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troquantary · 3 years

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Edward Cullen: That Boy Ain’t Right

So I was doing a reread of @therealvinelle 's collection of Twilight metas, as one does, and in "Edward, Denial, and a Human Girlfriend" she mentions that she doesn't believe Edward is sane. I thought, "ha, yeah, he's definitely not," and also, "but wait, what does that mean exactly, please say more about that." But since she's already inundated with asks, I've decided to use my own head-muscle and explore this idea. (TL;DR: I start out more or less organized, synthesize some points Vinelle has made across several posts (and have hopefully linked to them all where relevant but please tell me if not), touch a little on narcissism, then take a hard left into the negative effects of being a telepath.)

Just a couple things to note at the outset, though. Theses have been written already (probably) about Edward as an abuser. Edward being insane doesn't negate that at all; he's definitely an asshole and just...a disaster of a human being. (I find it more funny than anything, but YMMV.) I'm also going to try to avoid talking specifically about mental illness and how it relates (or doesn't relate) to abusive behavior -- that's territory I'm not really equipped to discuss, like at all. My starting point is "Edward has a deeply warped perception of reality," not "Edward has X disorder."

So: deeply warped perception of reality. The evidence? Goes behind a cut, because my one character trait is Verbose.

Vinelle provides a great example of it in the post linked above, which I'll just quote because she does words good: "[Edward] keeps acting like his romance with Bella is a romantic tragedy, and all the cast of Twilight are actors on a stage making it as sublime as possible." Edward's the one to pursue Bella, but he does so with the full belief, from the very beginning, that it will never last; Bella will "outgrow" him, go on her human way, and he can spend the rest of eternity brooding magnificently over his too-short romantic bliss. [Insert premature ejaculation joke.] Turning her is never an option, even though Alice, Noted Psychic, says that romancing Bella will either end with her dead (exsanguinated) or dead (vampire).

This framing, where he's a dark anti-hero in love with -- but never tainting! -- the pure maiden and eventually leaving her in a grand, tragic sacrifice to preserve her soul? It's fucking bonkers. Bella isn't a person to him in this scenario. As Vinelle points out, Bella's never really a person to him at all; he falls in love with his own mental construct, cherry-picking from what he observes of her behavior and her responses to his 20 (thousand) Questions to convince himself that she is the ideal woman.

Bella's not the only one who gets the projection/cardboard-cutout treatment. Edward sees everything and everyone through a highly particular, personalized lens. He filters his entire reality, which we all do to an extent, but the thing with Edward is that he starts with his conclusions and then only pays attention to the evidence that supports those conclusions. Often that evidence consists of what he admits in New Moon are only "surface" thoughts -- but recognizing that limitation doesn't keep him from taking those thoughts as representative of what people are. Edward then becomes absolutely convinced by his own "reasoning" and won't be swayed from what he has decided is Objectively True. It's obvious with Bella; it's also painfully obvious with Rosalie. (Vinelle explains this and brings up Edward's raging Madonna/Whore complex in the same post, so refer to that again -- she's right.)

He also catastrophizes. Everything. Bella's just vibing in her room, rereading Wuthering Heights for the 87th time? She's gonna be hit by a meteor, better sneak into her room while she sleeps. Bella's going to the beach with the filthy mundanes their human classmates? She's gonna fall in the ocean. Jasper's cannibal pals are stopping by for a visit, but know not to hunt in the area? DISASTER, DEFCON 1, ALSO FUCK YOU JASPER FOR EVEN EXISTING IN MY AND BELLA'S SPHERE YOU UNSPEAKABLE BURDEN. Edward must believe that Bella is vulnerable and in near-constant peril, to support the reality he has created in which he is the villain turned protector and maybe?? hero??? (!!!) for his beloved. So when the actual, James-shaped danger arrives, he goes berserk, snarling and flipping his shit and generally not helping the situation. His fantasy demands that Bella remain human, so instead of doing the very thing Alice, Noted Psychic, assures him will neutralize the threat (and not just a threat to Bella, either, but to Bella's family and any other human James might decide to include in the "game"), he vetoes it immediately, no discussion. Bella Must Not Turn, and he sticks to those guns despite James nearly reducing her to ground beef, despite leaving Bella catatonic with depression (but human! success!) in New Moon, despite Aro's order and his family's vote and, let's not forget, Bella's clearly and repeatedly stated desire to be a vampire. It's going to happen. But he doesn't accept it until Renesmee busts out of Bella like the Kool-Aid man and the poor girl's heart finally, unequivocally stops.

Sane people don't behave this way. I don't want to slap labels on Edward, but I can't help but note that he comes across as highly narcissistic. He's the only real person in his universe, the lone player among us NPCs. That probably has a lot to do with him being frozen in the mindset and maturity of a seventeen-year-old boy, but I think it's also just...him, on some fundamental level. His failure to connect with others and recognize them as full, independent beings with their own wants and priorities isn't like Bella's failure -- she's badly depressed. Edward is...something else, and I get the sense that his sanity has been steadily deteriorating over time. And a cursory google of narcissistic traits turns up some familiar-looking stuff. He's self-loathing, yes, but also grandiose; he hates himself for the monster he is (and hates most vampires besides Esme and Carlisle for their monstrosity, too) but still feels superior to humans, to the extent that he felt entitled to human blood and resented Carlisle for depriving him of his "proper" diet. He eventually returns to Carlisle, but he's far from content -- the beginning of Midnight Sun finds him in a state of ennui, bored and dismissive of (if not outright disgusted by) everyone around him, that has apparently persisted for years and years. He doesn't play the piano, he doesn't compose, he doesn't enjoy anything...at least until Bella comes along and then he becomes obsessed to a disturbing degree with her and his new, romantic tragedy spin on reality.

[Next-day edit: I’m not sure where else to fit this in, but the way Edward casually contemplates violence against people who have, at best, mildly annoyed him is...chilling. I have a hard time writing off his strategizing how to murder the entire Biology class as a result of bloodlust -- it’s so calculated, nothing like the blackout state of thirst Emmett describes when he encountered his own “singer,” and that is probably the default for when a vampire is extremely thirsty. But even ignoring the Biology class incident, Edward still does things like consider, with disturbing frequency, how he might grievously injure or kill Mike Newton, all because...Edward considers him his romantic rival (despite Bella barely giving the kid the time of day). He thinks about slapping Mike through a wall, which might be an amusing slapstick image, except as a vampire Edward’s actually capable of turning this boy’s skeleton to a fine powder. So it’s, y’know, kind of sick when you think about it.

But even worse than that, when Bella tells Edward about how she flirted with Jacob to get at that sweet, sweet vampire lore, Edward chuckles and then, after dropping Bella home, flippantly observes that now that the treaty’s broken, why not genocide? I’m not even kidding, it’s right there in Midnight Sun; he seriously thinks about the fact that he’d be technically justified now in wiping out the entire tribe because a teenager tried to impress a girl with a spooky story. That is fucked. Remember, Edward was there with Carlisle when the treaty was first established. He knows how remarkable it is that they even came to a truce in the first place, that it was only ever possible because Carlisle is...well, Carlisle, and that it marks a pretty significant moment in supernatural history. He doesn’t care; he doesn’t respect it, or he’d never think something like “Ha ha, if I went and killed them all, I wouldn’t even be wrong. I mean, I won’t do it, but I’m just saying, I wouldn’t be wrong.”

Again: not the thought process or behavior of a sane person. (Or a person that respects life in general -- sorry Carlisle, big L.)]

Finally, whether he's a narcissist or not, I think the fact that Edward has constant, unavoidable access to everyone's thoughts is a powerful contributing factor to his instability. He can tune out the mental noise to an extent, but he can't stop it -- so he comes to rely on it like another sense. This causes issues with disconnect and lack of empathy, of course, but there's another facet to this shit diamond: he's basically experiencing a ceaseless flow of intrusive thoughts. His narration in Midnight Sun suggests that he "hears" the words people think, can "see" what they visualize in their mind's eye, and can sense the emotional "tone" and intensity of their thoughts. Therefore, perceiving Jasper's thirst through his thoughts makes Edward more aware of his own, "doubling" the discomfort. This would be a lot to deal with even from just his immediate coven members, but Edward gets all of this pouring into his head like a firehose on a day-to-day basis because the Cullens live right alongside humans. I know Meyerpires have galaxy brains or whatever, but that's a ton to process.

Besides the compounding effect on his own thirst when he "feels" the thirst of others, Meyer never suggests that Edward has difficulty separating his own thoughts from other people's; even when he was newly turned, he recognized Carlisle's "voice" in his head as Carlisle's. That would create a whole different host of issues around identity, but it looks like Edward's escaped that particular torment. However, I can easily imagine that what he does experience is just shy of unbearable nonetheless, with an eroding effect on his sanity over decades. He can't sleep to escape it; he's on a dishwater diet and probably (like the rest of his family) experiencing a perpetual, low-grade physical discomfort due to his thirst never being fully satisfied; and he's around far more people than is the norm for vampires -- even discounting all the humans, his own coven is unusually large -- meaning more noise.

Honestly, it would be weirder if he were all there, considering.

And even though I feel like I lost a sense of structure around where I started ranting about telepathy, I've written like 1.5k words about Edward fucking Cullen and I think that's enough for one post.

#twilight #twilight renaissance #twilight meta #edward cullen #i stared too long and the twilight abyss gazed back #long post #major credit due to therealvinelle for having basically all the ideas already #theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin too since they agree and build off each other's metas a lot #idk how people who write meta can just crank these posts out i've been here for two hours #edited to add stuff i forgot to mention about edward's disproportionately violent fantasies

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spideyspeaches · 3 years

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Pretty lies (ugly truths)

A/N: This was something I wrote as soon as I heard Clean also that was 2019 and @peterspideysstuff made me do it smh. I’m proud of it so don’t let this flop 🙂

WC: 3.3k+

Warnings: Please read these before going ahead- mentions of CSA (Skip Wescott), brief description of dissociation.

Pairing: Peter Parker x Stark!Reader

Masterlist || Taglist

It was the little things that you noticed in Peter. He was your closest friend ever, the best person to have ever entered your life next to Tony Stark, the man who had adopted you the moment he laid his eyes on you.

You always noticed when it came to Peter, the way he jumped around when he was in a happy mood, or when he scored a hundred in chemistry and he would flail his hands in the air and hug you as tightly as he could without crushing your bones with his super strength. You had met him when you were both eight- he had come with his uncle Ben to tour Stark Industries, and you both had snuck out to eat some pizza while the adults talked.

You would never forget that day, because it was the day the two of you became inseparable. He would often visit you since then, in Pepper’s penthouse, and you always cherished those visits. He shared everything in his life with you, he was an open book to you, a dog eared page that you could open with a flick of your fingers.

Coming back from the dead post blip was the final straw. No one could separate you two, and when May and Peter had finally agreed to live in the Lake House (only during the weekends though, since it was far from his school), it was the life of a party for You.

"And you three, don't wreck the house and if I found out that the kitchen is on fire-" Pepper said, fixing Peter's shirt and Morgan's hair at the same time, giving you a stern look.

May was out and it was only the three of you- You, Morgan and Peter, while Tony and Pepper went out for a vacation for the weekend.

They had trusted you to babysit Morgan, well You more than Peter.

“We will be fine Pep! Don’t worry I won’t let them burn down the kitchen, or let Gerald eat the goji berries. Now shoo!” You snickered, pushing Pepper with your hands on her shoulder, before she gave you one more look over her shoulder.

“Oh and if you need anything, Kyle will be here soon, you can ask him anything okay?” She said, making you stop in your tracks.

“Kyle? Who’s that?” Peter asked, shuffling to adjust Morgan, who was perched on his shoulder with her head buried in his neck, her soft snores barely audible.

“He’s Morgan’s babysitter, we can trust him honey, he’s been babysitting her since she was one.” Pepper said calmly, her eyes stiff as she wearily looked at Peter, her eyes flitting to You for a moment. They had all been weary of introducing you to change when you first came back, afraid what the change around you would cause you to break further. It ultimately lead to a heart to heart with Doctor Tumnus and You and Peter, one breakdown from each of you, and lots of cuddles.

“I thought he was in college?” You smiled, lifting your brows.

“You know about him?” He asked, his voice small. You didn’t answer him, choosing to nod your head instead.

Looking at Peter, you felt him stiffen, his shoulders tensing like the way they would whenever he was stressed or overthinking, his grip on Morgan tightening as if to protect her from whatever danger was about to come their way. Your heart sped at his look of frustration, his lip forming a thin line as he pursed them, your own confusion growing.

“Wh-why do we need him? I mean, Y/n/n and I can look after each other right?” He gulped, not meeting Pepper’s or your eyes. Morgan took that moment to wake up sniffing under her breath as she lifted her small head from his shoulder.

“Mommy is Kyle coming over?” She asked innocently, not noticing Peter as he gulped. You gripped his biceps, silently asking why he was acting the way he was.

Peter had always been shy when it came to strangers, choosing to stay in the circle of his own people. Heck he had taken almost months to warm up to you.

“Yes honey, he will be here soon, now, be nice for Peter and Y/N okay?” She cooed, kissing Morgan’s forehead and smiling at the little girl, grimacing as your dad honked from behind, shouting to make it fast.

“Okay mommy, have fun!” Morgan smiled sleepily, going back to her position on Peter’s neck, lifting her thumb to suck on. Holding her small hand, Peter softly brought it down to stop her from sucking on her finger. You smiled at how gentle he was with her, momentarily forgetting his ambiguous behavior at the mention of Morgan’s babysitter.

“So, wanna wreck the house?” You joked in an effort to dissipate the growing tension, watching the retreating figure of Pepper as she waved from the car. You waved back, smiling as you leant against the door jamb.

“Sure.” He said absentmindedly, holding his palm against Morgan’s head, tucking her in more firmly.

“Are you okay Pete?” You asked, scrunching your brows when he clenched his teeth, looking at you with seething eyes. You understood at that moment, why criminals feared him as your own heart clenched. He may be a doe eyed shy boy, but he could be angry when he wanted to.

“Can everyone stop fucking asking me that!?” He bellowed, looking at Morgan to make sure she hadn’t woken up. Walking to her bedroom, he tucked her in before keeping the door to her bedroom ajar, turning towards you,

“What’s crawled and died up your ass Parker?” You clenched, folding your hands as if in defence. You were getting worried, his behavior was not him. He was a naturally cheerful and chatty person, talking the ears off of the person who happened to be in his vicinity, now he was just, closed off.

“It’s nothing okay, it’s- it’s nothing. None of your business.” He said, walking away, leaving you with your jaw dropped and hands up in the air.

“Damn straight it’s my business! Why have you been acting weird ever since Pepper mentioned Morgan’s babysitter?” You snarled, shoulders sagging when you saw him tense up once more.

“Just, leave it alright?” He said, cursing your observation and not meeting your eyes before he turned the kitchen lights off, strutting to his bedroom. It was late at night and Pepper had wanted to have an early start, so they had decided to lodge at the tower before leaving for the trip.

“Alright, you don’t wanna talk am I right? See if I care next time!” You shouted pettily, huffing and moving to your bedroom, shuffling inside the covers, tears of frustration brimming your eyes as you tried to wash away the look Peter had given you from your brain.

***

Sleep didn’t come easy to Peter.

It wasn’t anything new for him, Ben had always said that his mind was like a whirlpool of thoughts- they churned at a very high speed and impared him from sleeping. But his insomnia had been causing problems as of late. Ever since he was little and his parents died, he had been prone to nightmares. Back then, Uncle Ben and Aunt May would do everything in their power to soothe him each time he had a bad dream.

Back then, when he was just a little boy, his uncle and aunt would snuggle up on either side of him and hold him until he fell asleep. Ben would sing with his gruff, slightly out of pitch but soothing voice, while aunt May would scratch the back of his ears, a sweet spot. It was the little gestures that reminded him of his childhood. The good parts of his childhood.

He tossed around in the bed, rolling his eyes to do a once over of his bedroom- the one that Pepper had designed when he had- when he had blipped along with You and three and a half million others. The word felt foreign on his tongue- why was such a catastrophic event named something as insignificant and fickle as “the blip”?

Scrunching his eyes shut, he groaned, tossing and turning around his bed. Heaving a frustrated sigh, he pulled at the bedsheets, kicking the covers off his feet as if he were five.

Peter was raised a city boy, living in the heart of New York, where nothing was really silent. Even before he gained his spidey powers, New York was never silent for him- the nightly noises of sirens and noisy neighbours was a constant in his life, so the sudden silence of living in the woods- where the only source of noise was Morgan and Tony in the morning and crickets chirping in the night was alarming.

Finally giving up, he decided to heave himself off the bed, shuffling his foot until he found the bunny slippers you had given him as a gag gift. Hovering his hands on the doorknob, he twisted it as slightly as he could, wincing when he heard the screeching noise of it twisting, as if it wanted to be as loud as it could just to piss him off.

Walking into the kitchen, he looked at the digital clock on his way, the red numbers glaring that it was well past three am into his retinas.

The room was dark, only illuminated by the small LED light in the garden. Picking up a glass, he looked over his shoulder to see if he had woken You or Morgan. Sighing when he heard your and Morgan’s minuscule snores (perks of having enhanced hearing), he opened the tap, filling the water in the glass before chugging it all up in one go.

“Fuck.” He muttered, slamming the glass down and wished the helpless feeling would go away. Ever since he heard the words come out of Pepper’s mouth, he couldn't think straight, all his thoughts strayed to him. He who had hurt Peter, he who was out of his life.

But who was he kidding? It was as if the universe was laughing at him by tossing another fuckery at his face, the ghost of his past lingering in his brain enough to cover the memories in a thin sheen of dust.

"Pete?" Your voice startled him, making him nearly drop the glass in his hand had it not been for his reflexes, "is that you?"

Your voice was heavy with sleep, fatigue evident as you appeared in his line of sight. Looking at him with squinting eyes as you flicked the light switch on.

"Yeah, just uh… thirsty. Wanted water."

“You have a water bottle on your bedside.”

He stayed silent, clenching his jaw as he looked at you. Biting his lips, he suppressed a chuckle as you failed to suppress a yawn, scrunching your eyes. You had a bad case of bed head, the strands of your hair all over your face. You were wearing your infamous strawberry pajamas, the shirt hanging off your shoulders. His eyes softened, you looked so young, all he wanted to do was smother you in a blanket and protect you from everything.

His gut twisted at the thought of protecting. He was supposed to be protecting Peter too.

“I can hear you thinking.” You said, your hands folded under your chest.

“So this Kyle guy, you know him?”

“Peter, you haven’t even met him, why do you hate him so much?” You sighed, rolling your eyes and wrapping your hands around his waist, laying your head against his shoulder blades.

“I- I don’t hate him! I just want to make sure-”

“Make sure what Peter?” You asked softly.

He gasped as memories flashed in front of him- that night when He had introduced himself to little Peter when He had come to babysit him.

Eight year old Peter had just wanted a friend. And Skip Wescott was a friend to him. He was cool and played games with Peter, showed him cool new science tricks and watched cartoons.

Aunt May and Uncle Ben were not home, they were late for work. Skip had been sending him small smiles the whole time.

“You want to see the big boy stuff now Einstein? I know you’re old enough.” Skip said, shifting uncomfortably close to Peter.

Peter’s smile fell off as he saw Skip’s eyes flash dangerously. And at that moment, he didn’t want Skip. He didn’t want to be friends with him any more and he wanted Aunt May.

“Nothing, go back to sleep.” He said, a lump forming in his throat, clutching the glass hard enough for cracks to appear on it. You left him be that night.

***

He didn’t notice when he fell asleep after that, the fear creeping up his spine in spite of knowing that Skip won’t be able to hurt him anymore- he was in jail, Ben had made sure of it. Yet he kept flashing back to his lowest points, when he had cried so loud, yet no one heard a thing.

In the end, he had won the case, yet the scars had remained fresh. His win felt futile, a defeat in spite of winning.

The smell of blueberry waffles invaded his senses first, his eyelids cracking open against the force of sleep. Scrunching his eyes, he let the world slowly come into motion, the walls coming into focus one by one.

He was startled into complete wakefulness by the sudden flurry of mass that had jumped on him, panic settling before noticing that it was just Morgan, her excited rambling bringing him back.

“H-hey Momo! You seem excited huh? Good morning to you too.” He laughed, inhaling as she jumped on his stomach.

“Petey you have to brush your teeth! Come down fast because I have a surprise for you.” She giggled, snuggling into his chest and getting up just as fast, pulling him with her tiny hand.

“I see you have a handy alarm clock.” You said from the doorway, smirking when you saw him

“A very cute alarm clock.” Peter cooed, pinching Morgan’s cheeks and leaving a big sloppy kiss on her cheek, making the little girl giggle, “Wait if you’re both here then who’s in the kitchen? Did May come back? Or is it Happy?”

“No May will be in Cali for a little longer, Happy visited her there so they’re having an impromptu vacation.” You smirked, knowing how much it irked Peter whenever you told him about May and Happy’s escapades. He rolled his eyes, scrunching his nose in disgust, just as you had expected him to.

“I didn’t need to know that, but whatever, who is it though?”

“Kyle’s here! He’s cooking waffles cause I told him Petey likes them very much! It was supposed to be a surprise but Y/n/n ruined it.” The little girl pouted, glaring at you with her adorable brown eyes. She looked exactly like Tony when she did that.

He felt a pang in his chest, an unearthed nervousness taking residence as he felt his stomach drop. He pulled Morgan closer, feeling your eyes on him as you tried to gauge his expression.

“Yeah.” You said simply, urging Morgan to come to you as he got up from the bed.

Walking downstairs after cleaning up, he stiffly sat on the table, watching as a short but lean Blond man cooked waffles.

“Hey kiddo! You must be Peter, Morgan and Y/N talk about you all the time!” The guy- Kyle probably, said chirpily. Peter clenched his fists under the table, noticing the look you were giving him.

“Hi.” He said shyly, ducking his head so he won’t have to see him.

“Well they told me you’re shy too.” He said, a smile evident in his voice.

“Y-Yeah.”

“Aw Pete don’t be rude! At least look at his face.” You joked, hitting him slightly in the ribs.

“Sorry I just, that smells delicious.” He smiled, finally looking up to blue eyes staring at him. He shifted nervously, sitting up straight.

“Thank you.”

He felt uneasy under his gaze, bringing the glass of water to his lips to avoid making eye contact.

“How long is he gonna stay here?” Peter whispered to you, avoiding to look inside the kitchen where he was cooking lunch with Morgan- the girl was perched on the countertop with her legs dangling and swinging.

You and Peter had retreated to the AV room after breakfast, opting to watch a movie instead of doing homework. Well it was You who had dragged Peter, because you knew he had already done it before coming.

“He’ll make dinner and go, again, why?” You asked him, fisting some popcorn and throwing them in your mouth.

“It’s nothing.”

You let it go again.

Dinner was an awkward affair. He couldn’t help but let his gaze linger onto him, how he interacted with Morgan. She seemed genuinely happy, jumping around the house till she was tired, enjoying as he lifted her up and played airplane with her.

He really didn’t want to think about it, but his spidey sense kept buzzing a headache in the bottom of his skull. He tried to distract himself, opening his chemistry text book to read ahead of class, but the worlds kept floating around as he saw you and Morgan laugh at something Kyle had said.

“Come on Einstein! It won’t hurt for you to keep that textbook and play with us eh?” Kyle said, winking at him as Morgan laughed, making grabby hands at him so he would come.

You want to see the big boy stuff now Einstein?

No, this wasn’t Skip. This was Kyle, Morgan’s babysitter.

He knew the comment was noncommittal, but he felt his heart race, the world zooming in and out of focus as it got harder to breathe, his book swimming in his hands. He felt floaty, the tingling in his hands intensifying as he felt someone’s hands on his back, dizzily startling him into reality.

“Hey, hey take a breath kid, it’s alright. Deep breaths.” A soothing voice said, cold sweat breaking as he dropped his textbooks. Tears ran down his face without meaning to as he pursed his lips. Instead of saying anything, he sat up and ran into his room.

He could hear you running after him, Kyle asking “Is he okay” as you reassured him. Tears were running freely now as he slammed the door, flopping on the bed and burying himself in the pillows, wishing that the bed would swallow him whole.

He didn’t know why he was reacting the way he did, Kyle was a good person, he saw the way he interacted with Morgan. He was gentle and loving, then why is it that he kept seeing him.

He heard the door creek, your footsteps echoing in his ears, drums rattling against his brain.

“Are you ready to talk now?” You asked softly, wafting your hands through his hair as he felt the bed dip with your weight.

“I had a babysitter, when I was eight. His name was Skip.” He croaked, breathing through his nose. He felt you stiffen as you seemed to connect the dots. Nudging him to move so you could insert yourself in the space.

“Did he hurt you Pete?” You whispered, rubbing his back.

“He did bad things to me, I just, I don’t want anyone to go through it again. Please. He may be in jail but- but sometimes I still feel like he’s here and I hate how I feel! I want him gone. I just want him gone and I want the memories to be erased.”

You remained silent, rubbing his back through his sweatshirt, unbidding tears appearing in your eyes. Someone had hurt Peter. You felt anger boiling inside you, swirling in a dangerous tornado at the thought of someone hurting the best person in your life,

You promised yourself that day that You would protect him at all costs. You couldn't do it in the past, but you would in the future.

“I’m glad you told me about this Pete.” You said, clenching your teeth as he met your eyes.

#peter parker x stark!reader #peter parker x reader #peter x reader #peter parker x stark reader #stark!reader #spiderman x stark!reader #peter parker x avenger!reader #avenger!reader #peter parker x reader angst #peter parker x reader fluff #peter parker smut #spideygirl writes

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thenixkat · 3 years

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Dragon Horror thoughts

There’s just so many different creatures with different abilities that fall under the umbrella of ‘Dragon’ that you could have so much fun with in any speculative fiction setting. Its actually really sad to see them restricted to the ‘dragon rider’s companion’ and ‘the last of their kind b/c the age of magic is dying’ kind of [action/]fantasy plots.

There’s few exceptions I can list off the top of my head but why haven’t we had another post apocalypse movie where dragons ended the world ala Reign of Fire? Or just schlocky B-Horror monster flicks like Basilisk: The Serpent King? Or even a scifi/thriller mini series of dragons appearing from the depths of the ocean causing all kinds of mysterious events and catastrophic environmental disasters like Surface?

Things about dragons that lend well to horror:

Appearance

So you’re probably thinking, “Ah yes a dragon. A firebreathing flying lizard!”. Or depending on your background, “Ah, yes a dragon. A mystical serpent associated with water!”

The firebreathing lizard thing is mostly just the modern popculture dragon which is like the modern popculture werewolf or vampire a far less diverse and interesting than their older and less mainstream counterparts. And frankly most of the well known popculture dragons don’t even get to be lizards, just a vaguely lizard-ish approximation built out of mammalian anatomy covered in scales and not even in a fun way.

Dragons can be right up the alley for monster designs horror wise b/c you could quite literally get away with calling anything a dragon if you put enough oomph in it. Even if it might be kinda silly, its perfectly fine to be kinda silly. Silly does not negate horrifying when done well.

- Serpents- a lot of the oldest dragon stories have the dragon as big fucked up powerful snake (eel, or worm). Honestly an earthworm big enough to eat people is far more terrifying than folks give credit to.

- Monster birds- More than a few dragons are described or called ‘birds’. Just, very wrong birds. And honestly birds would be used for horror more b/c birds are really fucking weird and brutal in general.

- Chimeras- Now this is the best part b/c many dragons are described/depicted as being a mishmash of various animal parts. Typically consisting of parts of predators and ‘vermin’ (or in cases where dragons aren’t meant to be elder terror spawns of Satan, mixups of revered/respected animals). It wouldn’t be hard to make it work for a scifi setting. And its just ripe for horror where you can go the more magical/supernatural route.

- Humanoids- you are in no way restricted to only beastly looking dragons. From Typhon and Echidna to Coatlicue to mermaids to the Snake king, sometimes dragons are nothing like what you’d think upon hearing the word dragon.

- Plants- there’s more than a few dragon-plant connections. From dragons that become trees when they die to strange vegetation that resembles and acts like dragons.

Abilities

Listen, firebreathing isn’t even the wildest things dragons can do. I’m not even gonna list everything.

- Flight- dragons don’t need wings to fly. And that’s not just an Asian dragon thing. Dragons don’t have to obey the laws of physics.

- Weather control- Dragons can cause storms and tornadoes and earthquakes and all manner of other natural disasters. And that’s not just an Asian dragon thing.

- Astral projection- yes. that is a thing some dragons can do. Sometimes they do it to control the weather.

- The Swarm- Some dragons could control snakes or fishes or birds. And honestly birds should be played for horror more often.

- Shapeshifting- a pretty common dragon ability. Not just transforming into different creatures but also into inanimate objects, vegetation, land formations, water, and such.

- Poison- most old school European dragons are known for being just fuck off walking wasteland level poisonous

- Hypnosis- looking at the eyes and/or face of a dragon can put people into a hypnotic state where they may freeze or walk into the dragon’s mouth.

- Deadly Gaze- remember the basilisk and the gorgons? Yeah, dragons that can murder shit with a look. Nowadays the basilisk and cockatrice turn bitches into stone, older version had shit just drop dead. Even older and it was just b/c shit was just that poisonous all a bitch had to do was look in yer direction.

- Horrible Visage- sometimes bitches just died from even looking at a dragon. A different version of the basilisk, didn’t have to look at you at all. You just had to see it.

- Seduction- sometimes dragons were extremely sexy. Sometimes that’s from the shapeshifting.

- Magic- Yeah. Yeah. Just general magic. Dragons can do shit like cast curses or give blessings.

- Indestructability- Dragons are very very hard to kill.

Behavior

Things that can also work well for horror is just the way the things act and what they want. Just a little bit of stuff.

- Intelligence- Dragons can be as smart or smarter than humans. This is from a lot of different places. Being hunted by an aggressive wild animal is a different experience to being hunted by a human who wants to kill you is a different experience to being hunted down by an eldritch monstrosity with supernatural powers and the ability to plan.

- Feast and Famine- A good number of the more monster dragons are the sorts that spend a long time sleeping or dormant, waking periodically to cause havoc and fill their belly before going back to sleep.

- Blood drinking- Dragons that hunt people down to drink their blood is a thing.

- The Collection- Dragons like to collect things. Either hordes of great wealth that they do nothing with or just things they like. Who’s to say a dragon couldn’t collect maidens, not to eat, but just b/c they like collecting them and put them in a pit until they get moldy.

- Thirsty- sometimes dragons be horny my dudes. (tho apparently thy do make great spouses so long as you respect their boundaries)

- Disproportionate Retribution- demolished villages and burned countrysides all for the theft of a single cup. Being cheated resulting in the flooding of an entire province.

- Guardians- the protectors of caves and bodies of water.

#nix meows #dragons #horror #thinky thoughts #long post

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fractallogic · 2 years

Text

Ffs BODY why are you doing this to me

All day long I’m all “ugh I’m so sweaty this is disgusting I hate how I smell and how I’m just …damp and there are SO MANY STAIRS who tf said it was okay to have SO MANY FUCKING STAIRS in one city”

And all day I’m like “maybe scone will be Up For It. Maybe I can convince myself to be Up For It. I should shower so I feel better. We’ve been having a ‘rest’ day today. It has been at LEAST six months since we’ve slept together both due to distance circumstances and due to these fucking antidepressants making me go ‘sex? Never heard of it’.”

And then we do the walk around the lights, which, meh. Was fine. Had a burger, which oh my fuck was very good, like not “in n out after not having it for two years” good or smashburger Arizona or Colorado state special burger good, but it was “wow this BUN??? This MEAT??? Wow this is GOOD” good. At last returned to the Airbnb. Drank a whole bunch of water because you get so very thirsty when water comes in tiny European-sized glasses at room temperature. I have never been so ready for a shower in my life, as I have thought literally every evening since the evening of the 27th of December. Sat down on the couch. Realized I felt like I was hit by a truck. “Okay all I have to do is shower and go to sleep”.

Scone goes “hm that sounds like a good idea” and I cannot possibly put two and two together until the very end of his shower when he comes back into the room where I’m laying half-asleep with my feet up the wall and goes, “so… are you tired” (which is one of the code words for “do you want to have sex”) and this wave of guilt-shame-and-too-much-water-ingesting nausea washes over me for wanting nothing more than to go to sleep but also make scone happy and AT SOME FUCKING POINT before I was on the current meds I TOO ENJOYED HAVING SEX and I excuse myself and go to the bathroom and brush my teeth trying to psyche myself up for it, but of course since I said “yes I’m exhausted I’m sorry” he took it like a reasonable human being and decided to get ready for bed, and then the guilt deepens because I am so excited to GO TO SLEEP and I also just really don’t want to be here anymore that yes, I do start crying as I try to explain that I’m sorry, it’s not him, I’m so tired, I’m so sorry, and he, like a rational human, is like no it’s okay don’t worry, I understand!! Go to bed, it’ll happen someday. And in my head I’m like BUT WHAT IF IT DOESNT. WE ARE GOING TO GET FUCKING DIVORCED AND I HAVENT SENT THE THANK YOU NOTES OUT. WE CANT GET DIVORCED WHILE YOUR GREEN CARD IS PROCESSING—and I’m too tired to stop myself from doing the catastrophization spiral, so it’s just going to sit in my brain and I’m going to let it and hope it doesn’t turn out too bad if I just acknowledge that the feelings are there and not feed the brain trolls.

And at some point I will have to have or remind him of having the conversation about hey yeah so because I have found and slept with the scum of the earth, I’ve also been emotionally and sexually abused by multiple people, so I very much love and appreciate your attitude about it, but I also need lots of reassurance that you aren’t going to be mad or something so that I can stop making long and rambling and incoherent posts on tumblr about it

Also we can cuddle, we just can’t Cuddle(tm), which is why we need to find another alternative euphemism for having sex

(IMAGINE our mutual confusion when he says “do you want to cuddle” after a date one night and I’m like hell fuck yeah I want to cuddle!!! thinking “yeah I want the biggest squishiest sidewaysest hug snuggle you can give me”, and he’s like fuck yeah let’s get naked and I’m like … what. And he’s like …??? What???? And I use my Native Speaker Intuition(tm) to go oh shit that was a EUPHEMISM that was PRAGMATICS and TABOO AVOIDANCE not literal cuddling (and then I explain it to him, only slightly more coherently than that, and go thank god you’re also a linguist so I can say that to you in that way), and so every time I have to adjust my expectations and elaborate when I go “yes let’s CUDDLE”)

#excuse me today I am deep in a pit of self-loathing apparently #please bring me out of it sleep

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phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess · 3 years

Text

if you have a question about aussie slang, for a fic or whatevs, please just ask i don't know all of it, but we do have some fun words and sayings that are day to day statements

esp. the more rural you go

not everyone has the full accent though, because you do get a lot of pressure at work to come across... professional or whatever.

the only one i've never been sure of being an Actual Phrase, or if it Became A Phrase after popularisation on a tv show, is "Stone the Flaming Crows" bc a dude from Neighbours used to say it frequently.

examples of day to day stuff i can think of right now

mad as a frog in a sock (angry about something, went off, off the shits)

mad as a cut snake (usually means 'they're nuts', but can also mean they exploded with anger, usually contextual)

she'll be right (it's fine - can be a flippant statement, can be reassurance, etc)

drongo / galah - (idiot, not very smart, wanker, etc)

dunny = toilet

thunderbox/outhouse / long-drop - usually outdoor toilet

dry as a nun's nasty / dry as a dead dingo's donger (I am thirsty, or It Is Hot AF/we need rain so bad)

chuck a u-ey (do a u-turn)

Oi! (Hey I want your attention/i was surprised, general exclamation, stop that, you are in a lot of fucking trouble mate - depends on the tone of voice and volume) like "OI!" says aunty ruth has just found her dentures in jello and she knows you did it, etc

Bugger off (go away, or sometimes a statement of disbelief)

Yeah nah /Nah yeah (can mean yes, no or maybe depending on what was said directly before the statement)

you cant pull the wool over my eyes - you can't lie to me like that / i can see you are not telling the truth

shut your gob / put a sock in it / put a cork in it - (shut up / shut the FUCK up / close your mouth or i will shut it for you) depends on tone

Ya wally (you idiot)

Roo = kangaroo

o = can be affixed to anything to shorten it at the servo - gone to the service station, arvo - afternoon, smoko - morning tea, bottlo - where the grog is

goon/goonsack - wine in a box

grog - alcohol

stubbie - beer, ususally

boardies - board shorts

rashie - swimming shirt,

slip, slop, slap - ancient proverb for avoiding sunburn. singing pelican.

thongs - footwear

sheila = female / woman, don't hear this a lot at the moment tbh except in certain contexts or from specific people

'Getting rowdy' = things are heating up, people are riled up, a fight is about to/has just broken out, etc.

DJ's like a mad cunt = one very specific meme about a bad PM we had like 10 years ago. i can't tell you how many PM's ago, it's been game of thrones here lmao

Beyond the black stump / Out whoop-whoop / references to timbuktu (quite a distance away)

strewth!/crickey!/bloody hell - (exclamation of surprise, expletive replacement, etc)

flat out like a lizard drinking (tired / drunk / exhausted / sleeping)

pull a harry holt - (I've heard a dozens variations of this one, it means Go Missing / Disappear, often used as a joke. PM Holt went swimming one day and disappeared)

have a stickybeak (to poke your nose in/investigate/look around)

chuck a wobbly/throw a tanty/chuck a tanty/throw a wobbly (throw a tantrum, i have legit never seen anyone successfully deescalate a situation by telling someone not to chuck a wobbly or throw a tanty, go figure lmao)

bogan - (very specific kind of low-income, generally white, people. sort of like rednecks, but with more stereotypical aussie features like a mullet, singlet tops, sunnies, stubbies, etc. tend to fall under the liberal party ideology - who are our republicans... )

ankle-biters / rugrats / little takkers / gremlins / nippers - (kids, usually the littler ones)

tiff - argument, small fight (had a tiff, had a row)

pav = pavlova

piss/whizz/take a piss = going to pee

vegemite - delicious

Kiwi = New Zealander

Banana benders - the disrespectful bs that apparently other states call anyone living in Queensland, the wankers

station - farming areas that have sheep or livestock usually, have farmhands etc.

dole bludger(s) - (anyone on Centrelink, whether they want to be or not, with no other employment. but like, a lot of people on centrelink have a job that does not cover enough and need additional financial supports to meet a minimum wage, or are students or apprentices, etc. there are people who go on centrelink on and off to avoid engaging in the jobseeking stuff, they are the real dole bludgers, but a lot of richer people tend to call anyone on 'welfare' bludgers)

don't you come the raw prawn with me - (do not lie to me / don't try that shit with me, mate / I wasn't born yesterday /etc)

dak/dack - to dack someone is to come up behind them and yank their pants down (or skirts). Often taking out your boxers, too.)

budgie smugglers - (speedoes, male swimwear)

togs/toggs or cozzie (swimwear, any kind. cozzie = costume)

mozzie - (mosquito)

better than a kick up the backside /better than a kick in the arse - (pretty self explanatory, one of those phrases parents use to get slightly hurt kids to start laughing and/or coworkers to commisserate about new work rules, etc)

I wouldn't piss on (name) if they were on fire - (self-explanatory, you hate them, or they're a useless tit or an insufferable person /a suckup etc, and you would gladly hand them a match)

one for the road = getting a drink for the road, usually. can also make a joke of it like, "one last piss for the road" = I'm going to the bathroom before I leave

here's your handbag, what's your hurry - probs not an aussie phrase but a common joke in my family

----------------

So like, there's some words and items from Australian Indigenous culture that often get used wrong in stereotypical characters, like saying 'gone walkabout', using 'cooee', making digeridoo jokes, and making some really uncomfy 'savages' statements can be very disrespectful. You might want to go looking into Australia's fucked up policies and historical (and only recent) situations before starting any arguments about this stuff... in many ways it mirrors the cruelty of american colonisers to native american peoples, etc.

Avoid some phrases. Your character gone to cool their head? He's gone off on to soak his head, or he's on his bike (gone away) but he'll be back... You can use 'Oi, dickhead!'

Please don't mock the names of towns or places, they are often the names from the traditional custodians and inhabitants.

-----------------

Random things:

We drive on the left side of the road, driver's side reversed.

More of our cars are automatic than manual. Utes aren't atypical, but bigger vehicles are out in rural areas because more than a few of the rural roads are poorly maintained or dirt, with potholes that yoyo your soul into your body.

If you have a character on a long drive on a non-highway, or rural road: +if you are on a one-lane road and someone is comingthe other way, you both move half-on, half-off; for big vehicles or trucks, you can choose to pull off completely and stop. Just for safety, esp. in rain, fog, mist or late at night. +at one-lane bridges, you have a give way sign on one side. if you want your characters to have a moment of 'pause to look at each other while driving' or 'a quiet moment of reflection', have them wait for another car or truck to pass from the other side. These can be a few metres long, to like, a really long bridge. +They may pass markers that say 'flood level marker' with numbers of 2, 3 or 5 metres. Could be useful to remark on if your fic needs a reason for them to have a crisis. +Bushfire warning signs (from Low to Catastrophic) are frequent +Animal Crossing signs are very frequent, and often have a wildlife rescue number on them +Water restriction signs are in most small towns, they range from levels 1 to 6. This can change what the characters are allowed to do with water in little towns, etc. +You may occasionally find a small servo and one or two houses. +pubs don't open/won't serve alcohol until after 10am. the joke has always been, 'beer on your cornflakes' but you will never be able to actually get that unless you preplanned the night before in your hotel room. +Around dawn and dusk, a lot of animals like hares, kangaroos, wallabies, sometimes echidnas and koalas and little numbat things, and snakes and bushmice will be close to the road. Sometimes dashing across. They do not react logically to cars approaching, and will leap out at random. Hares do this zigzag nonsense. If you need the character to hit the brakes frantically, or swerve, this is a good reason. If you are ever driving here and see an animal on the side of the road, flip lights to low beam, slow down and watch to see how they react. If you can. If there's a truck blaring down on you, you may not be able to.

+Emus are in more rural areas. Echidnas sometimes appear on fringes of towns though.

+Kookaburras are a lovely creature, I have rescued a few and they are nice... but their laugh is very grating when it goes off super early in the morning. They eat snakes (good) and baby birds (not so good).

+Lots of snakes round here. LOTS. Carpet Snakes are pretty common, red-belly black snakes, eastern brown (big danger!!!), whip snakes have declined in my region, keelback snakes, this one black and white banded one we found deceased, etc. Snakes can climb, snakes can SWIM. Putting something that stinks around a campsite MAY help, but not always.

+Never go swimming in a dam you don't own, and that hasn't been checked, and if no one knows where you are. How deep is it? What's on the bottom? How stirred is the water? etc.

+Kangaroos CAN drown you. They have perfected this attack, and will do it to humans, dogs and other pursuers alike. They can also eviscerate you with their hind paws or shatter your ribs with a kick. The 'boxing' they do is exceptionally violent. This seems to surprise people, but like, giraffes can kill each other by slamming their heads into each other, you think a 7 ft swole motherfucking cryptid can't do harm? They can be lovely tho, if they trust you. But DO NOT GO PETTING WILDLIFE.

+Dropbears, austrilanicus vericanthus bitus, are real. We do make jokes about them, but they are a Problem. The pee on yourself thing won't ward them off, that's more about working out which tourists are the most gullible (and if they run with it, the moistest) lmao. Akubras and other thicker-layered headwear,

+We have wild dogs and feral pigs. Do not fuck with the feral pigs, some are HUGE, and no... they're not just pigs who escaped farms, these are MASSIVE motherfuckers who will Get You if they See You. Rustling in the night outside the tent? Good Luck.

+Koalas should not be picked up directly. They have claws, and a lot of them have chamydia. I mean if a character saves one in a fic that's fine I guess, but like... someone's getting antibiotics after that lmao. They are bigger than you think, dumber than you think, and sometimes they have to be chased across a highway with a windscreen cover bc they're not very bright and keep failing to climb metal fences, lmaoooo

+Towns of about 20-30k will have more shops (some franchise, some local owned), servos, fast food places and usually at least two to three shopping centres. Usually small level entertainments like a cinema, or local groups. +Towns with 10-20k, may have one or two major shopping centres, servos (tracks and RVs catered to), possibly a maccas, and the majority of stores will be local-owned. May have a cinema, but not one that has the newest releases. Local council may have more festivals, or 'that one thing they're known for'. +0-10k towns have a small local store, prices usually a bit higher. A servo, often with capacity for trucks. Local festivals. Characters can cop a bit of side-eye in these places, esp. if they don't fit the traditional ideas or are loud/violently american. +Grey nomads are a thing. Old people with fancy caravans who drive So Slow, and move all around aus. Several refused to stop during covid and it was like, WHO DO YOU THNK WE'RE TRYING TO KEEP ALIVE BY STOPPING YOU MOVING THROUGH MULTIPLE TOWNS???

+Some rural areas have legit red dirt, its always super cool to look at. Some places have light brown to dark brown, some have more chalky colours or yellowish dirt. Depends.

+Reminder: Australia has very specific gun laws, if your character/s have weapons then they may need to be sneaky or store them specifically in the vehicle. Although if you're talking about like, mad max type rules, then who cares. But if you have them get into a gun fight in a town, the police will come, etc.

Dunno, just ask if you have a question... just trying to think of random things to paint a picture if you have a character over here for a roadtrip or mission or whatever.

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nanoland · 3 years

Text

new chapter (supernatural fic)

(earlier parts are here; whole thing is here)

Clean Hands, part 3

Crowley/Castiel/Dean Winchester, warning for violence and spn demons being spn demons

Another day, another assassination attempt.

“Congratulations, sir,” said Paula, bustling in with his coffee and daily planner. “That brings it to eight, yes? I recall your making some remark about throwing a small office party if we hit ten before the end of the month.”

Lifting the corpse off the row of retractable spikes he’d installed in his desk, Crowley grunted, “It was a joke. On the other hand, maybe it would be good for morale. Make the blighters less determined to snuff me.”

“I’ll add it to the calendar. Sir, your ten ‘o clock is waiting in the lobby. Should I send him in?”

Technically, ‘ten ‘o clock’ didn’t exist in Hell. Time didn’t exist in Hell.

But by God, it did for Paula.

Infamous among Crowley’s minions, she ruled his appointment diary with an iron fist (well – iron talons, more accurately) and kept a horseman’s pick tucked neatly under her workstation for anyone who was more than five minutes late.

She’d been the most competent corporate PA in the business when Crowley had purchased her soul in exchange for a medical breakthrough that had beaten down her cancer and allowed her those ten precious years. It would, in fact, have allowed her a normal human lifespan, if not for Crowley’s hounds.

(Her wish was among his favourites and her contract had pride of place in his trophy cabinet. She could have just said ‘cure me’; she’d dreamed bigger. Ambition! Now that was what Crowley liked to see. Very few people who sold their souls managed to leave the world a better place than they’d found it.

Truthfully, arranging the breakthrough had taken an amount of power on his part that, ordinarily, he’d have objected to. Ever since the Zuckerberg Incident of 2004, Crowley had maintained a policy against granting wishes that fundamentally altered the pace and trajectory of human scientific development. But he’d wanted her. Reliable PAs were like gold dust and they almost always went to bloody Heaven. “And for what, I ask you?” he’d said to Dean once. “How much admin is really involved in keeping people locked in a lotus-eater machine?”)

“The ten… oh, piss. It’s Alan, isn’t it? Yes, yes. Let’s get this over with. Send him in.”

Another day, another fucking workplace harassment mess to sort out. How many more sodding seminars was he going to have to host before they all got it through their heads that biting off a co-worker’s arm was not a viable long-term conflict resolution strategy?

Sigh.

It was only after four meetings and sixteen calls that Crowley remembered he’d not yet disposed of the assassin.

“I suppose I should make an example of you,” he huffed, already imagining it.

The hassle.

The bother.

Getting an apron on.

Finding the hammer.

Lugging the stupid bastard up a ladder and nailing him to the office noticeboard by his scrote.

He could always ask Paula to do it. But, bless her heart, she’d only been a demon for six years and arranging a corpse for maximum intimidation was just as much a matter of practice as talent.

As Crowley was fetching the ladder, Gwen from Legal arrived whey-faced and dogged by two dozen assistants and interns.

“Sir, it’s a catastrophe,” she wailed.

Five minutes later, Crowley was back at his desk, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Avoidable. Utterly, pathetically avoidable. All you had to do was amend the contract to state that the phrase ‘ten years’ refers solely and specifically to Earth’s orbital period, not the orbital period of the contractee.”

Gwen hung her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, sir. Finding qualified staff to manage this sort of deal is tricky. When people with, you know, science degrees and stuff die and are damned, the assholes over at the Experimental Punishments Department always snatch ‘em up first. It’s a real problem.”

“I’ll have a word with them. Ugh – alright, alright, let’s try and sort this out. How long is a Martian year?”

“The internet says six hundred and eighty-seven days.”

“Damn. Almost twice as long,” Crowley grumbled, pouring himself a drink. “What did he even want from us? He’s a billionaire. The list of things they can’t get without our help grows shorter by the day.”

“He wanted to guarantee that he’d be the first man on Mars, sir; that none of his competitors would get there before he did.”

“Wait. Hold on. The thing he wished for and the mechanism by which he’s attempting to fuck us over are one and the same? Oh, no, no, no. I’m not going to take that cheeky bollocks lying down. Get the head of Research and Development in here, now. We’re going to find out how to crash a spaceship.”

Gwen’s gaze flickered to the assassin’s corpse. “Um.”

“Fuck,” Crowley muttered.

At which point Paula tapped on the door to ask if he wanted to reschedule his next five meetings, because unless he could deal with them all in a grand total of twelve minutes, he’d be late for his call with the NRA’s chairman.

When Castiel arrived – without an appointment, as per usual, but Paula had standing instructions to let him through – he found Crowley resting his head on his desk, fantasising about being a paperweight.

“I’ve come for more sex,” he explained.

Dragging himself from despair’s depths, Crowley slurred, “T’riffic.”

He instructed his meat suit to sit up and turn on the winning smile. Unlike more reliable vehicles, possessed bodies didn’t have dashboard lights to indicate an exhausted battery; instead, it announced its displeasure by growing three new tumours.

Castiel stepped back, confused. Displeased. “You’re usually more enthusiastic than this. Why is your desk covered in diagrams of rockets? Is this a ‘new hobby’?”

Exaggerated finger quotes. Damn him to the pit, he was precious.

“Kitten, rest assured I have only two hobbies and they both dress badly.”

He expected retaliation for that. Castiel hated being reminded that Crowley regularly dallied with his favourite human. It came as a surprise, then, when the angel simply reached out and firmly gripped his shoulder, declaring, “You need to rest.”

Wings flapped. Suddenly, Crowley was standing in front of a wide, glassy lake, surrounded by dense forest, and in the distance…

“Is that Mount Fuji?”

“Indeed,” said Castiel, smiling briefly. “She’s a childhood friend. I first visited when she was little more than an unusually picturesque bump in the ground.”

There was no one around. There was nothing around. No boats on the lake, no fishermen, no families on holiday, not even the distant roar of traffic. Just them, the view, the water, and a – huh – a bright orange tent pitched nearby.

“This is where I come to relax,” Castiel informed him, opening up the zipper.

“Whose is it?”

“Mine.”

“Huh. I wasn’t aware that you…”

“That I what?”

“Owned things. Or even grasped the concept of owning things. Don’t give me that look; you’re the one who’s worn the same socks ever since you slipped into that God-bothering flesh puppet.”

Castiel sniffed. “Materialism is a disease. But I’m not a child, Crowley. For your information, in my time on Earth I have owned many things.”

Always fun to ruffle the pretty bird’s feathers. “Yeah? How many of them were hand-me-downs from the Hardy Boys?”

“Most of them,” he said, levelly. “With the exception of this tent and your ass, demon.”

A pin drop pause.

Castiel maintained unblinking eye contact for exactly twelve seconds, then turned and crawled into his neon den.

Practically vibrating with adoration, Crowley followed.

It was evident that Castiel, despite his laudable efforts to create a space for himself in a world that had no space for him, didn’t entirely grok camping.

There were no sleeping bags. Instead, the tent’s bottom was covered in duvets, dozens of them, soft and fresh as if they’d come directly from the shop – or, more accurately, Crowley suspected, someone’s washing line.

“I cured her dog’s foot infection,” Castiel said, somewhat defensively, settling into his cotton and fleece nest.

“Ah. And she was so grateful she said you could make off with all her laundry, hm?”

“She… did not say those words, precisely. But it was heavily implied.”

Thank sin this was only a meat suit. Thank sin, thank everything that Castiel couldn’t see the expression of hopeless, pitiable fondness that would have adorned Crowley’s true face at that moment.

It was a relief when Castiel, without further ado, started undressing. Crowley, copying him, took the opportunity to talk sense into himself.

Come on. Grow up. Get it together. You know what you are. More importantly, you know what he is. Ageless. Unfathomable. Demons, at the end of the day, are just distilled human nastiness, but him? He existed before humans. Before microbes. He’s nice to babies and bees and pot plants and Dean and that makes it easy to forget that… that…

Oh, yes. Remember when he came to Hell? The first time he saw Dean; the start of their epic, eternal, infuriating romance? And where were you? That’s right. You were with the others, standing there slack-jawed and helpless, like dinosaurs watching the comet hit. Like children gazing up at a mushroom cloud.

Twelve thousand. That’s how many demons he burned out of existence, without even trying. Twelve thousand.

Do you think he ever thinks about them? Do you think he even noticed?

Twelve thousand.

Do you think he knows how close you were to being one of them?

Do you think he cares?

He’s nice to babies. Bees. Pot plants. Dean. You, even, sometimes. He’s sweet. He’s got big, soft blue eyes and hair that aches to be tussled. He’s a top-tier, world-class fuck. And at any moment, for any reason, he could end you, easy as blowing away dust, and you can’t say for certain he would even remember your name in a month’s time.

“What? No,” Castiel protested when Crowley kissed him. “We’re here to rest, Crowley.”

Drawing back, Crowley leered. “That’s what you want to do, is it? Rest?”

Perpetually thirsty tart that he was, Castiel bit his lip and looked torn. “I… yes.”

Crowley pouted.

Firmer now, Castiel said, “We will rest for a while first. Then we will have sex. Is that satisfactory?”

No sooner had Crowley resignedly nodded than Castiel seized him and finished undressing him, tossing his undershirt and socks out the tent. When they were both naked, the cold air coming off the lake making Crowley shiver, Castiel burrowed into his pilfered pile and dragged the demon down with him.

“Rest first,” he ordered him. “Sex afterwards. No, no – stop that. Afterwards, I said.”

Crowley groaned and whined and fussed, but obeyed.

And bugger him gently if it wasn’t actually pleasant, very pleasant, to lie there with Castiel’s strong arms locked around his torso, toasty warm under layers of wool while, outside, the lake lapped at its bank and wind rustled through the trees. No assassins. No paperwork. No blood. Everything nice and quiet. Everything calm and clean.

Then Castiel sighed, a hot puff against the back of Crowley’s neck, and said, “You know, the thing that vexes me most about Dean is the way he…”

#supernatural #crowley #castiel #crowstiel #dean winchester #drowley #destiel #drowstiel #fanfic #my fic

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gatekeeper-watchman · 7 months

Text

Daily Devotionals for September 8, 2023

Proverbs: God's Wisdom for Daily Living

Devotional Scripture:

Proverbs 24:11-12 (KJV): 11 If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; 12 If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works? Proverbs 24:11-12 (AMP): 11 Deliver those who are drawn away to death, and those who totter to the slaughter hold them back (from their doom). 12 If you (profess ignorance and) say, Behold, we did not know this, does not He Who weighs and ponders the heart perceive and consider it? And He Who guards your life, does not He know it? And shall not He render to (you and) every man according to his works?

Thought for the Day

Verse 11 - It is our Christian duty to try to rescue those who are in danger of physical or spiritual death. We must not fail to tell others about Christ or ignore their cries for help, nor should we shut our eyes to their suffering. News on TV reports tragic situations throughout the world, and it is our responsibility to help those we can. We cannot help the whole world, but we can volunteer for a particular situation or support a person whom God lays upon our hearts. We must not become callous to people's needs, but we must be attentive to the Spirit; and always be ready to help the poor, hungry, and sick. Sometimes, He may lead us to visit an individual or the physical site of a catastrophe. Other times, He may lead us to give our finances to equip others at the scene of a tragedy. Also, we can always help by taking time to pray for those who are in danger. People who are weak and "tottering" can be destroyed without our help. Helping the poor and needy, as Christ commissioned His people to do, is like ministering to Jesus Himself. "For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, since ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:35-40).

Verse 12 - God knows our hearts. If we do not sow kindness, but make excuses for not helping others when they have a need, we will reap what we sow, and no one will help us when we need it. God desires His children to have a heart like His. He is merciful, kind, loving, and giving, and we should strive to be like Him. He promises to heal us and deliver us from trouble because we have given to the poor. What wonderful "insurance!"

"Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble. The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness" (Psalm 41:1-3). To sum up our Christian duty to the needy, I am reminded of the words of an old hymn "Rescue the Perishing; Care for the Dying."

Prayer Devotional for the Day

Dear heavenly Father, thank you for blessing me, and Lord, give me a greater heart to reach out and bless others. Lord, keep me from selfishness, greed, insecurity, lust, indifference, and any other thing that would keep me from giving up the things You have given me. May I always be reminded that all I own belongs to You, and I am only a steward over it. Lord, I want to hear Your voice as to where I should give and how much I should give. Lord, I always want to be generous and kind and one who reaches out to the poor and needy. Help me to be sensitive to those who are hurting and deliver me from any hardness of heart that would cause me to turn a deaf ear to the needs of others. I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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the-melting-world · 4 years

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Sleepy Valerius Fluff pt.2

GN!MC

Sleepy Valerius: Part 1 | Part 2

~ 2k words

***

You wake up feeling very stiff, but surprisingly well rested.

The first thing you smell is shampoo. It’s mixed in with the familiar scent of body salt and sweat. Still, the sharp pine soap cuts past the other layers and lingers.

A light groan escapes you as you flatten your face against a bed of silk. The sound is answered by another, coming from just above you. Your eyes flutter open, revealing the true nature of your silken pillow.

Disbelief and even the first inklings of horror course through you as you register the soft bronze tones darkening to richer shades of brown.

“Oh no. No, no, no.”

Your eyes use the undone braid like it’s some kind of rope ladder, climbing and climbing until you reach the smooth planes of Consul Valerius’s face. He’s still waking up, blinking slowly into consciousness.

You have no words. All you can do is watch the emotions cycle one after the other on the consul’s face.

Confusion. Discomfort. Sheer embarrassment.

“Get . . . off.”

You mumble a pathetic apology as you try to disengage your arms and legs from the nobleman’s. It’s even more mortifying when he has to assist you. You’re trapped in what feels like a never ending nightmare of squirming, tripping and breathless pardons.

Finally, you both are on your feet staring at each other from opposite ends of the pew. Valerius’s braid is completely undone. His uniform is just as untidy. And his eyes, though wild and perplexed, are much clearer now than the night before.

Of course, waking up after spending the night in his wine cellar suits him perfectly fine. You, on the other hand, must look like . . . You drag your fingers through the hair at your nape to test your theory. It’s as you expected — a horror story in the making.

You notice that Valerius is looking too. His lip quivers before he blurts, “You never went home?”

You surrender your hands. “You never woke me up!”

The emotion on his face is positively murderous.

“I was drunk! And you,” his eyes fixate on your upper body, “you are heavy! What’s your excuse, barhand?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” You groan, “sleep deprivation?”

Valerius’s lip quivers again. He bursts a second time in what could possibly be laughter. Bordering on hysteria.

You take advantage of the distraction and shuffle backwards towards the entrance of the cellar.

There wasn’t enough time for you to go all the way home and change. So you walk into work with the same clothes and unkempt hair. Your boss doesn’t fail to point out that it makes you look like a thug. You apologize profusely, though on the inside you are boiling. The only upside to this whole catastrophe was the fact that you finally got some rest. Amazing how a few extra hours could give you so much energy and clarity. You wonder if the consul feels the same.

But the idea of seeing the noble again gives you the chills. And you’re not sure whether they are the good or bad kind.

Days go by. You go to work and come home with barely enough daylight to start working on your other project. So you start sacrificing your nights again. And it costs you.

It’s when your life fully returns to this familiar yet tiresome routine that you receive a knock upon the door of your tiny apartment.

You don’t check your hair in the mirror or put on a proper shirt because it was most likely just your cute neighbor, Leah. Probably stopping by to ask for some sugar. Who else would it be?

You open the door.

And it’s not your neighbor.

It’s been two weeks since you’ve been this close to Consul Valerius.

It seems that he is alone.

He holds up a bottle of wine. “I come bearing gifts.”

You slam the door in his face. Then you panic because this is not supposed to be happening. You curse and breathe erratically as you gather up a sleeveless pullover off the couch and tug it over your head. You suddenly become aware of how cramped and disorganized your apartment is. You even find error with the smell of natural cooking oil wafting from your kitchenette.

Another polite knock sounds at the door. “I know I should have made some sort of announcement before showing up here. But if you give me a chance to –”

The consul’s words become even more muffled as you race to the bathroom to check your hair. It looks no better than it did the morning you woke up on his chest.

You can tell by the way Valerius muses to himself on the other side of the door that he is not going anywhere. And with how crowded your unit is, it’s only a matter of time before one of your curious neighbors begins to notice that nobility has somehow strayed this deep in the flooded district.

You return to the door, open it, and sweep the consul inside.

“Hello again,” he greets as if this is something you two do often. You ignore him, scan the hallway for any signs of life, and close the door behind you.

“Don’t look too hard, consul,” you say, gesturing to your cluttered hovel. “I wasn’t expecting any guests today.”

He says something about the space being charming and demure while you shuffle him towards the back. Though he towers over you, it doesn’t take much effort to move him across the room. He appears to find this amusing.

You reach the terrace that overlooks the watery alleyways. It’s small, but a lot cleaner than the inside. You guide Valerius outside and pull out a small, iron-wrought chair for him.

He maintains that glimmer of a smile as he takes his time getting comfortable. Meanwhile his gaze coasts over you. He seems particularly interested in your arms, which you cross over your chest as you lean against the stone guard rail.

“Consul Valerius,” you sigh, “what are you doing here?”

He’s already freeing the cork from the bottle of wine.

“Enjoying the view, obviously.”

You glance behind you and snort. “Of this part of the city? It’s nothing but gray water and sinking infrastructure.”

“The other view.”

You look back and follow the consul’s gaze to your tucked forearms.

“It’s pleasing to know that you’re as strong as I remember.”

You glance back up at him. “You’re too easily impressed, Consul.”

His clover honey eyes hold yours as he takes a swig straight from the bottle. When he takes it away, he’s left with a rosy thumbprint in the center of his lower lip. Suddenly finding yourself very thirsty, you quell the urge to lick your lips and instead join Valerius at the tiny iron bistro table.

When you take a seat, he offers you the bottle. You look away as you take a sip, clawing your mind for something eloquent and clever to say. Your thoughts sober once you realize that you are so far from the sort of company the man across from you keeps on a regular basis.

“I don’t know your name.” Valerius’s voice pulls you back to reality. “What should I call you?”

You blink and hand him the bottle. “Khleo, if you’d like.”

Valerius accepts and tilts his head. “A shorthand of Khleopath, I take? Or are you more of a Khleonari?”

You prop your elbow against the table and lean against your fist.

“It’s nothing like that.” Smiling, you shake your head. “It’s . . . long for Khlee. My father insisted that I take his name, but Mother didn’t want it sounding harsh, so… you know. Parents. What about yours?”

Valerius gives a derisive snort. “Are you suggesting that I was ever a child? How dare you.”

You both chuckle at that. All of the tension from before has ebbed significantly. Though you still don’t know why the consul is here, it doesn’t seem to matter at the moment.

The two of you share the wine and talk of things that are both meaningless and amusing. Your conversation carries on as you watch the shrinking daylight play games across the gunmetal surfaces of the twisting channels.

When the bottle is empty, you get up. Sure that you have another in your cabinet, you excuse yourself and head inside.

But Valerius apprehends you on the way. Before you know it, you’re perched on his lap. His mouth is close to your ear, asking for a kiss. This shift in proximity is almost enough to make you lose your nerve.

Still, you manage to say, “What’s the rush? You can at least take me on a date first.”

Your skin heats rapidly at Valerius’s low chuckle. “Fair. But since you’re here,” His hand coasts up the inside of your thigh. Your eyelids threaten to surrender to a sudden heaviness, but you fight it, training your features into coolness. “Can you give me something to part with?” His hand stops halfway up your leg and holds firmly to the underside.

You already know the answer is yes. But you don’t want to appear too eager, so you let your eyes drift from his tender hold on your leg to look over the terrace. You don’t make your move until he gives a sign of impatience.

In Valerius’s case, it was loosening his fingers to drum them along your thigh. You keep your eyes averted, but lean a bit closer to him and tilt your head away, exposing your neck. The consul’s fingers freeze as he reads your offering and exhales as he bends towards you. His forehead connects with the underside of your jaw. The bridge of his nose bumps carelessly against your jugular. No lips yet, but you feel his breath, hot and yet somehow like icy needles on your skin.

“Khleo, I’ll be candid with you. I haven’t slept soundly in months. Then you appeared in my wine cellar like some kind of gift wrapped sandsprite.”

You want to trip him up with a clever retort, but you’re too distracted by the way he teases your skin with the edge of his nose. And then there was that hand on your leg. When did it become so warm?

Valerius goes on. “I thought your presence was just a lame coincidence, but it was not. I haven’t been able to revisit that deep of a slumber since.”

Finally, you find your voice. “I didn’t realize this was a job interview.” Despite the taunt, you don’t withdraw from the touch. And neither does he.

The noble sighs. “I know that after the way I acted, you have every reason to say no.” Then Valerius – damn him – chooses this moment to work his lips into your neck, kneading your skin like a warm, soft dough. You fight off whatever urge compels you to show weakness.

He whispers, “I wonder if you might be interested in helping me chase this elusive sleep.”

You realize that your fist is clinging tightly to the front of Valerius’s uniform. He doesn’t seem to notice or care that your hand is determined to mangle it.

You swallow hard before saying, “What’s in it for me?”

Gods be damned. He kisses your neck again. “Tell me what you want.”

His gentle command momentarily clears your head. Your voice sobers. “What do I want? What do I want? Consul . . . ” You sigh, perhaps too aggressively. “I can name so many things.

Valerius’s lips subdue the vibrations of your throat, as if to tame a caged animal.

“Name one.”

You suddenly have control over your hand again. It lets go of Valerius’s collar and absently slides down his chest. Your throat bobs as you swallow once more. You close your eyes.

“I want . . .”

Valerius gives your leg a curious squeeze. “Khleo?”

“Anonymity.”

Valerius scoffs. “That’s it? Might I remind you of my influence –”

Finally, you turn, meeting his gaze head on. “I don’t need reminding.” You try to smooth down the ugly wrinkles in his collar. “Sorry. About your shirt.”

He smiles wistfully. “We can call ourselves even.”

You get the feeling that the consul enjoys your unwarranted demonstrations of strength. And it makes you smile.

“So . . . how does this work exactly?”

(To be continued . . .)

#valerius #valerius fanfic #valerius fluff #the arcana #valerius the arcana #valerius x mc #my writing #wine daddy fluff #gender neutral mc

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malecsecretsanta · 3 years

Text

Merry Christmas, koryandr!

For @koryandr. Thank you for your great prompts, I did my best to intertwine as many as I could. This is the first chapter of what will be a (hopefully) not-too-long multichapter. I hope I've come up with something that you'll like!

Read On AO3

*****

“We met by chance, one split decision to turn right instead of left, made no sense at the time, but it felt right and then there was you.”

― Nikki Rowe

Alec Lightwood doesn’t believe in hidden meanings and greater plans.

He’s never been the sort of person to cradle the thought that there’s something, out there, that has set up everything, even if he can’t see the bigger picture yet.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that he’s not religious in the slightest, and that he definitely isn’t a man of God. There’s no divinity, no greater good, or fate whatsoever, nothing and no-one that makes things happen and that moves people as though they are puppets to cruelly play with. It’s simply not possible.

It might even be a bit cynical on his part, but – is there really someone out there who naively believes that everything has a hidden meaning?

Sometimes, things just happen (or they don’t). Simple as that.

And Alec Lightwood happens to be one of those people who’s never fallen in love before.

At the ripe old age of twenty-something, Alec’s never felt this overwhelming, fuzzy, messy tightness in his chest, like his ribcage is on the verge of bursting and let all those things called feelings pour out, finally free to swirl up to the sky or who-knows-where.

He always tells himself that he’s not had the time for this thing called love. He’s always so busy he doesn’t have the time to devote himself to love. He has more important things to do.

Sometimes, he tells himself he does have more important things to do, but maybe he hasn’t met The One yet. He hasn’t met someone worth blowing his own routine off – and Alec flourishes in routines; someone who makes him feel like burning the world up in flames for the ardour of his love, just to make it rise from its ashes again, phoenixilly, more prosperous and beautiful than ever before. He’s just not had the chance yet to –.

No. No, no, chance has nothing to do with this. He doesn’t believe in things like chance. It hasn’t happened, simple as that.

Alec tells himself lots of things. Lots of very articulate excuses, as Isabelle points out so accurately, to hide the intrinsic and visceral fear he feels gripped by. Fear of letting go. Fear of putting the deepest, most intimate part of himself in someone else’s hands – gentle hands that know how to handle gentle, fragile, delicate feelings.

“Isn’t everybody scared of that, Alec?” Isabelle is so keen to remind him.

It isn’t just fear, though. It would be easier, if it was. But it isn’t.

Izzy’s right. Partially. He does make up excuses. They allow him to wrench himself away from the most brutal truth he could ever come to: he’s not made for love.

He can tell himself what he wants: about his hectic, fast-paced, busy life; about his not having met someone-worth-it yet; about being scared. But he’s not made for love. He’s never been.

He hadn’t been until he turned eighteen, when he couldn’t hide himself any longer and he came out to his family. How was he supposed to love, how could he love, back then, when he didn’t even have the courage to be his true self? When he wasn’t being honest, neither with the people he cared about, nor with himself, to begin with?

And he hasn’t been after he came out, when his parents – his father, specifically – made it very clear that the life choice he was making wouldn’t only condemn him to a wretched, miserable life in which nobody would ever love him. That life choice, it would also bring disgrace and shame upon the whole family. That was the reason why it would be better if he kept this whole situation for himself, behind closed doors – even better, inside a fucking closet –, if that was truly the path he was deciding to follow. Or else, he shall show Alec the door (which he did).

And he isn’t made for love even now, almost a decade later, even though he is not hiding anymore. Why should he be hiding in the dark, why should he be wearing a damn mask and lie to everybody? He wasn’t making a goddamn choice, for Heaven’s sake. He would never change that part of himself, because there was nothing to change whatsoever. That’s who he is. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

He had spent so many years to hate himself for it, to hate every single atom of his body for that part of himself that he couldn’t ever change and that wrenched the love of his parents away from him, that simply getting to accept himself for who he is has been an interminable, painful, pulling-apart-and-becoming-whole-again kind of process.

It felt like his skin was being scratched raw. That’s how he’d describe it. Like a roaring fire scorched him and left him raw, his nerves exposed to the air, sensitive to the barest of stimuli. And how could he ever love someone else if he didn’t learn to love himself first?

And yet, there he is. Almost ten years later, with a job he liked, an apartment of his own, both his siblings and a circle of friends around him. Maybe he wasn’t made for love, but he could undeniably call that a progress, after all.

Surely enough, the biggest and unexpected progress was that his mother, after all those years spent without talking to him and pretending that he didn’t exist, was trying to reconnect with him. After divorcing Robert, Maryse had changed a whole lot. She was more compliant, more amenable, sweeter, if a woman like her could ever be defined that way.

But he couldn’t find any other reason to explain the way she tried and reconnect with Alec, her son. The way she had phoned him; the way she had apologised for what she’d told him in the past; the way she had promised him to listen to him and really try to understand him in the attempt to neutralise the huge stigma that had obstructed her relationship with her son for so long.

She was in detox. Her own words.

Alec had appreciated her effort. He truly had.

He grew up carrying the burden of being the eldest brother, the perfect son, the positive role model to follow: he never allowed himself a single slip-up, it was always him who had to do his best and even more, when his best wasn’t good enough. It was always him who had to try and knock some sense into his siblings when they stuck their necks out. It was always him who had to make an effort and accommodate others’ stands.

For once, it feels nice that someone else – a someone he never meant to let down – is trying to reach out and make an effort to accommodate him.

Nonetheless, the fear of disappointing his mother is still hanging like a sword of Damocles over his head. Maybe that’s why – when she phones him as he walks in long strides down the street to grab a drink with his sister at The Hunter’s Moon – those words escape his lips before he has the time to grasp them, to seal his mouth and prevent the catastrophic consequences of his blurting out.

Yes, I’m coming over for Christmas dinner.

Yes, I’m bringing a guest.

Yes, he’s my boyfriend.

The thing is: it’s a lie – well, somewhat.

He is coming over for Christmas dinner – they’re trying to reconnect, aren’t they?

But, the whole boyfriend thing… that’s a whole ‘nother beast.

There’s no boyfriend in sight.

Alec is irremediably fucked.

_________________

Alec is fucked. He truly is.

That’s what he thinks as he steps into The Hunter’s Moon, out of breath, with scattered shards of sleet beading his dark hair. He hastily runs a gloved hand through his hair, but he doesn’t think it does much to make him look any better. Not that he actually cares about how he looks, let’s make it pretty clear.

But maybe…

Maybe, if he’s lucky enough, he’ll…

Yet again, no. There’s no such thing as luck.

He huffs out a tired breath, tugging at his gloves to take them off. With a shiver scampering down his spine, he accommodates to the familiar tingling in his frozen, heat-thirsty hands, which bask in the warmth of the pub.

Alec searches the room for Izzy’s dark hair. He spots her easily enough. She’s sitting at a table tucked across the room, and he stalks towards her.

As he walks, he nods a hello at Maia, who’s standing behind the counter. She rises the corner of her lips in that usual crooked smirk of hers.

Alec weaves his way through the room, heading towards his sister.

“Hey,” he says as he pulls out the chair opposite to Izzy and slumps in it.

“Hey, big bro,” she smiles, looking away from her phone, her dark, brilliant eyes meeting Alec’s.

Her face sobers quickly when she sees him, her eyes narrowing as she searches Alec’s face, looking for any clue of what might have happened.

She’s always been so good at reading people. And Alec makes no exception to that. In fact, he might even be the easiest book to read, for her. Always has been. Always will be.

“What?” Alec shrugs, reaching for the bar menu, a crinkled sheet of paper inside a plastic coat standing in the middle of their table.

He doesn’t really need to read the menu, he already knows what he’s going to drink. He only needs something to do with his hands and somewhere to focus his gaze on, to avoid Iz’s scrutiny. He already feels that strange heat trailing up the back of his neck, that uncomfortable feeling he always feels whenever Izzy’s unwavering stare sets upon him.

Izzy’s faster than he is, and she pulls the menu away from him, swatting his fingers when he tries to grab it back. She stares at him, an unimpressed look on her face.

“What?” Alec asks again, finally gazing up at her. “Come on, Iz, what are we, twelve –”

“I’m not giving it back to you unless you tell me what happened,” she tells him, defiantly crossing her arms over her chest. “As if you don't know what you’re going to drink, by the way,” she adds then.

Alec rolls his eyes fondly at that remark. She knows him so well.

“What if I told you I wanna try something new,” he dares her.

She puts on a surprised face, just to make him laugh.

“Do you mean something or someone,” she then suggests allusively, her eyes moving sideways towards someone behind Alec’s back and a smile blooming on her red lips.

Alec swallows thickly. He already knows whom he’s going to see when he’ll twist on his chair to look.

Magnus Bane.

He slightly turns his head, a bare movement that allows him to glance at Magnus from the corner of his eye. He already feels his stomach churn. He wets his lips nervously.

Magnus is as beautiful as usual. Today he’s wearing a magnificent charcoal-grey three-piece suit and a burgundy tie that stands out impressively against the pure white of his shirt. He gracefully slips out of his long, black trench coat as he steps into the room, and he bends it over his arm as he smiles gleefully at Maia.

Alec feels a strange, humid heat pooling on his palms, so he clamps them together and places them in his lap, under the table. He turns his attention back to Iz, who’s staring at him with a knowing look on her face.

“What,” he deadpans, for what feels the umpteenth time tonight.

“Nothing,” she retorts, but the tone of her voice makes what she’s thinking about very clear. “So,” she adds then, “Are you gonna tell me what happened or are you leaving me guessing?”

“Mom called,” Alec tells her, but when he notices the way Izzy’s brows alarmingly shoot up to her hairline and her eyes widen in surprise, he rushes to give her some context. “Well, you know we’ve been trying to… y’know… reconnect.”

“And?”

“Aaand,” he says, trying to gain time before he tells her the mess he’s made. He wets his lower lip, his mouth abruptly dry with shame.

There’s no point in delaying this, he thinks. Iz’s gonna pull the truth out of his mouth anyway.

“I told her that I’m bringing someone home for Christmas” he blurts out. “My boyfriend,” he clarifies, when Iz says nothing.

“Okay.” She sucks in a breath, her nostrils flaring a little. “Okay,” she repeats, placing her palms flat on the table. Her long, red-painted nails stand out against the dark wood. “What do you think you want to do about that?”

Sharply, Alec looks up to her, not expecting his sister to shrug this off and act like he hasn’t fucked up.

“I don’t know!” he exclaims, “That’s why I’m asking you! I don’t even know why I told her so.”

“You’re allowed to mess up and do stupid things, you know that, right?”

Alec looks down to his hands, still clamped in his lap.

“Alec.”

“Mh?” he mumbles under his breath.

“Alec, hey.” Iz reaches out, and Alec feels her fingers gently brushing his hair. “Hey,” she says softly, “Can I speak with my brother or am I meant to talk to his hair?”

A little snort escapes him, and finally he hesitantly gazes up at her. He finds her looking at him, a kind look in her stare, her lips slightly parted, a hint of a reassuring smile.

Izzy always knows how to make him feel better. She listens to him, she really does, and she does not judge him, whatever he might do. She’s always there for him, every step of the way. Always has been and always will be.

Alec slightly rises the corner of his lip.

“You wanna know what I think?”

“Yes,” he says, like a plead. Yes, please. Show me the way out of this.

“Well,” she hums, wetting her lower lip and tucking her hair behind her ear. “You can tell her the truth.” A pause. “Or you can pretend that you and your mysterious boyfriend no-one knows about have broken up just before Christmas,” she suggests ironically.

“God, no,” he replies in horror, “I don’t think I could handle the pity looks.”

“There’s one more path you can take, then.”

“Is there?”

“You can actually find a special someone to bring home for Christmas.”

Alec looks at her, his eyes widening and his body tensing, completely still. He must look like a deer, caught in the middle of an empty street in the dead of night by the abrupt, violent headlights of a solitary car.

“Think about it!” Izzy exclaims. “It would definitely be a win-win for everyone: you find a boyfriend; you get to spend Christmas holidays with your family and your special someone; we would all be happy!” she enumerates, proudly counting the advantages of her suggestion on her fingers.

“You do know that real life is not one of those cheesy romcoms you secretly adore and that you can’t really ask people to fake-date you or something, right?” he deadpans.

Izzy rolls her eyes, a grin blooming on her lips.

“Besides, I’ve been on my own for my entire life, what makes you think that I’m going to find a boyfriend in – what – twenty days or something.”

“You know what they say, will is power.”

Alec glares at her, his eyes narrowing in that peculiar look of reproach of his.

“I’m just kidding!” Izzy exclaims, holding her hands up in surrender. “Relax, Alec, it was just a joke, Dios mío. But really, I’m serious about the fact of bringing someone home for Christmas. You should really consider that.”

Alec opens his mouth to protest, but Izzy precedes him. She already knows what he’s going to say.

“Don’t,” she warns him, threateningly pointing a finger at him. “Don’t you dare say it. We both know whom you should ask to.”

Alec swallows thickly, that uncomfortable heat rising again on the back of his neck. He finally unclamps his hands and he nervously scratches his nape.

“I don’t think he’d accept,” he mumbles under his breath, gazing down at the plastic-coated menu in the middle of the table.

“You see? You don’t even deny it!”

“Deny what?”

“That you like him, you ass!” Izzy throws her hands up in despair.

“I don’t – it’s not – I mean –”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“I’m serious, Iz,” he says, and he slightly turns his head to glance briefly at Magnus, who’s sitting on one of the high stools near the countertop and is lively chatting with Maia. Alec glances away, and his eyes go back to his sister. “I don’t even know him.”

“That’s what dates are for,” she says, imploringly, “If you never ask him out, you’ll never get to know him for real. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

“Iz –”

“Promise me, Alec.”

Alec pulls a face and huffs out a breath, defeatedly. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” she retorts, “And now, if you don’t mind, I’d want my Pinot Noir.”

_________________

Alec fumbles with his keys outside the front door of his apartment, muttering a curse under his breath. He eventually decides to fish his phone out of his pocket and use its torch to scatter some light and finally manage to jam the right key into the lock.

He opens the door, his hand feeling around the wall for the light-switch. He finds it and switches it on, the warm, yellow light flickering to life over his head. He stumbles into his apartment, kicking the door closed behind his back. He lets out a tired huff of breath and he kicks his work shoes off without untying the laces.

The shoes have left dirty footprints, wet with slush, where he has walked. He’ll clean tomorrow, he thinks with a shrug.

Alec takes his coat off and hangs it to the coat hanger, along with his bag, glad to get it off from where its strap was sinking into his shoulder.

He traipses to his bedroom, where he gracelessly takes his clothes off and carelessly slips into his bed. He scrubs his hand down his face as he sinks among the pillows, his skin unpleasantly goose-bumping for the cold of the sheets.

Rolling over on his side, Alec looks outside the windows. He forgot to shut the blinds. New York spreads out before his eyes, melancholic in the dead of night under the swirling snow, the white and light blue lights of the city dance before his eyes, liquid and impalpable.

His hand moves cautiously on the bed, reaching out, as though he was searching for the company of a sleepy lover. But there’s no one there. Alec is alone. He longs for the human warmth of another body next to him, and he wonders what it’d feel like to let himself be so vulnerable to sleep next to somebody else.

Promise me you’ll think about it, Alec.

His thoughts cannot help but wander to Iz.

Well, not to Izzy specifically. They wander to Magnus Bane.

You don’t even deny that you like him.

Izzy is right – shocker.

Alec does like Magnus.

Actually, Alec doesn’t think there might be someone who doesn’t like Magnus. He’s sharp, and smart, and brilliant and charming. He is undeniably handsome, and Alec always struggles to keep his eyes off of him whenever he enters the room. It’s like there’s something magnetic about him, and Alec is just drawn to it.

Maybe it’s not a magical magnetism, though. It’s something gravitational. It’s something solar.

Yes, solar might be the right word. Magnus is like the sun. His golden light can’t be avoided, he is meant to shine, and people can only stop and stare at him in awe, like a devotee falling to their knees in witnessing a miracle of God.

If anyone asked him, Alec wouldn’t be able to say exactly what it is that he likes about Magnus so much. Alec can’t even claim to know him well. In fact, they met just some weeks ago and he could probably count on one hand the times they talked.

A snort escapes him, remembering the unfortunate event that brought them to talk to each other for the first time. Right away he wanted the Earth to open up and swallow him whole. However, with the benefit of hindsight, maybe it wasn’t all too bad that Simon tripped over his own feet and bumped against Alec, who took a step back to brace himself and his back collided with a too-close Magnus. It was so sudden and unexpected for both of them that Magnus ended up spilling his glass of whiskey over his own shirt.

“Oh, shit! I’m so sorry, I –”

“Never fear.” A pause. A beam. “I’m Magnus. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”

“Alec.”

“ Short for Alexander, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Then, Alexander, I think you owe me a whiskey.”

Alec hasn’t had the opportunity to get a drink with Magnus yet.

They have seen each other after that very first, disastrous meeting – they’re both regulars at The Hunter’s Moon, after all – but they haven’t really had a date. Alec doesn’t feel brave enough to ask Magnus out, even though everybody keeps telling him that he should, and that if Magnus isn’t flirting with him every single time they see each other, then they don’t know what that is.

But Alec knows that Magnus flirts. He flirts, he laughs, he uses his magic, his solar attraction. His sparkle.

Alec doesn’t mind being on the receiving-end of Magnus’ attention, but he just doesn’t believe that this makes him special. Magnus is the type of person who makes everybody laugh without them even realising. He is the type of person who makes people feel flattered by the simple pleasure of talking to him. And Alec is just like anybody else. He is not special. He doesn’t think so.

The thing is, however, that Magnus does make him feel special. And Alec treasures that. He doesn’t think he’s made for love, but maybe he can just have that: a platonic what if? to cradle and hold onto, the possibility of a what-could-be to dream about and hold dearly to his chest, like it’s the most pure and treasured secret to ever preserve.

If that’s how he makes you feel, why don’t you give it a chance? You’re self-sabotaging, a voice inside his head points out. It annoyingly sounds like his sister.

If I don’t act on it, then I won’t be disappointed if things don’t sort out the way I want them to and I won’t be confirmed that I’m not made for love, Alec would tell her petulantly.

If you don’t try, you’ll never know, she’d retort matter-of-factly.

(Promise me, Alec.)

He promised her he’d think about it. Not that he’d act on it.

I can feel you clutching at straws from here, Alec, Isabelle’s voice inside his head reproaches him.

Alec frowns, a wrinkle forming between his brows. He purses his lips like a scolded child.

Do what’s in your heart. Make your what if come true, write your own narrative. Go for it.

(Promise me, Alec.)

And if it doesn’t turn out the way you expect it to, then you’ll know that at least you’ve tried. You have nothing to lose.

(Promise me, Alec.)

He pinches his eyes shut and sucks in a deep breath, in the attempt to shut out the voice of his sister. It’s difficult to do something exclusively for yourself, he wants to argue, when you’ve been trying to live up to people’s expectations for your whole life to avoid feeling like a walking failure. It makes him feel selfish, when all he’s ever been is selfless. How do you write your own self in your own narrative when you’ve always tried to write it out and make room for someone else’s wishes and wants?

It’s not a switch Alec can just turn off, even though Izzy claims he has a switch that is always on when it comes to being selfless. She might not be wrong, but it’s not that simple.

He rolls over on his other side, turning his back to the window and the city lights beyond it. Maybe he only needs to sleep this whole thing off. He can’t sleep though. He tosses and turns for great part of the night, his mind still running a mile a minute. He clenches his fists, incapable of decompressing.

His thoughts are very loud. They go adrift, they swirl, they spiral and entangle and he eventually realises that maybe he should just follow his little sister’s advice, just for once, and see what happens. Maybe it will turn out to be a huge disappointment. Or maybe something great will come of it.

When his alarm goes off and he gets up in the morning, he steps out of his bed like a man with purpose. After a night spent in the opaque labyrinth of his mind, he’s reached a decision. Maybe the bravest decision of his life, after his coming out.

He approaches the window and lightly rests a hand against the cold glass, which mists up around the pads of his fingers. He looks outside and he quirks up his lips at the corners: a pale sun is shyly lighting up the horizon, welcoming the break of a new dawn, a flimsy glow on the plate-glass of Manhattan skyscrapers.

Alec Lightwood doesn’t believe in hidden meanings and greater plans. He doesn’t believe in signs. And yet, he cannot help but admit to himself that the sun shining on the very same day he’s going to ask Magnus Bane out is the loveliest coincidence of his entire life.

TBC on AO3!

#koryandr #malecsanta20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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loudlypanickinginvenezolano · 3 years

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Amusing! Chapter 1, part 2.

«And this, you mother fucker, is why we can’t want nice things. There is an actual risk of them becoming true, and then we will fucking panic because we don’t know that to do. Did you want kisses? There are your cursed kisses, you whiny! And you can’t kiss back nor pet or…or… Fuck this shit. »

Silver is trying his best, Shadow is still very confused, and Sonic…He´s in there, somewhere…

(Working title and summary. Going to change them when I have something more solid to put in.) Even though only Shadow and Silver appear in this chapter, Sonic is in there. He is going to appear in the second chapter. So, yes, this is a triple s.

Part One Chapter 1 on AO3

It was chaste and sweet. Their lips met with care once and once again, slowly as if in a dance. Their posture was a bit awkward, with this of Shadow having his mind set on not moving from his spot, but they made do.

Silver deepened their kiss, then, and Shadow smoothly took the control of it. He wasn’t brusque, nor aggressive. It really wasn’t a fight for dominance, even though it actually (Mh? Kinda?) was. Just not in Shadows side. He just…calmly took over, as if it were the way things were and there was nothing to do about it. Just accept it. It made Silver whine and squirm on his insides because Shit, it was hot. The little nibbling on his lips, the graze of fangs and the wet met of their tongues, the texture of Shadows mouth, the little gasps… It was infuriating, how even now Shadow insisted in keeping things calm yet passionate. Was it even possible to kiss like that? Keep things chaste.

Yeah. Great idea. If you want to end up bald.

It made him whine and fidget, which is a Bad™ idea if you are kissing with Shadow. The ebony parted from their kiss, a little frown appearing on his face at seeing how Silver seemed to just…lean forward, as if losing his balance… or maybe searching for more?

Well, Silver was looking at his lips and basically pouting…So, It was a big maybe? Ah, what did he know.

—Is everything okay? — He asked, and Silver found himself tempted with answering “No, we aren’t kissing anymore, how can things be okay?” but restrained himself in time. It was more a thing that Sonic would say, anyway. (And how could he said that without cackling is still a mystery to both of them, truth to be told.)

—Yes. — He breathed, touching his forehead with Shadows in a loving manner. Something occurred to him, however, and Silver perked up almost instantly, much to Shadows amusement. Great Chaos on earth, what was he supposed to do with these two big dorks…and their inability to stay put!? — That wasn’t a smile, you know?

—No, It really wasn’t, now was it? It certainly made me want to, though.

—Maybe we should do a repeat, then, see if we can get that smile out of you this time…

Shadow snorted, half a smile curling his lips and shoulders shaking with barely repressed laughter. — What the--What was that!? Silver!

Silver definitely was pouting this time.

Shadow couldn’t help it, he broke down in a fit of loud silly giggles which Silver promptly joined. He took hold of Shadow wrist though, knowing well the tendency of his boyfriend of lifting his hand to his mouth while laughing. He was not disappointed when not long after he felt a very small tug and shift under his grip. You see? He was paying attention!

Once both of them calmed down, Shadow shot him a grateful glance, accompanied with a tiny grin that had Silvers heart melting and his whole body preening because, Happy mate? He looked like an absolute idiot in Shadows eyes, flushing face and wagging tail and…Ah, there goes the heart burn once again. Really, can’t you tone it down a bit? For real, brain, stop with the drugs.

There isn’t a real lot to do, isn’t it?

He rocked on his tip toes, before landing a quick smooch of his own on Silver warm cheek, falling back on his heels and turning, as if something had gained his attention and, well, something certainly did. He almost spluttered. — Is that the time!?

His paralyzed by the shock boyfriend came back to his senses, stuttering and confused and happy of course he is happy what the fuck and really really surprised and- - Silver loud whimper scared Shadow.

He felt almost cheated by life.

—It is not fair! — He exclaimed, falling hard on the ebony’s strong back, poking at his sides and tummy and doing sad noises because it really wasn’t fair. — Shadow! Shaaaadow~ — He whined, trying to get his boyfriend attention back. — Why did you--It wasn’t fair! You can’t do that! Why? You can’t just be so cute like that and kiss me and then change the topic so-so…Horribly! It was catastrophic!

Shadow just huffed, rolling his eyes at the dramatics. He waited a little until the agitated hedgehog calmed down a bit, his frantic rambling quieting before he spoke: — First of all, I did not change the topic. I am surprised by how quick has the time passed. It is somewhat late, and if you can’t remember, I am in the middle of something--that yes, I need to finish before I go to sleep. Second of all, if I were to really try and change the topic I would at least try my hand at subtleness. Or just outright scream. Third but not less important… I am not cute. I am not, was not, and will not.

—Hm, Shadow… But, you are cute.

—What? I… Do not.

—Do so.

—Do not.

—Do, so!

— Do not! Ah, I’m not discussin´ it with you!

Silver laughed openly at that, and Shadows ears flickered in annoyance. He pecked the ebony neck before rubbing his cheeks on. —You are right about something, though.

—Of course I am.

—It is getting late. —He kept going on, ignoring Shadows input. He squinted at the entry of the kitchen, straining his ears to hear the soft muffled sound of the TV. He wondered if Sonic was still seeing the DVDs he had gotten him that very day, if he was waiting for them to go to sleep, or if he had gone already and was in bed. He hummed, tracking his fingers up and down on Shadows tummy, feeling the muscles quiver and his tail squirm (One of the few tells he had, and not always that reliable.) thanks to the sensation. He also saw the dirty glare the ebony throw him, but he was so used to them and knew that there was no real threat behind it, so he didn’t paid any attention and kept petting him as he tought. — Do you still need to do a lot of things? How long will it take for you to be finished?

—I need to finish with this, and do the final step before I can put it on the freezer. That will take a while. Then I need to clean, and check the fridge. Fill eh…—He trailed up for a second, before thinking “what the hell” and keep on talking. — fill my thermos for tonight and the two for tomorrow, also leave things ready for when I wake up and need to do breakfast. While I am at it, I guess I could also check the windows and the door. The balcony, as well? I really should check the bathroom, though. I really would appreciate not waking up to an annoying flood once again. I just can’t explain how they keep happening…

Silver winced, grateful that his mind was a safe place, and with it, the reason behind how the “mysterious floods” keep happening would remain far from Shadows reach… However…

—I think that…No.

—Excuse me? — Shadow blinked, because he really wasn’t expecting that as an answer? Just, what exactly was Silver saying no to? It didn’t sound like he was cutting himself short or something like that.

—I said that no. I’m so sorry, but I don’t think that is going to roll. We both need to sleep, don’t you remember? When do you plan in doing so, at 3 of the morning just to wake up at 5? No sire! I don’t… how about this, Hm? What if you let me help you--Shadow let me speak--and then you can finish up earlier? Before you -No. No, shut. Shut. Shadow, no. Keep your mouth shut. Shut. Stop… Don’t you dare open your mouth. Shadow. No. — He sighed, putting his hand on the other lips and pouting a bit, because, blessed chaos, he was trying to help.— What would you do--I swear that if you try to bite me once again you really aren’t moving out of bed tomorrow morning, fast healing or not. Your pride will not be the only thing sore.

Wisely, Shadow kept calm, lowering his ears slowly as if to show his distaste at doing so? But doing it anyway. Silver sighed once again. Really, was this what he got for his efforts? — Now that we are calm, and for your own good, we behaving, what I was going to say? Ah! Yes, yes, Just, think it, ´kay? If I were really busy, wouldn’t you help me? Even if it’s a silly thing, and you are really annoyed with me, you would help me at the end. You can finishing to do your thing, and I can… I dunnu, Check the windows you said? Oh, I know, I can be washing up the dishes! Or, Uh, What you aren’t going to need anymore, I suppose. —He muttered belatedly, remembering that Sonic did the dishes of the dinner.

Or well, actually, just a half of them, as he had rushed to the entry to retry Silver messenger bag and gotten so excited with his gift and his chattering, that when he blinked and remembered that he had been doing something besides smooching and chocking Silver to death, Shadow was finishing with the last of the cups. Sonic indignant and slightly distressed squeak and the honest to Chaos expression of complete confusion Shadow shot back had made him laugh until his belly hurt. Sonic looked like a feral and cute mad kitty ready to pounce with all of his might (And he was using kitty because this was the safe territory of his own mind where he could compare his boyfriend with a kitty and call both pretty as much as he wanted and be freaking thirsty and whatever he felt like. Fucking free will and speech, yes.) And Shadow like a very lost scientist trying to understand an alien or a really troubled mathematician that was trying their hardest to answer a very complicated problem.

Oh! That made him remember something…Damn. How could he distract Shadow now?

— I don’t … really know where all of this is coming from, Silver. And, it is just that, ok, it is getting late, but it’s not yet. You can go to bed without a fuss, and when you expect it the least I am going to be there. Aren’t you overreacting, even just a bit? Besides, it is not that much anyway, and this is something I do everyday, by myself, so… —His voice trailed off, both eye ridges lifting and then falling. It was his routine by this point, whoever house they were in, or hell, even if he was by himself. He always did so. Though now that Shadows thought about it, the days were he was completely alone kept getting lesser and lesser by an alarming rate. What the fuck? A disappearing was in order into two days. Or maybe could he managed it for one? But then, for how long will he be away? It couldn’t be that much, either…

He refocused just in time to catch his boyfriend frustrated pout, and he leaned in a bit almost by instinct, Silver bending immediately and letting him rub their noses together in his usual act of comfort. Unknowingly, Shadow seemed to relax slightly in Silvers hold, something that had and most likely will always have the younger one chirruping lowly under his breath in a very pleased manner and relaxing as well. The reason was a rather simple one, as straight as just saying that he treasured and could very well live for this kind of interactions with all of his loved ones and didn’t have any shame in saying or demonstrating so, unlike some others.

The ebony breath stuttered at the sounds, and for a second Silver though that he had fucked up immensely, but Shadow continued with the gentle caress, carefully looking into amber eyes before speaking. —I am…Not denying you, Silver. Not to say that this is not something to be upset about. I would be mad if I got angry because this. It is just, ah, you… helping me, I guess? It is, kind of nice of you. Thank you for your concern.

Well.

That was just lame. Fucking Chaos.

— Yes, Yes, Die of laughter, why wouldn’t you?

#my writing #I didnt remember this thing #what the hell me?#Silvadow #Silver the Hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #Sonic is there he just is sleeping #Sonadilver #Romance #i guess #Two gay hedgehogs being idiots #This is OLD #older than Animalistic by a while.#sth #Shadilver #Domestic life

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simon-snows-pitch · 4 years

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Thirsty Thursday??

I was today years old when I was tagged in Thirsty Thursday for the first time. (thanks @sharing-a-room-with-an-open-fire!) It was also today when I learned what that was, which seems to be fic recs/appreciation? Yes?? someone tell me if I’ve missed any particularities

I am living and dying by the hand of @llamapyjamas and The Truth About Love. It’s so fucking perfect. It’s angsty (and smutty) and totally lovely. I haven’t read the latest DeNiall update, but it will be my reward for finishing my work this week.

Second, as an intense cat lover and melty hearted human, I am enjoying @siriusly-the-best-bi‘s A Catastrophe where Baz has a kitten roommate that is suspiciously hungry and ginger....

@foolofabookwyrm made me realize that apparently I have a sweet spot for sickfics with Early to Bed and Early to Rise. (It’s not a surprise, given that I am a slut for hurt/comfort)

Last, I would like to acknowledge that I am a terrible person, because I have not yet read my COExchange fic. It’s not that I don’t want to--I’m literally SO EXCITED TO READ THIS, but I want to appreciate it and do it justice and I haven’t been able to focus on reading anything all week. It’s also my birthday in four days, so I’ve decided it will be saved as a birthday treat this weekend. Anyway, I’m sure it will be so lovely (the premise alone has me D: -ing all over the place), so plz check out @andanteavians‘s fic (for me!!!), Your Name Like a Song I Sing To Myself.

Okay, now who to tag?? It seems like so many of you have been tagged already. If you’re not tagged below and still want to do this, please do it and tag me to read your recs!

@thenameissnow-simonsnow @that-bi-bliophile @mitsuhamiyamizi @sunshinesalmon @vintagecar-but-onfire @gampyre @quasi-pup @amphipodgirl @i-am-haiku-lairde @waywardlilpie @problematic-mind @pennameverity @crisps-and-curry @anika-222 @nightimedreamersghost

#thirsty thursday #fic recs

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panharmonium · 4 years

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a face like a wounded bear (i’ve just got a few things on my mind, that’s all)

back on my merlin rewatch rambles this week. i’m finishing up S1 now and just putting down some notes here for myself about 1.11 - specifically, how it ties back to/is informed by 1.10, because this is something that’s been on my mind for a long time.

these got a bit long so feel free to scroll past if this isn’t your cup of tea!

standard disclaimer for people who don’t know me and might stumble across this: i got into this show late and i have not finished season 5. i am GOING to finish season 5, hence this rewatch. so far i have remained unspoiled for the end of this show; i super appreciate everybody helping me stay that way. you have my permission to laugh at me for being ten years late to this show in the first place and also for taking a geological age to finish the last four episodes. i understand and fully support you in this; in my defense, i have been using the break to write fic, so i hope all can be forgiven in the end X)

with that out of the way, some thoughts!

i. a wounded bear

i really appreciate how much angrier merlin suddenly is at everything once we hit ‘the labyrinth of gedref.’

he’s still trying to help solve arthur’s problems, and he’s still rooting for arthur to succeed, but he’s also snappy and irritable and getting lost staring out windows, and his patience level with arthur in particular is set to absolute zero. it’s not a catastrophic change - it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like arthur anymore or that he doesn’t still respect arthur for what arthur...could be, and for what he is, at moments; merlin obviously still deeply admires him for caring so much about the people of camelot and he obviously still believes that arthur is noble at heart and worth supporting. but he’s simultaneously sick and tired of arthur’s particular brand of princely BS, and in this episode it’s starting to show.

before this episode, merlin used to tolerate arthur’s dumbassery with a kind of...willingness to be amused as opposed to annoyed. arthur would go into his “insult merlin” routine or say something only a rich idiot would say and merlin would just laugh it off, or quip it away, or roll his eyes and get on with his day. he was kind of…gently entertained by the people he had to serve. he was having a little adventure right then, you know? and the nobles, arthur included, were colorful characters in this story he’d walked into. if they were occasionally insufferable, well, at least they were good for a laugh.

for example, that episode where arthur keeps asking merlin to cover for him so he can go have his little dates with sophia? merlin winds up in the stocks for it three times in a row, but the first time, he just shrugs it off with his typical cheery equanimity and wryly says, “i forgot how much fun this was!” and then when arthur asks him to cover for him a second time, merlin is just psyched that arthur is having such a good time with sophia, and he immediately agrees to do it, saying, “don’t worry, i’ll find a way to get you out of it!” and then he’s back in the stocks, but when he comes out of them, gaius is more annoyed at arthur than merlin is. and then after arthur runs off to “elope” with sophia, and merlin ends up in the stocks a THIRD time, it’s just the funny zinger at the end of the episode. he’s not upset about it. it’s just like, “meh! here i am again! classic merlin misadventure, what can you do? :)”

there is no chance that would fly in the back quarter of S1. none. zero.

merlin is completely fed up in 1.11. starting with the hunting party’s slaughter of the unicorn, and then branching out to other, smaller things - every dismissive thing arthur says to him, every time arthur ignores or denies the reality of their situation and tries to pin responsibility for camelot’s misfortune on sorcery rather than his own actions, every time arthur makes stupid comments like ‘merlin you’re less intelligent than a rat’ - in this episode, merlin doesn’t roll with those things. he snaps back, or raises his voice; he refuses to be talked over, he bites back “i’m THIRSTY” when arthur tells him to stop smacking his lips in the granary.

in another episode, that stuff might have been delivered in a jokey way - and it will be again, some day in the future, when they’re both back to having fun with it - but merlin’s not having fun with it in 1.11. he’s giving arthur challenging stares and resentful glares instead of friendly, this-is-just-how-we-tease-each-other looks. his tone isn’t amused or fondly exasperated, it’s frustrated or irritated or, sometimes, straight-up angry.

there’s a point in one of their arguments where merlin says he believes what anhora is saying, and arthur’s cold response is, “then you’re a fool. you cannot trust a single word a sorcerer says. you’d do well to remember that.”

and merlin gives him the most baleful glare. like he wants to just...strangle him with his eyes. like he has so many cutting things just sitting on the tip of his tongue and can’t decide which one he wishes he could say first.

ii. a few things on my mind

this, i think, is where it’s worth remembering that this episode takes place in a larger context than ‘arthur did a dumbass thing at the beginning of the episode and merlin’s upset about it.’

because merlin definitely is upset about the unicorn, but merlin’s also just upset, full stop, about things that have nothing to do with the unicorn or camelot’s curse or camelot to begin with, and it’s bleeding over into other areas of his life.

to clarify: i don’t think we can really understand merlin’s subtle attitude shift in 1.11 without understanding that 1.11 takes place immediately after 1.10.

1.11 is one of two S1 episodes whose positions in the timeline we can actually pinpoint relative to their neighbors (the first being 1.02, which is directly stated to take place on merlin’s “first day as arthur’s servant,” aka the day after 1.01). 1.11 likewise can be mapped accurately onto the timeline, because kanen comes thundering into ealdor bellowing “it’s harvest time!” in 1.10, and then in 1.11 camelot is bringing in their harvest, too (literally, gaius yells at the end, “they’re bringing in the harvest!”).

there’s really not any wiggle room there. the harvest season is only so many weeks long to begin with, and we know ealdor was pretty far along with their work in 1.10 - we see the evidence of their labor, and if the grain hadn’t already been harvested, kanen’s group wouldn’t have had anything to steal. ealdor is smaller, so it makes sense for them to finish faster than camelot, but it looks like camelot is just getting started in 1.11, given the state of their grain reserves and the fact that so much grain appears to be unharvested when the blight hits. and, that being the case, honestly, camelot had to have started like, immediately after 1.10 finished, or even while that arc was still going on. it’s already pushing the boundaries of disbelief that they wouldn’t have started by the time ealdor has gotten so much done. there’s no plausible way they could have waited any longer. harvest season is the same for everyone; it’s not some kind of rotating schedule. people only have about a month to get it done in the first place.

so these two episodes occur, at the absolute most, a couple weeks apart from one another, and that’s only by the most generous of estimates; it’s more likely that they’re closer together than that, given the information above. but honestly, it doesn’t matter whether it’s two weeks or two days - either way, merlin in 1.11 has something going on in his head that’s extremely recent and taking up kind of a lot of his energy.

i don’t know that this angle gets looked at often, because the understandable tendency is to mostly focus on merlin in relation to arthur, and this becomes especially true in episodes that contain arthur+merlin umm...idk, focus scenes like the one near the end of 1.11. but this is the angle that’s always on my mind when i watch the end of S1, because if there is one hill i’ve staked out for the digging of my future grave, it’s the following:

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon.

this probably qualifies as an unpopular fandom opinion, but it’s something i absolutely refuse to budge on.

and of course it’s just my own read, obviously; you may have more fun coming at this episode from a different direction, and that’s totally cool! but for me, my understanding when i’m watching this season - merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. especially not yet, especially not now, when merlin has only known arthur for a few months and he’s just coming back from being with people who have known him (and i mean known him, known everything, known him for real) for something like twenty years.

merlin’s life does NOT revolve around arthur pendragon. his relationship with arthur, at this point, is not the most important relationship in his life. arthur is not the best friend he’s ever had. arthur is barely merlin’s friend at all, right now. arthur likes him all right, yes, and merlin likes him back, most of the time, but arthur doesn’t even know him, really.

arthur doesn’t know.

and i love arthur and merlin, like - i’m as down for the mythic, destiny-laden, we-find-each-other-in-every-universe dimension of their dynamic as anybody, and when those two finally have an equal, healthy friendship going on, i’m going to be cheering for them. but it doesn’t change the fact that merlin had a life before he came to camelot, or the fact that by 1.11 he’s only been in camelot for a few months and doesn’t really know arthur all that well yet.

you can pick whatever example you want to illustrate this point; there are enough of them to choose from, but one of the clearest is in 1.11, when arthur passes his final test and drinks anhora’s fake poison. merlin thinks arthur is dead, at that point - he’s pretty well convinced that the poison was real and that arthur has just keeled over dead on the beach - but his reaction to arthur’s ‘death’ is....i don’t want to minimize it, exactly, because merlin's obviously upset about it, but at the same time the level of distress he displays is visibly, objectively different from what we see from him in other contexts. it looks nothing like his naked grief when will is slipping away from him in 1.10, or his desperation when his mother shows up deathly ill on his doorstep in 1.13. he doesn’t look at potentiallydead!arthur the same way, or talk to him the same way, or touch him the same way - of course he hustles right over and shakes him to see if he can wake him up, but it is just...you can watch these scenes next to each other and they are just not the same. it is not the same gentle way he leans over his mother, the way he takes her hand, strokes her forehead, folds gaius’ rabbit’s foot into her fingers. it is not the same way he cradles will in 1.10, when his fingers are in will’s hair and his hand is just - reflexively rubbing will’s head in a way that is just so...intimate and automatic and brokenly tender like -

of course it’s different with them! he loves them! watching them suffer is torture for him, and the idea of losing either of them is devastating to him on a scale i can’t possibly understand. he’s only ever had two people in his life. one parent. one friend. they were his whole world.

so, yeah, merlin is stressed about arthur’s apparent death. he’s upset. he likes arthur, he believes in arthur, he’s appalled that this is happening. but it’s not a personal grief. there aren’t any deathbed confessions. there aren’t any gentle touches. there aren’t any tears. his protest to anhora isn’t ‘i love this person and i don’t want them to leave me;’ it’s ‘i was meant to protect him!’ it’s about him failing at his “destiny;” it’s about the fact that someone told him he was born like this for a reason and now he’s failed at the job that gave him a sense of purpose, at the thing that made him feel like having magic was worth all this terrible trouble.

contrast this to when his mother shows up dying in 1.13, and gaius tries to prevent merlin from saving her by bringing up the importance of merlin’s “destiny.” on that occasion, merlin’s immediate incredulous retort is, “my destiny? this is my mother.”

arthur’s death and merlin’s distress over it all come back to merlin’s unfulfilled destiny, in 1.11. but merlin couldn’t care less about his destiny when it’s his mother’s life on the line. my destiny means nothing if i cannot save her.

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. not here, not now.

[that said - it’s different, of course, later in the series. merlin’s reaction to arthur’s supposed death in 5.07 isn’t just “oh no i failed!”, it’s also a personal, particular anguish. they matter to each other, by then. (though even then i think there’s a lot to be said about the…unhealthy tragedy of merlin giving up on his own wants and needs and worth as a person who exists outside the context of this narrow mandate to protect someone who doesn’t know who merlin really is and wouldn’t love him if he did - but that’s just the situation merlin’s trapped himself in, by that point. it’s what he’s accepted for himself. it’s all he thinks he deserves.)]

[that’s a post for another day, though, so. back to the point.]

merlin’s life does not revolve around arthur pendragon. merlin had a life all his own before he came to camelot, and during the last quarter of season 1, every part of it that matters to him is falling apart.

i keep coming back to this, every time i think about this kid. there’s just no way to overstate the fact that merlin’s world up until this point has always been just two people. his whole life has been just two people. his whole life has been just one parent. his whole life has been just one friend.

and after 1.10, his one friend is dead.

i think we dramatically underestimate the impact of merlin having half of his world obliterated, just like that.

that’s not something he gets up and strolls away from. he can’t roll with that punch. he carries that for the rest of his life.

you know what i mean? it would be a disastrous enough thing on its own, without even getting into the fact that it unfolds in a way that is SO complicated and tied up with messy personal history and regret/guilt that it needs to be parsed in an essay of its own (which, yes, i might already have half-written; yes, i have too much extra time on my hands this month.) we’re also not getting into the fact that like - okay, the sort of grimly positive flip side to only having two significant relationships in your life is that you’ve also never personally experienced any significant bereavement. you don’t have any extended family to mourn, no friends to lose, et cetera. so to have your first experience with loss be something so huge, when you’ve had no practice dealing with grief, and to be trapped in a place where you aren’t allowed to discuss it honestly because if you told somebody what it all really meant you’d be executed?

i’d be in a bad mood, too.

merlin is such a good kid and he tries so hard to have a smile for everyone, but i can’t watch the last quarter of S1 without seeing the strain of this weighing on him. it affects how he reacts to the situation with gwen’s father in 1.12 (more on that another time), and it absolutely plays into the fact that he spends the season finale racing from one side of the kingdom to the other, desperate to sacrifice his life for someone else’s.

^^ regarding that last bit - i think about that a lot. merlin tries to die three separate times over the last three episodes of S1, and it’s not that he’s...running around trying to get someone to kill him, exactly, but there’s definitely a very real sense that he’s dumped any interest in self-preservation, at this point, that he doesn’t care what happens to him. if dying is what it takes to make sure nobody else is taken away from him, then that’s fine. he will do literally anything to not feel this again.

merlin is trying to process something so big for him and he’s trying, by necessity, to do it alone, because he left his mother behind and came back to camelot where nobody understands that the only person other than his mother who ever loved him just died lying for him. he is so stressed out in the last three episodes of this season and so desperately unhappy about things he isn’t allowed to even mention, and i just think it’s impossible to evaluate these episodes outside of that particular context.

“we haven’t done all the things we’re meant to do,” he protests in the finale - and you can feel that aching admission come welling right up out of his soul. it’s uttered in a new context, yes, but he’s been thinking it for weeks and weeks and weeks already, too late to change anything, too late to buy his friend any more time. he’s hurting. and he goes zipping around from life-sacrifice to life-sacrifice in the last three episodes in a desperate attempt to keep himself from hurting more.

iii. i’d never have a friend who could be such an ass

the point of all this is the following: the reason merlin sounds like he’s fed up with arthur in 1.11 is because he is fed up with arthur in 1.11. he’s fed up with everything. they all just got home from ealdor somewhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks ago, and merlin is reeling. he feels like his head and his heart are still trapped on the other side of the border. he’s sick of looking at arthur’s arrogant, insensitive, infuriatingly alive face - and i say this while recognizing that, even at the same time, merlin also cares about arthur, and believes in him, and lionizes him; admires him; hero-worships him, even. these two things can be simultaneously true. merlin’s relationship with arthur is already so fraught with dissonance (how can you care about someone who thinks people like you are inherently evil? how can you respect someone who oppresses you?) - and merlin’s always carried two contradictory truths when he navigates their relationship, one in each hand. and right now it’s just that one hand is holding something too heavy. he’s not being bitchy, he’s busy - he’s trying to deal with something that is taking up 100% of his mental and emotional energy; he doesn’t have anything left over to accommodate arthur pendragon’s dumbassery.

and arthur pendragon IS a dumbass; let’s not pretend that he isn’t. i love him, and he has moments that are so admirable and glorious and shining that they take your breath away, when you can see why gwen says you are going to live to be the man i see inside you; i can see a king that the people will love and be proud to call their sovereign (that speech makes my eyes sting EVERY TIME, it gets me right there) - but arthur is STILL a dumbass. no question about it. he has so far to go, still. he’s dumb in all the generic ‘oblivious rich dude’ ways, and he’s also a jerk in his own specific ‘arrogant arthur pendragon TM’ ways, and merlin at this particular moment doesn’t have the energy to deal with it. he likes arthur, even at this early stage, despite all the mental gymnastics he has to do in order to like someone who hates magic-users. but merlin’s closest friend in the world is dead, and arthur is such an asshole sometimes and it’s like - this is what i got in exchange? this is the trade the universe made? what the hell makes arthur more deserving of being here than somebody who loved me without being told, without being taught, without needing to be constantly convinced that i should be allowed to exist and be safe and be loved on this earth?

are we really surprised that merlin wants to strangle arthur after that trademark ‘you cannot trust a single word a sorcerer says’ comment? merlin has enough reasons to resent that on his own behalf, but his own secret isn’t the problem, this time; the problem is that they literally just got home from their little jaunt to ealdor and the only reason arthur even made it back from ealdor in the first place was because (as far as arthur knows) a ‘sorcerer’ died saving his stupid life, and arthur knows that, and still, this is what he has to say?

and that’s on top of like - back in ealdor before they left, the fact that arthur really felt it was necessary to take time out of his day to come over and reproachfully chastise merlin about not disclosing will’s ‘magic,’ AT WILL’S FUCKING FUNERAL??? “you know how dangerous magic is. you shouldn’t have kept this from me.” AT WILL’S FUNERAL? RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS BURNING CORPSE? LIKE???? HELLO????

can you imagine being in this scenario??? and thinking??? yeah this is appropriate. this is the time.

how is merlin supposed to respond to that? when arthur’s like ‘you know how dangerous magic is’ and merlin is just like ????!! we are AT HIS FUNERAL!!! we are literally WATCHING HIS BODY BURN!!!! you know how dangerous magic is FFS THAT ‘MAGIC-USER’ COULDN’T STAND YOU AND HE STILL SAVED YOUR UNGRATEFUL LIFE AND HE’S DEAD BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT AND WE’RE AT HIS FUNERAL OMG IS THIS THE TIME? IS IT EVER GOING TO BE THE TIME? SHUT! UP!

of course merlin wants to kill him.

so anyway. i really appreciate merlin’s sudden prickliness in this episode. it’s subtle enough not to be completely jarring, but it’s still clearly perceptible, and i’m glad for that, because this is something that should be perceptible, given the timeline, but at the same time merlin would never, ever mention what’s really bothering him out loud, because a) the sorcery element and arthur’s involvement in how things went down have made it an absolutely unbroachable, forbidden topic, and b) guilt has wired merlin’s jaw shut.

^^ re: that last thing - it’s a post for another day, and i won’t really get into it now, but suffice to say, once again, that merlin spends the last quarter of season 1 running around trying his absolute hardest to throw his life away for someone, and i just feel like...i think it says something about the kind of pain he is in, and the kind of apology he feels he needs to make.

he is having a very hard time. merlin in the back quarter of S1 is feeling very alone and very much like he doesn’t deserve to ever feel better.

so if he’s a little bitey with arthur’s trademark noble nonsense, i think we can cut him some slack.

#meta #the once and future slowburn #no kings no masters #tl;dr: merlin in 1.11 is grieving #this is...a lot of meta about not-arthur for an episode with such a frequently giffed arthur+merlin scene lol #but i don't care #not everything in merlin's life is about arthur pendragon #some things are just his #and will is one of those things #it has been so desperately rare for merlin to experience love without fear #every other relationship he has is tainted with 'they don't love the real me. they will hate me when they know.'#the very very few people who give him a breath of relief from this - who let him Exist and know beyond a doubt that he is cared for -#we RESPECT those people in this house!!!#how crucially important they are to him #how essential to his existence #how fundamental to his survival #how much they mean to him and how deeply it changes him when they're torn away #will and lancelot and hunith and gaius are the real mvps folks

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