Tumgik
#Including the fact that—unfortunately and I hate it!!!!—my name is on there
fatuismooches · 11 months
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principiis amoris.
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synopsis: In other words, five times Dottore swore he hated you and the one time he realized it was the opposite.
includes: dottore w/ gn! reader
notes: I wanted to try my hand at these 5+1 fics, and Dottore seemed to be the best candidate. Behold, 6k+ words of fluff. Reader and Dottore are complete menaces (and not very good people) and you also throw a book at someone.
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I. blindness
Much to anyone’s surprise, Zandik was having what he would call a good day. Today was the last day of all of his especially boring and easy classes, the illegal parts he secretly ordered came in, and he would be able to stay in his dorm for a while before classes started again. A break from these all these so-called scholars would be much appreciated. He was growing rather tired of them and was greatly looking forward to the much-needed retreat of progressing his research. He could feel it already - the sweet sensation of tinkering with the new parts quickened his pace.
What he was not expecting was his door to be open, voices and rustling noises coming from inside. Immediately a frown appeared and his good feeling was lost. Quickly, he entered the room and saw an unknown figure donning the Akademiya’s robes, and an academic counselor he recognized standing in his room. Now he was glad he made sure to put his tools away. Ones that were totally not prohibited.
“What is the meaning of this?” He didn’t try to hide the loathing in his voice.
The counselor shifted in place, clearly not wanting to be here anymore due to his presence. You, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care. In fact, Zandik could see that you were smiling.
“Ah, hello Zandik. Good to see you are doing well,” she lied through her teeth. “This here is [Name], your-”
“Your new roommate!” you chimed in. The counselor shrunk in her place even more, probably regretting all her life choices now as Zandik’s laser gaze was on her now. 
“I thought I made myself clear when I informed you that I did not want anyone in my dorm?”
“Yes, well, as per the rules of the Akademiya, every scholar should try to have a roommate for the purpose of cooperation…” Her voice became progressively smaller as Zandik continued to burn his gaze onto her, “a-and collaboration. Regardless of your thoughts, [Name] has to try to dorm with someone, and that someone happens to be you.” You nodded your head in agreement as the counselor spoke.
“So please, um, try to get along!” She quickly excused herself and scurried out of the room, leaving the two of you alone. You smiled at him yet again, sticking your hand out for a handshake, to which he only spared a glance and turned away.
“Pleased to meet you! I’m excited to live with you!”
“We’ll see about that,” he scoffed. You’d be out of here in less than a week, just like the few other roommates he had. But to think he had to spend his break with a nuisance in his room now? That irritated him to no end. Though what confused him more was your sunny disposition. Quite literally everyone in the Akademiya knew him and acted the complete opposite.
“Hehe, sure. By the way, I call the top bunk bed!”
It was from that moment he knew.
Zandik hated you.
II. relentless
Zandik had been giving you the cold shoulder since the moment you stepped into his (now yours too) dorm. You knew this would be a tough journey, but damn. At least he was good eye candy and wasn’t loud. (If you excused his eerie laughter in the middle of the night.)
On this particular night, Zandik was at his makeshift workbench tinkering with Archon knows what, as usual. Unfortunately, even though you found it to be interesting, you were unfamiliar with all of that mechanical stuff. You always would look at him while he worked, and while he would sometimes snap at you to stop staring, he never actually did anything about it. Today was one of those nights.
“You’ve certainly been at that for a while,” you commented. Zandik showed no sign of reaction.
“You don’t want anything to eat? Or drink?” you continued.
“Don’t have time,” he responded with no hesitation, far too interested in his new play toys, and also wanting to shut down this conversation immediately. But, you didn’t think these were the ones he usually used. You think he kept the deadlier ones hidden away in case you reported him or something.
“To consume something?”
“To make something right now,” he corrected.
“Well, yeah, I know. That’s why I’m going to make it for you,” you clarified, kind of surprised (but also not) that you needed to say it directly. This managed to make your roommate pause.
“So you are offering to cook for me?” he clarified your statement yet again.
“Yes?” This time he freed his hand of items completely and looked you dead in the eye.
“Explain.”
“E-Explain? Well, I mean, we’re roommates and all, habiting the same space. It only makes sense that we do things we each other once in a while.”
“So you expect a transaction.”
“A transaction…? Huh? No! This isn’t some kind of business deal or whatever. No, I do not expect anything back from you. I am doing this for you because I want to. There’s nothing more to it.” There was no response from Zandik, and he was silent as if he was trying to process what you just said, which was rather cute.
“I do not understand.”
You mentally sighed. “That’s fine, for now. I’m gonna whip something up anyway.” Before he could protest further, you disappeared into the tiny kitchen the Akademiya’s dorms provided.
You had to think of a suitable snack. He probably wouldn’t eat it if it was too cumbersome and distracting from whatever he was doing. He needed some kind of finger food… and you had just the idea. You believed that when you were a struggling Akademiya student, it was only natural to have some good recipes up your sleeve.
Samosas. Delicious bite-sized pieces of goodness. Although they would take a bit to make, you didn’t think Zandik would care. He hardly realized the difference between minutes and hours when he was in this kind of scientific state. And you were glad you stocked up the pantry with your own products because you really had no idea how Zandik lived in these conditions.
Soon enough, you had made a portion for him (and secretly snuck a few for yourself) and you had also made a piping hot cup of coffee, a student’s best friend of course. You then plated it and brought it to your roommate, setting it down in front of him wordlessly, to which he seemed surprised.
Zandik did not realize you were even still doing that. He thought you were bluffing. But now that such aromatic food was right in front of him, his stomach came to life and he noticed the dryness of his throat. With squinted eyes, he tentatively picked up one of the samosas and inspected it. (Did he think you poisoned it or something?) But then he popped one into his mouth and began to chew experimentally. His face did not betray his emotions, but your questions were answered by his next actions.
“Hmm,” he said matter-of-factly, before nomming on another samosa. You peered at him from the top bunk bed as he polished off the bowl of samosas rather quickly. Now, he was waiting for the coffee to cool.
“Sooooo, how was my cooking?” you questioned, already internally knowing the answer even if he didn’t admit it.
“It was convenient,” he admitted. Most of the time, Zandik did not cook for himself, as he found the process a waste of time when he could be doing other things. 
“I’m glad. And the taste?”
“It was fine.” Actually, it was far more than fine. The constant consumption of the easiest food to make had dulled his taste buds and made him accustomed to bland food. Though your food was quite tasty, Zandik was not about to let you get a big head now.
“Just fine? Seemed like you scarfed them down pretty quickly,” you teased.
“The quicker I eat, the quicker I am able to devote my full attention to the research,” he corrected you. You pouted but still felt pleased.
“Then I’ll make something for you every day.”
He felt on guard again at your kindness. “Why?”
You raised an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t I already say? ‘Cause we’re roommates and all, and also soon-to-be friends. And friends usually help each other out, yeah? And also because I’m kind of worried how you eat the same thing over and over.” 
He immediately frowned at your proposal. “I am not your friend. And never will be.”
You shrugged your shoulders and moved to lie down instead, pulling the blankets over you. “Ehe, we’ll see. I have a way with words, you know!” You smiled and winked at him, to which you received a deadpan glare. “Good night, Zandik! Oh, and make sure to clean up afterward!”
“Hmph.”
Friend. He toyed with the word and idea in his head, mocking it internally. Friend… friend, as if that could ever be feasible. Of course not.
Zandik hated you.
III. possessiveness 
It had been a while since you moved in with Zandik, and he stopped treating you with disdain. Though, Zandik was Zandik, so you still got a tongue-lashing from time to time. (But you could never take him seriously anymore, which irritated him.)
Lately, though, he had begun to show you some of his research, and even begun to let you tinker with some of his stuff! Only while he was present of course, but you were elated. Though, he seemed to be enjoying this more than you somehow. You could ask one question and suddenly he’d be on a tangent. But you were just happy he was talking to you.
You had been upgraded from hated stranger to tolerable stranger to okay acquaintance in Zandik’s eyes. You had insisted on calling him your friend, to which he still did not understand, but for some reason he allowed it. Perhaps it was because it felt nice.
Actually, you were a helpful, okay acquaintance. You frequently looked over his notes for him, correcting spelling and grammar errors from when he scribbled so fast. Tidied up his bed and work space too. The best part was that you had begun to run errands for him so he didn’t need to leave the dorm himself. After these series of events, you had declared yourself his assistant without even asking him first, but he supposed that was okay. He valued usefulness. And maybe your company a bit, too. And although he enjoyed silence the most, maybe he liked how nice your voice was in the background.
Today was one of those days where he waited for you to get back from an errand. It was quick and easy, and the seller wasn’t too far away. Like always, he occupied himself with his work and awaited your return, which proved to be fruitful as usual. But after a while, something did not feel right.
Zandik could not put his finger on it. Why did he have this feeling in the back of his mind? He was quite irritated at this itch he could not reach. Perhaps you would have-
That’s right. You. You. You. Where were you? That’s when he realized that you were gone longer than you usually were. To think that his body and mind would get so accustomed to your presence. He wasn’t sure whether to feel disgusted or not by this feeling.
He wondered what was the holdup. But there was naught he could do except wait. And wait. And wait. Until the jiggle of the doorknob drew his attention and you stepped through the door with the items he requested. 
“Hey, Zandik,” you greeted, locking the door behind you and dropping the bag on the table. He didn’t respond, but you didn’t think that was anything strange since he never cared much for greetings. “Got your stuff,” you continued your normal routine, kicking off your shoes and shedding your sweater, expecting the silence to continue.
“What took you so long?” You almost did a double-take when he spoke.
“What?”
“What took you so long?” he repeated.
“Oh, on the way back, some students stopped me and asked if I could explain some stuff to them. I guess I did take a bit longer than usual. Why?” you questioned. Did he really notice the difference? It hadn’t even been that long, maybe ten to fifteen minutes extra that you took. And plus, it’s not like you two were doing anything together. Just sitting in silence with metal clanking as usual.
When you did not get any response, you raised your eyebrows and tip-toed your way over to him to get a glimpse of his expression. It was mostly empty if you ignored the eye twitching and the downward curve. You had to dig your fingernails into your palm to control the chuckles. 
“Could it be… did you miss little old me, Zandik?”
“Perish the thought,” Zandik immediately interrupted before you could even finish your sentence. “Your whereabouts are not my concern,” he vehemently denied.
“Mhm, alright then.”
“I simply do not see why you need to talk to those so-called scholars. They are not worth the time or energy to even look at.”
Ah, there it was. So he was jealous. You understood now.
“Well, I was just doing what a normal, nice person would do.”
“The fact that you are still living with me proves you’re not normal. As for the nice part, you don’t need to do that for anyone.”
“Oh really? So what should I do, turn a blind eye to everyone else and save the sweet words for you?” you joked.
“Yes. Were you not the one who declared yourself as my assistant? Assistants always follow their seniors,” he stated matter-of-factly.
You were completely surprised at his mini confession, that if you spoke carelessly, you knew you’d stutter. But you weren’t complaining. You ignored the heat on your face, and matched his words.
“Hmm… I would say in that case, you can’t speak to anyone either, but it’s not like you do that anyway,” you said simply, biting down on your lip to prevent laughing. Zandik immediately scowled at your statement.
“I don’t need, want, or care to speak to anyone. But since you clearly need to be around these low-tier scholars, you can get out this instant.” You couldn’t help but double over with giggles now at his defensiveness and landed on Zandik’s bed. He huffed. You loved when he acted like this.
“Ah, I’m so glad I asked to dorm with you,” you giggled with a dopey grin. Zandik paused his work, taking in what you just said.
“You… what?”
You turned to lay on your side and propped yourself up on your arm. “Hmm? Did I say something strange?” you questioned.
“You chose to live here? With me, of your own choice? I knew it was strange when the counselor chose me of all people. Surely there were others available?” Zandik was utterly baffled as he had now temporarily abandoned his tinkering to gauge your expression.
“Yes! Shall I recount the exact events for you?” Without waiting for an answer, you prattled on. “Okay so, I went to the counselor lady and she wanted me to dorm with this random guy, and I was like okay cool, but then I got this little sneak peek of the list she had and I saw your name in fancy handwriting. And then I was like, hey, that’s the smart cute morally dubious guy that I hear people talking about! So then I said, nah, give Zandik to me instead please- hey, why is your face kind of red?” 
You ended your little rambling and sat up straight, leaning into your roommate’s face. “Hey, are you embar-” Before you could finish your sentence, he quickly spun back around to face his desk, trying to block out your incessant giggling.
“Shut up,” he hissed in reply, quick to defend himself. “No one in this school would willingly live with me.” And how dare you call him that? That… c-word.
“Well,” you clutched your chest to prevent any more laughter, “That’s clearly not true anymore, because I’ve been here for quite a while! But wow, your face!” You toppled back onto his bed grinning. He swore you were brain-dead. 
Zandik hated you.
IV. like-mindedness
Zandik did not like being in public. That was something you came to realize and understand rather quickly. For the most part, you had no qualms with it. You were quite content with bantering with him in the privacy of the dorm or in the desert or forest looking for whatever specimens he wanted. There were no distractions, no other people to give you weird stares or looks.
It was another normal day for you, and you came to realize that you’d actually been living with Zandik for quite a while. You liked to think that you two were rather close now. The time had flown by quickly for you, but apparently very long for others. To say people were baffled was an understatement. 
People were shocked, fascinated, intrigued, fearful, any word you could think of, at how you managed to dorm with Zandik and still be alive, mentally and physically. Many people even applauded you for managing to live with Zandik for so long. You had people coming up to you asking for tips on how you confronted your fears so easily. The crazier ones even wanted to write a paper on your mental fortitude. (Thankfully your roommate hadn’t found out about that yet.)
Today, however, the two of you decided to stop by Puspa Café after class. It was a nice day to dine outside, and the coffee and food there was excellent. You had no complaints, especially since this was your first time doing this kind of thing with Zandik. It was going quite well, as the two of you read over your notes in silence until whispers began to penetrate the tranquility.
“Hey, look over there. Is that Zandik?”
“Oh wow, you’re right! This is my first time seeing him outside of class.”
“Really? This is my first time seeing him in general.”
“Well yeah, he only goes to class and then back to his dorm. Everyone knows he’s a freak.” Their blathering continued and you twitched your eye, unable to concentrate. You peaked at Zandik but he looked unbothered.
“We’re right in front of them and can still talk about you like that?” You were simultaneously shocked and impressed at their audacity and stupidity. Zandik simply shrugged his shoulders, his uncaring attitude shining through as he was practically immune to these kinds of scenarios now. You huffed and flipped a page in your book. Sometimes you wished you could borrow some of his ability to not care what people think.
But there was only so much you could take. And Archons above, these scholars and their incessant talking were annoying. You had no idea how Zandik could continue to read so intently with this racket. At least he was more pretty when he was quiet.
Slowly you stood up, and Zandik glanced at you, a bit confused but not too interested, still absorbed in his own book. His eyes returned to the text, but then he heard a loud thump from the side. Now more of his attention was on you, as he saw you now closed the thick book shut.
“[Name]?” he questioned, raising an eyebrow. You were now retrieving some Mora, probably for the bill, and laying it on the table. “Do you have business to attend to?”
“Business? You know what, yes, yes I do,” you chuckled a bit eerily. “But it’ll only take a couple of seconds.” With that, you picked up the textbook and lifted it up and down like a weight. Finally, you positioned yourself properly and raised your arm toward the direction of the student.
You threw the fucking textbook.
It was a sight that Zandik would never forget. A heavy book that would hurt anyone’s arm from lugging it around, flew through the air, and with uncanny precision, knocked the scholar right in the face.
It was dead silence for a few seconds.
And then chaos.
Screams erupted from the other students at the table at the sight of their fallen friend. A commotion was born as people scrambled to the boy. Zandik was having a bit of trouble comprehending what just happened. Yes, he just understood that you just threw a textbook at a guy, but he did not understand at the same time. Even he knew not to harm someone in public. (Private was a different case.) And you did it with no hesitation, no logical thought process of what would happen. It was an activity far from what most scholars did.
While he was in a little stupor, you quickly pushed your papers into your bag and slung it over your shoulder. “Hey! Teyvat to Zandik! Don’t just sit there! We have to leave the scene!” you scolded him, taking initiative and stuffing his work into his bag as well. He wasn’t the most pleased with how you treated his precious research material but that was only a fleeting thought compared to what just occurred. You threw his bag over your shoulder as well and cursed at how heavy his damn textbook was. But what he did not expect was what you did next.
Rolling your shoulders back to prepare yourself for the weight, you then grabbed his hand and started pulling him away. 
Zandik then had no words to describe his emotions. He could only focus on the prickles that arose from all over his body at such prolonged and close contact with you. He was used to your teasing - running your hands through his hair on occasion, or leaning in close to his ear to whisper something, but this simply broke his scale. He felt as though he was moving unconsciously, feet moving in sync with yours, and he had no idea how to feel or even understand this phenomenon. 
“Hey, I know you can walk faster than that!” Your voice snapped him out of his unfamiliar sensations, and that’s when he realized what was happening. You had actually managed to drag him so far along that you were both probably halfway through the city looking like complete, bumbling fools. And you were still holding his hand, and that’s when he realized again how lovely you looked in this moment. He quickly discarded those thoughts.
“Release me this instant, [Name],” he threatened, immediately putting his vexed look back up. He could feel your warmth penetrating his whole body just from your hand.
“Sure, sure~! Let’s turn into this alley to hide,” He could tell that was a complete lie because your laugh was so loud it probably rang out all the way to Port Ormos. Zandik scoffed and bit his lip to prevent a smile.
Soon enough, you both reached a secluded part of the city, away from all the hustle and bustle and caught your breath. You slid down a wall in relief and closed your eyes while Zandik had his eyes trained on you for what you just put him through.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” he raised an eyebrow at your crazy behavior. You peeked at him and put your hand on your chin, in a thinking position.
“Hmm… well, that was quite fun, was it not?!” you tried to keep a straight face but you could not help but laugh at your friend’s incredulous expression.
“You- we, we are going to get in trouble with the dean you know. And the counselors,” he said, trying to bite down the smile that kept rising when he remembered the expression on the assaulted student’s face.
“We’ll be fineeeee,” you shrugged your shoulders and stretched your letters. “Haven’t you gotten into more trouble with the head administration with your little controversial experiments? Besides, if we’re lucky, he’ll be too scared to report the incident,” you laughed, completely nonchalant about what you just did.
“Hmph. The blame is on you if anything happens,” he attempted to speak in an irritated voice, but he could not help but be amused. A bit elated, even. There were many people he wanted to see get chucked with a textbook. And do worse things too.
But a bit of the thrill came from how you did that with no hesitation. It was a… strange feeling to have someone do that for him. Actually, this whole relationship was strange. You were strange. Even he felt strange. He was honestly a straight-up asshole to you sometimes, like he was to everyone else. But that didn’t drive you off. You still did things for him. You still spoke to him. You didn’t want anything in return, not money, not knowledge, not relics, but perhaps what you did want was-
Zandik stopped that line of thoughts in its tracks, trying to ignore how his hand was all tingly from you holding it. Things were fine this way, he declared. He could not admit he was enamored with you. Nothing needed to change. He had to maintain his view of you, otherwise… 
“You know, I’m surprised I even got you to do that. Did you hit your head too?”
“Shut up.”
Zandik hated you.
(You two did get into trouble. The Akademiya assigned you an apology essay which Zandik refused to do so you had to write two separate essays for each of you. With some begging, he did your homework for you in return, and somehow managed to get the blood stain off of that textbook you had thrown. You didn’t question where he learned that.)
V. kindness
It had been years since that fateful day, the time when you first moved in with Zandik. The Akademiya was a long and arduous grind, but that was to be expected. Your friendship with Zandik was one you cherished more than most things.
To say the two of you were close was an understatement. You still remember the counselor’s expression when you told her how well the two of you were getting along, and that there was no need for you to ever switch roommates. You think she became afraid of you too after that.
Tonight was a relaxed night. Zandik and you were not doing any work, simply laying side by side on his bed. (Even though he always threw fierce words at you, you knew he liked your touch.)
In the beginning, you would never be able to tear him away from that desk, but with time comes new things. You were just happy he was getting more hours of sleep.
The two of you lied in the dark as usual, simply enjoying the cool Sumeru breeze and the muffled noises from the city. You learned to grow content with these simple moments. But tonight you felt like talking.
“Hey, Zandik?”
“Hm?”
“Remember when you met me?” You could feel his head shift to look at you, probably for asking such a dumb question.
“Yes, I do. Too well, actually.”
“What was your first impression of me?” you questioned, realizing you never actually asked him that.
“That you were quite annoying and a thorn in my side.”
Anyone else might have been hurt by these words, but you did not mind. He made it pretty obvious that was how he felt in the beginning anyway, so it was no surprise. “But what about now?”
“You’re fine.” Even in the dark, he could feel your pout and pleading eyes. “And your intelligence and helpfulness deserve to be praised, I suppose.” And then he could feel your smile grow as your face was partially on his shoulder. From then the conversation flowed through many things. That research paper you two were working on, some kind of experiment he wanted to do on you (he swore it was painless), about that one scholar who was always annoying during the lectures.
The more you spoke, the more you realized how much of your life centered around being with Zandik here. You didn’t know if you ever wanted to graduate. To ever be apart from him.
“You know, I’ve been thinking. How long do you think we’ll live here?”
“Hmm, it’s hard to say. The benefits the Akademiya provides are far too good to let go of now. Speaking of that, there’s somewhere I want to visit.” 
“Oh, you mean those hidden ruins you think are connected with Khaenri’ah?” How nice it would be if you could just drape your arm over his chest.
“Yes. Though I don’t know if the Akademiya will let me make another trip back to the desert as of right now,” he pondered.
“Are you referring to how you’ve been on the Matra’s watch list for years? So they started following you everywhere?” you giggled.
“Not just me. You too, [Name],” he rolled his eyes. “At least I never threw a book at someone in public.” You pouted and playfully punched his arm.
“C’mon, that was so long ago! You can stop bringing it up!” you whined. He would never let that go, huh? The conversation died down from there, but it was a comfortable silence, which you loved. After that little banter, your eyes began to droop and you yawned. Zandik glanced at you.
“Tired?” You nodded and blearily rubbed your eyes.
“Sleep, then,” he commanded, and you had no qualms with following that. Soon enough, Zandik was the only one left awake, staring out at the open window. He had found these little resting sessions of yours good for clearing his mind. He closed his eyes too. 
Two people, on the same tiny, college-sized bed, arms brushing each other and talking nonchalantly. Totally, two good friends.
Friends. Friends, friends, friends. Long ago, the word left a distasteful feeling in his mouth, and it still did, but not for the reason he originally felt. Now, what he desired was more complicated.
Zandik hated you.
VI. endless
Zandik knew he would be expelled from the Akademiya soon, for the crimes he committed. And yet, instead of preparing for any future plans, he found himself following the directions of a note you left on his workbench. Meet me at our usual spot, 8 PM.
He was a busy man, more so in soon-to-be exile. He didn’t have time for your frivolous games. But for some reason, he found himself heading over to the cliff anyway. It was dark outside, but the stars illuminated your figure, and that was when he noticed the basket next to you as well. You noticed him and sat up eagerly.
“Hey, you made it! I was worried you wouldn’t come, to be honest.”
“...What is this?”
“Eh? A picnic, of course. The weather is real perfect for one.”
He was so astonished that the laugh building in his throat could not come out immediately. Surely you were aware of what he had done? Practically everyone in the Akademiya knew. You couldn’t walk for five minutes without hearing rumors floating around. Or perhaps you were that oblivious?
“Oh really?” His familiar, eerie laugh that you loved finally rang out. “Did a Ruin Guard finally toss you around well enough? Only an idiot wouldn’t know what I’ve-”
“I mean, do killers not like picnics anymore?” You replied so nonchalantly, he was actually a bit shocked. 
“You’re… you’re frustrating,” he murmured.
The way you managed to make him so tongue-tied all the time made him itch to put you in your place, to snap back somehow, but he found himself unable to lately. Actually, he struggled to do that for a while now, and he despised how you made him feel like a bumbling fool.
“Heh, perhaps some of your unhingedness rubbed off on me,” you shrugged, patting down the spot next to you. “Look, I made samosas for you again.”
The blanket was soft and comfy, and though he didn’t care much for the flavors of food, he did enjoy your cooking. You continued to polish off your meal before you spoke again.
“So, I hear you’re going to be expelled soon.”
“Correct. Though I care little for this place, it’s a shame to lose a suitable environment for my research.”
“Have you decided where you’re going? I’m sure you’re not planning to stay exiled in the desert for the rest of your life,” you hummed. “Leaving this country, perhaps?”
“That seems to be the most logical action. There is nowhere in this nation that would fund my research.”
“I see. You’re going far away from here.” Zandik nodded in reply, but the more he thought about it, the more irritated he felt. Far away from here meant far away from you.
To think he felt no remorse for murder but he felt a tingle of emotion (sadness? regret? anger?) at no longer being with you. Whatever it was, it left a bitter taste in his mouth. He loathed to admit it, but he enjoyed your company. He enjoyed dragging you out of bed in the morning, and he enjoyed you dragging him to bed at night. He enjoyed your bantering, your inquisitive nature towards his work. He enjoyed being the only person you’d treat like this and having one person to himself. Zandik enjoyed you, thoroughly and fully.
“Well, keep me updated. I already got my bags packed and ready to go.” 
“What?” A quirk of yours, he realized, was being able to leave him surprised at the most unpredictable times. Although scholars must plan for every possibility, he found it difficult to prepare for yours.
“I’m coming with you, of course. You’re gonna need your number one assistant with you. Hey, why’d you stop eating? We still need to get through the Padisarah Pudding.”
“You? Accompany me?” All of a sudden, everything made perfect sense. Yes, of course! You were right, he thought, as a fit of laughter overcame him. It was a splendid idea, one that pleased him immensely. Having you with him would be a great asset for his research. No one suited the role better than you. And you, in general, were… nice. You didn’t grate on his nerves like everyone else.
“Ha! Good! Amazing, even! I shall be sure to tell you when we depart from this nation of fools.” You raised your eyebrows at his sudden enthusiasm, but witnessing Zandik’s bursts of inspiration was nothing new to you either. 
“Well, glad to see you’re so keen on it,” you chuckled. “But I have a request. Actually, it’s more like something I have to say to you before we embark on this. It’s crucial, really.”
“Oh? Do tell.” He wasn’t rich, but he had the ability to procure a wide variety of items. The Nation of Wisdom was more corrupt than one would think. But he did wonder what you would ever want. You didn’t chase after material goods like the majority of humans.
“To be frank, I like you,” you declared, looking right into his eyes. At that moment, it felt like the world had gone silent. The wind stopped blowing, the animals lied low, the grass no longer rustled. “I like you. I want to be more than just friends with you,” you stated bluntly. You felt that getting straight to the point was the best course of action with Zandik, since many things besides his research and manipulating people tended to go over his head.
“So, what do you say?”
There was no response. You attempted to build your case.
“By the way, did you think I’d go through all this trouble if I didn’t want to be with you? I didn’t dorm with you for no reason, you know.”
“...”
“For such a smart guy, you aren’t very good at this, are you? Well, I can’t be too mad. I’ve been dealing with the denseness for a few years now. You know, I’ve been making the first moves this whole time.”
“...” 
The lack of response was beginning to make you nervous. You preferred the maniacal laughter of rejection at this point. “H-hey, I’d like a reply, you know. You don’t need to accept-”
Zandik thought. And he found that the words he spoke next were genuine.
“I find you… agreeable as well.”
You couldn’t help but throw your head back and laugh, shoulders now relaxed. “Why, such an amazing compliment from the high and mighty Zandik has me even more lovestruck!” He wanted to be mad, he really did, but it was at this moment he understood what it meant to be mesmerized by another person. He had found himself mesmerized by ancient machines, ruins, texts, his research. But he truly found you beautiful, your giggles echoing through the night.
“I’m agreeable, yes?” You turned to face him, your body leaning in closer to his. “Am I agreeable enough to do… this?” You tentatively glided your fingers over his hand, gauging to see how far Zandik would let you go. He stiffened at the foreign contact, clearly unused to it, but let you continue.
“What about this?” You slid your hand up and down his arm, keeping your eyes on his face the whole time. He tried not to show any emotions, besides a half-hearted scowl, but you could still see the red tips of his ears. He was so cute.
You scooted closer to him and let your other hand rest on Zandik’s thigh. “I think I’m much more than agreeable in your books,” you teased, cupping his cheek. He scoffed in response but did nothing to refuse your advancement. You leaned in and connected your lips with your lover’s. It felt damn good. Zandik had no idea what he was doing, but it was endearing nonetheless. You kissed him again, and again, and he reciprocated, albeit a little awkwardly. Your heart soared as you pulled away, and placed a few final kisses on his cheeks.
“Now, how did that feel?” You already knew the answer to that, of course. You knew Zandik for a long time, and could tell when he was in a shitty mood, a bad mood, a grumpy one, an excited one, a happy one, and much more. This mood was one you haven’t seen until now, but it sure was a good one. Completely flustered was a great look on him.
“I… I cannot come to a definitive answer as of now. I would say that I need to carry out some more experiments to reach a conclusion.”
“Oh? Then I’m a willing participant for however long as you want,” you smiled, finding comfort in his soft, teal locks. 
And that’s when Zandik truly realized. You were more tolerable than the rest. You were bearable enough to want to keep you around forever. Smart enough for him to desire to hear your honeyed voice. Soft enough to want to feel your skin against his. Ah, he would never say it though, as he brushed his lips over yours once again.
Zandik loved you.
2K notes · View notes
zooone · 9 months
Text
as above, so below
╰┈➤ a grumpy grim reaper falls in love with an optimistic angel.
one sided hatred to lovers; grim reaper!wilbur x angel!reader
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𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 - here it is, my magnum opus. even tho its not done! i had to split this fic in half, so unfortunately there will have to be a part two :( very sorry. but on a lighter note, HUGE HUGEEE thank you to @harbingerofheartbreak. as per usual, she helped me visualized the entire thing and even made some of the plots and ideas that i used. in fact, the original fic was supposed to be a grim reaper x human, but it was florence who thought of the grim reaper x angel prompt and i could not thank her enough. furthermore, she helped keep this fic going and constantly pushed me beyond my limits to do so. the fic was started july 21st and it was supposed to be shelved after a couple weeks, but she made me keep going. she is the best forever and ever go read ynaf. additionally, another big thanks to @starsyoubreaklikesugardust for being another little beta reader for this fic. she always has the greatest ideas known to man and i wanted to run everything by her bcuz it was like having van gogh rate my painting. i had to share this with her earlier than i thought cuz she was threatening me but we dont have to talk about that smile. both of these people helped me so much, and i will forever be in debt to them.
all in all, please please enjoy and give this your love pretty please <3
𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 - talk of death, religious aspects, and swearing
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she had a lot of questions about wilbur.
not the type of, "what's your favorite color?" or "what's your favorite band?" questions. more like, "on a scale of one to ten, how much does being a murderer really affect your mood?"
all of these questions would go unanswered. including "what's your favorite band?" no matter what, she just could not crack the code of wilbur soot.
to say he was intricate would be an understatement, and her ongoing curiosity would surely be the death of her.
unless he had something to do about it.
-
he stomped away from her on the rooftop as she followed after him.
"i told you to leave me alone," wilbur grunted, trying to speed walk past her with his long scythe trailing behind him. "is that so difficult to understand?"
"i just- i just wanna talk-" she panted, trying to catch up to him. her white dress flowed beneath her, but wilbur tried not to think about it too much.
"no." he made a sharp turn to fully face her, making her nearly bump into him.
her frown was illuminated by her golden halo, making her hair look almost cloud-like. her eyes glimmered like the entire sun was like a clown nose on her face, despite them arguing in the cold of night.
she pouted, crossing her arms over her chest. her halo also lit his face up, and she saw the permanent frown and scrunched up eyebrows under his dark hood.
"why not, wilbur?"
he looked at her like she asked if the moon was real.
"you ruined my job. again." he punctuated his sentence with her name, saying it like he was curling at the nasty taste of it.
he always hated her. there was no mistaking it. he hated the way she giggled and danced around just because she could. he hated the way she spoke, always sounding so bright and happy and fucking naive. he hated her big white wings and her shiny halo.
"there you go talking about your job! like its all that matters to you," she yelled over the continuous honking cars beneath them. "do you even care about anything else in life?"
they weren't even supposed to interact, her being an angel and him being the prince of death. but he was always out doing his grim reaper duties, and she couldn't help but stop him.
he just wanted to follow orders from mumza- the queen of death. every single day that he existed, he had to take the lives of those who were ready. it ate him alive, but it was his only purpose.
"i can't care about everything else in life if i have to care about everything else in death," he grumbled under his breath, making her go silent. he liked her silence, loved it even, because that meant she couldn't criticize him for everything he did.
he would tell her about how angry the job made him. that if he could just switch spots with his brother, the stork, he would be the happiest being in hell. that he hated being the grim reaper almost as much as she hated him.
but if there was anything he really hated, it was opening up to people. and vice versa.
the last time he remotely opened up to someone, it was his mother, and he barely remembered the conversation. it was all the way back when he was welcome to smile. all he could recall was it being something about love, whatever it meant.
"will you please leave me alone now?" he sighed, rubbing his hand in his eye. he watched her eyes go from their usual large state to becoming droopy. she silently nodded her head.
"sorry. goodbye, mr. grim reaper," and the title tore him to shreds. it angered him, over everything else, that all he would be to her was an evil being.
yet, he watched as she jumped from the rooftop, fluttering her wings until she flew away. as she looked back over at him, he couldn't place the odd feeling left in his stomach. if it was guilt or hatred, he would never know.
he would continue to travel, picking up the souls on his way. she always thought he was lucky for being able to travel wherever he wanted. she always wanted to befriend the humans- in fact, she wanted to befriend everyone, but she found it impossible when she was constantly being held back.
he arrived back to hell's palace, a bag in one hand, and his scythe in the other. his head drooped down, avoiding any unnecessary eye contact with the other demons.
that hope would be short lived, however, as a demon took his shoulder as he walked.
"wilbur!" he spoke cheerfully, as if he wasn't living among lava pools and ash.
"quackity," wilbur responded in the same, monotone voice. it made the demon groan.
"quackity-" he mocked, changing his shape to an exact replica of wilbur's. mimic demons, they were called, and they were able to take form of any other being, even adorning their voice. it came in handy for most demon's entertainment, but it certainly didn't faze wilbur.
he stared into the mimic of his face, hating what stared back at him.
"oh come on. that usually works on people," quackity frowned as he twisted himself back to his natural state. he began poking wilbur with his blackened hands. "just give me a little giggle, wilbur."
"no." he'd said the word so much that it rolled perfectly off his tongue. "and for fucks sake, please put on a shirt."
quackity laughed loudly. "we're in hell, wilbur! its hot as- well, hell down here. don't tell me you haven't thought about walking around shirtless either." he paused, putting his hands on wilbur's dark outfit, "or.. hoodless.."
wilbur glared with an unamused look on his face, shrugging quackity's touch off of him and trying to continue walking along his path. walking away from conversations never worked to end them, yet he still tried it.
it would be the second example today that his tactic never worked, because quackity continued to walk along with him into the palace.
"what's the catch today?" he said it like it was a cheer. "did you get the big numbers? beat your high score yet?"
he would say he could feel his blood boil, but the flames in hell already did that.
"no. i don't keep track," he explained simply, pouring his bag's content into the soul sorter. it went to the fates to decide whether the soul was good or bad. simply enough, the good souls would be transported to heaven and the bad ones would stay. sometimes he imagined them debating over a soul's purity. the sound of screams every time he opened the bag would never become easier to stomach.
"bummer," quackity hummed. "why don't you try to make the job a little fun?"
"because i don't want to, okay?" he raised his voice. this time, quackity caught the memo and stayed quiet, except for a "shit, okay." under his breath.
wilbur walked along the palace's stairs, leaving quackity alone in the lobby without another word. this time, walking away from the situation made it stop. the third time really was the charm.
he set his hood down to his shoulders with a sigh, being able to fully see the gold and red palace for what it was. all of the vibrant and bright colors that quite literally clashed with the flames. it was scary and huge, but it was home to him. it was all he'd really known.
he went up to his room, laying on his bed with a groan. sometimes he wished his bed was quite literally made out of feathers, because his back always ached. tommy always said it was because of his "fucking posture", but wilbur knew he had no room to talk. just the thought of him jumping into a big pile of fluffy feathers made his bones ease a little more.
he would spend the night rolling around in his not-feather bed, having issues with his sleep. it was such a frequent problem for him that it was barely even a problem. just how he existed.
and, meanwhile, she would spend her "night" (in quotations. it never got dark in heaven.) staring up at the sun, wondering what sort of buttons she could've possibly pushed with wilbur to make him hate her. it was a recurring thought, but it kept her up too frequently.
the worst part about waking up was simply that. waking up. wilbur would roll out of bed, fluff up his hair a little bit, put on the same clothes, and be going. he went through the same routine every day and he hated it. but at the same time, if anyone disrupted his routine, he'd be angered.
"wilbur!"
and his routine was ruined.
"morning, tommy," he muttered, wiping the sleep from his eyes with a yawn. he couldn't be bothered to be angry this early, and definitely not to tommy. "aren't you supposed to be in heaven right now?"
"i'm on break," tommy said in a matter-of-fact tone. he stretched his arms and his wings with a groan, leaving some stray yellowed feathers behind. "delivering babies to peoples' doors is quite the workout."
wilbur barely registered his words, staring idly past tommy. his eyes wandered more on a decoration on a table behind him. he didn't even notice that tommy had continued speaking until he put his hands on his hips and sighed.
"yeah. both mum and dad really like me!" tommy spoke, ruffling his hands through his hair until he realized his goggles were in the way. the mention of phil darkened his mood.
"mum told you to stop calling him 'dad'," wilbur spoke monotone and simple, as usual.
and as usual, tommy groaned at wilbur's monotone voice and simple words, slouching down. "she also told you to stop being so fucking gloomy."
wilbur felt the need to do a lot of things; one- hit tommy with his scythe, two- tell tommy what a privileged asshole he sounded like, and three- do both at the same time. but wilbur had an okay-ish perception of tommy, growing up alongside the boy took a lot. but as annoying as the boy was, he was wilbur's company. even if he would rather swallow his scythe than to admit it aloud.
instead of acting on his mental list of intrusive thoughts, wilbur only sighed. he didn't bother to pick the conversation back up, his eyes wandering to the decoration again. had they always had that there? it looks off-centered.
"well," tommy noticed wilbur's spacing and patted his shoulder as he walked towards the stairs. "good luck today."
wilbur stared blankly through the fringe of sweaty hair on his forehead. inside, he was trying to form whatever a smile was. "thank you, tommy."
he watched as tommy jumped down the stairway, yellow tufts of hair flying with him. he heard a shout from down below, "and don't forget to fix your posture!"
wilbur scoffed in response, sounding more uninterested than he intended to, but ultimately pulling his shoulders back. a new day! a new window of opportunity! is what wilbur would think, if he wasn't wilbur.
he grabbed the railing of the stairway, his pale thin hand contrasting with the gold. he stared at his feet the entire time stepping down. he'd already forgotten about "fixing his posture".
he made his way down the lobby, not getting a chance to speak to his mother due to the abundance of demons lined up, trying to tell her that she was making a mistake. it was typical, but it still left bags under her eyes. wilbur only gave her a timid wave as a greeting before exiting through the palace's doors.
he dragged his tacky shoes through the red dirt beneath him, watching as tiny rocks rolled along his feet before stopping. he almost ran head first into the elevator due to how long he kept his gaze down, but luckily he saved himself from the mental embarrassment.
he stepped inside, proving his identity to the machine far more times than he needed to. mimic demons would always try to steal his finger print to use the elevator and get themselves back onto earth, but it was never successful. he had a keycard, just in case the identity proving didn't work. tommy had the same.
as the doors parted and he made a careful step out, he did his daily greeting to the guard (his daily greeting being a casual glare and a furrow of his eyebrows) and used his scythe to poke himself out.
from the surface, it would simply look like a boulder being turned over. but as wilbur stepped onto the grass, he took a moment to breathe. the air on earth was far better than the smoke in hell. he would spend a great deal of time taking a couple deep breaths, appreciating the silence, oh the lovely sound of absolutely nothing-
"wilbur! there you are!"
he almost screamed. instead, he only turned to the source of the way-too-cheerful voice, saying her name in utter disbelief. "what are you doing here?"
he didn't speak as if he were asking a question. he wasn't actually interested in why she was here in the grass with her elegant white dress and her annoyingly wide smile, using her wings to shield herself from the sun, even if they were translucent.
"i was waiting for you!" she squeaked, getting up from her spot in the grass and practically skipping up towards him. she had what looked to be a gardener's nightmare in her hands. "this is for you!"
before he could say another word, she pushed his hood off of his head. she had to use her wings to reach the top of his hair, but she was still able to run her hand through his brown waves. and as she giggled, she placed her makeshift flower crown on his head.
she pushed herself away- still hovering on her wings, and took a long, meaningful look at him. "you look great!"
"i feel disgusting," he said with anger, taking the weeds out of his hair and stuffing them sloppily into his bag. "why did you do that."
she looked at him with a frown, but still tried to make herself sound happy. her halo flickered softly. "it.. it was supposed to be a gift for you."
"yeah? well i hated it," he squinted his gaze down at her, and she could feel herself shrinking the more and more he looked.
she stayed quiet, the halo above her head still flicked on and off. she looked at him with nothing but a frown, lowering herself so that her feet hit the ground.
what she failed to notice was that he unfurrowed his brows ever so slightly upon seeing her upset.
"let me just get going, okay?" he spoke, trying to make his voice a little bit softer but still keeping the agonizing punch in there.
she spoke quieter now. "i have one more thing for you."
wilbur flinched, fully expecting a glitter bomb to come out of her pocket. but to his surprise, it wasn't.
she pulled out a pack of gummy worms, handing it to him with a pitiful smile on her face. he took it, examining it slowly.
"why is it open?" he took another look at it and realized it was almost half empty.
"umm.. i got a little hungry waiting for you," she mumbled, playing with the hem of her dress. "you were taking a little bit long."
"and speaking of which, i've been talking to you for a little bit too long," he retorted, crumpling up the bag of gummy worms in his palm. the sides of the bagging were practically fighting with the cage he made out of his fingers.
he began to walk in the opposite direction, debating in his mind exactly how long it would take to make his way out of the field and to the nearest trash can. she quickly followed behind him, almost tripping on herself in the process.
"hey- i didn't expect a hello from you, but a thank you would at least be nice!" she yelled as he speed-walked away with his grumpy walk and stone shoulders. "i'm talking to you!"
"and i'm not," he grumbled, fiddling to put his hood back onto his head as a way of closing himself off.
"just-" she flapped her wings, trying to be alongside him. "just have some gummy worms, please?"
he glared, slightly squinting from the piercing light of her halo. "maybe later."
"right now."
as much as he didn't want to, he stopped dead in his tracks. his stare was hurtful and his hand clenched onto his scythe. that was the most demanding he'd ever heard of her.
there was a voice in his head telling him to leave, to just let her have the last word and be gone. but he felt like he couldn't move.
"excuse me?" he only said, scrunching his eyebrows up.
"i want you to have them right now," she enunciated her words, crossing her arms and trying to copy his expression. she was fighting her usual bright smile under her pursed lips. "in front of me."
he blinked, almost starstruck. "why?"
she seemed nearly surprised at his one word question, her stern voice softening slightly. "you look like you haven't been taking care of yourself," as she spoke through a pout, he could feel his face warming up, like tiny little punching bags beneath his skin. "i wanna make sure you're eating."
he hated the feeling of his cheeks going warm. he slept in hell, obviously he knew what warmth was. but for some reason it felt even weirder when it was behind his skin. he cleared his throat with a cough.
"this? you think this is healthy?" he held up the crumpled, half-empty bag, speaking with his forceful actions.
she went quiet again, only speaking loud enough for him to hear. "i couldn't afford anything else at the gas station."
the feeling of warmth in his cheeks soon boiled over into anger. "you couldn't afford anything else?" he repeated in disbelief, "you are quite literally an angel! you're invisible to the human eye! it is so easy for you to steal."
"but i don't wanna be a bad person!" she copied his raised voice, standing on her tiptoes as almost a challenge. "i leave money in the cash register for the man. you know, he's really struggling. he could use the money. his name is robert, i think-"
"i don't care!" wilbur screamed, cutting her off completely. she flinched at his voice, feeling overwhelmed tears start to prickle from her eyes. she hid behind her wings, afraid that he might do something drastic.
he felt his shoulders shrink at her reaction, but ultimately grumbled and opened the pack of gummy worms. he hesitated, holding out the candy in front of him.
she opened her eyes from her flinch, and saw him sniffing the gummy worm. a smile spread across her face. "you just.. take a bite out of it."
"i know," he muttered. he was already mad enough that he had to eat it, he didn't want to be instructed on how.
"oh.. okay. i mean- i just kinda assumed that you didn't know because i don't think there are gummy worms in hell. they'd get all sticky and stuff. at least, that's what i've heard. are there really no gummy worms in hell?"
he looked at her with no amusement on his face. she looked right back at him, however, wanting an answer to her long winded question that was somehow said in a singular breath.
"no… no there aren't," he spoke slowly, raising an eyebrow at her. "are there gummy worms in heaven?"
why was he making conversation with her? he should be out collecting souls right now, not talking about stupid little gummy worms with this stupid little angel. he mentally slapped himself in the face, cringing with a shake of his head.
"no, there aren't," she batted her eyelashes like she was trying to think for a moment. "but phil sometimes gives me money for gummy worms. i share it with the others!"
he was barely registering her words, his mind still clouded with the mental boxing match he was having with himself. he was being stupid. not even the mention of phil was able to knock him from his thoughts.
"hey," she waved her hand in his face, acting as the referee and stopping his boxing match. he was almost at a knockout. "you've been making that face for a while. do you not like gummy worms?"
wilbur didn't know how to really respond to the question, having never even tried gummy worms before. he looked back at her. she had her full attention on him, waiting for another answer that he would hopefully not blunder.
"it's.. it's fine."
he definitely blundered.
he ignored it, not ready for a round two fight, and put the gummy worm in his mouth.
she leaned forward. "how is it?"
it was about the best damn thing he's ever had.
"it's.. okay, i guess."
"great!" she jumped- fucking jumped. "im sure you have to be on your way for your very important job-"
he completely forgot about his being the grim reaper, straightening up suddenly with widened eyes and tightening his grip on his scythe. he cursed under his breath, running towards the direction of the city.
"hey, i didn't finish!" she called out, catching up to him once more with flaps of her wings.
"i can't talk. you've already made me late enough," his hood almost fell off in the wind with how quickly he was running. "fuck, mum's gonna be pissed."
she would, in fact, not be pissed. she was always far too busy to even greet wilbur or tommy, and they hadn't done any sort of domestic activity in what felt like an eternity. he tried to convince himself that he didn't care, that she was just busy with being the queen of death, but it was extremely lonely.
there wasn't any time for them to really speak. they were both always busy and family meals were long forgotten. in fact, wilbur had never eaten in front of another person before. the most he'd done was eat some boring, rotten food while sitting on his floor with tommy- and even then, he was only picking at it idly with his fork.
he found comfort in eating alone. there was no one there to judge him or to argue. it was just him, his thoughts, and the literal grayed out food they had in hell. but there was something always so reminiscent about having food with another person, even if it was just something like dessert.
"oh," she sighed, moving her wings idly. she watched as he ran away without another look. her arms swung at her sides in an almost confused fashion. "okay. um- hope you like your gummy worms! bye wilbur!"
at least she didn't call him mr. grim reaper again.
he didn't care, anyway, just trying to get to work on the job he obviously hated. but when he stopped to catch his breath, he couldn't help but stare at the pack of gummy worms in his sweaty palms, the colorful designs contrasting his dull looking hand.
he looked around. it looked like there were no cheerful angels in sight, so he figured himself to be safe. he popped another gummy worm into his mouth, scrunching his nose at the taste of something so impossibly sweet. it was a pleasant change from the tasteless foods in hell, and the addictive sweetness coated his tongue for a while.
he stuffed the rest of the pack into his bag, appreciating how empty it was without the souls inside it- a temporary feeling.
wilbur already felt like he'd wasted enough time, and got to work. bringing people to death's door wasn't exactly the easiest job.
he started with a car crash, wincing at the amount of shattered glass and blood everywhere. he fell sick to his stomach with a nasty feeling bubbling up in his throat. all those years dealing with death and it still never got easier to see the causes.
he held his scythe up slowly, shutting his eyes in a flinch. he thought of a thousand things all at once, trying to focus on one. they have to die. i have to put them out of their misery. they're dying because they have to, not because i chose to.
he took a breath, feeling like needles were going up his nose and into his lungs, and swung the weapon down.
it sunk through the person's body without struggle, opening up a passageway for him. he removed his scythe carefully, as if it would hurt them.
he sat on his knees next to the car. although his body was phantom-like against the gravel, he could still feel the roughness under him.
he held a cold hand to the person's back, trying to ignore how it looked to see the life drain from under their eyelids and filter out onto his palm. as soon as he could no longer feel a nauseating pull on his hand, he lifted it gently. he watched as the soul threaded directly off the person, catching onto his fingertips.
he didn't bother to take a closer look at it. the last thing he wanted was to remind himself that these people were actually human. he only took it in his palms, mushing it until it turned into a small circular shape. he put it in his bag, not caring to look at what else was in it.
wilbur would continue to follow through with that sequence throughout the day, as he usually did. scythe, hand, soul, bag. when he was growing up, mumza told him that he would be used to it in no time. but as "no time" passed, he still felt like throwing up after each day.
he made his way down the elevator, his shoulders stinging with the weight of his bag. the souls were practically weightless, but gathering so many into his bag made it sag down. he held his scythe with two hands, his arms being too sore to function properly on their own.
tommy was waiting for him at the steps of the palace, ignoring everyone lined up at the doors. his elbow was on his knee, and his face was being held up in his palm. he had been playing with a stone, trying to break it with his fingertips.
"wilbur," he automatically sprung up upon seeing his brother. he used to go in for hugs, however stopped shortly after wilbur started discussing how much he hated them. "mum wants to see you. says its important."
wilbur took time to react to his words, feeling like his bones weren't his. he only hummed an, "oh. okay," as he made his way up the steps, his feet barely dragging behind him.
"wait-" tommy called out, making wilbur almost freeze on cue. "i was.. i was wondering if you wanted to hang out by the fountain.. of wishes. the one up there. like- like we used to..?"
wilbur's breath stalled, stopping in his lungs. he'd barely even remembered it, but was holding back a smile at the memory.
that smile became easy to suppress as it slowly disappeared. he remembered all of it.
"mum doesn't want us talking to phil," was all wilbur muttered. he finally took a breath, his chest rising and falling with a sigh. "sorry."
"its not like that anymore!" tommy tried, throwing his hands up in the air in an almost child-like fashion. "they've changed, phil especially! i talked to him the other day, and-"
"mum doesn't want us talking to phil, tommy," he enunciated it slower this time. watching tommy's shoulders shrink, a sinking grayness fell over his face like a cloud was above him.
"yeah. okay," tommy sighed with a shake of his head. he played with the calloused skin on his fingers. "you're right."
wilbur stood there for a great deal of time. as much as it physically pained him, he felt a trapped sensation in his chest.
"tommy?" he spoke softly, barely enough for the both of them to hear. "you're a good kid."
he left before tommy could respond, expecting the boy to make some stupid remark about how soft he was turning. tommy didn't react that way, however. he stood alone on the steps, taking breaths watching as wilbur walked away.
wilbur made his way past the screaming, impatient people. he was always hateful towards loud noises as they made his skin crawl. he thought maybe that was the reason he hated the angel's voice so much.
there he went again thinking of that stupid angel. if he'd given her any more room in his mind, she'd have to pay the rent.
shaking his head from stupid thoughts, he called his mother's name, gaining her attention.
"wilbur," she spoke softly, her voice too tired from all the demons and ghosts she spoke to. her black hair hung over her face messily, but it was covered by a large lacy hat. "how are you?"
wilbur knew she wasn't actually curious about how he was feeling. it was just a filler for the missing years of his childhood.
"i'm doing well," a lie, "tommy said you wanted to talk to me?"
he saw his mother's face light up, as if she'd just remembered something blatantly obvious. wilbur could imagine her thoughts- "oh, thats my son, i forgot."
she fished for something on a table near her large throne. it looked more shiny than any angel's halo. damn it, why was he thinking about her again?
"here," she handed an envelope to him with her large hand. he hesitated in taking it. "the messenger said it was for you. you don't usually get mail, so i figured it was important."
wilbur stared at the wax seal, the intricate pattern almost painful to stare at for too long. "are you sure this is for me? im not-"
"im so sorry, wilbur," her eyebrows disappeared into the shape of her hat as she put a hand to her black gown. "i have to get going talking to these people," she motioned to the line in front of her. "i also have a super busy day. i have to-"
"its fine, mum," he cut her off just as she did to him. he couldn't feel any remorse for his lack of formality. "you're.. doing great."
he spared himself from the long speech his mother always gave about how busy she was. it was always a drag to hear. tommy said it was her way of indirectly apologizing for not giving him family meals- but wilbur always thought that if he was right, she would directly say it.
in all honesty, however, he missed being able to sit next to someone and eat something.
the black lipstick on her face formed into a smile. "thank you, wilbur," she sighed, her body already facing the demon she was talking to last. "and tell me what the letter is!"
"i will," another lie. he was really great at them because she could barely ever hear them.
as he was going to the soul sorter, he turned the letter over in his hand, squinting at the written address. it read, "hell's palace (if it's real! i've never been there but i've heard about it!) for wilbur!" with a bunch of hearts and smiley faces. wilbur felt himself go sick to the stomach, nearly tripping on himself.
it was probably that stupid angel trying to give him a pity letter that he didn't want. he scowled at the thought as he emptied his bag into the soul sorter.
that dumb little angel, who did she think she was? did she genuinely think that wilbur would soften up to her because of a little letter with hearts all over it?
but as wilbur was coming up with more mean adjectives, items had been rejected from the soul sorter, and fell out.
it was her flower crown and gummy worms.
wilbur felt his angered expression slowly fade away like sand in an hourglass. he stared at the objects on the ground by his feet.
he was reminded of her soft smile as she put the flower crown on his head, her gentle touches to his hair like he was delicate. or how she forced him to eat fucking gummy worms because of his health.
he could feel the tiniest sliver of a smile peeking out from the corners of his lips. no, what was he doing? that angel was always so judgemental of him. from the moment they first met, she was always criticizing his job and she was always being rude to him.
but, she still cared about him.
wilbur didn't know how to react to that thought. his stomach felt like it was clawing its way out of him, and that weird, warm feeling came back to his face. he hated it.
he bent over, picking up the flowers and gummy worms. he held them in his hands and under his robe, just in case someone saw him holding them.
he quickly went up the stairs, cutting the corner to his room so that no one saw him. he set the flowers, gummy worms, and letter on his desk, his hands propping him up. he stared, yet again, at the objects until he realized- he hadn't even opened her letter yet.
he took a sharp inhale, his fist pressed so hard against the table that he didn't even register the fact that his hands were shaking. he leaned back, taking the envelope with him.
sure enough, it was from her.
"dear wilbur!
hi! i hope this delivered to the right address. i thought mail would be easier in the afterlife, but it really isn't. i hope you're okay!! i hope you didn't hate the gummy worms too much and that you are taking care of yourself! get plenty of sleep please.
i was writing to ask if you wanted to meet me for ice cream! i asked phil, and he said that ice cream would melt in hell too, so i wanted to have some with you. i can show you all the good flavors and everything.
it would be tomorrow, i've listed the time and address below. i hope to see you there!
ps. you better come with a full eight hours of sleep!"
he read over the letter at least a thousand times, his eyes glazing all over the hearts and smiley faces that she used to punctuate each sentence. he felt like he was going to throw up his ugly, beating heart. he didn't know if he should write back or even show up.
it would be his first time properly eating in front of someone in a while, and the thought made him nervous, almost.
as if to taunt him, tommy burst into the room, the sudden loud noise making wilbur scream. he hid the letter on his desk behind him.
"woah," tommy put his hand up to almost shush wilbur, as if he were some wild tiger. "calm down, man."
"sorry-" wilbur straightened himself up, coughing out of awkwardness. he felt his skin melting off of him, and he wanted something to make the tense air easier. "tommy, can you cover for me tomorrow?"
oh god. was he really that desperate to start a conversation?
tommy's eyebrows disappeared into his golden tufts of hair, a confused look grazing his face. "you want me to what?"
"cover.. for me?" he couldn't even believe the words he was saying. "i have a.. thing tomorrow-" no he didn't. he wasn't gonna go. "and.. i need someone to do my job."
"what thing? its not like you have a.." tommy's words trailed off as he stared at his brother in terror. "do you?"
"do i have a what..?" wilbur spoke with confusion as tommy gawked at him. he stage whispered, as if someone were watching.
"do you have a date?"
wilbur's chest bloomed with an awful sensation, his heartbeat picking up and pounding against his ribs. "what? no, i-" he felt like his mouth was stuffed with tar and feathers. "no, of course not, tommy."
"okay! okay," the boy held his gloved hands up in defense, backing away from a powder keg in the form of his brother. "but, whatever it is, how do i cover for you?"
wilbur dropped his tensed shoulders. "you always talk about how easy my job seems, right?"
"what?" tommy screeched, his gold wings flinching with him. "but- but you're the prince of death and i'm the prince of life! how am i supposed to do that?"
wilbur felt his stomach churn at the comparison. he hated the way people would always say "the prince of death" like it would curse the next seven generations of life. his eyebrows furrowed like caterpillars above his eyes.
"then at least pretend that i'm working," he muttered. "it's gonna be easy. i'm sure mum won't even notice."
tommy's lips shifted as he bit the inside of his cheek. he knew wilbur was right. mumza barely said hi to him too.
"okay," tommy sighed as his shoulders fell in defeat. he pointed a finger at wilbur, "but you owe me big time!"
wilbur nodded in response, shooing tommy away with a flick of his hand. tommy listened (although not shutting the door properly), and left his brother alone in his room. the letter was still hidden behind him.
he sighed, feeling his lungs shrink intensely. he had no clue what to do or how to pull it off.
wilbur went to sleep earlier that night, trying to fulfill her promise to get eight hours of sleep. when he woke up, he could feel his bones almost moving on their own. it felt odd to not have the burden of being the soul taking grim reaper.
he looked at himself in the mirror. he looked nothing short of depressing.
he walked over to his closet, sighing as he was face to face with the same rotten black robes he wore. people always trashed on tommy for owning the same white, red sleeved shirt, but wilbur wasn't any better with his duplicates.
he groaned, his head falling in a near defeat. though, he could see a small glint of yellow. hesitating, he picked it up, taking off his cloak to put it on.
it was a really old sweater that phil got him many years ago. back before everything went down the gutter. he ran his thumb down the frayed material. by some miracle, it still fit him.
he looked at himself in his mirror, scowling when he saw who stared back. he looked nothing like how he usually did, and that slight bit of color changed him. the yellow fabric, even when old, still popped out more than his pale skin did.
still, something felt like it was missing. his glasses, maybe? he set the frames on his scrunched face, pushing it up his nose with the back of his hand. that didn't seem to work.
he looked over at his desk, his bottom lip plumped out as he thought. he gave a long stare to the flower crown, feeling his chest tighten and warm with a disgusting feeling. he picked up the flower crown- more delicately than he'd like to admit, and placed it on his tufts of brown as he stared at his reflection.
his mouth hung open. he looked completely different now. there were so many colors and shapes for him to process. and were the dark spots under his eyes really that prominent?
although, even with the wave of confusion, it felt almost comforting. he tried his best at a smile, but shook his head. too far.
wilbur shuffled through the underworld quickly, trying his best not to be seen- and especially not by quackity.
"tommy," quackity stage whispered, gaining the boy's attention. "what the hell's he doing?"
tommy took his place beside quackity, looking to where he was pointing. he scowled. "dude, i kid you not, he's got a fucking date."
quackity scoffed a laugh before looking at tommy. his face was still scrunched in disapproval, his wings idle behind him. quackity’s expression dropped. “wait- you’re serious? he’s actually got a date?”
“that’s what i’m thinking!” tommy’s voice screeched suddenly. he looked and sounded like a bird. “i’ve never seen him wearing something so.. colorful. and look at his fucking posture!”
they watched in amusement as wilbur jammed his finger on the elevator button, trying to get the doors open as he looked around frantically. he hadn’t even noticed, but his shoulders were in fact more pushed back.
he stared at his reflection in front of him, bringing a hand into his hair to even it out. flowers were still scattered around in his hair and it was as if he were producing a trail of petals behind him. he let out a groan as the doors finally parted, and he stepped in.
“who is it with?” quackity asked, holding his chin. his other hand was dug into his pocket. a small, rectangular figure lining the fabric. “do you know?”
tommy turned to quackity with a serious look on his face, as if he were speaking about a universe killing secret rather than who wilbur was eating ice cream with. “you didn’t hear it from me,” he emphasized his words, “but i keep overhearing this angel talking to phil about wilbur. its weird- especially when you think about how phil and wilbur think about each other.”
tommy grimaced at his own words. he could tell how much it cut the mood. it was practically taboo to say wilbur and phil’s name in the same sentence- let alone even mention phil in the underworld. even with tommy trying to get them to forgive each other, the thought of them ever eating at the same dinner table was unfathomable.
quackity interrupted the tension filled silence by asking the angel’s name. tommy gave it without a second thought, but eventually had to repeat it for quackity to properly hear. they were stood outside the pit of lost souls, a place that the forgotten demons would go. they served no purpose in hell as long as they were somehow remembered by someone on earth. it was always a loud area, having literal burning souls inside.
“huh..” quackity hummed, repeating the angel’s name again. “you think they’ll become a thing?”
“no, definitely not,” tommy huffed, laughing as if quackity was telling a knock-knock joke. “he’s too grumpy to actually function around another being.”
“i say give the guy some slack! he deserves at least a chance," quackity protested. "twenty bucks."
"you're betting on his love life?" tommy asked, but quackity stood still with a smirk on his face with his hand out. "fine. deal."
as they shook on their bet, tommy grumbled, his wings tensing up with him. a plan was forming itself in quackity’s mind, his hand patting the lining of his shorts.
“he’s probably up there making out with her right now.”
wilbur, in fact, was not. he was standing on the distant sidewalk, watching her from afar. she sat on the concrete with her legs crossed, looking like her mind was in another galaxy. wilbur on the other hand, stood with his clammy hands at his sides. his palms never sweat as badly as this, and it was making him unsettled. he tried his best to wipe his hands off on his sleeve, but it only made them damp and warm. he sucked in a breath, ignoring it and walking up towards her.
when he caught her eye, her never-ending smile only widened. she stood up to properly face him, looking at him from the top of his flower-ridden hair down to his shoes. “wilbur?”
“hi.. hi-” his voice cracked, and he tried to cover it up with a fake cough. now his throat wasn’t working. “um, i didn’t know.. i wasn’t sure if.. i-”
“you look really nice!” she interrupted, saving him the embarrassment. he let out a mix of a smile and a relieved sigh, muttering his thanks. “and it looks like you actually slept.”
“i did,” he mumbled, adjusting the collar of his bunchy sweater. suddenly, he could feel every texture touching his body. “eight hours.. just like you asked..”
“it wasn’t so difficult, was it?” she giggled, and the noise stabbed wilbur a thousand times in the stomach.
“actually, it was,” he bit the inside of his cheek, rocking back and forth on his heels with nervousness. “my bed is a literal stone. i wish it were made out of feathers.”
“maybe your dream will come true some time! come on, let’s make a wish,” she tilted her head, closing her eyes and putting her palms together. “i wish wilbur’s bed was made out of feathers!”
“..is that gonna work?” he tilted his head in her direction.
“hm.. i don’t know. but i always like to try it,” she hummed with satisfaction, putting her hands back at her sides. “can i tell you a secret? i’ve always wanted to visit the fountain of wishes.”
the name rung a bell all the way in the back of wilbur’s mind. he remembered his father telling him stories every night about the fountain of wishes. he scowled at the thought of hin. phil would tell wilbur that his only wish was to meet a beautiful woman, but look where that got him.
“what would you wish for?” he asked, trying to shift the gears of his mind.
“i don’t know,” she said, contently, leaning forward to grab his hand. “maybe i’ll think of something later.”
wilbur flinched, something she didn’t see because she was dragging him into the store. he wondered if she could feel how damp and warm his palms were, but it looked like she didn’t mind. for some reason, their hands seemed to magically fit together like puzzle pieces.
his mind was churning again, thinking about the unknown feeling running through him. he felt suddenly aware of everything around him, and it was awful. yet, she kept giggling and smiling like it was just another day. he envied her power of optimism, even if it was the same thing he disliked about her.
uncomfortably, his mind felt as if he was put in a room of a thousand people, contributing and understanding each one of their conversations. as overwhelming as it was, it was how his brain regularly worked. how he somehow managed to get even an ounce of sleep every night, he'll never know.
his thoughts were unraveling before he could roll them back up, feeling tired of aimlessly following the long film of this and that and-
"do you have a favorite flavor?"
it all snapped away.
"uh- um, well, um-"
how was she able to do that?
"oh, right," she giggled. somehow, in the thousand person room that took place in his mind, her small laugh was the only thing bouncing off his skull. "you've never had ice cream before."
unable to process the sudden quiet of his mind, he simply shook his head. "n-no, i haven't."
"try this!" she held out a scoop of her favorite flavor and wilbur stared at it like it was a cure to the common cold.
shakily, he took it. even if it only existed as a transparent-phantom thing, he was surprised that it didn't slip out of his sweaty hands.
"do.. do i bite-"
"just give it a small lick. i know it'll be cold, but it'll taste good," her words felt like a small promise to him, the most comforting thing he'd heard in a while. yet, it was like talking about the weather to her.
god, what was the feeling? he couldn't exactly pinpoint it at all.
he followed her directions, scrunching his brows in a slight concern as he stuck his tongue out. she was right, it was cold. terribly cold. he thought his tongue would get stuck to it like in the old christmas movies tommy forced him to watch.
and yet, it tasted terribly good. it was such an unfamiliar feeling on his tongue, but it somehow had a certain kick that he enjoyed.
he smacked his lips a couple times, and nodded slightly, mumbling his words. "y-yeah, i like that one."
"great!" she spoke, going over to grab the ice cream scooper. the real thing stood still on the table, but the translucent version was in her hands as she scooped up some of the flavor. as long as she put it back in the right place, nothing would be messed up too badly.
as she finished up scooping her cone, she sighed dramatically. "oh gods, i forgot to get cash."
"you don't need to give him cash, angel, he won't even notice."
his tongue went numb- not from the ice cream, but from the small nickname he'd given her.
it was a small gesture, and he could probably play it off, but it stirred his intestines until he felt like throwing them up. he'd never willingly give someone a nickname. ever.
and the worst part? she noticed.
"did you call me angel?" she stopped her fit of panic over invisible cash to look at him, the corner of her mouth lifting in an asymmetrical smile.
"well- yeah, because you're.. you're an angel," wilbur stumbled, unable to pull something out of thin air. he's lied many times. to his mom, to tommy, to quackity. but for some reason lying to her didn't feel right on his tongue. "a-and you.. have a halo.. and stuff.."
she noticed how he fiddled with his fingers, and decided to spare him of the embarrassment by switching the topic to her day. she seemed passionate with talking about every small thing she'd done, and wilbur admired her attitude.
wilbur prided himself in his writing. his pen and paper were like a magical escape from his burdens. he had a specific way with words that would always get him praised by his parents when he was younger. but despite that, he was completely lost on a word to describe his feelings.
she dragged him back outside without a care in the world, looking around like she owned the place. she pointed to a bench, talking about how it was her favorite bench (to which wilbur began to wonder how one could have a favorite bench), and began guiding them towards it.
in the midst of her excitement, however, she made a wrong step on the curb and yelped. wilbur noticed this quickly, bringing a quick hand to her waist to catch her.
"woah, are you alright-?" he brought her back up carefully, checking to make sure that her and her ice cream were still intact. he checked both off in his mind.
"yeah- yeah i'm fine-" she muttered, and it was the first time he'd ever seen a glint of gloominess on her face. "sorry- that was embarrassing-"
"no need to be embarrassed," wilbur's tone was calm. not a monotone calm, but an assuring calm. one that was stranger to her too.
his hand remained still on her waist, his fingers trembling in such small beats. “wilbur?” her gaze slowly met his, and she could see a small droplet of worry beneath the pools of his irises. “can i tell you something?”
he nodded slowly, eyebrows furrowing in such a concerned manner that it almost cut his forehead in half. with his hand still on her waist, he guided her carefully to the bench.
she looked at the pavement, her words coming out in a string of small mumbles that made him feel like they were the only two beings ever. just him, an angel, and a bench. “i don’t.. i don’t usually tell people this,” she fiddled with the hem of her dress, her wings draping over the back of the bench. “but.. the- the way i-i d..”
wilbur stared at the angel- the carefree, optimistic, happy angel; while she broke down bit by bit. he felt like he was almost breaking the law, that he wasn’t allowed to see such a sight. but most importantly, he felt like he needed to help.
he was always gentle, there was no denying it. he spent a lot of time as a child examining bugs (which he called “friends”) and making sure they were okay. and the urge to care for anything in need grew with him, even as everything else changed.
he noticed that his hand was still on her hip, and he drew her closer to his body. the small gesture made her startled, but she quickly grew accustomed to his touch. she felt safe, and wilbur knew that.
she took a deep breath, and spoke. “we were playing a game of hide-and-seek,” she whispered, “i-i was always clumsy, everyone made fun of me.. nobody..”
her words trailed off again, and wilbur felt his heart aching. “nobody..?”
“nobody really.. liked.. me,” she huffed, her face turning away from him. he could tell that she didn’t speak about this much. “everyone hated me, actually. like you do..”
his heart was wrapped in thorns.
it was the clearest thing she’d said. like she had so much time to think about it and deduct it. he wanted to say something, wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and scream at her. but he didn’t. he couldn’t- he felt paralyzed.
“i guess i tripped and fell or something, a-and i-” a bile swelled her throat. “it hurt. a lot. i was- i was screaming and crying for help b-but everyone ignored me. except for..”
her head lifted as she looked at him. it was the type of look in which he could study each pigment on her face, and he’d be able to use the rosiness of her cheeks to paint a breathtaking portrait.
“except for you.”
she smiled. and even through tears, her expression lit up the earth.
“me?” he whispered softly.
immediately, she nodded. she was so close to his face that she could see a tiny cut to the right of his adam’s apple. she suppressed a giggle as she thought about him struggling to shave, making all sorts of faces into his mirror.
“i was so scared and alone.. and then you came along with your big scythe and your scary hood. and you plunged your scythe into me chest- gods, i was so scared,” she giggled briefly at the thought, but her expression was genuine. “but you gave me peace.”
she leaned closer, wanting to wrap her arms around him and die a second time like that. but she knew he’d hate it.
“it was all i wanted in that moment.”
his eyes were droopy, staring from her left eye, to her right, and down at her parted lips. she was nothing short of beautiful. looking at her for that long felt like a mere privilege, forcing him to be speechless.. he squeezed her hip tighter just to hold her.
“i.. i wanted to thank you..” she whispered, so quiet that her vocal chords barely buzzed.
in his peripheral vision, he noticed how her eyelids fluttered softly. his sight blurred as she leaned in closer, and-
“but you always hated me.”
she leaned back in the seat, and wilbur’s disappointment split him in two. she was right there- right fucking there, but she was so out of reach. the only barrier? his own loathing. the irony of hating his hatred felt like a stab wound to his thorn-crowned heart.
and the worst part; she was unphased.
wilbur gulped as a stack of words piled themselves in his throat. that nasty, overwhelming feeling running through him again. “angel, i-”
“so, what’s your favorite color?” she asked in a light tone, licking at her ice cream.
a wave of dismay washed over his face. he couldn’t think. “t-teal?”
“really? i wouldn’t have guessed that,” she swung her legs beneath the bench, clearly unbothered by wilbur’s confusion. “you don’t really dress like a teal-lover. do you think the moon is real?"
what?
"no, bad question. hmm. what’s your favorite band?”
his heart fell into the pit of his stomach, thorns poking at his sides creating a terrible sting on his abdomen. he opened his mouth to speak- maybe cry and release his feelings; but nothing came up. not even an answer to her stupid question. it was nauseating.
she began talking about the sort of music she liked, but none of it struck his brain. he felt sick. he wanted to scream and sob and punch something. but he sat still like he was posing for a renaissance painting.
“hey, that reminds me,” she stood up abruptly, pointing her finger upwards, despite going unnoticed by wilbur. “i gotta get cash for the ice cream man! i’ll be right back.”
he didn’t even realize she spoke, even when she was repeating his name and trying to get his attention.
why was he disappointed at the lost opportunity? why did he want to curl up in a ball and tug his hair out? what was that stupid feeling that was haunting him all afternoon? it was tearing him apart limb by limb. what was the word, what was-
oh.
oh.
it was love. he loved her. it was as simple as a four letter word.
the last time he told someone he loved them, he was begging his father not to leave. as he watched the man- the god- his father walk away, he realized that the word meant nothing. it only brought him pain; and if he didn't love, he didn't have to feel that agony.
his stomach turned, breathing becoming alarmingly shallow. too many memories flushed his mind, and his throat tightened.
"hello? wilbur?"
"don't come back." he stood up suddenly, ice cream falling to the ground next to him.
"what?" she flinched, staring up at him with terror on her face that he didn't even read. he was so blinded by his anger. the light of her halo flickered.
"i said, don't come back." it was almost a subconscious thing, how he lifted his hand into his hair and threw the flower crown onto the sidewalk. right next to his ice cream.
his throat burned harshly. all of his muscles tensed up in such a way that definitely wasn't healthy. he could barely even hear his own words through the pounding in his ears, and he most importantly couldn't hear her heart ripping in two.
"wilbur-"
"stop. stop this. stop following me everywhere, stop- stop acting like you care-" his hands balled up into fists at his sides, "stop everything! i never want to see you again!"
and that was all that was needed for her to turn around and fly off, and that was all that he needed for him to realize what a complete moron he was.
his walk home was nothing short of shameful. and this time he walked through hell with messy flower petals in his hair and a stupid yellow sweater and dumb tears in his eyes.
he didn't realize that quackity, a man who was about to lose twenty dollars, was watching him from afar. he cursed under his breath, biting his bottom lip until his hand brushed against his pocket.
tommy's keycard.
-
he looked at himself in the reflection of a lava pool, making all sorts of scrunchy and over dramatic faces. he experimented with the way the hood fell over his hair and how it made his furrowed eyebrows look.
he made his way to the elevator, admiring how the scythe looked when he tossed it around in his hands. and when it asked for a confirmation of identity, he pulled out the keycard, swiping it before anyone could see.
he'd continue to try to do tricks with the scythe until he got to the top, waving a hand to the guard until he realized he had to stay in character. his lips suddenly pursed and his eyes became hooded.
to his delight, an angel was there waiting for him.
"wilbur-" she stood up suddenly, her hands shaking at her sides. the light in her tear filled eyes was nearly gone, the glow of her halo barely there. "i wanted to a-apologize-"
"come with me," he spoke, as monotone as he could. his hand reached out towards her, and she hesitantly took it.
with uncertainty written all over her face, she spoke nervously. "where.. where are we going-?"
"i want to make up for what.. happened.. last night.." he muttered, dragging her underground.
she held her flickering halo carefully as they zoomed to the elevator, watching him jam the buttons with his finger. she'd never seen someone so eager.
as soon as the doors parted, he forced her inside with such an anticipation she couldn't pinpoint. it made her feel uneasy, how weird he had been acting.
"wilbur?" her voice came out as more of a squeak, taking his other hand in hers. she looked right at him with swelled eyelids. "this.. this isn't a trick, is it?"
his eyes widened, eyebrows unknotting a crease on his forehead. "what?" he practically laughed, "why- why would it be a trick?"
"i don't know.. you just seem.." her voice wavered, eye contact faltering. "nevermind, it's stupid."
"look at me, love," the nickname was.. new. "i don't want to hurt you. i'm gonna make everything up, okay?"
she hummed an agreement, eyes fluttering to make contact with his. his face was soft, just like the other night. but something seemed missing.
"i wanna show you everything about my home," the excitement in his voice was almost raw. "i live in a palace, did you know that?"
"i didn't," she smiled, a forced one. "are you gonna show me around?"
at that, the elevator's doors opened, and she was hit with a sudden wave of heat that nearly made her fall over.
and he almost didn't catch her.
tears started to swell up her eyes as she clung onto his arm, nails digging into broken fabric. soft yelps came out of her mouth.
"love, are you alright?" he spoke worriedly, and the amount of emotion in his voice made her even more lightheaded.
"i-i am-" she whispered, getting back onto her feet. "its just- y'know- what.. what i told you last night..?"
he nodded his head, a soft "oh" coming out of his mouth. but it didn't seem like an ounce of actual empathy lied behind his eyes. a tint of red glazed it instead. she felt odd.
did he not remember? or did he choose not to?
when she was able to walk properly, he led her around. if it wasn't for the burning pit in her stomach, she'd be extremely excited. but she had a feeling that something deeper was lying under the lava pools.
"this is the palace," he sighed, gesturing to the building. "isn't it cool?"
"it is.." she muttered. this awe, she could not fake. the large, intricate structures of gold and red and the occasional fire bounced off her glassy eyes. "can we go inside? maybe you can show me your room-"
"i.." he stiffened up suddenly. "i don't think that's a good idea."
"oh.." she muttered, trying to read his firm facial expression. but she couldn't.
a thick silence fell upon them. the only noticeable thing was how her halo flicked on and off with inconsistent beats.
"hey, i have to.. do something.. how about you stay here until i'm finished, okay? maybe you can talk to my mom or.. or talk to the hellhounds," his voice was unconvincing, but she still nodded, even as disappointed as she was.
and she watched him walk away, turning the corner away from her. she couldn't help the overwhelming feeling of disgust rummaging through her. the constant stares of demons around her didn't make anything better.
her feelings were mixed. maybe he's having a good day or- or maybe he's really considering peace between them.
but what if it really was a trick?
her soft facial expressions fell into her lap, weighing her options. she always sought to find the good in people, always trying and trying to think positive. but even after she revealed everything- everything she couldn't admit out loud, he turned her away. and there was no right explanation for that, no matter how beautiful his palace was.
she straightened up, fists clenched at her sides. she wasn't going to take it. after going through so much of his hatred for so long, she didn't like him practically making fun of her death. she hated it.
she was going to look for him and tell him all of her raw feelings.
as he rounded the corner, his back hit the wall and his knees failed. his breathing was labored as he ran a blackened hand through his changing hair. he could feel the skin literally crawl off of him, and he was delighted to have his normal look back.
quackity sighed against the wall, catching up to his quickened breath. "now all he has to do is find her. and they're forced to make up. and i win my twenty bucks," he muttered under his lips. "god, quackity, you genius."
his laughs felt amazing to churn out. pretending to be wilbur was exhausting him to the core, but it was worth each and every penny of the twenty dollars he'd be receiving soon.
but, through all of his buzzing victory, he didn't notice an angry little angel looking for a certain grim reaper. he didn't notice her stomping around with her fists clenched at her sides.
and he definitely didn't notice her tripping and falling into the pit of lost souls.
-
wilbur's day went on horribly.
he didn't get any sleep. not that this was any different from usual; but this time his night was spent tossing and turning in his stone bed trying to think of how he was going to talk to her.
his bones ached when he got up, and no amount of stretches could heal the knot in his neck.
work was even worse. especially considering the fact that everytime he heard some sort of high pitched noise, he'd think it was a little angel fluttering her wings at him, and then he'd be able say the speech he had written up in his mind.
he was regretting his word choice of "i never want to see you again" on top of his regret for the rest of his blown out word vomit.
but as he walked from the elevator to his palace, he couldn't help but hear a sort of cry for help. and it sounded oddly similar to the angel's.
"wilbur? w-wilbur.. i know- i know you hate me but this- this hurts -"
was it?
"its not fffunny anymore- i know you got your kick out of tricking- me- but this is- ow!"
it couldn't be.
"i won't bother you again! i promise! just please- let- let me out of here- help me.. please..? it's- it's -"
he'd been hearing her voice in his head all day in somewhat intervals. but this felt more real, more raw.
he stumbled on his feet. he knew where it was coming from. he heard noises of desperate cries from it everyday, but the thought that this might be real? it scared him to his core.
worry rushed over him quicker than second thought, and he rushed over to the pit of lost souls in a panic. hoarse, raspy screams of "angel!" flew out of his throat as he scrambled to climb the volcano-like structure.
-
she still had a lot of questions for wilbur.
not the type of, "what's your favorite color?" or "what's your favorite band?" questions. more like, "wilbur? hello? please help- this hurts- are you still there?"
and she was starting to lose hope in the fact that those questions might be answered.
one things for sure; her curiosity will be the death of her.
unless he's got the courage to do something about it.
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11.4k || 8.12.23 || masterlist here!
taglist (dm or send an ask to be added!) — @sixofshadowandbone @theoneandonlyyeti @harbingerofheartbreak @starsyoubreaklikesugardust @mcr-pr-fob @sapphic-soot @flynn-thebin @puppyburbites @xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx @merakiaes @aimi-chann @axthrial @lololol00 @deadphantomsociety @hometown-smile @qweengigi @kisstheskin
thank you so much for your read, i appreciate all of the support <33 a part two is indeed coming soon!! stay tuned
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phoward89 · 3 months
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Banner by me, dividers by @saradika-graphics
Based on this ask
I'm sorry in advance for murdering your feels with this sad, angsty, heartbreaking story.
Anyways....have fun reading
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Heartless
Pt 1
You loved your boyfriend, Coriolanus. Maybe you even loved him too much. So when you discovered the truth about him…
Well…it devastated you.
It broke your heart into a million pieces.
On the day that you made a life changing discovery, one that was supposed to be happy, you got a reality check that gave you whiplash so hard that you didn't know what was what anymore.
After your doctor's appointment you went home to the penthouse that you shared with Coriolanus and his grandmother, Grandma’am. His cousin, Tigris, had moved out a little while back; she lives in a condo above her boutique now.
When you entered the penthouse, you saw that Ma Plinth was sitting, waiting for you, with a little platter of ginger cookies on the glass coffee table. “How was your appointment? I hope you're feeling better.” The mother of your late friend, Sejanus, warmly remarked.
“My appointment went well; I'm feeling better now too.” You kindly smiled at the middle-aged woman who reminded you so much of her son with her kind smile. “Thank you for watching Grandma’am. Coriolanus doesn't like her to be alone too much and I just had to get to my appointment.” You gratefully told her while making your way over to the coffee table to grab a cookie.
Ma Plinth stood up, only to gesture to a brown paper wrapped package on the table. “A package arrived while you were gone.”
You grabbed a cookie.l, taking a small nibble off it. “Oh, thank you for bringing it in. I'll put it in Coryo's study for him.”
“Oh, Y/N, it's not for him. It's addressed to you.” The dark-haired woman informed you before waving goodbye and showing herself out.
You had a package?That's odd. You never get packages or mail in general.
Everything gets sent to Coriolanus since he has all the bills and the house registered under his name.
You were curious about the package, so you put your cookie down on the tray and picked up the brown parcel.
You read your name and address on the package, but the space for a return address was left blank. You thought that was odd, but shrugged it off.
Curiosity got the better of you; you opened the parcel only to find a letter and a tape. An audio tape.
You unfolded the letter and read it.
Miss Halvir,
I'm writing you this letter because your dear Mr. Snow is not the man you believe him to be.
He is not a man that takes his…say…oaths and promises seriously. He is a heartless man incapable of feelings.
Most of all love. I know you believe him to love you, but listen to me when I say, my dear, that he does not in fact love you.
Coriolanus Snow is cut from the same cloth as his father. A cold, callous man that sees order as a way to balance the wildness of the world.
He sees all the world as an arena with two types of people in it.
Victors and the unfortunate souls that are not strong enough to survive and become a victor.
You, girl, are no victor, but he is.
Coriolanus Snow is.
And he will do anything to get ahead in this world. Including selling out his only friend. His best friend. One Sejanus Plinth.
In this package I have placed a copy of the recording that was played during Private Plinth’s date with the noose. Please listen to it in private.
It will shed some light on the man you falsely believe to love you.
I would hate for something to happen to you, like it did poor Sejanus Plinth, because of misplaced trust in one Coriolanus Snow.
Your hands shook as you put the letter down.
I'mYou couldn't believe what you just read.
It couldn't be true. It just couldn't be.
You worried your bottom lip, turning the small audio tape over and over in your hand. You were scared to hear what was on it.
But you knew that you had to listen to it. So, you went over to the stereo, but it in, and pressed play.
What you heard on that tape made your heart stop. Every word exchanged between Sejanus and Coryo made you sick. The dead boy trusted the blonde, only to be secretly recorded and betrayed by him.
It was too much to handle.
If Coriolanus could do that to sweet Sejanus then what could he do to you?
You knew what you had to do. You couldn't stay with him; you had to pack your bags and go back to your mother's apartment. At least you'd be safe back home with your mother; safety's all that matters right now.
You can ignore that shattering pain of your heart breaking as long as your safe.
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“Darling, I made reservations for dinner tonight at the Capitol Grille for 7.” You heard Coriolanus call out to you from the foyer as you finished packing the last of your things in your bags.
Well, the Capitol Grille was a very high end steak house where the menus didn't have price tags printed on them. It was also a place that you needed to put in a reservation ahead of time; somebody just couldn't walk in or call same day to get a table.
People waited weeks, sometimes even months for a table. Hmph, and knowing that Coryo's using Strabo Plinth’s money to snag a table and eat a 3 course meal that cost more then most people's pay in the districts disgusted you.
Oh god. The way he got the Plinths family fortune made you want to run away from him and never look back.
Main reason why you were zipping up your bag whenever Coriolanus entered you- no his bedroom.
“Darling why don't you wear-” He began to say, only to stop mid sentence and ask, “Going somewhere?”
“Yea.” You nodded. “I'm moving back in with my mother.” You looked up from your bag, only to see the platinum blonde arching a puzzled brow at you.
“Why're you going down to the 8th floor? Is she sick” Coriolanus couldn't help, but think that all your mother's chain smoking had finally gotten to her.
Yes, Coriolanus smokes socially; even has cigars with the high power playing politicians during certain events and dinners, but it wasn't anything that's damaging to his health.
Hell, he thinks breathing in all the chemicals in Dr. Gual’s lab’ll destroy his lungs first.
“I can't be with you anymore, Coriolanus. I'm breaking up with you; moving back home.”
“WHAT?!” The platinum blondr shouted so loud that you thought your eardrums busted.
Slinging you duffel over your shoulder and grabbing the handle to your rolling suitcase, you simply told him, “You heard me. I’m leaving you.”
His icy blue eyes flashed with anger and a hint of something else as he stormed over to you. “You're not going anywhere, Y/N.” He ordered, grabbing your suitcase out of your hand.
You yanked your suitcase, trying to snatch it away from him. “Give it back, Coriolanus. I need it “
“You don't need it because you're not leaving.” The cold hearted man that you once believed was capable of loving you said while slinging your suitcase across the room. “Now behave and get dressed. I got reservations for us at-” began pulling the strap of your duffel off of your shoulder l, only for you to snatch the bag back and interrupt him with, “I'm not going to dinner with you tonight or any other night. Not anymore, Coriolanus.” Feeling yourself ready to cry, you started walking away from him.
As long as you didn't look at him you'd be fine.
“We're done. Just go find something else you can pretend to love.” You remarked, walking out of the bedroom.
You made it roughly 3 feet down the hall, only to hear the heavy footfalls of your ex’s black floor shines echoing against the marble floor. Coriolanus stopped you dead in your tracks when he grabbed your upper arm. Spinning you around to look at him, he made to sell you the charming lie of, “Y/N, after being together since our Academy day, I'm not pretending to love you. I do love you.”
Shaking your head, you let out a tiny cackle of, “You're so full of shit. You know that?” You snapped your arm, causing his hold on it to break. Your fingers tightly clutched the strap of your duffel bag as you revealed, ‘I know what you did to sweet Sejanus and how you're exhorting his wall meaning parents.”
His baby blues turned into saucers. For once, the stoic and well masked man looked like he was frazzled.
Looks like you caught him off guard; you confronted him with truths he didn't want to share with you.
Coriolanus reached out for you, but you took two large steps back. Running a hand thru his hair, the platinum blonde looked at you as if you chucked his car out of the penthouse window. “I don't know what you think I did, darling, but let me explain everything.” His tone was dripping with a fake promise.
You knew that he wouldn't tell you the truth. He'd just tell you another one of his lies.
Heartless bastard.
And to think that you wasted nearly 5 years with his ass. You've been by his side since you were 16 years old, only to find out now that everything was a lie.
He never loved you. He never cared.
Hell, the only reason Coriolanus is with you is because the songbird went missing.
Yea…
Now you're thinking that the friendly act he was putting on with his tribute, Lucy Gray, wasn't an act at all. Now you realize he was cheating on you with her and you were too damn stupid to see it.
And to think that you faithfully wrote him and called him when he was a peacekeeper stationed in 12.
You should've listened to your mother and gone out with Sejanus instead. Maybe if you would've accepted his advance he'd still be alive..your friend wouldn't have followed the devil out to District 12 only to be betrayed and sent to the noose.
Too late now. What's done’s done.
But you do wish that you didn't fall in love with somebody who can never love you. Someone so evil.
So heartless.
“Nothing you say to me’s going to make me stay with you, Coriolanus.”
“Can you stop calling me Coriolanus and call me Coryo, like you always do?” Coriolanus asked with a pitiful look in his eyes. You're positive it's fake since he's incapable of feeling anything, other than hate and greed.
“I got a package in the mail today addressed to me; inside was the tape that you recorded of Sejanus. The one that got him hanged.”
Coriolanus' breath caught in his throat and his palms began to sweat. How did somebody send you the copy? He thought that only Dr. Gual has access to that.
She wouldn't send it to you. In fact, she keeps her records well under lock and key; would never part with them.
Looks like one of the interns he replaced in Dr. Gaul's lab is out to make his life hell because he took their coveted internship.
Coriolanus know that he had to calm you down; get you to put your bag down and get changed into a nice dress so he could take you out for dinner.
Damnit, he had something special planned, even got permission from Dr. Gaul to leave the lab early, so you needed to stop looking at him like a monster. He needed you to look at him with love again and quick, otherwise his dinner plans are going to go up in smoke.
“Y/N, I know you think that I betrayed Sejanus, but I didn't. I meant for the tape to reach Strabo, so that he could buy Sejanus an honorable discharge, but it didn't happen that way. The tape was never given to Strabo, it was used as evidence against our friend instead.” Coriolanus told you, foolishly thinking that you'd believe his twisted half truth. Well, they say the best lies are half truths.
Your nostrils flared angrily at hearing the snake in front of you call Sejanus his friend. Sejanus was your friend, not his. Coriolanus wasn't able to have real friends because he couldn't love anything.
Well the only things he loved were money and power, but that didn't count because those aren't people. Those are objects; possessions.
Before you could blink, you slapped Coriolanus across his smooth shaven cheek. “You don't get to call him your friend. Not after you got him killed.”
“You think I'm not haunted by that? That I don't have nightmares of Sejanus screaming out for his Ma; the mockingjays perched on the hanging tree repeating his frightened last cries before flying away?” Coriolanus rhetorically asked, only to give the false confession of, “I broke down crying at my bunk after helplessly watching my brother die, so don't stand here and tell me that I'm not sorry or that I killed my best friend on purpose because I didn't.”
“Oh, Coriolanus l, don't go there. I know for a fact you sleep like a baby every night.” You scoffed.
Shaking your head, you spun round and stormed down the hall.
Coriolanus was hot on your heels. His velvety words of, “Please, darling, don't be rash. Don't throw away 5 years over a tape you received in the mail.”
“I'm not throwing anything away, Coriolanus. As it turns out, those 5 years were all an act for you.” You stormed right into the main room and over to the foyer. Looking at him from over your shoulder as you reached the door, you gave him the famous last words of, “I’m glad I found out you’re heartless; will never love me before when there's still time to get away from you.”
Coriolanus just stared at the door after you slammed it shut. His anger was festering in his chest; he wanted to kill whoever sent you that tape.
Damnit!
There goes his plans for tonight.
He better call the restaurant and cancel the reservation; call up Tigris and let her know that he doesn't need her to stay with Grandma’am tonight because he's not taking Y/N out for dinner anymore.
Looks like he's stuck ordering something in for him and Grandma'am. He wonders if he should give her back that heirloom ring of hers or if he should just keep it; shove it to the back of his sock drawer.
Grandma’am is old and her memory’s started to fade; if he tries to give her the ring back it might put her into one of her nonsense ramblings.
No, he'll keep the ring.
He'll give you some time to cool off; then he'll shower you with jewelry and roses to soften you up.
Once you were softened up, he'd talk some sense into you. Get you to come home.
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If you thought that breaking up with Coriolanus Snow would be easy, well, you were wrong. It was the hardest thing you did in your entire life.
And you know why?
Because he wouldn't leave you alone.
Well, he left you alone for the first couple of days, but after that he started sending flowers and gifts. No, not flowers and gifts. Roses and jewelry.
You never accepted them. You always tossed the roses in the trash and gave the packages of jewelry to the desk clerk with the instructions to give them to Coriolanus Snow.
You'd think he'd get the hint and stop.
Well, he didn't.
Instead, the floral arranged for larger and the jewelry kept coming back. Hell, he even went so far as giving you a copy of an ancient Pre-Panem book. A book from an ancient author that you loved.
Jane Austen.
You mother told you to burn the book, but you couldn't do that. It's be a sin to destroy such a work of art.
So, that was the only gift you kept.
But in doing so, you opened the Pandora’s box that was Coriolanus Snow's delusions. He thought that you were ready to see him again because you accepted a book, so he would come by your mother's every night looking to see you.
You always hid in your old child bedroom while your mother showed him away.
After 4 weeks of this insane behavior, your mother told you that she was concerned for your safety. That she felt you never to leave the Capitol for a while. Stay with your brother Rein, who was a peacekeeper that just received an officer’s commission in District 12.
Honestly, you didn't want to leave the Capitol. The Capitol was your home, but you knew that if you stayed then things would get ugly for you. Especially when it concerns Coriolanus.
You knew that Coriolanus would never look for you in District 12. He'd just write you off as a girl he lost control of and just find himself another Capitol bimbo to manipulate and control with false words of love.
So, that's why you were currently stepping off of the train in District 12.
Your brother was standing on the platform, eager awaiting your arrival in his officer’s uniform. When he spotted you, he quickly made his way over to your side and greeted you with a hug.
Reaching for your suitcase, he chuckled, “Let me take that for you, sis.”
“I see becoming an officer's turned you into a gentleman.” You teased Rein as he room your suitcase from you; leading you away from the platform.
“Mother told me your ex is stalking you with roses and jewelry.” Of course she did. Looking between you and a Jeep in the distance, your brother asked, “Does he know about the baby?”
“No.” And you're glad you received that tape after you came home from your doctor's appointment, confirming your suspicions. If not then you'd be trapped with that heartless monster.
“He’s just been sending me that stuff in an attempt to manipulate me back into his arms.
“I'm sorry things didn't work out, but you're more then welcome to stay with me in my apartment on base for as long as you need to.”
Your brother's words meant a lot to you. At least you had somebody to protect you from your ex.
Protect the both of you since you were going to become a mother in nearly 7 months.
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Coriolanus walked into Dr. Gaul’s lab with a dead look in his icy blue eyes. It made Dr. Gaul gleeful. It was better then the cold look he had when he returned from his summer vacation as a peacekeeper.
Oh, this time the look in his eyes held so much hate that she doubts anything could ever soften his irises. It was marvelous, really, how the mad scientist molded her protege into a hateful man. Into, well, her best experiment.
But Dr. Gaul knew that there was a chance all of her hard work turning Snow as cold as his namesake could be ruined by you. Well, not you per say, but the creature you were incubating.
Coriolanus Snow wasn't old enough, cold enough, and calloused enough yet to enter fatherhood. He was too young and might grow soft at becoming a father.
A year under her tutelage wasn't long enough to ensure that he wouldn't slip back into a weaker mindset once a crying, shriveling, pink creature that was half him and half you popped into the world.
Dr. Gaul knew that she had to break every part of Coriolanus in order to piece him together into the war mongrel leader she wanted to run the country. You were that small shred of good that latched onto him, kept him from fully drowning in the darkness. A child, your child, might make Coriolanus see the world through a different lense.
Now, she couldn't have that. That would ruin everything.
So, when her contacts at the OBGYN office told her about your appointment and your condition, she sent you a little care package.
Her star student never figured out.that she sent it, instead he blamed the intern who lost his spot to him. The mad scientist even helped Coriolanus test a deadly mutt of the innocent soul who he thought did him wrong. All because Coriolanus’ proposal plans where ruined.
Oops…
Dr. Gaul grinned evilly as she read the latest report from her spies. You were now in District 12 living with your brother on the Peacekeeper base.
Well, looks like it's time for a new game change when it comes to the Hunger Games.
Dr. Gaul decided that even children born on peacekeeper bases would be considered district citizens and would be legally obligated to enter their names into the game's lotto style drawing.
Unless a child between the ages of 12 and 18 is a Capitol citizen living in the Capitol, they will be registered for the games. Living on a Peacekeeper’s.base will not over safety to any child I'm the districts.
Not anymore.
Hopefully your child, fathered by Coriolanus, will never have their name picked for the games.
But as long as Dr. Gaul's alive, shaping Coriolanus like a potter shapes clay, anything's possible.
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Tags: @kuroosbby001, @purriteen, @poppyflower-22, @meetmeatyourworst, @whipwhoops, @bxtchopolis, @readingthingsonhere,@savagenctzen, @ryswritingrecord, @erikasurfer, @tulips2715, @universal-s1ut, @thesmutconnoisseur, @squidscottjeans, @sudek4l, @wearemadeofstardust0, @mashiromochi, @gracieroxzy, @belcalis9503, @shari-berri, @aoi-targaryen, @whiteoakoak, @spear-bearing-bi-witch, @gisellesprettylies @loverandqueenofdragons , @qoopeeya , @mfnqueen1
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dykefaggotry · 12 days
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[image id: an ask from @harbingerofskulls that reads: "im gonna b real i only knew the jerking off i would love to hear you elaborate more if you want to go on the whole situation" /end id]
answering here so i can save as a draft without risking the ask disappearing bc tumblr's been doing that lately but
oh god </3 for everyone else- it's talking about this post. sooo i'm gonna go through each one bc i've been feeling insane for several weeks. i'll do my best to cite my sources lmao
i don't know (johnny johnny)
this is referring to this unreleased VERY early beatles track from 1960. the audio quality is absolute shit & as such unfortunately people love to put words to it that don't make much sense in either direction (i.e a lot of mclennon fans want to hear "you're in love with me" and a lot of people that hate mclennon will just make up the weirdest lyrics that make 0 sense so it's Not Gay). some of the lyrics that ARE clear make it obvious this song is about the two of them running away together- at one point i'm fairly certain paul says "how am i gonna tell my father that we're leaving town?" probably referring to them leaving to hamburg. which would be fine but some of the other lyrics areeeee..... very..... Hm. like multiple times paul refers to john as "my boy" and there's bits of them talking about not knowing what to tell their friends & wanting to just run off together alone. if i were the other members of the band having to record this i would have killed them with hammers <3 also the entire end is just paul going "oh johnny" like 1 million times. okay. sure. also since the lyrics ARE so garbled i mean i guess people could be right about it saying "how am i gonna tell my father you're in love with me" but i just don't hear it. still, a very gay song about running off together and getting away from everything and everyone, complete with moaning the other's name </3
2. paris
this one is a huge part of McLennon Fandom Lore lmao but for good reason. not citing sources on all this bc it's one of those that's just Fact & can be found in like any beatles biography or thebeatlesbible.com (my savior) but. for john's 21st birthday, he got 100 pounds from a rich relative. instead of taking his girlfriend or any of his other friends, he decided to use the money to take paul to spain. but they stopped in paris on the way and just decided to stay there. which i mean like. taking your best friend over your girlfriend to the city of love is a little weird but it's not THAT weird. it's everything else that makes people want to chew glass about it. including some of the other things on this list. like this audio of john just goofing around singing about paris and paul, with such hits as "my cheri, my pau pau my pau paul." which is :| okay best friend. and paul has this picture hung up in his house that he took of john sleeping in paris. okay. sure. why not. (although ig there's some doubt about if the photo is from paris? either way it's a picture paul took and has framed in his house which is incriminating enough my man). also NOT in the original post but may pang, a woman john had a brief affair with in the 70s, wrote a book called loving john. in it, there's this quote:
After a late lunch, Linda launched into a long paean to the joys of living in England. When she was finished, she turned to John and said, “Don’t you miss England?”
“Frankly,” John replied, “I miss Paris.”
okay! also in an interview once he said:
The thing was all the kissing and the holding that was going on in Paris. And it was so romantic, just to be there and see them, even though I was twenty-one and sort of not romantic. But I really loved it, the way the people would just stand under a tree kissing; and they weren’t mauling at each other, they were just kissing.
(interview with david scheff for playboy in september 1980)
3. if i fell
this one i already made an insane post on that started my spiral into posting about the beatles publicly </3 but, essentially, the song "if i fell" by john is..... well it's most likely about paul. he said it wasn't about his wife but that it was auto-biographical and he never really had any public affairs that weren't flings, certainly not a lover. but most damning is he wrote the complete lyrics for the first time on a valentine's day card addressed "to paul with love" with some hearts and arrows pointing to where the lyrics were written. absolutely insane. made me insane.
4. oh! darling
rawest paul song of all time if i do say so myself lmao. but it's just.... Highly Suspicious, that's what it is. a Lot of beatles fans/historians will admit this song is most likely about john but they won't admit that it's fucking romantic if it is. like.
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like that is so blatantly romantic idk what to say other than that. also, in the official recording on abbey road, there's Several points where paul says "darling" that sound more like he's saying "johnny" which is what he called him. people brush it off by saying it's his accent, but there's a very clear difference between when he's saying "darling" and when he's saying "johnny". i mean the Lore behind this is that it was written right when things were splitting up between them (& the rest of the band) so it makes sense and it's why most people are willing to accept it's about john. it's just insane to me that they'll accept it's about john without considering the implications of that.
5. the real life demo
this one made me want to light myself on fire i won't lie to you. but here it is! john had a song called "real love" and this is a very early demo of it. but instead of the lyrics that came to actually be in the song (which are thought to be about yoko but let's not get into the fact that it was on a tape labeled "for paul" but whatever), it includes john fucking crying as he sings saying:
"was i just dreaming or was it only yesterday? i used to hold you in my arms. and now a baby and another on the way... la la la la farm..."
which can quite literally be about no one else but paul, as this demo was recorded when he'd just had two children with his wife linda and linda was pregnant with their third child. they'd moved to a farm in scotland. hearing this audio clip did genuinely make me want to lie down in the dirt for a week. also "i used to hold you in my arms" just... yeah. god. when people think it was unrequited idk what to say, really.
6. If Paul Were A Woman-
shoving these two together but. in april of 85, paul said in an interview about john and yoko's relationship:
"I mean, I couldn’t stand in the way of someone who’d fallen in love. You can’t say, 'Who’s this?' You can’t really do that. If I was a girl, maybe I could go out and…"
okay bestie <3 and what would make your relationship different if you were a woman? interesting! and yoko had something similar to say. in this audio, she says:
"I’m sure that if he had been a woman or something, he would have been a great threat – because there’s something definitely very strong between John and Paul."
just reminds me of being a kid and telling my best friends "if i were a boy i'd date you" lol. incredible. does anyone here know about bisexuality.
7. stuart!
not much to say here except that john had a best friend, stu sutcliffe, who died young & before that had been the bassist in the band. paul fucking hated him sooo much oh he SEETHED. a lot has been written on that relationship but it was.... very interesting to say the least. it could have just been about the band, or just jealousy over john's friendship, but take that with a lot of john biographers suspecting john had feelings/even a sexual relationship with stuart and it paints a very Interesting picture to say the least
8. john's bisexuality
here's a compilation of quotes about it, but john was more than likely bisexual. which has nothing to do w paul, really, but more to do against people that like to claim they were both Heterosexual Men. although an interesting quote in this compilation is him saying he's "had paul" lmfao
9. paul's post-beatles work
there's just.... there is so so so much here i don't even know where to begin. @ringompreg has a good compilation of paul songs here. a lot of them do take a bit of Lore but like..... it comes down to the fact that both him and john have/had admitted many times to using their lyrics during The Breakup Years to talk to/reference each other and sooooo many of these lyrics are insanely blatant. the two i mentioned were tug of war and let me roll it, both of which are acknowledged to be about john by most people WITH NO ONE BOTHERING TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT which..... tug of war has this:
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we could stand on top of the mountain with our flag unfurled? dancing to a beat played on a different drum? this is what gaylors think gaylor conspiracy is but paul mccartney is really out here saying this shit.
and let me roll it is so fucking blatantly romantic but every reviewer is like haha! what a cool song that's "making fun" of john and clearly in his style! like are straight people stupid genuinely. anyway:
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bonus to that but about JOHN'S solo work :)))))) he wrote a song called "watching the wheels" and when you consider he very much responded to MANY of paul's solo stuff it's :)
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which as a response to let me roll it would just be... so devestating but it may be a stretch idk if i'm onto anything there it's just worth Mentioning
and there's a lot of others, a lot of them in that post up there. like far too many where paul mentions falling in love with a friend like Alright.
10. paul's first lsd trip with john/"i know" "i know"
this one is less blatantly romantic but it is just insane. here's an article. and a quote from george martin about it. the first time paul tripped on acid w john was bc john accidentally took some and he took him home & then took acid w him bc he didn't want john to be alone on the trip :( but, notably:
"And we looked into each other’s eyes, the eye contact thing we used to do, which is fairly mind-boggling. You dissolve into each other. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot," the singer recalled, "And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person. It was a very freaky experience and I was totally blown away."
he also apparently saw john as the, and i quote, "emperor of eternity" during this trip??????? okay
SOMEWHERE i can't find it rn and i'm getting lazy but somewhere they (i think paul?) talk about the fact that they used to just stare into each other's eyes and then say "i know" "i know" which. considering john's song "i know (i know)" makes me crazy
11. in my life/i will
these are really just some devastating songs with lyrics that make you really raise your eyebrows. for in my life, written by john, it's just an incredibly romantic & sweet song that is again, not about his wife. given that the lennon estate is still out here posting pictures of paul to those lyrics i have to say it's a liiiiittle suspicious. and i will is...... it's one that paul insists is not about his girlfriend at the time, jane asher. and when you look at the lyrics vs how him and john met.... like. the song goes:
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and the story of how they met was that paul saw john repeatedly before they ever met, when he didn't know who john was other than that he thought he looked cool & admired his sideburns (lmfao). and when they did finally meet, it was when john was singing at a garden fete (party) and paul was in the crowd just Mesmerized. so. well. you can see.... you can see how fitting that is. makes me crazy makes me want to chew glass actually
12. "we were each other's intimates" and other insane quotes
"we were each other's intimates" is a paul quote about john which is just insane but that's not even the tip of the iceberg. here's a ton of quote compilations.
13. "literally everything else"/honorable mentions
some honorable mentions go out to: john going on stage w elton john & playing i saw her standing there and introducing it as "a song by an estranged fiance of mine" okay! the "just like starting over" demos. okay! which isn't even to MENTION the fact that paul locked himself away in the studio listening to "just like starting over" on repeat for DAYS after john died like???? john saying repeatedly that he considered paul & yoko to be his two major partners in life including in an interview the literal day he died. a whole ass rpf movie where they kiss & talk like they're ex-lovers and dance in central park (two of us) made by the same dude that made the let it be movie like. he knew them personally? he worked with them closely? and the only thing paul had to say about it was just essentially that it was what he wished would've happened like???????? i can't find a super reliable source for this so take it w a grain of salt, but apparently paul referred to mclennon fanfiction as "beautiful stories" and doesn't mind them being written. paul also had a cat that had kittens & he named two of the kittens pyramus and thisbe after fictional lovers he and john played and he gave pyramus (the character paul played) to john :|
and literally so much else like all of this and it's not even all of it. it's not even close to all of it. i didn't even get to talk about the way in "get back" the documentary, paul started talking about john leaving the band for yoko and how john would choose her over them and then he got teary eyed, started choke laughing, and then started singing "build me up buttercup" before looking at the cameras and stopping. what the FUCK was that about! IT'S NOT EVEN GETTING INTO THE SONG "TWO OF US" THAT'S SO OBVIOUSLY ABOUT JOHN THAT IT HURTS. it's. it's not even scratching the surface. they were just genuinely insane about each other.
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ylskquevmxv · 1 year
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British insight for those military men fics
Coming from a British person
Use this for your angsty british backstory
Will include:
-insight to healthcare and low income situations
- opinions on the royal family (all negative)
- british food
- talks about home life and low income
• none of them would care for the queens death. They would not be mourning, they would not be sad, they're not tories. If anything theyd be glad and wishing death upon the rest of them. The monarchy sucks the only downside is that we have Charles and camilla now. Diana rest in peace
• to add on to this they wouldnt care for the coronation they would most likely insult it, they probably hate the entire royal family like almost all of the entire uk does. I am repeating this again but they are NOT tories 🚫nuh uh🚫 stop painting, price, gaz and ghost as people who love the royals while soap hates them 💀💀 they all hate the monarchy
• they most likely wouldnt drink fancy tea Pg, Yorkshire, tetley etc are their go to because that's what most of the uk drink especially low income houses as it's the cheapest. Taste of home I guess.
• also they're not out here eating beans on toast whenever they get the chance💀 they're probably eating an entire meal because they're giant men??? Like beans on toast is what parents give to their kids because it's cheap and fills them up, the only time they're having beans is with:
1) breakfast
2) jacket potatoes
3) sasauge and mash
4) Gregg's bean and sausage pasties
• also soap probably eats beans too?? I've seen fics where hes wholeheartedly against beans like??? Hes Scottish?? I know he ate beans as a kid, no one grows up and decides to have a mohawk otherwise
• they're all meat and potatoes type of men (like all british men) that's it. That's the facts
• fries =/= chips
• also british people are like really lazy when they speak
"would you like a cup of tea?"= "fancy a cuppa?"
"I'm just not in the mood to do that" = "cant be arsed"
"How are you?" = "ya alright?"
"Should we get some Chinese/Indian/Italian/etc food?" = "you want a chinese/Indian/italian/etc?"
• we tend to just drop words off In sentences because the person were talking to probably already understands what we mean and because like I said we're lazy
• British accents also vary so much!!! Even if you're from the same street you'll probably have a different accent and we also swear a lot, we also use a bunch of mixed slang as thete are people from everywhere over here (poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, india named from just my class)
• Irish travellers are also really common so their would probably be a few in recruitment  idk why people dont add Irish people to their fics ?? maybe they fear putting Scotts and irish people together (watch big fat gypsy wedding for more insight I used to love that show)
• Aussies understand us pretty well (shout out to my uncle Andy) a lot of our language dialects are pretty similar and our humour is both pretty dry and blunt
• also British people dont care for like anything?? Even tho we have free healthcare most of us just slap a wet paper towel on it and call it a day. The most reaction you'll get is a room temperature ice pack
• british teeth are also something that Americans dont really understand since we have free healthcare but I'll they to simplify it. our Healthcare is free and so is dental care but only if you're younger than 16 except for check ups etc and unfortunately alot of us are born into low income households whose parents are a)mentally unwell b) physically unwell c) involved with drugs or are just simply neglectful so that means a lot of us arent taken to the dentist and by the time we are old enough to take ourselves we would have to pay for it and some of us just dont have the money for things like braces
• also I really want to see someone include chavs/roadmen in their stories because i think it would be funny plus some of them are really nice and genuinely curious when asking
• there are things called council houses/ council estates and they arent the nicest places to live and are usually not in the best shape but it's a place to sleep, most of the people who live there are usually people who live on benefits and are really lovely (might be biased I used to live in one tho), you usually have to top up on gas and electric every so often via a card (gas) and a key (for electric) usually able to get these topped up from you local corner shop
• alot of the nosies we make are as if we're cave men
*throws paper ball into trash*
Anyone in a 5mile radius: WOOOOO
• we also make up chants alot?? Idk why but we're just a musical country usually has something about your mum, your nan, a nonce, or one of the many other british wonders *nonce = pedo
• our beauty standards are a lot less extreme like theres obviously beauty standards but there are a lot more regular looking people on tv over here rather than supermodels ?? I've been to America and some of the people on tv you'd swear they were made in a factory for hot people only. Let people be regular
• British tv has a commercial every 15 minutes or so and our commercials dont offer lawyers or medication, some our commercials have songs, silly gags in them or are terrifying (check out: money supermarket, the antibiotic song, the meerkat adverts just to name a few)
• our eggs are orange not yellow
•our sandwiches have butter on them (not all but most) + brits arent much of foodies we just eat to survive really especially during the cost of living
• our drinking culture is a big thing over here, a lot of us start drinking around 13
• we have stores like asda, tesco, lidl, aldi, iceland, sainsburys and big Tesco, corner shops are really common depending on if they're owned by a large company or not some of them arent in perfect shape and are run my people from other countries but they have good stuff so who cares about how they look
• you have to be 16 to buy an energy drink and 18 to buy alcohol/ cigarettes
• outside cats are a thing, they're not homeless they just come as they go
• for some reason people are really classist?? Because how dare the poor be alive, and I'm not talking about just rich people being bad to the poor if you have bad living conditions expect to be made fun of by other low income people 💀 you'll be lucky if yoire funny because otherwise you will just be getting bullied.
•our weather is pretty much grey, our grass is almost never fully green and usually patchy, our summers are so hot they cause wild fires because we have no humidity and no air con, our winters are a hit or miss either too cold or a regular day
• tv shows that most of us call soaps: eastenders, coronation street, emmadale and hollyoaks
• some uk shows, naked attraction, snog marry avoid, friday night dinner, bad education, plebs, come dine with me, him & her, some girls, the Keith lemon show, gavin and stacey, not british but Derry girls, inbetweeners, anything with philomena cunk in it, the great british bake off
• Some documentaries (ish) for those who love information: old people homes for four year old, emergency, educating greater Manchester, educating Cardiff, poor kids, anything with stacey Dooley or louis theroux in
• it's kinda hard to describe the uk to someone whose never witnessed or experienced it.
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dystopianam · 15 days
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[DOWNLOAD] 4T2 GP7 STRANGERVILLE BIZARRE PLANTS SETS (GLOWING PLANTS!) - PART 1
EDIT: YES I wrote "bizarre" wrong, I apologize, English is not my language 💀 In italian it's "bizzarro", so I had a bit of confusion...
WARNING: I'm remaking this set from scratch because I discovered new things. This set works but I mistakenly used the fairy statue as the base thinking it was Base Game, when in fact it's from Mansion & Garden, so if you don't have M&G you won't see these cc in your game. It's NOT your fault, it's my fault because I remembered wrong. In the new version I'm working on, in addition to solving the compatibility problem (I'm using a BG base, the plants could be decorations OR lights that you can turn on and off, with the addition of many other swatches! I'm still deciding whether to make one thing or another.
(It depends if I can make cc lights, I'm still a beginner) also...I want to include Sixam plants from Get To Work in a part 2 or 3 👀
SO: You can continue to download and use these sets if you have M&G. I also checked the files and the error in the name is present only in the .rar, in the folder and in the file names, but in game the names are correct (I mistakenly wrote Bizzare instead of Bizarre, but in game the cc is called Bizarre) so if it bothers you just rename the packages! (How you would rename any file and folder)
In the meantime I will work on the updated version!
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I always had the headcanon that Vidcund was one of the scientists who studied the mother plant, and because of that I always wanted to have a bit of Strangerville in my game but I never found the converted plants!
Some have already been converted (like the vines) but I wanted to have a complete set (also because I made my own edits!) I couldn't find the other plants anywhere for YEARS! (I'm very sure that after this post I'll see a post from someone who converted them like yesterday...but never mind!)
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Since I couldn't put the intermittent light effect, I decided to create some glowing versions!
The difference between Glow 1 and Glow 2 is that Glow 1 uses a white light, while Glow 2 uses a purplish light which makes the plant slightly more saturated!
I only made one glowing version of the Unhealthy Bizarre Plant because...well, it's the dead version of the plant! It wouldn't make sense if it lit up! (Since it is absent in Glow 2 and 3, if you decide to use these sets you could use Unhealthy Bizarre Plant from the other two sets)
They all cost 0 Simoleons (Well... I had no idea what price to put!) and you can find them in decorations > indoor plants!
They have no animations! They are static decorations unfortunately!
I hope it's clear because I would hate to disappoint anyone, but as I have already explained, they do not light up intermittently. They aren't lights. The no glow version doesn't turn on, the glow version is permanently on. If I can, in the future, if someone wants I can try to create a version that works as a light that can be turned on and off! Remember that I'm a beginner, I do what I can ^^"
I thought too late that it would have made more sense to categorize them as outdoor plants 💀 If it bothers you, you can change the category on simPe (Open the packages on simPe > Go in Object Data, in this page you can put the plants where you want them!) or wait until I'll fix the category with a future update!
Only use one set! (You can choose plants from each set individually, but don't use different version of the same plant, it has the same guid!)
I changed some textures from 1024 to 512, and compressed everything! Let me know if there are any problems!
DOWNLOAD (SFS)
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morallyinept · 7 months
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HELLO & WELCOME TO THE PEDRO PASCAL FANDOM! 👋🏻
I'd just like to take a moment to say hello and a big welcome to all my recent followers & mutuals. How wonderful that you're here! So exciting!!
My name's Jett and I'm so happy that you're here in the Pedro fandom, and you're all so welcome here at my place too! 🖤
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I'd also like to share with you some hints and tips on navigating this fandom and Tumblr.
Perhaps this is your first time in a fandom, or using a site like Tumblr, and I can appreciate how daunting it can feel. I've been there. Trust me. 🥴
But don't worry - I've got your back. We all have.
I hope you find it helpful, and if you have any questions, or just want to say hello back, please feel free to reach out. 🖤
Fandom is a different experience for everyone. You get out what you put in.
What do I mean by that?
Well, fandom is an inclusive place, for everyone to come together in mutual admiration and respect for, in this case, Pedro Pascal. It's a hub to share, create and get excited about content, and to make new friends.
It's NOT a place for divisiveness, hate or toxicity, although sadly it exists here in small pockets, as it does in any fandom. 😑
The best piece of advice I can give to you, is to be respectful.
Be respectful in the way you conduct yourself. Be respectful to your mutuals and followers, and to the blogs you follow. Be respectful to Pedro. As much as we all write fanfic about his characters (and some choose to write about him; that's their prerogative, although I personally don't), he is a human being, not a piece of meat.
It's perfectly fine to get excited, to fantasize and daydream, we all do it. We all get thirsty, let's face it. That Pedro fountain is flowing. 💦 But be mindful about blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.
Have fun, that's why you're here. I'm not your mom, but always remember to respect each other. (I'm fairly certain your mom would have told you that, however.)
If you are subject to any negativity or toxicity whilst here - and hopefully you never will be as the majority of us in this fandom are friendly, approachable and lovely, if but a bit excitable - but if you do experience it, the best thing to do is to ignore it.
Block, delete and move on. Don't feed into it or be a part of the problem.
If you have an ageless or empty blog, chances are you will be blocked.
Tumblr has a massive bot problem. 🤖 Specifically a porn bot problem.
It's easy for us to spot a fake blog or a bot that follows us. They usually have an empty bio, no icon, or their icon is an AI generated image of a scantily clad female. We all block them. 🚫
Most, if not all, writers in the Pedro fandom (and other fandoms too) write smut. We love it. And we know you do too, it's probably why you're here. But we are responsible writers, or try to be as responsible as we can be, by ensuring that no minors under the age of 18, to our knowledge, are reading our smutty fics.
So, if you have a blog that doesn't have your age on it, chances are you'll be blocked. We're protecting ourselves and we're protecting you.
Unfortunately, Tumblr is working against new users of the site in the fact that they now ask you to follow a few blogs BEFORE your profile bio is able to be set up or edited. I know, counterproductive right? So chances are you're getting blocked even before you start. 😖
I'd urge you to add your age onto your blog at the very least. It's okay to have an anonymous profile if you want to, but please, please tell us your age. Otherwise we will have no choice but to block you.
The RE-BLOG button is the only button you need.
Look at this:
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The icon in green is the RE-BLOG button, the two arrows.
You'll find this at the bottom of every single blog post, including your own. Look at the difference in the numbers here. See how they differ from the RE-BLOG to the likes, the heart icon?
Yeeeeah. We don't want that disparity. We want that RE-BLOG icon to be the biggest number on our posts.
And here is where you can help with this:
PRESS THIS RE-BLOG BUTTON. DON'T STOP PRESSING THIS RE-BLOG BUTTON. LOVE THIS BUTTON. RE-BLOG EVERYTHING YOU LIKE!
Tumblr doesn't work like Instagram, Twitter/X or other social media platforms where 'likes' drive content to be seen. Here on Tumblr RE-BLOGGING is what gets our stories onto your home feed for you to see them and enjoy.
If you don't RE-BLOG, our posts get lost and have very little engagement, and that is why your favourite writers then stop writing and leave the site.
RE-BLOG, RE-BLOG, RE-BLOG everything you like and love. I cannot stress that enough.
Likes are nice, but they do absolutely nothing. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis.
Well, that's not technically true. Likes tell me that you've seen my post. That's it.
Annnnd what can I do with that info? Nothing. That's what.
RE-BLOGGING the post tells me however that you've enjoyed it, loved it even. That makes me very happy and inspires me to carry on writing fics that you'll (hopefully) enjoy.
Pressing the heart icon works like a bookmarking feature on Tumblr rather than a liking feature as you're probably used to from other social media sites. And the more things you like here, the more your older likes get pushed to the bottom of your epically long like list, to be forgotten about and will probably never see the light of day again.
Personally, I like to use the like button as a way of bookmarking something to come back to later and then I will RE-BLOG it once I've read it.
There is no limit to the amount of times you can RE-BLOG the same post, but you can only like it once. That should tell you that liking something here on Tumblr has no effect.
Tumblr is all about encouraging engagement through RE-BLOGS, the algorithm does nothing if you press the like button and move on.
By all means, give that heart icon a press, but please also RE-BLOG it at the same time. We will absolutely love you for it!
☝🏻And be mindful of going on a mass liking spree - Tumblr doesn't like that and neither do we. It's a quick way for you - and us - to get shadow-banned and Tumblr will think you're a bot. And being shadow-banned is incredibly annoying for everyone involved. Trust me. 😖
Talk to us. We love it!
We love getting positive/constructive feedback on our work. We love engaging or interacting with you. I certainly love receiving and responding to any comments, DM's or ASKS that I'm lucky enough to get.
But again, ensure you're respectful.
Tumblr has created an ASK feature where you can ask us a question, and you also have the option of asking us that question anonymously if you'd like.
If you do use the anonymous (anon) option on your ASK, be aware that we have the right to ignore or delete your ask if you're being a jerk. Don't be a jerk.
This feature is for someone to interact with us anonymously if they're shy. Not to be abused to send hate or negativity our way.
You'll find the ASK button on the main page of anyone's blog that has it activated, just below their bio.
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And Tumblr has made it easy for us now to see if you're a mutual of ours, even if you're asking on anon FYI. So we can narrow it down to finding you if you do happen to be a jerk... just saying.
Be respectful in your comments, DM's, ASKS and RE-BLOGS.
Yes, you can leave comments on your RE-BLOGS too. Another reason for you to press that RE-BLOG button.
If you use something, always give credit to the source/creator where possible.
One way to garner enemies in any social media space is to use something that isn't yours, without crediting the source.
Now, it's impossible to physically ask everyone if you can use their content, however Tumblr makes this very easy for you to do that in most cases.
Yep, RE-BLOG IT.
RE-BLOGGING leaves a clear trail back to the original poster for everyone to see.
Now, if you use something without re-blogging, which you can absolutely do when you create your own blog posts from scratch, you should give credit to anything you use in your post that is not something you have originally created yourself.
Perhaps there is a GIF you like, for example. You can post it, but you should absolutely give credit by tagging the blogger/creator who created that GIF. (Tumblr also has their own selection of GIFS you can use FYI, and when you do they automatically add the original creator's tag at the bottom of it. Easy!)
And this should be respected if you use another's person's art or writing too.
Now, I could quite happily sit here and tell you all about copyright law, but we'd be here forever and frankly it's a boring topic and I'd rather you get out there and read all the awesome fics you're going to discover instead.
But, in a nutshell, any picture of Pedro you post, does not belong to you, no matter how many times you write your user name all over it.
Look, we all do it; we all like to make our edits, our banners, our covers look wizard, and I do it myself. But what we can't do is claim ownership or copyright to it.
Some people will try; they'll get pissy if you use something that they claim they found first or is "theirs" because they plastered their user name all over it... putting your username on something does absolutely nothing FYI.
☝🏻No-one can claim copyright or ownership to any image of Pedro, unless they physically took that photo themselves and can back it up with evidence should they be challenged legally.
My advice here is to always credit the source on anything you want to use, i.e. where you found it and tag or link back to the original content creator where possible.
If you're unsure where it originates from, you can still use it, but just make a note in your post somewhere about not knowing who it belongs to etc... so the original creator can advise you later.
Again, it just all boils down to being respectful.
And if you're ever not sure if you can, or should, use something, reach out to that creator on Tumblr and ask. They'll appreciate it, regardless if they give you permission or not.
Hoo, we sure covered a lot here...
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I hope you've found this post useful at the very least. For a more extensive use of Tumblr you can easily use the search function, or via Google if there is a particular setting or something you need help with, or reach out and ask someone. This Pedro community is incredibly welcoming and helpful.
And if they're not, well you let me know and I'll send the Pedro Boys to sort them out. 🫡
If you enjoyed this, and did indeed find it useful, you know what to do:
RE-BLOG IT!
Now, get out there and have some fun exploring and reading!
Stay Kind. Stay Creamy. 🖤
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🖤
GIF of Dieter Bravo from @miguelo-hara 🖤
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pandoraslxna · 3 months
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Hi everyone.
As you all know, I’m usually not the kind of person to address these things publicly, but there is a situation going on that leaves me with no choice but to speak up about it. I‘m deeply sorry for disrupting the peace that I tried to maintain on my blog by bringing unnecessary and childish drama on here and I hope that I will only have to speak up about it once. Writing this down already makes me feel so stupid, but I just can’t keep ignoring this, hoping it will eventually get better, when I know it won’t unless I share my side of the story.
Last week it was bought to my attention that @teyamshuman had updated her blog to make it look extremely similar to mine. And I’m not just talking about a few similarities by taking inspiration, I’m talking about a direct copy of my layout, navigation, masterlist, guidelines and even my about me post.
I’ve put them side by side as demonstration:
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While I tried to think of it as a compliment, it still bothered me to see someone else basically copying me and all the hard work I’ve put into creating my blog and my layout, which is why I decided to reach out to her. I tried to approach this as respectfully as possible, even asked my friends for advice because I didn’t want to come across as rude or entitled and explained my feelings about this to her.
Here are our conversations:
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While she agreed to change it up, it took her almost a day and barely any changes were made. I had to explain to her again and in detail what exactly was bothering me, but I continued to be respectful and kind. A day later there were still some major similarities on her blog, and I was honestly running out of patience. I still didn’t want to make a big deal out of this so I simply decided to block her for my own peace of mind and also because I didn’t feel like checking her blog every other day to check if she had changed anything or maybe even copied me again —which is a valid fear and I’m fully standing behind my own feelings and won’t apologize for them.
Only then did @teyamshuman change her blog theme enough that there was barely any resemblance to mine. She then decided to reach out to my friends and sent some of her moots to try and talk to me / ask if I can unblock her / telling me she wants to talk and apologize, etc. I choose to ignore this because my decision was already made and I was honestly annoyed by the fact that she only made those changes on her blog after I decided to block her.
Now to the main reason why I am even making this post.
After this, the following days my inbox kept filling itself with weird, rude and straight up hateful asks that were seemingly coming out of nowhere. I got suspicious but thought nothing of it, since I don’t take bullying to heart, especially not by someone hiding behind the anon button. It was then bought to my attention that @teyamshuman, who had by then blocked me as well so I couldn’t see her posts myself, published several asks of stories about me being rude and straight up toxic to others. Some of these asks even included the names of my close friends that had absolutely nothing to do with this whole situation. In her responses to these asks it seemed like she was agreeing to everything that was shared about me, some of these asks also contained misinformations and descriptions of situations that were completely out of context. This all reached a point where suddenly people were bragging to her about reporting my blog and simply stating that they now hate me after whatever she had told them about me.
The asks she responded to:
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Unfortunately that is not all.
Apparently, @teyamshuman has at some point decided to stop sharing these asks, yet that didn’t change what was already done. I tried to be the bigger person in this and just continue to ignore her, especially since she told these people to leave me be, but my inbox still fills itself with hateful asks, even death threats and people straight up asking me if I’m the blog everyone is talking about / if I am "that toxic writer."
These are just some of the asks I’ve received, because I’ve immediately deleted most of them when they first started coming in. Sadly there are more and more coming every day.
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While everyone is free to have their own opinion and I, by all means, can’t and won’t force anyone to like me, seeing these things about myself really hurt. I‘m trying so hard to be nice and respectful on here, even if I don’t get the same treatment in return, and I simply choose to ignore so many things that are being said to me and the way I’m treated by some people, yet the one time I decided to speak up for myself and address something that made me uncomfortable, this is the outcome.
What genuinely confuses me up to this point is that this whole situation has taken a turn where I feel like I did something wrong, when all I did was try to protect my peace and express my feelings after someone made me uncomfortable. It was never my intention to come across as rude or passive aggressive while doing so.
Now with that being said, I hope everyone is now able to see this from my point of view and make their own opinion about it. I also hope that the people behind these asks will reflect themselves and realize that what they’re doing is not okay.
Lastly I want to remind you all that this will continue to stay a safe place for everyone and I’m not trying to cause drama over something so silly, something that could’ve been handled so much better, so please don’t send any hate, threats or rude messages to anyone involved in this. This post isn’t meant as an attack against anyone, it’s meant to protect myself and bring peace.
Thank you.
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paracosmic-murdock · 9 months
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gold rush ; benedict bridgerton x reader (part two)
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pairing: benedict bridgerton x fem!reader
summary: after he found out the reason why you had been distancing from him, benedict decided he would do anything and everything to win you back. how unfortunate that he will not have it as easy as he firstly believed it to be.
warnings/tags: mutual pining, idiots in love, insane benedict bridgerton, married kate and anthony, platonic anthony bridgerton & reader, song: gold rush (taylor swift)
word count: 1.6K
❁ part 1 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5
❁ mila's paracosm (main masterlist)
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It was a whole new day, but for him it wasn't.
The thought of you being in love with him and him not being able to reciprocate your feelings, therefore, you hating him, was eating Benedict alive.
And the more he thought of it, the more he realized he had given you plenty of mixed signals throughout the years. His excitement every time he saw you? Asking you to dance at least twice every single ball? Painting portraits of you each and every time he could for all the assignments that required him to paint a woman? Buying you books every week? Mixed signals here and there because a man that does not love a woman doesn't do any of the things he has done for you since you became friends.
So he made a plan to get you to forgive him so you could be friends again.
One that began with him at your home.
One that didn't include seeing you and your parents chatting with an unknown man, who was, by the way, sitting so inappropriately close to you.
As he was about to leave, your mother's eyes landed on Benedict, and she said his name as she stood up.
He saw the way you tensed under his mention, but stood up nevertheless.
"Uh…" He cleared his throat. "My apologies, I did not mean to intrude. I shall return some other time."
"Nonsense, my dear!" your mother exclaimed. "Come on in, take a seat."
Benedict gave everyone an apologetic look and sat on the chair next to you.
"Good afternoon, Benedict. We have not seen you in quite a while here," your father noted. "Why is that? You have been missed."
He chuckled slightly. "Uh, the Academy has been quite time consuming as of late. More than I had anticipated, in fact. My apologies, that is why I came, for… a keep up."
"You do not have to have a reason to come visit, Benedict," your mother said. "Right, my darling?"
You looked up, an uncomfortable grin on your face. "That is right, Benedict…" you replied. "This is, uh… Lord Vikander. Lord Vikander, this is Mr. Bridgerton, a friend of the family."
"It is nice to meet you, Mr. Bridgerton." They shook hands.
"Likewise." Benedict agreed with his lips in a fine, fake line.
"Benedict, would you like to stay for dinner?"
"My apologies, Lord Y/L/N, but I am expected at home for dinner, I… I wish to speak to Y/N in private, actually."
"Of course." He nodded, making a gesture so you would take Benedict somewhere you could speak.
You obeyed, as expected, and walked next to him to your studio.
Benedict sighed looking around. All the things with his name that used to be in your studio were dead, gone, and buried. "Where are the…?"
"Somewhere I could not see them." you replied dryly.
"Whatever did I do?" he questioned, the patience in his eyes disappeared, distress replacing it. "I- I must know because I cannot live without you in my life."
"You should start getting used to it," you murmured. "Lord Vikander and I will be engaged to be married any time soon, and I shall move to Stockholm with him as his wife."
"Excuse me, what?"
You nodded. "I overheard him telling Papa and my brother that he had sent for his Mother's ring."
"Y/N, you… you cannot just marry and leave."
"Ben, this is the cycle of the life of a woman: once we are old enough, we become a pretty trophy for a man to win over. I have postponed it long enough and now it is time… Soon I will be too old for a fine gentleman to want me, so this is my all or nothing at all."
"But you cannot marry him and move to Sweden."
"I can, I will, and I have no other choice but to either way," you answered. "And please, return to your home. There is nothing left for us to talk about… This is not appropriate, especially with Lord Vikander waiting for me."
"Since when do you care for what is appropriate when it comes to you and me?"
"Since I lost hope," you confessed, looking anywhere but at his eyes. "Now, it is best if you leave."
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"Benedict!"
He downed the bottle of whiskey that wasn't meant to be drunk that way before Anthony could reach him. "Brother!"
"Benedict, what is happening to you?!"
"This, Brother, is what a man who has lost hope looks like!" he exclaimed. "You shall see me in a circus by next month."
Anthony rolled his eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"She will marry that man," he answered, and Anthony's concern grew bigger at the sight of his brother weeping. "She will marry that man, move to Sweden, and not come back. She will not come back to me, I will never see her again… And I ran out of whiskey."
"What man?" He frowned.
"A Swedish lord who seems to be in love with her."
"Swedish? You mean Lord Vikander?"
"In the flesh," Benedict confirmed. "She says she has no other choice, but she does…"
"She does not have another choice, Brother. That is the wealthiest man in Sweden, someone who can provide for her, take good care of her. He is a good man, and if you do not love her, he is the best husband she could dream of."
"Whose side are you on?"
Anthony smirked, taking the empty bottle from his brother's hand. "Hers."
"I cannot let her go. I cannot lose her."
"There is nothing you can do, Ben," he said. "She was never yours to lose to begin with."
"But she could be."
"No, Benedict," He shook his head. "You do not love her so you must let her go. Perhaps one day you will get married or simply move to your property outside of London, and what will be of her? A single woman who renounced her suitor for her friend who could not even return her feelings? Let her go."
"I cannot, Anthony, she-"
"She will be better with Niklaus, brother, just…"
"You know him?" He asked, trying to seem careless.
"Y/N's brother, Niklaus, Simon, and I were close friends back in Oxford."
"He is friends with Nathaniel?"
"He is, and I did not know Niklaus was courting her, though I saw him last night at White's."
"He did not say a word about her?"
"No, and I did not ask."
Benedict sighed. "I will not let her go."
"You must," Anthony rolled his eyes. "Now, go to your room."
"Do not treat me like a kid, Anthony."
"But you are behaving like a stubborn child who does not want to let go of a toy someone borrowed! I hope to God you do not sabotage Y/N's engagement or else."
Benedict nodded, and Anthony knew he had to keep an eye on him.
Back at the Y/L/N Manor, you were cursing him and yourself.
Even your Father, ever so clueless of anything in regards of emotions and feelings, noticed that something was wrong as soon as you returned from your private conversation with Benedict.
It was midnight now, and you were sitting on the windowsill and looking outside, the Orion constellations bringing you memories of when you and Benedict were teenagers and he used to escape from his home so late at night and you to your home. You two would look at the stars until the sunrise hid them, and look at each other until your eyes were too tired to be kept open.
Two knocks on the door killed your reminiscing.
"Are you awake, my darling?"
You recognized your Papa's voice, so you stood up and opened the door.
"I apologize for being up so late, Papa. I just cannot fall asleep."
He shook his head in amusement. "Do not apologize, just talk to me and tell me what has got you so distressed."
"It is nothing, Papa."
"Does it have to do with Lord Vikander?"
"No, everything is alright."
"Benedict?"
The mere mention of his name made you break down. His expression softened and he opened his arms to receive you in a hug.
"I love him."
Your father stroked your hair lightly. "What is the problem? You do not have to marry Lord Vikander if you do not wish to, you can marry whoever you choose."
"But Ben doesn't want to marry me, Papa… If he wanted me, we would be married by now."
"How can you be so sure, my darling?" he asked, making you look him in the eyes. "I was so in love with your mother when we were your age, but I had promised myself I would enjoy the life of a bachelor as long as I could… It took me long enough to admit to myself how much I loved your mother, but once I did, I could never forget I did. Perhaps he has not realized yet that he loves you, and perhaps he needs a little push. Tell him how you feel," he advised, cleaning your tears. "And if he doesn't feel the same way, then you will always have Lord Vikander. You can always learn how to love him, and if not, you get along very well with him. He is sensible, he respects you, he is serious about his intentions, he knows what he wants… You deserve a man like him, not one that does not love you, my darling. Listen to my words and converse with Benedict, then you will know what to do."
"Thank you, Papa."
He smiled. "You do not have to thank me for anything. Now, go to sleep."
You smiled back at him and did as he told you.
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maverick-werewolf · 2 months
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Werewolf Article - (Play As A) Werewolf Video Games
The results of the poll for this month on my Patreon are in, and the winner is an opinionated article on werewolf video games! Apologies in advance if any of my opinions here anger you. I was asked for opinionated, so I went opinionated and did not hold back.
For clarity's sake: this will be a relatively concise list of SOME video games in which you can or do play as a werewolf. It will NOT include every single game in which you can or do play as a werewolf, nor will it include certain kinds of playable werewolves that exist in gaming, for the sake of brevity. You'll notice some missing and then want to be first to tell me I left out [thing], but I assure you I am aware of those too. I am also not going to list games in which you can play as a werewolf but it requires either user-made mods or else playing in a custom campaign/tileset/server (like Neverwinter Nights <3), only games wherein you can play as a werewolf as part of base game or expansion pack mechanics.
This IS a tiered list. It is tiered based on the werewolf gameplay mechanics and elements in the game.
Let's get started. I will begin at #9, go to #1, and then I will close with some words on some other games that didn't make the numbered list.
9. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
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Note: your player character will never have torn-up clothing or use his claws like in this artwork/like the enemy worgen do
I'm just going to list Cataclysm here because, frankly, I don't even want to discuss WoW at Shadowlands and beyond... even if discussing the model update will reach into that era of content. Obviously, I don't play WoW anymore and haven't in quite a while, but yeah, I used to really enjoy it. Played it for many, many years. Probably too many.
Cataclysm was a pretty outright bad expansion, but it did add playable worgen (something I obviously wanted from day 1 after seeing the worgen mobs running around), and they can even turn into human form, which is a must for me in terms of actually being a werewolf instead of just a wolf-person, which I wouldn't even roll. That was a nice touch I didn't actually expect from the devs.
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Unfortunately, the model update turned them into something far "cuter" and more cuddly than I liked, not to mention adding preposterous fur options like stripes and merle, but the human form customization was nice. Still, the model update drove me toward playing different races, like maining my kul'tiran and night elf instead of the worgen I was always ultimately pretty disappointed in, given his wearing fine armor and wielding giant weapons. Anyway, the entire game took a huge nosedive not long after the model change, so it's a moot point for me regardless.
As for the deeper worgen lore beyond "they are werewolves with a funny name": I hate it with all my heart. I did my best to ignore every scrap of that and how they are just self-parodies, to delete the Gilneas/worgen starting zone quests from my entire brain, and especially to ignore the fact that they were all preposterously British despite England being one of the last places historically to even have many werewolf legends of its own. I have an article about that here if you are interested in the topic. The game made all of these things very difficult, especially how hard they wanted to drive home that the worgen are silly posh British parody dog-people strutting around in waistcoats and tophats instead of being fearsome cursed werewolves. So I won't bother going into all that.
The mechanics are fun except for the fact that you have to wear armor and use weapons, so ultimately you just look like a beast-person instead of a werewolf, especially after the model change making them far more appealing to a certain demographic. If Blizzard had wanted to put in effort, they would have made your gear look tattered and would have made you swap to claws when you turn, but that would've been a lot of work. They could have at least added a specialized class or something and then also given it to some Horde races to make the precious Horde players happy. I don't know. I just think werewolves wearing fine clothes and armor and wielding weapons is immensely silly. They're supposed to be werewolves.
So while they are extremely far from perfect, the worgen are at least relatively fun in that, if nothing else, you can go between werewolf and human forms and run on all fours as fast as the fastest ground mount, and I am deeply surprised they did either. I immensely enjoyed both of those things during my time playing a worgen, and they helped mitigate the great disappointment otherwise in many other regards - though not enough to keep me from maining other races, especially later on. But, in the end, WoW sucks now and it's unrecoverable, and WoW Classic is a joke, so I'll never be playing a worgen again anyway.
8. Diablo II
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I'm sure you were looking for this one - the werewolf druid in Diablo II (preemptive sidebar: I am not going to talk about Diablo IV). I love his design and gameplay mechanics. He's fantastic. However, he is of course yet another instance of "the werewolf must be a druid," which I personally find a little tiresome after so much of it. But hey, this was one of the earlier games to do that, so it predated a lot of the craze.
At any rate, the Druid class in Diablo II obviously gets a werewolf form. It also gets a requisite werebear because werewolves can almost never just be werewolves, but at least the werewolf does not completely suck. You can also summon wolves, which is a bonus.
While I'm not really that big on Diablo-type gameplay - I prefer either third-person or else a proper isometric, party-based RPG - so Diablo II didn't really hold my interest a lot, the werewolf druid is very fun and a very cool werewolf, the setting is great, and the werewolf suits the dark Gothic feeling and look of the game that is enjoyable and well conveyed in the first place. The werewolf druid is a great addition that I am glad they added.
7. Baldur's Gate II
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Let me make something perfectly clear: Baldur's Gate II is, in my opinion, the best game ever made (only Uncharted 2: Among Thieves also makes this rank for me). Combined with BG1 to create the Baldur's Gate Saga, it is one of the best stories ever told and also my favorite game mechanics-wise, again alongside Uncharted 2 even if yes, I know that those games could almost not be farther apart in terms of mechanics. I absolutely love BG2 beyond words. Please note I am talking about the original Baldur's Gate II, as released in 2000, not the "Enhanced Edition," which is a disgrace to the game, the entire series, and a piece of garbage. It's shamefully difficult to find the original game anymore, but it's worth it over playing the EE; trust me. I'll try to spare you any further ranting on this topic, as the original Baldur's Gate Saga is something very close to my heart.
Anyway, the werewolf in BG2 is - once again - a druid, specifically a druid subclass called Shapeshifter. It doesn't really have any werewolf gameplay mechanics in that you are not treated differently for it, nor do you transform out of your own control. In fact you will be spending the majority of your time in werewolf form, which can get quite tiresome. I'm not the biggest fan of a werewolf holding normal conversations with NPCs, etc. But regardless, it's there, and I love it, and it looks awesome, and that's more than I can say for so many games. Plus, you get cool bonuses and stuff. The power of it varies over time and with the progression of your character. I will not go too deeply into it, as I am actually an insane D&D video game nerd and even today I can spend far too much time building characters and tweaking numbers and doing ridiculous tricks in D&D games to powergame. If you want just one of my credentials I beat BG2 on the hardest difficulty with Ascension and no other gameplay mods. Long story short, the Greater Werewolf is quite powerful, and it shouldn't be a detriment to your party to either be one or bring along Cernd, one of my favorite companions.
So don't listen to the people down on the Shapeshifter in BG2. You can get mods that make them overpowered, anyway. Also don't listen to my complaints about it not feeling werewolfish enough because that's nearly impossible to come by anyway if you're not playing the #1 game on this list. Go try one out. It's fun! Plus, BG2 is the best game ever made.
6. Altered Beast
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What are some of Mav's favorite things? Ancient Greece, hoplites, hot men, werewolves, dragons, tigers...
When I found out Altered Beast exists and is a game wherein you play as an awesome hoplite dude and turn into a werewolf, a green dragon, a tiger-man, and ultimately a werewolf is still the most powerful of all his forms, I was ecstatic. I had to play it immediately.
I wasn't disappointed. It's a fun, unforgiving game, because it was made before video games started becoming what I think we're supposed to call accessible today. I don't know what else there is to say about the game if what I've already said hasn't convinced you to play it. The werewolf form is your first transformation, and your most powerful is a golden werewolf. Me being me, I appreciate that a werewolf form is still the best in the end instead of being outshone by other creatures, and even the other forms available are all very cool.
As I said, I really don't know what more one could ask for of this setting and gameplay. I've never been picky about genre; I play a very wide variety of video games and have plenty of fun, and I certainly had fun with this one.
(Note: I'm not going to talk about that 2005 Altered Beast remake, I like to pretend it never happened)
5. Werewolf the Apocalypse: Earthblood
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I'll be the first to admit I'm far from the biggest World of Darkness fan ever, as has brought many insults my way already, but I was pleasantly surprised by the mechanics of the werewolf form in Earthblood. I will not call it the "crinos form," as that terminology is so immensely silly that I could no longer take it seriously if I did. So anyway, the gameplay actually lets you feel like a werewolf, and you even get two stances you can swap between for different combat styles instead of anchoring werewolves down to just doing one thing. I'm not going to wax on about the lore, the story, etc. - but man the werewolf mechanics really are fun. It is, of course, the main draw of the whole deal, and they didn't slouch on that element.
It's important to me that a werewolf feel powerful and also violent. Werewolves should not be cuddly, or else they are no longer werewolves. Painting hallways with the blood of my enemies as if I'm recreating the Ninja lead-up in Metal Gear Solid while in werewolf form is cathartic and a good way to give the player a sense of being a werewolf instead of just an animal-headed person. This is a very solid "play as a werewolf" game, and one of the few games that exist with the primary purpose of letting you really play as a werewolf, whether you are a predetermined character or not. Be warned, the game is notoriously janky, but if you're like me, you're enjoying the werewolf mechanics enough that you don't care - or you can be even more like me and not give a toss about "jankiness" in a game in the first place.
4. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
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While a significant and crushing downgrade from the werewolves in certain other Elder Scrolls entries - more on that momentarily - at least Skyrim let you become a werewolf in the base game. No waiting for an expansion pack and no waiting forever until you move on (thanks, Oblivion). However, the differences between the mechanics of werewolves in past entries and the Skyrim werewolves are many and tragic. I confess I did not play Skyrim much, partially as a result of these exact elements, and partially because I just don't spend much time playing video games anymore, among other things.
In Skyrim, being a werewolf becomes what is colloquially called an "awesome button," letting you turn into a big, strong, cool werewolf that can eat people to extend your werewolf timer. It's great and enjoyable, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't actually feel as if you are truly cursed with lycanthropy or smelly lupus or whatever silly name Elder Scrolls gave it (yes, I know the name, but that doesn't make it less silly). You have no real disadvantages to being a werewolf, such as having to worry about when you will transform outside your own control - because you never will, which is an immense downgrade in terms of feeling werewolfish and adding appropriate challenge and downside to being a werewolf. You also don't have to worry about being forced to devour a civilized race in order to sate your accursed hunger. Instead, you're doing that on purpose to turn out of werewolf form again, because the more you eat, the longer you stay transformed. Still, the werewolves in Skyrim are good - they just don't compare to previous entries. But I certainly appreciate them and the fact that they are present in the base game.
3. The Sims 3
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Trust me, they do look better in game, but I couldn't find any of my own screenshots because it's been a hot minute since I played this.
You probably think I'm trolling you, but the werewolves in The Sims have always been pretty fun; I remember when the ones in 2 first came out, I enjoyed them like crazy. The ones in 3 rocked and were easily the best variant; too bad the game is relatively difficult to get running properly, and many aspects of the werewolves are delicate and easy to glitch, including your entire Sim's werewolf form design. I am not going to talk about those abominations that were added to The Sims 4, because they are some of the worst things I have ever had the misfortune of seeing and are not werewolves by any metric.
Sims 3 changed the aspects of Sims 2 werewolves that I didn't like, such as how being a werewolf altered your sim's entire personality over time and how the werewolf form always looked the same. They made the system much more robust. Frankly, the Sims 3 werewolves are some of the better werewolves in gaming, especially for the kind of game that The Sims is (expect assorted dog jokes, for example, given it's The Sims, yet it still isn't half as bad as it could be). I also love the wolf-man design; it works much better with Sims than something bigger and more wolfish. Certainly far better than whatever the hell is in Sims 4, which again, I will try my best not to talk about.
Anyway, I absolutely recommend Sims 3 if you enjoy Sims games and werewolves and want to have some werewolf fun. I'd probably still be occasionally blowing my finite amount of time on this earth playing it if I had it properly running on my current PC.
2. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
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Bet you didn't expect to see this one, did you? You thought I was gonna say Skyrim as #2, right? Actually, I bet you thought I was going to say that one as #1.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is a game many would consider unapproachable today. I enjoyed it. Obviously, I played it for the playable werewolf, and I had fun! They work similarly to the ones in Bloodmoon, but, in my opinion, they still aren't as fantastic as the Bloodmoon ones. But the game does force you to actually live and behave as a werewolf - I love the werewolf hunter[s] mechanic - which, again... it's almost the only one of its kind other than Bloodmoon. For that, it gets #2 on this list.
And that means you know what makes #1, untouched in its glory, undimmed by time...
1. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - Bloodmoon
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Alright. Have I ever talked about how this is the single greatest werewolf game ever made? I think I have, but let's get into it again.
I like Morrowind in the first place. I think it's hands down the best of the Elder Scrolls series and, frankly, the only one really worth dedicating much time to (forgive me). I played it when it first came out, and while I have never been the kind of person to pour hours into any ES or even any other open world game, Morrowind held my attention even as a kid - before I knew about "open world" and before it was such a buzzword - whereas other games before and after it struggled to do so or else failed entirely. Morrowind was groundbreaking for its time in many ways. And then they announced the expansion pack called Bloodmoon that would let you play as a werewolf. I was so excited I could hardly stand it, and even with my extreme werewolf pickiness, I was not disappointed. At all.
This is a game wherein the werewolves are treated as a serious threat, they are insanely rare to encounter in the wild in any capacity (I actually became a werewolf through a random encounter because I ran around on Solstheim obsessively every night rather than just becoming one through the story - it took me many nights, IRL, to encounter one), and when you do run into them, they are likely to destroy you. You are insanely, over the top powerful when you turn into a werewolf, yourself. Some would even call it stupid. I would not. You run at the speed of light and your jump turns into borderline flight. It's basically gliding. You're also preposterously powerful in general. I love it.
Most importantly of all, however, is that you are actually forced to roleplay as a werewolf. You will turn each night, and you must consume 1 victim NPC of any of the playable races. Solstheim is full of assorted enemies that will work for this, but when you go back to Vvardenfell, it can be harder to find a nightly meal while avoiding devouring any quest NPCs. Plus, you have to manage your gear before and after transformations, and you have to be sure you are never witnessed transforming. The entire system is in-depth and very awesome, making you actually feel like a cursed being that has to worry when the sun starts to set, forcing you to run far from civilization.
I cannot put into words how much I adore this game's werewolf system. Nothing compares. This is a real werewolf system, instead of "play as a wolf-person" or "hit the awesome button to become a werewolf for a little while with 0 consequences" like basically every other werewolf game out there.
So long story short, if you claim to love werewolves and want to play as one in a video game, and you haven't played Bloodmoon, then you're lying to yourself and the whole world. Shame on you.
And now for things that didn't make the list...
10. Assorted Acknowledgements
This category is for ones I don't even really have a lot to say about, but I figured I would mention them.
Terraria - You can get an item that lets you turn into a werewolf when night falls. It's pretty fun! I like the mechanics of it, plus it has a neat werewolf design, to boot. I dock serious points in this game for straight-up replacing the zombies with hordes of werewolves in hard mode, though. "Werewolf infestations" and werewolves being zombie stand-ins these days is preposterous and overdone. But I had a lot of fun running around as a werewolf and exploring, so it's absolutely top of the non-tiered list especially as far as werewolf mechanics go.
Pillars of Eternity - The "werewolf" in this game is one of several animal-person forms the druid can get, continuing the common theme in gaming of druid werewolves. The wolf is decidedly the worst of the lot, less useful even than the prey animals available. Put bluntly: they are basically terrible, and you're an idiot to ever use this form when there are so many build options available. There are also lots of other RPG options available. As in other games out there in the world. You should play those instead.
Guild Wars 2 - You cannot actually play as a werewolf in Guild Wars 2, but I figured I would mention it because lots of people do. If you want to roll one of the Norn giant race, either as a pretty giant woman who is the mommy stepping on you from some men's dreams or as the ugly tiny-headed cartoon men, you can get an ability to turn into a werewolf for like 30 seconds; it's far from exciting. And like so many werewolf abilities today, it comes with the option to also turn into other humanoid animals with different abilities. I've heard that, of them, only the cat and bear are useful, which is not a shocker as video game logic goes (game devs think wolves straight up suck at everything lol). I didn't play a Norn during my stint with Guild Wars 2 - I played a male human. He's Nolan North, so he's obviously the only choice and also why I played the game as much as I did.
The Elder Scrolls Online - This disgraceful abomination of a "game" is terrible in every way and could not have been a bigger disappointment on the promise of an "Elder Scrolls but MMORPG" concept even from the very beginning. It was never good, it only ever got worse, and I am happy to say I abandoned it long ago (I am not happy to say I was playing it in early closed beta because of the promise of werewolves - and I played it far more than I should have, so I am not coming at this from ignorance). It is a game with designs so ugly and unremarkable that you want to quit and walk through the woods just to remind yourself beauty still exists in the world. ESO clearly had no idea what direction to take itself in from the moment it dropped, and it certainly was never created with the pretense of playing like an Elder Scrolls game but being massively multiplayer. It has no sense of mood or atmosphere whatsoever and possesses writing that will make you long for the riveting tales in other low-rent, low-thought MMORPGs. You can play as a hideous weird sad werewolf model that is absurdly small (most likely smaller than the race you are playing as, which means you actually shrink when you transform) and should have been left in beta, which functions like a worse awesome button werewolf than the ones in Skyrim, because you also suck gameplay-wise especially depending on the dev's mood with the meta. It is terrible, as is everything about the game. ESO also went out of its way to completely wreck all previous Elder Scrolls werewolf lore that was actually really good. Anyway, don't play this. Your time is worth more than that, even if you don't think it is.
That covers some of the best! Requisite apologies if I didn't include your favorite.
( Free Newsletter  — Patreon — Wulfgard — Werewolf Fact Masterlist — Twitter — Vampire Fact Masterlist — Amazon Author page )
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daydreamingleclerc · 2 years
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do you think about me at night? - lewis hamilton
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based loosely (or quite a lot on second thought) on conversations with friends. 
summary: you’ve loved lewis ever since the moment you laid eyes on him, despite the age gap and the fact that he’s engaged, and as much as you both know what you’re about to do is completely and utterly wrong, you do it anyway and all your cards are laid bare in the process.
warnings: this includes cheating from both lewis and his fiancee, and Y/N, unfortunately looks like a bit of a homewrecker. Y/N IS ALSO SIGNIFICANTLY YOUNGER THAN LEWIS (!!!!), lewis is the age he is now (37), Y/N is about 23. smut, weed smoking, alcohol consumption, bisexual!reader, this is literally one of the longest pieces ive ever written, theres a lot of backstory and smut towards the end. oral (f rec), fingering, protected sex, pet names (think lewis says good girl like once), praise kink, very brief mention of choking (blink and you miss it kinda mention), i think that’s it. in true emi fashion, this isn’t very good and it’s not been proofread - but let me know what you think! 
pairing: lewis hamilton x fem reader
requested: no
notes: requests are open, see who i write for here and my masterlist here. this is my first lewis smut so it’s not 100% in the swing of it all yet, but i hope you enjoy! 
“ready?” 
georgie peered in, a raised eyebrow as they wandered through your bedroom. their eyes scanned your outfit and for a minute, you thought they hated it until their lips curled up into a smile. they approved, which was something you were relieved about. 
“you look nice,” they smiled, fingers dancing along the bottom of the dress and feeling the thin silk, “it’s pretty.” 
“nice?” you asked, raising an eyebrow, “i at least want to look good, that’s better than nice.” 
georgie frowned, and kicked your shin with the tip of their foot. you weren’t even going to go to this goddamned party, in fact, you were completely and utterly against it. you saw how kiara treated lewis, and it made you angry, like all the heat in your body was causing you to levitate off the ground somewhere. 
“you do look good,” georgie laughed softly, “but it’s got nothing to do with lewis, no?” 
they raised their eyebrows and you shrugged. “does it matter if it is?” you replied, picking at the skin around your fingers. georgie was right, it was everything to do with lewis, but you were also right, it didn’t matter because he was engaged. 
“i think you should just go for it,” they shrugged, “we all know kiara isn’t happy, either.” 
you rolled your eyes, applying the last of your lipgloss in the mirror and almost toppling over the pile of clothes in the first place, “yeah, we only know she’s not happy in that relationship because she told you when her tongue was halfway down your throat.” 
“well, technically she told me after that,” georgie shrugged, tank top blowing in the wind coming from your open window, “kinda difficult to tell someone how you feel about your imploding engagement when you’ve got their tongue down your throat,” they smirked, “you should know that, Y/N, especially after all the times we used to make out.”
“fuck off,” you groaned, dropping the gloss in your bag and turning to face them with rosy cheeks, “are we going or not?” 
georgie got up off of your bed, sliding their phone down into the pocket of their denim shorts. they looked effortlessly good, as per usual, with denim shorts and a blue tank top, both of which eccentuated the long limbs of their legs and arms in a way that would never look right on you. you wore your matching shoes, and it always made you giggle when you did that. 
the taxi ride to lewis and kiara’s was quiet, gentle small talk between the two of you while georgie told you about the people kiara had invited. you were hardly listening to them, gazing out of the taxi window almost regretting your decision to come tonight. 
kiara spotted you both almost instantly, and on second thought, you questioned the baby blue silk dress you’d slipped into. it was noticable, and that wasn’t what you wanted to be tonight. you handed kiara the small bottle bag in your hand, “happy birthday,” you felt stupidly inferior as you handed it to her with your chipped green nail polish, noticing her dark red gel polish that hadn’t chipped a single bit. “it’s not much but its something from us both.” 
you knew you weren’t inferior. if lewis was yours you would never even dream of being so stupid. 
“it is?” georgie asked, raising their eyebrows. you laughed gently.
“mhm, you owe me twelve pound seventy five.”
“of course i do,” they nodded, “drink?” 
georgie went off, mingling with kiara’s friends and meeting new people you’d only feared they’d introduce you to. lewis’ friends were in a completely seperate part of the house entirely, and when you scanned for him amongst the crowd, he was nowhere to be seen. 
an hour or so passed, and you’d been dragged into a conversation between georgie and a few of kiara’s friends surrounding freud. it was boring you, as much as you hated to admit it. you didn’t come to the party to discuss the  psychoanalysis of boys and their mothers, you came for one reason and that reason was nowhere to be seen. 
you tapped georgie’s shoulder and signalled to the bathroom, but they furrowed their eyebrows, “you okay?” 
“yeah, am i not allowed to go to the bathroom?” 
georgie nodded, their smile soft as you wandered off through the house. kiara’s eyebrows knotted when you took a right turn to the stairs after clocking the line for the main toilet in the hallway, but you pretended that you didn’t notice. 
you’d been to the house enough times to know that the door furthest from the staircase on the left was not the bathroom, but something drew you to it anyway. the door swung open, and inside you found lewis sitting by the window on an armchair, a puff of smoke surrounding his head. 
the smell of weed wasn’t as strong as you anticipated, mixing with the smell of the BBQ from downstairs, and the smell of alcohol and fresh bedsheets. it was a surprisingly nice concoction. 
“Y/N,” lewis smiled softly, “i didn’t expect you here so early.” 
“well, georgie wanted to put old men in their place about psychoanalysis, so,” you straightened out your dress, “here i am.” 
“of course they did,” lewis chuckled, “but, are you saying i’m old?” he stood up, and immediately your cheeks flushed a light shade of crimson and your mouth went dry as if you’d forgotten to speak, “i’m kidding.” 
you let out a hot puff of air and lewis walked closer, “i was trying to find the toilet but i, uh-” 
“-we both know you know this isn’t the bathroom, Y/N,” he said. he was inches away from you now, standing so close you could smell his expensive aftershave, and it almost made you melt, “you’re blushing.” 
“you’re drunk,” you noted, and took the cigarette from his fingers to take a drag, “and high.” 
“you’re blushing,” he repeated, taking the cigarette from your fingers, taking a drag and stamping it out, “over me?” 
“it’s hot out in case you hadn’t noticed,” you hummed, blowing your puff of smoke out in short bursts. lewis was impressed. he watched as you blew out the rest of the smoke, and then he followed, bringing his beer bottle up to his lips. you watched as he drank it, eyes never leaving his when he pulled it from his lips and brought it to your shoulder to cool you down. 
you breathed out, a soft gasp, and it took everything inside of him to not combust there and then. 
“that feels nice,” you noted, “it’d feel better here.”
you dragged lewis’ bottle to your chest, the swells of your boobs spilling out from the top of it anyway, but they jolted when the cool droplets from the side of his bottle trickled between them. “yeah, i was right.” 
lewis lowered the bottle, only slightly, and the gasp elicited from your lips again. he took a long, deep breath, composing himself, but before he managed to successfully forget about wanting to kiss you, you leaned in and did it yourself. 
one hand wrapped around his neck, pulling him into you closer while he stood there in amazement. your lips slotted between his perfectly, and when he kissed back after what felt like hours, they moulded even better. the bottle he held at your chest had been removed, you placed it on the bedside table behind you. 
lewis’ hands moved to your cheeks, cupping them gently and engulfing you in him as you kissed, your hands coming to rest on his torso. you felt so content in his arms, his lips on yours. you’d fantasized about this moment for weeks, and it had finally happened. neither you nor lewis wanted to pull away, so thoroughly engrossed in the kisses the other had to offer you didn’t even want to breathe. 
he pulled away first, practically heaving for breath. he never knew a kiss could feel so good, and he realised rather quickly he never wanted to kiss anybody else ever again - not even his fiancee. you wiped your lips with the back of your hand, a vague, lingering taste of his budweiser coated your lips, while the citrus taste of your lipbalm coated his. 
without another word, your lips locked again. his tongue slid easily past your tongue, and you allowed him free access within your mouth. this kiss was even better than the last, but you weren’t sure if that was even possible. 
the door hadn’t been shut properly, and roscoe had managed to bump it open with his nose. he barked softly at lewis’ feet, and you soon pulled away from one another. the door was open barely an inch, but you sensed that kiara wasn’t far. lewis bent down to tend to roscoe, and you admired him while he did so. roscoe barked softly again, and you bent down to greet the bulldog with a smile on your face. 
“who’s a good boy?” you cooed, and watched as roscoe cocked his head to the side, “rossy’s a good boy!” 
as if on cue, kiara walked through the door. you straightened yourself up, awkwardly standing between the pair of them like a dagger through their marriage, and her gaze never left you. 
“is everything okay up here?” 
“mhm,” lewis said dryly, “Y/N was just playing with roscoe.” 
“thought you went to the bathroom,” she replied, aiming her response at you. your throat was dry, but you swallowed thickly. 
“i was - i, uh, i did - but then i saw roscoe coming into the bedroom and then i saw lewis so i-” 
“-the door wasn’t open wide enough for you to see lewis, Y/N.”
“jesus, ki,” lewis pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, “roscoe came in, and then Y/N followed and pushed the door closed a couple of inches,” he lied surprisingly well, and you nodded with a soft smile, avoiding kiara’s eyes. “anything else?” 
“you’ve got something on your lip,” she turned to lewis, even drier than before, and wiped her thumb underneath her own lip, eyes on you, “right there.” 
*
several weeks passed, and you’d hardly seen or spoken to lewis in that time. the one time you did see him, he looked effortlessly gorgeous, standing beside kiara at the launch of her new his and hers perfume range. she made sure to keep her eye on you both all night, never allowing him a moment alone with you. 
she had her head screwed on, she wasn’t stupid. georgie, much to your relief though, was none the wiser about the kiss, and you intended to keep it that way for as long as possible. 
they were deep in conversation with one of kiara’s friends, one who they hadn’t met yet and they shared multiple views on certain, uninteresting subjects and it kept them entertained. you, on the other hand, not so much. your phone beeped in your jacket pocket, and when you pulled it out, lewis’ name was spread across your screen. 
unable to grab you alone, he said, but kiara’s going away to france for paris fashion week on sunday. three dots popped up on the screen when you’d read the messages, and almost instantly, another message popped up, you can come over when she’s gone if you like, would be nice to see you. 
a small smile graced your lips, and for the first time in weeks you felt a pulse in your veins once more at the prospect of being alone with lewis. sounds good to me, you shot back, shall we say monday at 12:30? 
cool. he replied. you were just about to put down your phone when it buzzed again, don’t worry about making dinner, i’ll cook for you. you smiled again. and make sure to bring a change of clothes. 
“i bought wine,” you smiled when lewis opened his front door to greet you. roscoe barked at your feet and circled your ankles when you entered the hallway, “i wasn’t sure whether you drank red, white or rose so i just bought all three.” 
“you didn’t have to do that,” he replied, walking back off into the kitchen and watching you in the doorframe as you slipped off your shoes, “i like that dress.” 
you blushed softly at his compliment, and by default swayed your hips to show off the floral detail. you almost told him that you bought it especially for this occasion, but you didn’t want to sound too eager - he was an almost married man, after all. 
you watched as he poured you a glass of white wine from the half open bottle on the countertop, filling it just over three quarters of the way full and adding a drop of lemonade for sweetness. he handed it to you in silence. 
“it’s not as fun when kiara’s not here,” you giggled sheepishly, and watched lewis from the rim of your wine glass as he chuckled along opposite you. 
“i suppose you’re right,” he took a swig of his wine and then took several steps towards you, “but it’s nice, just us.” 
you nodded, desperately wanting to tell him how perfect it felt. how much you knew he was the person you were destined to be with, how the kiss had completely and utterly changed the direction of your life. but you didn’t. 
“did you know that kiara kissed georgie?” 
the question wasn’t meant to leave your lips, but it did anyway. you didn’t care. you wanted to see the look on his face, the anger, the frustration, the confusion. only you didn’t get any of that. he still remained calm, his facial expression had barely changed one iota. 
“no, but it doesn’t surprise me.” 
you furrowed your eyebrows in confusion and watched as lewis sipped his drink again. “there’s never been two people in this relationship, Y/N,” he sighed, “there’s always been affairs, i’ve just never had them.” 
“oh.” 
you weren’t sure whether lewis’ revelation made you so furious you could scream, or so furious you could fuck. he took another swig of his wine, and you stood there in silence once more. you began to walk towards him, placing your wine on the counter and getting closer to him until you were centemeters apart. you brought your lips to his, one hand bracing around the back of his neck like last time, while his hands moved to your hips. 
your lips danced in tandem with one another and you eagerly bit down on his bottom lip to tell him you were ready for this to happen. he moved his hands down to grab at your bum and lifted you onto the countertop, where he slotted between your legs perfectly. your hands moved from behind his neck to underneath his shirt, where you stroked your fingers up his defined torso until it rode too high and he pulled it from his body. one of his hands came to rest at your throat, giving it an experimental squeeze, while the other hand travelled up your leg. 
you opened them wider, and when they were open enough to his satisfaction, he pushed the lace material of your underwear to the side and circled your clit with the pad of his thumb. you gasped, clawing softly at the skin of his stomach as he continued to circle his thumb. 
his lips moved to your neck, sucking on the skin so lightly, and when he felt like you were ready he inserted a finger into you, and relished in the moan when you cried out at the feeling. you bit down on your lip, one hand running up the side of his neck and bringing his lips back to yours. 
you moaned into his mouth and he smrked against your lips, appreciating the reactions you were giving him. he inserted another finger and your back arched, pressing your chest up to his. 
“ssh, ssh, Y/N,” he spoke softly, “i know.” 
“feels so good, lewis,” you whispered back breathlessly, “please don’t stop.” 
he hummed, sucking at the underside of your chin and nibbling at it with his front teeth. your hand travelled down to his sweats, where you squeezed teasingly at his dick, protruding out of the grey material. he let out a breath, one he’d clearly been holding in for a while, the feeling of your delicate hands on his dick was something he’d only ever imagined; and now it was happening he felt like he would explode. 
lewis’ fingers began to pick up a bit more pace inside of you, curling in soft ‘come hither’ motions and coaxing you towards your orgasm. he leaned down, pushing the dress up higher and sinking to his knees to watch his fingers dissapear inside of you. 
“so wet,” he noted, pulling his fingers out momentarily to lick around the pads before inserting them back inside of you, “so wet, all for me.” 
“mhm,” you replied, sitting back on your elbows so he could get a better view, “all for you - fuck!” 
lewis’ lips wrapped around your clit while you spoke, and his tongue flicked the underside while he hummed ever so softly against it. the friction made you cry out again, and one hand flew to his hair while you gripped at the counter so hard with your other hand that the skin went ten shades lighter from squeezing. 
“‘m gonna - fuck, lewis, ‘m gonna cum.” you stated, tugging at his dreads as he continued to eat you out and curl his fingers. he nodded, humming slightly harsher and flicking your clit faster. it didn’t take long before you came, legs shaking around his head as he toppled you over the edge. 
he pulled off of you with a pop and brought his lips to yours, and you moaned when you tasted yourself on his tongue. you got to your knees, silently telling him you’d return the favour, but he stopped you. “i need to feel you,” he said, “you’ll be staying all night, there’ll be plenty of time for that later.” 
you frowned, but ultimately agreed. he pulled you up, and his fingers instantly went to the buttons down the front of your dress, carefully undoing them one by one. he could tell it was new by the smell, and he didn’t want to ruin it because he knew it would’ve upset you. 
the dress dropped to the floor and pooled at your feet, and lewis’ eyes almost bulged out of his head when he saw you standing in front of him in just lacy underwear. he’d only ever dreamed of this, of seeing you in front of him in lingerie, waiting patently for him to admire you before he took it off. 
your cheeks flushed red, and instinctually, you went to cover yourself over with your arms but lewis had other ideas. his fingers hooked under your bra straps, and they fell to your elbows. “you’re gorgeous, Y/N,” he spoke, almost breathlessly as he reached his arms around your body to unhook the back of the bra. he watched it fall, and your nipples pebbled in the cool air, “so fuckin’ gorgeous.” 
you blushed once more, and your hands hooked into the waistband of his sweats so they wouldn’t cover up your body. the sweats fell off of his legs with ease and pooled at his ankles, and your soul almost left your body when he didn’t have any underwear on. 
he smirked at your reaction, and hooked his fingers into your underwear. he pushed them down your legs, and travelled down with them, the pads of his fingers tickling the backs of your legs as he guided the underwear down. you stepped out of them and lewis came back to face you, his lips pecking yours and then your nose. 
“how do you want me, darling?” 
“i, uh,” you furrowed your eyebrows, unsure of the answer, “i don’t know.” 
lewis’ expression mimicked yours, scrunched together eyebrows and a soft look on his face. you didn’t mean to pull that expression, and you knew you should’ve mentioned something before he pulled all your clothes off. “i’ve never done this,” you breathed, “i mean, i have done this - i have had sex - but i’ve just not, uh, i’ve never-” 
“-hey hey, slow down,” lewis grabbed your wrists, “if you don’t want to do this, we really don’t have to.” 
“no, no, lewis, i want to,” you shook your head, “i’ve just never had sex with a man before,” a sigh left your body and the hot air from your mouth blew all over lewis’ face and left him with shivers down his spine, “i’ve only ever dated one person, and that was georgie’s sister tessie,” there was a small silence, “and then tessie cheated on me with her best friend michael so i slept with georgie to get back at her.” 
lewis chuckled and tucked some loose hair behind your ear, “i can work with that,” he kissed your nose, “do you still wanna do this?” 
you nodded, and lewis smiled, releasing your hands and bracing them around his neck, “okay, sweetheart, get up on the counter for me.” 
you did as you were told, and lewis almost felt now as if you were the most delicate china. you’d let him in, formed an emotional bond and that was something he would cherish forever. you spread your legs, much like earlier, and lewis reached over into the cabinet by the oven, pulling out a condom from a boz in the corner of it. 
“why do you have condoms in your kitchen?” you asked, a raised eyebrow and an amused smirk on your face. lewis laughed. 
“never know when you’ll need them,” he winked. 
you watched intently as pumped his hand over his dick several times before he rolled it on. 
“ready?” 
“ready,” you smiled, wrapping your arms back around his shoulders, hands in his dreads. he guided himself inside of you, and as he stretched you out inch by glorious inch, your fingers got tighter around his hair and your breath hitched more and more, “fuck, lewis.” 
he groaned when his ball hit the counter, signalling that he was all the way inside of you, and he pulled your chin to face him, lulling your eyes open by pressing his forehead against yours. “just tell me when you’re ready to carry on, okay?” 
you nodded, feeling so content in lewis’ touch as he kissed your nose and stroked your cheeks with his fingers. a minute or so passed for you to adjust to his size, and when you did you kissed him back, “you can move now.” 
he did as he was told, moving steadily inside of you until he got into a good rhythm, slow enough so that he didn’t hurt you but fast enough so that you both got the pleasure you deserved out of it. you were whimpering and whining at the feeling, blabbering incoherently about how good he felt, begging him to go faster. 
“lewis, please - fuck, please go faster.” 
he hooked his fingers underneath your thighs and with his immense strength he picked you from the counter and lowered you until you were on the floor, all while still being inside of you. the kitchen tiles were cold on your back, but you didn’t care. he hovered over you, the angle much easier for him to fuck you properly and for you to feel the full effect of him inside of you. 
he began thrusting, his pace slightly quicker than it was before, and you cried out. lewis’ whimpers and groans were unlike anything you’d ever heard before, and you realised you never wanted to hear them from anyone else. you couldn’t help yourself, getting lost in the feeling of him inside of you so much. 
your moans stroked his ego, and the louder you got, the faster lewis’ thrusts became. “fuck, Y/N, you’re so good,” he groaned, dipping his head into your shoulder where he left marks from his stubbly chin, “so good and so tight.” 
you moaned again, eyes clenched shut as you felt the familiar onsets of an orgasm sparking up in your stomach. lewis’ hand found yours, and you entwined your fingers as he held it beside your head, a soft gesture that let you know he wasn’t going anywhere. 
“fuck, lewis,” you cried out, arching your back up off of the floor, “i’m gonna cum again, can’t hold it any longer.” 
after several more thrusts from lewis, you came with a cry, clenching around him like a vice. he wanted to hold out a little longer and try and give you a third before his own orgasm hit, but the feeling of you clenching so hard around his dick was too much for him. he came inside the condom, not even giving himself time to pull out like he usually did, and you pictured what it would be like without the condom. 
he fucked the pair of you through your orgasm, and when you couldn’t take the sensitivity, he pulled out of you and rolled to his back. you were amazed that someone could make you feel this good. you felt like you could do anything, and you were positive he felt the same. 
you tucked yourself into his side, and he happily let you, kissing your forehead as you wrapped your legs together and entwined yourself physically as well as emotionally. 
“that was so much better than i ever could’ve imagined.” 
he smiled at your words, “it’s never been like that with kiara, this was different, the best kind of different,” his lips found yours when you looked up at him, “what’re you doing to me Y/N Y/L/N?” 
“what do you mean?” you furrowed your eyebrows, and his heart skipped a beat at your niavety. 
“i’m losing my mind over you,” he admitted, “the best thing that ever happened to me was meeting you at the art gallery all those months ago,” his fingers stroked your hair delicately, “i’ll never be able to live my life unless you’re in it.” 
you laid your head on his chest, and you could hear the abnormally fast thumping of his heart rocking against his bones. “wanna know something?” you raised an eyebrow as you looked up to him, “i’ll never be able to live mine without you in it either.” 
“then stay,” lewis offered, “stay all week, and when kiara comes back from paris we’ll figure something out. i can’t live without you, Y/N. you’re a part of me now.” 
you blushed, and your lips instinctively made their way to his. 
“you’re a part of me now too, lewis, and i wouldn’t change it for the world.”  
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darlenicy · 2 months
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Winx Club Trix Aesthetic inspired by my rewrite: It could've been us
Icy ~ Witch of eternal Ice
Darcy ~ Witch of Darkness
Stormy ~ Witch of Storms
Lilith ~ Witch of Earth (oc)
I tried to put their hobbies and features in it. Gonna explain for those who are interested :)
Icy: Yes, she is doing horseriding in my rewrite. It was her way to calm down and forget about the unfairness in her life. The horse's name is Imbolc. As mentioned in my rewrite, Icy's family had fallen from grace and became impoverished so it wasn't actually Icy's own horse. In fact, after most of the land of the Whisperia's was taken, they had to sell all their other properties too including the horses. However the new owners allowed Icy to still care for and ride it. She always lived in the fear, that they would eventually sell Imbolc. Then there is her passion for playing the piano. Unfortunately she isn’t able to take piano lessons anymore but whenever she has to calm down, she will go and play the piano no matter what time it is. Sometimes there will fly the sound of a piano melody through the deserted corridors of Cloud Tower at midnight.
Darcy: She has a thing going on with divination. Actually, she suffers from visions from time to time. Some of them come true, others not. It's always shown to her what could happen. She can't control the visions and was especially as a child afraid of them. So she decided to learn about them and make visions and, connected with that, divination her own specialty. This is also how she got into mind-reading and mind-control. She searched for a way to control her powers and the visions. It's not possible to really control the visions though but the way she embraced the powers helped her to manage to control the rest of her powers and use them as a weapon.
Lilith: Now Lilith is a secret actually, but I am willing to share a bit about her. She comes from a royal line in exile and Lilith stills sees herself as royalty and having the right to do what she yearns for: the dragon flame. Her powers are earth based because of her origin and connection to her (former) country (or planet in this case). Just like Stormy she likes testing her limits by going all out. Everything she does is extreme, everything she feels is extreme. There is nothing more she hates than to stand still and accept the status quo. She will only accept what she thinks is right. However, she shoulders a heavy burden and tries to numb it with drugs, sex and alcohol at some points. As said above, she goes all out to reach her goals and will always to whatever she likes to fulfill her own pleasure. And she’s hungry for it. Pleasure and power are the things she’s living for.
Stormy: She’s a rulebreaker. Given being the youngest sibling, she was always cherished and never really learned limits. She has problems in controlling herself and wants to taste every bit of life as best as possible. She too was an outsider in school as a kid but not because of the same reasons as Darcy and Icy (Darcy being the mysterious weird girl with the intense stare and Icy being cold and cruel so that everyone feared her). Stormy was the one who beat the other children up. Sometimes for fun and because she could, sometimes because the others dared to talk dirty about her family. She got called out by teachers a lot but she didn’t care. As said above, she doesn’t know any other limits than herself. So she does what she likes whenever she likes. She's smoking because she likes to, because it shows her rebellious side. She also has several tattoos, simply because she fkn can. She won’t surrender and behave, nor bow to anyone. That might become a problem though and a lesson she will learn at some point.
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crystalyssa35 · 7 months
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A General Guide to Writing Well, Now, & Consistently
In all my years writing, I have struggled with keeping writing as a fun and healthy habit. It took me five years (and many instances of writer's block and giving up) to actually have a basic set of guidelines to keep my writing going...
And I would like to share these "rules" with you all today!
Now, a bit of a disclaimer: developing the quality of your writing skills comes with time, research, and thinking. It may sound frustrating to hear, and you may hear it often, but the only way to get better at writing is to write and read often. Many times, just by jotting a silly thought down or reading fanfiction, you can spawn ideas without realizing it.
Now, to the list of tips that (I hope) will help you on your writing endeavors!
If you are not having fun writing your story, your readers will not have fun reading it. It sounds silly, but it's true! If you're enjoying your writing, you're more likely to write more and input more ideas into it!
Even if you have people to check your works, reread them on your own anyway. This may be a little frustrating tip for some, but let me tell you: I used to HATE checking my own stuff. The worst way I learned that personally checking it is a necessity was when my aunt checked it and pointed out tens of mistakes within my grammar, storyline, and characters. Check yo work, it will save you a LOT of embarrassment in the future.
Write anything. Read everything. As ambiguous and obscure as it will sound, it makes sense with context. As I mentioned before, the only way to get better at writing is to write and read often. Write anything your mind desires, that's simple enough. But read EVERYTHING; not only books, blogs, and articles, but also games, texts with friends, billboards, pictures with text, and (sorry, students) even homework as well. You'll be surprised how much your vocabulary expands when you actually pay attention to anything that is written (for me, it was video games. Seven-year old me knew vocabulary that I was taught in seventh grade because of it). And on that note...
Research what you don't know. Please, this one is genuinely important (I'm biased because it's one of my pet peeves). This includes words you don't know the definition of, spelling, and even generic, real-life information you want to add into your stories (e.g. I actually spent four hours researching how gemstones are categorized for my sci-fi story: Eco-Adstrum). Unfortunately, sometimes researching and fact-checking your ideas before writing them down can prove to be unmotivating, especially when you're wrong. But, it's always good to stay optimistic and be creative enough to twist the actual fact to mold it to your stories. Unless you're writing non-fiction, then maybe don't do that last bit.
If you have no ideas, keep wiggling your pencil. To those that recognize that phrase, yes, it is not my own. This is a piece of writing from former Tumblr user "officialtheonite" (I was only able to find the post because it has been reblogged multiple times) and their fifth grade writing teacher. Essentially, even if you have no ideas, keep writing. Write ANYTHING, even if it doesn't make sense. You will always be able to double-check it later and you will save yourself a lot of wasted time sitting around trying to stir the soup in your brain.
Balance the usage of your names and pronouns. To this day, I still struggle with this. I tend to use an abundance of pronouns when I'm referring to a character, so much so that sometimes, it becomes unclear on if we are still talking about aforementioned character or if we're talking about a different character entirely. Use names when the focus or action of a character is on stage; use pronouns if we are still talking about said character (even if we are talking about the same character, make sure you at least reiterate their name when there's a new paragraph).
I'll be editing and reworking this list as time goes on. I hope these tips can be of use so some of you all. Feel free to ask me any questions if needed. Enjoy writing and keep at it! I believe in you all!
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themotherofhorses · 14 days
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Hi guys, it's Vic! Also known as:
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Round TWO at addressing the extreme racism in the CoD fandom!
So it’s both odd and funny that my Indigenous fem!OC has pissed off so many random people, especially with the fact that I created her to ship with Ghost.
(A fictional character that has NO canon love interest, FYI. Sorry to bust y'all's little bubble. Well, there's Mara and Urban Tracker....)
Anyways, I really don't care if this post sounds bitchy in nature. I really don't, not anymore. Some of y'all need a damn wakeup call. Several months ago, in December of 2023, I made a post (here) regarding the sudden influx of hate I began receiving following the posting of my OC, SilentDove Reyes. For around two weeks after that post, the hate died down, and I felt motivated to create more content involving Dove and Ghost.
Until the hate picked up again with every little thing I posted that related to my OC x Ghost.
However....this new hate incorporated the MMIW. A bold ass move, in my opinion.
If you are not aware, the MMIW stands for "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women." Alternate spellings include the MMIWG & MMIWGTS (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirits). As of 2023, statistics indicate that Indigenous women face a 10x murder rate than any other race/ethnicity. I have made a previous post regarding the issue, seen here. The unfortunate truth is that young Indigenous girls are more likely to be SA'd and murdered than to attend college. Let that sink in for a moment.
Now, I am an Indigenous woman. That is no surprise there; I fashioned my OC to provide myself (and, by extension, others) with Native representation in a franchise I greatly enjoy. What IS surprising, however, is that me doing so has pissed off so many people. I'm very certain some of y'all must descend from Andrew Jackson, or John Wayne cause, christ on a bike driven by a pike.
Here is a screenshot of a hate anon I recently received:
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Listen, I don't care who you ship Ghost with. I really don't. I've blocked numerous shipping tags, remained mindful of the content I'm interacting with, and surrounded myself with fellow mutuals who also have personal OCs. It is really that easy.
What I do care about is the fact that some of you CANNOT separate fanon headcanons from canon material.
Exhibit A:
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So let’s clear some stuff up!
Soap x Ghost is NOT canon.
Ghost being queer is NOT canon.
And, most definitely, Ghost being a woman abuser who would harm/abuse/murder a woman (either physically, emotionally, psychologically) is NOT canon.
What IS canon is his and Soap's strong bond. In my eyes, that is a brotherly bond, reminding me of a big brother/little brother relationship; in my fanfiction, Soap is Ghost's children's uncle. In fact, his son (second-born child) is named after him.
You are, of course, free to view them as romantic; what you are not free to do is attack OC creators/non-shippers for not perceiving them like that.
That is just fucking weird and delusional behavior. Knock it off. You're giving your fellow normal shippers a bad name.
ALSO! Let’s clear things up!
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1. I’m not straight — I’m bisexual and demisexual.
2. I’m only half white (Spanish, with Mexican heritage). I’m QUITE LITERALLY an enrolled Native, so I guess the best way to describe me is “biracial.”
3. It’s y’all ruining the canon gay representation by shipping Laswell—a GAY woman—with Price, despite the fact that she canonically has a wife.
4. My OC does not have a “dumb fucking name.” Her name is an Indigenous name with a specific backstory to it; it’ll be explored further in future fanfics once I find the motivation to return to writing.
Anyways, I highly doubt this will be the last post I create regarding this problem; apparently, a nice chunk of the fandom has this intense animosity towards fem!OCs, fem!Y/Ns, and BIPOC!OC creators. Alright. With that being said, I invite anyone who has similar experiences to share yours, either in the reblogs or in separate posts.
As sometimes we say during pow wows:
“The floor is all yours.”
Thank you!
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jangofettjamz · 6 months
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Doctor Wednesday
Gentle!Wednesday x Selective!Mute!Male!Reader
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Reposted from my Wattpad
Reader is on the Autism spectrum
FYI: I do have Autism
Summary: You're extremely ill and Wednesday has to put her medical skills into practice
Words: 1786
Wednesday POV
Y/N has been noticeably absent from first period. He's usually incredibly punctual so this was extremely unusual. I hadn't seen him at our usual place where we congregate either.
Botany class was next period, perhaps he would decide to show his face then. I can't help but feel the slightest bit worried at his disappearance, despite my cold and callous nature ,Y/N has my heart and I'd do anything to keep him safe.
The bell rang, indicating that next period has started. I left hastily, avoiding any conversations that Xavier would surely try to engage with me. Even now he can't see that I have no interest in him, or his pathetic excuses for art.
Enid was standing outside of class. Perhaps she's seen Y/N around. "Enid have you seen Y/N around anywhere? He didn't turn up at our usual meeting spot, and I'm sure you've noticed his absence from class." I ask the blonde werewolf.
"No I haven't unfortunately. It's weird though, I've never seen him miss class. Sorry roomie." I nod at her words and made my way into class.
"Alright everyone settle down" Miss Hacksaw, our new botany teacher said gently with a smile. She's a gentle woman, despite what her name would suggest. Certainly a better candidate for a teacher than Laurel Gates.
"Wednesday have you seen Y/N? He usually walks in with you" just as I was about to answer her question, the doors to the class shot open and revealed Y/N, hair untidy and uniform a mess.
Y/N was panting heavily, likely due to running to class like a bafoon. He began to sign "Sorry for being late Miss Hacksaw. It won't happen again I promise" he signs, but lets out a rough cough shortly afterwards.
"It's okay Y/N, take your seat." Y/N sat down next to me, not sparing a glance as he hung his head low, hiding his face. He was fiddling with his hands, a motion that was only present when he was under extreme stress or just generally uncomfortable.
He was shivering, unusual as the weather was quite warm today, and that's not even including the already warm room temperature. He was sweating from head to toe, droplets of sweat ran down his forehead like a waterfall. The ever persistent cough racked through his body.
I'd had enough, something was clearly wrong and I intended to find out what. "Y/N you don't look well" I say, not eliciting a response from him. "You're coughing up a lung, you need to go back to bed" I try hammering in the fact that he's unwell but it fell on deaf ears.
He looked at me and signed "I can't afford for my grades to drop, Wednesday. You of all people know the importance of good grades" He finished. True, my grades are indeed impeccable, but I care more for my boyfriends health than grades.
I felt his forehead and immediately felt the scornful temperature. "Darling you have a fever, you're not well. You need medical attention." Before he could protest, another round of violent coughs occured, catching the attention of the teacher.
Miss Hacksaw spoke up "Wednesday is Y/N feeling okay?" I look back down at him, his eyes pleading for me to help him.
"No he's not. I'm going to take him to the infirmary." She nodded at my words and I briskly took Y/N out of the room with me. I hold his shivering body close to mine as we walk in tandem with each other. "Don't worry mi amor, I know you hate the infirmary and I'm not taking you there. I'm taking you to my dorm and I'll take really good care of you I promise" he nodded at my reassuring words.
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After a few minutes of tortured walking, we made it to my dorm room. I laid him on the bed so that I could tend to him properly. His whimpers of pain and discomfort did not bring me the usual sense satisfaction and joy they would do had they come from someone like Laurel or Xavier.
Now that Y/N was alone he began to talk. " Wens it hurts" He said, pain lacing his tone.
"Where does it hurt, sweet boy?" I ask, keeping my tone very gentle. I'd never speak to him rudely.
"My chest, my head, and stomach." He says while tears appear round his eyes. I nod at his words and go to grab my medical supplies from my wardrobe. I keep a black kit filled with medical equipment incase he ever got sick.
I grab my medical kit and race back to the bed hastily. "Shh shh shh, it's alright. I'm gonna help you now, sweetheart. Try and relax for me" I say and kiss his forehead to calm his nerves.
I take out my medical equipment (thermometer, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff) and lay them on the bedside table. "Thing go get an IV drip from the infirmary, he looks extremely dehydrated" Thing scurries off to get me an IV for Y/N.
"IV? No Wednesday, No needles! Please!" He started to cry, bordering on the verge of a meltdown. I wipe his tears away immediately. I hate seeing him cry, it breaks my heart.
"Shhhhh it's gonna be okay, my love. I'd never hurt you. I just wanna make you all better. I'll be really gentle I promise" I say squeezing his hand to offer reassurance. "Do you trust me?" He nodded and I gave a rare, gentle smile to reassure him. I'd only ever be gentle for him.
I grab the thermometer of the bedside table "Let's take your temperature, darling. Open your mouth and stick out your tongue" He did as instructed and I stuck the thermometer under his tongue. I rubbed his arm to comfort him, he was still shaking.
The thermometer beeped, indicating that it has calculated his body temperature. It didn't look good. "103.6 degrees. This is not ideal" He gulped at my words, his pale face now visibly more fearful.
"Let's check your heartbeat now, sweetheart" I grabbed the stethoscope and put it in my ears. "Let me warm up it for you. I don't want to frighten you, darling" I say while warming up the diaphragm of the stethoscope.
I lifted up his shirt and placed the stethoscope on his chest, the sound of his fast heartbeat alerted me of his heightened anxiety. "It's okay Y/N. Everything's gonna be okay. Take deep breaths for me, sweetheart. In and out"
I moved the stethoscope just under his ribs to get a hearing of his lungs.
His lungs sounded like sandpaper being scraped against bricks. They don't sound good. The raspy sound indicated some sort of respiratory infection affecting his breathing.
"Can you cough for me, sweet boy?" He nodded and coughed, the rattling in his lungs ever more apparent. "Good job. Another one?" He coughed more heavily this time. "You're doing so well, turn around for me so I can listen to the back of the lungs, darling" I say kissing his forehead.
He turns to his side, still laying down. I place the stethoscope on his back where the left lower lobe of his lung would be, drawing a circular pattern with my thumb just under where the stethoscope is placed to keep him calm. "Another deep breath, darling" he did as instructed, this was definitely sounding like the flu. I listened to his right lung "One more big breath, my love" he inhaled as best as he could and coughed while exhaling, my poor love.
"You're doing such a good job, sweetheart. I'm very proud of you. Now let's have a listen to your stomach. Okay?" He nods and lays onto his back again. I placed the stethoscope onto his stomach to listen for any abnormal stomach.
I'm hearing some irritated gastrointestinal sounds, consistent with the flu-like symptoms Y/N is exhibiting. My other hand rubbed his stomach to try and ease the pain he felt. "You've got some irritated stomach sounds going on my love, most likely caused by the flu. It would also explain your cough."
I take off my stethoscope and put it around my neck; like a doctor would. "Alright sweetheart, let's take your blood pressure. Stick your arm out for me" he did as ordered and I wrapped the cuff around his bicep. "Don't be nervous, darling. It'll be over quickly I promise."
I put my stethoscope back on and began pumping the cuff with air. "You're doing a really good job. It's nearly over my love." His blood pressure was 140/90; definitely elevated. I take off the cuff and put the stethoscope back around my neck. "Hmm your blood pressure is elevated too. Also consistent with the flu. We'll get you medicine soon, mi amor. Don't worry I won't leave your side" I kissed his temple for comfort.
The door opened revealing thing carrying an IV bag filled with a saline solution. This'll be vital in rehydrating Y/N as saline solutions contain potassium; a vital electrolyte. I grabbed the IV bag and hung it up on a coat rack next to the bedside.
Y/N saw the needle and went wide eyed, fear was practically palpable. He started to shake out of fear this time. "It'll be okay, mi amor. Give me your hand. I'll be really really gentle" I cooed softly.
He hesitated at first, but nodded in the end. "On three. One. Two. Three." I held his hand in place and inserted the needle into his vein, earning a whimper from Y/N while doing so. "Good boy, you did so well my love" I adjusted the drip and the saline began flowing into his blood stream.
"Good job, Y/N. You made me so proud. I know that wasn't easy for you, but you did so good for me." I smile softly and kiss his forehead longly and lovingly. "Would you like to cuddle for a bit, sweetheart?" He nodded and I got in bed beside him and put his head on my chest.
I softly stroke his hair, he snuggled further into my chest and yawned. "You can go to sleep if you want, mi amor. I'll be right here when you wake up" He nodded and closed his eyes. I rocked him gently in my arms, humming a soft tune my mother used to sing to me when I was a child. Not long afterwards snores were heard coming from him.
"Sweet dreams, mi amor" I kiss his forehead again. "I love you so much."
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theinfernalsanctuary · 8 months
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Unfortunately, a very common theme surrounding Satanism is that we are all cultists, unfortunately, this stigma cannot be avoided. Moreover, this stigma is perpetuated by the uneducated that sit amongst our ranks, those of us who pray with no knowledge or background of why we do so. No knowledge of the sacrifices our Lord Satan has made to make our worship meaningful. In this weakness, derision, hate, and cults thrive and poison the very heart of our community, taking the name of Lord Satan and other denizens of Hell and turning them into a mockery. The uneducated will be a never ending scourge on our noble religion, those who use depictions of the devil to justify the pain they cause others, to satisfy their desires though they hold no true faith. 
I have seen no end to the struggle surrounding the uneducated in our midst, and I can only do so much to assist in educating those who choose to walk this path, without gatekeeping the entire religion as a whole. Though my concern is less the fact that people don’t know, as much as it is those who repeatedly show themselves to be dangerous to themselves and others in the community while proclaiming themselves to be spiritual leaders. I would like to say this before I continue, I am not a spiritual leader, I am not trying to be a spiritual leader, I am merely trying to be a guide to those who need a push in the right direction. More than once on this journey I have been asked in private about whether or not I believed myself to be of any special significance to the faith, that answer is wholeheartedly no.
In my time on this platform I have seen a slew of people declaring their intentions of becoming a spiritual leader without understanding what that truly means, the dedication it comes with, and the education it requires. The blind attempting to lead the blind so to speak. With all of that said, there is a stark and notable difference between someone who is aiming to guide, and someone who is looking for power. A guide walks among you, one with the group, sharing knowledge and calling out those who are doing harm from within, the power hungry walk with a confidence they have not earned, declaring themselves to be looking into your best interest, while spewing misinformation. They will talk constantly of the people that have come to them for guidance, “a 23 year old from (here), a 19 year old from (there), ect.” I have even seen people adding prayers to the end of their messages that include their own name as an authority, “Lord Satan, in the name of (person) I bid thee enter me…” These are the ones to watch out for. The ones who will lead you down a much more dangerous path than that of Satanism. These are the want to be cult leaders that will pull you off the path of Lord Satan’s grace and into a mire of uncertainty. 
No one will ever know your craft better than you. No one will ever know your thoughts and feelings better than you. It is so important that we are critical of all information given to us and the people who give it. Pay attention to their intentions and make sure to step away when you feel as though someone is attempting to lead people astray or cause harm to a community who is already dwindling. Call out the people who are doing harm, calling themselves evil doers and whatnot, as they will poison the well of information that our community can provide. Call out those who refuse to acknowledge the facts in favor of a pretty truth. But most importantly, keep yourselves safe. Most of these people do not realize the harm that they do, and that isn't an excuse to allow them to continue to do it because they “mean well.”
I have faith in you all to continue down this path in a manner that aligns you with Lord Satan. I will always be here to guide those of you who struggle, but I will never ask you for any sort of devotion to me or this page.
May Lord Satan's light guide you even in the darkest of times!
Ave Satanas!
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