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#I'm kind of writing two scenes at once at the moment from it though so it might be a bit ????
leedee013 · 8 months
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WIP Wednesday
@justthislazy convinced me to join in @kedreeva 's game this week! Let's see how this goes.
It’s WIP Wednesday, time for a little accountability, sharing your work, and getting a kick in the pants.
Here’s how it works:
In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.
Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!
After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.
That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. I’ll be searching the reblogs to find people to send asks to!
If you’re reading this, you’re invited!
If you see someone posting a WIP Wednesday Game snippet, send them an ask! Make them write.
Here is what I have to offer:
1. Silly Little Jean Moreau Fic 2. Etienne 3. Baby Jean 4. Needle AU
Snippet from Etienne (hopefully) below the cut:
Jean Moreau truly had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. This had been Jeremy’s idea after all, and it made sense on paper. However, knowing that he would benefit from owning a dog was very different from actually getting one. Besides, he’d never even had a pet before. From what the internet told him, it seemed like a mostly pleasant experience. He’d even gotten permission from Coach Rheman to bring a dog along to the stadium, and they were fully prepared to create spaces where an ESA could get away from the noise of the crowd. All he needed now was the actual ESA.
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eff-plays · 8 months
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Ok so I watched the interview with Stephen Rooney, Astarion's writer, and here are some highlights. (I'm an aspiring writer and current game design student who wants to write for games so I'm sorry if some of these insights aren't as interesting to you as they are to me <3)
He calls Astarion his "horrible little vampire boy"
He loves seeing the fandom around Astarion<3
He did write other characters in the game, but mostly NPCs surrounding Astarion or his storyline, so it mostly revolved around Astarion
Astarion is not as connected to other companions/Origins as, for example, Lae'zel and Shadowheart, or Wyll and Karlach are to each other, but he is still reactive to their stories, even if it's just to stand off to the side and laugh when something terrible happens
He had a clear sense of where Astarion's story would start and end, but it got "muddy in the middle", but those are also moments where the best ideas come from
They write from the general idea that every character has one "good" and one "evil" ending, in order to give the player choice. RIP Ascendant apologists :(
According to Stephen, two of the most important aspects of Astarion's character (to keep consistent when bringing him to Idle Champions, at least) is that he enjoys violence, but is also fun about it
"He has a certain appreciation for violence, I guess? A bit of a murdery streak. [...] He's a vampire, he's all about blood, and he's all about, kind of, those darker sides of humanity. [..] But at the same time, he is ... He is really fun, he's really fun to write, he's really fun to have in your party, and it's very important for me that that is also represented."
"He's gonna stab you, but will have a smile on his face as he does it? I mean, I dunno. That's kind of him in a nutshell."
Larian would not have allowed for Astarion to be a typical brooding Dracula type, and there were scenes that were shot down for not being original enough
The main thing about Astarion was trying to get a "sense of fun." It would be easy to write a character that was very unlikable, and they absolutely did not want to do that
Rooney says Astarion is consistently terrible throughout the game and awful in a whole lot of ways, but he also needed to be charming enough that you could tolerate his presence and wanted him around
Rooney also had a lot of input on Astarion's stats (meaning the 10 Charisma is probalby 100% intentional)
He also had input on how certain lines should be delivered, even though the writers didn't directly work with voice actors
The way Astarion moves and poses is "all Neil"
Apparently, Neil Newbon worked on the character for years and Rooney did not speak to him once, though his voice work did influence how Astarion's lines were written and it became a "feedback loop" (Possible context for "ONLY SLIGHTLY, NEIL")
There were no points where a line delivery drastically changed Astarion's writing; rather it was a constant, slow evolution
However, there was one very spoilery moment where Neil gave such emotion to some "basic" lines that it fundamentally changed the scene (WHAT IS IT OMG)
It's difficult to balance approval, as you don't want to straight up write a monster. Every character needs to have some humanity in them. So if it comes to leaving the party, it needed to be the result of something central to said character. They wanted to be mindful of situations that would cause actual rifts between characters. (I assume this is why most generic disapprovals/approvals are +/- 1 or 2, while character-related ones give +/-5 or more)
However, as they don't write straight up horrible people/monsters, it doesn't come up as often as one might think.
The interviewer makes a point about how characters like Astarion and Lae'zel are good examples of how to play "evil" characters, as they are maybe not the best people but are still eager and willing to stick around the other party members
They worked to make sure the characters would work as a group, no matter the configuration of the group. The characters needed to be on the same path, even if they don't always agree or walk that path the same way.
Stephen Rooney is very proud of the "climactic" scene of Astarion's story. (AS HE SHOULD BE.) He even had to step away from the computer and have an emotional moment. Me too, man.
He's also "extremely pleased" that there's a point where you can punch Astarion in the face. "Actually, that one might be my favorite part" A MAN OF THE PEOPLE!!
Stephen Rooney's tip on what specific thing you should try out with Astarion: When he's trying to get a "sneaky nibble" at night, you should "probably" let him bite you. Way ahead of you there, sir.
No discussion about Astarion's romance unfortunately, but that's that!
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hi love!!!! your work is so amazing i love how you write
i was wondering if you could do a corionlanus x fem reader where she’s his tribute and is about to be killed in the game but it’s kind of like that scene in you where she says “no don’t kill me im pregnant” and it’s his reaction and everyone watching trying to get them to end the games? i’d love to see what you could do w that feel free to change anything u want!
Songbird's Plan | Coriolanus Snow
Pairing: Coriolanus Snow x fem!tribute!reader
Summary: The presence of a song bird can change everything for one who appreciates them or "if it weren't for the baby" TBOSAS edition.
Warning/s: a bit of angst, Coriolanus Snow being in love, nickname (songbird), mentions of death, mentions of pregnancy, short fic, possible grammar and spelling mistakes
Author's note: It's finally here. Hope you enjoy.
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The moment Coriolanus Snow met you he knew that he would do everything in his power to protect you from harm no matter what.
Of course he knew that that was going to be a difficult challenge because you were his tribute.
You were supposed to be in the games, you were supposed to literally fight for your life. There was always the chance that you would die, but Coriolanus didn't allow himself to think too long of this outcome. He knew that it would simply drive him to compete and utter madness.
So once the rebels bombed the arena, once he was out of the hospital and once he made sure that his tribute was okay, he sneaked into the arena the night before the games.
He spend more than half of the night searching for the places for his little songbird to hide. He did everything he could, he truly did, and he truly did though that he would be prepared for everything.
Yet as he found himself leaning towards the screen in front of him that displayed the scene of you being attacked by Coral he felt himself automatically freeze. He felt helpless.
He felt like he let you down and that ate him inside out.
Coriolanus felt like his heart was going to simply burst out of his chest as he watched, his throat tightening.
He watched Coral getting closer to you. He felt useless.
But there was something that both of you underestimated. There was a certain connection between you two. Both Coriolanus and you were smart, willing to do anything to survive.
Once Coriolanus remembered that, he forced himself to move. He could probably wipe out Coral with those badly made drones, but he needed some distraction because if Coral sees them, it's over. He could hit you.
"Please, don't!" Your voice broke out of the screen, Coriolanus felt himself flinch at the desperation behind it.
He watched your helpless form glazing away from Coral like you were on thin ice.
Coriolanus felt like he would scream put as Coral raised her weapon against you. But that's when you yelled out something that made his heart completely stop.
"No!" Your forceful voice shouted. "Don't kill me, I'm pregnant!"
Coral stopped for a moment. Coriolanus stopped for a moment. In fact, it seemed like the entire world stopped for a moment.
Coriolanus couldn't move, his mouth slightly agape as he watched you breathe heavily as you waited for Coral to move.
"Stop the games!" Tigris shouted in despair.
Coriolanus felt himself turn around quickly as he watched the mob of students standing up, waving his hands in air as they shouted to stop the games.
Coriolanus quickly turned to the screen and watched Coral still trying to gain her composure. He moved quickly, his body quicker than his mind.
If he doesn't do anything now, it would be over for you.
So as he send at least ten drones into the arena, successfully killing Coral, and as he watched your face twist in relief, and as he heard the cheers behind him he realized that maybe the hope wasn't lost after all.
His little songbird was truly a genius.
->
->
->
TAGLIST:
@hellonheels-x @especiallythewomenandthechildren @prettyinsatiable @caroline-books @runningfrom2am @10ava01 @thecrowdedstreetin1944
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hoshigray · 1 year
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So here's the scenario: Toji is your hot dilf apartment neighbor. You moved in next door to him, and you two hit it off as good neighbors ought to be. You're already in a relationship, but that "unfortunately" leads to a rocky end. But have no fear because Toji is here!
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A/n: Just a lil' smthn I have to write out for a fic I'm about to write and not post bc I'm hella busy this week;;;w;;; But anyways, here we go, and I hope you enjoy! This was a lil rushed so sorry for typos or incorrect grammar!!
Cw: soft dom! Toji x fem! reader - it gets cute the first half but smutty the next, so minors DNI - makeout session - daddy kink - pet names (baby, good girl, mama/ma, sweetheart, sweetie, princess) - praise - missionary position - his dick touches your cervix - mention of violence and blood on Toji's end.
Wc: 1.7k
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Dilf! Neighbor Toji...
...who rolls his eyes when he realizes someone will live next door to his unit. You first meet him on the day you move, happily introducing yourself to the tall man. Once he saw you, Toji was captivated by your kind tone and inviting atmosphere.
...who slowly but surely gets to know you as the days go on. You share moments of your life, and he shares some of his. You find out about his children, Tsumiki and Megumi, who you propose to babysit if he ever needs it, which is considered. Toji is told about your boyfriend whom you've been seeing for a long while. He pulls back from this information, but that doesn't mean he can't look at you when he pleases.
...whose children are the sweetest around you. Tsumiki enjoys playing and being around you, while her younger brother, Megumi, practically follows your every move like a baby duck. The more you spend time with them, the more you play a role in their life, and Toji can't help and think what if you were in their lives.
...who briefly meets your boyfriend and immediately catches a bad vibe from him. When he doesn't call or text you back after literal days go by, when he doesn't give you a ride to work even though you'd do so for him, even Toji's kids avoid him when he's around.
Oh, but the worse case of all was when Toji caught that little devil bringing another woman inside your apartment.
He wanted to do nothing but screw that man's face down, painting the hall with his blood. But he knows you'd be horrified, or worse, faint at the petrifying scene. So now, he stays quiet and waits for the perfect time.
...who loves the beautiful sound of your angry voice through the walls, with your door bursting open and your boyfriend's feet scampering down the stairs. Toji opens his door to see you breathing heavily, tears leaking on your face that's hot with anger and shame.
It hurts him to see you so broken, so he brings you inside for a cup of tea. It's up to you whether to talk about the issue; he knew you only needed company.
...who notices you hang out with him and his family without having to invite you over. Rather than going to your own apartment, you spend more time in his, playing games with his kids and making lunch for them or watching over the place while he's off doing hitmen business (which you don't know about yet).
He's not complaining at all, though. He welcomes you and would rather you be by his side than some other bastard who'd break your heart again.
...who enjoys it when it's just you two. The two of you are watching a movie together at Toji's, and the kids are at a sleepover.
You're lying next to him, your head resting on his shoulder with his hand stationed on yours. The television had your attention for quite some time until you felt someone's eyes looming into you. As you turn to see Toji, his gaze captures your eyes, and a smirk is thrown your way.
"What are you smiling about?" You raise a brow at him and chuckle.
A brow is raised in return. "Ya know you're very pretty, right?"
You bashfully look away from him. "Oh, stop it," you mumble as you can feel your face get a little hot. Toji snickers, the rise and fall of his chest causes your stomach to do flips.
"C'mon, don't be like that." He grips your shoulder to bring you closer, and his free hand gently pulls your face back to him. "I mean it, sweetheart. You're so fuckin' beautiful. You don't know what you do to me."
Your breathing goes slower, and your eyes can't seem to leave his green orbs. "What do I do to you?" Your voice drops down into a whisper.
There are no words. The two of you stare at one another as the movie fills the silence.
Toji's eyes don't leave yours, gaze so sharp as if you aren't allowed to either. The uncomfortable lack of response was gnawing you alive, and all you could do was hope for something to end this.
And then something does happen. Toji moves his face close enough for your nose to lightly brush his. Your body went rigid.
His chuckles were too low for your brain to function in this situation. "Nervous, huh? Close your eyes, baby. I'll take care of you."
You blink. Is this really happening right now?
Hesitation is present, yet your eyelids curtain your eyes. Toji grins harder in satisfaction and fulfills your silent request as his lips land on your anticipating plump ones.
Jerking a little, you reciprocate and kiss him back, your hands placed on his chest for some support. He brings one hand down to your back while the other holds the back of your neck, deepening the kiss as his tongue governs over yours.
The kiss is broken, in addition to the shaky breaths you inhale to steady yourself. Toji peers at you through a haze, drinking in your soft expression and the cute whimpers.
He grins at you. "So beautiful fr' me, sweetie, so fuckin' beautiful." He kisses you again, and the sound you make when he bites your lip has him wanting more. "Damn..." Toji grabs the TV remote to mute the television and cups your face with his big hands. " C'mere, mama," he says, his lips taking control with lustful haste.
You yelp into his mouth when you lose your balance, and Toji takes the initiative to lay you on the couch. Comfortable with the new position, your hands can roam around his back that hides under the black turtleneck, and your legs hold onto his waist as he rocks into your throbbing core.
Toji is absolutely relishing this moment. All this time, he could only watch and respect your prior relationship. But the more you smiled at him, played and cared for his children, wished him luck on his missions, and even visited his late wife's grave to pay respects, his resistance was hanging by a thread bound to snap.
And now that he has you in his grasp, mewling and squirming under him and softly gasping out his name in ecstasy, Toji would be even more idiotic than your ex if he let such a darling like you whisk away after all you've done for him.
It took a few moments for the makeout session to end, the two of you gasping for air instantly. You look at Toji, only to be met with the most breathtaking picture of your life.
The light from the TV highlights a side of his face, with his lips a little swollen and red from all the kissing that transpired. Strands of his slick black hair gravitate downwards away from his forehead. His emerald eyes are hooded softly, but the intense gaze isn't hindered as the feeling of hunger is portrayed through them.
You chew the bottom of your lip in anxiousness, and Toji laughs breathlessly.
"See?" He caresses your cheek. "Told you I'd take care of you, princess."
...who can hear the vibration of your phone ringing on the bedroom floor, with the caller ID titled your ex's name. But it doesn't matter to Toji. No, sir. Because at this moment in time is when you deserve his full attention as you're crying and panting heavily under his bow, your figure pressed into the bed as he drives his cock deep inside of you.
Salty tears on your face are wiped away by his calloused fingers. "Hnnngh, shit, shit, shit," curses fly out through gritted teeth as he slows his pace down. "Haaaah, damn, baby. You're grippin' me so hard, I ain't goin' nowhere."
He has you under him in missionary, but it wasn't the first position of the night. You're in your third round, and your body is aching. Your lips are swollen and plump, your legs twitch around his sweaty body, and your abused vulva is now a slick-covered mess extending to your inner thighs. The base of his cock has formed a creamy ring, evidence of the connection between your sexes, along with the sounds of skin slapping against each other.
"Ahhhh, haaaah, Daddy, please—Mmmph!!" You feel the tip of his length brush your cervix, you clamp into him harder, and Toji hisses at your inner grasp around him.
His sultry voice is weighed with exhaustion, but his tone still affects you. "Fuck, ma, I'm gonna— Aishhhh, oh fuck," his groans fill your ears, and a shiver is sent down your spine. "Where do you want it, sweetie?"
"I-I'll take the pill! Ahhaaa, please, Daddy, inside, inside!" Your words are slurred, but you choke them out for him to hear your demands.
"Heh, of course, for being such a good girl fr' me, mama." Toji's thrusts get erratically faster and harsher, your poor cervix being abused by the merciless intrusion of his dick.
Your eyes roll upwards as you let yourself go. You spasm around his girth and wait for him to finish. Toji hammers into you a few more cruel thrusts and then exhales out of heavy groan, eyebrows scrunched together as he releases himself into you.
Once you two come down from your high, he slowly moves off you and pulls his cock out. The cold feeling of cum and slick mixed together dripping out of your puffy cunt has you gasping.
Toji presses his forehead against yours and praises you for being such a good girl. You let out a worn-out chuckle and kissed his nose. The two of you lay together for a bit, harnessing the sense of bliss and peace as your bodies sink into the mattress when sleep succumbs to you both.
...who looks forward to you moving into his unit permanently, as well as Tsumiki and Megumi, counting the days for you to always be beside them. You fit the role of a family member by bringing them together. Toji realizes this and enjoys the thought of you being with his family, especially when the worst comes to worst. And even then, he'd lay down his life for your and his family's sake.
When the time comes, maybe another little being can join this happy union you've created, and Toji will be fully prepared.
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nolita-fairytale · 1 year
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comfort & chaos | carmy berzatto x fem!reader | chapter four: 2/22/22
summary: carmy receives bad news that changes his life forever, while you're relationship with him comes to a head. (the five times carmen berzatto fell in love with you a little and the one time he finally told you)
warnings: explicit sexual content (18+ only), death, grief, mentions of suicide, no use of y/n, she/her pronouns, drinking & smoking, suggestive language
word count: 5.5k
listen to: hurting kind - del water gap | robbers - the 1975 | hostages - the howl & the hum
a/n: i need therapy after writing this. so sorry bbs love you all. ok but fr, i thought that i was going to write a smut scene that was not going to be hot bc we know it's canon that carmy does not fuck and then it ended up being really hot and i'm once again asking for therapy.
read: chapter three
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2/22/22
Something happened. Can you come over?
That’s all the text said. It’s all that needed to be said for you to drop everything you were doing and hop on the subway. Your heart is pounding in your chest as you imagine every single worst case scenario possible. Carmy had given you little context in regards to what this was about, and you almost regret not asking as your mind runs rampant with possibilities. Not that he would’ve given you an answer. Something about him seemed different. He’d never sent that urgent of a text. 
Not even when the restaurant was slammed and he needed you to come in on your day off. 
Something happened. 
The words continue to echo in your head until you reach him. 
You're at Carmy’s doorstep faster than you ever thought your feet could carry you, and when he opens the door for you, your heart breaks. He’s wrecked. His face is a flushed red, though you don’t think it’s from crying, and he looks like he hasn’t washed his fuckin’ hair in days. You take in his somber expression, like all of the joy he’s ever experienced has been sucked out of him. 
Carmy steps aside, allowing him into your apartment. 
He mumbles something you can barely hear, gesturing towards the couch, so you follow him, taking a seat on the crappy couch you’ve come to love. He stares at the floor, his eyes cold and empty, as you sit in silence. 
It’s you who breaks it, bursting at the seams with anxiety.
“Carmy, you’re scaring me,” you say softly. 
He keeps his eyes fixed on the floor as he licks his lips, swallowing as he opens his mouth to say something. It’s a few moments later that he’s finally able to put two words together to tell you what happened. 
“It’s Michael,” is all he manages to get out. You can hear the break in his voice when he utters Michael’s name, and you’re terrified of what he’s going to say next. 
“Your brother?” you ask, secretly hoping he won’t say yes. 
You feel your stomach drop. 
Carmy nods slowly, “Yeah.” 
He takes a few beats before saying anything else, his head swimming. On one hand it doesn’t feel real, and if he doesn’t say it out loud, maybe it won’t be. There’s a part of him that still thinks this is some cruel, sick joke that Mikey cooked up, just to fuck with him. 
But he knows it’s real. He could hear it in the way that Sugar’s voice broke on the phone. He could hear it in the way that Richie practically screamed at him to stop being such a fuckin’ cuck and come home. He knows it’s real, because for the first time in years, his mom’s called him. 
Must be Sugar or something calling from her phone for her…. ‘S gotta be, he thinks to himself. 
“He’s-,” Carmy starts, before stopping again. Carmy looks away, in the opposite direction of you, focusing his eyes on something outside of the window. 
He can’t look at you because if he looks at you, he might lose it. 
“He’s dead.”
“Oh Carmy,” you gasp, your heart wrenching in your chest as the words leave his mouth. You reach out to touch him, but he flinches, pulling away from you. 
“No,” is all he says through gritted teeth. 
You cannot touch me. You cannot make me feel better about this because I’ll have to feel worse about this, is what he wants to say. 
“The fuckin’ asshole shot himself on the State Street bridge. I don’t-, you don’t get to make me feel better about this,” he snaps, his tone almost a warning. 
“Fuck,” you sigh, sitting up straight and leaning towards him. He may not want your comforts, so you’re going to give your presence. He had asked you to come over after all, right? “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says, coldly. 
His response is jarring, leaving an unsavory taste in your mouth. You understand that he’s just gotten the most unimaginable news, but it doesn’t sit right with that he’s taking it out on you either. Is that why he invited you over? To be his punching bag? Instead, you decide to pivot to crisis control-mode, hoping to remedy some of the animosity he’s harboring. 
“Okay, well, I’ll call Kate and let her know that you can’t come in tonight, if that helps. Just so you don’t have to-,” you suggest. 
“Why would you fucking do that?” he yells, snapping his head towards you as he finally turns towards you. You can see it in his eyes: how angry and devastated he is – at Michael, at what happened – and even though you know it’s not personal, it stings all the same.
“Because!” you shout back. “Carmy, you just found out-... something terrible. I just don’t think you should-.”
“Yeah, well you don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not my mom and you’re not my girlfriend so,” he’s quick to retort, rebelliously. 
You scoff at him, shaking your head in utter disbelief.
“You’ve got some fucking nerve, Carmen,” you cut him off with a yell. You know he’s hurting, but this is where you draw the line. “I’m well aware that I am not your girlfriend, but I am your friend, and I care about you.”
You’re right. 
He knows you’re right. 
He knows he’s being a dick, but it’s like he can’t stop his own rage from spilling out sideways as yells:
“Well, if you don’t want to be here, then get out!”
“Stop it!” you cut him off, venom in your voice. 
Carmy looks at you, his bloodshot eyes wide with utter despair. 
“You called me, Carmy. So shut the fuck up and let me fucking help,” you lower your voice, bringing the confrontation between the two of you back down. 
With his eyes fixed to the floor, his mind zoning out to numb the pain, he manages to get out, “I don’t want to-. I need to go to work tonight.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” you plead softly, yet firmly. 
“Yeah, well, you don’t get to make that decision,” he dismisses. 
He’s right. You don’t. 
“Yeah, okay,” you sigh, giving in. 
It’s a horrible idea – for Carmy to go into the restaurant – but you know he’s going to do it anyway. 
“What can I do for you in the meantime?”
“I just-, I don’t think I can be alone right now,” he mumbles, averting his eyes once again. “Can you just like… sit here with me? Till we gotta go?”
“Yeah.”
The afternoon passes slowly, and you feel like the both of you have been lit on fire – only a matter of time before you burn his whole place down. As you’re getting ready to leave, Carmy sprints into the bathroom, emptying what little contents he has in his stomach into the toilet. You’d been aware that he’d been having some trouble – throwing up before work – but he’d refused to see a doctor. Another decision he’d made clear wasn’t yours to make. What you weren’t aware of was that it had gotten this bad.
Like you’d imagined, going into the restaurant had been a mistake. It hadn’t taken long for Carmy to blow up at a line cook, mid-shift, over an undercooked duck breast. Sure, it was a big mistake, but Carmy had sent the line cook home after making a very public example of them. After the event, Tim had urged Carmy to take a break, offering to expedite for a few, while you rushed him into the walk-in. 
“Hey! You can’t do this shit. Not here. These people look up to you!” you chastise him. 
“He’s a fucking idiot! How do you undercook a fucking-,” Carmy yells, his face twisted into a look of disgust.  
“Carmy!” you shout, stopping him mid-sentence. 
You both know this is not about the duck breast. 
You share a moment of silence together, the cold of the walk-in leaving goosebumps on your skin. You lower your voice, a quiet and intentional demand leave your lips as you instruct:
“Listen, I’m going to give you five minutes to fuckin’ lose it in here, and then you’ve gotta pull it together and finish dinner service, okay?” 
He nods in response, his lips pressed together in a thin, tight line. You watch him pace a few times, before he clutches at his chest, his breathing becoming more uneven. 
This is why coming in had been the worst idea ever. 
“Carmy, are you o-?" you start, genuinely worried about him. You feel like your head is spinning. Carmy is losing control and all you can do is watch. 
He holds out a hand, as if to stop you from coming any closer, so reluctantly, you leave him to it, closing the door behind you. The sound of empty storage containers being thrown across the walk-in fills your ears, as you close the door to the walk-in behind you. You feel like your heart is caught in your throat and watching him go through this is more painful than you could’ve ever imagined. You take a deep breath before returning to your station, keeping your head down for the rest of the shift. 
Dinner service is pure chaos as Carmy undulates from unbroken focus to volatile and unpredictable throughout making the evening hell for the rest of you. The tension is thick, and it’s as if everyone is walking on eggshells around him, more so than normal. By the time it’s over, you insist on walking Carmy home. You make a stop at your favorite deli near his apartment to pick up a quart container of matzo ball soup on the way.
“You gotta eat something,” you encourage, the silence in his apartment deafening.
You’re met with silence as he stares blankly at the table in front of him, his spoon dipped into the soup. Instead, you sit with him, watching him take a few sips of the broth, while the actual food in the soup goes untouched. He doesn’t have the stomach for it. 
He doesn’t know if he has the stomach for this either. 
All of this. Any of this. 
You eventually give in, packing up the soup to put in the fridge for another day, even though you know he’ll probably just toss it when you leave. Just when you think it’s time for you to go, he stops you with the most tender touch to your arm, as he asks:
“Stay?” 
His eyes are watery, and although he’s going to let himself cry yet, he looks more vulnerable than he’s looked all day. How could you say no?
“Yeah,” you agree. 
You change into one of your favorite t-shirts of his and the pair of sweatpants that he always seems to give you as you get ready for bed. He doesn’t even wear them anymore, as if he knows they’ve become your favorite… as if they’ve just become yours. You spend the evening with the TV on, not talking, just sitting in each others’ company. You watch as he smokes a cigarette inside, stress-running a hand through his slicked back hair from his shift earlier. 
Tonight feels heavy. 
Tonight is heavy. 
Before bed, you fill up a glass of water for him, before placing it on his bedside table. Carmy lays on his back, staring up at the ceiling, as you crawl into bed with him. 
He’s too afraid to his close his eye, because if he closes his eyes he’ll picture it: the State Street bridge, Michael…. 
How could he? he thinks to himself, the bitter taste of betrayal welling up at the bottom of his throat. 
You close your eyes, trying your best to fall asleep next to Carmy – something that feels like an impossible task when you can practically hear him thinking out loud beside you. Instead, the two of you just lay there, frozen in silence. You’re not sure how long you’ve been doing it for when you feel Carmy shift closer to you. 
He turns to you so tenderly, practically folding himself into your body, earning the smallest gasp of surprise from you. You’ve never seen him like this as he buries his face into your chest, his body shaking against yours. It’s then that you realize he’s crying, and you know it’s highly likely that this is the first time he’s cried since he heard the news. 
“Carm?” you whisper, unsure if he wants you to acknowledge it or not. 
“Carmy.” 
But he doesn’t respond. He just cries. 
So you let him. 
“I’m so sorry, Carm. I’m so sorry,” you whisper, over and over again. 
You stroke his hair, wanting nothing more than to ease the pain of your best friend, but you know there isn’t much you can do. Instead, you let him cry, running your fingers along his scalp and through his delicate curls, desperate to give him any kind of comfort you can. This is breaking your heart. You fight the tears coming to your eyes because this is so not about you right now. 
Carmy’s body shakes against yours as he finally lets go, surrendering to the huge waves of pain and grief that crash and pull him under. He feels like he’s being taken under a riptide, never to see the surface again. He knows he’s been wildly unfair to you and as he weeps against your body and he’s not sure what he’s done to deserve someone like you. 
Someone who chooses to say, even when he’s being a dick. 
Someone who cares enough to fight with him. 
Someone who cares for him like this. 
When he finally looks up at you with bloodshot eyes and swollen lips, all he can think to do is to kiss you. 
It catches you off guard as he surges forward, pressing his lips against yours, that for a moment, you let him. 
But reality hits and you’re afraid he’s gotten too carried away, swept up in a moment of grief. 
“Carmy, stop it. You’re not-, you’re not okay right now,” you murmur, pushing him away.
He leans his head against your chest again with a sigh, letting out another sob, almost as if he’s given up on the idea. You feel like he’s put you in an impossible position. You’d have been lying if you said you didn’t want to – hadn’t thought about kissing him before – but this felt wrong. He was vulnerable, and you know you’ll both regret it in the morning. 
“I’m sorry, Carm,” you apologize quietly. “I just feel like-, well I’d feel like I'd be taking advantage. I don’t think we should.”
His silence only makes you more nervous, beginning to over explain yourself.
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I-, I do. I just… I don’t want you to regret it because… because you’re upset right now and cause you more-.”
“Please,” is all he says, cutting you off mid-sentence. With the way he’s looking at you, like you’re the sun, the moon, and you hang the stars, you’re not sure how to say no. 
Carmy leans in to kiss you once more before whispering mere inches away from your lips:
“Please.”
He presses his lips against yours again, immediately regretting his past self for not doing this sooner. He’s never tasted anything sweeter than you, and the way you kiss him back seems to bring all thoughts flooding his brain to a halt.
In between kisses you manage enough self control to stammer out, “Are you- are you sure? Is this really what you-?”
“Yes,” he replies, as if it’s a declaration.
“I’ve wanted this for so long. Just-, please,” he pleads, murmuring your name into the soft kisses he begins to leave across your collarbone. “Just wanna feel good.”
“Just wanna feel good,” he repeats. 
You surrender, letting go of your own ambivalence as you focus on the way his lips feel against your skin. It’s then that you realize what absolute fucking idiots the two of you had been for the past few years by ignoring this thing between the two of you. For a moment, you’ll tear down the walls, the rigid boundaries that you’ve kept to help you compartmentalize your relationship with Carmy. 
There’s no possibility of hiding from it when his body feels this good so close to yours. 
The truth is that you are fully, wholly, and stupidly in love with each other. 
“Yes,” you parrot.
With your confirmation, his mouth is back on yours, as you’re pulling him on top of you, deeper into your shared passionate liplock. He wonders why he’s denied himself the pleasure of having you, for this goddamn long. His tongue slides against yours, a tender hand moving up to cup your face. The way his name sounds tumbling out of your mouth sends him into a frenzy. It feels absolutely intoxicating and he can’t get enough. 
Carmy’s hands begin to wander, fingertips sliding at an experimental pace underneath the hem of the t-shirt you’re wearing. You shudder against his touch, gasping as you anticipate where this is going. 
Carmy raises his head to look at you, not sure if it’s a good thing or not. 
“This okay?” he asks you, concern evident in his voice. 
“Yeah,” you nod, giving him permission. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” he whispers.
And then he’s kissing you again, dragging calloused fingertips up and down your torso underneath the shirt, hesitantly making their way to where they’d like to be. You’re not wearing a bra, he realizes, as his fingertips find soft, supple skin at the rounded bottom of your breast. He follows the shape of it, before bringing a cautious palm up to grab hold of the fullness of your breast. You arch into his touch, encouraging him further. Carmy takes his time exploring your body, giving you the lightest touch as his fingertips graze your nipple. 
“Can I take this off?” he questions, only willing to move forward if you say yes.
You nod, breathlessly, “Please.”
You watch as he sits up, pushing the hem of your shirt up over your breasts, revealing your bare body to him. He has to hold back a groan, swallowing hard. 
Carmy stops what he’s doing, in pure awe of you, as he marvels at you. He can’t believe this is real: that you’re here, laying in his bed, allowing him to do the things he thought could only live in his head. 
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” are the words that tumble out of his mouth and you think you may cry. 
“Touch me,” you whisper desperately, begging him to come back to you. 
“Touch me, Carmy.”
Carmy lays his body over yours, and you spread your legs wider, allowing him to fit perfectly between them. He begins to roll his hips against yours as he returns his attention back to your bare breasts. He drags his fingertips over your erect nipples, following his touch with his mouth. 
He practically groans as he wraps his lips around one of your nipples, earning a strangled whine from you as his hot, wet mouth engulfs you. 
“Carmy,” you moan, arching into him. 
He’s rolling his hips against your clothed core on pure instinct, as he takes his time, now exploring unfamiliar territory with his lips and his tongue. You find a good rhythm as he continues to drag his mouth over you, grinding your hips into his underneath your remaining clothes. He’s surprisingly good at this – something you hadn’t expected considering he’d let you know he didn’t have much experience when it came to dating. You assumed that that meant sexually as well. 
As Carmy moves to your other breast, you feel one of his hands snake under the elastic waistband of your sweatpants, lifting his hips so he can feel you. You know you’ve soaked through your cotton panties from the anticipation, and it goes right to his dick as he feels just how wet you are. He doesn’t have much experience with this, but he’s seen in porn. He begins to rub circles across your clothed core, while he busies his mouth with exploring your other breast. 
But he’s not quite where you want him.
“Wait,” you say, stopping him. 
Had he just gotten caught up in the moment?
Did you not want to go this far?
“Did I do something wrong?” he asks you, a concerned tone in his voice. 
“No,” you’re quick to reassure him, shaking your head. “No, I just-.”
Instead of explaining, you reach down to grab his hand, guiding him just a little higher up to your clit. He presses the rough pad of his index finger against it, finally touching you where you need him, gasping to let him know that he’s found the right spot. His eyes are locked on you, watching your face change as the new spot you’ve shown him brings you more pleasure than he could’ve imagined. 
He practically groans into your mouth when he hears the way you whine his name, and he swears he’ll do anything to hear you say it again. 
“There?” he asks you, rubbing tight circles across your clit. 
“Yes,” you pant, growing wetter with every touch. 
Carmy pulls away just for a moment, daring to touch you underneath your panties. You’re so wet for him, and he thinks he may lose his mind as he slides his index finger in between your folds curiously.
“Take them off,” you practically demand. 
“Hm?” he hums, lost in the way you look at him with hooded lids and pupils blown out with pure desire. 
He’s never been this guy. 
The guy that gets the girl. 
He never knew he could feel like this guy, but here you are, begging him to undress you. 
“I said take them off,” you repeat yourself, more desperate this time. You take a lighter approach with what you say next, the smallest giggle in your voice. “And while you’re at it, we gotta get you naked too.” 
“Yeah,” he says, with the kind of conviction he’d say ‘heard’ with. 
He’s stripping off his shirt, and you’re sliding your pants and underwear off with him. 
“I have a condom in my emergency kit,” you say, the both of you busy shedding your clothes. 
“Yeah?” he asks you, relieved to hear it. He hadn’t thought that far yet. 
“Yeah, hold on,” you reply, getting up from the bed. 
Carmy thinks he may pass out as he watches you stand, giving him a full view of your naked body. You disappear only for a moment, before returning with the small emergency kit you always keep in your backpack. It’s equipped with all the ‘just-in-cases:’ tampons, panty liners, safety pins… condoms. You pull out a single condom before returning to the bed. Carmy’s kneeling on the bed, and you mirror his body language, doing the same. 
“What would you like to do?” you inquire softly. 
As turned on and hot for him as you are, you want to make sure that he still wants to do this. He finds himself surprised at your question, not sure how to answer it. 
“Think we can just pick up where we left off?” he asks you. 
“Yeah,” you reply. 
You place the condom down beside you on the bed, before leaning in to press your lips against his again. He inhales as you kiss him, his tongue immediately sliding against yours as one of his hands goes to the back of your head, pulling you closer to him. He’s surprised as you pull away from him, beginning to leave hot, open mouthed kisses down his neck, his chest, and he hisses in anticipation as run your hands down his muscular abdomen, following with your mouth. 
“Hold on, I uh-,” he stutters out, as he anticipates where you’re going with this. 
You pause, sitting up tall as you kneel, your body across from his. 
“I just uh… if you do that, I don’t know if I’ll last long,” he admits, a blush running across his cheeks. 
“Yeah, no. Totally cool,” you reassure him, before crashing your lips against his once again. 
As you tangle your tongues together once again, Carmy begins to lead you down towards the bed, pushing you back, and climbing on top of you. He still has his sweatpants on, so you begin to bring your hands down to them. He hisses as you cup his rock hard erection, pleasantly surprised by what you feel. 
“Wanna take these off?” you ask in between kisses. 
“Yeah,” Carmy nods, sitting up for a moment. 
You wait with baited breath as he strips his sweatpants off, wondering if he’s as thick as he feels. You’re practically pulsing, squeezing around nothing as you finally see him, Carmy, your best friend, fully naked. 
God, he’s beautiful. 
How had you not noticed how physically attractive he was? 
It’s not that you hadn’t noticed. It’s that you hadn’t let yourself think about it. 
You reach over to where you left the condom, handing it to him. Carmy takes it, a blush running across his cheeks as he rolls it on, still in disbelief that you’re about to do this. He returns to you, laying his body over top of you as you space for him once again between your legs. He’s hesitant to give you his full bodyweight as he gives you a long, passionate kiss. And before he knows it, you’re reaching down to stroke him, and he’s thrusting into your hand, his breath becoming heavier and heavier. 
You feel him as he presses his tip against you, rubbing it up and down before pushing into you. You both gasp as he gives you shallow thrusts, testing the waters, thrusting deeper into you with each one.
He pauses, exhaling as he’s fully inside of you. You’re pulsing around him, practically causing him to lose his mind with the way you feel alone.
“Fffffuck, you feel good,” he moans, trying not to cum right then and there. 
He begins giving you shallow, hesitant thrusts, unsure of himself. He wants to make you feel good. And he’s also terrified that this is going to end before it’s even properly started. 
Carmy stops again, pausing within you. 
“Sorry, I just-.” 
“No, it’s okay. Take your time.”
He’s nervous. You can tell he’s nervous and that he’s trying not to cum. 
“How about… I take control?” you suggest, hesitantly. “And that way, if you need me to stop we can um… well, you can just tell me.”
“Uh… yeah,” he agrees with a nod. “Sure.” 
Clumsily, the two of you switch positions, making sure he knows you’re okay with this. As he lies on his back, staring up at you, you straddle his hips, giving him the smallest smile. You reach down, guiding him into you once again. You gasp as he fills you, his thick cock stretching you, especially in this position. Carmy’s hands go to your hips as he watches you take him. 
“You feel really good too, Carm,” you finally say, your hands moving to his chest to brace yourself as you begin shifting your hips forward and back at the most unbearably slow pace. 
Carmy thinks he must be dreaming as he watches you ride him. His hands slide over your hips, wrapping around your body so that he can touch your butt. He’s practically digging the pads of his fingers into your hips as you begin moving over him at a faster pace. 
“Shit… you’re really good at this,” he groans, as you lean down to kiss him. 
You giggle against his lips, and whatever thoughts he has in his head disappear. Carmy begins thrusting up into you, his hands on your hips encouraging you to move a little faster as you kiss him. You’re moaning his name, whining as you feel every single inch of his cock slide against your walls, becoming more and more breathless by the minute. Your gasps turn into moans, getting higher in pitch as you go. His hands are guiding your hips, taking some control back as you grind against each other. 
“Carmy,” you cry out as he thrusts his hips hard into you. “If you keep doing that, I’m gonna cum.” 
“Yeah?” he asks. You nod, breathless, as you bury your face into his chest. 
He holds your hips down, pinning you down against him as pushing his hips into yours. 
“You wanna switch?” he asks, breathless. “Can I-?” 
“Please,” you reply eagerly.
You switch positions once more, and as Carmy guides himself into you again, you can tell he’s much more confident than last time you’d found yourself in this position. You wrap a leg around his waist and he holds you there, beginning to move his hips against yours again. He works his way up to a rapid pace, his face turning red as he does, and you’re writhing underneath his body, whispering the dirtiest things into his ear with every single thrust.
“Holy shit, Carmy. You feel so goddamn good too,” you praise him. “God, you’re gonna make me cum.”
“Yeah?” he manages to get out in between grunts. 
“Yes. Please let me cum,” you beg him, as he hits that spot inside of you, earning another loud cry. 
“Don’t stop.”
He’s surprised to learn that he likes it when you beg as he tangles his fingers with yours, pinning you down so that he can fuck you. With your hand in his, so close to your climax, you let slip:
“I thought about this too. I’ve wanted this for so long too, Carmy.”
“Fuck,” he howls as he drives into you, his sole purpose to earn more praise from you. To hear you cry out his name. To give you what you’ve been begging for. 
You angle your hips upward so that he can go even deeper, hitting all the way to the back of you. You’re grasping at his back, his arms, his biceps, hanging onto any piece of him that you can as he shudders, letting out the most guttural sounds. You’re squeezing around him, as he takes you to your high. The feeling of you cumming, squeezing around him like your life depends on it drive him wild, and he’s fucking you through it, the feeling of your orgasm bringing him to his. 
As you finally come down, you pull Carmy in for a searing kiss. 
“Holy shit, Carm,” you say, breathlessly. 
“Yeah,” he pants against your lips. 
Even if just for tonight, all feels right in the world. 
This feels right. 
*
The light of day is sobering. Before Carmy’s even had a chance to open his eyes, the events of the day before come flooding in, running in vicious circles around his mind: the phone call from Sugar, Richie screaming at him… and then…. 
Fuck. 
He’d crossed the line with you. 
He doesn’t know whether to be mad at himself or devastated that he fucked up, considering he’s sure as hell not going to let himself feel anything about Mikey yet. 
Michael. 
Michael’s dead. 
And he might’ve done the one thing he swore he wouldn’t do – the one thing that he’d been afraid of: that he might just lose you. 
As you stir in bed next to him, slowly blinking your eyes open, you turn over on your side. Carmy’s sitting on the edge of the bed and you can see Carmy’s stuck in his head. While you’d let yourself surrender to whatever that was last night, you knew today was different. 
“Hey,” is all you say, hugging Carmy’s bed sheets closer to your naked body. 
“Um… listen. We don’t have to-,” you begin, searching for the right words. “Let’s just forget about this, okay? I don’t-. You’ve got a lot going right now and-.”
You take a breath. You know the two of you can’t be together right now, even after your revelation last night. 
“I don’t want to lose you.”
Carmy swallows, fighting back the emotions that begin to swell in his chest. 
He feels sick to his stomach. 
But he doesn’t want to do this in front of you. 
“Yeah, no. We can… we can just forget it,” is all he gets out, his eyes fixed on the floor. 
“You sure?” you question. 
He takes a beat before answering:
“I don’t want to lose you either.” 
And even with the declaration you’d made – the promise to forget since neither of you could afford to lose each other – things had become different. In the weeks following, your communications with Carmy were less than normal. While you understood he was processing, grieving, he’d withdrawn from you, and it hurt more than you had the words for. 
You’d check in, making sure he knew you were here for him if he needed to talk. But he put his head down, working night after night at the restaurant, cold, stoic, and checked out. You worried about him. And you also knew that you both needed some space from each other. 
Some days you regret it – sleeping together – and other days, you don’t. You think that maybe everyone had been right about the two of you all along – that this had been inevitable. But it happened under the worst timing, the worst circumstances and you miss your best friend. You wish, in some ways, that two of you could just go back to normal.
read: chapter five
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genericpuff · 3 months
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I was kind of curious: What do you think of Persephone's therapy scenes in episodes 160-161?
I personally liked them, but you and many other LO critics always seem to see things that totally flew over my head (I mean that in a positive way).
I think the idea behind them was fine, just the execution that felt really half-baked. Rachel doesn't like scenes to sit too long so the therapy scene, of course, wound up being rushed in the course of 2-3 episodes (meaning she had to have Persephone dump everything all at once) and while Persephone's dialogue is handled relatively well, the direction of the scene itself feels entirely mismanaged (which is both a side effect of Rachel's directionless writing and the fact that she clearly doesn't want to do more than one of these kinds of episodes so she needs to speedrun it).
TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion concerning sexual assault ahead!
Like, let's start with Persephone's intent in going to therapy. Wanting to pursue therapy doesn't just happen suddenly, there's usually a "trigger event" to make someone realize "I need help", whether it be hitting rock bottom or even just going "I feel like I don't have the skills or tools necessary to deal with what I'm dealing with, I need a professional opinion".
Despite Eros advising her to go to therapy all the way back in S1 to address her assault-
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-she actually finally goes to therapy in S2 not to address the assault, but to address... how she feels insecure in comparison to Hera who she just found out Hades had a long-term affair with??? At least that's definitely the implication.
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And then of course the therapy session itself segues immediately into "Persephone is a high achiever and it's because of her mom being overbearing" which Rachel doesn't connect at all to either the SA or her feeling insecure compared to Hera (which, by the way, barely even has anything to do with her, but she didn't - and still doesn't - have the emotional maturity or self-respect to realize that Hades is a serial cheater-)
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That's where the first therapy episode cuts off, and then the next episode immediately opens with Persephone writing her entire backstory on a whiteboard, so we can assume time has passed and she's talked about everything from her childhood up until this point.
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Then we get Chiron asking Persephone... what could go wrong if she leaves TGOEM??
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Even though we never saw any of the actual sequence so it just feels like a question that's coming out of nowhere? Like did Persephone say during that schpeel that she wanted to leave TGOEM? Isn't that something we should have seen to connect these two trains of thought?
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Ah, right, because we have to get into Hades. Because this comic fails the Bechdel test so hard it can't even have a character talk about their trauma or childhood without it seguing into "well there's this one specific main character guy I just really wanna sleep with-"
Don't get me wrong, if Rachel is trying to "deconstruct purity culture" here, I can get her angle with this, if Persephone has been "groomed her entire life" to be an eternal maiden then there's clearly some thought processes about sexual attraction there that are being challenged by her attraction to Hades. But it just feels so rushed purely for the sake of getting her through her trauma and childhood problems and everything that Rachel tacked onto her backstory (in an attempt to make her seem more than just a self-insert) so that Rachel can get her back on track to sleeping with Hades, the one and only man she's clearly ever felt sexual attraction to enough to want to leave TGOEM and question her entire childhood.
And then we get this and I just-
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Like first of all, again, Persephone being a complete airhead and not realizing that it has less to do with her possibly being an inadequate partner and more to do with Hades being a serial cheater who also used her as an emotional affair partner;
but ALSO the fact that the conclusion is some "eureka" moment of "you're a bad decision maker" ??? I was a fan of the comic still when this scene happened and even I went "huh?"
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Like she doesn't bother to try and connect it to everything she just learned and said about her childhood and how she wants to be the "perfect daughter" who will make everyone happy, Chiron just reduces it to "oh you just suck at making decisions". As if "sucking at making decisions" isn't like, a reactionary extension of deeper problems. She's treating it as if Persephone is some "puzzle" to be solved and her being a "bad decision maker" was the answer when it's undoubtedly just one of many side effects of her upbringing. It feels like she's addressing the cough and not the virus.
Also a little off topic but-
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Gotta love how we've never seen Persephone actually employ this homework from her therapist because she's constantly stapled to Hades and the only thing she cares about is his happiness. Literally, I don't think Persephone could possibly answer that question because she's never been independent enough to even learn what makes her happy - she's jumped from wanting to make her mother happy to wanting to make Hades happy but we're supposed to condemn the former and celebrate the latter.
Buuut of course we don't get her answering that question because again, Rachel can't spend more than 30 seconds on a single scene because that would demand too much writing and thought from her. So we cut to Hera having a discussion with Asclepius regarding her scars re-opening, yadda yadda.
By the time we cut back to the therapy session at the start of the next episode (that's three episodes that have been spent basically accomplishing nothing because none of the thought threads tie together in a meaningful way beyond what the audience has to assume) Chiron is conveniently wrapping things up and it's then and only then does Rachel try to actually incorporate the SA plotline that was Persephone's ORIGINAL MOTIVATION in going to therapy.
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Now, the scene for the most part is fine, I don't really like how the therapy session was written leading up to it, but her describing her freeze response and how she feels guilty she couldn't "fight back" is a very real feeling that I can definitely say was well written.
My one gripe with it though - and sure, this might be nitpicky, but here me out - is this:
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I don't particularly like that Chiron the therapist just found out about her patient being a rape victim - someone who's also said she doesn't like people grabbing her / touching her without her consent - and then decides the best course of action is to comfort her... while touching her.
Now I want to make it perfectly clear, it's not against the law or even the code of ethics to make physical contact between a therapist and their patient. Loads of patients have made breakthroughs with their therapists that have called for hugs and while some therapists may not be okay with it, there are definitely therapists who are who fully understand that hugs in those moments are the best thing for a person. But it's still a general boundary that is there and even with patients who aren't victims of SA, consent needs to be asked for / given.
So Chiron just... coming over and touching Persephone on the knee, while undoubtedly seen as a "warm and comforting act" by those who have had similar sessions with their own therapists or even just those who have no clue and see it on the surface level as being "sweet", really irks me, because it just seems so tone deaf to do with a character like Persephone who is supposed to be a victim of having her bodily autonomy taken away from her.
Again, it's a small criticism, and undoubtedly a nitpick in the eyes of some, but a simple "can I give you a hug?" from either Chiron or Persephone would have gone a long way in accomplishing Persephone's need for consent and bodily autonomy a lot more than just having Chiron come up and touch her leg without her consent. Please, for the love of god, let Persephone have some autonomy, asking for consent doesn't ruin the moment.
And that's pretty much it, Persephone talks about how she feels like she's tethered to Apollo, and Chiron assures her that's not the case, session over, Persephone goes outside to Hades aaaand notice how we never actually tackled that "I feel insecure because of my partner having former partners?" thing? Notice how the best we got was her talking about her fears of being an "inadequate partner" which focused entirely on her not being "enough" for Hades and being a "bad decision maker" rather than pointing out 1.) Hades' own faults in being a serial cheater that would undoubtedly contribute to her insecurities and 2.) what Persephone could do for Hades rather than what Hades could do for Persephone? It's always "I don't know if I'm good enough for him" and never "I don't know if he's good enough for me."
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Yet another F-- on Lore Olympus' Bechdel test. Every single thing tacked onto Persephone's backstory is meant purely to get her with Hades - TGOEM is just an obstacle preventing her from having sex with Hades, the assault is just a framing device to show how much "better" Hades is for Persephone than Apollo, her overbearing childhood is just to show how much more "free" she is now that she's not living with her mother and is living with Hades instead, etc.
No agency, no autonomy, no character, even when it tries.
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fatuismooches · 1 year
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i'll brainrot with you about dottore and his sick! s/o:
clearly with s/o's conditions it's not optimal to go outside in the freezing cold, but one day the snowfall is so much more gentle outside and something like this is a rare occasion in snezhnaya. would dottore indulge them (of course with plenty of precautions taken) or would he rather not risk it at all?
your writing paints such vivid pictures in my head and i honestly love the comfort and warmth your work brings :]]
♡ 𝐒𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐲 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐃𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞 ♡
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synopsis: Your poor health and fragile condition have consistently gotten in the way of various activities for many years. But that was going to change today, as you were going to take your first step into the flaky goodness of pure, white snow.
includes: dottore w/ gn! reader
notes: Related to the posts under my fragile reader tag. Thank you very much, I'm very glad my writing makes you happy! This was so cute, I originally planned for it to be only a couple hundred words but I went overboard and decided to make it a full-blown piece.
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You used to enjoy the concept of cold. Growing up in a hot country had you deeply curious about the kind of weather that would warrant people wearing dozens of layers, bundling up to the point where they were barely recognizable. You wanted to go somewhere that snowed one day, you once told your lover as he sat at his desk, tinkering with Archons knows what. Dottore only grunted in response, saying that if research led him there, you would accompany him. As a matter of fact, there were some Ruin Guards he wanted to take a look at in Dragonspine. You hummed, enjoying the moment as you continued to flip through the picture book.
But now, you couldn’t bring yourself to like the cold. You think that if you weren’t sick, you’d enjoy the weather in Snezhnaya much more, but the cold permeates your body even though you’re inside the lab. (Dottore had to force Pantalone to give him more funds to install more heaters.) You didn’t like to even walk through the halls of Dottore’s complicated maze-like lab because they were too big, making the cold air suffocate you all around. (Unless you’re accompanied by a clone. Somehow, Dottore had implemented a feature into his clones to heat up and become warm, so when you’d cling to them, you wouldn’t be cold anymore. You enjoyed it thoroughly because the reactions of the clones were cute.)
Many days, you spent the time looking out the tightly sealed window at the snow. Despite living in the snow-covered nation for so long, you had never sunken a foot into the powdery fluff. When Zandik was recruited into the Fatui, you were unconscious during the trip because your body surely would not be able to handle such an extraneous journey. How would it feel, you thought? You’ve frequently asked some of your favorite clones to tell you how the snow felt. (You felt slightly embarrassed asking your real lover.) Apparently, most of the time the snow was deep and crunchy from continuous snowfall. If you weren’t careful where you walked, half of your leg could get swallowed underneath! Many children liked to form things like balls out of the snow and play games with them. But sometimes, very rarely, the snow lightens and melts, depending on how the Tsaritsa feels. It’s a beautiful scene, apparently.
You had lost faith in the Gods long ago after your mysterious illness suddenly struck you (Zandik never cared about them in the first place), but you hoped and prayed to any force that was willing to listen to you - please let the snow ease up, just a bit. It was a bit hypocritical since you did not like the cold, but you still desired to experience it like a normal person. You could bear the pain if only to have fun for a couple of minutes. You did not tell your lover this; one, because you knew it was impossible with your condition, and two, you did not want to bother him with your frivolous wants. But it seemed like you were too obvious with your intentions, as one of the first things you’d do in the morning was drag yourself out of bed, despite the great amount of energy it took, to go to your favorite window and peer outside.
“You seem to be quite interested in watching the snow lately, aren’t you?” The deep voice behind you made you jump.
“Zandik! Oh, you scared for there,” you pressed a hand to your heart and quickly took a seat that was already permanently placed near the window, already tired from the past few minutes. Your lover walked toward you, hands carefully placed behind his back, each step calculated. You couldn’t help but find some happiness in that - the way he walked was always so commanding and enchanting somehow, hypnotizing too.
“The weather here is quite different from Sumeru,” you observed. “I can’t help but be intrigued by it.”
“Is that so? It is quite boring to me. The landscape is always the same and it is rather hard to conduct experiments outside because of it.” 
“Heh, it’s always the experiments and research with you. At least try to enjoy it,” you teased, rolling your eyes at him playfully. Dottore shook his head and gently flicked your forehead, causing you to pout.
“Furthermore, the cold isn’t good for you. I believed you didn’t like it, anyway,” Dottore scoffed.
“I know,” you said softly. “But I still want to experience it,” the last part was a mumble that was meant for yourself, but Dottore heard it anyway, making his eyes widen as a thought began to quickly form.
“Do you… want to go outside and see the snow?”
The fact that you were caught made you bolt up straight and quickly try to deny it. “No, no, I’m fine. It was just a fleeting thought,” you quickly reassured him.
Dottore doesn’t know why he didn’t realize it sooner. Of course you would be bored, waking up every day to the same redundant routine, watching everyone go about their daily lives while you sat there, helpless to do anything besides wait for him to cure you. Of course you would want to do something new, after hearing the same repetitious lines of how you’ll get better soon, how he’s working on a new medicine, how it’ll all be over soon, but when was “soon” coming? How long has the envy of others been eating you up? The thought of that made his smile slip.
A soft goodbye snapped him out of his thoughts. A clone had come to administer your daily medicine and get you ready for the day. Dottore quickly put his usual smirk back on and nodded at you. Your gentle smile and a wave bid him farewell, as the clone wrapped his arm around you to support you as you walked away. But Zandik was still thinking. When was the last time he had seen you with a big smile? A big, goofy one that stretched your lips beautifully and made your face hurt from smiling that hard. The answer was, he did not know. The most he could recall was from his Akademiya days, where you would greet him with one of those grins every morning, always a ball of energy.
The fact followed him throughout the day as he worked. The mere idea that it was bothering him so much was simply absurd. But he could not forget about the times his clones has reported to him about the times you cried. When you refused to leave your room some days or didn’t want to eat. He was not one for any type of comfort, not when his hands had committed some of the most wicked acts to man. How could he be, when the first thing on his mind was to hurt others, but the last thing he wanted to do was hurt you? 
He did not know what to do, where to place his hands or if saying something would make the situation worse. He did not know what to do other than let you rest your head on his shoulder, allowing you to take his hand and place it on your head, giving him the okay to stroke your hair. He let you babble to your heart’s content and awkwardly wiped your tears away, for when he looked into your painfully bleak eyes that were once filled with life, he did not think he could refuse you.
It was an odd feeling for him. He took pleasure in seeing the pain of others, delighting at the moment when they lost all hope. He found it amusing when others took a stand against him, only to see their expression fall when they realized it was fruitless. But you? The thought of that happening to you made him… He had to do something.
One day you woke up, ready to live out another normal and boring day. As you sleepily rubbed your eyes, you noticed something was a bit off. Usually, you could hear the wind howling and the snow slamming against the windows, even if it was just a little bit. But there was nothing. As you lay on the bed, collecting enough energy to get out of bed, a glimmer of hope grew within you. With a great push, you heaved yourself out of bed and made a beeline to the window. You sat down on the chair, and pulled the curtains to the side, prepared to be disappointed, but what you saw blew you away.
The snow had melted significantly, leaving a moderate and easily walkable layer on the ground. The snowfall had reduced greatly, and it no longer pounded on the window. Instead, it flew down calmly from the sky, which was still gray, but it was a beautiful, hazy kind of gray. Now that there weren’t mass amounts of snow blowing your view, you noticed there was some kind of river around the lab. It was still frozen over, but the ice sparkled beautifully and reflected the snow-covered trees. Speaking of trees, you didn’t know it was possible for such boring things to look so pretty. Copious amounts of snow rested on the limbs, occasionally slumping to the ground with a thud, and the process kept repeating as snowfall continued.
Your jaw was slack the whole time, as you continued to take in the breathtaking scenery. Snezhnaya just got ten times better, you thought.
“I see you’ve seen the change in weather, [Name]. It seems to be to your liking.”
“Eep!” you started at the assertive voice that was practically in your ear. Dottore had snuck up on you while you were too entranced by the view to notice him. “You need to stop doing that,” you scolded him. 
His deep chuckle tugged at your heartstrings. “To think that after this many times, my experiment’s results have not changed. Truly fascinating.”
You tried to ball your hands into fists to prevent yourself from blushing. “A-Anyway, you should have woken me up earlier! I didn’t think this was possible!” you fretted, still in utter shock at this. 
“That, I could not do. You know your body requires a great amount of rest.” You couldn’t argue with that. He was right.
“Now, is there something you want to do?” It was as if he had somehow planned for this to happen.
You fiddled with your sweater, trying to find the words for your outlandish request. “Sooo, um, I know this may not be possible, but can I go outside? I know with my health and stuff it may be hard but… just for a bit, please,” your voice got quieter and quieter towards the end of your sentence. You bit your lip in anticipation and nervously kept your eyes trained on the rug-covered floor. The few seconds of silence that passed felt endless.
“Yes, you may-”
“Really?!?!”
Your legs were swinging happily, and there it was. Pearly whites peeked out as you grinned cheerfully and you threw your hands up into the air. The smile he had not seen in far too long.
“But, I will accompany you, and you must stay by me at all times. You must follow all of my directions as well. Do you understand?”
A walk with your lover too? “Yes, yes I’ll do anything you ask!” you easily complied. You gathered all of your energy and squeezed your partner as hard as you could (which, wasn’t that hard, but to you it was) taking him off guard. You buried your face into his midsection and refused to let go, your words of thanks being muffled from being so close to him. Dottore was stiff at first but then eased into your embrace, fingering a cord of your hair.
You were feeling a burst of energy from this exciting news, so you had to do one more thing. You released him, and when you looked up, you could see that same self-assured, confident smile that you loved. Before he could speak again, you tugged on his blue ascot with as much force as you could summon, pulling him farther down to your level allowing you to smash your lips onto his. Catching him off guard allowed you to be in control for a couple of seconds, but it is quickly relinquished as your lover takes over quickly, effortlessly deepening the kiss. When the two of you parted, he had an almost smug grin on his face, displaying his pointy shark-like teeth.
“My my, quite eager, aren’t we? I have not seen these kinds of surprises since those old days.”
“Well,” you pecked both of his soft cheeks again, “you know I always make sure my doctor knows how I feel.” At that point, there was a knock on the door and one of Dottore’s clones came in to help you with your morning routine.
“Go about your day. I will come to get you when it’s time.” You smiled and squeezed his hand once more as you rose from the chair. Dottore’s hands returned behind his back as he watched the clone and you leave.
“Perhaps I should start to add new variables to my experiment… the results are quite interesting indeed.”
You could not focus on anything for the whole time. Your mind was all over the place thinking about how satisfying it would be to sink your foot into the fluffy goodness.
Apparently, Dottore had designed some kind of special jacket for you to wear, along with a scarf, gloves, earmuffs, boots, and more. It had some kind of built-in heater somehow, which made everything consistently warm including your body. Normally you’d listen to his rambles on how he created it and such, but you were too giddy at the thought of freaking snow. (And also how he took the time to make all this stuff for you. It probably only took him a short amount of time considering how intelligent he was, but the action warmed your heart.)
There were quite a few clones in the lab area watching you. You think that they seemed happy for you. One of them was helping you put the gear on while your lover set down some ground rules. Zandik also had on a big fluffy coat, which made him look rather cute. You kind of wanted to fit yourself inside of it with him.
“First, you must stay by my side at all times. You’ll probably have to hold onto my arm to steady yourself. We will be following a path. This means no straying in any other direction, at least without my permission. Of course, if you feel that you can’t handle the weather anymore, let me know immediately. Do you agree to abide by these rules?”
You held back a sigh and a laugh. You knew that all of these precautions were necessary but they were still a drag. Plus, the way your lover said it all seriously as if your very existence was on the line made you want to giggle.
“Yes, Zandik. I agree to all of your rules,” you huffed as the clone finished zipping up the jacket. “My common sense is still intact, you know.”
Even though he did not show it at all, Dottore was the slightest bit uneasy. There were many things he did not understand or know about your illness. Would the sudden change in the environment trigger you? He was not sure, but he already prepared for the worst. If anything, it would be a learning experience too - to see how much your body could handle. He was ready to take notes in his head.
“Come here.”
You slowly trekked your way toward him, getting used to the feel of the long boots. It was hard to imagine wearing these every day, but you soon fell into your lover’s chest as he began to stroke your hair.
“Well then, let us go,” he wrapped a steady arm around your waist to help you balance. “Watch the lab for me,” Dottore directed the other clones as they waved goodbye to you.
They were so cute, to be honest. Especially the ones from the Akademiya days.
You did not realize the extent of how big Dottore’s lab was until now. There were so many paths and rooms you walked by that you had no idea existed. What was beyond those doors? Some questions were better left unanswered. You were just letting your partner guide you as you clung to his side (the walking was a lot) until you reached a great, big door with a keypad.
“Are you ready?” 
You eagerly nodded. 
“And you do still remember the-” 
“Yes, Zandik, I remember everything you told me,” you groaned. “Please just open the door already.”
“Patience, [Name],” he chuckled. “I look forward to seeing your reaction.” He let go of you and typed a whole long password on the keypad. And in an instant, loud noises exuded from the door as it began to open from the sides.
The first thing you felt was the puff of cold air hitting your cheeks, instinctively making you raise your arms to cover it. In a couple of seconds, the door opened completely and you could feel the light shine down on you. You put your hands down, and the snowy, outside world was laid before you.
It was majestic. The snow has managed to be untainted by any other substances, allowing it to be a pristine white that covered the landscape. Slowly, you took a few steps forward as Dottore carefully watched you, until you were standing at the edge where the floor ended, and the snow began. You took a quick glance at your lover and he motioned for you to go on. And so you did. You stepped into the snow.
The first thing you noticed was the crunch of the snow under your boots. It was oddly satisfying. And the way your foot sunk so easily into, it kind of reminded you of quicksand. But you could kick it around so easily, yet you could see it was hard enough to be used to form something solid. The cold hit you like a ton of bricks, but you were doing everything in your power to withstand it. The enhanced gear from your partner helped a lot. But, all you could say was wow. You were starting to get a bit jealous of the people who could walk in such surroundings every day with ease.
Dottore on the other hand was quite satisfied. The scenery was not what he found appealing. Rather, it was you. He found no interest in such worldly things, but your reactions were ever-changing and amusing to him. A snowflake fell on your nose and melted. You wrinkled your nose at the unfamiliar feeling. And he couldn’t help but chuckle at that.
“Hold onto me. The road is quite icy and slippery. You need to be very careful.” Zandik linked his arms with you, and you gratefully reciprocated.
You could not keep your eyes off anything and everything you saw. You loved Sumeru, but Snezhnaya was starting to grow on you. It was beautiful. But what you loved, even more, was talking to Zandik. You two had not had this much time together in far too long. He enthusiastically prattled on about his experiments, his creations. He even told you about his clones’ journey to Sumeru, and how the almighty Traveler was powerless against them. You indulged him of course. You had always loved his voice, and you found it rather endearing when he’d go on his rambles.
Dottore intentionally made sure the pace was slow and steady, so as to not rush your body or make you too tired. But of course, even after only a bit of time passed, you needed to rest. Thankfully, the two of you reached some kind of gazebo with a couple of benches inside. You had no idea this existed, and it seemed Dottore didn’t either, which didn’t surprise you. That man probably only cared about the entrance and exit to his lab.
The bench was cold but you did not care. Having your lover with you for this long already made you feel warm and fuzzy. Furthermore, you’d be crazy not to take advantage of the situation. You called his name and before you could make a move, he spoke.
“How do you feel?”
“Huh?”
“Has your heart rate increased since the exposure to the snow and cold? Do you feel light-headed? How easily can you move your arms and legs?”
“O-oh, well… um, I feel cold. My heart is a bit fast from the walking, but nothing out of the ordinary. My legs hurt from the walk too… but I’m used to it.”
“Interesting…” Zandik put his hand to his chin as he seemed to think. You sighed, and shifted closer to him, beginning to run your hands up his coat, which clearly grabbed his attention but he watched you silently. Your hands reached his soft cheeks and brushed over the cold exterior of his mask.
“You know, you should take this off more often,” you suggested as your hands began to creep under the sides of the mask. “There’s no one around…” you hummed. Dottore made no move to stop you so you easily slipped the mask off, revealing his sharp crimson eyes boring into you, and scars from long ago. Of course, you couldn’t help but smile at the face of your lover. 
You moved in to press your lips against his, pleased at how you could now gently trace your fingers over his scars. No matter how long you knew him, he was sensitive to touch around that area, so you always made sure to be careful.
It was an odd, but strangely good feeling, Dottore thought. One he did not know he missed, as you began to pepper kisses along the top of his face. It had been a while since the two of you had kissed for so long, which was a result of your lack of liveliness due to your illness. It seems the new surroundings really did help you. He would have to keep that in mind.
“You’re so cute,” you giggled. He frowned at that and grabbed both your wrists, pushing your back onto the bench, and making you yelp.
“Enough of that. I believe that all of this has gone to your head,” Dottore’s domineering tone was back again.
“I was just- eep!” Your words were cut short as Zandik’s lips began to mark your neck.
“The human body’s temperature can go up a substantial amount just from kissing. Would you care to experiment the limits of that with me? You would be the perfect test subject,” you felt his unhinged grin spread against your neck.
“After all, I wouldn’t want you becoming too cold now, hmm?” His impossible strength easily overpowered you as he moved to hold both your wrists with one hand, while his free one rested on your thigh.
As you relinquished yourself to him, your lips were claimed an innumerable amount of times, a clear reminder of who you belonged to.
You had to turn in early for the night. The miniature adventure was so, so fun, and it felt like you kicked your illness in the ass for a bit, but now you really had to get some rest to recover what little strength you had. Surprisingly, Zandik was there with you this time, instead of one of his clones. 
“...I’m sleepy, Zandik.”
“Of course. Your body has experienced much more physical exertion than usual. It needs time to relax.” You sighed, letting the warmth of the blankets begin to take you to dreamland.
“Hey, Zandik?”
“Yes, [Name]?”
“Remember when we were in the Akademiya, and during the night, I’d go down into your bunk bed and sleep with you? Hehe…”
“Yes, I remember rather clearly, the intrusion of my privacy and theft of my pillows,” he sighed. The first time you did that, he did not expect to be entranced by the sunlight cascading onto your peaceful face, the fluttering of your eyelashes, and the occasional quirk of your lips as you clearly dreamt of something good. But he had no knowledge of how to handle these feelings, so he shoved you off the tiny bed, rudely waking you up. You ended up walking around the Akademiya with a bump on your head after that.
“I was trying to give you hints, Zandik. You were just dense,” you pouted. “Hey, you should come and lay with me for a bit. Like the old days.”
Dottore was hesitant. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to, rather, he was so incredibly busy, especially after today. To be more precise, he felt that time not spent on finding a cure for you was time inefficiently used (most of the time.)
You tugged on his sleeve pleadingly. “Just for five minutes, until I nod off…”
He couldn’t bring himself to deny you, as he slipped under the covers with you. The softness of the mattress, plush blankets, and pillows that had your scent almost made him do a double take. It had been a long time since he was in a bed in general. Perhaps just a few hours of rest wouldn’t hurt. It would boost his effectiveness drastically…
You immediately scooted your body towards his and pressed it into his, nudging your face into his chest. He came to rest his hand on your head, while the other was loosely thrown over your waist.
“I miss you,” you softly uttered. He did not respond, nor did you expect an answer - what could he say anyway? The soft stroking on your head was more than enough for you at this moment, and it quickly lulled you to sleep.
“Thank… you.” You were out like a light, while your lover looked at you, absentmindedly fiddling with a strand of your hair.
It was no simple task to make this happen. But as a scholar, of course, he was able to negotiate. For once, it wasn’t for his own gain, but for you. The results? It was a complete and utter success. 
Dottore could not lie, he felt as though he was back at the Akademiya with you. He remembers the two of you walking down the hallways, your chatty and sweet self a stark contrast to his rather irritated and know-it-all aura. How you would hug him from behind late in the night as he worked at his desk, begging and whining for him to go to sleep as you both had long lectures in a few hours.
He admittedly wants to see you take the first step into a raging blizzard. He wants to see you brave the cold with ease. He wants to see you swing your sword without abandon again, not afraid to take on anyone in a verbal or physical fight. He wanted his assistant back: the one who would be ready to jump down the throat of someone who dared to question him, the one who organized his notes in the most efficient manner.
The God of Wisdom once told him that his research was insulting, contradictory to the rules and ways of life. Now that he looked back on it, he found it amusing - even a Godly being was held back by such drivel. But it did not matter to him. There was no rule or barrier he wasn’t willing to cross in order to cure you, as he had already done it multiple times with no remorse. He would oversee your absolute recovery personally.
After all, there were many more snowy days to come.
Bonus:
“You know, Arlecchino, I saw the most interesting thing the other day,” a soft voice echoed throughout the room.
“Hmm? What was it?”
“I happened across our lovely Doctor going into Her Majesty, The Tsaritsa’s chambers. For what, I wonder? Hehe…”
“...I guess that [Name] person truly does mean something to him, if he was willing to go that far.”
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izzysillyhandsy · 7 months
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It is finally time for me to try writing about The Scene.
There's so much happening and changing within seconds. I feel that the whole history of Edward and Izzy is played out here, for (from their point of view) the last time.
We start off with Ed waking Izzy up, taking out his pistol (to Izzy's confusion) and then handing it to Izzy.
They are close, Ed is calm and fully in the moment. It is such an intimate moment, the way Ed tilts his head down in line with the pistol, never breaking eye contact.
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And Izzy, who at first was trying to fend Ed off, now looks at him like this:
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What is actually going on here? It seems like a return to something they've done before, like a memory of a tender moment. Of course, this is right after Ed tells Iz about the dream. Maybe it's just the closeness, or the fact that this must be the first moment in forever where Izzy is the sole focus of Ed.
But I feel that there is a story there, something in their past that makes Izzy - what is it - happy? Nostalgic? Regretful? I don't see turned on here, it's much softer than that.
"Good for you." (slightly sneering) "It was good for me." (completely sincere)
You don't need me to tell you this has more than one meaning.
Ed touches Izzy's hand as he stands up, "It was just what the doctor ordered."
The first half ends - these were the good times. Spending time together with weapons aimed at each other :). I think this was when both were young and relatively innocent, when life was exciting and the two of them were best friends, possibly even closer than that.
But now the second half starts.
"Anyway, it wasn't even like that."
Also has a double meaning.
"No, in my dream - I was standing. Just like this."
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Ed turns his back to Izzy, making this an execution instead of an act of intimacy.
Izzy first raises the pistol, laughs brokenly and desperately. It feels like this was also a situation they'd both been in before. The laugh sounds like "No, we're not doing this. Once was enough."
I think a similar scene happened when they were young, and the next bit strengthens this theory for me.
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Izzy puts his hand over half his face, his voice changes and he calls Ed "Eddie" for the first and only time in the show:
"Oh, you're scared, Eddie? To sc- to scared to do it yourself?"
Hornigold also calls Ed "Eddie", and I think Izzy is kind of channeling Hornigold here. Maybe, back on Hornigold's ship, Ed was ordered to execute someone and couldn't. And maybe Izzy had to do it for him. Maybe Izzy had to do lots of traumatizing things for Ed. Maybe the person executed was someone Izzy and/or Ed cared about. And maybe Ed started to resent Izzy for it. The way Ed is spreading his arms out, the way it seems almost staged - it's like Ed is saying "kill me like you killed him".
OR maybe this is how Izzy pep-talked Ed into becoming Blackbeard, which would be much darker (and harder for me as an Izzy apologist). But Izzy telling Stede that Ed's complete breakdown is like 50% his fault may point to events in the past where Izzy thought he had to push Ed into the Kraken-zone to secure their and their crew's survival. Maybe he did this often, especially at the beginning of their Blackbeard fuckery.
What is remarkable though is that Izzy hides his face with his hand, then forces out the words, almost choking on them. This clearly has importance and history - nothing so far in the whole show was forced out so violently - so I am heavily leaning towards a traumatic experience for Ed and Izzy both. It definitely crashes Izzy down from his nostalgia-high real quick.
Now Izzy's voice changes back to his own, but he speaks really fast and without inflection, trying to get everything over with:
"Go on clean up your own fucking mess I'm not doing it I've been doing it all my fucking life."
(without thanks I might add)
"Fuck off."
Izzy's finally, finally had enough.
Ed acknowledges, resignedly, and leaves. I think he expected it to go this way.
Izzy shoots himself. I think Ed also expected this.
Ed says he loved him best he could. It's over. He goes to his own death.
This scene is only a few minutes long, but as I said in the beginning, I think they're reliving their whole relationship here, first the good times (which are quickly devalued - "But it wasn't even like that") and the bad times (I did this for you, but for nothing - "Fuck off").
As Ed says to Frenchie, he's had closure with Izzy. He's shown him what it was like for him. Izzy's also had closure with Ed. From now on, Ed has to carry the weight of his decisions himself.
Both die.
(and then both indestructible fuckers come back)
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galvanizedfriend · 1 month
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KC Wip Wednesday
This is my humble contribution to WIP Wednesday! It's a scene from the rewriting of TVD S5 - Yokan's version. In it, The Originals never happens, most of the Mikaelsons remain in Mystic Falls and Klaus and Caroline are kind of a thing, but nobody knows (for sure). Remember that moment where Katherine locks herself up in a safe with Stefan to "cure" his PTSD? It's that, except it's Klaus, not Katherine. This alludes to a very Klefan past, btw. Be warned if you're not a fan.
Also, this is for @definedareasofuncertainty, who wanted me to write her Easter Klefan. 🤧 There you go, friend! And you know, not beta'ed and all that.
--
Klaus lies on his back, takes a calm breath as the heavy door is closed with a thud, engulfing them in absolute darkness. All in all, he'd say a metal box is hardly the most uncomfortable setting he's found himself in. He prefers the comfort of first-class accommodations, but he's traveled in worse. The grown man beating about beside him does make things rather unpleasant, though.
"Stop! Caroline! Get me out of here!" Stefan screams, smashing his fists against the iron safe's indestructible structure. The more desperate he gets, the more uncoordinated and weaker his movements become, thus making the effort completely useless, however accomplished in making the experience all the more miserable for him.
It's embarrassing how incapable Klaus is of saying no to Caroline whenever she asks for a favor. Locking himself up in a box with a traumatized Stefan has to be an all-time low. The things he won't do when she bats her eyelashes and says please.
"Oh, stop it," he remarks in a bored tone as he shoves Stefan aside. The old safe is rather spacious, but definitely not enough to comport two men, particularly if one of them won't stop bloody writhing like a worm in hot sand. "The more you scream, the more breathless you become." The more I want to tear your vocal cords to shreds.
"Get me out of here, Klaus, get me the fuck out of here!"
"Relax, Stefan. I'm here to help," he says. "I'm what you would call a greater agony to alleviate the smaller pain you feel being trapped inside the box. It's reverse psychology, or so Caroline read in a book. What do you think of a little werewolf venom high to speed up the process?"
"You're psychotic. You're fucking insane!" Stefan starts pounding on the box again. "Caroline! Caroline, open up! Open it now!"
"I'm sorry, Stefan!" comes her muffled apology. Even through the metal barrier she sounds thick with guilt. It was her idea, but already she's cracking. That bleeding heart of hers… "I'm sorry, I will -"
"Do not touch that box, Caroline," he commands with his full authority. "Leave it."
There's a long pause, the sound of Stefan's heart hammering away inside his chest in the box as they wait to see what she'll do. A beat goes by before she mumbles a final sorry and scurries away, likely to avoid the temptation of putting poor Stefan out of his misery.
Klaus' lips pull into a grin. "Good girl."
Stefan starts shaking beside him, his breath becoming even more labored. "I can't breathe," he gasps. "I can't - I can't -"
"You don't need to breathe, Stefan. It's all in your head," Klaus reminds him pointedly. "A vampire having a panic attack, honestly. When you think you've seen everything…"
"You're not fucking helping!"
"Pardon me. My bedside manners have gone a little rusty since the last time you've experienced them." Klaus casts Stefan a glance, sees the way his eyes widen in horror, his body growing stiff as a rod, and he can't contain the self-satisfied smile that draws across his lips. "We did once find comfort in each other's company, didn't we?" Stefan makes another panicked sound, smoothing his hands across the cold metal door above them, trying to find a way out. Klaus chuckles. "Don't worry, mate. Caroline can't hear us. Your sordid little secret is safe with me. It's just us here, alone under the cover of darkness. Nothing we haven't done a dozen times in the past. Ahh, the 20s…" he speaks around a dramatic sigh. "It was the roaring years, indeed."
"What are you doing?"
"Making conversation."
"I don't want to talk to you, I especially don't want to talk about that." Stefan nearly chokes on the last word, inching as far away from Klaus as the confined space will allow, as though the mere idea of touching him fills him with utter revulsion. Klaus knows better; it's the way he remembers exactly how it didn't what terrifies him.
Anybody who's met this watered down, colorless version of Stefan would never be able to tell how much of a free spirit he used to be. He was fun. A far cry from the shivering man beside him now. Tragic, really.
"I know you like to pretend it never happened. Frankly, you've become quite an embarrassment of your former self, so I wouldn't proudly advertise it either. This bunny-eating, crying in the dark skin you're wearing these days is someone is wouldn't be caught fraternizing with if you were the last human being on earth."
"Then leave me the fuck alone already."
"Don't flatter yourself. I'm not here for you," he snaps back. And then, putting a leash on his rising temper, he continues, "But since I have to be… I can recognize that there was something about that time we had together that suited us both, more than just for the obvious reasons."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Sure you do. I was a tool for you."
"A tool for self-destruction."
Klaus huffs out a disdainful breath. "I was a balm to your tortured soul, Stefan, even at a time when you embraced your true self. I indulged you because you amused me, but at the end of the day, when we were together, it was all rather transactional. It wasn't about sentimentality or a shared appreciation for extravagance. It was about the hollow inside us. The fact we were always desperately seeking to fill it with… Anything, really. Whatever we could find. Passions. Pleasure. Violence. Cravings. But it never lasted, did it? Those things lack a purpose. They're all flitting in their essence, an immense explosion of satisfaction followed by… Nothing. We were both hungry, and we kept trying to find the thing that would sate us. You had lost your mind; I had lost my home. Like drawn to like." Klaus turns his face to Stefan, finds him staring back, eyes glinting with an emotion he can't quite read in the gloom. He always did fancy Stefan's eyes, though. There is something raw about them, something honest for a change. A little opening to the truth in his soul he tries so hard to hide from the outside world. "That's what the darkness is, Stefan," he continues. "Loneliness. It's what restrains us. The monster we cannot outrun. When it all stops - the laughter, the liquor, the hunger - and everything goes quiet around us, that's when we feel it. The curse of eternity. The weight of our years, deep in our bones. And the inevitable loneliness that comes with it. You had your names on the wall, I had my letters, but when all was said and done… We were both stuck in infinite darkness. Except for a few glorious stolen moments, in that repulsive room of yours." The corner of his mouth pulls up into a lopsided smile. "I was the bigger monster you needed in order to humanize yourself. Whatever you were, I was worse, and so I assuaged your guilt. Much like me being here right now. But then of course you found religion!" He laughs, closing his eyes and facing forward once more. "Your spiritual path towards the light. Elena Gilbert." He enunciates the name like it's coated in something toxic. His general distaste for Elena goes further than the fact she has thwarted so many of his plans. It's the boring saint act he cannot get over.
"Yes," Stefan says, his voice rough. "And then I lost her."
"Right. Because she chose your brother." Klaus chuckles. Stefan shifts uncomfortably beside him, the urge to hit him palpable in the air. It only spurs Klaus on. "How so very tacky. No taste, that one. Personally, I think there's no amount of blue eyes or good sex that can make Damon tolerable. What a wanker. I just want to bash his face against a wall whenever he opens his mouth."
Stefan scoffs. "Get in line."
"It's ironic, isn't it? You were at your absolute best behavior, weeding out all of your instincts, everything that made you fun and interesting in order to fashion yourself into a fairy tale prince for her, and what does she do? She chooses the dullard bad boy. Typical." Klaus shakes his head. "Ungrateful little -"
"Shut up."
"Martyr," he finishes with a smirk. "She probably thinks she's going to fix him, doesn't she? I bet he encourages it. But that's the difference between you and Damon, isn't it? Even with all your valiant efforts, you know creatures like us cannot be fixed. We're beyond salvation."
He gets a sudden twinge in his chest, an image flashing in his mind. A smile as bright as the sun. Hair the color of wheat. He sees her shifting under his sheets, feels the warmth of her touch, the brush of her rosy lips against his skin. It ignites a sense of joy inside him unlike anything else, a sense of possession, of belonging, of having found something that is far more precious or rare than any of the hundreds of treasures he's collected over the course of his life. But along with it comes the ever-present fear. Of loss. How long before he ruins her, like he's ruined everything else he's ever cherished? How long before he hurts her, even if he doesn't mean to? Before his darkness tarnishes her and kills that smile? Before she decides he's not worth it?
"How do you make yourself worthy?" he asks, the question tumbling out of his as though of their own accord. "How do you earn the affections of someone so…"
"Good?" Stefan finishes for him, reading his thoughts. "With sunshine and rainbows shining out of their eyes? Someone like, say… Caroline?" Klaus goes quiet, all his humor bleeding out of him in a second. "You don't," Stefan answers his own question. "You'll never be good enough for her, Klaus. Just like I was never good enough for Elena. Not really. The truth is they deserve much better than the two of us." He sighs, deflating with resignation next to Klaus. "I guess we did make quite a pair, you and I."
"Then perhaps we should die together," he says with an edge of aggression, his mood taking a sudden downturn. He's suddenly irritated. With Stefan, with this ridiculous situation, with himself for agreeing to that. "You and I, in a box, at the bottom of a quarry. Over and over again, drowning in suffering for all our sins and the women we don't deserve. How about that?" Silence stretches out between them, absolute. There's no response from Stefan, but there's also no pounding pulse, no disgruntled breaths. "Oh, look," he says dispassionately. "Someone's not having a panic attack anymore. Congratulations. You've conquered your fears. All you had to do was remember there are worse things than dying."
Klaus gives one violent kick on the door, sending it flying off its hinges. He pushes himself up, stepping out of the safe.
Caroline comes whooshing in, eyes wide as she takes in the state of the safe, the way Stefan is still down, cowering from the sudden burst of luminosity.
"What did you do to him?" she demands.
Klaus' mouth inches upward into the barest hint of a grin, no mirth whatsoever. "I fixed him."
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twig-tea · 2 months
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TsukuTabe S2 Is Perfection
I’ve been waffling about what to write about Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna s2, which completed last week (and which we have access to at all thanks to the hard work of @furritsubs). I have had to just give up on getting across how much this show means to me; there's no way I'll be able to communicate these feelings with words. Season 1 was excellent but Season 2 was everything I wanted and more that I didn't know I needed. This is going to be more disjointed than usual because I don't know how to be coherent about this show (and because tumblr ate my first two attempts).
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At its core, Tsukuritai Onna to Tabtetai Onna asks what if we were all just a little bit more conscientious and kind to one another? What if women were given space to be themselves and to make the choices that were best for them? This is the world of TsukuTabe, and I'm so grateful to have had the chance to inhabit it over these last four weeks. 
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I have so much love for the way Nomoto and Kasuga develop their relationship in conjunction with their relationships with the other women in their lives. Nagumo, Sayama, and Yako are integral to the success of Nomoto and Kasuga’s relationship, and they're also important relationships for the happiness of Nomoto and Kasuga in their own right. The found family vibes are immaculate. 
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The conflict between Kasuga and Nomoto this season was so perfectly them; the way they struggled with the transition from friends to lovers and being two people who are kind and giving in a relationship together and how that requires honesty and trust were both familiar conflicts that hit me hard in the feels. 
Kasuga's conflict with her family also hit me really hard. I once did the wrong thing and showed up to support my family in caring for someone who abused me, and it was a horrible experience that was ruinous to my mental health and took years to get over (and in the end they had to find a different solution anyway, which they could have done in the first place). Watching Kasuga refuse to make a similar decision, standing strong in the face of the social pressures of her parents and her aunt was so healing for me. And then to have her decision affirmed by someone of her parent's age? I sobbed in those scenes. 
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I also loved the way this season handled Nagumo’s anxiety issues and how she was given space to decide to get professional help on her own time and terms. The way her parents tried to help was also very familiar to me and realistic, and it was just a little heartbreaking how they tried and didn't understand how their attempts at helping added pressure in a way that wasn't helpful. 
The way this show covers this important beats in a person's life through these small, everyday moments, and in such a gentle way, is what I love so much about it. The show itself makes a safe space so that these subjects can come up and not feel overwhelming. 
And it's also really important to me that all of the characters get to have these moments. Sakae not only reflects on her insensitivity and the unfairness of Japan not having marriage equality, but she also reflects on the pressures on her to marry and whether she actually wants that for herself. Fujita not only helps Kasuga gain proxy acceptance for her choices but gets the same back for herself around her decision to divorce. All of these women live in ways that invoke social stigma, and the way this show gives explicit permission to these women to live their best lives is both cathartic and critical.
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I can't end this disjointed ramble without talking about the character I most identified with this season, Yako. Yako is an older, self-actualized asexual lesbian who makes friends with Nomoto on the Internet, recommends lesbian films to her, and mostly listens and affirms as Nomoto goes through her own process of discovering herself. I ran a GSA and have been on the Internet a long time, I've been in Yako’s position a lot (though I can only aspire to be as kind and wise). She is so patient and so genuinely happy for Nomoto when she and Kasuga get together, and she seems so quietly thrilled to have more wonderful people in her life willing to indulge her random party ideas. Her sharing a connection to a LGBTQ+-friendly real estate agency while being angry on their behalf that she even has to was perfection. 
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It's so important that these characters say the things they say aloud. I want to inscribe every sentence of this show into everyone's brains. This show is perfect, and lovely, and a warm bath, and a hug, and a cup of your favourite warm beverage perfectly fixed to your liking all in one. If you haven't done yourself the favour of watching yet, I highly recommend that you do so immediately. 
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[not an ID: Real footage of the entire audience's satisfaction and catharsis after watching TsukuTabe S2. Actual ID in alt text].
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clementianos-blog · 1 month
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From the beginning, Tim and Steph had a kind of chemistry in their lack of chemistry. They were very different - backgrounds, perspectives, family influences, etc. About all they had in common was that they were only children with family troubles, but even those similarities were abundantly different once you scratched the surface even a tad.
But what I find interesting, and seriously questionable, is how their actual relationship comes about. Steph repeatedly makes choices that aren't the best while "trying to help" and Tim repeatedly has to correct her. He's more-or-less acting like a conscience to her. I guess you could look at this as being that strong part of Tim's personality that drives him to help others. It's why he's Robin. Unlike his predecessors (and successors), the main reason he became Robin was to help Batman; helping everyone else was a secondary (and Batman's primary). To Batman, Tim's Robin is the "I'll help you so you can help everyone else." It's ingrained into him to see the shortcomings of others and he intrinsically wants to help.
There are multiple moments in which Steph is ready to walk away from a lowlife thug who is vulnerably facing certain death - and Tim explains why they need to help. But that's a major theme in the Batman comics in general, so it doesn't really fit the bill of what we're talking about here in a way that is unique to Steph and Tim.
But this does:
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Steph is willing to steal two Zesti sodas from a convenience store after she and Tim cleared out the bad guys. He sees no problem in taking the Zestis as long as they will be compensating the store for them rather than stealing. He probably thinks "we COULD go to another, open store, but I'd rather help this one out" or even "best to be seen as little as possible" etc. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that he anticipates that she's thinking about stealing them. He asks "this your treat?" to put the burden on her since she was the one who offered to pick them up.
This could also be his subtle and not-enough way of pushing the "this is not a date" vibes he's been lazily humming out at her lately. Which brings us to the scene that follows this directly:
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Tim has been emotionally cheating on Ariana for quite some time, relying on Steph for the emotional pick-me-ups and help-me-outs as well as leading her on. He's reflected on this a few times and even tried to do something about it several times before this point. But here, he is pretty open about his resignation.
This is the kind of thing teens do a lot - really, everyone does it at some point or another. We redefine our understanding of the world, of our morals, of our personal resolve to suit what feels nice. Exactly this is why it's a very good piece of advice to write down your goals in distinct, objective terms and keep them visible to you when you make them. If you say you aren't eating sweets for a month, be specific about what that means. If sugar in your coffee is an allowance, then say so. If desserts, pastries, jams and jellies, and candy are not allowed, then say so. Without being specific... we start to think things like "Well, a blueberry muffin isn't really a sweet (even though this one is covered in sugar crystals and tastes sweeter than the candybar I had last month)."
I'm not really cheating on Ariana. I haven't held Steph's hand. I haven't kissed - er, I haven't intentionally kissed Steph.
The problem is often that we don't see the danger of this stage. Just like Steph saw no danger in stealing two Zestis from the convenience store, Tim sees no danger in letting Steph treat their outings as dates. It's just a buck. It's just a game. It's not serious. No one's getting hurt by it.
And this is a problem for the exact reason Tim gives Steph.
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What Steph did was so small, so simple, and seemingly so harmless. The shopkeeper probably would have handed them a case of Zestis each for what they did. But the shopkeeper isn't there.
Steph has Tim here to help her understand why it's wrong to compromise even an inch of her integrity.
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What Tim is doing is so much worse. SO much worse. There is no justification, no excuse, and no good reason other than "this makes me happy right now."
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But unlike Steph, Tim doesn't have a... well... Tim to put it in perspective. To help him see why it's wrong. Why it starts like this, and soon he'll be bending all the rules.
Instead, Tim has a Steph who is the one dragging him into this quagmire where he's blatantly cheating on his girlfriend and cannot see it for what it is.
And yes, it's clear he can see that it's wrong - just like Steph knew that taking the sodas wasn't really right. But just like with the sodas, neither of them recognized the action for what it truly was: stealing/cheating. Once put into that context, Steph immediately pays. If it were simplified like that to Tim, he would cut it off. The end. No more. I'll either say goodbye to Ariana, or I'll say goodbye to Steph.
But he sees something else: he feels happiness, he sees two happy girls, and he thinks, "No one's getting hurt here. It's not really right but it's not like I'm, you know..."
It starts like that. And soon you're bending all the rules.
TimSteph has a lot of positive qualities to it, but the fact that Steph's a project of Tim's - to build into an upstanding citizen from the rough place she's been raised - means that he needs to stay in the role of her pillar of morality. If he doesn't, as we see, then he falls himself.
Tim managed to say no to the Zesti, but the apple was just too tempting.
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copperbadge · 4 months
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Supposedly, people with Anphantasia don't get scared reading scary stories, or at least not much. Is that true with you if you ever read Horror?
You know, I'd never thought about it, but I suppose it is. To an extent, anyway.
Follows a discussion of my relationship to horror prose and media; if you don't know what aphantasia is, as many people coming to this tumblr don't, I have a tag for it here that may help -- it's basically the lack of a "mind's eye", a visual imagination, so I hear/read things and don't see an image of them in my mind. If you are scoffing right now that nobody actually has a mind's eye, congratulations, you may also have aphantasia. The articles linked in the tag will be useful to you.
I have definitely been scared by prose before but it's very rare, and not much since I was a child, when the stories I found scary were preying on fears I already had. I loved the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books, and I think it's not unusual that I found the illustrations more frightening than the prose, but the only story that ever scared me was the one about the vampire who kept trying to grab a kid through a window -- because I had a window over my bed in my childhood bedroom and I was terrified I'd look up to see someone looking down at me through it. Likewise, as an adult, the only content in horror I find scary is what I think of as "mind horror" -- the loss of faculty or the loss of awareness of faculty (think the end scene of the novel Hannibal with the brain). Which is one of my biggest fears.
I don't read much horror because generally I get bored, which has in the past made me feel faintly appalled at myself, but which now makes more sense. Certainly I have no interest in slasher-style gore in prose, because I find it uninteresting and it goes on a really long time, while I don't watch it in movies/TV because the visual is upsetting -- so if I was getting the visual from the prose I might react more emotionally. I am a fan of Stephen King but mostly his early work where he was shorter on suspense, and I was reading it because I liked the ideas and the characters. Carrie is super interesting because of the personalities involved, not because of the violence or the horror aspects. But I've never seen a movie adaptation and I can imagine I would be deeply unsettled if not distraught by certain scenes if depicted visually. Although I didn't find the Hannibal TV series super upsetting (I mostly was put off by how bad I imagined Will smelled) so perhaps body horror just doesn't do it for me.
This may also explain my hard-no on zombie media, because I'm not scared at all of zombies, I just find them boring and gross, and that leaves the post-apocalyptic humans. My hard-no on post-apocalypse anything is an aversion to imagining the end of my world, though, which isn't visual, it's conceptual, and not scary, just upsetting.
Like, people kept suggesting Zombies Run! to me when I was taking up running and -- well, one, I needed the music to keep my pace, I didn't want it interrupted. But two, I didn't see why a bunch of random groaning noises would make me run faster. If you could see zombies chasing you in your head, yeah, that'd probably be more motivating.
It kind of explains too why I haven't written much horror. I used to be very curious about how people worked out what's "scary" in horror prose and I guess part of the curiosity came from not experiencing it myself. It's tough to know how to write a scary story when stories don't scare you.
To be clear, I definitely experience fear. Reading Stephen King's "It" didn't really scare me, but there were scary moments in the film adaptations. I startle at jumpscares. There's plenty of stuff in real life that I'm scared of. And even podcasts -- I don't get mental images during podcasts like apparently most people do, but Magnus Archives got me with the "digging into your pre-existing fears" thing once or twice, and while I didn't finish The Left Right Game (I just got bored) the hitchhiker scene definitely got me. But I think, unless it's playing on something conceptual that already existed, yeah, I don't find prose particularly frightening.
Huh. This feels like the kind of thing that could have a significant impact on my creative output if I could crowbar my way into it. Knowing that I as an aphantic don't need descriptions that other people do has already, I think, impacted my editing process, but this feels like it maybe would somehow have an effect on the whole thing -- the fact that I don't experience emotions when reading in the same way other people do because I don't get the visuals is something to meditate on.
How the fuck did I ever even become a writer. Like what's up with that.
(Ironically it was X-Files fanfic. X-Files, a show that very much did scare me, for which I wrote and read a lot of fanfic, none of which did...yikes. Well, that's something to meditate on for the weekend.)
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creedslove · 1 year
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BETRAYED - CHAPTER SEVEN (SPECIAL EDITION)
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Pedro Pascal x f!reader
Summary: Pedro invites you to be his plus one for the night but his attention is caught by another woman and leaves you with a broken heart
Warnings: angst, age gap, established friendship, unrequited love/one sided feelings, a little bit of fluff
A/N: PLEASE ATTENTION
As I said in a previous post, I had two plot lines to follow in this story and I couldn't make up my mind which one would be better. I asked help from a friend and though she helped me choose, I just wasn't feeling the story so I decided to write the two versions and let you all decide which one you prefer. The thing is, I woke up feeling exhausted and in a bad mood, I wanted to write to help me process my feelings but it turned out pure shit but I don't have enough energy to try and write it better, so you all get ready because this is not my best work.
Basically, you will read two drabbles that will take the story to different turns and at the end all you have to do is vote :D
A/N part 2: I still can't manually tag people on the works because I use the app and it won't let me do it, that's why I don't have a tag list at all!
1.8k words
PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE | PART SIX
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FIRST VERSION
After Pedro made sure Liev had left your house for good and locked all the doors just in case, you finally allowed yourself to cry. You felt such a turmoil of feelings within and it all clawed your throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. You hugged yourself as you sat down heavily onto the couch, trying to process what had happened.
You shook your head, your eyes closed shut as you wanted to undo things. If you could turn back in time, you'd do things so differently.
Pedro returned to the living room, immediately rushing to you and wrapping his arms around your body. He had washed his face and now the blood had been wiped off, you could see his face hadn't been damaged apart from a darkening bruise under his eye. He rubbed your back in a comforting way, lifting your chin up and staring into your eyes with worry.
"It's alright, cariño, things will be fine" he tried reassuring you, his hand finding yours and holding it tight. "I'll make sure you're safe, princesa"
"Nothing will be fine, Pedro. Don't you fucking understand it? You ruined everything once again!" You couldn't control yourself and simply shouted at him, letting all the anger and confusion slip out of your tongue, even if you weren't sure if he was guilty or not. Surely he was, but it wasn't just about that, and you knew it. You were lost and you had nowhere to turn.
He frowned and bit his lips, clearing his throat "Y/N, I know you're scared and confused about everything that happened, but I'm here for you, he won't bother you again" he assured you but you were unable to hold back things any longer.
"It is not all about you, Pedro. I know you got your head far up in your ass now that you are such a big star and how your ego is all the time well-fed by all the attention you got from the world, but not every single thing that goes on in my life is about you, Pedro. I had made things clear, I had told you I didn't want you, and you came here, you made that scene in front of Liev and now he hates me!" You said angrily.
"Are you telling me that after he threatened to beat you up, you're worried about him? Worried about his reaction? You told me you weren't even his girlfriend, why is it so important to you?" He asked angrily at how weird you were acting.
You bit your lips, trying to hold the news but you couldn't any longer. You had to let it out, your heart ached for some kind of comfort, some relief after keeping such a secret. Blinking away your tears, you looked at him.
"Because I'm pregnant, Pedro!!!" You raised your voice once more.
•••
Pedro felt as if time had stopped for a moment. He had heard your words, he had comprehended them, but it still didn't feel real. He tried processing it several times, but it didn't seem true to him. He was silent for a couple of minutes, and didn't dare say anything at first.
He noticed his mouth was dry and you sort of waited for an answer. He scratched the back of his neck and carefully chose his words.
"I'm guessing the baby's Liev's… and that was what that dinner was about, correct?" He saw you nodding and continued "and I assume it wasn't planned…"
You finally gathered some courage to speak and nodded "of course it wasn't, but I got sick about a month ago, got some really strong antibiotics and somehow they messed up with the effect of my birth control" you cried "and now you fucked up everything because he walked on us and of course he will never believe the baby is his. I mean, I don't even know if I'll keep the baby in the first place but still, I don't expect you to understand, you never wanted a family of your own-" you stopped yourself, realizing you were snapping at him, remembering how delicate the subject had been to him the time you had your argument. You swallowed hard and sighed "all I'm trying to say is that I don't know what to do, I'm lost and alone"
Pedro immediately softened up, he completely ignored some of your harsh words and sat closer to you. He kissed your temple and rubbed your arms
"You're not alone, Y/N" he said gently "I get that you are terrified, especially after Liev's reaction, I think you should follow your heart and decide what to do with the baby, I'll support you, but if you decide to keep it, I'll be by your side as a friend…" he said and felt his heart burning in his chest at the mere thought of all the dreams he's had about you and him having a family together, the ones he always thought that would never come true, but now, destiny being a bitch, seemed to offer him on a silver plate.
"... Or I can be by your side as the father, for the two of you" he gently placed his hand on your stomach, leaving you speechless.
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SECOND VERSION
You looked at Pedro while he focused on the drive home, you were tightening your jaw, still unbelievably pissed at everything that happened. That happened because of him, by the way.
The way Liev stormed out of your home after punching Pedro a couple of times when he walked on you two. You hated yourself for not resisting him, but how could you? Yes, he was a dick, he had broken your heart but he had showered you in all those stupid love words, which you never believed in, but when he shot you those puppy eyes and you felt your body against his, it was so damn impossible to fight back. If you concentrated hard enough, you could still feel parts of your body tingling, a longing sensation on your lower stomach, the warmth and that funny pressure on your core. Pedro was addictive and you were afraid of letting yourself go.
If such a scene hadn't happened, you could've just told him to go home, and preferably reminded him to never come back into your life, but after how violent things got with Liev, you agreed maybe it would be safer to spend the night at Pedro's.
You weren't in love with Liev but you two were having a pretty nice affair, it was satisfying on both ends and you guys were having fun. If once again, weren't for Pedro's intermission, you would've had some nice dinner and would end up in bed. Of course, you could also end up in Pedro's bed, but no matter how much your physical side ached for it, you wouldn't give in, he was still the same guy who left you in the middle of a party to go home by yourself so he could have his way with some skank. And he was still the same guy who got you going in a makeout session that earned you the end of your affair and a threat.
But then, you looked at Pedro, the way he drove focused, though you could see his face already bruising. Even if he'd cleaned up the blood, you knew that wouldn't look very good in the morning.
"C-can we stop?" You asked him, breaking the silence as you pointed at the drive-thru burger place just a few meters away.
He raised his eyebrow, letting a small groan of pain "really? Are you hungry, Y/N?" He asked and you groaned in response, not caring at all
"You ruined my dinner, it's the least you can do" you gritted your teeth, though you didn't want to admit the whole reason why you wanted to make that stop wasn't the burger nor the fries, you were actually thinking of the extra portion of ice you ordered. And as soon as you got it, you got your jacket out, poured the ice on your sleeve and made a very lame ice pad, but it was the only thing you could do. You gently placed it on Pedro's face, listening to his ounce of pain and couldn't help but let out a chuckle, which didn't go unnoticed by the man.
"What's so funny?" He asked, feeling a little annoyed.
"You sound just like a kid, come on Pedrito, you're stronger than that" you couldn't help yourself but let out another chuckle and feel surprise to see him smiling as well.
"You're right, mariposa, I should take it like a man, just like I did to protect you and I would do it a hundred times more" he extended his arm and took some stranded hair off your face. The man went serious again and looked at you "I'm sorry, I really am. I know I fucked things up for you, I couldn't control myself when I found your little card, it moved me, it made me believe you still had feelings for me, but I don't regret doing what I did, as I will have another thing to cherish about you for the rest of my life, and that at least we know that guy isn't good enough for you" he honestly said it.
"I mean, I know you think I'm not good for you either, but now you can see you deserve better, princesa" he said and leaned in, kissing your lips one last time again. He gently took your hands off his face and started the car, driving home.
You spent the rest of the trip quiet, your heart tightening in your chest as you replayed this last moment with you, there were so many things you wanted to tell him, so many times you wished you'd just think to hell with everything else and surrender to your passion, but you stopped yourself. You had to be strong.
You trusted your gut, and it always told you to be wary of Pedro, things had never been easy between the two of you, why would it start being easy now?
You knew you'd taken the correct decision when you both got inside and you found the skank from the gala sitting on his couch. She didn't look that great without her attire and scandalous makeup on, but you could see the appeal why a man would want her.
You immediately went serious and stared at Pedro, who seemed confused as well.
"Well, you never called, never replied to my texts, so I had to come over, Pedro," the woman said before either of you could do it.
"Listen, Melissa, we don't have anything going on, it was a one time thing, and it's over…" he stopped mid sentence the moment Melissa got up and took off her coat.
Her round bump was visible thanks to the very tight sweater she was wearing.
"Oh yeah? Well, you should've thought of that before using me as a cum dumpster, Pedro, because I'm pregnant"
_____
A/N: now it's your turn to choose: which plot do you want in the story? As the rest will be written accordingly.
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guardianspirits13 · 4 months
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Ok now for a list of things that I'm kind of iffy about or wish they had kept from the books. It's worth noting that I can't think of a single show exclusive scene they added that I did not like, and most of the changes were integrated flawlessly.
Starting out, the pacing. I'm hoping this gets better with time, especially given that the second episode has much more time to breathe. The whole first episode felt a little cramped, and some of the exposition felt a bit... exposition-y. I don' t think there is much they could have done to get around this though so I'm not gonna dwell on it.
As a fan of the series, I love how they introduced the structure and function of the PJO world with the intro, but I think the jump from "Percy sees things" to "everything is all real" felt a bit abrupt. I am curious what first time fans think about this, and again the first episode covers a lot more ground page-wise than ep 2.
Manchild Gabe... I am not sure how I feel about this. In the books he seemed downright threatening and even with Percy's 12yo bravado, he was still an intimidating figure. His bickering with Sally seemed more like your typical dysfunctional relationship than a power imbalance... both can be harmful in their own way, but I'm still undecided on how much giving Sally a bit more agency in her relationship with him effects the larger story. The whole "not all monsters look like monsters" thing works well in the books with Gabe, but I guess they were redirecting it to foreshadow Luke's betrayal? I'm not sure.
...which brings me to Sally. I was unsure about the casting, but she has earned her stay to me. I always imagined her as a bit more subdued, especially with the more intense iterations of Gabe. She's kind and gentle and has a rebellious streak, but as worried as she might be for Percy she hides it inside of herself. I think her being a bit more expressive as a character works in this setting though, especially since we aren't seeing her through Percy's kid colored lenses. She feels a bit less like the perfect, kind, and understanding mother Percy sees, and a bit more like a real-life single mother trying to keep some of that childhood wonder alive despite everything. She does seem younger than I would have expected, but that's a nitpick on my end. I think she is one character that I will always have a separate book/show counterpart for in my mind.
Ok. Now for Clarisse. Out of all the characters I was skeptic about, I think she's the only one who didn't win me over. This is a writing issue, nothing at all to do with the actress. She was characterized more as a 'queen bee' type mean girl than a bully who picks fights just to feel worthy of her father's approval. She would be better fit for a vindictive daughter of Aphrodite than a daughter of Ares. My mind might be changed in the future but we got most of her scenes in these first two episodes so I'm doubtful. The one moment that had potential was when Percy broke her spear, but the Clarisse I know would not back off just because there is an audience.
There was no hellhound... I was kinda looking forward to it, and it does emphasize that even camp isn't really safe for Percy and is a catalyst for both his quest and the idea that there is a traitor. I can kind of see why the cut it for thematic purposes so Percy feels safe for once in his life, but that's only if I squint.
The scene cuts. I know, I know they're supposed to mimic book chapters. I get it. But it just doesn't work for me, it feels like there's a lack of establishing shots and the black screen is long enough you think the tv is buffering. It's an interesting idea in concept, but the execution falls flat.
OH also as far as things that were missing- the 3 fates. I know this is in the show since it was in the trailers, but I'm curious as to where they're gonna put it now.
Anyways minor nitpicks aside these two episodes were an emotional roller coaster and absolute masterpieces of television cinema.
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redheadspark · 2 years
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can you write something based on joe's interview with jimmy fallon? where he asks about your relationship (you are also part of the cast of stranger things), And joe is so cute talking about you and the audience loves that. thank you ❤️
A/N: This is CUTE! I love this idea!! Thanks for this anon!
Star Struck
Summary: You loved watching you boyfriend make his television debut, but you weren't expecting to get a shout out on national television.
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Warnings: Pure fluff!
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You're gonna kill it tonight, babe! I'll be watching from home!
Love you and I wish you were here!
You placed your phone down and watched on bated breath as your boyfriend was on TV, national TV mind you, with his first talk show appearance. You were at the hotel in New York, watching in your pajamas at the screen illuminated Joe's face next to Jimmy Fallon. This was a huge deal, not just because he was there with Jimmy Fallon and millions were watching it at the same time, but he has never done a talk show before.
Joe was a nervous wreck, that's for sure.
His role as Eddie Munson launched him into the stratosphere of stardom, becoming one of the most popular characters in Stranger Things and in Netflix history. Even though he made it through just one season of the hit show, he still made a splash. A big enough splash to be in a talk show over in America.
He asked you to come with him to the US, finding you to be the best moral support for him because this was a huge deal. You didn't mind coming, just as excited for him to be on TV and to talk about Stranger Things. You two met on set and hit it off instantly, you thought he was the kindest man you've ever met and quite funny too.
It felt like a fever dream, seeing him laughing with Jimmy Fallon and the audience clapping for him. Sure he looked nervous, but he deserved every second on that screen.
"So, its' gotta be hard walking down the street and being out and about without someone yelling at you or calling you Eddie, right?" Jimmy asked as you leaned back against the pillows in your hotel room. Joe laughed and nodded his head, rubbing the back of his neck nervously and almost having a flushed of redness on his neck.
"Umm, it is yeah. I find it hard to walk down the street every once in awhile, especially back in London. But I don't mind it at all, really! The fans are so lovely with me and very kind, I don't get bombarded with then a lot when I'm out and about. Especially when I'm with my girlfriend and--"
"Woah woah woah!" Jimmy said in a shout as the audiences screamed and clapped. Your heart stopped for moment when Joe mentioned you, Joe grinning from ear to ear while the studio erupted in sound and exclamation.
"You're a taken man?!" Jimmy asked, Joe just nodding his head almost sheepishly as Jimmy gasped in a joking tone, "Joe, you're breaking hearts all over now, man!"
"I know, I know! But my girlfriend is an amazing woman" Joe explained, you sitting up a bit and watched his eyes. The sincerity and calmness was there since you were the topic, which felt like a surreal dream sine this was live television. Joe took in a long breath, almost looking dreamy.
"How long have you two been together?" Jimmy asked, seemingly interested in the topic of Joe having a girlfriend.
"We met on set during Stranger Things actually," Joe answered, his voice no longer nervous but smooth and calm. As if he was talking to you, "She was an extra, my first scene I filmed was in the cafeteria at Hawkins High. We both started taking between takes and.....I thought she was amazing and lovely,"
The audience melted, "Awwww" was heard in the crowd as you were smiling sheepishly from ear to ear.
"It was nice talking to her between takes and at the end of a long day, we're both homebodies and we love music since we have the same tastes in genres. Plus she's witty and can make me laugh, which I found quite attractive if I do say so myself," Joe went on with Jimmy, his face was lit up so warm and so relaxed as he was speaking about you. You were thinking back to those moments on set, meeting him for the first time in his wig and shaking hands. He was just as smart, you two talking about bands and concerts you went to before the Pandemic hit.
Your talks went into conversations, then longer talked outside his trailer at the end of the day and even meeting up for coffee on days off. Those were the best moments with him, laughing so hard from a joke or just drinking in each other's company.
"Who knew finding love on the set of a 80's horror show would ever happen?!" Jimmy asked in a joking tone, the rest of the audience laughing as Joe did too.
"It's quite the love story on set for sure, but I do love her and I find meeting her was the best thing out of the whole experience. Even though the show and all of it was great, but still.... meeting my girlfriend on Stranger Things was the cherry on top," Joe confessed in a sheepish shrug, the audience once again melting from his words. You felt like you could meet yourself, all that love you had for him magnified tenfold as he was talking about you, to millions of people watching the show, and expressing how he loved you and adored you.
Within a minute, your phone was blowing up from the other co-stars of the show, they must have been watching too since they were reaching out to you to see and hear your reaction. But you were letting your phone ring text after text, you eyes were on your boyfriend as they moved onto a new topic.
No, he wasn't just a boyfriend. The love of your life was more like it.
The End.
Sequel: Love at First Take
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misc-obeyme · 9 months
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Be Careful of Bedheads
For once in my life, I'm actually ahead on a series lol. I wrote this days ago, Simeon's is already done, and Satan's is partway finished. And these are the last three of this series. Though I have a couple extras I wanted to do so maybe I'll have some bonus ones? Maybe I'll do another secret scene smut sequel? I'm thinking about it.
Anyway, I'm actually really fond of Belphie. He gives me such petulant emo boy vibes and that is so fun to write.
I'd also like to mention that I took some artistic liberties in the description of Lucifer's office. When I looked at the picture of it again, there is indeed a sort of balcony area for the bookshelves. I just expanded on that a little bit. I also tried to keep the description of MC's hair vague so it could look like anything. Not sure how successful that was, but I did try!
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GN!MC x Belphegor
Warnings: just a little bit of kissing at the end
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BELPHEGOR Hey. I forgot to say when I passed you by in the hallway earlier. Your hair's sticking up in the back.
MC Yours too, Belphie.
BELPHEGOR Huh? Argh, you're right. You should have told me earlier. Though I suppose I don't mind as much if we're matching.
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You laughed and shook your head at Belphie's texts. Still, you thought you should probably fix your hair before the two of you went out for the day. You turned around and started back down the hallway.
Just as you were about to pass the twins' room, Belphie came out, his hair just as messed up as it was when you saw it earlier.
He looked at you with a petulant expression, as if daring you to say something about it.
You tried to hold in a laugh while you grabbed his hand. "C'mon, let me fix it for you."
Belphie looked like he was about to protest, but he didn't get the chance as you started back down the hall, dragging him along behind you. After a minute, his hand closed around yours and he let you lead the way.
You pulled him into the bathroom and stopped in front of the mirror. You looked at yourself standing side by side with Belphie, hands still clasped, both of you with your hair sticking out oddly in the back. You tried very hard not to laugh again, the smile fighting with the edges of your mouth.
Belphie was frowning. He closed his eyes and sighed. "It's fine, you can laugh."
You finally gave in, laughing into the hand that wasn't holding Belphie's. "Come on, it's pretty funny."
Belphie gave you one of his soft laughs and your stomach fluttered as he finally smiled. "Okay, it is kinda funny."
You let go of his hand, picked up a brush from the counter, and moved behind him. You ran your fingers through his hair for a moment. Then you used the brush, carefully ensuring that the strands were no longer askew. You took your time, savoring the closeness and the excuse to touch Belphie's soft hair.
But you couldn't brush his hair too long without it getting weird, so when you were satisfied with how it was laying, you put the brush down.
You looked at him in the mirror again and folded your arms. "There," you said. "That's better, right?"
Belphie ran a hand down his hair. "Yeah," he said. Then he picked up the brush. "Now let me fix yours."
You snatched the brush out of his hands. "No way," you said. "I can do it myself! It's not as bad as yours anyway."
"Come on, MC," Belphie said, taking the brush back from you. "I let you do mine. It's only fair."
You huffed. "Fine," you said.
You told Belphie exactly what he needed to do to fix the issue with your hair and he complied easily, using whatever tools or products you instructed him to use. The feeling of his fingers on your scalp was relaxing and you found yourself feeling a little sleepy by the time he was done.
"There," he said. "Now you're done, too. Do you still want to go shopping today?"
"If you still want to go, then sure," you said.
Belphie shrugged. "I don't mind, but you seem kind of sleepy. Are you sure you don't want to take a nap instead?"
You looked at him askance. "Are you sure you don't want to take a nap instead?"
"I always want to take a nap," Belphie said. "But if we do, it might mess up our hair again."
"And we can always fix it again," you said.
Belphie didn't seem to need much more encouragement than that. This time he grabbed you by the hand, pulling you out of the bathroom and back down the hallway.
"Where are we going?" you asked as he took you right past his own bedroom door.
"We can't nap in my room or your room or even the attic," he said. "Everybody will think to look for us in those places. But Lucifer's out of the house today, so…"
"So?" you asked, confused.
Belphie didn't elaborate, only pulled you along. Eventually you found yourself in Lucifer's office.
"Um," you said as Belphie continued to lead you through the room.
He took you to one of the sets of stairs that went up to a small balcony above the room. From below, it looked like this was only a thin balcony with a set of bookshelves, but as you followed Belphie to the end of it, you found it opened up just a little and created a kind of small alcove by the window.
Already in this alcove was a pile of pillows and blankets, creating a little nest.
"I sneak up here sometimes when Lucifer's gone," Belphie said. "Because nobody ever thinks to look for me here."
You laughed softly and shook your head. "I should have known you would have a little hideaway for napping like this. Does Lucifer know about it?"
Belphie sighed. "He didn't at first, but he figured it out. He didn't make me move all my blankets, but he usually doesn't let me stay when he's working."
Belphie pulled you down onto the soft collection of pillows, tugging a blanket over both of you as he settled by your side. The two of you faced each other and you snuggled down into Belphie's chest as he wrapped an arm around your back.
You felt Belphie's fingers on your head again, caressing you gently like he was fixing your hair again. It was such a nice, soft feeling that you felt your eyelids getting heavy already.
Just before you felt like you might drift off, you propped yourself up on an elbow. Belphie looked up at you, startled, not moving.
You watched his eyes for a moment before leaning forward and kissing him.
Belphie was so surprised, he gasped against your lips, but a second later you felt his arms around you again, pulling you down on top of him. He responded easily to the feeling of you, keeping his mouth open, allowing you to deepen things if you wanted to.
Maybe you did. But Belphie was right. Nobody found you there in Lucifer's office until much later, when Lucifer finally came home from wherever he had been. He climbed the stairs to find you and Belphie asleep in each other's arms, but instead of waking you up, he simply took a book off the shelf and went back down to his desk.
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others in this series:
Mammon | Barbatos | Solomon | Lucifer | Simeon
Leviathan | Asmodeus | Diavolo | Beelzebub | Satan
masterlist | Thank you for reading!
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