redolence.
he can't help but be drawn to you again and again; you're intoxicating and he fears he has grown addicted.
feat. wriothesley & gn!reader
w.c : 1.4 k
warnings : physically intimate scenario but nothing happens , a result of me being touch starved lol
note : i'm back for a little (: this idea has been haunting me and i wanted a simple warm up.
the warmth of your quaint apartment is welcoming as wriothesley haggardly enters through your doorway, a sharp contrast from the cool night breeze that clings to the streets of the court of fontaine. the smell of dinner entices the duke further into your home, but his exhausted body yearns for something other than the food waiting for him on the dining room table.
his feet shuffle across the hardwood floors, not even bothering to switch any lanterns on as your home has been memorized from the countless number of times he has visited you.
you, his beloved.
just as your name echoes in his head, your head pops out from the hallway leading into your bedroom and your bright smile lights up the darkness in your abode, putting the moon and her gracious light to shame.
the humble apartment comes to life as the lanterns illuminate the living space and the patter of your feet against the floor is all wriothesley can hear before-
"wrio!" you call his name and the duke can already feel his muscles relax and the weight from keeping busy at meropide lift from his shoulders. as if by instinct, wriothesley opens his arms wide and he doesn't need a warning from you as he feels your body leap into his arms.
and despite his world now embracing him in his arms, the duke of the fortress of meropide feels the most at ease.
your feet land on the wooden floor of your home as your lover sets you back down, grounding you back to reality and yet your heart still feels like it's feather light as if you weighed nothing more than a speck of dust as you meet ashen eyes.
he looks exhausted from a long day's work; the silver eyes that you love so much drooping and the weary lines below his eyes a bit more prominent this evening. his usually tousled hair is messier than it usually is and your fingers reach up to fix it as much as you could.
the sea of midnight tufts streaked with silver, reminiscent of the galaxies you would see littering the clear night sky after the tears of the hydro dragon cleanse the land of fontaine, is soft to the touch and you wish you could play with it forever. your fingers linger down to his jaw, caressing the scars that have made their home along his face.
and you watch as the man who has seen what the world has to offer in the worst way possible melt into your touch as if it were the only safe haven he knows.
"i take it work was rough on you?" you ask your lover, a smile growing on your face as wriothesley sighs heavily.
"don't get me started," he begins, pressing a kiss into your palm. "i'd rather not talk about it and ruin my mood for tonight."
your lover stays true to his word as his hand trails down your arm; his larger hand encases your own and keeps yours glued to his face as your warmth encompass him. however, as wriothesley relishes in your simple touch, something about you intrigues him. it stimulates his senses, reeling the duke in closer to your skin. he can feel your body heat increasing as he buries his face into your palm before sliding to your wrist as the scent grows stronger.
it's sweet, a smoky, herbal aroma with a hint of fruit... was it sunsettias? or bulle fruit?
regardless of what it was, it's enticing to the duke and he found himself inching his face further and further into the warmth of your body. you find it ticklish the way wriothesley's nose skims up your arm from your wrist, inhaling every single inch of your skin to get more of the aroma into his system.
his touch is dizzying to you; the kiss to your palm already sending your chest ablaze and it only gets worse the more he kisses up your arm. each press of his lips against your skin sends waves of heat over your body but you find it hard to pull away from the intimate atmosphere.
"new perfume?" your boyfriend grumbles against your shoulder as he takes in more of the scent. what was it; the fruity smell is on the tip of his tongue and yet fatigue clouds his brain.
"n-no," you stammer out in a voice that wavers in strength. your free hand, the one not held in your lover's as his lips caress your skin again and again, grips onto the fabric of his shirt. his heat melds into yours as your bodies get closer in the small room of your apartment. "it's a new body oil i'm trying out from sumeru... does it smell weird?"
truly, wriothesley's actions are quite the opposite of that. if anything, this herbal scent clinging onto your body lures the supposed cold duke that oversees the fortress of meropide into your frame and turns him into complete putty underneath the mere graze of your finger.
if only the prisoners of meropide could see the duke now.
wriothesley feels your body shiver as he nears your neck with his touch. you're flustered, skin warming up and breath hitching, and as a result he pulls away from your body... only to be greeted by such a delightful sight; eyes wide open like a deer caught in the spotlight and your kissable lips parted in such a way that almost reels him in completely.
oh, what you do to him.
"far from weird, sweetheart," wriothesley murmurs softly, his voice a mere whisper, before he delves down again as temptation rules over his mind and his body yearns for your touch. his lips press into your own, the taste of his afternoon tea enveloping your senses; it's floral yet citrus hints make your head spin as his kisses caress your lips again and again.
wriothesley's arms have moved to hold your waist and pull you closer to him; the need to feel every inch of you on his own body is overwhelming the duke and he knows he won't be able to hold himself back for too long.
you're too intoxicating and the aroma that wafts from your body is only pulling him further and further in.
your lover pulls away from the kiss, but you've only a moment of respite before his lips press into your skin again. they trail from your jaw down to the crook of your neck. your body shivers as his warm breath fans across the expanse of your neck and yet you're far from cold.
it's ticklish the way wriothesley buries himself into your neck and you can't even pull away to compose yourself as his arms trap you within his arms; a prisoner in the fortress of his embrace.
"wrio, maybe we should call it a night?" your voice is barely a breath as you try to snap your lover out of his trance, not that you would mind where this would be headed to but... the moon was high in the sky and you know wriothesley would be even more exhausted the next morning should the both of you continue.
his nuzzles against your skin put to a halt due to your words and like an obedient lover, wriothesley pulls away with a tired smile. he leans down again but only to press light kisses against the apples of your cheek and forehead.
"sorry, darling," wriothesley whispers in the close space between you. his thumb has come up to gently rub across your cheek and his heart skips a beat seeing how frazzled you had become because of him. he kisses you again, but this time it's brief and light. "you're just too much for me sometimes."
"all i did was welcome you home." your deadpan manner makes your lover chuckle softly.
and yet as the two of you bicker late into the night, all the duke could think about was the solace that you bring when you're near him. the warmth in your smile, the comfort in your embrace, and the relief that you bring to him with just your scent alone is enough to bring his mind at ease after the taxing work hours at the fortress of meropide.
should the days toughen the duke even more than he already is, he knows you'll be there to soften and protect his heart with a simple touch.
his solace.
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God it’s so unfair what they did to Molly. I know I’ve said it before but I can’t stop thinking about it. She was in love. She was young and in love and look what happened to her. She fell for a man infamous for his silver tongue, she is far from the first woman on his arm, and her only crime was believing in him. Believing in the promises he sold her and everybody else. She loved him. She loves him so much and he just didn’t care. What was she to him? A distraction? Something pretty to look at and touch when he pleased that became too much work to be worth his time? A status symbol? A pretty rich exotic bird in a cage to flaunt as he liked? A replacement? A stand in for a woman long since dead? Whatever she was, he didn’t love her. He never did. He knew he wouldn’t, he knew he didn’t, and yet there she was.
She was in love and alone in a country she didn’t know in a world that does not like her, in a gang that does not like her either, isolated from her peers by the influence of a man who does not and will not love her. Not the way she wants to be loved. A man who ignores and berates and abuses her, who belittles and complains about her every emotion, her simple asks to be spoken to, looked at, called by her first name. She is desperate for help and her attempt to reach out to somebody who may understand what she sees is wrong with Dutch is ignored. He starts looking at another woman. A younger woman. She’s already young. Not young enough for him. Not passive enough for him. Not enough for him. She says too much. She questions him too much. She asks too much for him when she tells him that she wants his respect and affection.
She knows. She sees him for who he is. No one else does. No one will listen to her. No one likes her. Some don’t mind her, of course, but they do not like her. Some pity her. They do not like her. They do not love her. He does not love her. She is a sobbing mess before him, telling him that he has ruined her life, and even then he refuses it all. She can’t leave. Where would she go? How would she live, with no skills to provide for herself and no idea where she even is beyond the imprisoning safety of camp? She is a sobbing mess every day, sleeping on the floor and talking to herself as she smokes, convinced that everyone is as bad as him, that everyone is laughing at her still. She runs away and no one cares. She flees into unfamiliar territory on foot and unarmed, and as quickly as she escapes her abuser she is captured and sweated about him, and even still, even after all he has done to her, even recalling his gang that do not like her, who she believes all hate her, she does not say a word about them. She does not betray him even after he has betrayed her. She does not put him in danger. She does not try to have him killed. She could. She does not put his gang in danger. His family that she has never been part of. People who have never been on her side. She does not betray them.
She is dragged right back the second one of them sees her, perhaps the first time she had been truly noticed in months, drunk and worn down and angry, and it’s too much now. She cannot take more of this. More of him. She can’t. She lies. She lies and he believes it. Almost all of them do. She lies. A lie they could have seen through if any had cared enough to know where she was. A bank robbery planned and failed in her presence, only in its aftermath deciding to leave. She lies and he believes her. He points his gun at her and she doesn’t care. Is that what she wanted? It does seem so, how she laughs at him. Finally winning, finally hurting him, knowing that even think it is only herself who is aware that she is making a fool of him. He’s not so big now. She lies and they shoot her and they burn her. She is shot in the back. In the stomach. There is a definite cruelty in that. It’s beyond just ridding the gang of a supposed traitor, a wound to the stomach. They shot her and they burned her. They fucking burned her. They burned this young woman destroyed by a man she loved. He destroyed her in life and they destroyed her body further. Her innocence is revealed and the very camp whose move was christened by her blood is meets the same fate, set alight, her killer’s body within. She never said a word, they learn. With every reason she had, she didn’t tell them anything. She was in love. I love Molly O'Shea
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i like to make fun of murderbot for being all "i hate everyone, i don't care about anything or anyone, fuck off" while simultaneously caring very much about the people around it and the situations it finds itself in. i love how it "accidentally" ends up caring quite a lot about the friends it makes along the way.
but i think something that i tend to forget is that murderbot actively decides to care - at least at some point in its story.
idk, as a person that struggles with depression, this paragraph from artificial condition really resonates with me. prior to all systems red, murderbot had contracts. it had routine and it had protocols. it knew what it had to do to just get by, how to perform so no one would notice it had disabled its governor module. it was deeply depressed, yes, but it was functioning (for lack of a better word).
in artificial condition, murderbot's routine is gone. it cannot go on in that state of numbly going-from-contract-to-contract, putting in as little effort as possible, consuming media to cope. that option is gone because it escaped (and note that escaping the company was not an active choice, it kinda happened to it). murderbot has two options now: it can either gather all its energy; actively do something new and difficult and distressing; change something in its life and try. or it can let the numbness and the emptiness take over and stop trying. if murderbot wants to survive as a rogue secunit, it has to try. no matter how difficult that is.
the wording in that paragraph really hits home for me. the way the non-caring sees an opportunity to slip in and to take over. does murderbot even care? does anything really matter? is anything really worth the hassle? wouldn't it be so much easier to just let your mind slip away a little, to go numb, to be passive, to watch media and wait for things to happen to you? wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking and struggling and feeling complicated things? to stop making an effort? you've been dealing with a lot lately and maybe it's time to just shut down. maybe you'll just take a little break. just slip deeper into this chair and start the show. time flies when you're not paying attention. trying is exhausting. who cares if you don't do the things you wanted to do, you were supposed to do. it'll be fine. let's just ignore those things for now. just let the non-caring take over. just stop thinking. you can deal with the aftermath later. just watch your shows. who cares.
but murderbot cares. it decides to care. it decides to fight with all it has and i think that is so brave. and i think in the later books caring is less of an active decision for murderbot. once you start caring, it's easier to keep going than to stop; and murderbot, for all its "i'm a grumpy rogue secunit, leave me alone" behavior, knows just how important caring is. so it's not that it doesn't know what's happening; rather, it lets itself care.
tl;dr: caring is not the default for murderbot, it's just the more difficult of two options. and it decides not to take the soft option. it decides to struggle. it decides to care. and so it does.
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something that kind of bothers me about modern feelings toward the epic of gilgamesh is how it's been COMPLETELY watered down to being "gay". Bear with me as I explain.
this is more of an extreme example, but I see this take all the time (not the yaoi part. the gay lover part). it's boiled down to the fact that it's gay over literally anything else in the epic. Gilgamesh's lament to Urshanabi about Enkidu's loss is overshadowed by the fact that Gilgamesh is mourning his gay lover. Gilgamesh is on a journey because he lost his gay lover. Gilgamesh and Enkidu were gay.
Now I understand that with a modern lens, people tend to lock on to how unabashedly Gilgamesh mourns Enkidu, because it's gay and because it's the oldest written epic in human history. People feel deeply connected to the idea that people like them have been around since the dawn of literature. But placing exclusive focus on the nature of the relationship as gay, rather than why the relationship or its loss was important, erases the story the epic is trying to tell.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is a story about love, yes, but it is not a love story. It's about the fear of death, coping with loss, and desperation to stave off the inevitable. It's about the bonds of friendship, about hardship, coming to terms personal change and losing pieces of yourself as you learn and grow. It is about consequences, arrogance, death, second chances, mourning, yearning, loving and LIVING. The Epic of Gilgamesh is about the entire human experience and one man's struggle to accept it. What does it mean to have lived? What does it mean to have loved, and lost? What does it mean to die, and to be remembered? What does it mean to be human?
It is perfectly okay to find appreciation for the Epic because of Gilgamesh and Enkidu's relationship. But also understand that the world's oldest story is not about two gay men who loved each other. It is a story about being alive.
TLDR;
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One thing about Shen Jiu that is really sad to me is that despite everything he’s been through and everything he’s become, despite how he acts and how he treats others, at the end of the day there’s still a little part of him that wants to do good.
Impulsively, he still tries to save people. Obviously with Yue Qi’s case that could be contributed to the attachment between them, but even with Liu Qingge— both when fighting the well ghost and in his (failed) attempt to save Liu Qingge from qi deviation. This is someone he hates, who he ambushed multiple times, who he has threatened with death over and over again, and yet when it comes down to a split-second decision, Shen Jiu still chooses to save him.
From what he says and how he acts normally, it’s easy to say that he doesn’t care about anyone, and certainly isn’t protective. And for the most part that’s probably true!! But when he has to make a split-second decision— let someone he loathes die or help him— he still tries to save them.
Until he fails, and Liu Qingge dies.
I think that impulse just about went away entirely after that point.
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👉👈 Hi friends! I have a long, serious post made just for you(!) that isn't full of spoilers, smut or mooning lawn gnomes. Please read if you can, this is a 💥 mutual aid request 💥
It has been a horribly painful and long while as most people following/keeping up with me know. and in a few days I'm going to be down $1500, which is basically all my fucking $
I can't afford Christmas for anybody, which sucks and I'm very sorry. I can't even take care of myself and haven't been, which also sucks and I'm very sorry
Landlords spontaneously raised rent on me more than halfway through this month as punishment for not getting to my house chores and not communicating, to be totally honest with you. I feel ashamed and awful about it but I didn't want to clean the place while multiple ppl living here had tested positive for COVID and kept walking around unmasked... I am not fully vaxxed because I've been too depressed to get any kind of necessary medical care done and I didn't want to catch COVID in the middle of my finals week for the semester. I woke up to being angrily and rudely bitched at first thing after the last of my finals (I passed at least). It wasn't a humanizing text. Fuck the mistreatment though. Rent is now almost doubled and it won't be lowered
There was no room for negotiation and I truly believe they've resorted to pricing me out of living here because the group of renters psychologically tormenting me wasn't effective (actually- putting a picture of my rapist on the fridge rly was super effective in getting me to isolate myself in my room all day and so was outing me as trans to the transphobic ass neighbors.... But I didn't and still don't have any place better to move out to, like the way they were hoping I would. Yes, I have looked and BEGGED btw)
I want out of here NOW, but I can't leave. I tried and had to come back because it was the best option. I can't afford to stay in a motel/hotel/BnB just to get away from them for a day or two during Christmas. I don't have any friends who I can spend the holiday with either. During the semester, I resorted to convincing classmates with keys to locked buildings to let me crash in them while they worked at night and I would leave before anybody showed up. Now that school is out, I can't do that. I don't have any family I can reach out to for support or friends who I can depend on for immediate help. I have been crying day in and day out for weeks. I have records of it posted throughout my blog. Literally crying for days on end. I'm being so fucking transparent
All that lump of text is to explain to whoever is out there, who might be listening and willing and able, to please consider helping me, if and ONLY IF able. I know times are tough and if you'd rather use your $ for other reasons or just don't have any to spare, don't sweat it and take care! 🫂
I've thought about what I could do for a long time and have helped myself how I can. It isn't enough. I've applied for so much assistance. Been approved and been sabotaged by my inhumane mom (who does not love me) via stealing my legal documents and letters and hiding them for months. My mind jumps to grim places but I'm clinging for dear life to whatever hope I have left that says things will get better. I wish I knew somebody with a business that I could work for. Part of me feels so fucking terrible for asking for help because I feel like a waste of all your resources. I feel like I shouldn't ask, like I really do not fucking deserve help, but there are friends online who care, who I know mentioned being interested in helping in whatever ways they can
So to the people who care to seriously me, I'm ready to accept it: please send me nice words to get through this and feel less alone. It feels pathetic to ask but I would love a nice letter. A nice card even. Kind words of any kind would go a long way. It means more to me than food. I have felt so broken and every day feels like a test to figure out how badly I actually want to live
I'm also leaving my cash app and paypal here in case anybody would like to do more than what I'm comfortable asking but probably very likely will inevitably need very very soon. I will be left with fucking nothing and I will have no idea what to do once rent is paid
Thank you to those of you who have sent love, offered to listen and heard me out. I really wish it wasn't so hard to survive. I'm trying to feel better knowing there are people out there who are also without help and hoping the best, but it doesn't make me feel any better or comforted tbh. I just wish the help was there for us. I wish there was a place to go for spare love, care, compassion, empathy, kindness, humanity, generosity... I need that more than I need $. Call me stupid but that's what I live for. I don't live for paying to survive in terrible conditions. I live for love and to smile with friends
I hope to write back to the friends who have already been so kind as to message me soon btw. I'm sorry for not replying sooner. Your overwhelming support is sincerely sweet and sometimes I cry because I can't believe people are so nice (to me???). It'll give me something to do that doesn't make me feel like dying! :') so thank you thank you thank you *fist bump*
Hope you're all doing as well as you can and that somehow things get better. Hope anybody else struggling like me doesn't make the mistake of isolating like a sick and dying animal. You deserve love. You deserve support. Don't be like me. Have the courage to reach out to the people who care about you for help as early on into your emergency as possible. Don't let your situation snowball because you spend so long trying to figure out if you're worth it!!! This Random Tumblr user is here to tell you that YOU ARE. Sending my infinite everlasting unconditional love. Be nice to yourselves. Be nice to each other. Fuck the hateful assholes who wish I would just kill myself already. Tell your friends you love them. Happy Holidays!!!
And here's a single picture of a mooning lawn gnome at the very end, as a treat! I told you this post wasn't full of it.... It just ended with it 👉👉
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