#streaming it is one thing but? even so the moral high ground is a bit much | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

herestrish · 8 months

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the king of cups

takeru danma x reader (gn)

synopsis; after you safely returned from one of the games, it seemed only fair to erase the memory with the two things you knew how to do best: dancing and drinking.

contents; protective takeru, always the charming bastard, jealousy, homoeroticism, angst, implied murder, nightclubs, pool parties, heavy drinking, dubious morality.

notes; this happens to be my first contribution to the aib fandom & more importantly first take on him so i'm equally terrified & curious to know how it lands <3

You were always the type to stop when you knew you were having too much. But tonight had you pushing your limits with one gulp more, one at a time, light bouncing off pool water and the gin in your glass.

The dampness of your lips as you sloshed the drink around your mouth.

Let it collapse from your grasp, it beat a tattoo into concrete, and it felt no louder than the blood thumping in your ears.

So it goes.

You weren’t making too much sense of the music they were playing either, not that you cared too much to try. The crowds at the Beach were especially animated during the night, and after two-something in the morning they began to gradually stream back outside. Lighters clicking, laughter booming, bodies swaying luridly with the tune. You stared across the pool at a volleyball plunging into a beer puddle, two slender girls lurching backwards when it did, their voices taking to a high-pitched sound.

More laughter. Flip-flops dodging shards of misplaced glass. But you were aware that, in the end, they were all taking momento with a knot in their throats. In a reality where a week is traded for suitcases and files and unrolled sleeves, Fridays leave room for everyone to store their mistakes. Entering this one reality was freefall. As if time contracted itself to the same day, droning, trudging, like a broken disc. You closed your eyes, chose to ignore the lingering smell of citrus in your nostrils.

Someone had died today.

Because that’s simply how things worked here. Death was a persisting thought for everyone wretched enough to land in this place; even for the ones who had it between their teeth. The Beach came as a band-aid for purgatory, a cheap thrill, yet here you found yourself, flat-eyed and confused, spilling the rest of your drink on the ground and hoping whoever would take it was resting in peace. Heavy breathing, the world distancing from you in waves, your heart tamped between your lungs. Ice-cold chlorine fondling your feet, you started to sort memories from moments ago. You’d renewed your visa. Showered. The night you’d spent in the prismatic flash of the dance floor, knocking back a few shots and losing control of your body to after-hours beats. Sweaty forehead, glitter on your chest.

As chance encounters go—you spotted him when you last needed to. Elbows propped on the bar with neon running a pink cast across his hair and a woman stitched to his face, he was a homemade majesty for a world that didn’t ask for it. Hatter, with his shoplifted sunglasses and iced whiskey and dubious hospitality. He bit the girl by the bottom lip and watched you from the corner of his eye as he did, his mouth slightly coiling into obscenity. And just like any other object starring your personal history of oversights, it happened that you'd seen this smirk before. You knew it well enough to have the temperature of your blood rise to hellfire.

She was a pretty thing. A pretty thing with a pretty face, at that, shoulder bone stabbing through skin and hair lining the chin in a symmetrical cut. Her swimsuit was two-piece with a loose string that slid down her shoulder when she wrapped her arm around him. You didn’t remember ever being coupled with her for a game, and for a moment there you envied Hatter’s ability to register even the less conspicuous of names. Dark hair was brushed around his ear in a tantalising way that revealed distant parts of his jaw and neck. The fingers that rested on her chin were long and slender and glimmered when the light shot into a chichi display of rings methodically lined just under the knuckles; over his shoulders he wore the usual robe that made him look like a sunscreen commercial running on loop. Polished and overripe.

If you were brought to say out loud, there was nothing more going on between you than some chardonnay-prompted chats and an insignificant number of nights spent on the balcony of his suite. For a clinical tongue-wagger like himself he had turned out a decent listener and you were surprised at how much you were ready to reveal about yourself. You watched him lay out his cards in dim-lit solitude and explain the unequivocal importance of consolidated communities. This morning when the executives called you in to head for a game, he made sure to slide a firearm under your car seat. You returned with a splitting headache and metal on the roof of your mouth; Eight of Hearts tossed on the coffee table, red-smudged, his eyes begging for detail, you stepped out into the hallway and promised yourself not to look back.

Music spread about the crowds like oxygen, someone elbowed you in the arm, and you flinched, blinked, looked over your shoulder. In different circumstances maybe you wouldn’t have even considered it. But you were angry and drunk and all you really needed to brush your pride at this point was to have a sweet someone flutter their eyelashes at you. Flashing lights, collarbones pulsing, lips half-opened, all dulling your thoughts into decision.

Two could play at this game, after all.

So you kissed them. Deeply, slowly, as the floor felt like being dragged from your feet. It became harder for you to remember the right order of later events. You saw a hip there, a vomiting head somewhere else. Danced more, touched more, then the next thing you knew you were edged into a secluded place where you didn’t need to shout over the music anymore and whatever you did with the person you brought there would remain up to the world’s imagination. Everything was a whirling blend of faces and colours and suddenly you felt thankful for all these people making you forget about what you experienced during the daytime. You also remembered the nausea, the tiles of the bathroom floor, you floundering outside with a glass of gin and tonic you didn’t know where the fuck came from.

You needed to take some air.

A sigh left you, hot and heavy. The water hugged your calves in small folds of movement, a slight gush of sobriety climbing in your exploding temples. You turned your head towards the red and blue sitting next to you, a bittersweet smile hanging in anticipation of your voice.

“So?” you managed, your throat surprisingly soar.

A moment passed.

A small chuckle fragranced the air. He smelled like amber and citrus and those fucking cherry superslims he used to smoke. “This is when you tell me to fuck off, I take.”

“Is that what you expect of my manners?” you said. “No, stay, let’s see how long you can feel sorry for yourself.”

“You think I’m pulling an act?” Takeru rested an ankle upon his knee; the movement was soundless, deliberate, a jaded Dionysus brought to divine trial.

You avoided meeting his stare. A corner of your lips hitched an inch higher at his response, like extracting the solving of a riddle. “Are you not?”

Then the laughter came out again, hearty this time, with his head thrown back and chest moving in an offensive staccato. You watched him as he regarded you with his tell-tale amusement and remembered the foul ways this world renders a man, edging between sanity and rehearsed conduct. But you knew Takeru well enough to tell he wasn’t a product of the games.

Unlike the rest of you, he was made for this. Viper sliding out of old skin.

Swiping the tears from his eyes, he said, “In my defense, I wasn’t expecting you’d know how to use it.”

You shot him a look. “That makes you an asshole and an idiot.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “You were, I–” a tap into concrete, once, twice, rephrasing the thought. “I should’ve come with you.”

You dragged your feet out of the water. “You simply don’t get it, don’t you now?” your frown was a wretched junction of jeer and accusation.

“Not really, no,” he said. “But I’m sure hoping you'll break it to me soon.”

“Ok, sure. I’ll tell you what you shoulda done,”

Takeru crossed his hands, his eyes fixing now an imaginary spot across the pool.

Silence.

You took in a deep breath.

“Nothing,” came out slow, painful. “Absolutely fucking nothing. I shouldn’t have been here, ok? What happened today confirmed it for me if anything. My chance at living is granted by someone deciding to fool around bending the rules, I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

“That’s simply not true.” Takeru hummed, taking yet another moment to himself, his profile shimmered graciously with a grin forming at the corners of his mouth. It made you think of satin sheets and Lotus Eaters, staining your lips with the fullness of a pomegranate. “You are more deserving than you give yourself credit for, sweetheart. It wounds me actually that you think I’d go out of my way for someone who isn’t.”

But you’d come out of your way for yourself. Something close to laughter vibrated inside your throat, your stare grew blank. “And if I tell you I find it selfish either way?”

“Selfishness carves lovers,” he said, heaving a dramatic sigh. “Besides, it saved your life, did it not?” Words took to a whisper as he let his head fall on your shoulder. His breath smelled of cherries and alcohol. “I’m glad you chose to stay with us lesser things.” Me.

Across from you kindled water painted itself in irregular strokes upon the walls of the resort. Sound of glass shattering inside, a group of three lumbered into one another on the way to the bar. With a veer of what felt like losing consciousness, you experienced life in particles and molecules, microscopic worlds overlaying each other so fast and so slowly at the same time. Big-Bang. You wrapped your arm around Takeru, thumb digging into the texture of his clothes. His mouth moved to tell you something more, selfish, and you closed your eyes, pushing a tear off your eyelashes. Apocalypse.

“You didn’t mean that,” you said, forced playfullness, rested your temple against his.

“Who knows,” a long murmur of secrecy was wrapping you both in a distant space between movement and sleep. His fingers stroked your eyes to spare you from another tear. “I’ve earned myself a couple more days with your pretty. Better start making every minute worthwhile, for once, for both.”

Behind your eyelids lingered an unspoken ache for a reality where you didn’t kill anybody, and you weren’t versed to look for sympathy in the arms of someone who had done worse, and where you wouldn't worry that this peacefulness could be taken from you in the blink of an eye. His hair was velvet against your jawline and his touch warm enough to make you stay.

“I’m still hell mad at you,” you said against him, a faint sound.

You felt a small shrug pushing into your ribcage. “Very well,” he said. “Won’t fault you for feeling that. Sort of saw it coming.”

There was nothing going on between you, you’d convince yourself every morning after. Somewhere you imagined him doing the same. Takeru liked to market himself as a creature of instinct; but there was something serpentine about him, too, still, poised, always calculated. Someone who’d store the right word for the right person and snatch their trust when less expected. Isn’t this what false prophets do after all, sweetheart? your eyelashes brushed the thought against the tip of his thumb.

It’s always the fear of rejection that would get the worst out of these ones.

“Perhaps I’m not in the right place to ask,” he said again, and even with your eyes closed, you could see the grin climbing upon his lips as he did. “But have I ever told you how hot you are when you're pissed off? You were electric in there.”

This time you let the chuckle escape you, a little unconvincing under the trails of tears that had rolled down your cheeks, a little wrecked.

"That right?"

"Mhm."

“Does your friend know that, too?" you said. "Next time tell her I make my own cocktails or something.”

“I'll make sure the message's heeded,” Takeru’s voice was sultry by your ear, he rolled his head to catch bits of your best angles. “However I’m wondering if this is the best magic you’ve got, darling.”

“It sure worked with you,” The ease it took to say this was enough to lift your spirits. Neither could you deny the thrill hitching up your throat as you found his eye, first time tonight, dark waves reflecting a flicker of intrigue that for a fleeting second you allowed yourself to indulge. “And I wasn’t even trying.”

It was a strange thing, this feeling that you had, something bitter you couldn't quite place but were clever enough not to associate with love.

Takeru's sigh came out long and dreamy in the starless night. You smirked.

No, this wasn't love, you concluded further, but rather the unexpected realisation of feeling anything at all, the weight of existence pressing down your shoulders. A drowsy appetite for life with its worths and misfortunes readying to flash at you all at once.

˖ ࣪⭑roll credits

#hatter x reader #takeru danma x reader #hatter #takeru danma #alice in borderland #今際の国のアリス #trish writing

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cartooncadet666 · 1 year

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youtube

In the garden, where it was sealed off by the rest of Pac-World and only available to see by those who knew about the area, the scientist flew through the gate where a tombstone covered in flowers and gifts from past soldiers and Freedom Fighters stood still in the ground.

He stared down at the grave, seeing his own name on the very stone, feeling guilty for even working for Betrayus, yet did he have a choice? No he didn't. He was a ghost now, and at this time whenever anyone sees a ghost they immediately assume that they are as evil as that war criminal.

It was 5:00 in the morning, people were still getting up to try and start the day, yet he decided to see if they still kept the same area the same, which they did. Dr. Buttocks hovered down and sat on the ground, finding some newly put cards and toys on his grave, it seemed that despite what he was doing now, people of the Round House and those that fought alongside the Freedom Fighters still paid their respects to him, since he himself never planned to go against his own race.

Meanwhile, a young Pointyhead had just planted his ship near the hidden garden, Axis, one of the youngest ones that participated in the third invasion, and he held the gold traced locket in his hands. He was a nice one, selfless unlike the others, and by curiosity and mainly morals, he decided to try and give back the locket to its owner. So he waddled around the garden, playing a bit in the small stream before spotting the scientist by his grave.

Not meaning to be rude, he quietly made his way towards the grave, accidentally stepping on a twig and causing the noise to make the other slightly turn his head from the sound. Axis breathed in from anxiety and watched the scientist's movements, feeling more off on how calm he was.

"...Hello to you too young man.. Any curiosity being the cause of that?"

Axis froze and winced. "Um.. No sir.. I was hoping to return something to you.. You left it during my kind's invasion..."

Dr. Buttocks stood silent, his hood still covering his back and head, but his medium length hair falling out of the hood anyways. "..Thank you son. Come. Sit with me."

Not wanting to annoy him with his presence, the young Pointyhead obeyed and sat by the ghost, keeping his hands on his lap and looking at the beloved grave. Dr. Buttocks exhaled softly, touching a rose bouquet by its petal and letting the entire thing be engulfed in a calming and soothing wisp, which chirped and went back to dancing in his hand.

"Tell me... Have you ever experienced any kind of depression for great sacrifice?" Axis shook his head in response, watching the wisp dance and chirp happily in his hand.

The ghost brought out his robotic claw and let the wisp give him the energy of the roses. "Have you ever felt weak under someone's control?"

Axis pondered before nodding, listening to the scientist ramble on about more grieving like subjects.

"If you could only know, who I really was, before I arrived in his presence, from out beyond your watch. You would be amazed to find, my old beauty and my worth, what I sacrificed for my own kind, and what I did for their legacy to never burn..."

"Yet... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I should have done more before my life had come to an end..."

"My brother had said to me that this pain will all be over soon.. Yet I wonder what they would think... This was our planet after all.. Our lives had a very high grasp of any fate... So I wonder what I could have done to support them more... I still feel that this world should belong to them.. And their hearts of gold.."

Axis just listened, shocked at feeling tears prick his eyes, than realizing that the atmosphere had suddenly turned very sorrowful, a blue radiance fulfilling every part of the garden, so he let his tears fall. He watched as the wisp started to cry as well, yet the ghost wiped the spirit's tears and let it be in the comfort of his presence.

"I'm also... very curious. I must say, I'm impressed by your species' ability to survive in any environment.. including our own.. Its such a strange trait of yours.."

"How else is being as fragile as a Pointyhead as yourself could live? Stronger than a powerful being such as a spirit like the war criminal himself?"

Axis frowned and stared at the ground, letting the tears pour down his face from the atmosphere's change.

"...But I cannot say anything.. Because this is where it happened... Where I was broken... All to support another being in order to protect those I loved..."

"I know how you feel sir..." Axis said, wiping his glossy eyes and giving a sense of positive energy in the gloomy time they were in. The ghost turned to look at him, his presence representing a fragile being who could shatter at any moment, tears were also dripping down his face, along with his hair falling down his shoulder.

"...I am surprised that any of your race is capable of understanding how I feel.. Its a shame..." He floated upwards. "There's a weapon that Lord Betrayus wants me to make that could destroy anything.... From a Pac-Worlder to a Pointyhead... But you don't deserve that pain.. do you?" He had a gentle and loving smile, one that made the young Pointyhead gaze up with more curiosity.

Dr. Buttocks knelt down and lifted his hood slightly, letting his gentle face and the little wisp to gaze down at Axis with a caring look. "You know... I really shouldn't be here.. But Im glad I was able to come back one last time... I can see through all of your struggles and successes, you will be able to heal soon... Just like me.." Axis smiled and handed the ghost his locket, in return, as a blessing, Dr. Buttocks let the wisp he created to be forever his, and forever, and nothing could ever change it, that same day the young Pointyhead was blessed by an Emoti, a misunderstood being that was able to have someone to understand them.

"Thank you Dr. Buttocks. I appreciate that you were able to come here again. You didn't deserve that fate, even this one. I hope you can heal soon sir." The young Pointyhead grinned, the wisp chirping back at the ghost. Dr. Buttocks smiled gently at him, setting his hood back on his head and handling his locket in his flipper like hand.

"Call me Brandi.." Was the last thing the ghost said before floating back to the Nether Realm.

Axis grinned and let the wisp float around his arm, waddling back to his small ship and starting it up. He then lifted the hovercraft off the ground and sped back into the sky, back to his planet and feeling great for returning something to someone and helping them feel comfort again.

(A few hours later...)

The President was leading a man and his sons towards the hidden tombstone, he was thanking him for coming to the Round House, although he was still uneasy for why he wanted to pay his respects to the secret grave so bad.

"I appreciate you arriving here Mr. Loverman, I hope you enjoy your time here at the Veterans memorial, Pac Man and his friends have been working very much for this to be comfortable to all of you." Stratos chuckled to himself, his guards following not too long behind.

"No, thank you for inviting me Mr. President. It's been a while since my ex wife went missing, honestly I'm glad we're able to share the memory with her. Maybe we can give some more knowledge to the young heroes as well." Sebastian Loverman, ex husband yet still a close friend to Aurora Borealis, who was a loyal soldier to the Freedom Fighters and to the nation for many years, yet strangely just like Pac's parents, she disappeared many years ago with bleak tracks, in her and other Pac Veterans honor, they were hosting a celebration to represent all of the support they had to win against Betrayus's forces.

"Oh I'm sure they will be very grateful for that, we all need to pay so many things back to those we lost, but at least we're still standing." The President clasped his hand together and opened the gate to the grave, letting the other man's sons to go inside and then himself while the guards stayed outside.

Sebastian's eldest of the two, a young adult, knelt down and placed a bronze rose creation by a few pictures, smiling to himself after reading the writing on the tombstone. He gazed up at the President with an optimistic yet sad look.

"Do you think he'll ever try to come back to you if he could?" He asked.

Stratos smiled sadly. "He inspired so many things in our team before his death, I am sure that one day he will come back in our embrace Fadil."

The young man nodded and stood up, looking at the youngest and encouraging him to place his gift down on the grave, which the younger one was often glancing at the President uncomfortably before he knelt down and placed a canvas of some sort.

The canvas had a light grayish blue Pac-Worlder who was sitting by a window with a book in hand, his mustache was curling at the ends, his hair was tied back in a low ponytail with strands of hair sticking out over his eyes, he had red glasses, a prosthetic arm, and a pin in his hair. His eyes were closed, he looked peaceful sitting next to the window, like nothing could harm his soul. At the bottom of the well done canvas, there were words that read: "May you follow the path to comfort again, my oldest friend."

Sebastian smiled softly at his son and side hugged him, exiting the grave with his eldest and the President.

However the youngest stood by a little longer, when he looked back at the tombstone he spotted a trinket on top of the stone, it was traced by gold and it had a little note sticking out the bottom. By pure curiosity, he gently picked up the locket and opened the note, reading the following.

"As long as you follow it as well, I shall see you again, keep on smiling my little angel. You know I'll never leave you son, I will always be here, protecting you as my own child, you can promise that." - Your oldest friend

The youngest smiled and opened the locket, revealing the same man in the canvas side hugging his mother and father while past him and his brother stood in the middle together. He then placed the note inside of the trinket and caressed it, the same gentle smile on his face.

"Skeebo! Come on! We gotta meet Sir Cumference!" Hollered out Fadil, who was waiting for his little brother to exit the grave.

The youngest looked back and ran out, keeping the locket close to his heart. "Coming!" The freckled Pac-Worlder sprinted up the stairs to catch up with his family, leaving the garden alone.

Dr. Buttocks peered from behind a tree, and let more wisps inside of the grave, chuckling to himself. As soon as every wisp had energy from the gifts, they spread out and flew out of the garden while the scientist watched as they hovered out. He turned to face the wisp who had the energy of the canvas and whispered to it.

"Make sure you give him the flower little one." He placed a purple lily on the spirit's head, which it chirped and saluted, then flew towards the direction of the teen through the Round House.

The ghost smiled and put his hood back up, covering his face and floating back to his laboratory.

(Yes... Dr. Buttocks was always a good man in this au, in this au, if Dr. B lived, he would have been the one to raise Skeebo, technically he's his godfather, what do you guys think of this new detail?)

#pmatga #pmatga au #pmatga oc #pac man #pac man and the ghostly adventures #suicidal au #dr. buttocks #axis #pointyheads #president spheros #sebastian loverman #fadil borealis #skeebo #skeebo au #Youtube

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heartisamusclethesizeofyourfist · 2 years

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tell me the ana mardoll discourse 👀

Oh, that really sucked. Lengthy rant incoming, because this is one of those discourses that sucks up about six different issues and tangles them all up, and it continues to nag away at me in all sorts of ways. I've been trying to find a way to write about it here for a while, and it's been rattling around unproductively in my head, so I appreciate you providing me the spur to finally do it... maybe this will be the thing that finally lets me stop worrying at it. I suspect the tone's going to be all over the place.

So, about a month or so back, Ana Mardoll, a prominent social justice commentator on Twitter, turns out to be working for Lockheed Martin. Cue an absolute screaming flood of people delighted to see him knocked off his supposed moral high ground (like, huge amounts of glee, that don't quite feel in keeping with their supposed concern about the victims of Lockheed Martin weaponry)...

Because here's the thing; Mardoll gets people's backs up in the way people who talk about social justice stuff often do, but also for reasons that include ableism and transphobia and just sheer aesthetic distaste for how he expresses himself about his identities (idk, that was cited weirdly often in the celebrations of his downfall; it's bad enough to work for arms makers, but if you work for arms makers and you're a bit twee then God help you).

It also wasn't independent of the increasing backlash against neurodivergent people and the confidence we've gained as a community in talking about our stuff publicly. I'd noticed for ages that a lot of people moaned about him in terms that suggested his Twitter presence caused them significant ongoing rage, yet somehow they couldn't bring themselves to use the mute or block tools to free themselves from the sight of him. There was a lot of hate reading going on, is what I'm thinking.

But most of all, the people enjoying his reputation getting tanked tended to skate over the (well known and constantly referenced) fact that his job only came out when he got doxxed by a noted hate site as part of a lengthy saga of transphobic harassment (they'd gone after his family, even) - i.e. the people currently chasing keffals around the world, and who spend their time targeting autistic and trans people for harassment and - sometimes successfully - baiting them into suicide.

Normally left wing people are against doxxing, and against this website full of TERFs, Nazis and generally dodgy people, but re: Mardoll they were falling over themselves to ignore their principles, which was ironic because they were mad at him for ignoring his own principles. And of course that must've been a huge win for the hate site, as it showed them that if they picked a hated enough target, they'd get very little blowback, at least from cis people .

Moreover, the rush to cancel Mardoll on Twitter employed a great deal of ableist rhetoric which felt horribly familiar from the past decade-plus of UK media/Tory discourse on disability, work and benefits.

Basically, the Twitterati instantly assumed everything Mardoll was saying about his limited capacity for work, struggles finding suitable work, general income and financial stability was fake, and in the light of that assumption, they also tore to shreds things about him that were contextually unsurprising for a part-time working, disabled, self-published writer, i.e. his having a few income streams such as a Ko-fi, publishing stuff, and indeed crowdfunding for mortgage payments. There was a general assumption that he must be loaded, with self-publishing used to claim both that he was a failure and that he was raking in the cash.

They also made up daft strings of illogic, like "he says 'boy' in his profile; a boy is under 20 and therefore he is doing a massive con where he's posing as a nineteen-year-old" - which was a trip to read as an older Millennial who remembers Mardoll being a prominent early-2010s feminist blogger (and not being six years old at the time). That's easily verified with Google, but people were too perversely hungry for the situation to be somehow worse than "social justice guy works for an arms maker" to bother doing so.

And maybe everyone's worst suspicions about Mardoll are right; maybe I'm being desperately naive here. But I do know that people have been conditioned to think that disabled people are lying about work/money stuff, and they had no interest in considering how that default atmosphere of suspicion and condemnation around disabled people and work as a subject might well have made it harder for him to reach out to his online networks about seeking less morally compromising work . Or in the fact that the way the conversation was playing out was making a ton of other disabled people feel it was unsafe for us to speak about our own work or financial situations.

And c) surprise surprise, leftist Twitter then turns on disabled people when we point out that it's already bad enough the guy works for LM, but as he's highlighted that family connections were the only way he'd been able to get part-time, work-from-home gig that paid enough, then maybe there needs to be a bit of nuance in how we talk about this, and could they please bring this level of energy to actually improving material conditions of disabled people?

Don't get me wrong; I don't want to absolve Mardoll of working for flipping Lockheed Martin for fifteen entire years. I think there's definite questions a lot of us need to ask ourselves about what we're prepared to compromise on morally for our livelihoods, and for how long, and whether we're really as completely stuck as we think we are, or there might be chinks of light and possibility and it's only that the traumas of surviving an ableist world have beaten out of us the capacity to trust in them. (I know, like a lot of disabled people, a thing or two about feeling stuck.)

I found it disingenuous how people were ignoring that these questions of ethics in the job market bite disabled people a hell of a lot harder and more quickly than they do abled people, and it was so clear to me that the way it exploded on Twitter was incredibly counterproductive and 75% about the lulz/snark for a lot of people.

Treating Mardoll as the Absolute Worst also doesn't sit right to me when so many people on both sides of the Atlantic are government workers: how do you decide how much better working for a government with policies that do harm at home and abroad is than licensing software for an arms manufacturer, as Mardoll has been doing? Is it ever morally acceptable to work in HR for the DWP, given their persecution of disabled people? What about being an admin assistant at an asylum seeker detention centre? Are your hands clean if you profit from providing goods or services to the Tory MPs who devote their lives to policies that are killing people? Might a lot of people in fact need this stuff to be discussable?

And people really didn't want to know when we pointed out that, while fifteen years of being unable to get anything else does raise questions, ableist recruitment practices are incredibly common, many workplaces fail to offer disability accommodations, and it costs more to be disabled to start with.

Having watched at close range as disabled loved ones stuck for many years with employers that treated them like shit, because chucking the job in felt too risky, I don't find Mardoll's decision to sit tight all that surprising. Of course there are disabled people who courageously cling to their principles no matter what the personal cost, but the cost the bear will be a damn sight steeper than it would be for a non-disabled person, and that doesn't make them extra principled, it just makes this ableist world extra shit.

And the refusal to explore those questions when Twitter had recently spent months discussing recent US labour relations upheavals (for perspective, someone recently was said to have been digging for dirt on whoever runs the Jorts account), the politicisation of work-from-home arrangements, the risks to disabled people forced back into workplaces/universities/schools in person, trans healthcare being under threat, the more general healthcare costs/access mess in the US, the medical risks for women and AFAB people of living/working in certain states after the fall of Roe...

On my timeline, there was also a lot of Extremely Sudden Concern About Weaponry and Colonialism from British lefties who I had never once seen give a flying fuck about colonialism's equally real outworkings right here on their doorstep, i.e. Boris Johnson's ongoing efforts to absolve the British army of their Troubles atrocities, the disproportionate harm being done to Northern Ireland by Brexit, or the fact we literally don't have a functioning Executive right now: indeed, that's a common enough problem in Northern Ireland that this website exists:

https://HowLongHasNorthernIrelandNotHadAgovernment.com/

It was revealing to watch Twitter lefties well-actuallying disabled people about all the deaths and disabilities Lockheed Martin weapons have caused like that was some sort of gotcha; like nobody with a Twitter account could possibly have grown up in a conflict zone, or been disabled in a bombing, or live in a place where bombings and shootings still happen.

Like none of us lives in a place with a complicated peace, with the UK's highest rates of physical disabilities/chronic illnesses and mental health problems, of unemployed disabled people, and with suicides among kids who don't even remember the conflict, all problems you can't untangle from the fact this is a post-conflict society where social progress was stunted for so long. A place where the writer of that last piece was herself murdered a few years ago, because it still fucking happens in peacetime. Because the violence hasn't really gone away, not entirely. And nor has the violence of the state.

Anyway, that's why I can't get the Ana Mardoll discourse out of my head.

#a saga #tw: ableism #tw: transphobia #tw: suicide #replies to asks #the discourse

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santilozart · 1 month

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Reality is a bitch for neurodivergent people. I wish I could keep up 24/7 live game streaming. World satanize social media but don´t realize this kind of dopamine release trough livegamestreaming music, writings and games is what keeps me going, filling the oxytocin this world, either evil or high ethical standars cannot provide...

and is what kept me apart from depression and even suicide... So, stop satanizing TechMedia, which is a safer serotonin releaser than the violence and disorder of fungus, drugs, MaryJane, etc... to cover the void leaved by this society high perfectionist standards... at least on emotionally damaged people like me, who had gone farther after a damage no return point. Think this like medicine for mental illness, to keep depression out... I know some of you, relates with the deepness of my polemic writing, because you identify it is the true, beyond this society, moral, rational and spiritual tabus. So please, help me reach faster my goal of dedicating 100% to this, because I just cause troubles in real life when trying to get along with "normal" not awakened, just rational people... And I just want to keep writing, revealing more things, so you can understand the truth of this planet, for an endurable and sustainable one, to bring back paradise here, and stop the chaos on this unbalanced world... With that said, feel free to support with additional cheers, bits, and subs... And who know, I may be filling my dream of spreading love and goods news through my life project, from my damaged broken life... I used to believe on love and marriage as the ultimate source, boost to enhance my life as a human being, showing love to God another... but since there is such idealization on people nowadays, on spiritual people surrounding this topic... and I had been broken so many times... I better move forward, with this, my ultimate attempt to motivate and do something positive with my life, to serve my creator and aid others in the path to know the truth... respecting of course, if they would like to awaken... because you are free to keep your path ignoring me, and following your conservative old, traditional rational path... I know ignorance is a blessing, and it also brings peace too... I´ve been there, it is comfortable... as you prefer... In regards me, I find now comfort and feeling up to date with my inner awareness (God) by stepping aside from the crow and stop muting my voice... cause being aligned from your free will with your upper high global collective life call, is the greater experience you may acquire in your life self-development path, and I invite you to find your own call and path Aswell to build up a better world together, each one of us from our individualities enhanced towards greater good, without hiding our skills, gifts neither spiritual or intellectual talents... humbleness and silence should not be confused with obedience... and limitans leaders shouldn´t infuse you with fear to hide your call to serve who brought you to this world in first instance... With love, from a self-regulated schizoaffective guy, who learned to defeat emotional and spiritual illness trough this livestream, since the pandemic, and since there is lack of love, humbleness, humanity in the ones called to guide me... unsuccessfully guide which made me connect directly with Him and be guide by my own... due the imperfection and limitations of current leader´s criteria... Hope to find someone there, one day, enough to be really pure at heart and mind, with the feet on the ground, to guide me and several as me, properly, so they can deserve my respect, love and admiration. not my obedience by fear, judgement and negative speech of condemnation, absolutism and perfectionism, who damaged even more, mentally and emotionally, people a bit more sensitive and skilled spiritually like me, who didn´t need to be preached the God of judgement to learn but instead the God of mercy, love, kindness, the gentlemen He is, to perfectionate the love and spiritual gifts and not to make me hide them... with rigor and spiritual violence as they made unrightfully towards me and my spiritual right to serve God... #PlusUltra #PeaceOut #OnliveEzine #globalmiraism #fimlm #idmjioficial #idmji

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obanaispy · 2 years

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omg pent up samu who's into regular-customer-reader so he goes onto a cam site in hopes of finding some look alike to jack off to but instead ends up seeing a familiar face 👀

smile for the camera!

{ adult audience only }

notes: @natriae also sent in this request with this plot, “okay ive been waiting for webcam y/n for so long🤞🤞maybe with Osamu, Suna, and Sakusa. i feel like Osamu would agree to be in the video with y/n and y/n would just wanna show off their precious baby. Telling everyone to look at how cute Osamu is as they ride him, but he would just be so dazed 😌 Now Sakusa 100% didn’t realize how into it he was till he actually watched from behind the camera as y/n streamed”. i will be incorporating both thoughts into these drabbles and thank you for sending in your thoughts! (y’all are creative as fuck i love it).

warnings: dirty talk { it’s soft core so there aren’t many }

wc: 1.3k

200 followers event: click me

characters included: suna rintarou ,kiyoomi sakusa , osamu miya

suna rintarou, the regular.

⍟ y/n had given suna something he’s lacked in all his years of living— structure. ever since he saw you on the top 5 “best webcam models on the west coast”, he’s sure to never miss a live stream— friday’s strictly being set aside to support you.

⍟ he’s not one of the watchers who speaks a lot but he definitely captures your attention with the enormous tips he sends in. he’s sure to attach what positions he loves you in the most, instructing you to pose up for him and him only. in his eyes, these lives are specifically for him and he has the dough to back up that mindset.

⍟ one thing you’ve always loved about suna is that he was never one to directly show you attention. with that being said, you couldn’t help but be a bit excited once you saw that message ..

“ user @sun.taro has requested a private session “

“crazy how you wore my favorite set without me saying a word..” sighs “too bad it wont be on for long..”

suna’s 1 hour session had ended 20 minutes ago yet here you both were, talking each other through yet another orgasm. “spread it open for me baby.. let me see how good i have that pussy feeling..” he husked out lowly, hand pumping his cock as he watched the way you rode your dildo— the ground below you drenched in the juices from those previous orgasms. suna’s brows furrowed as he imagined how good you felt. maybe this call was a mistake.. because now? he was hungry for more.

your eyes stayed focus on the way he pleasured himself to the view of you. brain turning to mush at the pet names he graced you with. all it took was one more “there we go pretty girl.. make daddy proud” before you were gasping for air, his orgasm following shortly after. coming down from that high, you could do nothing but smile modestly— contrasting all of your previous actions . “i feel like you did more than me. maybe you should be the webcam model” you laugh softly, throwing on your robe. suna simply responded with a chuckle as he cleaned himself up, “i find my pleasure in watching you lose your morals simply at my command.. to me that’s more than enough..”. his words sent a chill down your spine but the next ones would affect your entire being.

“hope you know i’d give anything to experience you in person.. how about it?”

kiyoomi sakusa, the supportive bf

⍟ one thing sakusa always loved about you is that you were always serious about your money and your craft. you spent bands on equipment, outfits and even took the time to write out elaborate scripts.

⍟ no matter how supportive, he always tried to give you your privacy during filming. he understood the men who watched enjoyed the idea of a single y/n— his presence would simply ruin the entire persona. he knew this he swear he did.. so why did he find himself sitting behind your camera— cock throbbing through his sweats as you worked through your set.

“i’m aware of how bad you want to fuck me..”

y/n’s regulars were eating up how into today’s session she was. her words were dripping with filth, cunt squelching more than it ever as she slowly worked to stretch herself open, eyes low and body glistening as she worked on her second orgasm. in all honesty, y/n was paying no attention to the men that drooled over her in the stream. no no, what really caught her attention was her introverted boyfriend boldly pumping his dick as his eyes stayed trained on her.

she felt herself throb as she watched the way kiyoomi’s hips thrusted upwards, lips slightly parted as he whispered low enough for only her to hear “y/n.. wanna fuck you so bad right now.. that pussy is calling my name.. you’re so fucking filthy” he gritted, his own vulgarity shocking him for only a moment before he drowned deeper into his lust. “i’m nothing more than a dirty slut.. need to be cleaned out so fucking bad..” y/n moaned out sweetly.

their viewers would never know why the stream suddenly ended. y/n couldn’t care enough to inform them as she struggled to keep any string of sanity as kiyoomi folded her in half— fucking her cunt like he never had before. he should definitely sit in more often.

osamu miya, the sweet + osamu miya, the intrigued

⍟ osamu was completely aware of the audience y/n attracted. men who got off the fact that she was completely unobtainable. when walking past her recording room he would have to hold in chuckles as he listened to the way he broke these simps—- managing to add sex appeal to each insult.

⍟ he would immediately agree to the idea of him joining you in a stream. all he asked in return was for you to try a new dish he had been experimenting with. he was a very simply boyfriend to please.

“have you ever made someone feel like this? i already know the answer.”

y/n’s hand caressed osamu’s head as she rode his cock in reverse cowgirl. they sat in her favorite chair so that their viewers could see the way his face twisted in pleasure, mind too dazed to provide any additional commentary. “look at my pretty boy.. this pussy was made just for him.. wasn’t it baby?”. osamu could do nothing but nod, hands gripping her hips firmly as she started to guide her down into his thrusts— low groans coming out loud enough for her and her only. he was sure to bury his head in her neck every so often, marking her up to show the lames watching exactly who she belonged to. his hands couldn’t get enough of touching her, groping and pulling on her nipples as his hand snaked around to give her clit much needed attention.

it wasn’t long before he said “fuck the stream”, now bending y/n over to where her face sat directly in frame, eyes crossed in ecstasy. finally focusing them she smirked, brows furrowed as he filled her up to her gut. “daddy’s fucking me so good.. you could never experience this— how embarrassing is that” she laughed, being cut off quickly with another moan. the tips were nonstop until the stream ended, y/n completely disregarding any and every donation as her pretty boy proved exactly why she was his and his only.

⍟ osamu had never had a crush on someone for this long, nor had he liked someone this hard. not hard enough for him to be clicking through his favorite webcam site— hoping to find someone as beautiful as you.

⍟ who would’ve thought he’d be lucky enough to find you instead! he barely recognized you out of the barista appropriate attire you wore at the coffee shop he visited regularly

“ @chefmiiya thank you for the $100 tip lovely.. this next one goes out to you..”

osamu could do nothing but blush at the way she said his name, cock gripped tightly in his palm as he watched the way you shoved in your lovense— starting the vibrating pattern he requested. he twitched in sensitivity, eyes refusing to blink once he saw how well their body reacted to the toy, brain trying to process how good she looked out of that uniform that truly didn’t do her justice.

after about ten minutes he had no choice but to switch to his fleshlight, groaning shamelessly as he matched y/n’s pace, cock thrusting and stretching the toy that barely provided him the stimulation he needed. he wanted to feel her. he wanted to be the one who had their toes curling, hands gripping onto your sheets as she let out jumbled thanks. honestly, the repeated “holy fuck mr. miya.. you surely know how to please a cunt.. ready to see me cum so hard for you baby?” was more than enough. osamu held in his orgasm until the last second, loads shooting out as soon as he saw her o-face appear.

cleaning up his mess he tried to fully process the fact that y/n was a webcam artist, thoughts quickly being interrupted once he heard a ding.

“yk.. your name looks so familiar..”

#obanaispy #oswrites #anime #anime smut #haiykuu smut #osamu smut #suna smut #sakusa smut #kiyoomi drabble #miya smut #okabe rintaro #suna rintaro smut #haikyuu drabbles #webcam y/n

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wasflypaw · 3 years

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I'm sorry that this brings a lot of negativity, but I just want to discuss a bit.

Since you've been around since the early days, I just wanted to check if there was a cult of personality in the early L'Manburg days. Mainly because I came across this take while editing TV Tropes (the editor claimed to be “correcting” information and added it) and from what they have said, they sound like an apologist for the sad green man.

They also claimed that c!Dream only started cutting off his attachments AFTER the Spirit incident (before Exile).

I want to know your thoughts on this take, because I think I'm about to cry over how stupid this sounds.

Going to rip this apart one second.

This person says L'Manberg was formed on the basis of "making a drug empire" using "materials that Wilbur and Tommy stole or manipulated other SMP members into giving" and oh boy.

1. Wilbur and Tommy stole a few brewing stands and some potions from Tubbo's base, which wasn't Right, but it also.. wasnt as bad as it sounds? The only person they really tried taking blaze rods from was again, Tubbo - but Sapnap took the blaze rods before they could - and then later, Tubbo gave the whole stack of blaze rods willingly to help Wilbur and Tommy. No other SMP members were affected other than Tubbo who chose to join their side. The only people they tried "manipulating into giving items" were Sapnap and Tubbo. Tubbo who later decided to work with them, Sapnap who refused and didnt have any items taken from him. Fundy later joined because he literally said he wanted to brew drugs. Eret decided to help Wilbur and Tommy for fun.

2. "L'Manberg was founded on the basis of creating a drug empire" god is this a tiring take. Yes, there was a "drug van" that held.. normal Minecraft potions. The drugs were a bit. Nobody ever acted high off their ass on drugs. Also L'Manberg was Not the drug empire. The drug empire is the failed thing they attempted before this, and the.. violent reaction to the drug empire sparked the L'Manberg revolution. Sapnap had repeatedly been referred to as the "police" and Wilbur even had Fundy say "fuck 12" and he was called a "pig eating pig". Sapnap killed Tommy, and later Purpled went on a killing spree, killing Fundy, Eret, Wilbur, and tried to kill Tommy and Tubbo. Wilbur's idea of a Safe Independent Nation was a response to the violence, not because he wanted to make drugs. Literally after L'Manberg got its independence I vividly remember Wilbur telling Tommy to stop talking about drugs bc he just wants a Hamilton roleplay lmao. Wilbur and Tommy never tried the drug thing after this, L'Manberg's focus has never been selling or creating drugs.

3. Yes they banned Americans from joining L'Manberg. It was funny. But there's this weird idea that "oh nobody could enter-" they could! People entered L'Manberg all the time, nobody could enforce the whole "keep non-L'Manbergians out" thing. Quackity trespassed on his first day. One time Sapnap threw a tantrum bc Tommy wouldnt kick Fundy out and went into L'Manberg to shoot at the salmon in the river. There's a whole stream with Niki hanging out with Punz, Ponk, Eret and Karl.. on L'Manberg's grounds. L'Manberg had a "no armor, no weapons" rule, so if anyone were to enter L'Manberg they'd take their armor off and keep their weapons away. Surprisingly enough this one was followed.

4. The idea that Dream was "in the right" during the first L'Manberg war. Why does there have to be a "right"? I dont think L'Manberg side was morally great, but that doesnt make Dream the one in the right. Even if it was "his land", even if he had a right to be mad... he focused on Tommy over the person who actually made L'Manberg, he destroyed Tommy's base twice, he burnt down Tubbo's base, he destroyed Tommy's cuck shed, he and his friends stole 10 hours worth of grinded items from Tubbo ONE DAY before the war, and then again stole the items he'd prepared the MORNING of the war. He then appointed a spy and took 4 canon lives. May I bring to attention that he did all this to enemies to repeatedly said theyd fight with words, not weapons, who refused to grief back. Dream was "viewed as a bad guy" because he destroyed things and killed people. He KNEW L'Manberg was harmless, he literally called them "The Land of Pussies" half an hour before declaring war and then burying Tommy and Tubbo in a hole to steal their items for fun. He knew damn well there was no chance of L'Manberg ever winning and he refused to let them have a chance at getting good items. Even if he felt villainised by L'Manberg, the "propaganda" turned nobody against him that didnt already have a bad experience with him, and the rest of the server was FINE with him until he hurt them directly.

5. "He has been known to do good" where

6. Tommy threatening Dream with Spirit is a scene that makes me see Red when people talk about it. Tommy was being humiliated for what was essentially the crime of.. burning a roof and building a netherrack penis. Dream responded by building huge obsidian walls and threatening war, instantaneously taking it too far. Everything was being blamed on Tommy, you could clearly see him panicking, Dream was taunting him, sending him whispers of "enjoy your probation" and ":)", knowing damn well he'll make Tommy snap. Tommy threatened Dream with Spirit to try to get him to take the walls down, to try to get him to stop. He did what Dream had done to him multiple times, use an attachment against him. I hate the idea of "this is the moment Dream gave up his attachments" because it blames everything on Tommy once again. People frame this as a malicious act from Tommy against Dream but it was a scared kid doing a last desperate move to try to get the person who was threatening to build walls up to build height and slaughter anyone outside them who was also trying to exile him from his nation to stop and leave him alone. George's house was an excuse, there has been no rule against messing with the DSMP king, no rules were added or changed. Tommy is not to blame for Dream willingly giving up his attachments, and the Spirit thing was a dumb move at best but never a malicious one done intentionally to hurt Dream. I hate the idea that Tommy "deserved exile" for "not listening" and letting Dream walk all over him and punish him in a severe way for something literally nobody else has been punished for.

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clouddsstar · 3 years

Text

★ their favourite thing about you ★

cc!dream team x gn!reader

dream ♡ ▪ your voice dream isn't that superficial, something as simple as your voice could give him a sense of comfort. he could listen to you talk for hours, just allowing you to go on rants about your favourite things. he thinks it's adorable whenever you start to excitedly talk about a new thing you found yourself obsessed with; not always paying attention to the words you say, more allowing the comfort of your voice overtake his mind and focusing on how pretty you sound.

▪your laugh he loves to hear you laugh, especially when it's because of something he said or did that made you giggle. seeing someone he loves happy gives him comfort and a sense of familiarity, so he'll often go out of his way to make you laugh, resulting in you sharing many inside jokes.

▪when you speak your mind he thinks that your bite-back is super admirable, and it makes him feel really proud whenever he hears you standing up for yourself or speaking out when something is unjust. this is also a trait you both share, so when together, you're a force to be reckoned with. he also likes it when you speak your mind to him, calling him out on any of his bullshit and keeping him grounded.

george ♡ ▪ your kindness your complete and utter selflessness and kindness never cease to make george smile, seeing you do simple acts of kindness in your everyday life keeps him humble in the mess that is your lives. your kind actions also push him to be more charitable, beginning to give more and taking less.

▪ your patience george knows he can sometimes be a bit much, his sleeping habits especially, so he is always grateful for your patient nature, making him feel oh-so lucky to have you, and when your patience is put up to the test because of him, he feels really bad. luckily, he always makes up for it in one way or another.

▪your smile even after a hard day george knows he can rely on you to keep up the mood, keeping morale high even when it feels impossible. seeing your smile after a long day is just what he needs and sometimes something so simple as looking at you makes him feel okay again. the smile is an added bonus, though.

sapnap ♡ ▪ your persistence when you have your mind set on something, you will not give up; sapnap loves that about you, and it even influences him to act the same, since meeting you, he started to be more persistent, whether it was something as simple as wanting a sandwich or wanting his merch to look a certain way, he was going to get what he wants. you reflect off of eachother in that wonderful way.

▪your clingyness sapnap thinks it's adorable when you're clingy, and yeah, sometimes it's a little inconvenient when you walk into his room while he's streaming and asks to sit on his lap, but it's never annoying. He's a cuddly guy, and you're cuddly too! so when you get a little clingy, he's more than willing to spend extra time with you.

▪your thighs you can take this in a sexual or non-sexual way, but sapnap seems like the kinda guy to just love your thighs, laying his head on them, kissing them, just all the things.

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vyeoh · 3 years

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this is your chance: wax poetic about an Empires or DSMP character of your choice to a fan who is new to both. Explain why I should love them. I need guidance in this new and meme-populated land.

okok this is a lot of pressure haha. Spoilers for EmpiresSMP and DreamSMP below, obviously. I wrote a lot so prepare yourself, anon

I watch a lot of empires POVs but the ones I most anticipate every week are Scott and Sausage.

c!Scott (I'll call him Smajor for the sake of simplicity) starts off the series chilling, not really getting involved with the rest of the server, and staying aggressively neutral. After all, he's an elf. He has lived far longer than most of the other rulers already, and will most likely outlive them for many years. So, the best thing is to stick to his mountains and not get invested in the dealings of mortal affairs, maybe sometimes causing problems on purpose and dipping because what's life without a little spice right.

But then, this demon comes to the server, Xornoth. He's going around causing havoc and wants to send the world into an eternal winter, but he doesn't bother the kingdom of Rivendell much so Smajor stays tentatively cautious but ultimately unbothered. But then, the puzzle pieces start falling together. The first thing that the audience noticed was was Xornoth sounded like Smajor, but we mostly thought that this was just due to cc!Scott voicing both of them and there was nothing more to it. However, then, the people the demon starts possessing start chanting in elvish. The demon hates mortals, and the elves are conveniently one of the two confirmed not fully mortal races in Empires.

This culminates when Smajor stumbles across a cave that contains the backstory of the patron god of Rivendell, Aeor. Basically, there's two opposing forces, Aeor and Exor, and both have a champion. In a previous life, those champions were two brothers, where Aeor eventually prevailed and banished Exor. In this life though, the champions are - you guessed it - Smajor, and the demon Xornoth.

So now Smajor is like. Well fuck. It's my literal god-given destiny to be responsible for defeating this demon who is technically my brother, and if I fail the server gets plunged into an eternal winter. And I have no fucking clue what is happening because I've just been here on this mountain actively trying to stay out of the issues outside my kingdom. We watch him panic and teeter on the verge of spiraling for an entire episode, and when the followers of Xornoth go to the End to kill the dragon, releasing Xornoth's full powers, he fails to stop him. Smajor is a character who was used to being the smart one, the prepared one, the one who has the least deaths on the server. But he's also a character who runs away from his problems and ignores them. Before and during the dragon fight, we hear the desperation in his voice, as he's thrown into a situation he is wholly unprepared for, and it's bigger than him going to the Cod Empire to kill their king, or assisting in other people's plans to kill the codfather. He can't run from this. cc!Scott plays this scene so well as well, as I've said before, one of the best parts of Scott's acting is how he's never super dramatic, but he's so effective in the little things like inflection to make you feel, viscerally, the panic and dread.

So after the dragon fight, Smajor realizes, I can't do this on my own. I've tried and failed. So he gets allies. We watch him, someone who has so strongly been an isolationist, learn the benefits of allies and watch him learn to trust others and watch him learn how to get that trust in return.

My favorite thing about Smajor's characterization is that he's an incompetent protagonist, but not in the way of the "plucky young adventurer". He's capable skill-wise, and fairly jaded and very pessimistic. However, his issue is that up until recently, he did not care about the rest of the server at all, and by the time he learned to, it was way too late.

Also, in 3rd Life, cc!Scott and cc!Jimmy were canonically married and they reference it sometimes in Empires. Like, Scott goes over to the Cod Empire every so often both in and out of character to kill and/or flirt with Jimmy, the ruler of the Cod Empire, which may develop as a secondary plot into the future who knows. So ty Scott for giving the gays what they want o7

Now onto Sausage: his is a story of Icarus, his hubris and ambition being his downfall. He's one of the two followers of Xornoth, who promised him endless power in exchange for his servitude. He started the series being eccentric, but not outright unhinged, but slowly gets more and more extreme as the series progresses, as he gets brought more and more to Xornoth's side.

One of the best parts of Sausage's character, in my opinion, is how his gradual corruption affects the people around him. Initially, he got into a conflict with the Cod Empire and was allied with two other people in the Witherrose alliance. They were allies, but also close friends. The fandom liked to joke that the three had sibling energy, and I'm pretty sure the ccs played to that even more lol.

It was painful to watch the other two members, Gem and fWhip, watch Sausage get corrupted right in front of them, and see them desperately clinging on to this old idea of Sausage in their head because if they faced the truth, it would mean that their friend was gone. Eventually, they do finally cut him out of the alliance, leading him to fully commit to the side of the demon. Sausage felt very clearly betrayed by this, and declared the remaining two Witherrose alliance members to be enemies.

He gets more and more possessed, and we even see the other Empires, his enemies even, slowly realize that something is very wrong with the ruler of Mythland. He starts doing more and more evil things, like killing people more, making sacrifices to the demon, and eventually helping to kill the dragon to free Xornoth. So things are good for Sausage, for a bit. He won, and is more powerful than ever. Then he finds out: he's going to die. Xornoth's possession is slowly killing his soul, and eventually, his body going to be fully taken over and he himself is going to be trapped in the spirit realm. So how do you react to this? Over the next few episodes, we watch Sausage struggle between "the demon is literally killing me" and "the demon has given me so much, and I love it", all while Xornoth takes over more and more of him. We hear him exclaim that "don't worry!! I'm still about 15% there!" while trying to downplay every time Xornoth completely takes over his body. We watch him willingly oppose anyone who is trying to end the thing that is killing him.

My favorite thing about Sausage is that he is undoubtedly evil and proud of it, but he's also undoubtedly human. If you like to watch evil characters go absolutely feral, he's the guy for you. He makes the deal with Xornoth in the beginning, knowing and fully embracing the evilness of the demon, but at the same time he knows what he's doing is detrimental to both himself and everyone around him, but he's gotten in way too deep at this point, and to be fair the demon has held up its end fo the bargain, right?

Also, I would be damned if I don't talk about cc!Sausage's editing. Every one of his videos is like a movie. The way he does camera angles and uses music is so skillful- every lore scene feels like something out of a high fantasy action saga (think: LotR). Every big lore event I always wait in anticipation for Sausage's ep because his editing truly takes lore to another level.

I'm just generally very excited to see where this series goes. Empires is such a good mix of talented builders and good lore. Part of the reason why the series is so immersive for me, beyond any other lore smp, is that they have the settings to back it up. There is a certain charm to the DreamSMP's objectively terrible builds (with a few exceptions) but in Empires, the settings help sell the plot so much.

Another part of why I love EmpiresSMP is how much the ccs are involved with the fan community. I'm sure you've seen the memes about Scott being on tumblr, and Sausage regularly goes through the EmpiresSMP fanart tag on Twitter and likes art, even ones not related to Mythland. Most of the ccs, in fact, have brought up tumblr content on stream at some point or another. Like, several ccs have said that they read tumblr lore theories and hcs and stuff and sometimes take inspiration from them. Fun fact: Rivendell's church was inspired by my pinned drawing; confirmed by Scott Smajor himself. It's just such a good cycle of ccs and fans being excited about each other.

As for DreamSMP, I'm gonna be honest here, the only person I really am invested in in Technoblade. I started watching when he joined the server, and he's the only person whose lore I keep up to date with.

Techno's fun to watch because he's like the Deadpool of DreamSMP. Virtually unkillable, very skilled and scary, but consistently cracks jokes and breaks the 4th wall during plot. His POV is just fun. Like, he does wild plans and gives speeches and some of the stuff that happens to him should be called deus ex machine if it wasn't for the fact that Technoblade is the one who's doing it, and all the stuff is grounded in the fact that cc!Techno is just that good at the game.

However, the fact that he rarely takes anything seriously makes the few times Techno is 100% serious so much more impactful. His whole character has a basis in being perceived as inhuman and being treated as such, and therefore in return trying to hide his humanity. So, when he shows that humanity, whether that's fear, anger, or genuine love for his friends, it really makes you go "oh shit."

Techno's often said not to have character development, but I'd argue that while he remains steadfast in his moral code, he develops leaps and bounds as a person. Like, at the beginning, he's brought onto the server to help Wilbur and Tommy overthrow a government; them knowing he's 1) an anarchist and 2) very very powerful. His character was more of a plot device at that point and was treated as such in the canon. Wilbur and Tommy straight-up lie to him about their plans to establish another government after they overthrow the current one, while he was led on to believe that they were abolishing all governments in the area. But he isn't a plot device. He's a person, as much as he only shows the terrifying, blood god side of himself.

After the establishment of New Lmanburg (the new government its a long story), his friend Phil joins. And for the first time, we see him be fully human with someone and we see someone treat him like a human. Like, we saw glimpses before, with Wilbur and Tommy in Pogtopia, but Phil is the first person we noticeably see he trusts 100%. Then Doomsday happens, and Techno essentially retires to the tundra. During this time, we see Techno learn to be more human, first with Ranboo, then Niki when he establishes the Syndicate. In fact, the two of them, along with Phil, canonically throw him a birthday party, which is a far cry from his treatment in Pogtopia.

Techno's development is one of a god learning to be human, and I just think he <3

#vio.ask #empiressmp #empires smp #dreamsmp #scott smajor #smajor #smajor1995 #mythicalsausage #mythical sausage #technoblade #to be clear i am not an apologist for any character #i fully realize that they are doing wrong and I like to watch it happen #minecraft roleplay got be in full character analysis mode #long post

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aetherknit · 2 years

Text

i dont want to drag this out so ill answer everything in one fell swoop (or two. we'll see)

oh FOR SURE. the chat was a minefield i imagine the donos were the same. probably a shit ton of auto-blocking for keywords and then a manual approval requirement

by playing the moral high-ground, people are able to easily evade a difficult topic. imo, its a perfect showcase of how twitter's occasionally performative activism can really fucking suck. they rank breaking a boundary above literal crime i think. obviously d*xxing is disgusting to me but we cant use that as a reason to look away from evidence like this

theres a lot more to this anon but im just stopping it here to say theres more evidence than that. obviously im not going into it but there are summarizations around

after this i feel like i will never be befriending anyone i know from solely dttwitter again i was nauseous scrolling thru my tl

i am so sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if u backread my account u can find a good summary from lesbianwilbur sorry my brain is dead rn but its out there

defamation, d*xxing, etc. -- there's grounds to build a case against the original posters.

u put this perfectly. it makes me miserable to see the take that ppl thinking critically are being cruel to Dream -- i promise you i want Dream to be completely cleared and innocent more than i want anything in the world right now. but i can't comfortably sweep it under the rug until we get some kind of acknowledgment.

support needs to be to the victim, but the victim never asked to be involved so its a difficult position to be in. i think most of us dont even know a lick about the actual victim. right now, people are focused on what they can do imo. agree that people should have respect toward what the heart of this situation though.

i only tuned in for a bit but dream's nervousness came through clearly to me. i felt like he was rambling, occasionally snappish, etc. i wish i could have sympathy for him (and i do to a certain extent) its hard not to see a stream of a fan-favorite game with donos on as somewhat intentional.... good faith can only take us so far

so well-put, i really have nothing to add. i am so disappointed, but i want to emphasize empathy where its deserved. its such a hard situation.

anon who sent the long ask that included links: im not answering that bc im not spreading that kind of thing, but obviously i agree with the sentiment behind what you were saying

#if any of this is worded poorly i am saur sorry its really late for ESTers #ask #manatreed situation /#discourse /#critical /#negative /#LORDDD

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need-a-fugue · 3 years

Text

Trustworthy (Chapter 3)

Summary: You’ve spent the last three years teaming up with Santiago Garcia on every mission you had a hand in coordinating… and the past several months plotting with him to take down the biggest bad to hit your radar. But even all your time at the DEA and all your experience in the field couldn’t have prepared you for this.

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales x Fem!Reader (slow burn)

Warnings: Does fluff warrant a warning? Well, before we get into the gritty mission, here be some fluffy fluff. Oh, and language. Because I speak that shit.

Thursday came sooner than anticipated, and with it came that awful rush of dread that enveloped you each and every time you set foot in an airport. You’d think you’d be over this by now, your job shuttling you off to the far corners of the Earth, making it so that the only way you could ever get to where you needed to be – Bogota, Juarez, Islamabad, home – was by plane. But… no. The fear of plummeting to an inevitably fiery death inside a giant can filled with the recycled breath of dozens – even hundreds – of strangers was one you were simply never going to get over.

“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding,” Benny barks out amid a thunderous laugh as he watches you down another pill and chase it with a tiny bottle of vodka. “Is it even safe to take Xanax with alcohol?” he asks, his face screwing up in confusion, a hint of concern breaking through the amusement. “Are you so scared of flying that you’re willing to risk an OD?”

“Seems strange, given your profession,” Tom mutters as he sidesteps Ben to slide into the row of seats behind you.

You offer no reply, instead blinking your eyes shut in an attempt to block out the awful activity of preparing for takeoff. The doors haven’t even closed yet, people still steadily boarding the plane, your new teammates still stowing bags and chatting merrily around you, and yet you’ve already buckled in, pulled the lap belt as tight as it will go, and downed your second Xanax in an hour.

“She’ll be alright,” you hear from above. You crack open a single eye and look up to see Santiago looming over the back of your seat. “Fish,” he calls out, tossing a quick glance at the man still struggling with fitting everything into the overhead compartment. “You sit with her. Tell her about all the times you’ve flown. Keep her calm.”

“I’m calm,” you mumble under your breath.

He looks down at you and raises a brow, gaze holding yours even as he tells his friend, “And don’t let her pop any more pills.”

“No shit,” Ben chuckles as he steps out into the aisle, relinquishing his seat just as Frankie finally slams shut the door on the overhead bin. “We’ll have to scrape her off the floor otherwise.”

Frankie slides in next to you, the tiny armrest barely allowing for any space between you and the scorching heat radiating off of him. Normally you might be okay with that, it certainly felt good in the chilly parking lot the other night. But right now you’re feeling flush and hot and on the verge of possible combustion, the odd suck and click sound of the plane’s door shutting and sealing you in causing a bead of sweat to begin sliding down your temple.

“Truth be told, I’m not too wild about being on flights where I’m not the pilot,” he says, his soft voice pitched perfectly to sound just over the hum of the plane, the new buzzing in your ears, and the sudden woosh of air from the vent that he reaches over to switch on above you.

“Comforting,” you mutter, shutting your eyes against the harsh, dry air blowing down on you, but inclining your head back into the steady, cooling stream just the same.

“Just don’t tell her about how many times you’ve crashed, Fish,” Ben laughs from across the aisle. You bolt upright and crane your neck around the man beside you so as to stare the giggly child down, wide eyes gleaming with a very real threat that actually causes his smirk to break and a subtle, “sorry,” to slip past his lips.

Frankie takes your hand, pries it away from the armrest that you’d been holding in a death grip, and he gives you a little nudge with his elbow, encouraging you to lean back in your seat. “I’ve never crashed,” he corrects, shooting Benny a swift, reprimanding glare before turning back to you. “I’ve just… had a couple of rough landings. But each time everyone walked away fine.”

“Yeah?” you question, critical brow cranking high. “And how often do people walk away from rough landings on a commercial airplane?”

He lets out a soft chuckle. “Not often,” he admits. “But they also don’t go down often, so there’s that.”

Your eyes blow wide, slight gasp catching in your throat as you eke out, “Are you trying to jinx us?”

He twists in his seat to look at you, his fingers wrapping just a little bit tighter around your hand as you inadvertently shake in his grasp. “Trust me, princesa, this is the least dangerous thing we’re gonna do this week.”

The heady bolt of fear subsides a bit, quickly replaced by a tinge of confusion – princesa? – and a hint of irritation. Your face twists into an overdone pout – “Don’t call me that.” – but you can’t deny that his words do, somehow, put you at ease. Or perhaps the Xanax is just kicking in. Either way, you find yourself settling back into the seat, body and mind both suddenly sluggish and heavy. You twist towards him, away from the window and the blinding glare of the early morning sun as it reflects off the stark white wing of the plane, and you let out a small disgruntled grunt as the too-tight lap belt digs into your hip.

Frankie easily contorts himself in his seat so that he’s able to face you bodily, smiling – perhaps teasing – eyes never disconnecting from yours as he too settles in and reclines his head to the headrest. “Gotta have some kind of callsign over the radio,” he states, the corner of his mouth pulling up into a coy, crooked smile. “You don’t like princesa… how about loquita?”

“Fuck you,” you bark out amid a snort of a laugh, the offended pitch to your voice and wide-eyed stare setting him to very nearly vibrate with stifled giggles.

He takes a moment to swallow down his obvious amusement, holding your gaze all the while. Then he clears his throat and pulls his features into a stern set. “Don’t take it personally. I’d call anyone who hates to fly crazy.”

You issue out a short, incredulous scoff. “Maybe if I were the pilot, I’d like it. If I were in control.”

“Yeah,” he admits with a nod and a sigh. “That helps.”

But the truth is, you don’t actually think it would help that much. Because, well… “What person in their right mind thinks, you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to ignore the fact that God gave me legs instead of wings and I’d like to leave the ground. I mean… the ground is the safe place, man. What are you thinking?”

He smiles over at you, a soft, tender expression that sets off a flutter deep in your core. “What kind of person wants to stay on the ground with everybody else when they can climb into the heavens and move through the clouds?”

You bite back the grin that begs to break out and instead flatten your face in the most deadpan expression you can muster. “Are you fucking with me right now?” He merely shoots a wink in response, the light from outside your window reflecting in his deep brown eyes as they pierce into you. You roll your own eyes, but can just barely hold back the quirk to your lips as you say simply, “You’re the crazy one.”

He lets loose with a soft chuckle and shifts further in his seat so that he’s entirely facing you. “You never wanted to play in the clouds?” he asks, grin pulling wider. You feel a new heat – a welcome and comforting one, not the panicky, dizzying burn from before – blossom inside of you as you notice a single dimple cave in on the side of his stubble-dusted face.

A long sigh escapes you. “I mean, I did watch a lot of Care Bears growing up,” you offer, working to keep your expression still and set. But his smile simply grows and it’s just a breath of a moment before you break and let loose with a beam of your own. “God,” you nearly whine as an airy chuckle spills out of you. “Play in the clouds? You’re so cheesy.”

“Hey, I happen to really like cheese.” He raises a rather serious brow as he asks, tone low and sincere, “Can you imagine what the world would be like without cheese?”

You force a stoic glare, bite back a smile. “It’d be terrible. No nachos or pizza…”

He shakes his head slowly, sadly. “All the macaroni would be naked.”

You release a soft sigh. “One third of those popcorn tins would be empty.”

“Or filled with, I dunno, kale-dusted popcorn or something.”

You snort out a laugh, nose wrinkling in disgust. “What would we eat with tomato soup? Grilled eggplant?”

He shrugs. “What would Green Bay fans wear to the game?”

And again, you laugh, this one full and buoyant. “Poor Wisconsin, their entire economy would collapse.”

“What about the French?” he asks.

And it’s your turn to offer up a shrug. “They’ve still got wine.”

He stares at you for a lingering moment before his eyes flicker just past and out the window. “Maybe it sounds a little cheesy,” he begins, ticking his chin towards you, towards the tiny airplane window behind you. “But look out there and tell me there isn’t a part of you that wants to climb out there right now and bounce through those fluffy little bastards.”

Your brows pull tightly together, a quick flicker of pure shock shooting through you and causing you to whip around so fast that a crack sounds from your spine. Outside the window are, in fact, hordes of white puffy clouds peppering the bright blue sky. “What…?” you choke out, utter confusion lacing the word.

When had you taken off? When had you reached altitude? How had he managed to distract you so effectively as you climbed thousands of miles into the sky in this deathtrap tube?

You stare out the window for a long moment, giving yourself time to breathe, to comprehend. Allowing your fingers – which had just clamped painfully down on Frankie’s hand yet again – to slowly relax and loosen their terrified hold. No, there’s no part of you that wants to go out there and bounce around in the damn clouds. No. Way. In. Hell. But there is a part of you that begins to get lost in the soft, subtle beauty stretching out all around you. It’s still scary as hell. But it’s also… amazing.

Frankie watches as you continue to gaze out at the sprawling sky, bright blue on this beautiful day, a day he’d like nothing more in this world than to be out in, flying through the wide-open sky. Your hand remains wrapped around his, even if the intense grip has slackened. And your shoulders are still nearly pressed to you ears, so tense and taut. But there’s a sort of wonder wrapping about you now too, a look of, if not joy, at least appreciation.

“Los cielos,” he mutters from behind, seemingly to himself, his tone dreamy and airy and full of something like… wonder. You toss a glance over your shoulder and catch the way the sun lights his face as he stares just past you, his eyes fixated on the world beyond. You stare for perhaps a beat too long, not realizing until his gaze slowly shifts from the window to you, catching you in the act. The dimple caves again, wide smile pulling once more as he locks onto your eyes, light laughter bubbling out of him as your gaze pings away in a swift moment of embarrassment. He squeezes your hand, tightening his grip on your fingers for a single, quick, perfect millisecond before he utters, honeyed voice once again carrying more than a hint of teasing, “Cielo.”

Confused, you look back up at him, your brow twisting. But you let out a groan the moment he tenders another wink, the moment you realize that he’s just offered up another ridiculous callsign suggestion. You roll you eyes again, but make no move to pull out of his hold nor turn from his heated gaze. “So much cheese…”

He laughs again, his grin pulling tight as he watches you settle back into your seat with an exhausted sigh. You raise a brow in question, in challenge. And the smirk fades to a stony façade as he gives a single, definitive nod and declares, as though all has been settled, “Cielo.”

000

The flight knocks you for a loop. Less than an hour in, you’re passed out, snoring away on Frankie’s shoulder. You wake at one point to discover a pool of drool leaking from your gaping mouth and soaking through the shoulder of his button down, but you don’t even have the wherewithal to be embarrassed, nor the grace to apologize. Instead, you lazily swipe at the mess and turn with an incoherent mumble before dropping your heavy head against the cool glass of the window. You’re pretty sure you hear the tinkling of laughter coming from across the aisle – pretty sure that’s the sound that woke you from your drug-induced slumber to begin with – and you can definitely discern the throaty whispers of shut the hell up and you’re an asshole, Ben coming from the man by your side. But you’re too laden with sleep to really process or care.

For the next however many hours, you dream. Dream of bouncing through clouds in a bright blue sky. Dream of slinking through the jungle with strange men by your side. Dream of falling and floating and somehow rising to fly. You sleep and dream – and snore and drool – until an all-too familiar laugh sounds from above, a barking command of, “Hey, get your ass up, agent,” echoing in Santi’s exasperated – yet amused – tone. You blink open your eyes, tilt back your head, and see both him and Tom glaring down at you as they stand – bent awkwardly from the low ceiling of the plane – in the row behind. “Everybody else is already lone gone, bonita. Get your ass off the plane.”

Your brow furrows and your middle finger rises steadily upward, but somehow the rest of your body feels too heavy to move and it takes a kindhearted gentleman in a tattered old ballcap to ease you to your feet and out into the aisle.

“The second one was a mistake,” you mutter wearily as you nearly faceplant into Frankie’s chest.

“Yeah,” comes from behind in an annoyed scoff as Santiago reaches over to collect your bag from beneath the seat. “I’m confiscating your Xanax.”

The ride to the run-down inn and resort – far from the city and cheap as all hell – passes in a blur. But by the time you arrive and check into your little bungalow, you’re feeling, if not refreshed, at least awake.

Everyone agrees to meet up at the tiny restaurant at the edge of the grounds in about twenty minutes, just long enough for a quick rinse and wardrobe change. And somehow you manage to be the first one there, allowing you the opportunity to have a quick chat with the bartender – which results in a free, giant fruity concoction – before settling into a table in the corner. You let out a relaxed sigh and breathe back in the humid jungle air, realizing only in this very moment that a part of you actually missed this place. That a part of you might just think of the Amazon as home. You glance around, take note of your surroundings – as you always do, always have done, even before your law enforcement training – and begin to watch the rather handsy young couple at the bar as they giggle and swoon.

It isn’t long before Benny jogs up behind you and drops into the seat on your right. He sets down a fruity drink that looks suspiciously like yours, making you wonder if the bartender treats all tourists to a free, sugar-fueled beverage and perhaps your flirting earned you nothing at all. But as the others meander in and join you, all with mere sweating bottles of beer in their hands, you decide instead that you and Ben must just be the most special of the bunch.

Of course, that notion begins to chafe once Benny turns to you with a wicked look in his eye and pulls his phone from his pocket, nonchalantly swiping though a parade of terrible photos with an all-too delighted smile. The first few show you passed out on Frankie on the plane, mouth gaping wide as you spill drool into his shirt. “Oh, God!” you gasp, only just now recalling the brief moment of near lucidity from earlier in the day. “You took pictures?!”

You give him a quick slap and try to grab the cell from his hand only to have him rear back and laugh out, “Wait, wait, these are my favorites,” before scrolling through the next dozen or so, each picture showing a steady progression of your drowsy head falling from Will’s shoulder down to his lap as the two of you sat in the back on the drive in from the airport.

“You talk in your sleep,” Will states plainly from across the table, his eyes twinkling with mirth.

You cock your head suspiciously at him, gaze narrowing. “Liar,” you accuse despite knowing full well that it’s true.

The corner of his mouth quirks into a crooked grin. “Something about… sliding down rainbows?”

“Ooooh,” you drawl out, nodding your head. “Yeah, that makes sense. Frankie kept talking to me about Care Bears on the flight in.”

The man to your left takes a steady gulp from his beer, a swallow so huge it makes you think he’d been navigating the desert all day, desperate for a drink. “You were barely conscious for more than five minutes on that flight. You don’t have a clue what I talked to you about.”

“Better not have been anything dirty,” Santiago interjects pointedly.

You turn and pin Frankie down with an intent yet amused stare. “I definitely remember something about playing in the clouds.”

“Naked?” Ben asks as he jostles your other side with his elbow.

“Ahora, eso seria realmente el cielo,” Frankie mutters softly, ducking further beneath the bill of his hat and trying desperately not to laugh as you level him with an astounded glare.

By the time the food comes, your table has managed to outdo the small group of college students in the corner in terms of noise, filling the only partially walled-in establishment with a relaxed sort of banter and the occasional booming laughter. Benny continues his jokes and playful ribbing, eagerly pulling you in to blend with his tightknit group. Will and Frankie both remain mostly quiet, despite their comfortable-looking grins and occasional bursts of laughter.

Tom’s demeanor is similar, perhaps a bit less relaxed, a bit more guarded. Even after claiming to be cool with your presence on this little escapade, he’s anything but warm and welcoming to you. It doesn’t escape your notice that he continues to pull Santi aside to whisper what you can only assume are either covert sweet nothings or – far more likely – mission-related thoughts and plans that he still doesn’t quite trust you with. You shrug it off… it’s fine, really. You’ve had to slip into other cliques and clusters before, wedge yourself into a special operations task force or try to integrate in with local police to gain access to intel. This wasn’t your first rodeo. And frankly, compared to the Federales in Juarez, all of these guys had welcomed you into the fold with wide-open arms.

It isn’t long – or it doesn’t feel like long, anyway – before Santi rises and tells everyone that he’s heading to bed. A shit-eating grin passes over his face as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, familiar looking pill bottle. He shakes the remaining Xanax around and states simply, “For once, I’m actually gonna sleep great.”

Tom follows hot on his heels after issuing out – in a tone equal parts dad and captain – “We’re up at 0500 and I don’t want any of you to be dragging ass.” Everyone nods their assent, but the moment he and Santi are out the door, Ben promptly buys another round and the four of you who remain settle into a new rhythm that lasts until the tiny restaurant and bar finally shoos you out so they can close for the night.

The lot of you wander the grounds of the inn for a bit after that, indulging in the cool breeze after hours of sweltering heat, and continuing to laugh and talk. But as you make it back to the bungalows, the brothers break away, Ben disappearing into his room without so much as a grunt of goodbye, and Will raising a pointed finger high and telling you and Frankie both to, “Get the hell away from these mosquitos and go get some sleep. Otherwise, Redfly’ll be raining down shit on everyone in the morning.”

But you’re now more awake than you’ve been all day, sated from a too-large dinner and positively sloshing with alcohol, well-rested after your many-hours-long nap during your travels, and you just can’t seem to make yourself shut up, not even once you arrive at your door.

And Frankie seems to welcome it, listening intently as you babble on, filling the gaps with assertions of his own. Now that Ben’s no longer around to monopolize the conversation, you and Frankie develop an easy back and forth, the dialog taking on a soft, steady, even cadence. You talk about everything, the two of you. About Mexico, because you spent nearly four years in different parts of the country, and he still has family in a few of those areas. And you talk about all the places you’ve been, you with your sprawling career and general lust for travel – Road trips are more my thing though… and camping, hiking… Have you ever been through Bryce Cannon? God’s country. – and Frankie with his time in the military and more recent contract work – Yeah, nature’s great and all, but have you walked through the bazars in Marrakesh? Unbelievable. Though I wouldn’t say no to a day of fishing off the Gulf.

You talk about Santiago, each sharing stories of the man who had only just become a trusted colleague and friend for you over these last few years, but had been one of Frankie’s most beloved people for well over a decade. And that leads you into asking about the other guys too, each of whom you find yourself getting to know better and better from even just the few stories he shares as you two recline back into the railing of the bungalow’s small porch. He even manages to get you comfortable enough to share some stories about your own comrades over the years, the good, the bad, and the ugly… and the long-time partner who bled out in your arms following a bust outside of Albuquerque. Though you don’t spend much time on that, eager to move on almost the moment that your partner’s name passes through your lips.

The look on his face, though – as you share those sparse details from that most awful day – tells you immediately that Frankie understands exactly what it’s like to lose a partner, a brother in arms. And while that isn’t a surprise in the least – he had just gotten through telling you that he spent fifteen years in the special forces after all – that knowledge does cause you to feel a whole new pull. It makes you scoot a bit closer, makes you drop your hand easily atop his, your sweaty palm gliding along his warm skin before he reciprocates by slowly turning in your grasp and twining his fingers with yours.

“So,” he breathes out after a moment. “You’ve been out here for… three years?”

You nod, a soft smile blooming as you think about this bizarre and stunning corner of the world. “About that.”

His gaze travels out into the lush jungle located just beyond the row of bungalows, small porchlights illuminating just enough of the canopy to remind you both of where you are. “What’s the city like?” he asks after a beat.

“It’s nice,” you rush out. “Small, relaxed…” Your lips purse together as you think on what to say, how to describe this place that has been your home for three years now. “Lot more tourists than you might think. It’s funny, even the people who live here – in the city at least – a lot of them are transplants from Bogota.” You give a nonchalant shrug – “The streets flood a lot. That’s not always fun.” – and relish the deep chuckle emanating from the man by your side. “There’s a legend about how it got its name,” you say suddenly. “I’ve never really gotten any details about it, but supposedly a Colombian soldier fell in love with an Amerindian woman…”

“Leticia,” he supplies, the name slipping from his tongue in a perfectly accented drawl, falling out into the dark night in a soft, low rumble.

You nod. “And he named the city after her.”

Frankie huffs out a small laugh, a light and airy rumble. His gaze continues to wander, dark eyes shifting along the barely perceivable horizon. “Must’ve been a hell of a lady,” he mutters absently, giving your fingers a squeeze.

You watch him closely, his features soft and relaxed in the low light, the slightest hint of a smile still riding his lips. “Yeah. Must’ve been.”

Taglist:

@tweedlydumbtweedlydoo @icanbeyourjedi @greeneyedblondie44 @mrscrain-x7 @kyjoraven@elephants-are-a-thing @nakhudanyx

#frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #triple frontier #francisco catfish morales #frankie morales x you #santiago pope garcia #benny miller #will ironhead miller

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nervousladytraveler · 3 years

Text

@veryflowerobservation asked me for a little story with a very specific plot line. While I doubt this is what they had in mind (apologies in advance) this is what came to me over my morning coffee. Also, I’ve been reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, and am indebted to her for the world (and tone) of that novel that I borrowed here.

---

She was already seated at a table in a quiet back corner when Ross entered the restaurant. A sandwich sat in front of her--untouched. How long had she been waiting? Ross hadn’t been late. In fact he was rather pleased with his timing.

He’d only just found her note a mere half hour before he was to meet her. He’d almost missed it--a small piece of folded paper deposited on his desk and no one claimed to have seen the messenger.

Dear Mr. Poldark, it read. Please meet me, if you can, noon today. The Drake. Important item to be discussed. Yours, Miss D. Carne. The ink had smeared a bit revealing an impatient or untidy author.

He remembered Miss Carne. Often, if he were to be honest. He smiled at the physical feelings associated with the memory and was on his feet shuffling for his coat before he’d thought it all through. After a late breakfast, he wasn’t hungry yet his curiosity was piqued by such a veiled message. Then again cryptic was the nature of their business, he supposed.

Ross hadn’t wanted the job but was cajoled, battered--railroaded really. But his gallantry in the previous war and in his off-the-record jaunts in between, not to mention his Good Family (“So many Poldarks already in the high ranks, you know”) were all tallied up. If Ross was trying to slip away from duty unnoticed, it seemed he was his own worst enemy. And if he had a choice, he’d have preferred to return to the army, but his ankle still bore shrapnel from ‘17 and apparently he wasn’t needed in that capacity.

“We need trustworthy men inside, Poldark,” some smart Undersecretary and an older but oh so reputable Colonel had huffed. They nodded in agreement with one another, and without waiting for an answer, had begun making plans for Ross in an unmarked office at the end of a serpentine hall in That Building.

The last thing Ross wanted was to be trusted with someone else’s secrets and yet, there he was--working for the War Time Government, which he soon learned was a very different machine than the one they’d elected in times of peace, the one everyone thought they knew. And once he saw the ways the gears really moved, Ross was certain most would prefer not to know much about this one at all.

Miss Carne, the author of the note and the guardian of the untouched sandwich, was one of the girls in the unmarked office. The department that didn’t really exist on paper needed scores of young women to keep it running.

She was different from the other girls. Not just a typist but clever--she was always solving problems, often before they were discovered, and saving the men who didn’t really exist on paper from very real embarrassment.

Ross hadn’t many dealings with her. Well, not until that one night when he got to know her quite well.

It had been a Thursday and there had been cocktails out--what had been the occasion? War had already been declared so it was quite unusual to have held a work do. Why was she even there?

He remembered the dress she wore--blue satin--and the way it fit her. Like a glove. No, more like water in a stream rippling smoothly over immovable stones. It made him feel at ease to look at her and he knew how the night would end.

In the all the secretarial pools across the city, few girls had their clothes tailored--who had time or money? So when they ventured out after work, they sported those subtle signs of economy--gaping necklines or tight stretches across the middle. Their one good dress hadn’t been replaced in so many years but their bodies had changed with the war. Rationing had left them scrawny or cheap gin had left them bloated.

Oh but those girls tried, didn’t they? They carried on the best they could. With their lips so brightly made up they could violate the black out, they were hell bent on keeping up the spirits of the lads. Wartime made for an interesting and furtive nightlife. Of course the nice girls, the ones with breeding and good dress makers weren’t out much at all these days.

But this one, Miss Carne, with her red hair--real, not from a bottle--and a fitted dress the colour of the sea at twilight, was different. Demelza was her name. It sounded like some yet-undiscovered gem. Rare as hell and essential to keep out of enemy hands. She didn’t seem to belong in either world--not the world of well dressed would-be fiancees nor the seedy boîtes, that were filled after hours when the good girls were tucked up in their bunkers.

The hotel Ross had taken Demelza to after they’d left the party was nice enough. Not the Savoy but it had a toilet ensuite and the sheets were clean. She was not Ross’s first affair so he knew how to be discreet when signing the register. He needn’t have bothered--the concierge clearly hadn't cared.

He remembered the sound of that blue dress as he unfastened it down the back. A crisp zip in an otherwise quiet room. That and her breathing and his heart beating in his chest. The sounds of anticipation. Before the dress slipped from her shoulders and his hands clasped her naked body to him.

Today she wore a stiff woolen frock the colour of filing cabinets. It reminded him of a wall of sandbags, protecting a hidden softness beneath. Still the zipper would sound the same.

“Miss Carne,” he smiled and held out his hand to her. He contemplated kissing hers when it was finally offered but sensing some unspoken chill, he refrained. He sat down opposite and gave his serviette a merry snap.

She twisted her lips when she spied the gold band on his left hand.

“You're married?” she began, raising one perfect brow. Was it naturally arched or was that her own artistry?

He might have wanted to scrutinize her face, to map out what was artifice and what was real, but at that moment he didn’t dare look her in the eye.

“Yes, I am,” he said, just a decibel louder than a mumble. “And yes, I was married when we…” He took a gulp from his water glass.

“And yet there was no ring that night,” she mused. She had no problem with eye contact, her blue eyes remained fixed on his face.

“We...uh...we were in the midst of a separation then but the war has made us rethink things…”

We. Us. There wasn’t really an us. Elizabeth was merely feeling scared and lonely, between lovers, and suddenly liking the idea of a strong husband about. But since then her plans to retreat home to Cornwall, first spoken of as a ‘hypothetical perhaps’, had started to come to fruition. She’d been packing a trunk for some days now and was fretting about whether to take just some of her furs, or all of them. She was clearly planning to stay away. Ross’s response was to arrange a driver.

“Well then,” Demelza said and pushed away her plate. “That will complicate things but doesn’t change reality one bit,” she continued crisply.

It was an office voice. With it she would manage the girls under her with confidence and efficiency. No time for emotion, yet it wasn’t sour. Must keep morale up. They had jobs to do and every memo taken, every letter filed, was a fulfillment of their duty.

It was not the soft, easy voice that laughed in his ear as she lay next to him on the pillow in the blacked out room. The dusky voice that had whispered his name as he crawled up her body like a soldier crawling through mud. On a mission. Towards his target.

“It seems, Mr. Poldark, that I’m to have a baby.”

He held his glass aloft and stared at her.

“What?” he spat. “Well, it can’t be...I didn’t…not in...” Of course he couldn’t utter those words in daylight. Not over a sandwich at lunchtime. One needed a stiff drink before dissecting the mechanics of love. Yet somehow he knew it was possible. He thought he’d been careful not to leave seed in the field. Now it hit him he’d in fact laid a land mine.

“Well it doesn’t really matter what you believe you did not do, because apparently whatever you did, was enough,” she responded coolly.

He didn’t dare ask if there were any others who might stand accused with him in the dock. His gut told him she wasn’t that type. And though she hadn’t confirmed it during their night together--nor had he looked for evidence later--he suspected she’d been intact before he took her to bed. Oh, she’d been a quick learner!

He also sensed that she’d rather be sitting across from just about anyone else than talking to him now, so she certainly wasn’t trying to trap him.

“Are...are you sure? I...I need to think,” he said, aware that he sounded like an old Spitfire whose propeller couldn’t quite get going. So much sputtering.

She lit a cigarette, took one long drag, then ground it out carefully in the ashtray. No doubt she’d revisit that same fag again later, at a time when she was less impatient, when she could enjoy it alone.

“Well, you do that then,” she said, and gathered her handbag, ready to take her leave.

“Wait! Where are you going? How can I reach you?” His words came out in a fast and frantic stream. The engine had started--the sputter became a steady buzz filling the room.

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head lightly. Today her hair was held back with tortoise shell combs on either side. Tidy, discreet, and appropriate for an unmarked office. Or any office.

He recalled his hands getting lost in a sea of those curls, fistfuls he’d grasped in passion. An unexpected lifeline, it had seemed at the time, that prevented him from drowning.

He felt himself going under again.

“Now you want to reach me, Mr. Poldark?” she said archly.

“Hey--you left me! You were the one who waltzed out of that hotel room while I was asleep, without so much as a backwards glance,” he growled. He’d been rankled that she continued to call him Mister Poldark, especially when he could still hear her hiss in his ear--Ross--while her body bucked under his.

“I assure you it wasn’t a waltz,” she said. And that was all she said. At least she didn’t claim she’d been trying to save him the embarrassment of a morning after. “I share a flat with another girl in Kingley Street. We don't have a telephone but you can find me at the office--unless I get reassigned in the next few days. There are changes coming, I’ve been told.”

She rose to her feet and towering over him, nodded.

Ross tried to stand up quickly--to plead with her to stay? To follow her out? He couldn't say what his intentions had been but it mattered little. He was too slow. His legs got twisted under the narrow table, his chair scraped awkwardly, and the remaining lunch things began to tip before he caught them with his broad hands. He narrowly avoided one mess, aware that he had quite another still to be cleared up.

And just like that she was gone. Leaving her entire sandwich and almost-intact cigarette behind afterall.

In a strange flash, Ross was surprised she didn't offer to pay for her own lunch. Of course a gentleman should pick up the bill for a lady no matter the circumstances, but there was something so determined and iron about her now, that he couldn’t imagine her allowing anyone to help her.

And yet help her he must. Somehow.

He felt his pockets frantically for a scrap of paper but only found a stub of a pencil.

Kingley Street, he scrawled on the back of a matchbook. He had no house number, nothing else to go.

Could he ask someone to watch the street? He knew some blokes who would do a job like that--a stake out--for the right price. Or was he better off handling this himself, intercepting her at work? Even if she did get moved to a different sector--one that also did not officially exist--he might have channels to find her.

He sat back in his chair and reached for her cigarette. He imagined it smelled like her but he lit it anyway. It helped him to relax for just a moment while he planned his next move.

Ross knew he had a duty to this woman--to their child if one was to be--and while that was an overwhelming and unforeseen realisation, he was taken aback by a different unexpected sensation.

Desire.

He wanted her. Again. Now.

And he had to find her.

#poldark fanfic #poldark modern au #london blitz #ross poldark #demelza carne #blue dress #fastens down the back

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evienyx · 3 years

Note

lmao seems like you're becoming an mcyt blogger too. anyway i was wondering what are your thoughts on wilbur??? like the character, i mean

I’m expanding my horizons. I’m an incredibly versatile person.

Anyway, you want my thoughts on Wilbur? Oh, I can give you my thoughts on Wilbur.

First off, I would say that, as a character, Wilbur is probably my second favorite, right behind Techno. My favorites tend to differ from the norm, largely because of the fact that I’m a writer, and I look at everything with a bit of a different lense. Even subconsciously, the first time I watch the streams, I’m analyzing the story and the characters, thinking of ways it could have been improved, and admiring what’s done well.

And, damn, Wilbur’s character is done so well.

His descent into madness was, obviously, terrifying to see, but what’s most interesting about it to me is the fact that he feels so justified throughout it. His character is consistent, and what he wants is also consistent. Wilbur stated in his conversation to Phil that he’s come back multiple times to the button, that he’s almost pressed it so many times. Just that statement, the realization of how many times he’s come close to it, despite everything he’s said to Tommy, despite the way he’s been seemingly all for the revolution now,is terrifying. It’s seemed to us for quite a while now that, through the madness, through the insanity, he does believe that L’Manburg can be taken back.

It’s at this moment, though, in the button room, that the truth slowly dawns. All this time, Wilbur did believe that they could take L’Manburg back.

And, all this time, that hasn’t mattered in the slightest to him.

Win or lose, live or die, Wilbur was going to press that button.

If we ignore the fact that the button was a Chekhov’s gun, if we fully analyze this in character, it’s absolutely groundbreaking.

Because here we see a man who once would have done anything to save L’Manburg, now doing anything to destroy it.

One of the ways Wilbur’s arc over the last few months of story (since the election) can be well-represented is, in my opinion, through observation of his relationship and interactions with Tommy.

More specifically, though, in the way that he uses his power over Tommy, what value he places on Tommy’s wellbeing, and how Tommy views him.

At the L’Manburg election, they’re thick as thieves. They’re brothers, at that point, because in this household we roll with SBI family dynamics. Tommy looks to Wilbur for guidance, and when they lose the election and Schlatt exiles them, they run together. Wilbur calls for Tommy to run, they make sure the other is safe (ignore Wilbur’s death, lmao). They leave L’Manburg together.

When they start Pogtopia, when they start thinking about how they’re going to get their country back, Wilbur tries to cheer Tommy up. He jokes with him, references Tubbox. They brainstorm together, they share ideas. They plan, and they work as equals. Wilbur has Tommy drop the ‘President.’ They’re in this together, and one of them is not above the other, anymore. Wilbur does his best to make sure that Tommy is safe, and that he is as happy as possible in the current situation, despite how dark and dreary their prospects appear to be.

Skip forward a bit, and we come to the announcement of the Manburg Festival. Now, up until this point, the dynamics have been rather consistent since the election. We’ve seen Wilbur rise up and take charge a bit more when necessary, like with Tubbo and the whole double-agent business, but ideas are shared and they treat each other with both respect and love.

When Schlatt is making the announcement, with Wilbur and Tommy looking on from above, Tommy draws back his bow to take the president out, and Wilbur stops him. Tommy listens. Had the roles been reversed, this would not have occurred, but mostly because Tommy wouldn’t have questioned Wilbur’s judgement in the first place. Tommy has complete and utter faith in Wilbur and his decisions at this point. That is the power that Wilbur holds over Tommy. Tommy trusts him. Wilbur uses this power over Tommy to ensure that the outcome of each and every decision they make is optimal, and to make sure that both of them stay safe and the rebellion stays strong. It’s a relationship of faith and trust.

Then, though, the announcement of the festival. And, mainly, the aftermath of the announcement. As they walk through the forest, for the first time, we see Wilbur question his motives. We’ve never seen this before, and neither has Tommy. Wilbur wonders if his morals are correct, or if he’s just been assuming he’s in the right. He decides to be the bad guy, and the relationship with Tommy shifts. The trust and faith that Tommy places in Wilbur is turned right back on him as Wilbur tells Tommy that he’ll never be president. Wilbur uses the relationship that he has with Tommy, uses the subconscious trust Tommy places in him, to manipulate him.

At this point, they are no longer equals. Wilbur no longer values Tommy’s input, as Tommy isn’t on his side on this issue, and Tommy doesn’t share with Wilbur anymore, as the faith is gone. Still, Tommy continues to trust Wilbur, he just doesn’t have faith in him or believe that he’s doing the right thing. Additionally, Wilbur’s care for Tommy’s wellbeing deteriorates a bit, but he still does care. Just... not as much.

The next big shift would be the day of the Manburg Festival.

What is interesting about this day is that it is the one time that Wilbur and Tommy agree on whether or not to blow up Manburg, because, as Tubbo is executed by their ally in a shower of colorful sparks, Tommy calls for Wilbur to blow the place to smithereens. Wilbur’s failure here is one of the best things for the story, but we can talk about that another time.

While the dynamics don’t shift in any notable way at the festival, what with Tommy and Wilbur showing up together, fighting and working together, they do change dramatically after the festival is over.

We can see this mainly with two events: The Pit, and Tommy, Tubbo, and Niki’s talk.

Wilbur is the one who coaxes Tommy into fighting Techno (a fight that, logically, Wilbur knew Tommy would lose). He pushed at Tommy’s emotions, manipulated him, into fighting a battle that he had no hope of winning. Any care he had for Tommy’s wellbeing is out the window at this point. He willingly sent him into the Pit to die.

Additionally, this is the first time that Tommy explains that he isn’t fighting for Wilbur anymore. He fights not for Wilbur, but for vengeance for Tubbo in the pit, and when he talks with Tubbo and Niki, it becomes clear that he no longer has faith in nor trusts Wilbur.

The next turning point comes very soon, when Wilbur is in the button room with Tommy and Quackity.

Tommy convinces Wilbur not to press the button, and Wilbur says that he’ll trust in Tommy for now, and breaks the button down as well.

The thing about this that is most important is that Wilbur is lying, and Tommy doesn’t realize that until it is far too late.

We don’t realize this until much later, but Wilbur didn’t care about what Tommy said. He explained to Phil that, despite his words to Tommy, despite what he claims about trusting Tommy’s plan, he’s still come close to pressing the button again, and again. He doesn’t trust in Tommy’s plan, and even if he does, it doesn’t matter, because Wilbur doesn’t care. He’s going to press that button regardless.

What does come from this, though, is that Tommy begins to trust Wilbur again. He feels like Wilbur cares, like Wilbur has his back. He places Wilbur back as leader, in his mind, and all of these things come to a climax on the day of the battle between Manburg and Pogtopia.

The War for L’Manburg shows the two of them relatively trusting of one another on the field, despite Wilbur’s constant jokes about being the traitor (which we later find out to be true, but that’s not what this is about). Tommy trusts Wilbur on the battlefield, and listens to what he says. They fight together.

Wilbur then places Schlatt’s life into Tommy’s hands. He gives him an incredibly difficult decision to make, plays with Schlatt’s life just to rise conflict within Tommy. It doesn’t matter in the end, but I thought it was interesting to see.

Anyway, Wilbur then places Tommy as president-elect, while Wilbur plans to go and detonate the bombs beneath the country while Tommy speaks of plans to rebuild. Then, though, Tommy calls Wilbur president again, and Wilbur renames the country before passing it off to Tubbo.

Wilbur had called Tommy up to the podium to speak, right where a large part of the bombs were placed. His intent was for Tommy to speak there while Wilbur pressed the button and blew the country sky-high, with Tommy at the center of it all.

Any care Wilbur once had for Tommy’s wellbeing is gone, and nothing makes that more apparent than his attempted appointment of Tommy to the presidency, where he would have been in the most danger as he gave a speech while standing on a minefield, facing a crowd containing a man who lived only for chaos and another who vowed to watch the country burn to the ground along with any government that may wish to form.

We can see, as well, the moment Tommy realizes what’s going to happen. We can see when he begins calling for people to find Wilbur, muttering “no” as he searches desperately, and then screaming as his worst fears are realized and his brother Wilbur blows everything that he’s ever worked for into nothing more than a crater.

Wilbur’s character development, his arc, his consistency, is incredible to watch. It’s one of the most impressive things of the entire Dream SMP story (which, honestly, isn’t much of a surprise, since Wilbur’s been directing it this whole time, anyway). There are so many more things that I could say about this, but this post is long enough, so I’m gonna end it here.

I’m always up to rambling about Dream SMP things, especially analyzing characters, plot, motivations, and the like.

I’m a nerd, sue me.

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tokimihyachi · 3 years

Text

Love Is War [ AU ]

Pairing: Nacht Faust X Reader

Warning/s: None

Includes: Kaguya-sama references </333

The prestigious school of Clover Academy with its ancient and noble origin, was founded to educate its students born in the crusts of upper society. Despite its nobility class system being abolished due to the efforts of a certain man, distinguished families from all over the land, who will one day take lead continue to enroll in the said academy.

But of course, they would not let anyone rule the school in its grounds of education.

'LOOK!'

'It's the members of the Student Council!'

Proud, conserved, and prudent. These where the characteritics of [Y/N] that allured all the rest of their dignified school's students, staff, and even members of the council.

She was viewed as the powerful Vice-President who's connections are far more vast than the ocean's wideness itself, her intelligence beyond comprehension, and above all else, her beauty exulding nothing but that worthy of a regal woman who's shares with their own company is far superior than anyone else that attended the school. (yes we ain't broke here)

And the man who she supports dedicatedly; Nacht Faust. Unlike [Y/N] [L/N] , the student council president is well respected as he is first in every academic-related contest, event and affairs, earning the high and fear of his peers. And of course, would could not let slide how charming this man is.

'They're like gods walking around!'

'Do you think they're dating?'

'Why don't you ask them?'

'No! That would be too embarassing!'

Joining the power duo is Mimosa Vermillion, the student council secretary, Asta, the treasurer and Noelle Silva, their trusted auditor and also the public morale committee head.

These five students make the strongest foundation an institute could ever ask for, but even the strongest of pillars have its weaknesses...

Pouring in a sum of coffee, deliciously brewed by the Vice-President herself, [Y/N] smiles gently, holding the kettle with its contents streaming into the porcelain cup of the President, who looks over the book he held with his right arm to thank the girl for her unwavering kindness.

"So it seems that the students have been gossiping about us lately, President." Nacht hums at her statement, delicately raising the cup to his lips and drinking the pleasant morning coffee, "They're wondering if we're a couple or not." the girl giggle softly, trailing back to the cabinet of ceramic plates and dishes.

Nacht closed both of his eyes, and responded with a furtive grin, "They're probably at that age of curiousity. It is best to ignore them, if it bothers you." the last sentence he uttered was hesitant in his perspective, but to her, it was filled with much confidence.

Despite the thick tension in the air, [Y/N] maintained her composure, "Oh? But it does not mind me at all." the President was surprised at her boldness, was this perhaps... a sign that he should take initiative?

Feeling a surge of new found bravery, he opens his mouth to commend them and undobtedly push the woman to her limits when the door opens, and Noelle, Asta and Mimosa walk through the doors.

'Curse them/!' the two thought simultaneously

Asta, the energetic boy that he is, loudly entered the room and jumped onto the sofa next to Nacht, while the two girls were giggling to themselves and went to the direction of the Vice-President. Mimosa shyly tugs [Y/N]'s uniform and hands her a letter.

"Is this next month's budget for the activites?" she inquired, slowly opening the letter.

"NOPE! I THINK IT'S A LOVE LETTER!" Asta yelled from the sofa, causing Nacht's eyes to open. His calm and serene eyes looking at their course with an amused complexion painting his face.

[Y/N] opened it, and was surprised with the contents of the letter: It was a confession, a very passionate one from a boy named bokuto, "It is." the girl thoroughly read every bit of it, as it clearly stated that he wanted to meet up with her at the cafeteria during lunch.

Noelle, clearly irritated that it wasn't who she was shipping with her senpai, flipped her hair and scoffed, "It's not like you're going. Am I right, [Y/N]-chan?" the silence that followed such question, echoed in Nacht's mind.

The President always knew that [Y/N] was, and is a woman of class and dignity. He felt that whoever confessed to him, must've been an over-achiever, or a big ball of pure dumbness, as they confessed to a woman who spent most of her time staring at him lovingly.

"Of course I am." her simple reply shook them to the bones. Miss [L/N] who's standards were well-known all over the school for being completely high and too out of reach for anyone to even qualify for, decided that she wanted to hear the boy confess? She has never done that, as far as any student can remember.

The silver-haired girl shakes her head as if she's heard the most absurd thing in her life— No, this is by far, the most ridiculous thing she's heard her say. Who was it that confessed to her that even made her change her strong belief!?

The Vermillion beside her, squealed in delight and clinged herself to [Y/N] who uncomfortably felt her 'mountainous' chest pressed against her arm, as the girl's throughts suddenly drift to how flat-chested she actually is.

[Y/N] gulped before kindly detaching Mimosa to herself, "They clearly poured all of their own to the letter, it would be rather unfair of me to not even show myself up." Nact sighed in relief, as his mind sat on the edge, thinking of every possible way to stop her.

"OHHHHH! Finally! [Y/N]-chan is going to have a boyfriend—"

Asta's enthusiasm however, was cut off by the President, "I will not allow it." the black-haired boy tensed at his own words feeling how resolute he seemed, "As the student council president, I will not allow such illicit sexual affair in this academe." the smile dancing on [Y/N]'s lips widen, as she tried to surpress her mirth.

"Illicit? sexual? affair? Whoever said it would come to that?" she grinned at her reposte, biting her inner lip to prevent herself from laughing at how hilarious and discomposed the President looked like.

"Then I'm not sorry to inform you that I will tell of the teachers about this then. You may be suspended over this." Nacht's demeanor slowly returned as he believed his statement should be enough to silence her.

But she was not willing to back down so easily, unless the President would beg obediently for her to not meet him.

"And I, am not sorry to inform you as well that if it comes to such love as this, then I am prepared for suspension. I don't even mind if I am faced with expulsion." other members of the student council held their gasp from her choice of words. 'E-E-Expulsion!? What kind of man would confess to [Y/N]-chan that would even make her go as far as that!?' Noelle thought as she looked at the letter the girl pressed against her chest with a look of love emitted from her presence.

'What? Huh, I wonder which weed I have to pluck out...' Nacht's intelligence was put to test.

The satisfaction flowing vividly inside of [Y/N] with her imagination running wildly at how the President may actually bow down to his knees for her was enough of a thought to make her blush in place, which the others misinterpreted. 'She's serious!'

The school bell rang, signifying that it was lunch time. The moment of judgement has finally presented itself, and [Y/N], despite knowing that no lowly normal person was worthy of her except Nacht, is fully commited in pushing through with her plans.

"WELL! I HAVE TO GO SEE YUNO NOW AND ASK WHAT'S HIS SCORE ON THE SCIENCE EXAM! SEE YOU AT AT THE CAFETERIA [Y/N]-CHAN! I'LL SAVE A SEAT FOR YOU TWO— MIMOSA! NOELLE!" the ash-blonde boy yelled, passing through the corridors to run off to his rival.

The darkening presence of Nacht as though being surrounded by a scad of shadows, frigthening both Noelle and Mimosa who, from the look on their President's face, knew that he wanted to be alone with her, "H-Hey [Y/N]-senpai! Mimosa and I will be going now!"

"What? We will? But I thought—"

"See you laterrr~!"

[Y/N] merely chuckled at the two who, presumably, went to look for Asta. But as the door of the room clicked, it dawned to her that she is to face whoever this 'bokuto' of a simpleton he may be if the President does not act in a few minutes. This was a risk she was willing to do and make, but it may as well be a chance of meeting and casting her eyes away from the President who has shown very little interest in her.

The girl has taken into account all of the words which their President spoke to other people; on normal conversations, a lengthy half an hour, but with her, Nacht seems to have upset his stomach and would only converse for a few minutes. When it came to eye contact, he would not, and one would even say, he dared not to look at her for more than a minute as well. And yet did not break it with any others.

With all these thoughts in mind, [Y/N] realized she may have been fooled by the appeal of the President, falling into their trap like a mindless stray dog, "Well," she sighed, "Lunch time. I-I, I should go." the lump in her throat was unbearable, and to make matters worst, Nacht seemed like he didn't care at all.

She smiled wistfully to herself, taking her things that were next to the President himself and prepared to leave, but was stopped when asked a question, "If I confessed, would you still go?" [Y/N] looked at him, shock evident on her face, "Hypothetically speaking, If I did, would you." he added, further saddening the girl.

"Well, it's only a hypothetical question...So, I would not have an answer. See you this afternoon then, President." with a heavy heart, [Y/N] slowly marched towards the doors, her hold on the door knob trembled, as if waiting for him to stop her, but how delusional she was as he did nothing but stare at her back.

And so she went outside, and carefully closed the door. Every step she took was like a burden since the farther she went, their distance would be forever tainted in her heart.

After a couple of steps, a hand made its way to her wrist, and was surprisingly, unexpectedly faced with the President himself, "[Y/N]" he breathed out, his hand cold and shaking lightly.

"Hm?"

"Don't go."

The girl sighed, removing her hand from his grasp, "I will, if there is no reason to stay. You should go and eat lunch, President. There may nothing be—

"I like you."

The girl chuckled, "Of course you do— wait, what?" 'Does he really? Did he just...? Or was that a fraction of my imagination yet again? Can, can you repeat it, just to be sure?'

"If it means that I get to be with you, then I will gladly concede,[Y/N]. To hell with this little competition. As long as you tell me you'd like the same..." Nacht's voice was almost pleading, wailing for her to stay, to say that she felt the same as he did, despite such being unnecessary.

"I thought you'd never ask. Of course, I like you—" Nacht closed the distance between them, and claimed her lips which he always dreamt of placing his against, "Are you not ashamed o-others are watching!" she yelled at him, a deep blushing forming on her cheeks as Nacht held her face with such gentleness and love. His eyes piercing her soul as its coldness was no longer traceable with his features softening while looking at her.

As if not listening to the girl, he placed his hand behind her neck and connected their lips again for another kiss, not willing to give a care for the students who were happily eyeing them with much anticipation as they've always wanted to see such scene happen, "Then let them watch so they know what is mine."

#black clover #mimosa vermillion #noelle silva #asta #nacht #nacht faust #nacht x reader #one shot #fluff #mimosa #noelle

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bang-to-the-tan · 4 years

Text

Moth to Flame

Chapter 17

Reader x OT7

► Vampire!AU

Smut/Porn With Some Plot That is Rapidly Getting Out of Hand Dear God Why Please Help Me

Warnings: Complicated Morality, Lots of Stockholm Syndrome, Addiction, Possessiveness, Vampires (Reference to Biting, Blood-Sucking and Death), Language

↳ Summary: Robbed of your memories and intended as a birthday present for a deadly creature of the night, you unwittingly become the center of a territorial dispute between two covens of vampires. Tensions are rising and the brothers are getting hungry…

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You reach up to thread your fingers through Yoongi’s hair, scrubbing out the sweat, the dirt, the grime, and replacing it with a gently scented shampoo. He makes a criminally contented grunt deep in his throat and leans into your touch. His own hands pause in their attentive cleaning of your shoulders and collarbone. The water is warm around you, not too hot or too cold; comfort raining down on your bodies. Your leg and neck ache slightly, especially where your new marks throb, but it’s a feeling you welcome. You missed it.

“You sure you feel okay?” he mumbles, squinting at you with one eye against a stream dripping down his forehead.

“I’m sure.”

“You have to tell me if you’re gonna pass out. You’ll break your skull on the tile.”

“I promise.”

When your fingers curl around his ears, his eyes flutter closed and you snort quietly through your nose. Even though the both of you are naked, there’s no sexuality at this moment. Something is...so incredibly human about this. Washing each other off, surrounded by gentle water and the scent of wet, clean bodies. There’s a spark of electricity that passes through you when he lathers up your torso, palms drifting to your belly, up over your breasts, but it’s probably a good idea that you don’t try anything in the shower. He has a point. The tiling has the potential to be a serious problem if you slipped and fell into it.

“Yoongi,” you say after a moment. He hums, distracted, rubbing wide circles into your tits. They’ll be the cleanest part of you when the shower is over.

“I was thinking.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah. Do you know if there’s any...any footage?”

He pauses. His lips purse thoughtfully. Sniffs once.

“Not this time,” he says finally, flippant, “But next time I could set something up—”

You push at his hands with a scoff. They hover inches from your chest like he’s forgotten about them. “I don’t mean a sex tape!”

“Why not? Taehyung used to have these really nice cameras—”

“ Yoongi—”

He slinks closer, leg sneaking between yours, a teasing grin pulling at his mouth. He reaches to brace himself on the wall behind you, leaning further into your space. “—not usually one for that kind of thing but I’d be willing to try it once.”

“Yoongi.”

“Put on a good show.” Yoongi’s voice has dipped lower into a rumble, his head craning to plant a searing kiss against your jawline. “For you. If you wanted.”

“That’s not what I meant,” you insist, refusing to be distracted.

He hesitates again.

“Yeah,” his tongue flits to lick at his lips habitually. He squints back up. “Yeah, I figured.”

“I meant of the...The hit and run.”

“There’s probably footage of it somewhere.”

“I want to see it. I want—” you swallow, hard, but there is a determination that has latched deeper, more firmly onto your heart.. “I want to know about it.”

He doesn’t answer that for a moment, instead starting to help you rinse off in silence. He’s obviously turning things about in his head as he guides the water over your skin, your hair.

“I get that.” he says. “Kind of. But you know it doesn’t change anything. What happened is what happened.”

“It isn’t ‘what happened’,” you reply. “It’s what I did. Even if I don’t remember. I want to know.”

He nods, once, but his expression doesn’t change.

He reaches behind himself to shut the water off, scooting past you awkwardly to step out. He grabs a towel off the side and passes it forwards, tossing his hair out of his eyes to peer at you. You take it from his grip, rubbing your body down.

“You know they’re gonna be pissed that I bit you,” he changes the topic, his stare caught by the bite at your thigh.

“Hypocrites. Besides, it wasn’t your fault.” You wrap the fabric over your chest with an absent huff. “I was the one who started it.”

His jaw sets at that, and he looks away. His head bounces. As you step out, he’s wiping himself off with a towel of his own, throwing it over his head and rubbing at his hair.

“I still can’t believe you’re okay,” he adds, slightly muffled. “That doesn’t seem right.”

You shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just used to it.”

He straightens, peering at you with a grimace equal parts disbelieving and impressed. “Can you do that?”

You shrug again, more exaggerated. “I guess!”

Just as you move towards the door, head already spinning with half-formed ideas and plans, Yoongi speaks up again.

“What do you think it’s going to change?”

Your feet halt, digging briefly into the rug by the sink. You cast a look over your shoulder, eyeing him as he pulls the towel around his hips. The expression he levels your way reminds you a startling amount of Hoseok—when he’s talking about the person he was before. Earnest. Real, afraid, even. Someone just as confused as you. Dark, steady eyes watch you from underneath strands of wet hair. He looks good now, though, his skin soft and his face clear.

“If you learned everything about who you used to be,” he adds, quiet. “Would that change who you are now?”

“What do you care?”

His eyes widen slightly, lips parting.

“What do you care?” you repeat, shocked by the steadiness of your voice. “Who am I now?”

“I...I don’t know.” Comes the hushed response.

The atmosphere crackles, and your mouth sets into a line without your input. “Then no. Nothing will change for you.”

“Then—”

Here, now, you feel incredibly unclouded for a change. The shower, the haze and addiction quieted, a moment of respite; like vinegar cutting through dust to reveal your own reflection. It feels natural to tighten your shoulders, reaffirm the stance of your feet.

“If I change, maybe it’ll be for me, Yoongi. Maybe I want to make a choice . For once.”

The hallway is empty when you sneak through it, heading back towards your room for new clothes, leaving Yoongi to his sullied bedsheets and his solitude. You’d originally planned to use his phone to seek out news sources and such, but that end to your conversation has put something of a damper on your relationship for the time being, you think. Once again, it occurs to you how little you know these men. Really know. Understand, even. As you get dressed, the fabric of your shirt rubs at your neck and you find yourself scratching absently at it, still frowning into the mirror. Once upon a time, a bite mark at your neck had needed bandaging and managing for days. This one seems to have clotted, scabbed, in record time. It’ll be healed within a couple days.

I don’t know.

Yeah. You, either. But who you were is as good a place to start as any to finding out.

You need something with Internet access. There’s no phones, no computers, in your room, but you’ve seen at least Jin and Joon with phones—it’s a safe bet that most if not all of them have their own devices. And with all seven of them being in the same house now, it’ll be hard to avoid running into at least one willing to let you commandeer it for a sec or two.

You step outside your room, casting a glance about the now-familiar hallway. The strange portraits stare back at you, the faux-old electrical lights flickering at intermediate beats. A hotel for an amusement park, you recall with a slight chuckle. There must have been an immense effort in making this whole place look the part. One that Jin seems to have inherited and maintained, however long they’ve been here. The thought makes you grin. ‘Vampire’, as a title, definitely comes with some steep demands in the name of upholding aesthetic. Despite the details. One of the portraits has a moustache splashed on with neon-green paint, and it kind of ruins the mysterious vibe.

The carpet muffles your steps as you walk, unable to shrug the feeling of being strangely naked. This is the first time you’ve walked this way entirely of your own accord. When you reach the stairs, you slide your palm against the banister, gazing at the wide doors at the foot of the steps. How far would you get? Before someone caught you? Before your own hunger kicked in and you circled back for a re-up on vampire bites? You hesitate, caught in place by the watchful eye of the outside, the moonlight filtering through the topmost window.

You don’t have to deny it forever. The concept of freedom. You’ll shelve it for now. Until it’s convenient for you. Until it’s plausible, and final. Until nobody would come after you. Hoseok said that he’d help you out if you wanted to leave. Then again, how long did you have until that offer expired? Until next his throat ran dry? You sniff, once, and shake your head, continuing down the stairs..

You want to know who you were. Who you are. Preferably before somebody either kills you or throws you in jail. You have to be here for that.

As you touch down on the ground floor, you realize you can hear noise coming from the hallway just behind the stairs. The room opposite where Jin first fed from you. A familiar chill creeps up your spine, curls talons into your shoulders and quickens your heartbeat so that it sounds loud in your own ears as you continue. It’s the youngers of the coven that you can hear—Taehyung, Jimin, and though you can’t hear him over the conversation of the others, you can tell Jungkook is in there, too.

“—past a high school education,” Taehyung rumbles.

“You can’t just decide not to do it,” Jimin scoffs.

“Wasn’t saying I wouldn’t do it, I’m just saying it’ll be harder when its you and me—which its gonna have to be soon .”

Something electronically compressed shouts in a foreign language.

“I can dance.”

“Oh, yeah, we’ll rent you out for parties.” You can hear the eyeroll.

Before you’ve even cleared the doorway, the voices subside.

The room before you is structurally identical to the one on the left of the hall, more wide than tall, reaching towards the back of the house. But the similarities end there. While the room prior is decorated lavishly, like a gentleman’s sitting lounge, this one looks like a teenage boy’s wet dream. There’s anime posters tacked up directly onto the walls, a huge television set centered in the back with a circle of comfortable-looking chairs that have seen better days. To the far right is a beat-up pool table, and to the far left a thin bookcase that looks like it’s been ransacked. Books shoved onto the shelves, sitting dejectedly in rickety stacks on the floor. Comics, most of them. Some are magazines bearing scantily clad women on the covers. A sexy fireman calendar is pinned at the wall just beside the bookshelf with a thumbtack, the gentleman in question pouting at the camera and slipping a thumb under his bright yellow waistband, dark brows cocked. You get the distinct feeling it isn’t up-to-date, but rather a favored model.

On the television screen, a fighting game waits, humming, paused in bright letters slashed across what appears to be a cybernetic feudal japan rendered in 8-bit. Taehyung and Jimin both, seated on the sagging couch directly in front of it, have craned over their necks to behold you with apprehensive eyes past the blanket draped over the back.

Jungkook perches on the end of the pool table, leaning with a cue propping his chin up. He, too, lends a glassy stare your way.

Nobody moves.

You can taste the seconds that pass on the back of your tongue.

“Hey.” You finally greet.

Taehyung is the first to break into a wide smile that creases his eyes and bares his teeth in a boxy shape. “Hey.” he repeats, teasing, brows flitting upwards. “Welcome back.”

Jimin licks his lips and briefly looks to his companions. “Hey.” he says finally, rubbing at his mouth with a sniff.

Jungkook offers no comment, but the corner of his lips quirk, pulling into a straight line. You’ll take it as a greeting.

“I don’t wanna interrupt,” you continue, awkward, but proud of yourself for standing your ground. “I just need access to the web.”

“We’re grounded.” Jungkook finally speaks up, deadpan. No one moves, watching you patiently as you wait for him to add the ‘kidding’. It doesn’t come.

“...You’re serious.”

“Jin changed the wifi password,” Taehyung explains, with a wry chuckle. “He said he’ll give it back in a few years.”

“As long as he doesn’t catch Jungkook trying to guess it again,” Jimin adds with a pointed glance at his younger.

Jungkook rolls his eyes, huffing once. “If I had figured it out, you’d use it.”

Jimin shifts in his seat, raising his hand to gesture as he continues to accuse, now facing him directly, brows high. “Yeah, but you didn’t, did you? You know if he catches you again, we’re all gonna be in trouble for it.”

“I’d rather die standing than live kneeling.” Jungkook’s voice drops into a deep accent for the dramatics.

Taehyung nods sagely. “Good man,” he returns in a similar timber.

Jimin snatches a threadbare pillow off the ground, smacks Taehyung upside the head with it and beams it directly at Jungkook, who fends it off with a skillful parry using the pool cue.

“Pathetic,” Jungkook intones, thick, torso dropping into a defensive stance, wielding the cue like a bo staff.

Taehyung giggles. “It’s no use,” he adds in a growl.

“Okay,” you interrupt their antics, “So I’ll have to ask Jin?”

“Probably.” Jimin replies, nodding. “Namjoon has it, too.”

“He hasn't been out of his room since you got here, though,” Taehyung interjects.

The cherry-headed kung fu master perched atop the pool table deflates visibly. He flips the cue to lean it back onto the ground again, shoulders sinking. His face resumes its empty stare into space, a slight frown curving his lips.

“Hobi would have it.”

“You could ask him, but he doesn’t like letting people on his stuff.”

“Yoongi?”

“Probably not a good idea. He didn’t look too good—”

“I’m not asking Yoongi,” you say, a little too quickly. Three sets of eyes swivel to you in mild surprise.

“I already...I’m not going to ask him.” You finish, lame.

“Your best bet is just asking Jin. He’ll let you do whatever you want,” Jungkook pipes up, quiet.

“Uh. Alright. Do you know where he is?”

“Probably in the study. Back down the hall. To the right. It’s opposite the kitchen. You remember where the kitchen is?”

You remember. You remember Jungkook pressing you gently to the counter. His hands on your waist. His lips against yours, stolen and perfect. The way his jet eyes burn into yours tells you he remembers, too. You try to focus on the memory of stale crackers instead.

“Thanks.” The word escapes your lips like something small, something almost shameful, slinking past your teeth and disappearing somewhere under the couch.

You move to turn away, to leave them to their games. Talking to Jin might be best, anyways, if your goal was to figure yourself out. He’s always been kind to you. He’s probably most likely to sit still and listen to what you have to say. Probably.

“Wait. Do…”

You pull up short, just shy of leaving the frame. You poke your head back around the corner to find Jimin scooted up on the couch, fixing you with a look that’s as surprised as his companions’.

“Do you...want to play?” he finishes.

A beat passes.

“The game,” he clarifies, tone softening, but his eyes are earnest.

“The game?...” you echo, frozen in place. Ah. The one on the television screen. You blink. “I...I don’t remember how to play video games.”

“It’s super easy. We can teach you. If you want. You don’t have to.” he adds, rapid-fire and increasingly losing his nerve.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

He frowns, throwing his gaze to some indeterminate point in space to his right. “I just...they made it sound like you’re...staying. I don’t want things to be weird forever, you know?”

The other two in the room turn their sights on you and you can feel yourself being the center of attention between them; and not for the first time, though now for a completely different reason. You hesitate.

But he’s right. If you’re going to be living with these people for the foreseeable future, what’s the point in leaving room for tensions? And if you’re going to leave, why not convince them in the meantime to see you as something other than a fuckable meal ticket? It can’t hurt. Can’t it?

“...Alright.” you acquiesce, finally. Jimin’s expression melts into a sweet relief, and he’s automatically scooting to the side on the couch, gesturing you over. Jungkook doesn’t move, opting to continue staring as you reenter the room and approach the sofa. Taehyung’s face is impossible to get a proper read on, but he slides to the side and pats at the seat between himself and Jimin in a way you think is encouraging.

You skirt around the corner, navigating past Taehyung’s legs and the wires decorating the floor in front of the tv set, finally opting to throw yourself into the cushions. A yelp of surprise leaves you when you sink further into it than you bargained for, your feet leaving the ground and your sight almost obscured by the sofa’s plush maw. Taehyung laughs at that, his eyes pushing into crescents.

“Comfy, right?”

“It’s, uh,” you struggle to combat your new pillowy prison, thrashing to regain your balance. “Well—”

“It’s a piece of shit is what it is,” Jungkook clarifies through an absent pout.

“Tae won’t let us get rid of it,” Jimin adds with a roll of his eyes, leaning to pass you his controller. You accept it with one hand, finalizing your position atop the seat instead of inside it with the other.

“It’s literally the perfect couch,” Tae defends. “Years and years of wearing it in has made it the ideal specimen.”

“Don’t sleep on it. You’ll throw out your back and walk funny for like a week,” Jungkook warns.

“Nobody said you had to sleep on it.”

“I don’t. I sleep on the pool table. Way more comfortable.”

Jimin shifts closer as they argue, careful not to get too close, careful not to touch you when he points the buttons out.

“These are for attacking, these are for combos,” he’s explaining, patient. “The joystick moves it. All you have to do is beat Taehyung up.”

You can’t help but smile at that. “The dream,” you venture, trying to be more familiar.

To your relief, he returns it, a giggle shaking his shoulders. “This one unpauses the game. When you’re ready.”

“When you’re ready to have your ass handed to you.” A glance at Tae reveals his brows raised ridiculously high on his head, his head tilted back to eye you with an exaggerated air of superiority. His jaw flexes as he chews imaginary gum for punctuation.

“Give her the chance to learn the controls at least.”

“No. Adapt or die.”

You take a breath, trying to cement Jimin’s brief overview in your mind. Are you the kind of person who’s good at video games? It’s a possibility. “...We’ll see who hands whose ass to whom.”

“Foolish.”

With a tap of the button, you unpause the game.

The wolf-man character on the far right of the screen immediately strides over to the winged angel-looking man on the left. You start mashing buttons, suddenly frantic, but the character advances closer and grabs yours, throws him to the side of the screen and unleashes hell on him when he bounces back. The character explodes in shards of light, falling dramatically to the ground, and bright text once again flashes red across the screen.

K.O.

Jimin tries to defend you through laughter, offering advice and scolding Taehyung in turn, who stretches leisurely and cracks his neck with an expression of ultimate self-satisfaction.

“You, are a jerk,” you laugh after a beat of stunned silence. “You couldn’t have thrown one match?”

“A true champion never throws matches,” is his deeply-serious reply.

“In the words of Ghandi,” Jungkook pipes up, “Get good.”

“Ghandi didn’t say that.”

“Ghandi said ‘get good, scrub,’” Taehyung corrects.

“Ah, my bad, namaste.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jimin gripes. “Give me the other controller.”

You turn from him with a look of determination, effectively shielding Taehyung from his grasp as you twist in the seat, despite the inherent difficulty of the maneuver. “No! I was promised the chance to beat him up!”

From the side, you hear Jungkook’s quiet, “Yes, let it flow through you.”

“But he—”

“I want to go again! I’m just figuring the controls out!” You insist, swivelling to glower at Tae. “We’re gonna go again!”

His eyes flash and he grins, delighted in your participation in his little play competition. “Another hot, steamy plate of ass-whooping for the lady?”

“Weird thing to call yourself,” you bite back.

“Ass-whooping?”

“‘The lady’.”

Jungkook hoots. “She’s calling you a girl.”

Taehyung shrugs at that as he flicks a button absently, the words ‘Player 1: READY’ darting across the screen. “I could be ladylike.”

“You’re too much of a whore,” Jimin snarks.

“This is true.”

Your next round doesn’t fare much better than the first. Or your third. Fifth. But it doesn’t take long for you to get caught up in the game as well as the company, the boys visibly relaxing the longer you sit there among them. Jungkook slowly begins to chime in with tips and tricks, occasionally dipping into this ‘announcer’ voice like he’s narrating a sports channel. His favorite thing to shout becomes “That’s gotta hurt!” and for some reason, it only becomes funnier every time he trots it out.

Taehyung talks shit nonstop, constantly, raining endless pain onto your little angel man like its hardly a second thought. Like his fingers are plugged directly into the matrix. Like he was born with this controller in his hand. He doesn’t blink.

Jimin mostly tsks and complains about Taehyung’s merciless demolition of your player character, cheering loudly when the odd hit lands. He almost falls off the couch laughing when you manage to kick Tae upwards with a lucky combination of button mashing and he immediately uses the air to pummel your head into the ground with a one-shot, flawless K.O. It only gets worse at your insistence that the controller is at fault, but you can’t help but laugh with him until the four of you are lost completely in giggles.

“We need to level the playing field somehow,” Jimin gasps, tears in his eyes. “This isn’t a game, this is a massacre.”

Taehyung jumps nearly a mile in the air when the business end of a pool cue suddenly appears in his periphery, rearing back before smacking the backs of his outstretched hands like a stern nun.

“Ow?” he giggles, head turning in confusion, the controller nearly slipping out of his grip.

“Interference.” Jungkook wiggles the pole at him again, playfully dodging like he’s boxing, before rapping him across the knuckles again.

“Hey!” Tae yelps, trying to scoot out of his reach, but Jungkook’s arm and the cue itself are long enough that he just continues to extend with him, waving at him warningly even as he bats at it.

“Press play, press play,” Jimin urges, leaning towards you with excitement, eyes wild.

“That’s cheating, that’s not fair,” Taehyung laughs in a high pitch, trying to shoulder at the cue, raise his knee against it, all futile against Jungkook’s pestilence, gripping his controller for the next round as you hit the button to continue.

“All is fair in war.” Jungkook replies, solemn.

Tae manages to push the stick away just in time to block your clumsy attack, getting a quick combo in, but the end move is cut off when the pool cue jams into a space just beneath his ribs and his whole body immediately convulses ticklishly with a shout.

“Now! Now!” Jimin surges forward, warm hands covering yours to guide your fingers to the right buttons. It’s a split second window of opportunity where Taehyung has to take one hand off the controller in order to grab the cue, but you’re seizing it with a vigor you didn’t know you had, slamming into the buttons so hard you swear they could crack, aided by Jimin’s fingers above yours, everyone breathlessly focused on the screen as your character unleashes one, two, three combos onto the body of the wolf man.

Taehyung roars aloud, intimidating if not for the laughter that pitches the end upwards.

The finishing move.

Simultaneous, moved by one will, the intention towards sheer and utter annihilation, you and Jimin slot the last combo into place. The finishing move is some untenable, seizure-inducing spasm of lights and feathers and halos and something to do with water? You don’t understand whatever it is the angel man shrieks, but you understand the red slash of victory streaking across the screen with righteous fanfare.

K.O.

You won.

Jimin is crowing, beaming, and you can’t help but grin along with him, raising the controller aloft like a trophy won. You’re sweating.

“You did so good!” he gushes, hands shaking yours in the air, still curled around each other. “You did it, you kicked his ass apart!”

“Traitor!!” Taehyung howls, still laughing so hard he can barely see.

As you and Jimin briefly engage in some awkward, silly victory dance, both pairs of hands held above your head, Taehyung places the controller gently on the floor in front of himself, jerking upwards and clamping both hands onto the pool cue, tugging Jungkook off his seat atop the table with one motion. Jungkook shrieks as he’s thrown forward, losing his balance and crashing into the blonde man ungracefully, the two of them carried by the force into you. You jolt when Taehyung’s head lands in your lap, still play-growling and releasing the cue to grab the other boy more firmly about his shoulders. The motion in turn thrusts you at Jimin, who catches you with a small noise of surprise, the four of you tilting like dominos, steadily sinking into the couch like hollywood quicksand. The two youngsters struggle for a moment, Tae’s head thrashing across your thighs, Jungkook trying to extricate himself and knocking into your elbow, Jimin seemingly frozen beneath you, arms forgotten midair, the heat of his midsection warming your back.

All at once, everyone stills.

Your excitement wavers. Dissipates.

What’s happening? What’s wrong?

Realization crashes into you as several things happen at the same time.

Taehyung’s expression drops, turning back to impassive and unreadable. He turns slightly, towards the bite at your thigh, and you can hear the inhale he draws through his nose as he casts his eyes upwards, at you. His pupils dilate. Oh shit.

Jungkook turns entirely to stone, held steady by his forearms on top of his elder. But you can hear his lips part, the sharp breath he takes. His fingers curl absently into the cushions beneath you.

At the sound of Jimin’s tongue flitting to wet his lips, you move to begin turning and facing him, but you jolt, pausing at the feeling of something brushing, feather-light and barely there, at the base of your hair. His breath warms the nape of your neck when he speaks in a hesitant murmur. He’s angled towards the side where your fresh marks sting.

“...Ah. Did Yoongi…?”

Your body is moving before you can think, aided by the heat that floods your limbs. You’re writhing, kicking out from under Taehyung, disentangling yours and Jimin’s hands, pushing them off, away, trying to get leverage enough to be released from the depths of the sagging couch. Taehyung and Jungkook are clumsy and slow, sitting up just enough for you to get out, and Jimin is doing his best to assist you, you think, but you’re still unthreading your fingers, shoving a steadying hand off your waist and pretending that the lack of support doesn’t make you stumble forward. Some part of you is disappointed to leave the warmth, the attention, but you know exactly what would happen if you stayed. And you don’t have time for it. As you struggle your way upwards, finally free, you refuse to look directly at them, but you catch a glimpse of their faces anyway on your way to the doorframe, headed for the hallway.

Jungkook is still holding himself up over Tae, their play fight forgotten entirely. His eyes bore dark, burning holes into yours. Taehyung’s are glued to your thighs, tongue making an appearance to slide across his mouth almost thoughtfully as he sinks leisurely back into the pillows. Jimin is the only one of them that doesn’t look blown-out. Brows raised and angled, plush lips parted in shock—that all-too-familiar hunger has crept behind his eyes but more than that, he looks surprised.

You bite back an apology as you stride to the doorway and through the hall, heading back towards the front of the house. What do you have to apologize for? You aren’t sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. Even so, there’s a part of you that’s mourning the most comfortable atmosphere you’ve been party to in what feels like ever.

It was nice, but you forgot.

You forgot what they are, and what you are to them.

You wish it didn’t make your heart ache.

“Wait. Wait!”

You don’t hear him the first time, too lost in your own embarrassment, but the second time you hear Jimin calling after you, your pace quickens. He’s running after you, breaking into a slight jog when you speed up. He catches up with you at the front door, nearly on top of you, and the thought of him grabbing your arm or otherwise touching to get your attention has your heel spinning to frown at him. He halts immediately when your gazes meet. Your cheeks are still flushed and you hate thinking of how it must look.

“Yeah, Yoongi did. Okay? What do you want, Jimin?”

He recoils visibly, stepping back. His eyes are still slightly dilated, his own cheeks a pretty pink, plump lips parted. He looks hurt. Agitated. You ignore the urge to sidle closer and bite his lips for him.

“I—I just,” he hesitates, spluttering when you move to turn around again and continue to the study, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

“I just wanted you to...to feel more comfortable with us.” he admits, quiet. “I know things are weird.”

You snort. He winces. “That’s a word for it.”

“I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. Being here. I just want you to feel…like...like you can trust us.”

“Trust you?”

“Like you can trust me! I know it’s hard, just being dropped in a house where everybody’s already...and you’re the odd one out…”

“I’m not an in-law, Jimin,” you balk. You remind him just as much as yourself, “You kidnapped me so you could eat me.”

He winces again, rubbing the back of his neck. His tongue wets his lips again, nervous. “I know that. I’m just.” He meets your eye again. “I’m just trying to help.”

You stare at him.

“The last time you ‘helped’ me, you ended up with your dick down my throat.” You reply, incredulous.

The red dusting his face gets so, so much worse and he has to look away.

“That was...different. We...you...it was—” he’s looking for some excuse and failing miserably. “I’m sorry for that, too.” he ends finally. “But! But, I never was going to hurt you, y’know.”

You sigh, hand coming to massage at your temples absently. God, you hope that migraine isn’t planning on coming back. Will drama make your withdrawal worse? “Jimin—”

“I don’t want you to feel alone. Hunted and wanted and scared and alone. And,” he adds, his tone going quiet. “I don’t want...us….” He trails off, restarting with a steadying inhale. “You aren’t hazed.”

The new direction spins you for a moment, taking you completely off-guard. “...no?”

“Are you okay?”

You gape. What is he getting at? But he meets your eye with...fear? Worry? “I’m...fine?”

“Yoongi bit you.”

“Yes…?”

“Without any haze. While he’s...he’s sick. Hungry.”

There’s a pause between you while you try to decipher his point. He eventually gets frustrated with it and casts a brief look about, as if checking for anyone who might be listening in, before stepping in slightly closer. His hands raise, placating, like you’re a spooked animal who might turn tail any minute, at the slightest movement.

“Did he force himself on you?” His voice is soft.

“No more than any of you have,” you retort, stepping back, but Jimin only looks more concerned, eyes darting between yours. “Come on, you can’t pretend that ‘haze’ excuses some of the shit I’ve been through.”

“Haze can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do—”

This again. You could strangle him. “Oh, thank you, Namjoon—”

“—and there is a difference between convincing someone to give you their blood and taking it from them. An important difference. I need...I need to know that we aren’t like that to you.”

“And if you were?”

“Then we’re both leaving.” His response is immediate, grim, and again you’re left somewhat reeling. You watch him for a moment, admittedly intrigued by this convoluted, complicated world view he’s apparently keeping track of. The gray standards he’s holding this entire crew to. It’s weirdly fascinating. Would he really leave them? Just because they didn’t haze you?

“...I went into Yoongi’s room and asked him to bite me,” you say finally. Jimin’s entire frame sags in relief, though his expression morphs into open-mouthed shock.

“You….did?”

“Actually, he was the one that wasn’t...completely into it to start with,” you admit after a beat, recalling the man bundled into the corner, insisting that he didn’t want to hurt you. Something like guilt flashes through you. “He asked me to leave.”

“Oh, thank God.” Jimin looks like he’s this close to crying, head leaning back, brows furrowed. He leans his head into his hands, running his fingers through his hair with a deep inhale. He presses his palms into his eyes, disbelieving. “Oh, my god, I was so...I thought…”

You eye him peculiarly. “You really think it makes that big of a difference.”

“It makes all the difference. We have to drink blood. And we can’t always just... ask people for it. But we can make it as painless as possible. We can choose not to let people suffer for it. We don’t have to be...like others.” He takes another breath. “We aren’t like them. We don’t have to be.”

“That is such a thin line.”

“It is,” he concedes. “It really is. But I have to...I have to draw it. For my sake. For everyone’s. I love them all too much.”

“You’re a hero,” you drawl.

“I’m traumatized,” he counters, too quick on the draw, too off-handed. The wry grin that pulls up one side of his mouth is not a happy one. There are scars hiding in his tone, and for a second, you can see how old he is. How old he really is. The shadow of what he’s really been through, passing over him and seeping past the veil that immortality lends. “It does that to you.”

Silence settles into the front hall around you, punctuated only by the odd creak of old wood somewhere in the bowels of the hotel, echoing.

Namjoon’s words rise, unbidden, in your mind.

Jimin...Jimin was my fault. Wait, does that mean that Namjoon—You don’t have time to be horrified or even more confused, because Jimin is shoving his hands into his pockets and exhaling loudly through his nose. He looks equal parts content with his answers and idly thoughtful.

“So you’re okay?” he asks, eyes searching yours. His pupils have almost shrunk back to normal, no doubt distracted by whatever is lurking in his past.

“...I’m okay,” you respond.

“Okay,” his head bobs. “You can talk to me, okay?”

“Without sticking your dick in my mouth?” you snap before you can stop yourself.

His expression darkens. “It…” he hesitates, tongue slipping to wet his lips.

“That...will be up to you,” he says finally, slow, intent.

Your belly roils and again you have to beat back the sudden desire to throw yourself at him, sneak hands beneath his shirt, into his jeans, lick into his mouth. His gaze flicks across your body, bottom to top, before he turns on his heel and slinks back down the hall to the game room. Briefly, you wonder what the atmosphere must be like in there now. You shudder and the marks at your neck and thigh pulse.

It’s too easy for them.

Far too easy.

But you like to think you’re learning.

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#moth to flame #bts smut #bts fanfic #bts vampire au #bts x reader #eyyyyyy she returns #what do yall think

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lunar-writings-love · 3 years

Text

College!AU - Hongjoong (ateez)

ahaha so i’m baaaack ;; super sorry for all the inactivity babes life has been weighing down on all of us i’m sure and i needed some time! This is the next installment of the college!au ateez series, and although i had planned to have hongjoong last, y’all requested him so much i wrote him next and changed the order around!

Author’s note: Bullet fic,

Warnings: like a drop of angst if u squint ?? the word sh!t appears one time i think

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Hongjoong:

he’s so cute i’m Sad

ok so Joongie is just so loved, so treasured by everyone ,, every time he enters into a room everyone just 🥺

he’ll walk into a room looking all sleepy in overalls or something and literally everyone’s parental instincts awaken from the depths of college emotional indifference and suddenly ,,

there’s world peace it’s a sight to see

so, our Hongjoongie is actually a double major!!

he’s a world lit major, and he’s minoring in gender studies so his emphasis is on analyzing feminist texts

more often than not, the best way to find hongjoong is to just go to the library on the south side of campus at odd hours at night and you’ll usually find him buried underneath a pile of books ;; (and more often than not he’ll also be sleeping because baby can’t stay awake to save his life ://)

But he really does love his major ,, and If u let him , he’ll rave hours and hours about literature; analyzing them through historical context, societal reflection, the role of women, writing style.....

....he just loves what he does and it makes everyone around him love him for it too!!

He always has extensive talks with Yeosang (an english major who took a lot of lit classes with hongjoong hint go read the yeosang!au) on american 19th century feminist writings

they started their own book club and it’s literally just them two, no other members allowed, and all they do is eat finger sandwiches and shit on misogynistic men we sTAN

HoWEVer, although hongjoong’s work in literature is impressive and respected, he’s probably better known for his second major:

music composition!

music is the love of his life ,,, no buts there’s nothing he’ll love more than his art (except maybe you aha ha ha ;)

and people knew him around campus becaaaauseeeeee ,,,,, he would usually ,,, dj at frat parties...

it wasn’t something he particularly liked, but hey money is money.

in all seriousness though, when hongjoong wasn’t reading or writing papers, he was glued to his mac producing tracks and writing lyrics

the only thing was ,,, he didn’t actually sing any of what he wrote

he never thought his own voice suited his songs, and would much rather sit on the sidelines moving along the creative direction

and although the boys usually are the ones to sing his demos,, joongie always felt like something was still ,,, missing

this is where u come in wink wonk

you’re just a lowly econ major who surprisingly !! doesn’t !! want !! to start your own fortune 500 company :DD !! wow so rare :)

anYWaYS,, you’re just doing it cuz your parents pressured you into pursuing a career with stable job opportunities and you’re kinda good at math and graphs soooo

....why not

but to be honest, you always felt trapped

you were never able to stop that feeling of impending doom when you’d open your macro-econ textbooks ,,,

or how your heart hurt when you think about the fact that your life is headed straight to an incredibly mundane future :

a desk job, an overpriced apartment that barely has enough room for you, living in constant air pollution from the city’s high carbon emissions, never finding true love, dying alone with 50 cats, taxes...you get the drift

you usually pushed those thoughts to the back of your mind, negativity isn’t productive and right now you had a world economics midterm to study for

but..

not that you’d ever admit it, your true passion had always been music

you weren’t the best composer, you knew just enough piano to get you but; but you had a set of PIPES dAmN

your friends could usually find you at the dorm’s music rooms ,, and whenever you felt stress or needed to unwind, you’d usually head over to those rooms

now ,,, these rooms are soundproof // but the trick is you actually have to close the door cuz if u don’t......

everyone can hear you

and by everyone I mean the entire floor

you were doing your usual thing at the music room one night when one of your friends came in to let you know everyone would be heading over to dinner soon,, u promised only one more song before meeting them upstairs on your dorm floor

hoWEVeR, U DIDN’T REALIZE THAT WHEN YOUR FRIEND WALKED AWAY THEY LEFT THE DOOR OPEN

and soo ,, when u started singing again //// everyone heard

and by everyone i mean ???!?

hongjoong :))

and it was love at first sight ,,, or rather

,, love at first listen??

he won’t ponder over the semantics, all Hongjoong knew was that he had been looking for a voice like yours and needed you on his tracks

this man barged into the room and begged you to lend your voice for his songs

...on his knees :00

you were in shock like what were you supposed to do?

this random man stormed in and got on his knees ,,

what was next ??

marriage ????

u didn’t really say anything for a while just kinda looked him in his eyes

but then your uwu instincts kicked in--u don’t know what it is about this dude but u just wanna like give him candy or something

and so you hesitantly asked for his name

and that’s when hongjoong realized he was an IDIOT

because not only was your voice heavenly, but of course you were cute too and he just presented himself like a complete and utter maniac and He Didn’T eVEN bOTHER To TelL You hIS NAme!

he wanted the ground to swallow him up but alas

he got off his knees and shyly stuck out his hand and told you his name

you looked at him once again ,, and surprisingly

you took his hand with a small smile on your face

you ended up totally forgetting about dinner with your friends at the dining hall

because hongjoong sat beside you on the piano bench and showed you his songs and lyrics, and you....fell in love <3

you’d never connected with anyone on this type of emotional level before and it was almost sort of overwhelming

it also kinda gave you hope too ,, because here was Hongjoong ,, someone who managed to get the best of both worlds : a music and a lit degree

and you thought that maybe ,, you could do something with music too

you guys exchanged numbers and scheduled to meet at the university��s recording studio that weekend

Hongjoong composed a track and you added your own lyrics with his help--after two weeks of mixing, mastering, producing, and recording ,,, you guys officially released a single!!

you really weren’t expecting it, but hongjoong was a bit of a social butterfly and so the song became a hit on campus

people were uploading it to their social media, sharing it with friends, playing it while they worked out, it was kinda ridiculous to you

the student paper even wrote an article about it (and later you found out that the journalist was one of hongjoong’s friend’s girlfriend ,, (hint go read the yunho!au)

And when the song reached 10,000 streams, that gave you the confidence to do what you had always wanted to do

you called your parents up on a Saturday morning to tell them you were picking up a vocal performance major

you were extremely anxious for this conversation, so Hongjoong decided to stay by your side for moral support

As both of you waited with baited breath for your parents’ response, Hongjoong was also right there just ,, holding your hand so sweetly,, and that was driving YOU INSANE

(because in these past couple of months you had gotten to know Hongjoong you had mostly definitely, absolutely, completely fallen head over heels for him)

after a long moment of silence, your parents agreed

they weren’t too happy about it, but they also weren’t as against it as you thought they’d be--the only condition was that you’d continue with econ and instead double major

it would honestly be hard considering the amount of mandatory classes and performances required of the vocal performance major, but you were too happy to care

after your goodbyes with your parents, you looked over to Hongjoong with the biggest smile on your face

and it just,, absolutely melted his heart

before he could stop himself he just wrapped his arms around you and twirled you around

and then :) he gave you the softest kiss on your cheek

of course, after it dawned on him what he had done, he instantly turned red and started chucking nervously as he stuttered his words

but for you, the newfound confidence and ADRENALINE after your successful phone call with your parents, you grabbed both sides of his face and asked him if you could kiss him

Hongjoong was wide-eyed but LIKE HELL he would pass up this up

so after muttering out a shy yes, y’all kissed awwww :))

and after that, you guys became a couple!

you’d show up to the frat parties he would DJ at and would always dance like an idiot with wooyoung in the corner of the room

and you and hongjoong would always partner up for music composition and performance projects: Hongjoong would write the tracks and you’d sing for them

you guys were honestly such a soft couple

you also picked up the habit of studying sleeping at the library with hongjoong because double majoring was hard and it required a lot of work

and it just, now became a thing for people to always find you along with Hongjoong sleeping under a pile of books

you guys kept on releasing more singles after that, and are currently working on an EP!

and honestly, you were so incredibly happy

you had the most amazing boyfriend, and you were pursuing your passion

and you felt just a little bit better knowing that your future was unclear

you no longer pictured yourself at a desk job, living out an absolutely dreadful life

instead, you finally realized the multitude of opportunities at your disposal

and with Hongjoong by your side, you just knew everything in life would work out in the end!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FEEL FREE TO REQUEST!

Love you guys! Stay safe and healthy!!

- Luna

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