking you.

He drives his cock into you at a grueling speed, stopping his rhythm momentarily to roll his hips against your ass, making sure you feel every fucking inch of him. Whatever pathetic noise tries to slip through your lips is muffled by leather and you’re grateful for it because your cries would echo through the field if not for the glove.

Mando drops his weight back on you, feeling his breastplate dig into your back. He lets his cock just sit there as his naked hand wraps around your neck, applying pressure with two fingers. He resumes his pace, jackhammering your pussy with so much force, his balls slapping against your skin echo through the clearing.

“Shit, this—this is what you wa-anted?” He hisses, never once relenting his rhythm.

You couldn’t have planned for how mind-blowing this is. The daydreams, the dreams while you slept, nothing could have prepared you for the real thing. Nothing in your imagination even comes close to the actual feeling of Mando fucking you senseless in the middle of an open area. You’re so close to your climax already, something no other person has even gotten close to doing. Mando knows how to fuck, how to reach the right spots inside you, how to drive you fucking insane.

“Yes, ah-shit, yes Mando, please, please, it feels so good,” you babble, your mind unable to come up with a coherent thought; instead, you’re reduced to a blubbering mess. Tears are forming in the corners of your eyes, and when you squeeze your eyes shut, they begin streaming down your face.

“Be a good girl and come all over my cock,” he grits out between thrusts.

The grass is tickling your face, he pushes you deeper in the ground with every plunge, and then your orgasm rips through you, waves of white-hot pleasure crashing over you, electrifying your body from the inside out. Clawing at the ground and grabbing fistfuls of dirt, your body tenses and untenses at the same time, you can barely breathe. His hand is still pressing into your neck, making you dizzy from the limited air you can actually take in, as well as your climax punching out of you.

“Yes, fuck—ah shit—stars, you feel so fucking good.”

Mando doesn’t like to talk very much, only speaking when directly addressed, but now he’s a mess. He praises you, repeating words of admiration like it’s a prayer he tells himself at night and knowing you’re the reason for all this chatter just fills you up with pride.

He has incredible stamina, so he doesn’t need to pause in order to catch his breath very often. Mando continues to drill into you with such speed and force, you don’t know how much more you can take. It’s so much better than you thought it could be, you never could have predicted Mando to be so good at fucking you. He knows exactly how to treat your body, how to get the most pleasure out of you, it’s like he already knows you better than you know yourself. His cock rams that spot deep inside you that’s never been touched, nearly blinding you and causing your mind to go blank. You curse the Maker for making you wait this long. Both of you needed this, to take your frustrations and desires out on each other.

It’s primal, the way he thrusts inside you, feeling his cock pulse and twitch as your walls squeeze around him. Mando can barely shut up, if he’s not growling admirations in your ear, he’s keening into the helmet, his baritone hitting so low and rough, it only spurs you on.

The hand on your neck slacks, and then he’s pulling the glove out of your mouth. “Where d-do I—”

“Inside,” you manage to mewl, although your voice is barely above a whisper. “Please.”

“Ah—shit, you want me inside you? Fill your pretty little cunt with my come?”

You make a pathetic noise in your throat, the dryness of it too much for you to actually speak.

“Words, pretty girl. I need you to use your—fuck—words.”

You swallow hard, trying to get some dampness in your throat. “Y-yes.”

Mando growls contently and resumes his ruthless, hard pace. It’s no longer rushed, but with every thrust, he slams into your pussy so hard and hitting your cervix that your body jerks upwards, struggling to keep still. He grinds his hips a couple more times and then he reaches his own climax. You feel his cock throb inside you, filling you up with his seed.

“Fuck!” He snarls into the helmet, keeping it pressed against the side of your head.

You’re completely spent, you can barely move a muscle. Mando’s just fucked the life out of you, and you could lie here for the rest of your life, happy and satisfied. When you feel him start to pull out, with the little strength you gave—which is by no means a lot, you clench your walls around him, trying to keep him inside you.

“Don’t want me to leave?” He jokes.

“Want you inside all the time,” you mumble into the ground.

Mando hums, sheathing himself inside you once again.

“Pretty girl, I’m just getting started with you.”

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian fanfiction #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #the mandalorian smut #one-shot #pedrostories #fics

[fluffywolverine]

so season 6 of lucifer came out.

there were some things that i liked, but generally i hated it. i believe that was SUCH. BAD. WRITING and it left me frustrated. so i decided to write down all things that pissed me off and sometimes i try to fix this by giving other ideas that – in my opinion – would have made the story better. Check my points out and feel free to add your points of view. without further ado: let’s talk.

- imma start with the big one – fucking time travel. ok I generally hate this trope in the media, because it’s complicated and often leads to some logical mistakes – and they happened here. so rory time travels because of her anger which was caused… by her anger?? i think this was unnecessary. it also brings trouble with this whole free will vs. fate discourse. lucifer says, that he chooses free will… but at the same time he goes the path of his fate. he disappears from rory’s life, because he HAS TO in order of the events of the season to happen. just because he chose to do it, doesn’t mean it’s free will.

- lucifer becomes the very thing he desperately didn’t want to become. “bUt It WaS fOr ThE gReAtEr GoOd” screw this bullshit, if writers wanted to make it better, they could have easily do so. they could have altered the rules of time travel so that his choice of staying could have resulted in rory disappearing. yes, that would have been heart-breaking, but it would have been a great lesson for lucifer, that he can’t make the same mistakes his father did.

- chloe and Lucifer get a child without even talking about it. “bUt MaYbE tHeY tAlKeD aBoUt It We JuSt DiDn’T sEe It” you may say. but the point of writing anything  - whether it’s a book or a script – is to show any thing that matters. and talking about having kids is one of the most things any couple should do. also not every couple needs to have kids and forcing deckerstar to have it feels so far-fetched. this thread was very unnecessary.

- rory herself is a big problem. to begin with – she wanted to KILL her FATHER. i get her frustration, but commiting a murder?? just because he wasn’t there for her?? I would have thought that chloe taught her better, taught her that, like, killing people is bad. turns out she did not. secondly… she just isn’t necessary here. i elaborate later so in conclusion – her thread could be altered with michael’s and it would have made much more sense. i also don’t like the actress (why was she blinking so much??) so i certainly didn’t help.

- of course ella has to end up with a boyfriend. because earlier she always ended up with “bad boys” and now, without any help, she is just able to have a healthy relationship! yay! for me this creates a toxic view, that in order to be happy one HAS TO be in a relationship, because being alone is aLwAyS bAd. well, it’s not.

- i also have troubles with lucifer starting up a foundation for her. firstly, he didn’t ask her. secondly it – AGAIN – shows, that anything good ella got, was because of another man. firstly because of her relationship with carol, secondly because of lucifer’s idea. it could have been so easily altered! there could have been a scene of a conversation e.g. with amenadiel where she expressed a will to do better and be better for someone (given that she sees a lot of dark in herself). amenadiel could have then told her, that she is an inspiration and that it is her biggest strength. that could have been where ella came up with an idea to start a foundation blah blah – it’s just a rough idea but I believe that written well, it could have been so much better;

- and the last thing about ella – of course she had to find out about celestial stuff because sHe WaS tHe OnLy OnE rEmAiNiNg. umm what about trixie? i'll come back to her later. ella was portrayed as the only one believing in god and having her seeing that he really exists ruins the concept of faith. it’s not about knowing something exists, it’s about believing in it.

- WHERE THE FUCK IS MICHAEL. i must admit that i loved this character AND I CAN’T STAND HOW AWFULLY HE WAS TREATED HERE. so at the end of season 5 lucifer says “everyone deserves a second chance, even you michael". and what does he do then? COMMANDS HIS TWIN TO CLEAR THE FLOOR IN HELL. yes, i agree that michael should have been punished for his rebellion plan, but… he already has his wing cut off. now he’s stuck in hell, with no way out and is he supposed to learn his lesson? this is cruel. instead of this the entire season could have been centred on him – his journey to self-acceptance, learning how manipulating someone is toxic and starting to realise how to be a better person. at the end he could have become god (because amenadiel is such an obvious choice), which would create a beautiful connection – michael in heaven and his twin in hell.

- lucifer doesn’t feel like being god and that’s cool. damn. people died for him to win this place and he’s like “actually you know guys i’m not the right person bye”. while i believe that anyone should step out if they have a reason, but at the same time lucifer should have faced any consequences of his decisions. falling frog and kool aid in the river are not enough.

- adam’s plot feels just quickly sketched, not actually written. i really appreciate this take on toxic masculinity but it all felt too fast-paced. it’s good that they show this idea of “strong and not-showing-any-feelings man” kind of attitude, but it is impossible for ANYONE (especially The ManTM) to change their mind in a matter of a few days. it takes weeks, months, years even, especially given that adam is like a gazillion years old, he should have especially taken a long time to process this.

- carol is just too pure to exist. he’s also one of the most boring, plain and one-dimensional character i’ve ever seen. i feel like they gave him a problem with alcohol because the writers were like “hmmmmm he has to have some weakness. LET’S MAKE HIM AN ALCOHOLIC”. we don’t see any signs of his everyday struggle, why did he fell into this problem, how did struggle. it just feels like a dull plot device to show that he has flaws. oh and also he’s so pure that he doesn’t mind ella BREAKING INTO HIS HOUSE. acceptance should have boundaries and violating someone’s personal space isn’t right.

- why did they forget about trixie again? yes, i know that scarlett estevez had another project but this does not justify the bad writing. the girl lost her father and we only see her crying once because of that. no signs of this affecting her everyday life, not showing any consequences of her relationships with other people, not  glimpse of any change in her behaviour. oh and also she loses lucifer too because time travel! great idea, writers! losing another close to her person would have been soooooo good for her psychic for sure.

- i also hate the idea that suddenly rory becomes the only child they care for. where is trixie when they spend their day on the beach? where is she when her mother dies? did writers forget about her as well as they did about michael?

- amenadiel being a police officer is… problematic. i was looking forward to this thread, i was kinda scared too and it turned out… meh. i’m white and not American, so this of course does not involve me at all, but i felt like this was not enough. harris basically said that there is nothing they can do to make it better for black folks. even though chloe and amenadiel want to make everything more just, we don’t actually see any change. the only thing is that harris becomes a detective (right? i’m not sure if i understood it correctly, so correct me if i’m wrong, please) which is a total contradiction of what she said before. suddenly she does not have to protect people anymore?

- in season 5 they stated that heaven and hell need to be fixed, as the system is unfair and unjust. at the end we don’t see any change, the only thing that is different is lucifer helping damned souls. it doesn’t help at all! these people still go to hell, they still suffer and there’s nothing that changed here! plus there is also this thing, that a sociopath who murdered people in cold blood goes to heaven (because he does not feel any guilt) and a person abused by her parents/partner/whoever goes to hell (because have been manipulated to feel guilt).

- dan making amends with trixie while… there wasn’t really anything to make amends about. like, most of the parents make mistakes while upbringing their children, but does this make them unworthy of heaven? i would have preferred dan to slowly regain his self-consciousness, how he positively affected the lives of people around him and by doing so – through conversations or maybe reliving some of the memories, he could have proved to himself that he is worthy of love and redemption.

phew, what a ride. i really liked dan being reunited with charlotte (it went just as i imagined) and mazeve dynamics. i even felt like they are finally a real life relationship – with people hurting each other by not understanding each other, but then talking and seeing other’s perspective. generally though, i’m very disappointed.

sorry for any mistakes, lacking commas etc. writing a text this long in not my native language was not easy.

#lucifer #lucifer netflix #lucifer spoilers #lucifer season 6