#I know this is way back in my archive already but since I’ve got it on the brain

[jj-one]

STRAY KIDS + WHEN YOU’RE BUSY AND THEY CRAVE YOUR ATTENTION !

this is smut, do not interact if under 18

pairing: skz x f!reader genre/tags: smut, fluff, nipple play, fingering, exhibitionism, voyeurism, marking, sexting, sending nudes, piv, unprotected sex (don't be silly, wrap ur willy), masturbation, oral (f receiving), dry humping, pussy slapping, multiple orgasms, spanking, there is probably more but i’m too lazy to write them all words: 4.4k

[note] if you remember seeing this before yes i’m the original author i didn’t plagiarize lol, i made a new blog and was formerly known as @milkychae but deleted a while ago. i’ll be reposting all my old deleted fics and using this as an archive !

BANG CHAN. It was finals week, aka your personal hell. You were always super nervous about tests and if you didn’t score over an 80% that may as well be a failure to you. You sighed as you opened yet another textbook to read, your dickhead professor thought it would be a good idea to pile more homework on top of the fact knowing you all needed to study. Your major was biochemical engineering so you shouldn’t have been too shocked by all this intense workload. As you were sitting on the bed you heard a noise come from the door, looking to the left of you to see Chan coming inside. You don’t really put much thought into it though since you see him literally everyday and you were just really focused on studying right now. That’s when Chan starts to come up behind you, rubbing your shoulders and planting a kiss to your cheek.

“Hiii y/n, I’m back!” He says cheerfully, “I couldn’t wait to see you baby,” he proceeds to try and pry the textbook out of your hands so you can give him your full, undivided attention but you pull it back.

“Sorry babe but I really, really need to study right now.” You tell him with an exhausted look on your face. You’ve been studying for only 2 and a half hours but it feels like the entire day.

Chan looks at you and puts his arm around you, “You look so tired sweetie, why don’t you let me give you a massage?” He asks, already starting by wrapping his hands back on your shoulders.

You loved this man dearly, he just came back home from an 8 hour shift at work but is still offering to give you massages and help you out when you’re stressed. You want to tell him no and that you seriously need to focus back on studying but the intrusive thoughts were slowly winning. Ultimately you gave in to Chan’s desires and he gave you a gentle massage. The massage started off pure at first with no intention of going any further but then his hands slipped a little too far and came in contact with your nipple. He noticed you weren’t wearing a bra underneath so he slips his hand through the opening of your t-shirt, light moans were now leaving your mouth from his touch.

“I’ve been thinking about fucking you all day babe,” Chan softly whispers while pinching your nipples, bringing his other hand down to your thigh and gently caressing it. Chan has always been good at being a distraction for you and his cock is definitely what you need instead of reading about the Principles and Techniques of Molecular Physics.

LEE KNOW. Saturday nights were the best, you had no work and got to do whatever you wanted for the whole day. You weren’t much of an outgoing kind of person so you chose to stay in and have your boyfriend Minho come over and be lazy with you. You were wrapped up in your cozy sherpa blanket watching your favorite kdrama season finale, you and Minho both loved kdramas but you got way too into them. Your eyes have been glued to the show since Minho got there and you only spoke about three sentences to him. He’s sitting on the couch next to you and he’s not as remotely interested in the show as you are, he keeps looking around the room and sneaking glances at you from time to time.

He can’t stop noticing how cute you look today, you were wearing very light makeup and had messy hair. He thought you looked so adorable in your current state, just in awe of your natural beauty. He wraps his arm tightly around you and tries to give you a kiss, but you quickly pull away from him so you can focus back on the TV, not trying to miss anything. Minho gets visibly upset by this, he wants to give you his affection yet you’re currently denying it. He tries one more time to kiss you but you continue to keep pulling away to watch the show. That’s when he decides he’s had enough and grabs the remote to turn off the TV, causing you to get frustrated with him.

“What the hell Minho?!” You say in confusion, you were getting so close to knowing who the girl’s father finally was.

He doesn’t say anything, instead he just starts roughly kissing you, pushing you down on the couch and hovering over your body. He pulls away leaving you breathless, then proceeds to nibble on your earlobe, dragging his tongue further down to lightly suck on your neck, touching a certain spot that makes you inhale sharply. He brings one of his hands to your stomach, rubbing it gently. Beginning to toy with the hem of your sweatpants and wants nothing more than for them to be off.

He was almost going to give in to that idea but a new one came to mind, an even more sinister thought. He grins as he continues rubbing down your thigh, you want him to wipe that smirk off his face so badly because you have no idea what he’s up to. Wondering what he could possibly be thinking about right now. Minho brings his fingers to your clothed heat, sliding them inside the sweatpants and starts rubbing your clit through your panties. You moan for him as you close your eyes, feeling the friction. You buck your hips in the air so you can feel more of him, but Minho grips your hips and holds them firmly in place.

“No, stop. No moving ‘til I say so,” Minho says sternly, giving your clothed pussy a little slap as he looks at you. “Since you’re so willing to ignore me, I get to tell you what to do from now on.”

CHANGBIN. You’ve been cleaning the entire house preparing for your parents to come over for dinner. You wanted to make sure that everything was perfectly spotless and the amount of cleaning you did today could account for your whole lifetime. You were cleaning the stove and just as you were about to grab another clean sponge you see Changbin with a whole box full of donuts from Krispy Kreme.

“How’s it goin’ babe?” Changbin asks while setting the donuts onto the table, he sees you wearing an apron and giant yellow gloves, “looks like you’ve been doing some serious, hard labor!”

“I’ve been cleaning for 5 hours now..” You say with an exhausted look on your face, “I haven’t even finished cleaning the stove yet.”

“Who cares about the stove y/n,” Changbin says, chuckling at your frustration about needing everything to be neat and tidy.

“I’m serious Binnie, I need to clean everything and make sure it’s all perfect!” You tell him while pouting.

“Why don’t you take a break babe.” He suggests out of concern, grabbing your hands to take your gloves off and sets them aside. He slowly brings your body up against the wall behind you, kissing you passionately. He must have been wanting you all day by the way he was hungrily kissing you, the man was sucking on your face for dear life, exploring the depths of your mouth as both your tongues were intertwined. He takes off your apron and grips his hands around your waist while your leg wraps around him, he held you so securely.

As things got more heated, and all your clothes were off, he aligned himself inside you. Your hands were snaked around his neck as you desperately move your hips to feel his cock, feeling every bit of his thrusts in you. Letting out a high-pitched moan as you grab a fistful of his hair and scream his name. Your legs grew weak with each and every stroke Changbin gives you, feeling like you’re going to faint. He continues pounding into you like no tomorrow and you hold tightly onto his shoulders for support. His skin was sticky and sweaty from all the work he’s putting into fucking you, his face looked super focused as he was hitting all the right spots. He was fucking all your stress away at this point and you were feeling so good. You feel yourself coming to your peak as he thrusts into your dripping heat, you’re seeing stars at this point. The harder his strokes were getting, the faster you were to reaching your climax.

“Mmm…gonna cum!” You cry out in pleasure, slowly losing your grip on him as you slip from his grasp. Changbin swiftly picks you up and pins you harder into the wall, making sure you don’t go anywhere by fully pinning his body up against yours. You feel so connected to each other in this very moment as you’re both about to cum, both letting out a string of moans in unison. You both reach your highs together, dizzy as your orgasm washes over you, feeling his cum leaking out of your cunt and dripping down to your leg. You just spent the whole day cleaning and now you have to get cleaned up before your parents come in approximately 30 minutes.

HYUNJIN. It was a long day at work, you were about 6 hours in and you already wanted to end it all. You work at a clothing store and on this particular day for some reason everyone and their mom wanted to come shopping. You’ve been working the register nonstop and you had yet to take a break, you were so busy that you forgot to even take one. You asked one of your coworkers if they could cover for you while you go on lunch and they said yes. You were so excited to finally be able to get to sit down and eat. As you sat in the break room you checked your phone for any missed messages, you see that you have a bunch of missed texts from the new guy you’re seeing. Hyunjin’s name is plastered on your phone and you check the messages straight away, eyes growing wide at what was shown before you. Hyunjin sent you a string of messages:

‘Hey y/n, what’s up?’ [1:15 pm]

‘Imyyy’ [1:25 pm]

‘Wyd? Are you at work?’ [1:42 pm]

‘Yea you’re prob at work :P’ [2:26 pm]

‘I’m a little horny lol’ [2:41 pm]

‘I want youuuu’ [3:02 pm]

He then proceeds to send you a couple shirtless pics of him in bed and a short video of him stroking his erect cock through his boxers. You quickly look around to see if anyone would be able to notice and you don’t see anyone else in the break room besides you. That’s when you open the video fully to see the rest, quickly get turned on as your wetness is only growing. You ran to the bathroom so you can send a photo back, snapping a quick pic of your boobs under your shirt and telling him how wet that video made you at work. You love that he now comes to you for when he feels needy, you like that he craves your attention while you’re gone. He sends you another message saying how much badly he wants to fuck you and he can’t to pick you up from work. You smile at that and tell him you only have 2 more hours to go.

You realize it’s time to get back to work and now all you can think about is that damn video Hyunjin sent you. The way he was stroking his cock all nice and slow made you want to be there to give him even more pleasure. You were walking around all day with wet and sticky panties since you came a little bit from fingering yourself in the bathroom to the video. You couldn’t wait to bounce on Hyunjin’s cock all night after you get off work.

HAN. This was now the fifth dress you tried on and you still haven’t figured out a style you liked yet. You were getting frustrated but you weren’t going to let your pickiness get you down from shopping. You were at the mall with your boyfriend Han and as much as he hated shopping he liked to see you try on the pretty dresses for him so it was a win-win. You go to a different store now and you check out those dresses, making a beeline for the pink ones since that was your favorite color. You check out all the various designs and ask Han which ones he liked best, he didn’t really give much input and just picked the shortest one for you.

You gave him a playful side eye and put the dresses you didn’t like back, heading over to the dressing room so you can try everything on. As you were trying on the dresses, Han was sitting on a bench outside the door, texting all his homies. He soon started to notice how long it’s taking you in there and although you were busy trying on dresses he was getting tired of sitting here and waiting for what seemed like an eternity. He sighs as he figures out what to do, but he ends up deciding to knock on your dressing room door. You don’t reply but he can hear stuff rustling from the inside so he knocks again and tells you it’s just him.

“Uh… I think I need help,” you tell him reluctantly, he’s not sure what you need help with but he comes in anyway. He sees you standing in the dressing room with your hands in the air and the dress halfway up your body, he starts to laugh at how you were stuck in it.

“This isn’t a laughing matter, please help get this damn thing off of me!” You whine, and he begins to unzip the dress from the back, releasing you from its tight grip. You feel like you can finally breathe once again and slip the dress off of you, now completely naked in front of Han. You were only wearing your skimpy g-string and you had your nipples pierced which Han loved about you. He looks you up and down, licking his lips as if he was about to destroy you. The only thought in his head right now was to kiss you, so he grabs your face and crashes his lips into yours, moving some of your hair out the way. You kiss him back but harder and even more passionately, letting him fondle your boobs and play with your piercing. As he toys with your nipples he looks at you with pure lust, his eyes were all hazy and he looked nothing but in love with you. He started kissing your chin and licked the side of your neck, making you get all wet and worked up for him.

“We shouldn’t be doing this right here baby,” you tell Han as he continues roaming all over your body.

“Doesn’t that make you wanna do it even more though?” He says mischievously, sucking on your neck and giving you small hickies. You knew the chances of getting caught were very high but at this moment, you didn’t really seem to care. All you wanted right now was Han and that’s all that was on your mind. His hands slid down between your legs, spreading your pussy lips with his fingers and coating them with your essence. Your wetness was leaking down to your thighs and it took everything in you not to scream from Han’s touch. He inserts two fingers in your tight little hole and goes in and out slowly, you press your lips together trying not to make a sound, so he covers your mouth.

“Shhh… quiet babe,” He whispers into your ear.

FELIX. It’s not secret to Felix that you were a workaholic, you often immersed yourself in your work a little too much. He knows you are an independent woman that enjoys the freedom of working but at the same time he really wishes you’d give that same energy towards him sometimes. You traveled a lot for work and although you two live together, it still puts a strain on your relationship being apart for long periods of times. Felix loves to be around his lover and the fact you are always so busy with work makes him want to shower you with even more love and affection when he sees you. You were gone on another usual business trip but this time it was for a week, that was the longest you’ve gone for work and it was driving him insane. Everyday he thought of you and he would text you little things that he saw randomly throughout the day that reminded him of you. You always appreciated how much Felix adored you and your work ethic, he loved you for you.

The day you came back home from work Felix came to you with open arms, he was more than excited to see you again and all he wanted for the past week was the attention of his beautiful lover.

“I’ve missed you so so much baby,” Felix says whilst giving you the biggest hug, his body was so warm and you melted right into him. You gave him a kiss and he moves you both over to the couch, pulling away from kissing you for a second with a weird grin plastered on his face.

“What’s with that look?” You ask, wondering what he’s thinking in that head of his.

“I got you a little something, I’ll be right back,” he quickly runs to your shared room and comes back with a black box in his hand.

“What’s this?” You ask curiously, holding the box up to examine what it could be.

“Just open it, you’ll be surprised.”

You do as you’re told and open the box, you see a purple velvet bag and you open to see what’s inside. It was a vibrator, it had multiple settings and looked very high quality and expensive. You instantly blushed as you held the item in your hand, looking up at Felix so he can explain what’s going on.

“I wanted to get something to relieve your stress..” he continues “because you’re always so busy and stuff, y’know.”

You smile at the naughty gift your boyfriend gave you, giving him another kiss and thanking him.

“Want to use it on me now?” You ask, knowing that he’ll say yes to you in a heartbeat. Felix’s eyes light up like a kid in a candy store and he agrees without hesitation. He sits next to you on the couch with the toy in his hand and you’re now making out. As one thing leads to another, you end up naked lying on your back with your legs spread wide out for him. He has the toy on one of the highest settings and you’ve squirted about three times for him already.

“Come on baby, you can give me another. Just one more,” Felix says demandingly, having too much fun with this toy.

You spring your head back as you feel the toy in your soaking wet entrance, you don’t know how much more of this you can take. Your legs were violently shaking and the couch was soaked with your juices, you felt like you didn’t have anything left in you. Felix keeps fucking the toy in and out of you making you scream out for him, he palms himself through his pants as he does it.

“I never want you to be away from me again y/n,” Felix’s deep voice rasps as he pumps the toy into you deeper, “I mean it this time.”

SEUNGMIN. You were laughing hysterically as you were scrolling through TikTok, you’ve been glued to your phone for hours at this point. You showed Seungmin, who was sitting next to you on his bed yet another TikTok that he probably wouldn’t think is funny. You put the screen up to his face to show him the video and he looks but doesn’t really seem that interested. You tell him how funny you think the video is and he just shrugs his shoulders.

“You know, I’d rather have you shoved in my face rather than a phone.” Seungmin says to you.

‘Ok boomer’ you think to yourself, not wanting to actually say it incase he gets offended. You decide to just ignore his comment and go back to watching hilarious TikToks. Seungmin starts to get bored and he when he gets bored he becomes bratty. You hear him whine a little bit, looking up from your phone to see him pouting and all you want to do is give him a kiss.

“C’mere,” You command for him to come closer, he quickly does so looking like a lost puppy. He plants a chaste kiss to your lips, then begins to leave a trail of kisses down your neck. He slips a hand under your tank top and lightly squeezes your boob. You sigh as you feel him innocently brush past your nipples, then he trails some more kisses down your stomach. Once he makes his way down to your lower body, he quickly takes off your pants with ease. Teasing your clothed pussy a little bit, watching as a wet spot starts to appear from the outside, he circles your clit and starts to sniff you.

“You smell good baby,” Seungmin compliments, finally taking off your panties and tossing them somewhere on the bed. He kisses the inside of your thighs and feels the warmth of your skin on his lips. He loves every inch of you and he wants to take his time with you. Flicking his tongue on your clit and you hiss at the feeling, you want him to fuck you with his tongue. He licks a nice long stripe across your wet folds, staring up at you while doing so, your phone still in your hand the whole time. Seungmin brought his head up more to face you, “keep looking at your phone while I eat you out babe, pretend like I’m not even here.”

You comply with his instructions, continuing to watch TikToks like normal and Seungmin goes back to devouring your pussy like the good boy he is.

JEONGIN. It was a very nerve wrecking day for you, you were meeting Jeongin’s parents for the first time today. You put on your most expensive Dior perfume and prettiest heels to meet his mom since Jeongin told you she was very into fashion and can tell when girl’s wear cheap perfume. You wanted to impress this woman as much as possible since this was definitely going to be the man you wanted to marry someday. Jeongin reassures you the whole day that she was going to love you regardless,

“Even if you wore perfume from the Dollar Tree she’d still like you!” He tries to give reassurance. You don’t believe that’s true but when you get to his mom’s house you meet her and the rest of his family. His dad was super nice and everyone was very welcoming towards you. You were actually shocked by how chill and laid back everyone was, you felt bad for assuming that they would be mean to you. Jeongin’s mom was the last person you met, when you met her she came off as a little timid but then she started to warming up to you once you started having a lot of things in common.

She was really sweet and super funny, you now know why Jeongin is such a charming guy. You see Jeongin come up to you so he can pull you away from his mom for a bit but his mom brushes him off to tell him she wasn’t finished talking. He walks away with a defeated look on his face and you continue talking with his mom. When the food is ready everyone gathers at the table to eat and you sit beside Jeongin, his mom was across from you both. You were busy for most of the day talking with his family and getting to know everyone. He wanted to be with you but he couldn’t even get the chance, feeling left out in the conversation. You feel your phone vibrate from the table and you pick it up to see who it is, seeing that it’s from Jeongin but you’re confused because he’s sitting right next to you. You turn towards him to ask him why he just texted you but he puts his finger to his mouth to tell you it’s a secret. You place your phone under the table to look at the message,

‘Come meet me in the bathroom upstairs by the laundry room ;)’

You instantly blush from reading that text and try to hide your flustered expression. You look at him and nod your head to signal that you understand. Jeongin shoots his head up and tells his parents who were across the table from him that he needs to be excused to go to the bathroom. You shoot yourself in the foot thinking about what excuse you can come up with so you both don’t look sketchy.

“Sorry please excuse me I have to take this important call for my job,” you quickly say to his parents as you head over to where you’re supposed to go.

You meet Jeongin in the bathroom where he told you to and you went straight to heavily making out. He grabs your ass and spanks it lightly, “How long you think we can be in here before they start to notice?” You ask, his lips now glued to your neck.

“I dunno, I honestly don’t really give a fuck.” He says bluntly, turning you around to face the sink and the mirror, pressing his bulge against your ass. He starts grinding his dick against you slowly, kissing your neck and running his fingers down your body. He lifts up your dress and drags his cock to rub against your clothed cunt, you lowly moan his name and he smiles. He’s about to fuck you so hard against this sink all the while his parents not having a clue where you two went.

#skz smut #stray kids smut #skz x reader #skz x female reader #stray kids x female reader #bang chan smut #lee minho smut #lee know smut #changbin smut #hyunjin smut #hwang hyunjin smut #han jisung smut #felix smut #lee felix smut #seungmin smut #jeongin smut #skz imagines #skz drabbles #skz scenarios #stray kids drabbles #stray kids scenarios #skz hard thoughts #stray kids imagines

[slut4thebroken]

Smut Prompt List

Trying something new :) send a request for Jason Todd (disclaimer: there’s a small chance I’ll write for him since I’m not hyperfixating on him anymore but it’s not zero lol) or any of Cillian’s characters that I’ve written for and I’ll do my best to write it lol. (Be sure to specify if you want the character to be dominant or submissive cause some of these can go either way lol)

I got these from a few different creators (@mypoisonedvine @dumplingsjinson @sxcret-garden-archive @hawksredfeather @landhoesnorris @organparanormal @thestressedskittles) and just picked the ones I liked.

"where are you going dressed like that?"

"it's not what it looks like!" "is that a picture of me?!"

"do you really think that toy can replace me?"

"what would they think if they saw you right now?"

"I didn't know you could be so obedient."

"no, I'm in charge tonight, remember?"

"if you keep doing that, this might end a little too soon."

"is it just me, or does your celebrity crush look a lot like me?"

"what happens next in your fantasy?"

“You look good with my hand around your pretty little throat.”

“Do you feel that? Feel what you do to me?”

“Like the stretch?”

“Look how pretty you are, taking all of me.”

“If I have to pull over, you won't be able to walk for a week.”

“Did I say you could stop?”

"That's not how we ask for things, is it?"

“Fucking is a reward, but you haven’t been good.”

“Move an inch and you won’t be coming tonight.”

“You’re so in for it when we get home.”

“Just a little more.”

“I won’t apologize for marking you up, everyone should know you’re taken.”

“God, you feel amazing.”

“Swallow. All of it.”

“Come one more time for me, I know you’ve got it in you.”

“Show me how much you missed me.”

“Enough, please, I can’t take anymore!”

“What makes you think I’m going to fuck you?”

“Slowly, baby, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t like getting off on my own.”

“Oh, baby, you’re drooling everywhere.”

“It’s my thigh or nothing, I’m not helping you get off.”

“You seem more sensitive than usual.”

“I know, baby, I know. I’m right here, just breathe.”

“Where did this attitude come from?”

“God, you love it like this, don’t you?”

“You know I’m holding back from fucking you over this kitchen counter, don’t push your luck.”

“Why not tonight? I’m even wearing something pretty.”

“Why are you being so gentle with me? I like it when you’re rough.”

“Does it make you nervous when I stare?”

“It’s hot when you talk back.”

“You’re so messy.”

“Your thighs are shaking so much.”

“Be good for me and I’ll untie you.”

“That’s good, baby, keep doing that.”

“I was good while you were gone! I didn’t even touch myself.”

“You’re still horny? Didn’t I fuck you hard enough last night?

“don’t give me that look”

“no panties. you need me that bad?”

“i don’t care how good it feels, you better not come until i tell you to”

“i bet you think you’re real cute letting them put their hands all over you. we’ll see how cute you look later when i get you home”

“you’re in trouble now”

“you keep acting like a brat and i’ll take you over my knee right here. i don’t care how many people are watching”

“want some help with that?”

“come here. you can sit on my lap until i’m done working”

“you look so pretty on your knees like that”

“suck on my fingers and get them nice and wet for me”

“such a needy little thing, aren’t you?”

“pushing back against my fingers already? how pathetic”

“don’t fucking touch what isn’t yours”

“what are you doing in my bed?”

“is that a tattoo?”

“you know i don’t like to be teased”

“just shut up and fuck me”

“aww, poor baby. do you want me to take care of it for you?”

“i see the gift i got you fits well”

“This cock isn’t going to suck itself”

“I want to fuck you against the glass so everyone can see how good you take it”

“You better watch your fucking mouth”

“I guess I’ll just get off all by myself then”

“I could just pull your bikini bottoms to the side, no one will notice”

“YOU SENT ME PICTURES OF YOU NAKED WHILE I WAS IN A WORK MEETING!”

"Keep your hands away or I'll fucking tie them behind your back."

"Please, come inside me, I wanna be filled."

"Let me come in you, please. I wanna fill you up."

"You wanted this. You can take it."

"Look at the mess you're making."

"Suck on it. Come on."

"Such a good little pup/girl, aren't you?"

"You talk too much. We need to put that mouth to use for something better."

"Is that gonna fit?" "I'll make it fit."

"Use your words, sweetheart."

"Doesn't that feel so good, baby?"

"This is why I get off to you every night by myself."

"Hurry your ass up and sit on my fucking face."

"What's the matter? Can't form a sentence?"

"Look at you... you think you're in control."

“That’s sweet and all but do they touch you the way I touch you? Fuck you the way I fuck you? Mm, yeah, didn’t think so.”

“Let me take care of you, yeah? I’ll do the work.”

“Gonna fuck you until the only word you remember is my name.”

“Shh, just a little more…”

“You’re taking me so well, baby.”

“Oh, I can think of many ways to shut you up right now.”

“You want to come?” “Y-yes, I— please—” “Hm, but do you really deserve to?”

“F-Fuck, I don’t think I’m gonna last long if you keep doing that.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Stop fucking teasing me and get to it already.”

“Oh, the things I’d do to you if we were alone right now…”

“Look at you, squirming under me, all flushed and pretty looking. Can’t even take a little teasing, can you?”

“Oh, sensitive there, aren’t we?”

In a hoarse whisper, “Fuck, you’re killing me here.”

“But you think about me when they’re fucking you, don’t you?” “I… That’s not true.”

“Tell me if it hurts, okay?”

“Fuck, you’re so hot when you’re bossy.”

“S-Stop leaving marks on my neck. I have a presentation first thing in the morning.” “Then I get to leave marks anywhere below the neck?”

“You only get to watch.” “B-but—” “No buts, sweetheart.”

“I don’t like people touching what’s mine.”

“Spread your legs for me.” … “Spread them wider.”

“I’m not done with you yet.”

A whispered, “Then come for me,” right next to their ear after they beg for release through tears and soft whimpers, because they’ve been edged for way too long.

"you promise you're going to behave this time?"

“Beg and maybe I’ll think about it.”

“Say my name.”

“Keep your eyes on me.”

“Open your mouth for me, baby.”

“I want it. I want to taste you.”

“I need it! Please!”

“I can't- please I can’t-”

“i told you, you’re mine”

“i’m going to ruin you”

“don’t make me tell you twice”

“If you want to cum you have to beg”

"Look at yourself, all fucked out. Pathetic."

"Is this what you wanted, angel?"

“I’ve been wondering what it feels like…”

“I can’t believe you’re this innocent…”

“Makes me want to wreck you.”

“You’ve never even touched yourself?”

“Show me how you do it when you touch yourself.”

“I can’t wait to take your innocence.”

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Teach me how to make you feel good.”

“I wanna touch you too.”

“Is it going to hurt?”

“So excited already…”

“Are you sure this is your first time?”

“I’ll guide you.”

“Can I… can I please touch myself/you?”

“Mine. All mine.”

“Doing so good for me, sweetheart.”

“Say please.”

“P-please just”—a sob—“I just need you to fuck me.”

“All yours. Only yours.”

“I want you to say my name like that again.”

“Only I get to ruin you like this, you hear me?”

“You like that, don’t you?”

“I-I promise I’ll be good.”

“God, you feel so good around me.”

“So wet/hard for me already, huh?”

“Turn around.”

“What did I just say?”

#smut prompts #smut prompt list

[serial-serializednovelreader]

What other novels to your inbox do you recommend? I have done Dracula Daily for years and I want to expand my horizon. War is pretty much the only thing that I don't like. Thanks

Hi!

So funny story, contrary to my username and bio…I have not been keeping up with the classic novels in my emails lately. BUT. That does not mean I don’t have some recommendations for you!

Also, since you did mention you don’t like war, I made sure not to recommend any novels that heavily involve war (War & Peace & Emails, for instance). However, I do know some characters in these recommendations have history with war (e.g. Watson was a war doctor) and I’ve made sure to make mention of that wherever possible. So, I apologize if that comes off as annoying or stating the obvious, I just want you to be fully informed before you read. I’m also listing general content warnings as a rule to inform anyone who might be interested in these Substacks. :)

On to the recommendations!

If you’re looking for mystery…

Learn about the greatest detective of all time from his faithful partner — that’s right! Read Letters from Watson to get the scoop on Sherlock and solve mysteries alongside the legendary duo. I thought this was such a cool concept and I wish I had been able to keep up with it. But it was very fun for the time I did. It goes through the entire chronology of Sherlock stories (which is a lot, by the way) and they just started going through the “more complex cases” (aka, the 4 Sherlock novels) back in January. So, it might be a good time to start! There isn’t war in these cases (at least as far as I know, each email does have a list of content warnings for specifics), but Watson was a war doctor and this does come up frequently, just as a heads up.

If you’re looking for epistolary stories…

Literary Letters takes obscure epistolary novels from the public domain and puts them into your inbox! Right now they’re reading The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is about a guy who’s in love with a girl who’s betrothed to another and writes very passionate letters on the subject.

For a content warning, I’ve included the publisher’s note on this one: “There are passages where the book discusses Werther’s depression, despair, rationalizations for suicide, and the suicide itself at length, so please take whatever precautions you need to read the book safely, which may include buddy reading, mental health breaks, or skipping it altogether.”

So with that being said, the reason I got into this email chain was actually for their first novel they emailed - The Lightning Conductor. I absolutely loved this novel and I heavily recommend going back into the archives to read it and its sequel if you can (that one is in the “Side Stories” archive). It’s a very lighthearted read and a romance, told in epistolary format! Basically, it’s about this smart (yet a bit scatterbrained — not judging, because, same) woman who goes to Europe for the first time and she ends up meeting a gentleman when her car breaks down. Said gentleman is mistaken for a chauffeur and he goes along with it, just because she’s dreamy and he’s already smitten with her. Then there’s her “best guy friend” and her mom trying to throw a wrench in their plans. It’s utter chaos and I love it. I could go on for hours about this novel, but I won’t! I do highly recommended reading it if you ever get the chance.

If you’re looking for a read in verse format…

Check out Divine Comedy Weekly! It’s telling Dante’s Divine Comedy every Tuesday and Thursday. There’s not much to say about this one because I dropped out pretty early in the game, unfortunately. For some reason, stories told in a lyrical/verse format don’t seem to be my thing, but maybe they’re your thing! I think it’s a great concept and for that reason, I will recommend this.

If you’re looking for an all-new read…

North and South by Jane Austen is coming to your inbox this June! It’s apparently a bit like Pride and Prejudice but with the Industrial Revolution and labor relations. I actually just subscribed to this one and I’m excited to see how I enjoy it!

If you’re looking for a long haul read…

Buckle in! It’s time for Whale Weekly! That’s right, you’re in for a THREE YEAR TRIP with this bad boy because Ishmael is emailing you the tale of Moby Dick. Life has gotten in the way and I’ve fallen behind (though this is motivating me to catch up again), but this is actually really good as an email read because this guy goes on so many tangents, it’s more fun for me to absorb his thoughts in spaced out emails, rather than if I tried to read the book.

The memes are very fun with this one, but please keep in mind there is racism and foul language in this, as well as other heavy topics I can’t remember off the top of my head. Also, this does not take place in a war setting, but I do believe some characters have been in war in the past, so that is probably something to keep in mind with this one!

This one is coming to an end fairly soon (I didn’t realize we were on chapter 113/135 OOF), so I don’t know if they’re going to do another round after this or leave it. I imagine it would probably be hard to catch up at this point, but I’m going to link it anyway because I typed all of this up before realizing how far along we were and I do still recommend the read in email format rather than a novel format.

If you’re looking for horror…

I would recommend “The Beetle Weekly”. I wasn’t able to finish this one because LifeTM got in the way, but it is, for sure, one of the reads of all time. Probably the best and worst thing you could read ever tbh. It’s not very enjoyable and I’m not pitching it well at all, but for some reason, I am legitimately recommending this because it is hilarious to read with Tumblr memes by your side. As a heads up, this book does include racism, gore, sexism, transphobia (iirc?) and likely more content warnings I can’t remember. The reason I’m recommending it at all is because it does carry some of the same themes as Dracula and the characters are interesting. Plus, love it or hate it, I reacted while reading this book - a lot. Did I mention I have a bug phobia? Also, fun fact: it was published at the same time as Dracula and was actually MORE POPULAR than Dracula for a while before fading into obscurity.

The only thing is, it did just end last April so you might have to wait until December for it to crawl back into your inbox if you’re interested.

If you’re looking for a thriller…

Jekyll and Hyde Weekly. I absolutely LOVED THIS ONE!!!! Very much vibes of Dracula Daily. Immaculate stuff right there. This one has a lot more comedy than you’d think and was very enjoyable. Content warnings for violence against a child (mentioned, not shown), body horror, and there is one more I can’t say without spoiling the book (feel free to DM me if you’re interested in knowing).

Again, this is pretty short and it’s not currently active; it runs November through January, so that’s when you can look out for it!

I was hoping to recommend some more via a masterlist, I know someone made a post waaay back in 2022 when this serialized email novel thing first got started, but it looks like it got deleted, so if there is a new one, I would love for anyone to share it just for future reference!

I do have a couple of honorable mentions I’ll link that I haven’t read and know next to nothing about, but just so you can have even more recommendations. Please feel free to share your favorites!

#also I’m very flattered you would ask me! #i hope this helps #answered asks #booklr #book recommendations #substack #jekyll and hyde weekly #the beetle weekly #whale weekly #divine comedy #north and south weekly #literary letters #letters from watson #letters from bunny #letters regarding jeeves #the beetle #jekyll and hyde #moby dick #the lightning conductor #the sorrows of young werther #cw sui mention

[theold-ultraviolence]

so excited for your ficletfest bestie!! i'd love to request mutual pining with eddie!

Since I've Been Loving You • Eddie Munson x reader

Summary: working at the radio station on valentine's day is the worst... • 2023 Vday ficlet fest masterlist

Being stuck in traffic, paying taxes, crying babies in a movie theater, are all things you’d rather put up with than working on Valentine’s day. 

It’s the absolute worst day to be working at the radio station. All damn day, answering calls of sappy people requesting love songs for their significant others. You loathe it. And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with people flaunting the bouquets of roses, boxes of chocolates and cards that everyone in the office got except for you. Nothing to do with the fact that all your friends already have dates and they wouldn’t be able to hang out with you. 

Nothing to do whatsoever, with Eddie not being here, today, out of all days. 

By the end of your shift your lip would be all chewed up and your cuticles peeled back. Your eyes keep flicking from the wall clock to the door of your booth, yearning for his figure bursting in and dropping a selection of his personal picks to play on the radio, like always. 

Eddie works in the archives, as one of the curators at the station. He always chooses the greatest records to play, and even has a daily habit of leaving you little notes on certain tracks when he drops off the selection for the day onto your desk. He’s gifted you mixtapes that you cherish as if they’re worth all the gold in the world. His music taste is absolutely exquisite, and he’s so intelligent and witty and funny and handsome, the absolute man of your dreams, whom you’ve been pining for since you started working here, and…and he’d never like you that way. 

How could he? Why would he, of all people? No one you ever have a crush on reciprocates your feelings, it’s just something that doesn’t happen to you. And you’re at peace with it now. Plus, what a silly thing it is – to be having a crush at your age. And on a co-worker!? No way. 

Still, you cling to whatever remnant of hope you have left to at least see him today. That would brighten up your day immediately.

But your shift soon comes to a close and Eddie’s nowhere in sight. 

You grumble when the last ring of the day comes through, fumbling with the telephone cord before picking up the call – 

– through the static, a familiar voice tunes in. 

“Hey there! the name’s Eddie Munson and, okay, so! I uh, I’d like to dedicate this song to my favorite person ever, who I think might be totally clueless. I’ve been dropping hints, giving them mixtapes and notes and shit – oops, sorry, not supposed to swear on the air.” Eddie chuckles. 

Your heart must’ve freaking thrusted out of your chest into the stratosphere. 

“But yeah, so, if they check under the pile of records on their desk, they’ll know which song I’d like to request. They’re keen on Zeppelin, so I thought that track was it, ya know. Happy Valentine’s day, babe! This is for you!” 

The second he disconnects, you scramble through the box of tapes to see that buried underneath the pile is a copy of Led Zeppelin’s “III”, with a post- it that reads, “track 4” with Eddie’s handwriting on sharpie. 

With trembling hands, you put on the tape and flick the ‘on air’ button of your console, speaking to the audience. 

“Coming up next! ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You by Led Zeppelin! As requested by our last caller of the day. Safe to say, your message has been received, Eddie.” 

You giggle as the track begins to play. 

The grin that now stretches your cheeks wide couldn’t be wiped down even if you tried, and all those silly butterflies in your stomach now roam free inside of you, as you listen to the lyrics of the song and realize you’ve been such a fool. 

Such a great fool. 

Too immersed in denial, afraid of being hurt again, that you were terribly oblivious that all this time, after all, your feelings were returned. 

What a wonderful, surreal feeling. 

More so, when Eddie finally opens up the door to your booth, with a bouquet of roses and a goofy grin that makes your heart thump — even quicker when he wraps you in a bear hug, murmuring into your hair, “Fucking finally babe!”

A/N: Thank you so much for requesting besties!! I think you're the ones that have been my mutuals for the longest time! Happy Valentine's day, hope you enjoyed this! x

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #gender neutral reader #eddie munson fanfiction #reader insert #reader insert fanfiction #stranger things #vday ficlet fest #joseph quinn #my writing

[canirove]

Kylian Mbappé Imagine | one

Author's note: So far I had only shared my Mbappé imagines on Wattpad because that’s where I’ve been getting the requests, but since people are liking them so much, I thought about starting to share them here too 😊 Yesterday I posted some kind of masterlist with links to Wattpad, so some of you may have already read this, but I wanted to post it here for people who don’t have an account there, don’t want to open it, or just want to have these imagines archived somewhere. Hope you like it, and thank you for reading! 💜

Little summary: you are dating Kylian and PSG is playing against Monaco, your ex's team. He didn't treat you well, and now you fear something bad may happen during the game.

Masterlist

"How was training?"

"Great. I'm ready to kick some Monaco asses tomorrow" Kylian says, sitting on the sofa next to me.

"Monaco..."

"Wait, no, sorry. It was joke. I'm sorry" he says, hugging me. "I had forgotten about him."

"Lucky you" I chuckle.

"It's gonna be ok, you'll see. That jerk won't dare hurting me."

"You don't know that, Kylian. I still haven't forgotten about the texts he sent me when he found out that we were dating. They were fucking scary."

"You should have blocked him the moment you broke up. But hey, they were just words. The words of a coward. Only cowards will treat the person they love the way he treated you" he says, caressing my cheek.

"But what if..."

"I'll be fine. We'll be fine. You are staying home, right?"

"Yeah... I'm too nervous already. If I go to the stadium, it will only get worse."

"And Alex is coming to stay with you, right?"

"Yes."

"Good, I don't want you to be alone. But I'll behave and nothing will happen, I promise. Beyond me scoring a hat trick and dedicate you each goal" he says with a cheeky smile.

"Thank you" I reply, kissing his cheek.

It's gonna be ok. It'll be an easy game, PSG will win, Kylian will score, and everything will be ok. It will be.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

Minute 70. PSG wins 2-0, both goals by Kylian. So far the game has been a quiet one and no one has tried to break anyone's legs. But that's just because my ex isn't on the pitch. Yet.

"Oh God" I say when I see that Monaco is doing a substitution after one of their defenders got injured. "He's coming in."

"Maybe they'll put in a striker, they still have time to score a couple of goals" Alex says.

"They won't risk it. He is coming in."

And the moment those words leave my mouth, I see him on tv.

"Kylian said he'll behave, right? He'll be fine, don't worry" Alex says, giving my hand an encouraging squeeze.

"That's what he said, yes" I sigh, my heart already beating too fast.

Minute 88. They haven't crossed paths, my ex busy defending Neymar. But then...

"Penalty!" Alex screams. "That's a freaking penalty! Why do they have to go check the var?"

"Maybe because Neymar is the one who went down?" I chuckle.

"Rude" Alex says.

"It is a penalty for PSG. Kylian Mbappé wants his hat trick" the commentator says.

While he gets ready for it, he notices there is something missing. The most important thing, the ball. And who has it? Yes, you guessed it. My ex.

When he gives Kylian the ball, he says something to his ear, making him laugh at first. But then, he gets really serious, his eyes focused on the goalkeeper.

"That look... Yikes" Alex says. "I would not like to be the goalkeeper right now, he is going to destroy him."

"Urgh, I can't watch" I say, covering my face with my hands.

"Mbappé is ready. He takes a few steps back, a deep breath... And goal! It is a hat trick for Kylian Mbappé against Monaco!" the commentator says.

"He is scored! Look!" Alex says, grabbing me by the arm and shaking me until I'm looking at the screen again. "Awww, he did your thing again. Cute."

"Cute would be the game ending now" I say, trying not to smile but failing. He said he would score three goals and dedicate them to me, and he did.

As he walks back to the centre of the pitch, he crosses paths with my ex again. They start talking, but the chat quikcly turns into an argument, getting closer and closer to each other until they are forehead against forehead like footballers always do. Why? Who knows.

"Oh my God" Alex says as players from PSG and Monaco get around them and try to break them apart. When they finally are able to, Neymar is talking to Kylian, telling him something like "think, use your head", while he says my name and points at my ex.

"I can't watch this anymore" I say, getting up from the sofa and moving to the kitchen.

"It is over" Alex says, joining me a few minutes later.

"Finally" I sigh.

"Do you want me to stay until he is back?"

"Nah, don't worry. I'll probably eat something and go to bed. I've been so tense that I feel as if I've been playing myself."

"Ok" Alex says. "But don't be too harsh on him. He was provoked, too excited after the hat trick, and when you mix it all..."

"He had promised me to do nothing, tho."

"I know, but... Just don't be too harsh, ok?"

"I'll try."

"Will you call me tomorrow?"

"I will. Goodnight, Alex."

"Goodnight."

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

"Hey" Kylian says, walking into our room.

"Hi."

"Did you watch the game?" he says, getting in bed next to me and hugging me from behind.

"I did."

"I scored a hat trick like I told you I would."

"I know."

"Are you mad?" he asks after a few seconds in silence.

"No."

"Then why are you being so cold? Why aren't you looking at me?"

"Maybe because you also promised that nothing would happen with my ex, yet it did?"

"He started it, I didn't."

"I don't care who started. It still happened."

"I'm sorry" he says, hugging me a bit tighter.

"I hate this. I wish we wouldn't have to see him ever again."

"Well, that may actually happen."

"What?" I say, finally moving to look at him.

"This was our last game of the season against Monaco, we won't be playing against them anymore. But a very reliable source told me that he is leaving."

"Leaving? Where?"

"Turkey" Kylian snorts. "Sorry, sorry. But he isn't playing that much here, and a Turkish team was the only one interested on him."

"And you won't have to play against him anymore?"

"Nope. The team he seems to have signed with doesn't play the Champions League. It is over."

"For real?"

"For real" he says, caressing my cheek. "That jerk won't be bothering us anymore, and now we'll be able to focus on being happy together."

"Finally" I say, letting out a big sigh.

"Will you forgive for the fight, then?"

"It depends."

"On what?"

"On if the kiss you are about to give me is the best kiss ever" I smirk.

"Lucky you, besides having a hat trick scorer as your boyfriend, he also happens to be a really good kisser. One of the best in France. In Europe. In the world!"

"Yeah, sure" I chuckle.

"Do you want me to show you?" he says with a mischievous smile.

"I'm looking forward to it" I giggle. "I love you, Kylian."

"I love you too" he says before kissing me and showing me that, indeed, he is one of the best kissers in France, Europe and the world.

Though if you ask me... He isn't just one of the best. He is the best.

#kylian mbappe #kylian mbappe imagine #kylian mbappe x reader #kylian mbappe fanfic #football imagine #football fanfic

[toasted-valentine]

Still Got Adamandi Details I’m Not Normal About, So Here They Are

A lot of these are going to make me sound like a massive fucking nerd lol

•Beatrix slapping Vincent’s hand away when he tries to grab the archive records from the table.

•Beatrix clearly not wanting to be there during the first two interviews, then just relaxing and teasing Vincent during their interview with him since they’re friends. The switch from strict professionalism to being a bit more playful is a good way of establishing that the two already know each other and are comfortable with one another, especially the opening line about Beatrix not knowing Vincent’s middle name. It’s just a simple thing, but gets the point across well.

•All of Portia’s reaction, highlights include the sweet to surprised one during the beginning of A Little More in Love and her “I’m not mad, just disappointed” look during Ghost Writer.

•The little flourish Beatrix does with the pencil during The One Who Pulls The Strings, I’m curious how many times the actor accidentally stabbed themself before they got that down lol

•This is something I notice gets done in both TAOPP and Adamandi, with the same actor too. The actor for Ambrose and Rowan changes the pitch of their voice and how high the notes they hit are depending on how vulnerable the character is being. Higher is more vulnerable and expressive, lower is more closed off. Extra fucked up points for the fact Ambrose’s notes get higher after he fucking dies.

•I’m going to be a massive music nerd for a minute, my music analysis skills are a bit rusty, so forgive me if I’m a bit wrong. The motif I like to call the “Beatrix Does A Bad Thing” motif. It plays whenever Beatrix does something wrong, it’s the skeleton of their three major songs. Starts with The One Who Pulls The Strings, gets a bit more complicated in the reprise, and is at full force in Ghost Writer. It’s like a building monster, first the bones, then the muscle, then the creature itself.

•The actors for The Saints and the other Phaethon nominees are the same people, so Vincent does in fact cut The Saints up lmao

•The glowing under Ambrose’s shirt goes from a visual of his muscles hardening to a show of his slit throat, which is evil and I love it.

•Beatrix covers their eyes and looks away when Quincy stabs Vincent, I can’t tell if it’s the fact they can’t stomach the murder, or if they fucking got blood on their face and that’s why they’re staring at their hand in horror when Portia comes on stage. It’s also a good transition motion to guide the audience’s eyes from the killing blow to them. They couldn’t actually use blood on stage, stage blood has to be minimal since it’s sticky, stains costumes, and is difficult to get rid of for continuity, so reaction shots like that get the point across well.

•Beatrix has a ring on in The Other Side of Failure, might be just a show that time has passed, or it could be that it’s to help them remember stuff but they’re no longer being tugged around on strings by the admin. Or crackpot theory, it’s one of Portia’s rings from earlier in the show, but I can’t tell if it’s the same one since none of the shots I’ve dug through are close enough to get details.

•The little hand motions Beatrix does in the show are mimicking a puppeteer pulling strings.

•The admins red coloration call back to Beatrix’s red string, it’s a visual callback to the fact she’s being strung along by them and manipulated. The Admin have it on their cloak collars too, keeping the collar in their designs.

•In Read All About It, one of the chorus actors fucks up their newspaper and forgets to close it when they’re supposed to with the others. It’s just something that makes me chuckle, cause you can see how fucking stressed they are about it, and that they close it when they pass behind Beatrix’s actor cause they didn’t think the camera would catch it lol

•When The Admin lift their arms in Read All About It Beatrix does the same, and when the music cuts out they’re super confused on what just happened and are staring at the newspapers contemplating what they just did.

•I just realized that the marks on Ambrose’s face in the second act weren’t meant to guide where his chisel was, but was a guide for where Vincent had to cut.

•Ambrose looks flattered when Quincy says their professor led a moment of silence, even in death he has his head up his own ass.

•Ambrose is projecting so fucking hard on Vincent during Sound Body Sound Mind, and it makes me laugh.

•There is a continuity error in Oh, Ms. Reporter! The drawers had red strings in them in the previous scene and during the wide shots, but they aren’t there during the close ups.

•This is just a story note, but it’s clever that they had Portia get a better position in The Daily. It serves a duel purpose in the narrative, it emphasizes the fact Rosswell has implicit bias and that she picks the person whose more white passing instead of the more skilled Latina with seniority, and gives an explanation to how they managed to get the article about Vincent and The Admin published. Beatrix wouldn’t have been able to on her own, but Portia’s position allows them greater access to The Daily’s resources.

•In Me, Myself, and I, I think the actor for Ambrose accidentally made their microphone crackle and you can actually hear a small pop in the recording, dude performed so hard the equipment had a small stroke. You can only hear it in the album tho.

•The is just a music thing, Vincent slowing down for his part to explain why being loved is great in Me, Myself, and I serves the music in giving a brief breath of air so when it comes back it feels like it’s going faster and more frantic. It’s a really common technique to make something feel like it’s going faster when it’s keeping a consistent, just had a short slow down.

•Ambrose grabs Vincent’s face during Student Body, it’s creepy, thanks I hate it. The actor for Ambrose did not have to put that much effort into being unsettling, but they did, and they made Ambrose as likable as he is in the show.

•Everything the actor for Ambrose does when the character dies, they’re jerking around like a corpse that’s gone stiff from decomposing. Give them a medal for managing to be the creepiest mf in that show, and keep them ten feet away from me because it kind of freaks me out.

•The little transition in Oh, Ms. Reporter of the chorus members spelling out Ambrose’s name but Vincent cutting it off to continue his song. It’s a creative lyrical moment and hints to the fact that Vincent cut Ambrose’s life short.

•A couple of the people who Vincent mention’s in Oh, Ms. Reporter are actual some of the people Beatrix was interviewing in the first act, you can hear them saying their names when they’re all yelling over each other.

•The little pieces of advice the main four give Portia during A Word to the Wise are foreshadowing. Ambrose trying to be perfect gets him killed, Quincy’s ambition and academic perfectionism causes them to snap, Vincent deciding to murder people instead of an actual project since there isn’t a use of trying anything else, Beatrix being a bystander and waiting to “do something great” gets people killed.

•Whoever wrote the line “What use is a candle if both ends aren’t burning?” is a menace to society and I want to give them all the money in my wallet, because Quincy burns both their hands later on, and that’s evil.

•The mic on Beatrix’s actor accidentally picks up them tapping the notebook too hard during The One Who Pulled the String, just something I find funky.

•Apollo was the god of young men, being eternally youthful, but was also the god of plagues and disease. Ambrose wants to be the white ideal of an eternally twinkish gay trans guy, but ends up falling victim to Vincent, who compares his actions to a disease killing someone.

•The music used to introduce Beatrix into Me, Myself, and I is the same as the beginning of Read All About It, they’re doubting their actions, and their mind is racing like the music.

•Vincent tries fucking squaring up with the other Ardess students during A Word to The Wise when Quincy is about to jump, dude just is ready to throw hands, it’s great.

•Ambrose tries to defend Vincent from the others, but turns around and betrays him after.

•I like the little spin that Roswell does to Beatrix, she’s getting them confused so she can take advantage.

•Vincent and Quincy aren’t singing during the “And two or three students like you” part, but Beatrix is because she’s internalized the racism of Ardess and is trying to fit in.

•Beatrix just is not having a good time during the interviews, and you can see them get annoyed when the nominees try sucking up to them.

•Fun little thing, they get around the fact Beatrix’s actor can’t spin around like the others when the names are read out during A Word to The Wise by having them stagger and open their arms. It’s a little thing, but gets around that nicely.

•When everyone starts stomping to the beat at the end of A Word to the Wise you can see Portia hesitate to join in, start slowly, then join in fully in the end and begin to sing with the others.

•The poses everyone strike at the end of A Word to the Wise actually have a lot of personality in them, Ambrose is being a dramatic dude bro, Quincy is stiff and nervous, Vincent stands out by having their hand to their chest, Portia is hopeful, and Beatrix just continues to smoke and seem disinterested.

•The “I don’t know, do you have any ideas?” guy is the funniest mf in the room.

•The A papers during Perfect at School form a halo. Again, the people who made this are evil and I love that for them.

•The umbrellas in Where Can I Run harken back to a funeral environment, which is nice foreshadowing that death follows Vincent everywhere for most of the show.

•Vincent wants to go home back to China, wants to go back to his family, to the environment he knows, but he’s stuck at Ardess. Without that degree he’s got nothing, he’d be a complete failure, so they’re stuck at a school they hate surrounded by people who hate them with only two people that like being around them.

•I want to find whoever decided to have Quincy accidentally smack Vincent in the face when he goes to kiss them during the first act as foreshadowing to the fact Quincy later harms Vincent, buy them dinner, and then make them pay for my therapy bills.

•I want to know what god the actor for Beatrix had to kill in order to gender so fucking hard. What kind of sacrilegious actions did they have to commit to win that?

•The newspaper that Beatrix’s actor has in one hand during The One Who Pulls the Strings is a random Princeton one and you can see the university’s name during some of the close ups lol

•During A Little More in Love you can see Ambrose’s actor getting ready for their cue under the bookshelf in a few shots.

•I find it funny that Portia hugs Quincy after A Little More in Love while Beatrix just looks offended and brushes Vincent off. Motherfucking Beatrix, blue hair and pronouns, Campbell tried denying the homosexuality allegations and is failing.

•This maybe speculation, but I think the reason Ambrose’s chest is highlighted in red is because he’s trying to work out enough to make his chest smaller. My friend actually does this, a lot of trans masc gym rats do.

•Vincent “Oh, Ms. Reporter!” Lin denies stalking people.

•Vincent keeps writing in their notebook during Sound Body Sound Mind, you can see them pull it out when they go to hide under the ladders.

•Vincent only calls Ambrose by his name instead of Bassford after killing him.

•I like Ambrose getting annoyed at Preston and Adrian not doing the kick line right lol

•I don’t know what Mandela affect bullshit is going on, but I always thought Ambrose kept the pages from Vincent’s notebook, and I have no clue where I got that idea from.

•I like that Portia starts wit “Hi hi!” when she’s nervous, and that she’s so frazzled trying to interview Beatrix that she can’t find a pencil and Beatrix has to give theirs to her. It’s just a cute little bit of character building. Beatrix actually pulls the pencil out from behind her ear, which is also a nice little bit of characterization.

•As soon as the interview starts Beatrix starts wrapping one of their strings around their fingers to try and not forget what they’re lying about. If you pay attention to what the actor is doing with their hands the entire show you can catch a few little fun character building bits like that.

•In the wide shots of the Beatrix and Portia interview scene you can see Beatrix start to stress smoke when Portia compliments them and says they should’ve gotten nominated. Mf feels the weight of her lies on her back real fast lol

•Beatrix sits like a bisexual, and I find that funny.

•Vincent almost manages to talk Ambrose down, but when Quincy gets brought up he almost starts crying and gets violently angry. So close there bud, so close.

•When Beatrix’s actor starts doing their funky little hand motions in Me, Myself, and I it’s actually on cue with the music, reference to Beatrix pulling the strings. They also move their hands on cue to Ambrose and Quincy singing “me, myself, and I” and on cue for when the singing stops. Nice touch.

•The person who Vincent takes the place of during Me, Myself, and I is who saw him fleeing the gym. Just noticed it, that’s such a cool thing. Was super confused on why a chorus member was there, then I remembered the line in Read All About It.

•Portia is still editing articles in the background while Beatrix is having a crisis of morality in the foreground lol

•The actor for Vincent pulls off the ribbon trick to symbolize Ambrose’s death by grabbing the ribbon from the bag while moving towards the back of the stage, hiding their hand behind their back while they continue to sing, and pulling the ribbon out with his free hand when time comes. The song is so grand in scale that no one in the audience would be being attention to his hands.

•The flour cigarette trick is actually refilled a couple times when time allows it, you can see the actor for Beatrix puffing fake smoke out with it a few times, but can only do it once in a scene due to the limits of the trick.

•It is hilarious how disinterest Beatrix sounds when reading Ambrose’s memorial, they know it’s not true and are bored by it lol

•One of The Saint’s actors, Saint Jude specifically, has the remote for the candles in their hand and are the one controlling it during Litany of Martyrs. You can see them accidentally reveal it during one of the close up and quickly try to hide it in their sleeve.

•Saint Jude’s actor doesn’t actually tie the bandage onto Quincy’s hand right during Litany of Martyrs so the actor for Quincy just uses their thumbs to keep it in place.

•When Beatrix gets their strings caught in the typewriter, the mise en scene us is used to emphasize how small The Prize Section is by having Portia sit on the glorified nightstand Beatrix is using as a desk instead of an actual chair.

•Vincent puts his feet up on the “desk” when he breaks into The Prize Section office, which is apparently a habit of theirs since they also do it when Beatrix is interviewing them.

•Adrian and Preston’s actors aren’t on stage as their characters until Oh, Ms. Reporter! because they’re also chorus members in Read All About it, so needed time to get changed and get their makeup done.

•The Saints are mimicking hellfire during I Hate and I Love, creepy as fuck, but one hell of a visual. They’re still there when Quincy is talking to Portia too, like goddamn, leave them alone you weird religious bongos.

•You can see Beatrix’s actor struggling to keep their glasses on their face the entire show, and it is the funniest thing to me, because I have similar glasses and I know how much of a pain in the ass they are to keep on when trying to move around quick.

•Of course English major Beatrix would correct Portia’s grammar when she’s trying to tell them that Vincent is the killer.

•I find it funny you can see Beatrix mouth “fuck” when Portia goes to raid The Prize Section for information after suggesting they stop Vincent.

•Alright, I think the way they spliced together the audio and video for the YouTube version is with two dress rehearsals and the two nights the show was put on combine. The dress rehearsals are the close ups, but you can tell which one of them came first based on the costume for Beatrix. The earlier one has gloves with the tags still on and the red string in the second act is shorter, plus they used to have a flower pin on the jacket but lost it for the actual show. The audio is from the actual performances from show night asides from a few bits where they needed to cut the audience’s reaction out, but the music on the album is a mix of all of them and just the best takes they had put together. It’s why the mic cracking on Ambrose’s actor can be heard on the album but not on the YouTube version, in the YouTube version the audio tech didn’t turn Vincent’s actor’s mic on in time during his part, so they had to use the cracked audio for the album.

•The Admin are casually homophobic and racist towards Quincy and Vincent during their meeting, actively try to divide them, and I want to kick all of them in the skull. You can see just how manipulative they are, calling Quincy and Vincent’s relationship a friendship, openly insulting Vincent, hinting that Quincy is being held back, they’re so fucking bitchy and I want them to get slapped with a tuna.

•You can see the different mentalities Quincy and Vincent have with how they react to the admin, Quincy is acceptance, and Vincent would definitely kill them all if possible. I love the “bullshit” line so much.

•I love and hate how hurt Vincent gets when Quincy accuses them of not caring. The entire Where Can I Run (Reprise) scene is so good, Quincy shoving Vincent off, the ghosts dragging Vincent’s jacket off them, both their parts being haunted by their respective demons with The Saints and the ghosts of The Marmorius.

•Explanation of the staging trick used to make it look like Beatrix and Portia’s actors are kissing. It’s a really old trick, but a useful one. The actors are both about the same height so it’s possible, they quickly press their foreheads together, turn, and the lights dim. They aren’t actually kissing, but the quick motion of it, the fact you can’t see their faces, and the dark lighting hides it. It’s also why Quincy and Vincent’s actors couldn’t do that, Vincent’s actor stands solidly at chest height with Quincy’s actor, and it would look too awkward to have them kiss like that. Quincy’s actor would have to bend down, and that would look really weird.

•Vincent calling his murders the “smoothest” murders just make me think of him being a smooth criminal lmfao

•The prop for Quincy’s notebook during I Hate and I Love and Vincent’s notebook for The Other Side of Failure are the same notebook, just a basic molskine I think.

•The boots for Beatrix’s costume don’t have laces because those are doc martens, and doc marten laces are a pain in the fucking ass to keep tied, so they just are using zip ups lol

#adamandi #vincent aurelius lin #beatrix valeria campbell #quincy cynthius martin #ambrose wellington bassford #portia elizabeth harper

[faithfromanewperspective]

sugar coated brain (the fluid ain’t to blame): unraveling Conor Aurelian

I don’t know if this is me admitting to have read embarrassingly little in terms of Actual Books since I turned 18 but. Wow. I loved sword catcher, and for once I was there eating up the plot rather than only relating to the characters so much I was obsessively hoping for a happy ending for them. 

I’ve said before that sword catcher was good, so good it’s almost above fandom discourse (like a Beethoven symphony perhaps, you think twice before making arrangements of a masterpiece like that) but even the best symphonies deserve, actually they’re honoured by, critical analysis of the phrasing and melodies and that which are used. And this is a Cassandra Clare book after all. The beauty comes from beautifully (read: realistic, somehow more human than real humans idk I’m blown away every time) constructed characters, and then from the plot. Which was character-driven and so, so delicious, but we’re not talking those kind of spoilers this early in the game. 

While I’ll admit that Kel was the most relatable character, followed by Lin or maybe Ana, there were some things about Conor that just cut a little too close in ways I hadn’t thought about in years. Taking me back to some worldbuilding of my childhood, a ‘reluctant princess’ I came up with based on feeling trapped and overprotected and that fantasy world has long since been archived in my head and it’s entertaining to think this weird kid in western sydney who didn’t get to run quite as wild as some of the other kids (but still did get to run quite wild) felt like that when we were the furthest thing from royalty. I didn’t expect to be reminded of that in an adult fantasy book, but here we are, and I’m being entertained to see all the different takes on Conor: some driven to fascination, some to annoyance, and somehow in the 5 of us who’ve actually read sword catcher already everything in between. 

But let’s be real for a second: who hasn’t heard the ‘oh you can’t be depressed you have everything you need’ and been like. Really hurt by it?? Who hasn’t sat among know it all adults in their younger years who would just judge the hell out of other young people who supposedly ‘never got to hear no’ and now they have ‘no resilience’ and ‘no wonder they’re having problems’? Referring to people you actually relate to and thought, well this definitely isn’t a safe space to be vulnerable I’ll just suffer in silence? I’ve grown up enough now to see Lin’s trauma behind the way she says this about Conor but part of me is still a little mad at her. As for Conor?? He’s everything I’d expect from someone in his position and I actually don’t think the majority of it comes from ‘never hearing no’ and ‘getting everything he wants’ but rather the things that those try to make up for: a lack of real autonomy over his life, not being allowed to feel Normal Child Feelings, having no one he can relate to and see as an equal, a heavy burden of responsibility before he was ever old enough to understand it, and the many levels of fuckery that’s all done to his parents making them not just emotionally unavailable but frivolous, trying to maintain their own autonomy and connection doing silly little rich people hobbies that just make the divide between and resentment of them vs Every Other Person greater (constant stargazing or Decoration and Control). Sugar-coated brains: how could they not be when everything revolves around you but there’s so little you can actually do but pursue the pleasure you’re told you’re entitled to? 

I didn’t expect to be this mad at the royal family culture within SC but when I look back on it I’m not surprised. Not when the setting of the book is on the edge of a revolution, the unraveling of a society that feels so much like today and allows me to zoom out in a way that makes my little revolutionist heart happy. But oh, the angst and the bad decisions as the world teeters on that razorblade. The lives that are lost in the fray. I don’t know what’s happening in our world now but after Cast Long Shadows and an arc I know that she’s proud of (our dear Matthew Fairchild) I do trust Cassie. And in the meantime I’ll let her convince me of what I already know: the lives of nobility are simply pawns in a much bigger game no one (except maybe Ana) knows how to take the reins of, and the life of a pawn, no matter the luxuries, is a sorry life indeed. 

This little revolutionist brain of the 2000s had one thing right, and I feel vindicated to see it in such clarity here: the relationship between social class and genuine connection. From the stark contrast of the opening with Cas and Kel, even also Mari and Lin, against the disaster that is the royal family, it couldn’t be clearer to me: when you’re nobody, when there are no expectations of you, you can be who you really are. Maybe not in the eyes of the authorities, and that’s an important distinction to make, but there’s no need to pretend around your nearest and dearest and sometimes that’s worth so much more than hypothetical safety. Because yes you can get away with things when you’re rich but you’ve also got more people trying to assassinate you for who you are specifically rather than just running the risk of getting killed because you’re unlucky and too unimportant for anyone to think you’d be missed. When you’re royalty (or just have parents with really high expectations or are a gifted kid even) you’re given a mold to grow into and no one really asks if that’s who you really are: why would they, when their worldview depends on you being exactly who they want you to be? So if you’re not it you pretend and even with those, like your children, who are close enough to see behind the ruse, you never quite show them who you really are either. You can see how that would drive one insane. You showcase that the only way to exist is to mask until you snap, or lose the ability to be yourself at all. Which leads me to the second type of sugar coat. 

(And I’m quoting songs as my inspo behind this post as always, title quote is empty wallets by 5sos and I’m about to move onto sugar coat by little big town aka the band with an irl fairchild in it): this sugar coat is politeness and etiquette. There’s a quote somewhere in Kel’s narration I believe that I can’t find but basically views social etiquette and the like as you know. War strategy or something, which is another little segment of the reminder it’s cassie writing this and there’s a lot of accidental neurodivergence, or neurodivergence existing in a world so very different to ours, because that’s a very neurodivergent way of viewing it imo. And in this case, the sugar coat is like a constructed mask you spend your whole life trying to perfect, wear it as it’s handed down from your predecessors: in Conor’s case, lilibet (passed down from my mum, she wears it so well, put it on my shoulders said it’s colder out there than you think/would I recognise myself, would anybody else, if I took the damn thing off and burned it up?) who does make the frivolity and politics of being queen into her whole personality. She’s equally a pitiable and annoying character for that. 

But as for Conor? He’s a Cassandra Clare Created (TM) young man. Of course he can’t quite manage this kind of sugar coat business. The politeness, the etiquette, the little social dances: he longs for real connection (and now we’re back in empty wallets territory, get you high when I’m high, so we see eye to eye: to me this sums out how he makes connections with those who are nowhere near his equals but he wants to have some sort of equal footed connection with: Kel and *[redacted minor spoiler, see below cut]). He’s snapping from the pressure of it, and that’s exactly the kind of driving force for the narrative Cassie uses excellently. We see him coming undone, and hate it (or at least I do) but hope maybe, maybe it’s the path for liberation for him from the life that’s obviously making him (more) depressed (than he otherwise might be), and as the audience we don’t care if the kingdom burns down for this, as long as it doesn’t cause too much collateral damage. And we know it’s going to be a wild ride to get there. 

I don’t reckon this is obvious to everyone else but it is to me, with my experience of Christianity and life and just everything that if you’re a leader in any way, you’re a better leader for being liberated in yourself, having autonomy and appropriate boundaries and Conor has none of that and he’s coming undone and yes there’s a lot of other characters (who I will post about later) with their own arcs and A LOT going on (seriously it’s so deliciously complex and so much more so than tsc ever was with maybe the exception of tec which is kind of adult fantasy anyway). But oh. She really knows how to deliver, all through the first book and I can’t wait to see what the next one has to offer!! And to me the characterisation of Conor is just proof on how expertly the whole world of Castellane and it’s stories is being carried out. 

BIG GAP CAUSE CUT ISNT WORKING

*and Lin later on, kind of

tagging: @daisymylove and feel free to mention anyone who might like it in comments/reblogs!

#sword catcher #cassandra clare #conor aurelian #I TRIED SO HARD TO MAKE IT UNSPOILERY #and genuinely don’t think it is?!? #not spoilery #I checked again #sword catcher deep dives #<-is that a new tag I see?

[deconstructthesoup]

The Web House

Full disclosure—I did not have this all typed out before today, but this won the poll, and I do nothing if not deliver.

*cracks knuckles*

So, this is kind of an inverse to my already well-established AU, The Wittebane Archives, over on AO3—Luz is the Archivist and going through the horrors, there’s an equal amount of deep character moments as well as incredibly chilling encounters, it’s great, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, please go check it out. You got tragic Lumity, tragic Huntlow, wholesome Veesha, Skara and Boscha content, and Belos being much more morally grey than you’d expect. Also, there’s some fucked-up monster content.

ANYWAYS!

I finally decided to do an AU where a young Jon ends up on the Boiling Isles, and I took a similar approach with the tone that I did with Wittebane Archives. In that story, while I still highlighted the horror of the world they live in, I decided to make it more manageable for the characters and give them chances to still find ways to feel human, reflecting the fact that TOH is a more gentle and optimistic show (and I much prefer happy endings to sad ones). So, with The Web House, I decided that the Isles in this world are the Isles we would’ve gotten if Dana had been allowed to do her original vision… which is to say, all of the scary and horrific parts are kicked up to their extent. No sugarcoating here, the demon realm is explicitly referred to as Hell.

Now, to the characters!

Jon: He is, of course, in the role of Luz. Rather than being a naive ray of sunshine from Connecticut, he’s a prickly, anxious, and socially awkward kid from Bournemouth who gets in trouble for his constant refrain of correcting the teacher, having no interest in the assignments, and his habit of reading during class. This eventually leads to him nearly getting sent to a camp for “troubled kids…” until his habit for wandering off and getting distracted by things that are out of the ordinary leads him to stumble in through a portal to the Boiling Isles. Once there, Jon is absolutely blown away by the wonder and horror of the world, and he finally finds something that he’s truly passionate about—though, time and time again, he’s told that he can’t do magic because he’s a human, and he gets very defensive about it. It takes him a while for his walls to come down.

Gerry: He’s Eda—a snarky, anti-establishment, laid-back criminal with a lot of trauma and a habit of unintentionally adopting kids. Instead of an Owl Beast curse, he has a Spider Beast curse, and is referred to as the “Web Witch” by the denizens of the Isles. Gerry was actually pretty happy pre-curse, mainly because his mother died before she could do a lot of real harm… but after getting cursed, everything came crashing down, culminating in Gerry accidentally blinding his father and running away to hide in the woods. Since then, he has a hard time really letting people in, and the fact that he’s a wanted criminal doesn’t help. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t regularly take in strays. (Also, the curse turns his hair black, but it’s naturally red. You’ll see why in a sec.)

Annabelle: She is a slightly more mature version of King—a spiderlike demon child that Gerry found and took in at a young age. Knowing full well that she’s adorable, she takes advantage of the fact that people think she’s sweet and naive to get what she wants, which leads to a lot of shenanigans in the first-season arc. As the story goes on, and she finally takes the push to learn more about her past, she starts learning how to be responsible and to be more honest with herself and others, though she never loses her talent for deception. She’s a curious and devious little kid.

Helen: She’s a Hooty equivalent. Just a sassy door being who helps keep the Web House in tip-top shape.

Agnes: She’s Lilith—Gerry’s older sister and the head of the Emperor’s Coven. Of course, Agnes being Agnes, she’s a lot less tightly wound than Lilith at first and is genuinely sweet and caring, just deeply misguided. She truly believes that Gerry joining the EC is the best option for him, and she’s always been tormented with guilt over cursing him. After leaving the coven, Agnes tries her hardest to make up for lost time, both with Gerry, Eric, and their great-aunt Gertrude, even if she really has no idea how to interact with people outside of being the polite and perfect role model. It’s a learning curve.

Basira: She takes the place of Willow, though her character development is less about being insecure and slowly gaining confidence and more about being stoic and apathetic and learning to express her emotions and fight for what she believes in. Basira has natural talent in both Beastkeeping and Plants, and while she initially thinks that switching to the Plant track would be better for her, she eventually decides to take both classes once it’s approved. She’s painfully logic-minded and has a lot of internal doubts about the coven system, though until she meets Jon and hears his casual breakdown of how valuing certain types of magic over others just doesn’t make sense, she doesn’t yet have the courage to voice it. On her end, Basira turns out to be just the friend that Jon needs—someone who believes in him, but isn’t afraid to tell him when he’s being an ass.

Georgie: She’s in Gus’s position, though instead of being a prodigy at Illusion magic, she’s a prodigy at Abominations magic… and is more than a little terrifying as a result. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a wonderful person, but her keen interest in both humans and in subsects of magic that are more than a little macabre can be a little off-putting to some, which is why Basira’s her only real friend at first. After their initial meeting, which consists of Georgie excitedly asking Jon for a blood sample and him being incredibly spooked by her amazement at meeting an actual human, the two end up getting along like a house on fire, and are basically enablers in each other’s chaos. Georgie’s family doesn’t have a lot of money or social standing in the Isles, so she works twice as hard in order to prove herself and get better opportunities. This leads to burnout. Frequently.

Melanie: She’s… okay, so, she’s Matt in that she’s a fellow member of Georgie’s human appreciation club and a new student at Hexside, though she and Georgie don’t really have a rivalry beyond friendly ribbing. However, she’s also Viney, in that she’s a member of the Detention track who helps kickstart multi-track studies. She and Jon don’t get along immediately, mostly due to the fact that he unintentionally ratted her out for studying both Oracle and Construction magic the first time they met, but the two form a begrudging alliance during a basilisk attack and later become actual friends. Melanie’s a sucker for drama and conflict, and she carries that with her—whether she’s in the Human Appreciation Society, the Flyer Derby team, or just hanging out with Georgie and the rest of the gang. She’s fun.

Martin: He’s Amity, in that he’s a depressed rich kid who’s severely isolated due to parental expectations. Due to his incredible talent at Illusions, a lot of kids end up coming to him when they need to cheat, though they never actually become friends with him due to everyone seeing him as a quiet weirdo who never had to work for anything. When Jon comes along, Martin is distrustful of anybody claiming to want to be his friend, and he doesn’t help things by accidentally demeaning Jon’s interest in magic—which, in Jon’s eyes, cements him as a rival. After a string of miscommunication and failed interactions, the two eventually reach a middle ground and become friends… which later leads into Martin developing a gigantic crush on Jon. Which is later reciprocated. Aside from the romantic drama, Martin learns to both become more open and to stand up for himself, becoming the kind yet bitchy individual we all know and love.

Tim & Danny: They’re Edric and Emira—Martin’s class-clown yet charming older brothers who love teasing their little brother and getting into general mischief. Tim’s the oldest, and he’s usually the one who shows a lot of actual worry towards Martin, though he’s still a very flashy individual and tends to do a lot of crazy things just for the hell of it. Danny, on the other hand, has some identity issues that stem from being a middle child who doesn’t quite know who he is outside of his family, and he tends to throw himself into something if he thinks it’ll make him stand out. They’re both illusionists, like Martin, and while Tim and Danny are biological brothers, all of them are adopted. (Also, Tim eventually starts taking Bard and Beastkeeping classes, while Danny starts taking Potions.)

Daisy: If my decision to make Basira Willow hasn’t tipped you off, Daisy is Hunter—the Golden Guard of the Emperor’s Coven, praised as a teen prodigy yet possesses no magical talent of her own. She’s loyal to the emperor and genuinely believes in everything she’s been taught, and she is absolutely horrible at expressing any emotion other than smugness or anger, believing fear and sentiment to be weaknesses and being deathly afraid of being perceived as anything other than strong. Daisy is a very vulnerable person underneath her hard exterior, and she can be incredibly soft with people she cares about… though, of course, she’s not given much opportunity to connect with anyone outside of the castle, or inside, for that matter. In the canon of TMA, Daisy is a truly fascinating character to me, and I knew that the only character she could feasibly be is Hunter—hey, person who did bad things for a cause they believed was just and had that illusion stripped from them, meet other person who did bad things for a cause they believed was just and had that illusion stripped from them. And they both love wolves. So, yeah, she’s a very traumatized child soldier who makes the gradual evolution into a protective big sister friend and a disaster lesbian.

Sasha: I had to make her Vee. I had to. Even if you take away the whole fact that she was NotThemed and how similar that is to the basilisks, the fact that she was almost made the Archivist makes her perfect for that role. Her general story is pretty much the same as in canon—she’s a basilisk who was created in a lab for the purpose of studying magic draining and ran away to the human realm, falling in love with it almost as soon as she arrived. Once in the human realm, Sasha develops a love for computers and manages to make friends with the people she meets at the camp (I’m not sure who they are yet, though I’m leaning towards making them Sam and Colin—Alice already has a role), and when she and Jon actually have a chance to meet, they almost immediately bond as siblings after the distrust and animosity is thrown out the window. Also, Sasha’s existence helps Jon finally fully connect with his grandmother, so… bonus!

Oliver: He’s Raine. As much as I love Doorkeay, I have a different role in mind for Micheal, and Oliver’s dynamic with Gerry as two gorgeous witchy goth men connected with The End is something that I’d love to see more of. Anyways, um… so, Oliver and Gerry’s story is pretty similar to canon—they met when they were in high school, were best friends from that point on, and eventually started dating, though they broke up due to Gerry being tight-lipped about the curse and Oliver eventually making the decision to join the Bard coven. Oliver didn’t start being a rebel leader right away, though, since he initially believed that the best way to fix things was by changing it from the inside, but after years of that not working, he finally caved and started the BATs. He’s very practiced at pretending that he’s just an unassuming workaholic, and he often claims stage fright in order to continue operating under the radar. Oliver’s a smart dude.

Trevor: He’s… well, he takes the position of Eberwolf as the Beastkeeping coven head, but he also acts as Darius for a lot of the story beats—mostly because he takes the role as Daisy’s actually decent paternal figure. Trevor comes off as an old grump who doesn’t like people or fun, and he’s seen many a Golden Guard die in his time as a head of a coven… so, when he sees Daisy be rebellious for the first time in her life, his wolf dad instincts kick in. Not quite sure where Julia fits in yet, but she’ll fit in. Somewhere.

Jane: Terra. She has to be Terra. Gross plant woman who pretends to be sweet but is actually psychotic. She’d definitely suggest turning children into mulch as an apt punishment for failing a small challenge.

Nikola: Same deal, she’s Adrian. She can’t be anyone else.

Peter: He’s in the position of Odalia—an antisocial yet jovial businessman who reeks of old money. He also deals in security and weaponry, though he primarily uses oracle magic instead of Abominations, and he’s very interested in studying the effects illusion magic has on the mind. Of course, he can’t actually practice illusion magic, so he has to turn to other avenues for research… such as adopting three gifted illusionists. Needless to say, Peter is not a good parent by any measure,  and he kind of holds the fact that he adopted his sons over their heads so they don’t step out of line. Unfortunately, the kiddos don’t have an Alador equivalent (as far as I’ve decided), so the only person they can really go to outside of each other is Peter. Not a good environment, really. And it’s definitely complicated by the reason why their dad has all this standing and power, beyond just the family connections…

Elias/Jonah: So, he is in Belos’s place as the emperor who’s secretly a human witch hunter, but his motivations aren’t the same. Rather than planning on killing witches simply because he hates magic, his intention is to drain the magic from them and take it for himself—well, for humans, but mostly himself. Elias is also a lot more… shall we say, lax about interacting with other witches, which is why he has zero qualms with having an on-again, off-again relationship with Peter Lukas. And several other men throughout his time on the Isles. Yeah, Philip may be too deep in a Puritanical mindset to claw his way out of Narnia and admit that he’s not straight, but Jonah is a harlot and that’s a part of his character that stays constant. I’m not gonna go into his backstory, for spoiler reasons, but I will say that Gwendolyn is a Caleb equivalent, and Alice is her Evelyn. I’m riding on the Dyhard train and you can’t stop me.

Micheal (Distortion): And last but not least, I couldn’t make our boy Micheal anybody other than The Collector! I know that technically, he and Helen are kind of the same character, but she just doesn’t have the silly vibes that he does. All I can really say is that his story is… well, it matches up with in canon, except he’s more of a preteen than a kid. We know so little about Collie’s past outside of the events that led them to be trapped, and what we know about Micheal himself—pre-Distortion, of course—is equally as murky and unclear, so… yeah. He’s a funky neon star kid who originally manifests as a funky shadow kid.

And yeah, I think that’s it for now.

#the owl house #the magnus archives #jon sims #gerry delano #gerry keay #annabelle cane #helen distortion #agnes montague #basira hussain #georgie barker #melanie king #martin blackwood #tim stoker #danny stoker #daisy tonner #sasha james #oliver banks #trevor herbert #jane prentiss #nikola orsinov #peter lukas #elias bouchard #jonah magnus #micheal distortion #tma owl house au #the web house

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Hello! I’m trying to collect seminal fanworks for different fandoms, and figured that it would be a good idea to ask you for any for atla since you said that you’ve been involved in writing fanfic for the show for so long. Basically, I’m hoping to find any fics that are widely popular within the fandom and/or have laid the groundwork for certain aspects of fanon. I’ve already got Embers by Vathara down for this since I’ve seen influence from it pop up pretty often, but I’m a bit new to the fic side of the fandom so I wanted to know which other ones were out there. Thank you!

Hmmm. Well, I can probably point you in the right direction, BUT there's a few things about me you'll want to take into account.

I have always had incredibly niche tastes. Even back in 2009 I was way more interested in reading about minor characters than I was reading about the main cast, and I preferred genfic over shipping. So the fics I read didn't tend to get popular, and the fics that did get popular were usually shipfic and thus I didn't read them and wouldn't be able to track their effects on the fandom. I also haven't regularly read ATLA fic in years; I write it, but I'm way more interested in my own OCs and worldbuilding and headcanon sandbox than most fic these days, so I'm not sure what the current trends are or where they came from. Most of the things I point you towards are going to be very old and possibly forgotten.

That said, I think your best bet is going to be figuring out where the hangout spaces were and who the major players were in old ATLA fandom and going from there. @loopy777 and @piandaoist may be able to help us out here too, especially since I only joined the fandom after the finale aired; they were around long before that.

So, where did the original ATLA fandom and its fic live? Well, for the fic, mostly on FanFiction.Net. You're lucky in this regard--I don't think there were any big independent fanfic archives for ATLA. Harry Potter was around at the same time and had several big fic sites, but HP was older than ATLA, so places like Sugar Quill and FictionAlley were founded around 2001. FFdotnet was founded in 1998, but back then it was pretty commonplace to build your own personal place on the internet. By the time ATLA aired, though, I think FFdotnet was becoming the go-to fic place. And old ATLA fandom never seemed to have much of a slash fandom; if it had that would've been more incentive to start up a separate slash-focused archive, since m/m would be especially vulnerable to purges. So as far as I know, no one felt a need to establish an ATLA-focused fic website, and if they did it never got very big. You'll probably have some good luck seeing what was popular if you just go to the FFdotnet ATLA section and sort by number of reviews and check the dates on what you find.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are going to go looking for this stuff, you need to keep in mind that you are looking at a past internet that is very different from what you might be used to today. For all that purity culture wankers like to complain, AO3 is a dream compared to the olden days. Now, you can see a fic's tags and warnings (or that the author chose NOT to warn) before you even open it. That was not possible or expected on many other fic archives. FFdotnet only gave you so many characters to write your fic summary, that was precious real estate. Sometimes people warned for things in author's notes, sometimes they did not. The culture and etiquette around warnings was different; in many fandoms back then, failing to warn for character death was seen as way more upsetting than failing to warn for rape. Check the rating, the summary, the author's notes--and then understand that you might still run into a completely random sex scene halfway through the fic. Was every fic like this? No, of course not. Most of them weren't. But you have to understand that this is an unavoidable risk. If you can't handle the idea of stumbling across some underage Zutara smut, this might not be the project for you.

Oh, and mind the citrus scale--lemons mean sex, limes mean the characters don't go as far as having sex.

And FYI, it's been ages since I've read anything I'm about to go over and I can't remember the details, so yes, this warning applies to anything I recommend here, too.

Other places to check...well, fandom lived on LiveJournal back then. I'm not sure if ATLA fandom was very affected by Strikethrough and Boldthrough; like I said, there didn't seem to be a lot of slash fans back then. But you could probably go trawling through old journals and communities and see if you find anything interesting... Oh, and back then all fanart would've been posted on DeviantArt, that was pretty much where fanart lived back then. LJ didn't have native image hosting, you had to use Photobucket if you wanted to post any images on there, and why do that when DeviantArt was RIGHT THERE for your fanart.

Ooooh, here you go, FanLore has some lists of ATLA fan spaces, lots of which are on LJ and DA!

There was also AvatarSpirit.Net, but they shut down ages ago. I archived a lot of the threads before it went, but I basically skipped the whole fanfic forum--everything in there was probably on FFdotnet, and no one really left comments on the fic threads, so it seemed pointless since I was pressed for time.

I think that pretty much covers the places. So what about the people?

Well, off the top of my head, I think one fan you might find useful is AvocadoLove (haha your names match). She wrote a lot of fic, but her most popular by far was Another Brother, which I believe was the original Zuko Joins The Water Tribe story, so that trope can be traced back to her. AvocadoLove also kept what might've been the fandom's most prestigious fic reclist, which you can still see on both her LiveJournal and her DreamWidth:

LJ 1 | LJ 2 ||| DW 1 | DW 2

There's a lot of popular fics on this list. Be warned, though, that a lot of them have disappeared, especially if they were posted on someone's LJ instead of on FFdotnet. A few years back I went down this list archiving everything I could, and the number of error pages I hit was saddening. It's possible some have been reposted to AO3 so you can go check there.

Going off this list...

Enslaved by sharkflip--This was a popular Zutara fic, Zuko's the one who got enslaved lol. Extremely different worldbuilding from canon, I gave it a read once and it was interesting.

Mai's Ramblings by @loopy777--Oh my GOD I forgot this existed but it's great. Unfortunately ASN is gone and I have no idea if they're posted anywhere else, LOOPY TELL US, but these were just hilariously stupid rambles by Mai on every ATLA ship imaginable. Did they have a big effect on fanon? Unsure. Were they beloved by the ASN community? YES.

Stormbenders by Fandomme--Another super-popular Zutara fic, people loved it, so it's possible it might've affected Zutara fanon?

Water Tribe by Rufftoon on NoSelfControl--Okay, so this is a long webcomic about "what if Zhao survived the Siege of the North, got amnesia, and the NWT begrudgingly took him in?" Very popular with Zhao fans back in the day. The really cool thing about this is that Rufftoon was actually an ATLA storyboard artist, so her artwork looks a LOT like the show. I believe she made Water Tribe as a sort of personal practice for long-term visual storytelling or something. She did lots of other ATLA art too, you should check her out.

Oh, speaking of webcomics...

Plight of the Freedom Fighters by SioUte and PFFbySIO--The first webcomic was a "how to make Jet survive" story, the second followed the Freedom Fighters after the war as adults. SioUte was the Freedom Fighters BNF back in the day.

And while I'm thinking of it, not a webcomic, but sylvacoer had this whole not-really-Zutara story going on that was literally Blue Spirit/Painted Lady.

*thinks* Look, when it comes right down to it, unless there's stuff going on in the shipping subfandoms that I'm not aware of, I don't think you're going to find anything that directly established as much fanon as Embers did. There were plenty of other super-popular fics, sure, but most of them focused on shipping, and worldbuilding wasn't quite as important. Embers put worldbuilding first and foremost, and therefore it was easier for the fandom to pull from as a whole.

Uhhh let's see what else...at this point I'm basically just throwing whatever I can remember being interesting at you, lol, idk how much of an effect any of this really had.

DJNS wrote a bunch of fic with interesting premises, some shippy, some not. The Zuko/Aang roleswap AU was pretty cool.

For me personally, the biggest influences on my writing were Dark Puck and Rebecca Hb, specifically their Dai Li fics. They had a circle of friends on LJ who put out some good stuff.

*thinks* Yeah, I think that's all I've got for now. Hope that gives you a starting point! I'd also recommend, as you trawl through FFdotnet, checking out the authors' favorited fics in their profiles, you could probably find more interesting stuff that way.

Idk, I'll add more later if I think of anything. But if you start with AvocadoLove, I think that's an excellent starting point.

#asks #fandom history #ancient fanfiction #fanfiction #fandom #caelum rambles

[sketchncanto]

Yet Another Life Update! 🌱

Hi guys!! It’s been a little minute since I made a life update— got a bunch of stuff goin on as usual lol I haven’t been super active but I wanted to pop in and let ya know that I’m still here and I have PLANS

Update 1! Remember that Pixar Story course thingy I mentioned a few months ago? Well— I was one of the winners!! I still can’t believe I was picked out of so many other incredible stories 🥲 I’ll probably upload the story reel here but I’m kinda hesitant bc my voice over/narration is bad lmao but we’ll see! Might upload it with subtitles..

Update 2! I know I've said it like-- 47 times already BUT I’m going to start uploading way more original boards this year!! I will absolutely still be drawing and posting my highly self indulgent encanto fanart BUT I also wanna make room for more original work too 🌱

Update 3! Going along with update 2, I’m almost done with this big personal storyboard I’m working on!! I want to be done with it by mid March at the latest. I also wanna make a tutorial-ish post on my storyboarding process and how I do it at some point. I’ve never created a tutorial before so we’ll see how that goes 😬

Update 4! I’m currently taking an online feature storyboarding course until April and I’m learning SO MUCH. Hopefully by April I’ll be ready to throw myself back into working— but until then, my training arc resumes 🤌🏼

Update 5! I think I wanna make a separate blog to archive all of my encanto fanart for easier access 🤔 Thinking of calling it “sketchncanto" lol

That’s all!! Hope all of you are doing swell and staying healthy!! 💕

#I swear I’m gonna actually post my original stuff #one day #please believe me #it’s gonna happen #I swear #😃 #chels rambles

[drunkspacearchivist]

okay now that we’re on hiatus let’s talk about the parallels between the season one mag crew (and beyond) and the season one magp crew

If we take out Lena and Collin (and we’ll get back to them, I swear), we’ve got a gender flipped one for one version of the original Archive crew. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons between Sam and Jon, and also Collin and Jon, but I don’t think either of these are necessarily meant to be narrative parallels.

Let’s remember what the Archives crew was like in season one. Setting aside everything they become, everything that happens to them, remember what they were like at the beginning.

Jon was trying to seem as professional and official as possible. No one (save for Martin) actually looked at him as the boss of the situation, but he really wanted to be. He was trying to project confidence and control, tied to the Institute for an unclear purpose. Season one Jon wasn’t paranoid, wasn’t focused on the greater mystery, but wanted to be very good at his job. It was only at the end of the season that he started to realize that the job he wanted to succeed at wasn’t what he thought at all. That’s the position we left /Gwen/ in over the hiatus. I think that Gwen is meant to be the Jon stand-in, as much as any of them are supposed to be stand-ins for the old crew, and I think we can probably follow a lot of his character growth to make theories tied to where Gwen will end up: pursuing the power until it changes her irrevocably.

My biggest stretch out of the four is tying Celia to Martin, but hear me out. We don’t know much about either of them in the first season, and we still don’t know a lot about Celia. But the little we’ve seen shows that she’s a relatively sweet person, generally rolling with the horrors, and knows more than she lets on. We know that Martin had the potential to belong to the Web, but ended up towards the Lonely instead. I think we’ll see kind of what we could have had with Web!Martin.

Then, of course, we’re down to Sam and Alice. I’ve predicted that they would be our Tim and Sasha since the first episode, but it honestly hurts how much they’re living up to it. Sam, ignoring logic and reason to pursue the greater mystery like how Sasha followed Michael, how Sasha approached the thing in Artifact storage. Alice, who knows more than she lets on, barely hiding her anger and hurt under flirty jokes and jabs at her friends, and so close to her brother. The way that Tim loved Sasha, really loved Sasha, but she didn’t love him in the same way, the way that Sasha changed and Tim didn’t notice until it was too late, the way that Sam has changed and Alice hadn’t noticed until Sam had already left her behind.

Finally getting back to the two I put aside, it’s easy to draw comparisons to Lena and Elias, but they’re also very different. Sure, they’re both creepy bosses with secret power, but I don’t think people acknowledge how… incompetent Lena is? Sure she’s creepy, and vague, and everything she says feels like a thinly veiled threat, but she also is easily blackmailed by Gwen, and failed to kill the only person we’ve heard her attempt to kill. (And yet, Elias made a copy of the tunnel key for Jon, pretended not to believe the worms to suit his own needs. Is it a long con? Or is Lena like the fears, something familiar and yet undefined?)

Now, here’s my biggest thing. A lot of people have compared Colin to Season 2 Jon, but again, I think they’re forgetting what it was like to hear Season 2 for the first time. Jon didn’t know what was going on. He was lost, scared, and confused. He’d started to figure out the evil was real but his hatred was misplaced. Colin recognizes there’s a mystery, and he also seems to have a firmer grasp on the source of the issues. He’s not paranoid, per se, because he’s /right/. The computers are listening, and there probably is something more going on. He’s angry, and scared, but not because he doesn’t know the threat. He’s angry and scared because he does know what’s causing this, but he’s alone in it. His anger and exhaustion are driven by a need for this all to be over, one way or another. He seems to know that there is something evil here, and he doesn’t want to be a part of it. He wants to end it. Collin isn’t Jon. Collin is Melanie.

Now, do I think all of these characters are meant to be foils? No. Do I think we’re supposed to make predictions based on the past? Not really. But I think the parallels are where it’s really going to hit hard in the future

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #character study #long post #kinda rambling but #i love them all #cannot wait for april

[the12thnightproject]

Chapter 11: Disney Hime: Taking advantage of Sho’s teenage crush on Shojumaru, Katsu enables a stalking expedition to the docks.

Mitsuhide x OC; Hideyoshi x MC (Mai)

All Chapters Archived on Ao3 

Logline - With Mai, Hideyoshi, and Aki missing, Mitsuhide and Katsuko reluctantly team up. Disguised as a merchant and his concubine, can they outsmart the man known as the God of Deceit?

“Kaya, I can cook. In fact, I always prepare breakfast for my brother and sisters, so I don’t mind helping out here too.” Sho made good her announcement by literally yanking the teakettle out of my hands.

“I don’t mind cooking.” I’d gotten used to making my own meals while living with Mitsuhide – granted it had started as self defense, but at least I got to control what went into the pot. “You’re a personal maid, not a kitchen maid. Which, by the way, I have been, so I know what kind of work goes into that.”

“And, as your personal maid, I’ve spent the last week trying to soften the callouses on your hands, so if you ruin them again, you’ll only be making more work for me.” With as much as skill over the fire as she had with my hair, she expertly finished my breakfast stirfry and slid it into a bowl. “There you go. Please eat it.” She added something under her breath about people needing to appreciate her skills.

Since I sensed a teenage sulk approaching, I knelt at the table. “Only if you eat too.” It felt weird eating while she watched me.

“I ate already.” She put the wok in a deep bucket of water. Then she set another pot of water on the coals to heat up.

“I’m hungry.” A third voice piped up, as all of a sudden the boy I had meet a couple weeks ago – Hiko - appeared at the top of the staircase. He trotted into the eating area. “Feed me, Sho.”

They know each other?

Ok, yeah, I got the connection … Hiko worked for Shojumaru, who had been the one to recommend Sho to us.

“Hiko! You can’t just walk into people’s houses like this. Someone might get upset.” She clasped her hands in front of her, and bowed – then bowed again. “Miss Kaya, please excuse my brother. He has forgotten his manners.”

“The man downstairs said I could come up.” Hiko tossed a small coin purse at Sho. “You forgot your money and I’m going to the docks with Shojumaru, so you were on my way.” He plopped down at the table and eyed my plate. Sho sighed, but she found a jar of umboshi and poured some into a dish. Hiko reached for it, but Sho cuffed him on the back of the head and nodded her head toward me. Belated remembering his manners, Hiko jumped back up and bowed. “I’m Hiko.”

I caught myself from reminding him that we had met already, since it was Katsu whom he had met. “Happy to meet you Master Hiko. I’m Kaya.”

The hot water steamed and hissed, spitting a bit at the fire, and Sho dumped some of it in the bucket with the dirty dishes. “Thank you for bringing my coin purse. I planned to stop at the market later, so you saved me some embarrassment.”

Hiko shrugged. “Well, you could always steal what you want.”

Sho gasped and slapped her hand over his mouth. “Miss Kaya, he is telling a joke. We are not a family of theives.”

Hoping to keep the information flowing, I just shrugged. “Wouldn’t bother me if you were. People have to eat. Although I would rather you not steal from me – if you need something, just ask.”

“There.” Hiko mumbled around a mouthful of food. “I wish the Kaigoshu would see it that way.”

“I haven’t been in Sakai very long. Are the Kaigoshu really tough on thieves?” I knew they had set the prices and trade agreements, but aside from that, how much daily governance were they responsible for?

Hiko winked. “If you’re caught.”

“Which,” Sho said as she set a cup of tea in front of him, “you were.”

“But that worked out.” Hiko turned back to me. “Before I knew him, I tried to steal Shojumaru’s money. He grabbed my arm so fast I thought he was going to tear it right off. Figured that would be the end of me-”

“I was prepared to plead for his life for a week if it was necessary,” Sho added.

“Was it?” I could imagine the beautiful young Sho might be a convincing advocate, though that could be as dangerous to her as it was for Hiko to steal to begin with.

“I didn’t need to. Shojumaru offered Hiko work.” She sighed happily as a dreamy look came across her face – the kind of look that wouldn’t be out of place on a girl her age at a K-pop concert. “And when he found out about the rest of us, he sent us some sweets!”

Huh. That didn’t jive with Shojumaru importing illegal weapons (potentially) but maybe this was a diversion. Or maybe he was truly innocent.

Or maybe, like Mitsuhide, like me – these things were all true and not a contradiction at all. I was both a courier and a (faux) courtesan. I could be both snarky and nice, depending on the company and whether or not they deserved my niceness. Mitsuhide did not deserve it, but it might be… ok, it would be sensible to learn more about him and what makes him tick.

Locks… locks make him tick.

Aaaaaand, more importantly, I should listen to the conversations going on in front of me rather than daydreaming, or risk missing important information.

“I wish I could go with you today. Shojumaru always seems so exciting when he’s striding around on the docks. Commanding. Powerful.” Sho had that ‘teenage dream’ look on her face again.

“Don’t be an idiot.” Speaking of facets, Hiko’s mood turned sour and he suddenly seemed much older than ten. “Shojumaru is the same wherever he is.”

“Yes, but in sunlight. It’s like he’s being kissed by the Gods.” She sighed.

“Stop it, Sho.” With a scowl, Hiko pushed away his food. “You shouldn’t go there alone.”

“We could… all go. Not to get in your way.” I hurried to assure Hiko that I meant no harm. “But Sho said she wanted to go shopping, so we can walk you there, watch the ships for a moment, then continue on to the market.”

Sho brightened for a moment, then shook her head. “Master Kyubei might not like it. He said you needed to be exquisite tonight.”

Well, she didn’t have to sound like it would take her hours to turn me into an exquisite creature. “As it happens, I broke one of my hairsticks last night and I need to buy new ones. Kyubei knows. He was there when it happened.”

“How did you manage to-” She looked at her younger brother and backtracked.

What exactly did she think we were doing with the hairstick?

“They can be fragile.” Especially if you jam them into a lock. I felt warm all over thinking about last night’s lesson.

Sho giggled. “Alright. Master Kyubei said he would give me money for any accessories you might need.” She hefted the purse Hiko had brought her. “So if we make it fast, we can do this.”

Really? He offers Sho an expense account, but not me?

The fourth thing I hate about Mitsuhide. He doesn’t trust me.

Unfortunately, asking for forgiveness and not permission only works if you are caught returning from an excursion, and not leaving on one. Granted, Mitshide had no need to work very hard to catch us when we trooped down the stairs en masse – especially as Hiko seemed to have only two speeds when in motion. Fast and faster.

Before we could exit the premises, Mitsuhide called to us. “And where might we be going?” He oozed over to our group and made minute adjustments to my clothing, as if his only care was how my looks would reflect upon him.

Wanting to get ahead of the news cycle (so to speak), I jumped in before the kids could. “Sho needs to find something to help with my hair since I broke a hairstick last night.” Just for him, I added a ‘don’t stop me’ smile. “Hiko, her brother, is escorting us, before going on to the dock to meet his employer, Shojumaru.” Hopefully he would (a) understand that I wanted to question the two of them, and (b) not offer to join us. I knew both of the kids would be more open to subtle questioning if it were just me.

“I don’t like the idea of someone as delicate and lovely as you wandering around in full view of foreigners and rough sailors.” He made an adjustment to my shawl, arranging it so I was more covered. Apparently ‘Kyubei’ is a yandere.

“We won’t be going that close,” I said, noting Sho’s look of disappointment at those words.

After pretending to think it over (or, well, he probably was internally thinking it over as himself too) Mitsuhide he reached into his kimono and pulled out his coin bag. “Buy something pretty for yourself.”

Ok. Possessive and indulgent is how we’re playing this today. Knowing a cue when I heard one, I bowed to him. “Thank you, Master Kyubei.”

He leaned in and placed a very theatrical kiss on my forehead. Then he ruined it by adding, “Be sure to take Sho’s advice. She understands what will suit you.”

What really sucked was that… he was probably correct. Sho has exquisite taste, if what she was currenting wearing – a simple kimono the color of the sunset over the ocean – was anything to judge by. I refused to dignify that with a ‘yes sir’ so I nodded slightly to let him know I heard him, then hurried to follow the other two into the bright morning sunshine.

While Hiko ran ahead of us - he would pause every so often to allow us to catch up, then immediately run ahead again, I strolled with Sho at a more leisurely pace, pretending to take in the area. “Have you lived in Sakai all your life?”

“No. We lived in the mountains in the Hida area – our father was killed in a mining accident and my mother thought to move us to live with her brother, who is a fisherman here in Sakai.” Sho kicked a stone out of her path with unnecessary force.

“Thought to? I take it he was less than pleased with a sudden influx of family?” What was it that Sho had said earlier? She had four other sisters?

“He said he had no room for all of us. Hiko, he was willing to keep because he could help him on the boats, but-” She bit her lip and seemed so upset that I chose not to ask further. I patted her shoulder instead. With a sad smile she continued. “He had a friend – an old man -  who was willing to pay for me. Hiko put a stop to that… and well, that was the end of any of us living there. If it wasn’t for Master Shojumaru, I don’t know where we would be living. Oh. And of course, my working for Master Kyubei and you now.”

The way she’d tacked that on as an afterthought made me again suspect she was spying on us for Shojumaru. Give that she also seemed to have a crush on the man, she probably hadn’t needed much convincing to-

Hang on.

Since we’d left Mitsuhide’s townhouse, someone had been walking a few paces behind us. I hadn’t thought much of it at first. Sakai is fairly big, and the middle of town basically leads everywhere. But as Hiko led us down to the waterfront, I noticed that our follower had not turned down another street, or gone into a shop.

So. We were being followed. The question was, who? And why?

No time like the present to find out.

I accidentally on purpose dropped the coin bag that Mitsuhide had given me. When I knelt to pick it up, I grabbed a fast look behind me, long enough to identify our stalker.

Tall… elegant… carrying a colorful rice paper umbrella in one hand, and a fan in the other.

Yoshimoto.

Specifically, Yoshimoto being not at all inconspicuous between that umbrella and a bright kimono. He was… so not good at this. No wonder I had spotted him.

Well, if he wanted to follow us, it had probably been at Sasuke’s request, and if he had a message to pass along, there would be plenty of opportunity to ‘encounter me’ at when we went to the open air market.

He continued to keep pace with us down to the harbor, where he stood with his fan open and the umbrella half-hiding his face. Hiko, meanwhile, said goodbye to us, then scrambled down to a dock where Shojumaru was already waiting for him. Next to me, Sho sighed the sigh of a Disney Princess about to go off into a musical monologue, and I half-expected the sea birds to provide a chorus behind her. “He’s so beautiful. Don’t you think so, Miss Kaya?”

It was true that Shojumaru appeared to be in his element as he strolled along the dock, the breeze ruffling his white hair. He looked more comfortable out here anyway. “He seems to fit the setting. Um, I mean, he looks like he’s enjoying himself, which is more attractive than bored.”

Though Hiko had clearly dismissed us for the day, Sho propelled us closer to the dock. I wouldn’t exactly say that she dragged me down there, for I was willing to learn more about the man, but if I had planted my feet on the ground and refused to move, I bet she would have had the strength to yank me further.

Such is the power of young love.

Since he either hadn’t noticed her (or was pretending not to), Sho called to him. “Master Shojumaru!”

Ow. Ok. Does anyone know where I can find an eardrum repair service?

He didn’t respond to her shriek. He had to be deaf, for she had hit a decibel level and pitch that prior to that moment had only been reached by sea birds fighting over scraps of food.

“Master Shojumaru!” That one was even louder. He couldn’t possible ignore that without appearing rude.

He chose option B (appear rude) and strode further along the dock without a backward glance. Beside me, Sho slumped in disappointment. I would have tried to cheer her up, but something curious was happening. A rowboat approached the dock, carrying sailors from a ship anchored off shore. Not a merchant vessel, but an atakebune – a warship. The sailors seemed to know Shojumaru, for they were waving at him. Odd, but not completely out of the question for a merchant to be on good relations with a naval vessel. He could have hired them to protect his trading ships.

Unfortunately the ship wasn’t flying any banners so I had no idea if there was a clan association, or if they were mercenaries.

An old man climbed out of the rowboat, and bowed to Shojumaru deferentially. “Who is that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t get to come down here very often, and when I do, Shojumaru hardly talks to me.” She pouted for a moment, and then upgraded her teenage moodiness programing by applying the random act of tears patch.

Wow. Ok. She’s a beautiful crier.

However, this was not the place for hysterics, so I wrapped my arm in hers and led her away from the docks, out of the path of any witnesses (aside from Yoshimoto, who had, of course, glided after us in his swanlike Yoshimoto way).

“What’s wrong?” The tears seemed excessive. Although what did I know? I’d never had a severe crush when I was her age (Ironman doesn’t count).

I glanced over my shoulder, at where Yoshimoto was still lurking. He gave a little nod toward Sho, as if to ask if I needed help. I shook my head. Whatever this was, seemed like it could probably be handled by girl talk.

She beautifully dabbed at her eyes with a creamy hand towel. “It’s my own fault that he hardly talks to me.” Sniffle. Single tear. “I was so grateful that he rescued us that I greeted him in his bed.”

Oh hell. If Shojumaru had taken advantage of this kid, then disguise or no disguise, I was going to hunt him down and dismember him. I rubbed her back. “What did he do?”

“When I tried to embrace him, he looked horrified and he pushed me away!” Sho seemed to be at least trying to keep her voice down, but I suspected that Yoshimoto was still close enough to overhear.

Ok. The rejection was a little over the top, but at least he hadn’t taken this very young girl up on the offer. “Did he say anything?” I still wasn’t sure what to make of Shojumaru, but at least I could cross “takes advantage of underage girls” off the list of potential crimes. And, yes, I knew that in this time period, Sho wasn’t underage – there were no laws governing this, and at sixteen many girls of the warrior class would already be married. But even though I lived in the Sengoku, my brain grew up in modern Japan, and to me, Sho just seemed too young.

“Only that he had no need of a concubine, and if he wanted pleasure for a night, he knew where he could find a woman of experience.” She abandoned delicacy and blew her nose in the hand towel. “He didn’t have to be so mean about it!”

“No. He could have chosen his words more carefully.” I tried to figure out more careful words myself. “Maybe he meant that he didn’t want the good deed he had done for your family to become a transaction?”

That was the moment when Yoshimoto decided to enter our conversation. “I agree with the lady.” Yoshimoto bowed to me. “A good deed needs no reward and you giving your innocence to him would have negated the act.”

Sho clapped her hands to her face, in obvious horror at being overheard, but Yoshimoto continued to smile at her. His own attractiveness seemed to guide her past her initial embarrassment. “My apologies Princess. I could not help drawing closer to your beauty, and once I was near, like a moth to flame, I could not stay away, even as I rudely listened to your conversation.”

Geez Yoshimoto. There’s a concept called punctuation. Look into it.

“I’m not a Princess,” was all that Sho managed to say, even as in the back of my mind, my brain added ‘hime’ to her name, and it seemed so appropriate, that I couldn’t shake it.

Yoshimoto swept a grand European style bow over her hand. “Every girl is a Princess to someone. Imagawa Yoshimoto.”

Seeing that she had lost her power of speech, I supplied her name to him, then added, “I’m Kaya,” since I wasn’t certain if Sasuke had given Yoshimoto my current alias.

“Two beautiful flowers of Sakai. Would you brighten my day and allow me to escort you to wherever you plan to go?” When I informed him that we were headed to the temporary stalls set up by the traveling merchants he pronounced himself thrilled as that had been his destination as well. From what I know of Yoshimoto it probably had been.

We made our way toward the outskirts of Sakai, where the merchants were set up along the interior of the city wall. Along the way Yoshimoto kept up a steady stream of light flirtation designed to balm a hurt teenage ego. It wasn't until we reached a stall selling feminine accessories that Sho gave in to exploring the wares, and Yoshimoto and I had a moment to chat.

“That was kind of you.” I watched as Yoshimoto held a silk handkerchief up to the light. “And possibly kind of Shojumaru as well.”

“I've little experience with him, though I once saw him conversing with an agent of Yoshiaki, which does not speak well of him.” He folded up the handkerchief as neatly, more neatly in fact, than it had been and picked up another.

“The deposed Shogun?” OK that was interesting. “Are they allies?”

“Yoshiaki doesn't have allies. Only pawns.” He shook his head. “I have little time, and I doubt Yoshiaki is your objective. Sasuke said that your father is missing. Yoshiaki is more concerned with returning to power, and I cannot see a connection between him and one missing man.”

Would he go so far as to kidnap Mai and Hideyoshi, though? It seemed that Sasuke had not told him about that part of it. “I’m not ruling out anything yet, although who knows where our search will lead. Do you have a message from Sasuke?”

“After you left, Kaya,” he gave me a significant look, indicating that he had finally realized (or been told) that ‘Katsu’ was as much of a disguise as ‘Kaya’ was, “Sasuke did some research and he thinks he’s pinpointed dates and locations where there will be events that should allow you to return to your home… village.”

Ah. So Yoshimoto also knew about the time travel. He handed me a paper, which appeared to list dates, and either ‘Honno-ji’ or ‘Togakushi.’ Wow. Apparently, a moderately awesome ninja got no sleep that night. I would probably need to memorize this as I doubted I could figure out a hiding place that Mitsuhide wouldn’t find. Unless I kept it tucked in my kimono – he wouldn’t dare scout around in that, although the idea of him trying made me feel— nope!  “Thank you.” I put the letter in my obi for the time being.

“And though Sasuke didn’t think to ask, I will. Are you safe in your situation? The man you were with the other day seemed rather cruel.” He reached toward me, then stopped, his hand frozen in the air, before redirecting, and plucking a chrysanthemum from a flower vendor. “Though some call me a paper prince, I have enough resources to protect you, if that is your wish.”

“I’m fine. The man’s attitude is as much of a necessary disguise as these clothes.” I was less clear on why Mitsuhide had chosen that particular persona. “In private, our relationship is far more businesslike. Um, I mean, we’re stuck working together, but at home he mostly ignores me.” Which was a slight exaggeration, as I had been the one to initiate the ignoring, but I didn’t need Yoshimoto hanging around the machiya and cluttering up our investigation. (Although he would be beautiful clutter.)

Was I making light of the situation? Mitsuhide had purchased me. Technically, legally, I was his to do with as he pleased. But I didn’t feel like I was a prisoner. Not exactly. If I truly felt the need to escape, I would have found a way. Heck, if I had been desperate, I would have returned to modern Japan with Sasuke.

“Though that is a relief to hear, I cannot trouble believe that anyone would wish to ignore you. You are far too lovely to languish unseen.” Yoshimoto’s co-spy persona was dropped in favor of the flirtatious prince I had met the other day.

I glanced over at Sho to make sure she still wasn’t listening. “No languishing happening here. I don’t like him. He doesn’t like me either. But we are each other’s best chance at achieving our goals.”

“Ah.” Yoshimoto was silent a long moment, during which he shred the few petals from his stolen flower. “I suppose I have been in similar situations. Necessity makes for uncomfortable alliances. My cousin, in face, is allied with a man he has gone to war with on eleven prior occasions.” He tossed the flower merchant a coin, then tucked the remains of the chrysanthemum in his sash. “They claim it is temporary.”

“As is my situation. A temporary alliance.” Once I have found Aki, and Mitsuhide has located his friends, we’ll happily go our separate ways. And if I am lucky, I will never encounter him again.

Yoshimoto looked at my face for a while before nodding. “If you are certain.” He looked past me as his expression flipped from sincere to acquisitiveness. “That bowl is exquisite. I must have it.”

Conversation over, Yoshimoto flitted over to a craftsman’s stall.

“You look lovely Miss Kaya.” Sho stepped back, comb still in her hand, with the attitude of an Olympic athlete who has just finished a marathon. Apparently getting me to the point of “lovely” took serious effort.

“Thank you, Sho.” I reached up to pat my hair, which apparently was in a complicated bundle of knots, and she diverted my hand just in time. “Uh. I will take your word for it.”

I didn’t own a mirror, as space was more important than vanity when you spend much of your time crossing the country on horseback. I could at least tell that the kimono, one of the first ones I had ever owned that was made specifically for me, a lovely pale blue with tiny pink (sigh) flowers and butterflies dyed on it, seemed to fit me in all the correct places.

“She is acceptable.” In his Kyubei wig and attitude, Mitsuhide stood at the doorway. He also was dressed in an expensive looking formal kimono, with gold and silver embroidery making it look like he was wearing precious metal – probably exactly the effect he was going for. “That is all we will need from you today, Sho. It will be late when we return.”

Sho bowed to both of us, then in moments I could hear her feet lightly pattering down the stairs as she made her escape in order to enjoy a the extra time off.

Mitsuhide waited until we heard the door rattle as she left the building. “That is a very talented maid.”

“She seems to enjoy the work.” I picked up the shawl she had set out and hung it over my shoulders. Mitsuhide immediately adjusted the way it draped. Of course. “By the way, apparently Shojumaru saved her whole family from starvation and homelessness, so if it turns out he is our villain, her loyalty and affection is to him. Oh and also-”

Mitsuhide held up his hand. “One thing at a time, brat. You may tell me in the palanquin on the way to the shrine.”

Palanquin?

A box?

We’re travelling in a box?

Oh no no no no.

“Can we not walk? Or ride?” I ignored the hand he extended to me.

“Kyubei would not.” He gave me one those looks he generally reserved for when he was ‘in charge’ and expecting his orders to be followed.

“Kyubei can have the tiny box. How about this? He can force Kaya to walk beside it… and really, those things are only made for one person. It’s not fair to the men carrying it to have two people and – hey!” Mitsuhide had gotten tired of my protests and had simply hauled me to my feet.

“Your weight is negligible.” He propelled me out of the room, just as easily as Sho had dragged me to the docks earlier.

So random behind the scenes footnote for this chapter. When I originally wrote this fic, I had only read Motonari's dramatic ending. My decision to have Hiko work for him was basically a head canon that if Motonari caught some kid trying to steal, he would relate to him and try to somehow help him out. Fast forward a few months later when I read the romantic epilogue and discovered that in that route, he had helped out a street kid he'd encountered at some point, and that the two had developed a kind of a friendship. Happy day... headcanon becomes canon.

@bestbryn

@selenacosmic

@mllorei

@tele86

@lyds323

@akitsuneswife

#10things #ten things i hate about mitsuhide #mitsuhide monday #ikemen sengoku #fanfic #ikesen mitsuhide #ao3 link #ikesen yoshimoto #ikesen motonari

[pilot-boi]

He’s falling through the void, tears in his eyes and heart in his throat. He doesn’t feel himself burn to cinder, doesn’t even see the gold dust his body has become because his eyes are squeezed shut.

But as he falls, he dreams.

In his first dream, he kills Penny when he fails to heal her in time. His sword plunges between her ribs and he breaks just enough for smoke and ash to rush in and consume every piece of him. The numbness burns away the grief. He dies in agony, turns into the husk of a husk.

In his second dream, he kills Weiss, a molten bright sword plunged through her back and her breath choking out in gasps. His rage and desperate tears burn like oil. He dies in a cacophony of fire and hatred.

In his third dream, the world is falling apart and Pyrrha is there. Brave, beautiful Pyrrha with gentle hands and sad eyes.

In reality he barely manages to pry through the walls she has slammed down. In reality she kisses him, and her touch is grounding, cold against the raging inferno of fear in his chest. In reality he is pushed away and tears spring to his eyes abruptly as he realizes too late that he could’ve stopped this.

In his dream, somehow, impossibly, they part at the peak of the tower, not at its foot.

She sees him in the middle of battle, and the shock permeates through him as much as it shows on her face. It freezes something crucial and human within him until he burns from the cold. The living inferno is gone from Beacon tower, and somehow he has come to replace it.

His limbs move of their own volition, they do not shake. His hand grazes the hilt of his sword, knowing that he’s already lost, knowing that he’s already won. He tries to say something, warn her, yell at her. It’s like his armor is welded to his flesh, metal and leather bound to his skin. Her hand is on his cheek, acceptance alight in her sad eyes. 

A hero would know there isn’t really a choice to make.

Gold and white metal, alight with the red of flames and blood alike. Her hand stays on his cheek as her lungs expel blood, as the smile turns to a grimace, as the light leaves her eyes. He reaches out to try and hold her as she fractures, fades, and burns away. Smoke on the wind.

The issue with surviving a near apocalypse more than once is the aftermath.

Are you safe?

Yeah, I am. Thank you.

Do you need help?

No, I’m fine. Thank you.

Are you alright?

It’s a tricky question, because some part of him is tempted to say “No, I’m not,” because that’s what you’re supposed to say if you need help. He does need help, as much as any of his friends. But not quite as much, or as desperately, because he isn’t hurt in any way. His friends are bleeding, and sobbing, and burning in a baptism of fire.

And he’s fine. Fine enough.

He’s still Jaune Arc with the name that rolls off the tongue and the haunted eyes.

Because sure, there’s a part of him that wants to say no and see what happens. There’s a much smaller part of him, that tiny and trembling and terrified part of him, young and in pain, wants to say “I don’t know.”

I don’t know, I’m not sure. Sometimes I close my eyes and I can see your bleeding bodies burned against the back of my eyelids. Sometimes I feel like I’m alone in the world, and sometimes the world feels too full. I’ve spent years walking through a world that got larger and more terrifying with every step. And in the end it feels natural to live in pain because I’m made for it, hurting is all that I’m for-

But he can’t say any of that.

So he shrugs and runs a hand through his hair, saying what he’s supposed to.

Yeah, I’m fine, just a little tired. Thank you.

His hands shake nowadays. 

Have since Haven, since Weiss nearly died because of his own tunnel-vision and he held her soul in his palms. And he guesses it makes sense that there would be some consequence to that, to stitching her body together with his hands, to binding his friends together with his soul time and again.

The shaking bothers him, though.

He can’t play guitar without his hands spasming and filling the air with discordant notes. He can’t braid Ren’s hair without tangling it up hopelessly as his hands suddenly refuse to respond for the millionth time this week. He can’t draw his sword without-

-Alright, Jaune. Just like we practiced. Follow these instructions. If I die buying them time it’s worth it. They’re the ones that matter. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Weiss will buy us time-

-without his fingers spasming strangely.

But he’s fine. Completely fine. Absolutely fine. The only thing he needs help with is figuring out how to pick up a pencil without immediately dropping it. Figuring out how to tell Yang, tell Nora, that no he won’t try throwing himself into a flaming Maiden’s path again, won’t try throwing himself into a charging Grimm’s path again, won’t make jokes about not being depressed he can always be a farmer or something.

He knows that they’re worried, and that the others are as well, Yang and Nora are just the only ones blunt enough to confront him to his face.

He’s also sorry, but he doesn’t really want to talk about why exactly it is that when faced with a metaphorical cliff his first instinct is to throw himself off of it, mostly because he doesn’t know himself.

He’s fine.

He’s back on the golden platforms, edges blurring away into mist that his eyes can’t track, blurring into the grand hall of Haven, into Beacon’s cracking stones and screaming crowds. His blade is heavy in his hand, its grip as familiar as it’s always been, and when he looks up he finds himself facing down his friends.

Smoke and flame blur the edges of his vision, and something within him tears apart and burns away. Ash falling away into the void through the windless air, a wildfire that rages and hungers for eons. He can’t breathe, not without his lungs catching fire.

A face peers over his shoulder, smiling with acceptance, flaming hair dancing in the wind, and a hand rests on his cheek. “This is the only way,” the voice whispers, soft and sad. He breathes and his lungs choke on the ash. He blinks and his tears turn to smoke. His sword is pointed at his friends, tip sharp and jagged and bloody. 

He isn’t sure exactly when he raised it.

He cuts his friends down where they stand. He hears himself begging, and reaching out to them, but they say nothing, only smiling softly and sadly. He can’t really discern their faces from the smoke in his eyes, can’t even hear their bodies thud into the gold misty ground.

His hands shake as he stabs, slashes, turns, moving automatically as if the act of hurting the people he loves is so deeply ingrained into him that it’s instinctual.

Penny reaches out, and he feels the tips of her fingers graze the hilt of his blade. She’s shaking. Shaking in pain and in fear of what she knows is coming. Her eyes are tired and nearly lifeless, her blood is red and new and already spilling from her chest.

Her lips quirked up in pleading, in acceptance.

He’s shaking too. Something within him that has yet to flake into ash is cracking, shivering, trembling with so much of his own naked fear that it spills out of him in painfully singeing tears. 

“Let me choose this one thing. Trust me.”

He lifts his sword and deals the final blow.

And then he spasms awake, covered in cold sweat. He jolts up, sways and vomits as the nausea catches up to him and it has nothing to do with his very recent journey through an interdimensional portal. 

Another death on his hands. Another friend killed and it’s all his fault.

He falls to the ground in a boneless heap. The golden sand under him is hot, the sun is beating down, bright as the flames of hell and there’s two of them and he’s certain that he’s gone crazy as much as he’s certain that he’s burning alive. 

The line between sobbing and laughing is so fine.

He feels a hand touch the small of his back, and he flinches away as if burnt. Before he knows what he’s doing his sword is in his hand and he’s half crouched, tears blurring his vision and teeth bared in a snarl. Ready to fight, ready to flee, ready to lay down and die.

But there’s nobody there. He’s losing his mind. He’s terrified.

“Of yourself?” A voice speaks behind him, calm and sure and echoing his own thoughts. 

It sounds like Ruby standing between Pyrrha and a Nevermore. Like Nora standing in between Ruby and her would-be assassin. Like Ren staring down the demons of his past with nothing but his father’s blade. Like Yang and Blake standing together, like Weiss standing against her father, like Oscar staring down the most powerful man in the world.

Not like him, never like him. What kind of hero is he?

He chokes out sob, straining through a smoke singed throat. He deserves it, he’s a monster, his soul a tattered mess of ash and death. He deserves all the fear and hatred and disgust for what he’s done to them. For breaking their trust in him at the most critical moment. For pointing his damn sword at Penny and then killing her-

He sobs and his shattered sword drops from his fingers, and for once the shaking has nothing to do with it.

“You seem to be carrying a rather large burden with you,” the voice says. Calm and sure and everything that he isn’t.

He feels sick to his core. He feels like he’s all rotten inside, like apples left on a tree branch too long. Left to shrivel in the heat of the sun.

He feels… Gods he feels empty. Hollow, like something has torn out some vital, beating, bleeding part of him and replaced it only to burn it away. He feels like someone could take a knife and carve him out and there would be nothing but smoke and ash in his chest.

“What if you could leave Jaune Arc behind?” The voice is smooth, silky, and it freezes the fire in his heart. His eyes widen unbidden, and he doesn’t dare to turn. Too afraid that his mind is finally fading away and there won’t be anyone there. 

A smaller more honest part of him is too afraid that if he turns he won’t have the strength to say no.

“I- I can’t do that even if I want to,” he chokes. And gods how he wants to. 

Pyrrha’s accepting smile as she pushes him away to be the idiot in the tree, not strong enough to help, just weak enough to kill. Weiss’s blue-gray dress staining red with her own blood as a spear pierces her torso, stitching her soul back together with shaking hands while knowing better than he knows his name that she’s dying because of him.

Penny asking him. Penny pleading him, bloody smile soft and understanding and her last expression.

He has hurt his friends before, and he will do it again. Someday, somehow. He is too broken for them, and they are much too good for him. He can’t stay here if he’ll hurt them again. He just can’t.

But he can’t leave them all the same. He can’t. 

“What might happen if you don’t?” the voice asks, gentle as it is cold. And his breath catches in his lungs.

He was made to hurt, to give and give until the well runs dry. To pour his burning soul out into his shaking blood-stained hands and wrest life back into his friends as some sort of recompense for his actions. He’ll give anything to stand by his friends’ until the last apocalypse comes, until Salem reaches up and plucks the shattered moon from the sky. 

But he’s just so tired.

Penny is dead by his own hands, and the last of his chest burned away trying to heal her. Trying to kill her. He’s not sure if there’s a difference at this point.

He’s nothing.

“Are you alright?” the voice asks, echoing the question from a lifetime ago. 

The question he had no answer to.

“No,” he chokes out, through a throat singed by flame, through a body that shakes with tremors. A distant part of him is shocked that his voice doesn’t echo in the hollow of his chest.

“Then allow me to ease your pain.”

His eyes shut, and tears of smoke run down his cheeks, relief and sorrow battling for attention. “I’m sorry, guys, this was the best that I could do.” He hopes to the gods that abandoned this planet that his friends understand. 

And Jaune Arc is relieved of his burden.

#rwby #jaune arc #mine #my writing #rwby volume 9 #penny polendina #pyrrha nikos #weiss schnee #ruby rose #yang xiao long #nora valkyrie #lie ren #blake belladonna

[lyon-amore]

With you until the end of the world Chapter 4

Chapter 3

*Angel POV*

I've become Jake's connection to the outside. It doesn't bother me since that way I can find out if there is news that my parents might be looking for me. It's been a month and there's still no one talking about a girl who ran off with a mystery guy. I walk the streets to go to the studio. From time to time I stop by so they can see that I use it, I stay for a few minutes and I leave. I haven't told Jake that I sent a letter to my parents, saying that I'm fine. Of course, I don’t put the address where we stayed. I have thought that every end of the month I will write to them and put different addresses. I don't want them to worry about me and look for me. I also don't go into details about who I'm with. Maybe the only one who knows is my mother? She always knew what was wrong with me and I told her but I didn't say many things. I didn't want to talk about Jake, just say that there was a boy I liked.

Okay, this might be the second thing I've kept from Jake. I also enter my mail, but disconnected. I have read the messages that my friends have sent me, wondering why I don’t answer my phone. Because I haven't told them anything. Lian asked me the day I left why I hadn't gone to work, later she found out from my parents that I had left, she wrote to me asking why I didn't tell her anything, since she was my best friend. The more I go up, the more messages I see that from when they found out. Most of the messages are from Jessy, Dan and Lilly. Jessy who has been writing more as if she were telling me how her day to day is going and that in the end she has decided to move, she’s looking for a apartment in Colville. It seems that texting me serves as therapy for her. Lilly texts me disappointed that I didn't tell her I was running away with Jake. Rather, she's mad at both of us for not telling her what we were planning to do. Dan writes to me worried that something might happen to me as I run away, if I might get in trouble with the law for being with Jake or if they might want to kill me because of him. I'd love to write back and tell them I'm fine, but they've already risked too much because of us. I decide to archive the emails so I can read them later.

I stand looking at the televisions in a store. They still talk about what happened in Duskwood and how the FBI showed up looking for a criminal. I see that they also name me quickly and I cover myself better. I want them to forget about this topic once and for all.    "Isn't Hannah Donfort the sister of that girl who made that video accusing two people of kidnapping her?" I hear a girl ask another.    "Yeah, what happened to her?" the other asks.     I walk away from there, continuing my way to the study. There are still “I am Jake” graffiti on some streets or some Nymos eyes. Where I lived, they gave my father and the other policemen headaches. Teenagers were the ones who painted the most. Then, after my article, it got a little worse. More overtime for my father.

I enter the building and go up to the studio, inserting the key to gain access. I lower my hood as I look inside. It's sparsely furnished and the blinds are down, it's only lit by the light from the computer. I check that everything is working fine and take out my phone to text Jake. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Angel

The computer is in perfect condition

Function correctly, as always

-----Jake has connected-----

Jake

Perfect.

Any problem upon arrival?

Angel

All good

No one following me, sir!

Jake

Do not call me sir.

I feel older.

Angel

Well, you're older than me 😝

Jake

Fine.

Well, being older than I am, you know that you must obey me, right?

Maybe tonight I can find a place for you to obey.

Angel 😳

Jake ;)

Be careful when you come back.

Make sure no one follows you.

Angel

OK

Something special to eat?

Jake

Hmm… Choose you today.

Angel

Well…

You? 😏

Jake

Ha ha.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I will be with the computer for a bit.

Angel

I know

I fancy something Italian

How about?

Jake

Of course:)

Angel

So, see you 😊

Jake

I will be waiting, angel.

-----Jake has disconnected----- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I put my phone away and pull up my hood. I'm not disappointed not to have intimate moments with Jake, honestly. Maybe at first we were a little…needy of each other, but now we just joke about these things on the phone. Also, it's not just about us having sex, for me, the fact that he caresses my hair when he is working on the computer or that we talk about the things we like being in the same room, without interruptions, is what I like the most. When I go to sleep, he stays next to me with his laptop, stroking my cheek gently, whispering how much he loves me as I drift off to sleep. I feel so complete with him.

I want that the day he is free; I can present him to my parents, that they see that he is someone special to me. Maybe at first my father wouldn't like it, but when he saw that they have the same taste in movies or a strong sense of justice, perhaps he likes him better, or also, the one who sees that he respects his daughter like no one has ever done before. I want that future for both of us.

Even though Jake hasn't told me anything about his past yet, it's like he's still afraid to tell me anything about his life for fear someone might take it from me by force. I hope that some day he will tell me something about his life, some detail. No one would ever get information out of Jake from me. I choose death rather than betray him.

*Jake POV*

I keep an eye on the data from the rental agency to know when people will come to look at the apartment. We have been here for a month with no problems and that relieves me, but I am sure we will have to leave eventually. You can never stay in one place for too long, so I have made a plan in case we have to leave.

I avoid thinking that I use her to monitor the computer. I think I like it better think that I do not keep her in here bored while I work on the computer. And according to her, she wants to know if there is talk of her disappearance, if her parents have caused a scandal to look for her. I do not know whether to care about jer words, I do not want to look like a kidnapper again. She told me not to worry about it, that she had made it very clear in writing that it was her decision.

While I am creating another surveillance program to detect any suspicious activity around me, I receive a notification that I have been named in his social network, again, posting a picture of me. I hacked his account to delete the post. I know he is been looking for me for a long time, but he does not know that he could risk being hunted down.    “Sorry buddy, but I can not let you put yourself in danger.” I mutter, heading back to the computer.     I make a small noise, complaining. I get a message. It is assumed that he would not have to send me one again if it was not that I did it. And I was not thinking about doing it again either, he already risked enough when I asked him to put the Nymos sticker on. But there have been so many messages that I have had enough. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comet

Hey

Uh…

I know that I have sent you many messages

That I risk getting in touch with you again, but…

I don't know anything about you Jake 😔 and that worries me ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I just hope he is talking meanwhile diverting his IP to another. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nymos

Comet, do not text me again.

Comet

Jake!

Do you know how many messages I have sent you?!

When I found out that the FBI was in Duskwood, I was worried!

Nymos

You risk writing to me.

Stop doing it or we will both be in trouble.

Comet I don’t care

Nymos

You can get your father in trouble.

Comet

He don't know nothing, he's busy keeping tabs on the people you messed with 😑

And enough of both of you treating me like a child when I'm an adult!

Just tell me if you're in trouble and I'll deflect any signals

Nymos I already have it under control. Do not worry.

And I do not treat you like a child, I just do not want to get my little brother in trouble. :)

Comet

Always with that habit of not worrying others when we already are 😠

And what about her? Don't worry about how I am for you?

Nymos

Angel is fine, do not worry about her.

Comet

Angel?

Who is Angel?

Wait… 😱 OH!

YOU ARE

SHE

WHAT?!

SHE RUN AWAY WITH YOU?!

Nymos

It was her decision.

Comet

I see that friends don’t enter the sack of the privileged 😒

Nymos

I could not make her see reason.

But I take good care of her.

I will not let anything bad happen to her.

Comet

Hmm…

If you trust her…

Nymos

I trust her.

Comet

Alright, alright

Just be careful…

Nymos

Henry, she is trustworthy.

Comet

But do you know that her father is a cop?

I wouldn’t trust her 😐

Nymos

She has always shown me that I can trust her.

She would have given me away long ago.

Comet

But this time you’re with her, it’s different 😰

Don’t let it give you away

-----Comet has disconnected----- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I pinch the bridge of my nose as I sigh. I have known Henry since he was a child, I myself helped him find a home and a father, we taught him everything we knew about security and hacking. He admired me and continues to admire me, to the point that when I contacted him again for help, he would not stop talking and asking me where I had been. Very persistent, if I dare say. I told him about her and he was even glad that I cared for someone as much as I ever had before. Now his attitude towards her has changed, as if she is dangerous. I have to assume it was the FBI news that made him change his mind. It is not yet known who warned them.

But I know my angel was not.

I hear the door and let out a small laugh. She still has trouble using the lock picks. I get up from the ground and go to open the door, then lean against the frame with a smile. She looks at me with a frown, picks in hand.    "I almost had it." she replies, putting them in his pants pocket.    “You have to avoid leaving marks on the lock” I lean forward, approaching her face “, if you see that you cannot, leave it.”    “ 'If you see that you can't, leave it' “ she imitates me entering the house.     I stop her by placing a hand on her waist, turning her around. I place my hand on her chin and approach her lips.    "Are not you forgetting something?" I ask, whispering.     I go to kiss her and she places a bag in front of me.    "The food." She replies with a mischievous smile.     I roll my eyes and pick up the bag. It is she who kisses me, to later let out a laugh.    "I told you, I was hungry for you." She chuckles, wrapping her arms around my neck.    "You are going to drive me crazy, angel." I caress her lips, seeing a shy smile.    Her cheeks turn red and I feel her skin warm. I kiss her forehead and hear her sigh. She hugs me resting her head on my body.    “I'm home.” she says, and I hear happiness in her voice.    "Yes, you are." I reply, kissing her head.

   We sit on the ground. I take care of the program and she eats, watching what I do.    "Here." She tells me, approaching the pasta. I open my mouth and let him feed me. If it weren't for her, I would forget the most important needs in a human being.     She then gets upset that she does not deserve to be called an angel.    "Any news of your escape?" I ask after finishing swallowing the food.   “No, it seems that my parents have understood the letter I left them correctly” she answers after she has finished swallowing “, besides, I told them that it wouldn't be forever.”     I nod understanding her words. She can come back without problems whenever she wants, I do not keep her by my side.    “What are you doing now?” she asks, dragging herself over to me, setting the food container aside.    "I am trying to create a better surveillance program around us" I answer without taking my eyes off the screen “, I want to collect the information of the people around us and know if any of them could be an undercover agent if I look at their messages.”    "Won't it be dangerous?" She does not sound worried, more curious.     I look at her raising an eyebrow.    "Do not you know who you are talking to?"     She looks me up and down, cocking her head. She raises her hand to her face and dabs with her finger.    “Well, no, I don't know” I take her by the wrist and attract her to me, beginning to tickle her “No! Stop!” She exclaimed between laughs.    “I am going to make you remember who you are talking to, angel.” I tell her, laying her down.    "Wasn't it that you had to work?" She smiled as she caressed my face.    "I can take a break."     She bites her lip and pulls her to me. Before I can kiss her, I hear the notification that he is put up another post again. I quickly part ways, deleting all information and photo from that post. Just about, if I am a second later… I raise my hands to my head, taking a deep breath. When will he give up?    "What's wrong, Jake?" She asks me worried.    "It is nothing" I reply, taking her hand and kissing it “. Do not worry, why do not you listen to some music while I work?”     I move a little and let her settle in with me. I start stroking her hair slowly, trying to make her forget what happened. But she did not make it.    “Are you sure you're okay?”     I lower my head to look at her and smile.    “Yes angel, I'm fine.” I kiss her forehead and she nods.     The less information she know about my past, the better. It would be risking too much.

Chapter 5 

#duskwood #duskwood jake #duskwood mc #duskwood jake x mc #duskwood fanfic #duskwood everbyte #everbyte #everbyte studio

[freeuselandonorris]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers 💫

tysm for the tag @glasscushion !!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

32 currently!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

241,146 since 2018 which is absolutely wild to me, particularly as i have about another 30k waiting in the wings. three novels’ worth. WILD.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

largely motorsports (formula 1 and formula e) although i do occasionally dip a toe into other fandoms. largely RPF, i’m generally not that interested in writing non-RPF although i do read it sometimes.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

there was always warmth between us (maxiel)

lol, my magnum opus. the stats on this one still blow my mind (almost 1400 kudos at time of writing). sometimes people tell me it’s a comfort fic for them which really makes my day. there’s a lot about this fic i would change if i wrote it again now (the dialogue especially) but there you go, hindsight and all that.

nobody knows the trouble i’ve been (or the exacting improvement of sin) (maxiel)

i think this was the first vaguely kinky fic i posted on AO3? spanking and behaviour correction from the days when max and dan were starting to want to kill each other and it was spilling over on-track. definitely blessed dan with way too much emotional intelligence compared to real life but hey, i can do what i like with my paper dollies.

as if death itself was undone (maxiel)

undernegotiated breathplay porn my beloved! this remains one of my favourite fics i’ve ever written (although the paragraphs are way too long). i’m a real sucker for the trope of people discovering kinks they didn’t know they had and immediately acting on them — v bad idea in real life, v hot in fiction.

a siren on the rocks calling you into the deep (girl!landoscar)

so funny to me that the lunatic squirting rule 63 porn i posted less than a fortnight ago is in my top 4 already, landoscar fans you are all freaks and i love you for it. this is absolute filth, my first rule 63 and contains a lot of bodily fluids, my favourite thing.

unfucktheworld (maxiel)

i was very surprised to see this in my top 5 but honestly i think it’s only there because it’s my oldest fic so it’s just had time to accrue more kudos? it was my first time writing fic in about 10 years, the characterisation is all over the place, it’s just…not that great i don’t think? but it’s sweet and porny and it’s lovely that people are still digging back through the archives to give it a go, so i’m not complaining.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i try to! i went through a phase last year where i just got very easily overwhelmed by life and gave up on replying for a while (which sucks because i received some of my favourite ever comments during that period, so if i ever didn’t reply to your comment please know that i DID read and treasure it, i am just very bad at carrying out simple tasks sometimes). i tend to save them up and reply in batches, which is probably why i get overwhelmed 🫠

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

idk if i’ve written any with an outright angsty ending tbh! i am a sucker for a happy ending, or at least an ambiguous one. also frankly a lot of my fics are just porn and don’t really have endings per se lmao.

i guess my weird toto/christian all the blood runs hot before it’s cold has a not-happy ending in the sense that it’s clear that they doomed to repeat unhealthy behaviour with each other (to be explored in the sequel i nearly have completed once i get free of the landoscar brain rot) but it’s not angsty, really, because christian’s too far in denial to be angsty about it.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

i think there was always warmth between us, being a slowburn friends to lovers that ends with a declaration of love, probably takes that crown!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not so far, fingers crossed it remains that way! i do remember being very nervous before i posted my first hardkink fic (the watersports fic eight of swords (reversed)) and feeling like i would be driven from the fandom with pitchforks, but thankfully that did not come to pass.

i do quite often receive comments that are just sort of…baffled? because i have a tendency to write extremely sexually explicit fics that are deliberately not actually that sexy. i like writing about the weirdness and grossness of sex, i like weird kinks and psychosexual oddness, i like unbalanced power dynamics and i like it when sex scenes aren’t all soft focus and simultaneous orgasms. so i think sometimes people go in to my fics expecting one thing and coming out with something else, but the comments are always very polite! also i think i have accidentally awakened something in quite a few readers but i consider that a public service.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

looool. do i. as above — i write a LOT of smut and it is usually far too detailed, generally very informed by kink and power dynamics, and unnecessarily verbose. i’m a huge fan of the writing of JG Ballard who wrote the most clinical, bizarre sex scenes that make you horny and disturbed in equal measure, and that’s what i strive towards in most of my fics.

even the ones that are actually incredibly sweet and romantic (to me anyway!) like just found me a brand new box of matches (landoscar foot fetish gremlin weirdness) or playboy in the grotto (landoscar piss fetish gremlin weirdness) are still not sexy in a sanitised way, they’re about love and connection being found through cherishing and honouring the weird and gross and unconventional parts of each other. this is a political standpoint for me as much as anything else, not to get overwrought about it — my queerness is as expressed through my love for the unsanitary and unsavoury and taboo as much as it is my love of people of different genders, and i want to reflect that in my fic.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

i don’t! i don’t tend to read them, either. maybe this is just a side effect of my preference for RPF but i just don’t find the concept all that interesting or appealing. i’m also not that much of a fan of AUs in general (rule 63 excepted), although i will make exceptions if they’re well-written and i like the concept enough.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

yeah someone reposted there was always warmth between us on wattpad a year or so ago and had to do the copyright strike thing. i felt very famous.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i don’t believe so! if anyone wants to translate any of my fics, please feel free to ask.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not officially! i think i am too much of a control freak for that tbh. but i have written a lot of fics that have been hashed out in forensic detail with @lost-decade and/or @scenetocause and so they probably should be given co-creator credits for half my fics.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

oooooh this is a hard one yknow. I tend to love a ship very intensely for a few months and then lose interest. i guess max/daniel is the one i have liked for the longest time, although i don’t really read it much anymore because i…frankly don’t really like either of them irl all that much anymore? lmao. but yeah it’s probably them! i will also always have a soft spot for jeandre.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

honestly my jeandre opus a universe hesitant to grant us grace is not technically finished, i just left it where it was due to real life events impinging on it at the time. it’s a shame because i did love what i was doing with that fic but i can’t revisit it because it’s too wrapped up in other stuff.

16. What are your writing strengths?

i’m good at vibes! good at small details that give an insight into a character or setting, good at seeding ideas and at description. I think i’m fairly decent at writing snappy dialogue too, and people tell me i’m good at writing humour too which i am always quite taken aback by but i will gratefully accept!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

long-winded sentences, not enough verbs/not making the verbs work for me, and too many adjectives. tight plotting (lack thereof). getting a bit too forensic in my sex scenes.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I do it occasionally when i’m writing people whose first language isn’t english, but i don’t speak any other languages well enough to be confident in using anything other than the odd word or phrase.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

ah, i’m ageing myself here… It was for placebo, on the fan forum they had hosted on their own website (god bless them, no wonder i’m so chill about the concept of RPF) around 20 years ago when i was 14. i learned a LOT from that forum. placebo are indeed largely to blame for stoking my degenerate tendencies at an impressionable age. good for them. the first fandom i wrote for on AO3 was in 2018 and it was F1.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

aghhh it’s hard to choose but i think it has to be all the blood runs hot before it’s cold, the toto/christian madness. it took me such a long time to write but i feel like i really achieved what i wanted to with it and caught the weird psychosexually unhealthy vibe i was aiming for. i’m also really fond of playboy in the grotto, the landoscar watersports porn. it was my first time writing them and it kicked off an obsession. piss kink is my holy grail kink and i just found this so easy and fun to write, and i think you can tell that i had fun from the writing.

WHEW. well done if you read all this. i think probably most people have already filled this in but if you have not and you would like to i am tagging @lost-decade @scenetocause @zeraparker @boxboxlewis @flawlessassholes @beechersnope

(edited to fix many typos)

#fic meta #sophie nerds out about psychosexuality yet again #ask meme

[berenwrites]

Dreams in the Night - Stranger Things - Steddie, Chapter 4 of 9

Dreams in the Night: But Vampires Aren't an Upside Down Thing!

A/N: Posting early again today, because I don't want to forget since I have a whole heap of work to do 😆.

Summary: Steve has been having nightmares, seeing through the eyes of a vampire like creature in Hawkins as it hunts. He puts the dreams down to past trauma and too many horror movies at Family video. He’s checked and no one’s been hurt, so even Robin agrees. However, his world is about to be turned upside down yet again as the nightmares become far too real.

Tumblr Master Chapter Listing | Also on AO3

For: @lady-lostmind (lady_lostmind on AO3)

Relationships: steddie, platonic stobin

Rating: Explicit

Wordcount: ~18600

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Tags: vampire!Eddie, Kas!Eddie, hurt/comfort, bisexual!Steve, bisexual!Eddie, platonic stobin, steddie

This fic is a part of the @steddieholidayexchange

Chapter 4: Follow Through

“So responsive, Stevie,” Eddie whispered, nipping at his butt cheek. “So good for me.”

Frissons of pleasure rippled through him at the praise. That particular kink he had already been aware of, and he groaned into the pillow with abandon.

“Do you like being good for me, Sweetheart?” Eddie asked, kneading the meat of his ass.

He hummed in response.

“I didn’t get that, Stevie,” Eddie said, drawing a thumb over his wet hole, teasing.

“Yes,” he moaned out as need flooded him.

His cock was so hard beneath him, and they’d barely started. He’d never been this turned on in his life.

“Thank you, Sweetheart,” Eddie said, “such a good boy.”

He had no time to let that sink in before Eddie’s tongue was back. That was when he gave up trying to think. He’d never known people did this. Couldn’t have imagined why they’d want to, but he was definitely getting the idea. Spreading his legs further, he let Eddie do whatever the hell Eddie wanted to, just trying his best not to come embarrassingly fast.

Everything Eddie was doing to him seared through him in ripples of arousal and pure pleasure. He was so engrossed in every touch, he didn’t even notice Eddie readying to move things up a gear.

“Oh fuck,” was as eloquent as he could manage when a slick finger slid deep into him in one smooth move.

He didn’t know when Eddie had retrieved the Vaseline, or when Eddie had taken his rings off, because both facts were now obvious, but he hadn’t been remotely away of either until that moment.

“Not quite yet,” Eddie said with a small laugh, “but the way you swallowed my finger, Stevie, it won’t be long.”

Steve wasn’t sure what did it for him more, the sensation of Eddie’s finger moving inside of him, knowing it was Eddie touching him so intimately, or the promise of what was to come. Not that he had long to think about it as Eddie began working him open with focused dedication. One finger became two and all he could do was moan as Eddie took him apart.

When Eddie bent his fingers just so and rubbed a particular place inside of him, his nerves lit up like a Christmas tree and he almost came on the spot. Only biting the inside of his cheek stopped him. The needy whine he let out said it all.

“Such a good boy,” Eddie praised, which really didn’t help.

His cock, trapped as it was beneath his body, throbbed hard and he pushed back against Eddie’s hand in desperate need. He had started this with little idea where it would end up, but now all he could think about was Eddie. He wanted it all and he wanted Eddie to give it to him.

“Greedy boy,” Eddie said with a small laugh, “but I’ve got to get you good and ready, Sweetheart.”

Eddie twisted his fingers again and disconnected Steve’s higher brain functions for a few seconds. What followed were some of the most torturous and wonderful minutes of Steve’s life. At least as far as his baser thoughts were concerned. Eddie worked him open. Carefully, methodically and far slower than Steve’s libido was insisting was right.

Every time he tried to take matters into his own hands and force them on, Eddie would do something that removed his ability to think or do anything sensible at all. At one point Eddie actually bit him on the butt. He felt fangs and everything. All he could do at the time was push his face into the bed and moan like a porn star.

The fact that Eddie kept praising him, telling him how well he was doing, did not assist in him having any control whatsoever. Everything was new, everything was amazing, and he had no thoughts left to care that he was completely at Eddie’s mercy. He had no idea where or when Eddie had learned what he was doing, but, damn, Eddie was good.

“Look at that, taking three whole fingers so smoothly,” Eddie said eventually. “I think you might be ready for me, Stevie.”

He couldn’t agree more. He was so very ready. When Eddie urged his hips up, slipping another pillow under him, he let it happen without question. The change in angle made him feel even more exposed, which he hadn’t realised was possible given what Eddie had been doing to him. The fizzle of nerves made it through the overwhelming arousal for a few moments as Eddie pulled back.

The sound of pants being shed made his breath quicken, but he didn’t look. His heart jumped a beat when Eddie climbed back on the bed and all Steve could feel was skin on skin. This was it, this was the moment he’d been dying for since Eddie first touched him. And suddenly he was anxious.

This time he heard Eddie pick up the jar of lube, heard Eddie’s tight inhale of breath, heard the tiniest moan.

“Ready, Sweetheart?” Eddie asked, moving in behind him and gently spreading his legs further.

“Yes,” he replied, refusing to let the doubts crowd into his head.

He wanted this, even as the first touch of Eddie’s cock against his ass made him tense. Eddie rubbed his back, gently soothing him, relaxing him.

Steve had never felt anything so raw, so powerful as when Eddie first pushed into his body. It burned because no matter how well Eddie had prepared him, it was his first time and Eddie’s cock was very different from Eddie’s fingers, but he didn’t care. In fact, he revelled in it. He moaned and whined, hands splayed against the bed sheets, and took everything Eddie had to give. He felt open and vulnerable, and he had never wanted anything more in his life.

“God, Sweetheart, you feel incredible,” Eddie moaned. “Like you were made to take my cock.”

Everything he had been taught by society, by his parents, told him he should have been humiliated by that, but he wasn’t, he felt liberated instead. He’d never considered himself bisexual before even though Robin had been very happy to explain lots about alternative sexualities, but there was no part of him that didn’t want everything Eddie was doing to him, didn’t want Eddie. He was finding out as much about himself as he was about his new lover.

Eddie held his hips firmly and began to move.

If he had thought Eddie fingering him was incredible, this was on another level. He could feel every inch of Eddie’s cock gliding into him, opening him up and filling him. Thrust after thrust drew more and more noises from him, some he hadn’t even realised he could make.

“That’s it, Stevie,” Eddie purred at him, “let me hear you.”

He’d always been the one in charge, the one guiding what was happening. Letting himself go completely had never been on the cards. But with Eddie there were no expectations, nothing he was supposed to do. With Eddie, he let the planning fly out of his head, living in the moment of sensation and pleasure.

Eddie fucked him slowly, then faster, then slowly again, as if he was trying to pull every kind of reaction out of him over and over again.

Each time Eddie’s cock filled him, his own cock was pushed against the pillows below, alternating between too much and not enough. In the end he just couldn’t take it anymore, pushing his hips up and off, whining.

“All you have to do was say, Sweetheart,” Eddie said, stilling inside him and reaching round beneath him.

At first he didn’t know what was going on. He was too sex drunk to figure it out, until Eddie began to gently urge him up.

The way their bodies moved together had Steve panting as Eddie pulled him to his knees. He felt so full, and a little bit helpless as Eddie held him almost effortlessly, keeping them intimately close together.

“Eddie,” he whispered, even though he wasn’t sure why, but it was the only thing in his head.

“I’ve got you, Sweetheart,” Eddie whispered into his ear. “Gonna make you feel so good.”

Of that Steve had no doubt. Eddie had yet to fail to deliver and when Eddie moved against him, the drag of Eddie’s cock inside him pushed another moan from his mouth. His dick throbbed mercilessly, and his balls felt tight as Eddie slowly, but firmly started to fuck him again.

“Want you to come so hard you see stars,” Eddie told him, sliding over that place that lit him up like fireworks every time, “think you can do that, Stevie?”

He nodded, moaning with every thrust.

“Need some help with that pretty cock of yours?” Eddie asked without letting up for a second.

Steve found himself shaking his head.

“So close,” he confessed breathlessly, “want to … want …”

He couldn’t get the words out.

“You want to come just from this?” Eddie asked, thrusting into him a little harder for emphasis.

“Yes,” he admitted, even though his cock was begging to be touched.

“So good for me,” Eddie whispered in his ear, “gonna come from my cock alone. My big, strong good boy.”

And if that didn’t do it for him. As Eddie fucked into him again, the familiar tightness built some more, before exploding through him, taking with it what little muscle control he had left. He moaned and shuddered, gasping as his orgasm surged from his cock all the way through his body. All coherence vanished as he spasmed around Eddie’s dick. When fangs slid into his neck as well, the pleasure centres of his brain went supernova. It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. Everything went white.

He came back to himself lying on his back with Eddie lying beside him, tracing patterns over the scarred skin of his side. His ass wasn’t exactly aching, but he could feel precisely what they had been doing and he never wanted the feeling to go away.

“Back with me, Stevie?” Eddie asked, peppering his shoulder with little kisses as he spoke.

“I passed out?” he asked as he forced his thoughts back into motion.

“Hmmm-hmmm,” Eddie replied, “but only for about twenty seconds. How are you feeling, Lover?”

He took a moment to process the question and decide on the answer.

“Amazing,” was what he went with, since his nerves were still tingling, and the flush of post orgasm pleasure had him in its grasp. “What about you?”

Eddie looked up at him then, eyes dark, but not black.

“Focused,” was the short reply, accompanied by a wicked smile. “You’re intoxicating. Up for round two?”

There was something heady and captivating about the expression on Eddie’s face. Steve found himself nodding before his conscious brain caught up.

“Good,” Eddie said, pushing himself up so he was leaning over Steve, looking down at him, “because when I make you come this time, I want to be able to see that pretty face.”

Steve’s cock gave an interested twitch. He was young, but it was still a bit soon for him to be getting hard again, only his body didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. As Eddie swooped in to kiss him, he couldn’t help wondering what different kind of monster he had unleashed onto himself. Giving in with a moan, he decided it would be a good way to go at least.

End of Chapter 4

On to Chapter 5

#stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fanfic #steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #robin buckley #steve x eddie #steve harrington/eddie munson #platonic stobin #vampires #kas eddie munson #vampire eddie munson #eddie lives #fanfic #fanfiction #dreams in the night - steddie