#a little from column a and a little from column b probably

[prismatic-starstuff]

So I just got to the part where we get the King of Puppets' message and... tell me why, despite the fact I know what he says, I'm standing here at the stargazer feeling nervous to play it???

Like, am I crushing on him so hard that I feel fluttery because I get to hear his voice, or am I pretty sure I'm gonna hear it and cry because it's so sad—

#probably a little from column a and a little from column b #lies of p spoilers #lop spoilers

[iwendix]

DO ME A FAVOR,

GIVE ME A TASTE

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: not proofreaded(there's probably misspellings and mistakes but rn I'm too tired to do anything about them😭). smut with just a little bit of a plot. a lot bit of manipulation. fingering, pussy licking, breasts play, teasing, dom!harin, sub!reader, praise kink, praise receiving!reader, good girl!reader, unnie!harin, strap using. reader innocent and harin loves to have control over such a gentle flower, it feels comforting for her.

𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀: you always had been in A, but a few months ago this changed, and now on every vote you're a B. were you a perfectionist or did you just want more power and status? who knows. but one thing is clear: you want to become A again and harin can help you with this, and very opportunely, you notice harin’s constant glances at yourself.

you always get the same rank from the very first day that harin started the pyramid game, you never doubted what rank you would get, it was always obvious A. let's say, being the heiress of a rich family was a kind of guarantee of success in voting for you. your carefree life continued for a long time, but suddenly, during the 13th game when you opened the app you saw your name in column B. that's when your eyes widened and fists clenched in annoyance and kinda discomfort. harin, sitting nearby, saw your reaction and the corner of her lips slightly moved up, of course, you didn’t notice that cuz you were too busy with your first “failure” in game. B this is not at all bad for others and you thought the same until today, until for some reason you felt very strong discomfort from such a voting result. yes, it hurts your pride very deeply. you racked your brains for a long time trying to understand why suddenly everything changed so much and you couldn’t return to A. though, the answer was much closer than you could have imagined. knowing that you would be desperate to get the desired result, harin decided to take advantage of this. it was easy to get some people in the class not to vote for you so that you don't get higher than class B. you weren’t stupid, at least not stupid enough to don't understand that the solution to your problem — baek harin, and she’s clearly interested in you, judging by her gaze that linger on you for a little longer than it should.

well, the realization that apparently you're a little more stupid than you initially thought came precisely when you came to harin for "help" in getting back into A rank in game and offered a service in return. expecting harin to ask in return some help with homework or something like that. just how wrong you were...

"a favor in return, you say? I would like to have a taste." harin said as her eyes lingered on your face for a couple of moments before moving a little lower to your chest. her hand gently touches your belly through your shirt, smoothly moves and rises along your silk covered body to your tie. with one confident and decisive move she tugged the tie a little, pulling you towards herself forcing a quiet gasp out of you.

you find yourself in harin’s house, that same day after school she invited you, talking about how the house is empty today and is at their disposal because her parents are on a business trip for work. your unnie’s room was spacious, very simple, but cozy and luxurious. in the dimly light the king-size bed was covered with soft, silky bed linen.

you're on the bed, harin is sitting right behind you, your shirt is already unbuttoned and open enough to give access to your bra and breasts that were almost spilling out of lingerie. first you feel the gentle touch of harin's fingers on your ribs, and then her fingers easily crawl under the lace fabric, prying up the hooks of your bra and unfastening it. she touches your already bare breasts, massaging them and then plays with your nipples, pinching and squeezing them, enjoying the soft moan you let out.

"harin-ah...."

she pinched your nipples a little more now making you moan louder and unintentionally back away a little, causing you to feel her chest pressing to your back.

"yes? what is it, hm? do you want to ask unnie for something?" one of her hands continues to play with your breasts not stopping her relentless assault on your nipples and her second hand goes down to your hip bone, squeezing it a little. she leans closer causing a goosebumps to run through your body from how nice and pleasant her warm breath feels on the back of your neck. "do you want me to touch you more, princess?"

when harin squeezes your thigh bone and plays with your breasts, you feel something unfamiliar but almost painfully pleasant and uncomfortable at the same time. it's like a knot is tightening in your lower abdomen and you feel the heat between your legs as well as the wetness starts to seep through your panties.

"yes. i want you to touch me... please. i feel the heat spreading trough my body..." you mutter trying not to sound too inexperienced and eager but failing immediately.

harin changes position a little, lowering your back onto the bed and your head resting on the pillows. the girl sits next to you, lifts your skirt and pulls down your panties, revealing your wet folds to her gaze. harin humms in delight and lightly licks her own lips. harin's fingers lowered to your pussy, collect moisture and smear it over your entrance. just a moment and one of her fingers pushes inside, moving a little.

"oh god, you're so tight... such a perfect girl for me." soon two of her fingers are pushing into your wet cunt, she spreads her fingers and twists them inside, stretching you and making your legs tremble. your moans are so cute, they only arousing harin more, a wet spot soon appears on her own panties too.

"Harin-ah!..." you yelping when she enters you with a third finger and it becomes difficult for you to stay still. a new layer of fun added harin’s tongue that moves circles around your clit, teasing the bundle of nerves. her tongues licks your folds all over, while her fingers pounding into you and now her lips wrap around your clit, starting to suck on it. you arch your back and your whimpers become much more urgent, your voice trembling.

"Unnie... please... I can't... oh my god... I'm gonna... I'm-"

with a wet pop, her fingers leave your pussy, which for a few more seconds tightened around the air trying to return contact. suddenly her tongue probs inside, she alternates between tongue fucking you and sucking your already swollen clit, making slurping sounds, drinking in your juices until you cum undone on her tongue. harin raises her head, and her fingers come to your clit, massaging it and slightly prolonging your orgasm. your eyes met and pleased smirk tugged her lips, seeing how your cheeks have turned red, and beads of sweat appeared on your forehead.

"you're such a good girl, princess. though, we're not done yet. i want to try something else on you." harin's hand reaches to the bedside table from where she takes out a medium-sized strap. she quickly and easily attaches the strap to her hips and positioned herself about you.

"oh, maybe we won't?... I mean, maybe we’ll try another time..." you sound a little nervous and worrying clearly etched on your face.

harin sighs, and pat's your head gently. she speaks, her voice calming and gentle but still gives the feeling of her being in control of the situation. "you don't want to? mm, princess, we can try... It's up to you, hon, but we could try and stop if you want. if you try for me, you'll make me very happy. you want unnie to be happy, right?" her last words, of course, kinda manipulative, but still you can't help but nod a little just unable to say no. harin smirks and raised your legs, bending them at the knees and she positioned the tip of the strap near your pussy still glistening with cum. she takes your hand in her own, gently stroking it and comforting you like that. when you look distracted enough she pushes all the way inside with just one thrust. you whimper in slight pain and squeeze her hand, your breathe catches in your throat. harin doesn’t move her hips for a few seconds, let you get used to the feeling of fullness and stretchiness.

"good girl... see, it wasn't that hard, right? I'm happy with you, princess. I'm so proud of you. such a gentle little flower... but still taking me so good." harin at first began to move her hips smoothly, later picking up speed, thrusting faster and harder. she pulled away and then slamms all the way back inside, hitting the sweet spot inside you. her thrusts were a little irregular but so good... she makes you moan, whimper and beg for more. in the end of the day you're becoming a breathless, blushing mess all hot and bothered, stretche and wet, just lying on the bed, your head on her chest while she plays with your hair

"by the way... as i said before, I'll help you return to A rank, princess."

#pyramid game x reader #baek harin #baek harin x reader #smut #wlw #character x reader #pyramid game #harin literally my baby i love her sm

[owlespresso]

the red fruit which ripens

alpha!blade/beta!reader you are a beta courier. one of your clients is getting too close. tags: blackmail, mind games, nonconsensual touching, blade and luocha are just weirdos idk pt 2 of my part in @lorelune's a/b/o collab. the first part can be read here.

You have never known peace. You doubt any emanator ever has. The Mother of Harmony, of peace, bestowed upon you a fraction of her immortal grace. She cored herself, tore out a seed—jewel like and glistening, and beckoned you to feast. The taste went down so smooth and sweet.

That was the first and last time you held your blessing in awe. Xipe sentenced you, that day, to never know the peace she covets. You could catch glimpses of it, inhale the scent of it deep, but it would fade like morning mist, chased away by the winds of chaos and whatever awful business you were to tend to next.

When you strayed from The Family, tore yourself free of their clutches and hid where their millions of bulging eyes could not find you; you believed it possible to know peace. Perhaps not immediately. There was so much to take care of during your first days on the Luofu, paperwork and apartment hunting. It was all jarringly normal. You were mystified by the mundanity, delighted by it even. The world suddenly closed in for the better. There were no enemy factions to worry about corralling, no petty politics, no attempts to usurp you or take your life.

The world became the Luofu. It became your apartment. It became your favorite food stalls and your neighbors and the little birds fluttering about in the trees.

But it was not peace. Soon, you came to realize that even the average Luofu citizen did not know the concept as intimate as you hoped. They live in fear of Mara, of the Abundance, which they are so intimately intertwined with. Every pain is a life threatening risk, a potential trigger to a deadly malady. Outside of the Abundance, so many run themselves ragged, weighted by long work hours and petty squabbles with loved ones. The kindly folk by the docks find themselves cornered by the IPC.

No mortal knows peace, you have come to realize. Perfect tranquility is a ripe and red lie, birthed gold and glistening from the Goddess’s many lips, spread carelessly and listlessly across the universe. Unattainable by the emanator’s closest to her.

You believed once, and it hurt you. Not again. You will heed no honeyed words. You can only believe in what is cold, concrete, and solid.

—

“I feel like—” you begin, pushing through the rusted metal paneling of the dilapidated fence. “—you could have gotten here by yourself.” You usually don’t talk this much, but Blade’s habitual silence combined with your burgeoning irritation leaves you uncharacteristically eager to complain aloud.

The abandoned warehouse looms an eerie, empty monument of crumbling sheet metal and shattered glass. Long columns of broken machinery are gutted in pieces across the concrete yard. You make note to return later, just to make sure you’re not leaving valuable goods out to waste.

“I have never been here before. Kafka thought it wise to come with a guide.” 

“And what do you think?” you pause, shoulder buried in the outside paneling of the building itself.

“What I think… does not matter.” Blade says cooly. “A blade is meant to be wielded. It does not choose who it cuts down or where it goes.”

“Hm,” you don’t have much to say to that. You shouldn’t have opened your yap in the first place. The less you know about the bizarre relations of the Stellaron Hunters, the better. You squeeze into the building through the gap. Blade hardly two paces behind. The metal groans and squeaks as he forces his way in. It feels like the loudest sound you’ve ever fucking heard, an offensive and high pitched screech that probably rings through the yard and neighboring alleyways.

“At least try to be a little quieter,” you grumble, squinting into the dark. The main room is made a maze by haphazardly laid out storage containers, many cracked open and already emptied. Wires hang from the ceiling, which has become an amalgamation of mechanical matter and rotting parts. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Black grunts his assent.

“Well. You’re here, safe and sound.” you waste no time, doubling back towards the Blade-shaped hole in the wall. Did he just walk straight through!? What are they feeding this guy? “So I—”

The sound of thundering footsteps and approaching shouts freezes you mid-step. Momentary panic jars you still. The Cloud Knights? Here? Now?

Your pulse thrums in your ears as you turn tail, ready to haul ass in the opposite direction, only to collide face-first with Blade’s firm chest. He jostles you to the side with his shoulder, ignoring your grunt of complaint. His hand rests on the hilt of his blade. Your stomach jumps into your throat.

“Where are you going!?” you hiss.

“To take care of the vermin,” Blade replies drolly, looking down his nose at you. His lips twitch into the beginnings of a puzzled frown.

“Absolutely not!” you say, and his frown pulls deeper. “Where there’s ten, there’s bound to be twenty waiting to back them up.”

It is unlike you to be so bold, but you seize him by the wrist, pulling him further into the jagged steel labyrinth. He allows himself to be led, surprisingly docile as you round corners and scuttle down corridors. Pale moonlight covers the room in a silvery sheen, providing just enough light for you to make out a door embedded into the outermost wall. Footsteps echo around you, calling voices made cacophonous by the echo. Blade’s grip on your hand tightens, likely annoyed and sorely tempted to begin the slaughter, but you yank open the door and jam yourself inside what seems to be a cramped server room.

A few circuit towers stand side-by-side, dark and dusty with disuse. Blade shuts the door behind you, opening his mouth to speak, but you’re already wedging yourself into the lone aisle between the wall and the towers, pulling him behind you.

A few moments later sees you crammed in the narrow space. The back wall and server towers rise on either side of you, caging you up against your troublesome accomplice. One of Blade’s thighs presses tight to your own. Warm and firm. The proximity betrays what you’ve expected since your first meeting. Blade is an alpha. Only now, brought so obscenely close, are you fully able to realize that. It’s a footnote in comparison to your agitation, which swims and simmers just beneath the surface of your skin.

“How long were they following us for?” you grumble aloud. “Tell Kafka she owes an extra 20% when you see her, and that I’m not doing this ever again.”

Blade sighs out of his nose. You can’t see his face well enough to make out his expression.

“You’re wearing a mask. Your identity is safe.” he says.

“The threat of being arrested still remains,” you grumble, listening to the clamorous noise outside. Trained troops rush back and forth, kicking up dust and old grease. You can’t quite make out what they’re saying, beyond a few paltry words, but no one has yet knocked on the door. Surely a good sign.

Blade squeezes your hand, and subsequently reminds you that you are holding it.

“That won’t happen. Destiny’s Slave would not risk your safety over something so simple. No harm will come to you, tonight.”

Well, isn’t that comforting. You wrest your hand away with a scowl, and clamp down on the pressing urge to let him know what you really think about his boss. He stares down at the place where your hands were once joined.

The next half-hour passes in relative silence. His eyes are all that is visible in the empty dark of the room, candlewick embers extinguished when he shuts them and leans back against the wall.

Eventually, the outside noise quiets. No more thudding boots or searching shouts, the warehouse silent as it had been when you arrived. Shimmying out from the pitch dark crevice is much more awkward without the frantic adrenaline, but you manage it, emerging in a new layer of dust.

“Alright. I’m heading out. Be careful.”

“They won’t return anytime soon,” Blade remains inside, arms crossed and impassive. Your frown deepens. You clamber through a hole in the wall. No Knights have remained behind. You feared a few would have stayed just in case, but none leap out from behind the rubble. Which means that the horrible feeling prickling up the back of your neck is just Blade’s cold, empty gaze trained on your retreating form.

Strange beast, you think to yourself, scuttling into the nearest alleyway.

—

One of your favorite things about Luocha’s home is that he is hardly ever in it. The first time you met him after helping him with his pre-heat, he pressed a silver house key into your palms, before turning and leaving. Not even allowing you to splutter a single, indignant protest. Back then, you mentally swore that you wouldn’t use it.

Now, you use it almost everyday. His neighborhood, smack dab in the middle of the Luofu, intersects with several of your regular routes. It’s just too easy so slide in between deliveries for a quick rest. It helps that he’s hardly ever home, leaving you to pilfer snacks from his fridge and take brief naps on the couch. You haven’t been bold enough to stay overnight. You’ve become far, far too intimate with the man.

No more, you decide, and stay firm to that decision even when he beseeches your company not a week later. It’s rude, but you can’t risk getting anymore attached than you already are. He’s become a bothersome burr stuck to your side, a looming presence in your thoughts even when he’s far across the stars, doing Xipe knows what.

There’s a knock at the door. You startle, because this has never happened before. You remain stock still on the couch. If you remain still, surely whoever is out there will get the message and bugger off. Another knock. You should have known that any solicitor determined to walk through the forest of a front yard would be too stubborn to give up after only seven knocks.

At the eleventh, you get up and stomp to the door. It’s mostly to preserve your own sanity. 

You throw open the door, prepared to give the nosy bastard on the other side an earful. 

It’s Blade. Blade is stood there. He blots out the afternoon sun, leaving you in the shadow he casts. It’s like seeing your clothes in the fridge. You blink several times.

“Ah. It’s you.”

“It is,” He’s holding a bouquet of flowers in his left hand. 

“What… why are you here?” 

“Kafka’s orders. She wanted you to have these,” he hands you the bouquet. You receive it. Fresh petunias and sprigs of rosemary curl next to daisies and tulips. It’s a nonsensical thing. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Nothing particularly artful about the presentation besides the pretty colors. 

“I see… Is this your home?” He looks like he already knows the answer.

You decide not to humor him. You tuck the bouquet underneath your arm and lean up against the doorframe. “What’s it to you?” 

He blinks, looks confused, and then responds after a moment of silent thought. “I… there is someone else who lives here. I remember it clearly, now.”

“You two know each other, huh? What a coincidence. But… how did you know where I was?”

“I asked the woman next door. She directed me here. I’ve been searching for you since the early morning.” 

“All morning?” you tut, somewhat sympathetic. “That’s a lot of walking.”

“It is nothing compared to other pains I have endured.” Blade says, solemnly. “And I have traveled far greater distances on foot. You shouldn’t worry.”

“...Well,” you stare down at the bouquet for a moment. “I’d feel bad if I didn’t give you anything for the effort. You know that big, red maple by the pond? Go sit there. I’ll get you something to drink.”

Two minutes later sees you outside, cradling two crystalline glasses filled with lemonade. You didn’t get him the fancy stuff—the strawberry-kiwi-whatever fruit stuff that you hand mixed. But it’s something.

He’s hunched beneath the red canopy. There’s a dark, inky type of handsomeness he possesses. Dark hair tumbles down his back, shaggy bangs frame that wolfish face. He looks dour almost all the time. Like the frown lines and cold apathy have permanently creased it. He’s hunched beneath the shade. Like it sits on his shoulders as a physical weight. He looks up at you as you settle next to him, accepts his glass without fuss or thanks. Which is just fine, with you. You probably shouldn’t be doing this, anyways. He’s an intergalactic criminal. The less time you spend together, the better.

But at the same time… you can’t help but be curious. Curious about the mara which buzzes underneath his skin, yet somehow never breaches it. Curious about what manner of creature he must be to withstand the final stages of Yaoshi’s curse. Curious if there’s any real, lingering emotion beyond the stoicism he treats… well, everything with. 

The two of you sit in silence and sip. You don’t feel any need for artificial conversation. It’s easy to sit down and simply exist next to him. No impulsive need for niceties. 

“This house isn’t yours,” he says.

“No. The owner is a client of mine. He lets me stop by here, in between deliveries. It’s convenient.”

A few beats of silence. “How well do you know the man that lives here?”

“As well as I know any other client,” he looks at you expectantly, as though waiting for you to finish that statement. “Which isn’t very well. He’s not here most of the time.”

“You should remain cautious while in his presence,” he says, and you nearly raise a brow at the unsolicited advice. He levels you with his dull, candlewick gaze, as impassive as ever. A leaf flutters from the lowest branches onto his head. “That man draws his power from the source of the mara. He wields it under the guise of a blessing, and yet…” Blade frowns, almost a grimace, and doesn’t say anything else. 

“I know.”

“Yet you take shelter under his roof and exist willingly in his space.” Blade stares at you. There’s a faint bristling in the air. A shuddering of the atmosphere that emerges from him. Thorny tendrils of bitter gold crackle beneath his pale skin. You don’t know exactly what aggrieves him so, but you get the feeling that you should say something to appease him, quickly.

“Well. I don’t know any other rich diplomats willing to offer me a free, mostly empty house to take a break in for… around twenty minutes a day,” you shrug. “It’s convenient.”

That seems to settle him.

“Do you… not like him? The merchant?” Does he even know Luocha’s name? What kind of relationship do these two weirdos have?

“In the strange purgatory of my existence, he acts as both poison and cure.” Blade informs you, as if it tells you really anything. As if sensing your befuddlement, he deflates a little, nose scrunching. He looks like a dour cat, stuck out in the rain. “He wants something from me. I can’t tell what it is. His unseemly fascination means it can be nothing good.” His attempt at elaboration gives you somewhat of a clearer picture, but it’s still some insanity that you’ll have to unpack later.

“I see. I’ll make sure to remember that,” you’re not sure if it’s possible to forget a conversation with Blade. Especially one that lasts more than a few moments. What prompted this? Genuine concern for your well-being? You have a hard time believing that. There are many things that are better off left unsaid, in your experience, so you don’t ask. 

The rest of the visit passes in relative quiet. Blade finishes his lemonade.

You reach over. His gaze snaps to you immediately, a beaten dog evaluating a potential threat.

“You have something in your hair,” you inform him helpfully, plucking the leaf from his sable locks. You curl the stem around your fingers. 

He doesn’t say anything after that. The two of you stand. He murmurs a brief farewell, and is off through the yard, slipping through the ferns to become one with the cast shadows. You’re not sure how long you remain after he leaves. The pond water ripples with each gentle breeze. Glimmering koi bob to the surface, in search of mid-afternoon snacks. When they find none, they dive beneath, water droplets flickering off their lashing tail fins.

Well, you think after another moment, at least you learned something.

Now, it is high time that you tend to the bouquet so generously sent your way. You dump the glasses in the sink, halfheartedly vowing to deal with them later, before taking a closer look at the arrangement of flowers. As you expected, it’s more than a paltry, sentimental gift. Tucked into the plastic wrapping is a small card.

Bladie said you got in quite the mess, the other day. You have my deepest gratitude for handling it so cleanly. He’s not that good at talking things out. He seems to like you, though! I wonder what makes you so special?

P.S. Next Tuesday, please escort Bladie to the address written on the back of this note. Please? Do it for me. :)

—

You hate working with criminals. Criminals other than yourself.

Though, you don’t fancy yourself much a criminal.  Deliveries are an entirely different beast, simple points of contact which last at most for five minutes. Escorting a known, intergalactic criminal through multiple layers of the Luofu is completely different—something you would never do if anyone besides Kafka asked. You’ll dance to her tune, run her errands if it keeps you off her shitlist. But is there even a point if keeping off of hers just puts you onto someone else’s?

You’ll have some fierce thinking to do after you shake off the six Cloud Knights currently on your tail. You dive between market stalls. You leap over a counter, sending an array of fruits and vegetables tumbling onto the pavement. You ignore the enraged shout of the peddler behind you, pulse thundering in your ears as you weave between the passerby, narrowly avoiding a stack of crates.

The air stings at the corners of your eyes. The marketplace blends together to the point of featurelessness. You don’t know who you pass or what else you know over, too focused on what’s ahead to care about the wreckage left behind. At the very least, it may hamper the Knights as they shout and stomp and rush after you—and Blade, whose fault all this is.

You slide around a corner and into a red-bricked alleyway, lanterns strung between the two rooftops, gold and glittering against that fake, blue sky.

“Dead end.” Blade grunts. You hear the telltale click of his sword being unsheathed.

“No! Just follow me!” you snap, seizing his wrist and pulling him forward, all the way to the end. As you trudge forward, you tap a sequence into the walls on either side. The worn clay surfaces are coarse under your fingertips. None move after you touch them, but you feel a subtle shift in the energy as it rushes down to the focal point. The pattern ends at the back of the alley. You tap a chipped, ragged brick embedded into the dead-end wall. The slabs unfold, layer-by-layer, to form an opening.

You pull him through.

It folds shut behind you, the quiet sound of grinding stone following you through the passage. The hollering and thudding of the pursuit have been silenced. Their chaos of the market sealed away behind the otherwise impenetrable seal. You doubt the low-ranking footmen who chased you will know the way.

Yellow-green vines crawl up the pulsing walls. Luminous particles bob and float in the air like fireflies. The place is silent, leaving you with only the sound of your own panting and Blade—Blade’s rasping, spluttering wheezes.

You stop, right where you are, because you have never heard him make such a sound before. Even after a chase, or a fight. 

The passage opens to a wider tunnel up ahead. You drop Blade’s hand, and turn to look at him. The adrenaline is fading, now leaving room for fresh, common sense. 

Blades hunches up against the wall. The air enters and leaves his lungs in winded, rushed wheezes. His eyes are wide and unseeing. Those candlewick irises dart from the floor, to the place where your hands had been joined, and finally, then, to you. 

A scent, like firewood charred too long, blistering into crumbled charcoal, blooms in and clouds the thin space. It’s like nothing you’ve ever smelled before, the vicious pheromones of an alpha at the very end of their tether. Something more, too, something earthen and ancient and charged. A flavor which has graced your palate only once or twice before.

Encroaching mara. You don’t know what he’s like, when his symptoms flare. You’re not eager to find out. The capricious nature of his mara has not once posed a threat to you. But his composure is slipping, his hands curling like claws and flexing. Like he’s getting a feel for his own body. Like the joints are sore and need stretching.

“Blade,” you stumble forward, pressing your palm to the cold, pale pane of his cheek. “Blade, look at me.”

His shaky irises hover awkwardly over your shoulder, before at last meeting your gaze. 

“It approaches,” he rasps, looking as haunted as you have ever seen him.

“Blade, do not let the mara take you.” you take in a deep, steadying breath. The violent pulsing in your ears returns in full force, the unhinged mass of his disease gnawing at your physical form.

Bracing yourself, you reach within. You touch the very bottom of your long neglected wellspring. Harmonic Essence leaps to the surface, warm and loving and so eager to be put to use. It feels like an old coat slipped around your shoulders, a familiarity you wouldn’t dare indulge in under ordinary circumstances. It is a power long wasted on you, but useful this very once. It pulses from underneath your fingertips, washes underneath his pallid skin.

The acrid taste of his mara brashes against the tip of your tongue for a single, fleeting moment. It then skitters backwards. Retreats into the dark, churning void of what you assume to be his subconsciousness. It’s a temporary balancing of the scales, but his wild pulse settles.

You sigh, shoulder slumping in relief. The tension winds out of your body, hand dropping back to your side.

He still looms above you, jet black hair curtaining you in. When did he get so close? Or had it been you in your haste to soothe him? He runs hot as a hearth, the warmth which radiates from him thick enough to feel. This close, you can see his every breath, soft mounds of his chest straining the fastenings which hold his shirt together. Slender stripes of pale skin peek through his chest wrappings. You swallow and look away, up at the strong column of his neck.

“Are you with me?” you murmur. You don’t dare move, lest your retreat trigger the chase instinct which some alphas are known to possess. You don’t like making assumptions. You feel like Blade would be among that number anyways.

“Yes,” Blade’s voice is sandpaper rough. He moves before you do, shouldering past you into the wider tunnel. “You make use of these often, I take it.”

As though nothing had ever happened. Something bitter churns in your gut, but you don’t bring it up. There’s no reason to. He probably wants to distance himself from this episode as quickly as possible. You don’t blame him. The mara must be a humiliating affliction to live and cope with. 

“It’s the fastest way to get around,” you break into a brisk walk, overtaking him. You’re the one who knows your way around, here.

“The mara would rend asunder the minds of anyone not wearing the correct protective gear,” Blade observes. There’s nothing pointed in his voice, but the weight of his gaze makes your skin crawl. Its keen focus is that of an apex predator’s, a beast somehow sated enough to keep his teeth from your throat. How long will that last? Fifteen minutes? An hour? The air here swelters with abundance. His mara must sup on it like a starved prisoner, far stronger and fuller than it could ever be on the surface. 

He could easily match your pace, but he chooses to walk behind you.

“I could say the same for you.”

“I am an abomination of Yaoshi. The abundance has already taken hold of me.” Blade says, grimacing. You toy with the fraying edge of your sleeve between your forefinger and thumb. “All the saturation here does is spur on the symptoms.”

You make a face. He must sense your unease.

“I should be able to resist the pull until we surface. Provided we do not linger overlong.” Blade replies. It does remarkably little to reassure you. 

A predator stalks at your back, one whose sanity may pop like an overfilled balloon at really any moment. Against your better sense, you feel anxiety lash at the bottom of your stomach, guts churning with that primal fear.

“Reassuring.” you bite out thoughtlessly. 

“It would be in your best interest to focus on finding a way out, rather than back-talking me.” Blade says, and you swallow. 

“Back-talking? I think my frustration is quite justified. You’re the reason we’re in this mess, after all.” you pointedly remind him. The words roll bitter off your tongue. Prickling discomfort coalesces with the saturation of abundance in the air, becoming a consistent buzz against the back of your skull.

Blade makes a ragged little noise, wedged between a wheeze and a laugh.

“Another do I make pay the price. I was not always like this. deathless beast borne of blind ambition and hubris…” he trails off. “I was once a man. Death walked with me as it walked with every other. It was never meant to—to become—”

A distorted warble slowly creeps into his voice. Shit, you just shouldn’t have said anything. The hovering energy coalesces, thin whispers congealing into thick, mist-like mass around him. It’s drawn to him. 

“What’s your favorite food?” you turn on your heel and ask, crossing your arms. He looks down at you, brows furrowing as he roots around for an answer. “You haven’t thought about it, have you?” Do the mara-struck even have to eat? Blade is a particularly unique case among them, but you wouldn’t be surprised if he even remembers to eat. He is a blade, according to his own words. And a blade doesn’t need to eat. How desolate an existence he must have lived. Must still be living if his own preferences evade him.

“Well. Try to find an answer while I get us out of here.” you command. He’s quiet for the remainder of the trek. You emerge topside and immediately feel several pounds lighter. The air is fresh and sweet, the skies blue and open. You’re two blocks from your apartment in a dark, neglected alleyway. 

“You can find your way back from here,” you sigh, chancing a glance at your companion as you stretch your arms above your head. “Right?”

He’s still quiet. You don’t sense the acrid tang of the illness. He looks thoughtful. You wish he would just give you an answer already. You’re not eager to be chanced upon again by a patrol, or by any other witnesses for that matter. 

“Your question. I don’t have an answer.” Blade says. He sounds almost regretful. 

Over your few interactions, you’ve come to realize that not much bothers him. Very little manages to budge that glacial mien. His demeanor, as you have come to understand, either sits as stoney neutrality or maniacal, giddy rage. The shades between are so very visited.

“It’s no big deal. You can just tell me next time, if you want.” If he even remembers. The idea of turning your back to him still riddles you with unease, but you do it anyway. Your steps are slow and measured. He stares you down until you disappear around the corner, meld into the crowds like just another thread in a blanket.

—

The sky above hangs a pale grey. It’s the threat of a light drizzle rather than a raging storm. You slip through the abundant foliage of Luocha’s front yard, unable but to notice that the shrubs and vibrant blooms have somehow grown in size since your last visit. The greens are hearty, fresh dewdrops glimmering off grass and unfurled leaves.

It’s not difficult to spot him. He’s lounged beneath the sole scarlet maple of the yard. He’s a spot of red himself, swathed in a richly-colored, likely richly-made, robe of it. The fabric pools on the lawn chair he lounges atop of. His eyes are shut, blonde lashes fanning against his perfect cheeks. Those eyes open as you skirt along the jagged stone edge of the pond, manilla envelope clutched in your left hand. He smiles, but does not lift his head. Sumptuous locks of golden blonde fan out behind his head like a halo. The very picture of serenity. 

“Well, well. To what do I owe this visit?” he tilts his head, smiling like a contented cat. You huff, and avoid looking below his neck, where the plush robe parts to reveal the pale soft of his chest. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but any sliver of intimacy you may have granted him has long passed. The moment you look down, he’ll notice and impose upon you another outlandish favor.

“Don’t get excited.” You hand him the package, and begin to pull back, but he’s faster. He darts for you like a viper. Long fingers curl around your wrist to hold you in place. The look in his eyes is beseeching. He gently deposits the envelope on the side table next to his seat. He doesn’t look away from you for even a moment. 

“Always so busy… doesn’t it exhaust you?” he murmurs, a sympathetic coo. He’s putting just enough strain on your arm to make standing uncomfortable, in hopes that you’ll sit down beside him. 

“No. I’m used to it. I like being busy,” you bear the ache in your arm with unyielding ease. It is so small and insignificant in comparison to every other you have endured.

“Do you… like being busy, or is it that you’ve never known anything else?” Luocha tilts his head to the side, smiling. Your skin prickles. You resist the urge to swallow. 

“You know what they say about assumptions.”

“Which is why I’m glad I’m not making one. You go to awfully desperate lengths to not be known, Courier.”

The corners of your lips twitch downwards, and his eyes gleam. “Don’t be coy with me. Did you talk to them?” You ask. The question has lingered on your mind for weeks, leaving you restless and more unkind than usual. The persistent threat of him is always at the back of your mind, represented in the throbbing between your temples, in the harshness of your voice as you snap at someone who might not deserve it. There’s no sense in beating around the bush, anymore. Not if you want to preserve your sanity.

“How very vague, for someone who just accused me of being coy. Be at ease, I haven’t had any contact with The Family. Merely some… particularly useful informants who have heard a thing or two. Hunches based on speculation that you’ve proven by being cagey.” Luocha assures you.

“...So, what do you want from me?”

“Merely conversation. I do find our interactions so compelling, however short they may be.”

“Being blackmailed doesn’t put me in the mood for conversation. There’s not much for us to talk about.”

“I beg to differ. I know so very little about you, despite all we’ve shared. I’m curious—what set you on the path of Harmony?” 

“...” You look away, internally evaluating the pros and cons of going along with his little game. “Peace. She promised us peace. Because that’s what Harmony was supposed to be.” His eyes soften. The indignation sizzling inside of you sparks into a raw flame (he has no right to look at you like that), but you smother it. 

“Did it live up to your expectations?” he asks. His thumb rubs circles against the hollow of your wrist. His gaze sweeps from your face, down your arm, to where he’s still got you. He’s waiting for you to be vulnerable, you just know it. A shark that smells blood in the water, circling and searching for tender flesh to lay its rows of teeth into. How does he imagine it will taste? Soft and meaty, melting underneath teeth and tongue? Layers of skin peeled back and pried open, made thin by older slices?

“It didn’t work out.” you reply. sagacious enough to play along only minimally. When you elaborate no further, he releases you with a smile.

“How interesting,” he hums. He reclines further, eyes fluttering shut. You could pounce on him so easily, like this. You could fix your teeth into his jugular and make it so he never threatens you again. The blood would be so warm in your mouth. His skin would be so sweet.

Don’t be gross. You grimace.

He drums his fingers on the armrest of his chair.

The fluttering of wings erupts in the canopy above you, a flock of songbirds taking an afternoon flight. He cracks open his eyes, then. He tracks some sort of movement (you aren’t looking up), idle, like you aren’t even there. He tilts his head to the side, the slender column of his neck completely exposed. The robe slips off of his shoulders, curvature of his collarbones and soft expanse of his chest open for your viewing pleasure. You’re annoyed.

 “I’ve held you long enough,” he sighs. “Thank you for sharing. Though, I do hope we can manage a longer conversation next time.”

“We’ll see,” you just barely keep a sigh out of your voice as you turn to leave, speed-walking up the grassy slope.

—

“That old man’s damn cat has been coming into the yard and bothering all the birds,” you grumble, squinting into the aforementioned patch of forest. 

Blade makes a noncommittal noise, indicating that he’s heard you.

“It pisses me off.”

“You care about the birds in someone else’s yard.” Blade observes. You frown deeper.

“It’s annoying. Cats are an invasive species, here. They slaughter all of the native wildlife—and sometimes they don’t even eat what they kill,” you sigh, tampering down your rising agitation. If you’ve learned one thing in your short and storied life, it’s that being impassioned isn’t good for you. 

“So, how would you suggest the problem be solved? If the owner insists on letting it out…”

“I don’t really live here, so it’s not like I have any right to get involved,” you shrug, “It’s just… if you’re gonna be that irresponsible with an animal, you don’t deserve to have it. You know?”

Blade makes another noise. Closer to a hum, this time. You don’t know if he knows or not. But you do know that he’s listening. You stare into the yard, and in your periphery you can see him staring at you.

—

You see Blade more in the coming days. Despite your best attempts, a routine slips into being, like weeds through cracks in the cement. Silver Wolf doesn’t show up to accept her own packages nearly as much, anymore. It’s almost always Blade. You see him so often that you question if he even has a job anymore.

He glowers. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He says, low voice almost lost amongst the bustle of the crowd. The markets are especially full today. Nestled in the crook of your elbow is a plastic shopping basket, loaded with some bread, some spices, and some vegetables. The stall you’re at rests beneath a red tarp, casts warm shadows onto his pale, bone-weary skin. “There are currently no tasks which command my presence at the moment.”

“Well. It’s good to have time off, but you don’t need to follow me around.”

“...” he doesn’t reply, but he does follow you all the way up to the counter. You can’t tell if he doesn’t understand the nuance, or if he’s just being bizarre and stubborn. Regardless, tailing you like a lost puppy seems to alleviate his boredom. To each their own.

“If you’re just going to walk behind me, can you—” you shift the basket from the crook of your arm, preparing to offer it. He snatches it from you before you can even finish speaking. 

“...Thanks.” 

He takes his newfound job as the basket carrier very seriously. His dour face doesn't budge an inch as you peruse the rest of the wares, plucking a few items from open crates and wooden shelves to add to the bundle. 

“So, see anything that piques your interest?” you’re not sure what prompts you to speak up. You should get through this as silently and as quickly as possible. The less time you spend in public with this man, the better. The presence of the Cloud Knights isn’t nearly as felt on this level, making it as safe a haven for criminals as can be. You suspect, sometimes, that it’s purposeful. In your many travels, you have come to realize that the criminal class is a valuable part of any economy, no matter how much those at the top may protest it. Those who disavow it the most fervently are usually the most involved, under the table.

Blade doesn’t respond, at first. His crimson gaze glances over the nearby shelves. He grabs a bottle of cloves and presents it to you, completely straight-faced.

You get the overwhelming sense he’s appeasing you more than anything.

“...Yeah,” you pluck it from his hand and halfheartedly eye the label. It’s hard to muster the energy to argue with him, especially when he looks so resolute. The fact that he’s continuing to tail you through the market is cause enough to ignore him. You drop the bottle into your basket and move on.

Thankfully, the rest of the trip passes in peaceful silence. You can feel Blade’s gaze, unreadable, lingering on your form as you pull your wallet out of one of your many pockets. The shopkeep, a sprightly young man with a head of bouncy, brown hair beams at the sight of you. You don’t remember his name, but you’re familiar with him. He opens his mouth to speak, but shuts his mouth tight before he can get a word out.

He glances over your shoulder. You swivel just barely to look at your stubborn shadow. Blade looms closer than you remember him being, leaving you with an up close and personal view of his chest. You tsk and look up at his face. 

“Can you get a bottle of white cardamom for me? It should be with the rest of the spices.”

Blade looks at you, and looks at the shopkeep. He is silent. The lines of his face are harsher than usual, burdened with deeper shadow. For a few, agonizing moments, you fear he may object, but he turns almost robotically and walks off. You’re not sure what’s upset him this time. You don’t particularly care. If you troubled yourself with the qualms of every pouting client, you’d be just as miserable as you were with The Family.

“Thanks. I could hardly get a word out while he was giving me those evil eyes,” the shopkeep says, shuddering.

“I guess his manners still need work,” Not that men in his line of work really needed any. 

“Alphas that smell that strong and don’t even try to put a lid on it are the worst,” he gripes, bagging your produce with nimble hands, before pausing and looking back up at you. He wrings his hands, contrite and sheepish. “—er, no offense.” 

“He smells strong?” you tilt your head to the side.

“Well, yeah. He’s all over you,” the man blinks. Some of his bangs fall over his big, brown eyes. He swipes them behind his ear thoughtlessly. “You guys just get together? He’s probably trying to flaunt it. Stake his ‘claim’, y’know?” he says with a sympathetic roll of the eyes.

You don’t particularly care what he says about Blade. A man able to lift a three-thousand pound sword doesn’t need defending.  It’s his misconceptions about your relationship that irks you, for some reason. You don’t care about the opinions of others (you try not to care about the opinions of others) but you can’t resist the sudden urge to correct him.

“We’re not together.”

“Oh,” he blinks at you. “Does he know that?”

“Ugh. Enough. It’s none of your business.” your lips twist, a sliver of teeth exposed in your displeasure.

The shopkeep nods and beams at you, all previous curiosity wiped clean off his face. “Heard loud and clear!”

He finishes ringing you up and sees you off with a “have a nice day~!”. Blade follows you to your next stop, a stall that sells fresh fruits. 

The frustration builds within you slowly. It’s a candlewick of a thing, at first. Blade is following you around. Irritating, but you can cope with it. He would leave if he was asked. Maybe Kafka told him to stick around for a while. She’s gotten into a bad habit of pawning him off on you, like he’s a child that needs watching rather than one of the universe’s most efficient killing machines. That’s fine. You’re not keen to get on her bad side.

Blade is scenting you. He’s sticking to you tight as a cobweb and giving dirty looks to people you talk to. That, you cannot abide by. It takes you at least five minutes to simmer, from the crate of apples to the lefternmost all of the stall to the bundle of leeks close to its middle. You’re not really looking at anything. Lost in thought.

“I am not an omega for you to covet. I don’t need your protection,” you tell him, letting your gaze idly roam over the prices. They’re written on fancy little labels with red accents, each one neatly stickered just below the lip of each crate. 

“I never said you did,” Blade replies after a moment of deliberating. You look over a crate of cantaloupe. Selecting a ripe one is a practiced art.

“You didn’t have to,” you pause, melon held in your hands as you give him a scathing look. “Control your pheromones. You’re not an animal.”

“No. Worse, I am a blade.” he sighs, suddenly sounding unusually surly. Your lips twitch in the barest beginnings of a frown. 

“Not an excuse,” you helpfully remind him. A shadow is cast over his face, then, dark and brooding. The space between his brows wrinkles, an uncertainty you haven’t quite seen from him before. There’s so little need to deliberate in a life like his own, so what troubles him now? It nettles something in you, makes you feel in a way that you don’t care to name and don’t want to look into. You deliberate asking, but he makes the choice for you.

“I will leave you, now.” When you turn to look at him, he’s already walked away from your side, strides longer than usual. He dissolves into the crowd like a sunset shadow, naught left in his wake but the scent you know still clings to your clothes. 

—

“My, my. You rarely ever visit at this hour,” Luocha says, giving you one of those mirthful smiles where his eyes scrunch, unabashedly delighted (and undeniably smug) to see you. He lounges on the ottoman, slender fingers parting the pages of a furniture catalogue. “To what do I owe the honor?”’ He’s already deduced that you want something from him. You take no excessive pride in your poker face but it still pains you to be so easily read. Luocha stands apart from the crowd with his soft hands and feigned delicacy, but he smells blood in the water just as easily as any other follower of the Hunt.

“I just wanted to talk,” you see no reason to dance around it.

“You came all this way for a conversation?” He rests his chin on the palm of his hand in a haughty way that pisses you off.

“Isn’t that what you’ve wanted this whole time?” you grouse, and he laughs.

“I’m flattered, regardless. Come, sit and tell me all that is on your mind.” he beckons to a seat at his side, which you stiffly sink into, unable to relax beneath his hunter’s gaze.

“You’re an omega—”

“Yes, quite,” his smile is now coquettish. You feel your face wrinkle in annoyance, line of your brows dipping low. 

“I wasn’t done. You know more about secondary genders than I do—and I don’t have anyone else to talk about it with, so…”

“I appreciate you confiding in me like this,” Luocha says, sweet as honey, timbre smooth as silk. There’s an ease about him here, in his own domain, that soothes and disarms you despite your best efforts. “It couldn’t have been easy for you to ask, so unused to relying on anyone else. I’m no professional, but I will answer your questions as best as I am able.”

He steeples his fingers with a smile, way too delighted for you to feel good about his generosity. He just likes knowing something you don’t, doesn’t he?

“Well. I’ve been spending time with an alpha, lately. It’s a work thing, but he keeps hovering around. Even after I tell him he can leave.”

“Ah.” Luocha says. The corners of his smile grow taut with something you don’t quite recognize. 

And it’s a question you suddenly have to wonder for yourself. Is Blade bothering you? You can count on one hand the amount of times you have been genuinely upset with him. He’s quiet, most of the time. He answers your questions and attempts to appease you whenever possible. He carries your bags whenever you happen to be at the markets, together. Even if you really wish he wouldn’t, you can tell he’s trying to be kind. 

“He hardly speaks. And when I does, I don’t really mind. But he hovers and keeps grabbing my shopping bags whenever we’re at the markets. I don’t get it. Is it some sort of courting gesture?”

“He certainly sounds like a character,” Luocha muses, sounding far off for a moment. “You have the right idea. He’s carrying your things to both lessen your burden and to prove himself capable, even if he himself does not realize it.”

You grimace, face twisting up, The truth has an acerbic tang to it. Luocha laughs unabashedly at your dismay, the sound melodic and trilling. The longer you spend in his presence, the more convinced you become that the Aeons crafted him specifically to vex you. You give him a scathing look.

“Come, now,” Luocha wheedles. “My humblest apologies, Courier—it’s simply so rare for you to be so expressive. I was caught off guard. Shall I get you something to drink? Come, please, sit back down. Surely you have more to ask of me?”

Reluctantly, you drop into the armchair closest to the door, leaning back as far as you have the space for, You fold your fingers together, elbows perched on an arm rest each.

“I don’t envy you. It must be difficult to bear the attentions of such a peculiar alpha,” Luocha says.

“You know him, then.” You can’t keep the accusation from your voice, something frenetic and ugly kicking up your pulse, making your stomach go sour. How deeply do they know each other? Enough for Luocha to consider spilling your secrets? Enough for them to conspire against your purposes unknown?

No, don't be ridiculous. You're not important enough a figure to be the center of any such elaborate scheme. Weak, as far as emanators go. Painfully average, even as far as betas go. Unremarkable in status and career. All that threatens you is what you have long left behind.

“I do know him. Quite well, in fact.” Luocha muses, undisputed fondness in his voice. How close are they? The question lingers bitter on the tip of your tongue. It vibrates underneath your skin, wild and desperate and gods, you want to know so badly.  “Though he may deny it, he can be shy. You’re alike, in that way.”

“I am not shy,” you bristle. It’s your curiosity alone that keeps you in his company. 

“An argument best saved for another day. Let’s not get off track—Blade is an alpha, but he bears few of the typical mannerisms associated with his secondary gender, which makes this newfound attachment to you all the more significant.”

Progressively, throughout your conversation, you’ve been able to feel the wrinkles on your face multiplying and darkening.

“It makes sense, if you ask me. You’re quite the extraordinary individual,” Luocha says, drumming his fingers idly against the armrest.

“So how do I get him to stop?” you brush past his superfluous flattery with practiced indifference. He wants to fluster you, to see you squirm. It’s one of the ugly truths behind the chivalrous front he wears in polite company.

“Are you sure you want him to stop?” he inquires.

“What are you getting at?”

“If you truly wanted to no longer be the object of these behaviors, you would have no problem telling him yourself.”

You laugh, and it’s a cold and bitter thing. “Not all men take rejection well.”

“As I well know,” Luocha reminds you. He’s so haughty, so utterly confident that sometimes you forget he’s an omega, a demographic as subject to unwanted advances as any you are a part of. He stands up, empty glass cradled in hand. The sheer material of his robe billows around him like fine mist, treating you to the outline of his smooth, toned legs. Blade is more built, the thought comes to you unbidden. You squish it like the raspberries you juiced only a week ago on Luocha's kitchen counter. You wonder if the stains ever came out.

“Objectively speaking, you have more of a reason to hold your tongue around me than you do him. Yet, you hardly hesitate to make your displeasure known in my company,” he points out. “It’s not because of my secondary sex. You hardly ever remember that I’m an omega, unless my heat is soon.”

“And your point is?”

He seizes your chin, then tilts your head up until you’re forced to look into those grass green eyes. Cradled between his forefinger and thumb, you are left with nowhere else to go. You wonder briefly if it thrills him to do this because he is an omega. If he finds some kind of perverse pleasure in subverting the roles society espouses about his kind.

“You could have told him off on your own. Instead, you went out of your way to consult someone you deeply dislike, looking for another, less direct way of handling it. All of that implies some degree of care, whether you want to admit it or not.”

He’s right, and you hate nothing more than when he’s right.

“Thank you for your time,” you dip back into your customer service with a placid and empty drone, because you know how much he hates it. You say it to his chest, refusing to give him the eye contact. Unwilling to expend the effort. For plausible deniability, because you don’t know what you’ll find on his face. The air has grown balmy and cloying and fragrant. You stand up, and he steps backwards. “But I must be going, now.”

“How unfortunate,” Luocha coos as you awkwardly find your way around him, having been sandwiched between his body and the coffee table. “I was going to put the kettle on…”

—

The shroud of night has settled over the Luofu. A crescent moon winks down at you from the artificial sky, peering between the treetops. You’re laid on your back, on the concrete patio near the shed. 

Footsteps head in your direction. You already know who it is. There’s no one else that has that blistering, writhing aura. Blade comes to stand over you. His brows wrinkle in displeasure. You don’t know why. It’s not his patio that you’ve gotten your blood all over.

“You’re injured,” he says, frowning. He crouches over you. A pale thumb smears the drying crimson on your upper lip. Your entire face scrunches up, gnarled like a gargoyle, recoiling from the unexpected touch.

“Nosebleed,” you mutter. The space behind your eyes throbs in protest, accompanied by a fierce pressure at the bridge of your nose. All typical symptoms. The gifts bestowed upon you as Emanator unfortunately do not shield you from your allergies. To think, an Emanator could still be laid low by something as mundane as allergies. 

“Who gave it to you?” Blade looms a little closer, gaze steely.

“No one. Sometimes my allergies act up. That’s all.” you assure him, squinting irritably. You hope your judgmental flower will shame him out of your personal space, but he lingers.

“You should remain indoors, then.” he draws. He lifts his bloodied hand and looks at it, too contemplative for your liking. 

“I take medication for it. Just forgot today,” it feels wrong to justify yourself. He isn't owed an answer, but this is a rare moment. Blade showing such outright concern over something so novel is interesting (a more sentimental person might call it touching). Has his immortality rendered him incapable of distinguishing a few pesky allergies from a deadly ammonia? You can’t imagine someone so riddled with regeneration to register the difference between a gaping gash and a papercut. 

“Then remember to take them.” he advises coolly. 

“I will.”

You lay there, then, in silence unperturbed for a few moments. The hard ground is cool against your back. It’ll fix your aching spine, you’re sure. 

“Are you not going to get up?” Blade asks.

“No. It feels nice to be on the floor, sometimes.” you assure him quickly, lest he assume your nosebleed has robbed you of all mobility. He stares at you, blank-faced, but you somehow can tell he is skeptical. You pat the space next to you, a silent offering.

You don’t expect him to take you up on it. This rare creature, crackling with the energy of his divine “gift”. You don’t indulge in typical sentiments, and you spurn love and limerence for your own sanity, due to the madness you have seen both inspire. To adore is to give of yourself, to exhaust what limited energy you have left. Yet, there is no arguing the fact of his beauty. His hair pools like fresh slick pitch. Faint moonlight catches on the sable strands. His jaw cuts a sharp and handsome shape, eyelashes long and thick. He stares up at the sky, unreadable. 

“Kafka has no need of me in the coming days.” “It is… strange. The Stellaron Hunters are few in number, so our hands are always full. To be bereft of any responsibility… is rare.”

“You don’t sound thrilled about that.”

“No. It will leave me restless. And the silence will only give the mara room to spread. It’s better—more manageable when there is a task at hand.” Blade admits, a shiver in his voice.

“I do. I believe you are familiar with the place,” he says. That catches your attention. And makes you just a little nervous. 

“Do you even have anywhere to stay?” The Stellaron Hunters surely have a vessel of their own where he can lodge. You’re ultimately not too concerned. You shut your eyes and listen to the midnight breeze, feel the black of the night against your skin.

You turn to look at him, almost afraid to ask. “Familiar?”

“The merchant has opened his home to me. I will remain there for the duration of my… off time.”

Again, you are sorely tempted to question the exact nature and origin of their relationship, but it’s truly none of your business. You’ve long espoused a policy of isolation, but there’s no denying how thoroughly entangled you have become in them. Elbows deep. You’re not quite sure how it happened. They’re infiltrated your monotonous life, moved in so slowly that you didn’t even notice until this very moment. 

“Well. He’s not there most of the time, so it’ll be like having your own place,” You can’t imagine Blade as a homeowner, for some reason. It just invokes the image of him mowing a lawn in khaki shorts with that same, placid face he always wears. He’s too ethereal and strange to trim the hedges or fix a leaky faucet. Sometimes, you think he’d look more in-place if he levitated instead of just walking everywhere.

“I had lemonade the other day,” he says, and this fascinates you, because it is so very rare for him to initiate conversation about something so little.

“...And? Did you like it?” Perhaps it’s petty, but you already have a feeling that he didn’t. You hate to presume, but you think you have similar palettes. 

“...It was too sweet, and burdened by a lingering, chemical taste,” he confirms your vague conjecture and you very nearly laugh. Or make some sort of short, wry noise like a horse’s snort.

“Yeah. Ones that aren’t made from scratch tend to be like that.”

“And that is why you make your own.” 

“Exactly,” you lift your gaze from him and return it to the sky. “When you make something from scratch, you can make however you like. Ones you buy pre-bottled have too much sugar.” He hums in acknowledgement, but says nothing else.

The twinkling stars are no more authentic than the clouds which hover during the day. But you wonder how many far off stars he has visited across the span of his long un-life. How many civilizations he has seen toppled, how many lives have ended at his hands. What a terrifying beast Yaoshi has created. Yet, here he lay beneath a sky he has likely long tired of, humoring your purposeless requests for reasons unknown.

—

You’re tucked on the steps off the side door, head leaned back and eyes shut, drinking in the warmth of the artificial midday sun. Blade leans up against the wall next to you, arms crossed. You don’t blame him for staying in the shade, not when he’s always dressed so darkly.

You shouldn’t show your stomach to a known apex predator. Your instincts are tampered down, but you still curl your spine and lift your knees to your chest when you usually it on the stoop. You haven’t done it, today. Anxiety thrums in the space right behind your eyes. The scared animal inside of you writhes in his presence. You look at him, gaze by happenstance falling on the profile of his chest.

Breasts, you think stupidly, and laugh aloud. The noise is so sudden that you almost don’t realize it came from you. Blade looks down at you like you’ve grown a second head, and you're still too caught up in your own disbelief. Spending so much time with him has softened your skill, started to fry your remaining brain cells. He’s always been handsome. But you’ve started to too keenly note the bow curve of his lips, the narrowness of his waist.

And you hate, hate, hate proving Luocha right.

“What is it that you find so amusing?” Blade speaks slowly, like he’s talking to a scared dog or a lost child.

“Nothing,” you shut your eyes and tilt your head back, letting it thump against the top step. Blade inhales sharply. “Just remembered a stupid joke I heard a few days ago.” When you open your eyes, Blade has turned away, inspecting a row of gladiolus planted next to the nearby shed. The line of his shoulders has gone tense.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” you muse.

“Did you plant them?”

“No. I delivered the seeds. Only a week ago, I think. They wouldn’t have been able to sprout this fast.”

“Under normal circumstances, perhaps,” Blade skates a finger over a bright orange petal. “That merchant utilizes his gift so shamelessly. Even while at the heart of his natural born enemy.”

“And it’ll all be for nothing if that damn cat comes and eats them,” you grunt. You’ev stumbled upon torn up patches of grass and bitten through flower patches, stems snapped and petals crushed. You briefly, in one of your pettiest and cruelest moments, nearly suggested Luocha plant lilies next. The callousness of your own thought had startled you into silence, so gladiolus it was.

“Ah. About the cat,” Blade begins. You blink, wide-eyed. A cold pit forms in your stomach, because—

“You didn’t,” you gape.

“I did not kill it,” Blade says sourly, clearly affronted by the assumption. “I brought it to Kafka. They seem to get along.”

The tension melts out of you at once. Your petty grudge isn’t worth the blood of an innocent animal. You let yourself fall back against the stoop. The edges of the stairs dig into your spine. 

“That makes sense,” you say, a touch wry.

Blade grimaces. “They send me images of the little beast every day I am not there. If Silver Wolf is to be believed, it ‘eats better’ than she does.”

Does Silver Wolf eat well to begin with? “That was kind of you,” you say instead. 

“Was it? Or was it cruel to the man who will wonder where his pet has gone?” Blade inquires. He doesn’t sound particularly bothered by the possibility. 

You scoff. “I doubt he’ll even notice.”

—

You are natant in the dull haze of half-sleep. The soft scent of camelias and fabric softener and linens. A cloying warmth cocoons you, keeps you mired in a state of partial sleep. Burrowed beneath the comfort exists a nagging feeling of wrongness, like a pebble in your boot. You cling to the sensation, let it pull you from the inky, peaceful depths. You’re not sure how long it takes for you to breach the surface. It feels like ages by the time you pry your weary eyes open.

There’s a body crushed into you. An unyielding, solid mass of muscle. The scent of something charred wreathes around you. Your cheek is pressed up against a heartbeat, steady and strong. It would be comforting if you knew where you were, or who you were with.

Alarm, molten hot, jots down your spine. Shaken from your stupor, you begin to writhe. Your palms slap against the chest of the man beneath you. You brace yourself against him in an effort to pry yourself free.

An arm around your midriff tightens, and the panic grows. You lash out, snarl, a hand reaching behind you to grab onto the assailant’s wrist.

The room blurs, then. The breath is knocked from your lungs as you’re reoriented and pinned with minimal effort. Your eyes blow wide, gaze caught by those candlewick eyes. Blade’s hair is mussed from both sleep and the struggle. His lips are pulled into a snarl. Your gut squirms at the flash of those deadly canines—sharper than you’d imagined (he’s never bared his teeth at you).

“Stop,” he commands, low and throaty. You shudder, foolish hindbrain moved to obey the order. This, you realize, is what an alpha’s command must sound like.

As you lay beneath him, chest to heaving chest, the pieces of the previous night return to you in fragments and shades.

Blade came to your door at dusk’s end. The shuttles had shut down for the night. You let him in, quickly, before anyone could witness a known fucking criminal at your door. You fed him dinner, anyways. Spoke late into the night—about what you cannot truly recall. Somewhere around three in the morning, you must have nodded off. 

“Have you calmed down?” Blade asks.

“Yes,” you grumble, feeling thoroughly chastised despite his flat and empty tone. You attempt to dislodge yourself a second time, but Blade stops you fast. “Blade—” The beginning of a feeling you cannot quite name crawls up your spine, up the back of your skull. It’s a creeping, white hot sensation. A sudden deprivation of air. His eyes have closed. You feel your pulse spike. “Blade.” You try again. “Let me up.”

He draws a shaky breath.

“You don’t understand, do you?”

“What is there for me to understand?” you ask, voice a tepid little thing. He laughs. The sound is manic and bitter. When he opens his eyes, they’re hot enough to burn a hole in you.

“I… remember you,” he begins slowly. There’s a creeping breathiness there, you feel it under your palms, writhing inside of his ribcage. “When you are not there. I remember how warm your hands are, the smell of your sweat—the taste of when we are… together. And I crave it every moment we are apart. It’s—maddening.”

“What.” you’re taken back, all the sudden, to the sixth time Sunday called you to his office. A servant of the Harmony, you were, still protected by your naivete, still convinced by the smiling faces and open arms which surrounded you. A child. A seed, among the older and wiser trees in Xipe’s forests. 

You remember the exact shape of his lips when he said it—you remember how it felt. You feel the same way now, pinned like a little butterfly. Lost in the reeds.

“I remember you,” Blade continues, slower and calmer, now. Burning wood to dead charcoal. “When we are apart, you are all I remember, and the emptiness that exists in your shape is too much to bear. I need—” he licks his lips, his empty pupils blown so very wide.

“The mara becomes quiet, when we are together,” he whispers, like he’s sharing a secret. His eyes close. His forehead is a wide rash of heat, pressed against yours. He takes a single, shuddering inhale, breathing your air. 

And you—you’re still frozen there, caught up in the vice of his body and the couch. You stare emptily beyond him. His face settles into the crook of your neck. 

The lamplight flickers on and off. 

#oz write #hungering for hsr #blade/reader #hsr/reader

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for telling my best friend that her child needs to be in preschool?

I am 22F. My best friend (22F) is a single mom to a 3 year old boy. The father of the child was very abusive and when he abandoned the family this year it was unfortunately considered a relief. However, being on her own to work and take care of the child became a challenge, but her friends, including myself, her boyfriend, and her coworkers stepped in to babysit so she could continue working and provide.

This little boy may have slower development. He could be autistic, or the father, who was previously the stay at home parent, did not do anything to cognitively support the child’s growth and did nothing more than the bare minimum of keeping him alive. Probably a little bit of column A and B. Either way, this 3, almost 4 year old STILL wears diapers and it is shocking to me. He is unsocialized, does not see other children his age, and almost lives exclusively at home (sometimes he goes to the park that’s within walking distance of home too but that’s it). His toys are not age appropriate, they’re more infant sensory toys rather than active play, and he has no books except for a goodnight bed story book. No ABC’s or 123’s are being taught. He cannot speak in full sentences, and hearing a single word from him is a miracle.

After the father left, I suggested she put him in preschool. I recommended the one I used to work at, where potty training was not even an issue, and the teachers would support potty training regardless of age. It was a fantastic upscale facility with LOTS of play and learning at every corner. She declined, saying that the recent absence of the father would heavily impact her little boy and he needed more time at home. (Money is not an issue for preschool by the way, great grandparents of the child offered to pay). She will put him in school in another year. And while I understand her perspective, being one of sitters is getting a little stressful (don’t get me wrong I LOVE that little boy SO MUCH) and I know that constantly rotating through sitters and panicking to schedule everyone every day strains her. Sometimes she has no choice to call out of work because she has no sitter, I’m worried that continuing this would lead her to get fired.

While I am not a parent myself, but have experience with early childhood education, WIBTA to tell her that she needs to put her child in preschool, for the sake of the child and herself and her friends?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Beautiful 1910 Victorian Bungalow style home in Denver, Colorado has 5bds, 2.5ba. $1.695M.

This is another home update that went with painting all the wood white, but underneath, all the original wood is intact. In the entrance hall there are 2 built-in benches, stained glass, and wainscoting.

The woodwork is beautiful and very detailed, which makes me wonder what sort of wood is underneath.

In some rooms the walls look beige and in others they look peach. I like to think they're peach. The home is cheery, though.

This sunporch would make a lovely conservatory.

The dining room cabinetry and fireplace is beautiful. Look at the detail on the fireplace surround.

The details are so stunning- dental molding, columns that match the bigger ones and intricate appliques. Also, the fireplace insert looks orignal. What did that wood look like before?

Columns and a short pony wall separate the two rooms.

The kitchen was updated with simple gray Shaker cabinets and reproduction period hardware. I don't like the modern glass in the cabinet doors, though.

The main bd. has a window that opens to the porch. It's a smallish room b/c this is a bungalow.

It looks like they made an en-suite from the bedroom next to it, b/c of the built-in dresser.

There's an interesting architectural feature. They left the stairs natural wood, but I don't think it's the original color. They also painted the kick plates teal, which looks a little too modern. I might've gone with a burgundy.

Isn't the woodwork on the landing gorgeous? It's storage, too. And, look the window. That's unusual.

The rooms up here follow the shape of the roof. Those windows are so pretty. And, I love the built-in drawers.

This library in the middle is stunning. There's a very small bedroom in the back.

I don't know what this would be, but it doesn't have a door- they just hung some curtains, so it's probably a spare bedroom.

This cute room on the other side of the library is set up as a nursery.

How cool is this tower?

The finished basement.

You can see the tower from here.

#victorian bungalow #houses #house tours #home tour #old house dreams

[anarchywoofwoof]

so today, a new study was released by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy and it's all about how the richest 1% in 41 states are literally paying less in taxes than the rest of us.

you heard that right. while the average person is out here struggling to make ends meet, the data reveals a truth that you probably already suspected: the ultra-wealthy are basically getting a free pass.

this isn't just some random report. it's a detailed analysis of tax systems across all 50 states and DC, looking at how different income groups are taxed. and the findings are kind of infuriating.

first off, most state and local tax systems are regressive in nature. this means they hit the low- and middle-income families the hardest. the bottom 20% are paying tax rates almost 60% higher than the top 1%.

and here's the kicker – in 41 out of 50 states, the rich are taxed at lower rates than everyone else. we're talking about the top 1% of earners here. they're literally paying less than any other income group.

if we look solely at Appendix A and Appendix B from the data, for example:

Appendix A - Tax Burden by Income Group: this tab on the worksheet shows the total state and local taxes as a share of family income for different income groups in each state. the columns represent different income groups, ranging from the lowest 20% of income earners in the given state to the top 1%. you can get the per capita income by state here.

for instance, in Alabama, the lowest 20% of earners pay about 11.87% of their income in taxes, while the top 1% pay only about 5.38%.

likewise, in Alaska, the lowest 20% pay around 8.71%, and the top 1% pay about 2.78%.

Appendix B - Tax Inequality Index: this section ranks states based on their tax inequality index and provides effective tax rates for different groups. states like Florida and Washington rank highest in terms of tax regressivity.

for example, in Florida, the lowest 20% pay an effective tax rate of 13.17%, while the top 1% pay just 2.74%.

Washington shows a similar pattern with the lowest 20% paying 13.80% and the top 1% paying 4.05%.

oh, and if you're low-income, it's even worse. in 34 states, low-income families are taxed at higher rates than anyone else. these are people who can barely afford to pay their bills, and they're being taxed higher than the richest people in the state.

the most regressive tax systems are in Florida, Washington, Tennessee, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. these places lean heavily on sales and excise taxes, which hit the poorest the hardest. states that are often branded as "low tax" – like Florida and Texas – are actually high-tax hells for low-income families.

some states are actually trying to fix this mess. New Mexico, Massachusetts, and even Washington are making moves toward less regressive taxes. they're making efforts to up taxes on the rich and giving some relief to the rest of us.

on the flip side however, some states are just making things worse. Arizona, Kentucky, South Dakota, and others are cutting taxes for the wealthy and screwing over low-income families even more. between 2021 and 2023, twenty-six states in total cut their personal income tax rates and/or corporate income tax rates, 13 of them multiple times

this report should serve as a wake-up call. it's showing us in black and white math how rigged the system is against the average person. the bottom line is that the rich are getting richer, and they're doing it at the expense of the rest of us. it's time to start calling out the gross disparity a little louder for the people in the back.

#united states #fuck capitalism #anti capitalist #anti capitalism #us news #eat the rich

[cephalog0d]

Batfam Spreadsheet 2 - Metadata Boogaloo

Remember when I made a giant spreadsheet of Batfam comic appearances well here's a GIANT update because hyperfixation is real! (Uploaded as a whole new spreadsheet because it's. A lot of updates. This thing has become a monster. I highly recommend hiding columns you don't care about in the master list for ease of use.)

Updates:

Added cover dates for all issues!

Added roles and identities for all character appearances as filterable columns (see below for more details)! Wanna only see times Steph showed up as Robin, or find those issues where Jason was being Nightwing? You can filter for that!

More minor characters added to the sheet: Bao Pham, Bette Kane, Charlie Gage-Radcliffe, Claire Clover, Cullen Row, David Zavimbe, Hank Clover, Minhkhoa Khan, and Wendy Harris

Appearances up to date through cover date November 2023 (actual release date September 2023). (I intend to update at the end of every month, but it's at least current through then.)

LINK

Roles: Characters are listed by Major, Supporting, Minor, Cameo and Unreal roles. Cameos that are only on a cover/in a photo are noted as such. When a character appears in both the main story and flashback both are listed separately (e.g. Supporting; Flashback). When characters are only in flashback, that's listed with a clarifying role (e.g. Flashback (Supporting)). Roles listed as "Flashback" only are either Minor or Cameo roles. Unreal indicates the character is in a dream/hallucination/vision/etc.

Character names in the Identity column indicate someone is out of costume or at a point where they aren't using a secret identity (flashbacks before officially taking it up, gaps where they stopped, etc.)

Related: I'm very much relying on wikis/databases for what identity and role people have in a particular issue because a) I have not read every single one of the 5200+ of these issues and b) I'm not great at remembering things by issue number anyway for what I have read. So, you know, grain of salt, sorry if someone's mis-labeled here and there.

Notes from the previous issue that still apply:

The Spreadsheet currently contains all post-crisis appearances for the following characters: Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson, Duke Thomas, Harper Row, Helena Bertinelli, Jace Fox, Jarro, Jason Todd, Jean-Paul Valley, Kate Kane, Luke Fox, Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake. I feel like that's most of the big ones (and several not-very-big-ones), but if there's a Bat-person missing you'd like to see on there, feel free to ask!

All sheets are conditionally formatted so if you enter "Y" in the Read column it will highlight the whole row in green to mark it off, if you're the kind of person who likes to keep track and mark things off a list.

Dates are the start of the series, since that's how a lot of places besides DC itself with their weird "volume" convention distinguish different runs.

Character lists aren't split into Preboot vs. New 52 vs. Rebirth vs. IF, sorry. You can figure it out by the dates for the most part, though. (New 52 was 2011, Rebirth was 2016, IF was 2022.)

On that note, all of this was pulled from the DC Wiki, and while I did a little bit of spot-checking as I went for things I knew off the top of my head it's entirely possible things are missing or mis-attributed. I'm happy to update accordingly if there are.

((I am low-key considering expanding into various Bat-adjacent teams (Titans, Outsiders, YJ, etc.) but those would probably be separate sheets rather than making this one even more gigantic. We shall see.))

#resources #spreadsheet #dc comics #batfam #reading guide #this thing has consumed my life lately and i'm so proud of it #digital data sorting makes scientist brain go brrrrrr

[mostlyinthemorning]

Noahvember Day 29

Don't forget to vote in the final poll at the end of this post.

It's a little bittersweet to be posting about getting out on the road again after Noah had to postpone the last few dates. Fingers crossed that everything works out for everyone as well as it can.

Why aren't you selling that shirt in your shop, Noah?

These two, honestly:

It only seems right to have the video of Dan at the show in London as part of this set:

Noah reflecting on his first tour experiences:

And here:

And on the Everything's Fine Tour:

All of Noah's setlists can be found here.

How about Noah and Sarah performing Simply the Best?

Today is the final poll. Here are your choices:

#noahvember nonsense #noahvember 2023 #noahvember #noah reid #Youtube

[copperbadge]

@bibliofran wrote (regarding King's Boon)

"Eddie is like 'Just herd anyone who wants to open a restaurant into my office....'" Are Boon-seekers sorted by the palace staff, or do they get someone mostly at random? You mentioned the person with the nightclub drawing Jerry, which sounds fairly random, but there might be more organization behind the scenes than most people think.

Little from column A, little from column B...

The way I had pictured it working was that you usually see the next available person, but the Royals can make general requests. (This is somewhat inspired by how jury selection began with some people being dismissed immediately based on their responses to a little two-page questionnaire we had to fill out determining our fitness to try the specific case we were there for.) So Eddie can ask for the chefs, Jerry can ask NOT to have people with mathematically complicated issues but to get as many farmers as possible, Alanna is best suited to handle bureaucracy, etc. So Eddie might see someone randomly, then a person wanting to open a kebab shop might need to wait ten extra minutes but get to see Eddie, who can provide more expertise than, say, Gregory would. Jerry would see Nightclub Guy and then skip someone with Parking Complaints to Alanna so that he could see a fellow olive farmer next.

And sometimes they'd hand off certain people to someone more appropriate after an initial talk, of course. Eddie and Gregory have adjoining offices, and Al and Jerry are both across the hall, so it's relatively easy to do. Michaelis takes over the family dining room as a makeshift office, so he gets to handle larger groups if any appear, which, you know, he's probably best for anyway. So for example Eddie could get someone struggling to export goods to Galia and knock on Gregory's door, find he's probably busy for the next half hour with a lively discussion about beach nudity codes, and then run across the hall to Alanna, who can call Milo and put the person on the phone with him so that they can get everything squared away.

Gregory has a policy of not making any requests, so your odds of getting the King over one of his family/staff is actually a bit higher than it otherwise would be. He enjoys the uh, diversity of challenges this presents to him. ("I'm not going to regulate nudity on the beach. If Americans feel weird about seeing someone with her nipples out, they can go to Florida.")

In theory Alanna would be in charge of the event but since she also has to participate, the execution of it falls to her assistant Darien, who thus haaaates King's Boon sessions. There's a line item in the budget for a spa day for him afterward. If I ever write Darien's novel, it'll open with him being such a fixture running the King's Boon that he ends up a Photogram celebrity via a meme, titled something like Hot Royal Secretary. ("I'm not a secretary!" "Dee, I think you may be missing a bigger picture here.")

#shivahdverse

[bluesfreakingart]

do u think jervis would get lost in an ikea. and how badly would he from a scale of A Little Turned Around to Has To Start A New Life In The Warehouse

HONESTLY? He's be...decently navigating an IKEA despite probably wandering off here and there because either something caught his eye or the latter more likely option... Eddie probably pissed him off with trying to talk about the interior decoration and much like that one tik tok, they act as if a toxic married couple in the IKEA show room and he storms off. Jervis and Ed usually try to rope Jonny into it mostly to pick sides but as per usual he detaches so hard when conflict between them happens bc it's "too petty". unless he has a horse in the race , that is when jon gets in on arguing/discussion with the two of them but that's when it gets all messy.

short answer: A bit of column A and a bit of column B

#blue speaks #they're all clowns all three of them

[morrak]

Untitled Wednesday Library Series, Part 140

Yes, another academic journal article. I have a brand to maintain, so maintain it I shall.

Xenobiotica is a very fun publication, but it usually sits on the far side of a Taylor & Francis paywall. It’s a real shame there’s no way around such a thing. Shucks, darn, and thrice drat.

Krumdieck C. L. (2013). Development of a live tissue microtome: reflections of an amateur machinist. Xenobiotica, 43(1), 2–7. https://doi.org/10.3109/00498254.2012.724727

The How

When I run searching or citation management workshops, one of my first scripted searches is always "machinist". There are good reasons for this — it's an uncommon word in biomedical databases with minimal controlled vocabulary mapping, so results are stable; it's easy to remember which articles are good for showing off important workflows; I've got a perfect record of typing it quickly in front of an audience — but mostly I just like the things it retrieves. I've probably looked at listings for this one a hundred times, but hadn't bothered to read it until a few weeks ago.

The Text

It is what it sounds like, more or less. Sometimes you (or maybe not you, but some people) really need to slice unmounted tissue samples, which stops being the job of a butcher somewhere in the 4,000–5,000 micron range. Live tissue respirometry, the main use case addressed by this paper, calls for 100–500 and high parallelism besides.

If I wanted to be picky — I do — I’d say the abstract is internally sound but weak in context. This is about 50% prototyping narrative by dry weight, though you’d never know it from the wrapper. I like development stories as much as the next person who spent several formative years partying with analytical biochemists; I don’t mind the surprise, but that doesn’t mean there should be one.

The Object

Unremarkable; unpretty; par for the course. Two columns, two photos, two (three if you're feeling generous) diagrams, tiny little bibliography. A little crispy, but readable in a pinch. I'm willing to give it a B for a relatively small journal in light of the vintage.

The Why, Though?

A microtome is a type of horse. To me. Is creating one this specialized and reliant on specialized laboratory conditions ethical? Probably not, but you cannot stop me from appreciating its frail and sickly charm.

I don't know if this prototype resulted in anything commercial; I haven't checked. Don't care, really. The paper has its charm, a little, but its quality and content are (for me) other than the point. It's ready to hand, inoffensive, and as stable as anything I work with can be.

#images #untitled wednesday library series

[adrowningmansballad]

report card

Do you have a heart? Can you feel it beat in your chest? Does it feel ooey, gooey and warm like the early rays of December's summer sun, peeking through your glazed windows when you wake? Like when a shy little girl or boy sneaks glances at their crush in a coming of age film with bated breath while walking to school, concealed by the shadows of wilted wallflowers. Does it flutter like cabbage butterflies that dance around your head as you walk down the cracked paved footpath? Tranquility breaks as you trip pitifully, the crumbling of concrete matches your confidence and crimsoning of cheeks. But you'll have more to be embarrassed about soon, don't you worry. Can you feel it pound as you're rushed by an influx of bodies, washing over you? As you enter school, moving from each class, slowly sinking on that anxious breeze that trails through the tall towering trees. Carrying that distinct scent of eucalyptus leaves that tumbles you dry. It follows you all the way to the end of the day, where you start to feel less alive. Can you feel your blood run cold when you realize what day it is today? When you're handed your progress report, and read the freshly printed Letraset flowing down the page. A column that pummels you into the earth- "A- for Math, A for Science, A for Music, A for Humanities, A for Physical Education...B for English". It's not much, but it's enough. It's enough to justify what will happen next. Does your heart thump hard enough to begin pushing it's way out of your chest? With each step home, do you feel yourself falling over? You might hope you trip again and break your arm. Or crack your skull. Or just bleed. Any reason to distract from what's in your hand. And when you finally get home, do you accept your fate and place the death sentence onto the dining table? If so, you should probably go hide. Wait in your bedroom, with only the melody of your heart sitting in the void with you. Does it drum the same beat of the bedroom door slamming open? Scuff marks signing "please kick here" from the day before. And the day before. And the day before that. And the day before that. And the day before that. There's nowhere to hide and you know that. All you can do is hold your breath. But we both know your heart won't steady. Do you sense the wall shake? The way they vibrate as he comes through the door. The windows rattle, no longer glittering with that warmth you felt when you opened your eyes. Are you starting to feel that sense of doom, as the static that descends like a burning vignette threatens to end you. You're unsure if your heart will burst from the pressure swelling in your chest, but your ears most definitely will; "You almost got an A" "You've really slacked off this time" "Maybe you've spent too much time with your friends" "You did so much better last term". It sounds nice enough now, but your continuing existence pours oil onto the fire; "You're a waste of space, you know that?" "A waste of time even" "How can you be such an idiot?" "That's all you are, and all you ever will be" "How could you be so sly and manipulative, making us think you could actually do something well for once" "Don't give me that look, or I'll give you something to really cry about" "Maybe grounding isn't enough, I ought to-". No matter how hard you try, this is how it ends; No happy love story in sight. It was never there to begin with. The end credits thanks you for your achievements that led us here. Do you have a heart? I have one. But I think it broke a long time ago.

#writing #writing? #light angst #slam poetry #spoken word #spoken poetry #poem #poem and poetry #high school #report #report card #writblr #creative wrting #writers on tumblr #poets on tumblr #original post #original poem #current wip #wip #wip wednesday #unfinished #work in progress #sad thoughts #sad poem

[littlewriterfullofwords]

Dream

Pairing: Andy Strucker x fem!reader

Summary: Andy and Y/N used to be together, but after Andy joined the Inner Circle, and Y/N found a way to make her spy-plan work, they weren't on a good hand

Reader description: Y/N is a mutant who as a kid used to train with Lorna. She saw her as an older sister and when she grew up Lorna was her best friend. Y/N can control temperature, that's why she can create a snow, and controls sound.

Warnings: fluff at the beginning, little angst at the end

A/N: I saw a post where someone (@thorpeobsessed) reblogged another post asking for Andy Strucker fanfictions. So here I am.... Please enjoy and tell me if you find any mistakes

Ps. Probably will write more with Andy and for sure with Xavier and with Percy because I'm fucking obsessed with all three of them^^ Masterlist

Your giggle filled the night world, making boy next to you also laugh. His eyes were following your fingers as they were moving, making snow fall on your hand. The snow you've created out of the pouring rain.

"We need to come back inside." you whispered as you looked at you two, totally soaked wet. "Your mum will be mad at me for keeping you out in a rain. At night. I am dead. I need to say goodbye to everyone."

"I will protect you." Andy ran his fingers through your hair and smiled at you with admiration in his eyes. "Don't worry about her."

"My knight." you laughed as you moved closer to the boy, your lips almost touching, only to quickly get up and look at the brown haired from above. "Let's go, knight. Or you will get ill and I will have to protect you."

"Ay." Andy followed your move up and chuckled as you again dodged him and his kiss. "Don't tease me."

"Or what, mr von Strucker?" you laughed as you disappeared for a second behind a column. "Should I be scared?"

"I don't know, should you?" Andy suddenly appeared in front of you with his unique smile you loved so much and this light in his dark eyes. "Are you scared?"

"Not at all." you tiptoed to reach his lips with yours, your eyes closed along with his as Andy's hand moved to the side of your neck and rested there.

The kiss was gentle yet passionate, full of unsaid words, not shown feelings....

And that was only a memory...one of many you had, but the one which you have been recollecting the most these days when you were observing now white haired Andy with a new chick, Rebecca, going out together as you were babysitting Dawn.

You weren't the member of the Inner Circle, but you somehow managed to get them to let you stay as a babysitter. It's not like it wasn't your plan from the beginning.

"Hi. Is she okay?" When only you heard the door, you wiped out your tears as fast as possible so Lorna who came in wouldn't see them.

"Yeah. She's sleeping." you looked at the baby and faked a smile. "She's so lucky to be your baby."

"You were once mine as well." Lorna reminded you of times when she had been your teacher, older sister and best friend, when you both had been fighting arm by arm against Sentinel Services. "I still see you as my little sister. But siblings part, that's life. And those...those are our paths. Those are our choices."

"I know." the cradle swung slightly once or twice under your touch. "I know."

"We will be back late." said Lorna before she kissed her baby's forehead and left the room.

You've never tried to leave the building...why? You didn't have the answer for that question but when the Inner Circle, without Sage and Esme, left, you started thinking about it. I mean, you had this weird bracelet but it's never done anything. It for wasn't like those collars in the prisons everyone had been talking about. Nothing could actually go bad, right? You decided to try that out. I wouldn't call that sneaking out, but it was like sneaking out...

"I am going to the kitchen...for a snack." you informed two left women in the operation room as you headed to the stairs and went downstairs.

When you were sure no one was around, your only way out of the building was an elevator. And that was your mistake. As soon as you touched the button to call the elevator, the bracelet on your wrist electrocuted you and knocked on the floor.

"Are you going somewhere?" Reeva, Andy and Lorna came out of the elevator.

When the white haired boy saw you on the floor and in pain he immediately knelt by your side.

"Y/N." he whispered and tried to help you get up. "Are you okay?"

"Get away from me!" you yelled and with your powers, a tunnel of sound, you pushed him few meters away. "Go to your new girlfriend. She needs you more than I do."

"You see what you get from trying to leave." Reeva squatted next to you and pointed at the bracelet. "It presses two arteries on your wrist...if electrocuted enough, they can knock you out easily. The sensors in the buttons activate the bracelet...you can't leave. Lock her somewhere."

"But Dawn needs her." opposed Lorna.

"Then lock her in your room." Reeva walked pass everyone and headed upstairs.

Andy got up from the floor and looked at still curled up girl with sadness in his eyes. They used to be close...now it all was gone.

"Let's go." Lorna grabbed you by arm and helped climb up to the next floor. "I don't want to lock you down. I really don't. I will have to."

"Then do." your voice was cold like the snow you could create. "I won't hurt, Dawn. I am not that evil. The windows are unbreakable. I won't kick out the door. Don't worry, I will stay."

"Can I talk to her for a second?" asked Andy before Lorna locked the door. "Please."

"Come in."

The green haired woman closed the door behind the boy's back and let the two of you have some space.

"What do you want? Your girlfriend left you or you did that first?" little Dawn's eyes met yours as you were swinging her cradle peacefully.

"Are you jealous?" Andy made a step closer but you stopped him by turning your head his way...your eyes were cold and empty, like if you were dead.

"Jealous? Hah. In your dreams." you shook your head. "You left me because of this 'amazing plan the Inner Circle has'. Really? And when I kind of joined it, I found out you got yourself a new girlfriend. Amazing. You moved on fast."

"You are jealous."

"Not jealous, disappointed." your voice became softer, calmer, quieter. "Hurt. I can go on, but why? You don't care anyway. Tell Rebecca that I pity her. Now leave. Dawn needs to sleep."

#ff writer #andy strucker #andy strucker x reader #andy strucker the gifted #the gifted #the gifted ff #ff #Spotify

[feitania]

𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖔𝖌𝖚𝖊:

𝕸𝖊𝖑𝖕𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖊

the muse and patron of tragedy

𝖘𝖞𝖓𝖔𝖕𝖘𝖎𝖘: when you are just a child, your father, Viscount Haitani, promises you to Duke Akashi's second son- the cold and distant Akashi Haruchiyo. Now engaged at the tender age of seven, you fall into your first tragedy of an arranged marriage with a total stranger who doesn't even seem to like you and betrays you the first chance he gets. And even worse; years later when you meet again the hatred for each other still burns in your veins, mixed with something else...

𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘: hurt/comfort, reader is a child in the prolouge, misogyny

𝖕𝖆𝖎𝖗𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘: Sanzu Haruchiyo x Reader

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖘: Akashi Haruchiyo, Akashi Senju, Akashi Takeomi, Haitani Rindou, Haitani Ran

𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

The first time you met the Akashi Family you were barely seven years old, still hiding behind your mother's legs and shyly burying your face in her skirt when approached by a stranger- too young to fully understand why you suddenly had to spend time with kids you never talked to before.

You rather wanted to spend more time with your brothers who were outside most of the day; Rindou learning with furious motivation how to master hand-to-hand combat while Ran instead specialized on his perfect, noble appearance, riding around the estate with such arrogance yet charming confidence that even your father could only shake his head.

Even when you were standing in the entrance hall of the Akashi household with tears in your eyes, grabbing onto Rindous trousers and begging them to stay with you, it was your mother who harshly pulled you away.

But your parents had made it clear that they didn't want you -the precious and only daughter of viscount Haitani- to run around in the dirt like they allowed your brothers to do.

“Do not start crying now, your face will be all red,” she said while leaning down to smooth out any possible wrinkles on your silk brocade dress. “No man desires a woman with a bloated face.”

That you were far too young to even be desired was something your mother ignored in favour of rearranging the pearl pins in your hair.

Maybe it was the unusual quietness that filled the air with a heavy tension or the frown on Ran's face as he stared straight ahead but instead of opposing your mother's words, you swallowed the tears burning in your eyes and looked at your feet while your father gently pried Rindou away from you.

A maid greeted and escorted you through the garden to the dining hall where you were supposed to meet the Akashis. If you weren´t so nervous you would have enjoyed the walk through the beautiful garden filled with white roses, dark lavender and vines crawling up columns out of black marble with silver ornaments. Small and well-kept ponds with lotus blooming beautifully were seated symmetrically on the side of the stone path leading to the imposing Duchy.

The meeting itself was a quiet affair.

Your brothers had a little bit more interest in the estate, Rindou laging behind to watch an exotic looking fish and Ran pointing at various flowers and whispering their names into your ear- to distract you probably.

“You two must be the sons of the Viscount! And you,” he bowed down to you and smiled, taking your hand and squeezing it, “must be the daughter of my old friend. Haruchiyo´s future bride.”

The Duke and his children were already waiting for you at the entrance, giving your father a nod and your mother a hand kiss which she accepted with blushing cheeks before turning to you and your brothers.

Just as with your mother, he gave you a short kiss on the back of your hand- which you wiped off on your skirt in mild disgust when no one was looking -before turning around to the three children standing behind him.

You knew the Akashi siblings already from your father's stories and your brothers' friends' sister, princess Emma, who occasionally invited you to play dates but you have never seen them, never interested enough to care about other people apart from your brothers.

Takeomi Akashi was a name you had heard at least once at dinner parties when you had to sit at a table with adults who talked about things you didn´t understand. He was crown prince Shinishiro's best friend and the heir to the Dukedom.

Senju Akashi was the daughter, a little younger than you but so beautiful you felt underdressed even when she only wore a simple dark gown and had wild hair with a flower petal still tangled in it while you were dressed in your best clothes and most expensive looking jewellery.

And then there was him. Haruchyio Akashi. The second son of the Duke, a prodigy with incredible wit and fighting talent, the boy who looked like an angel, even more ethereal than his sister.

Your future husband- at least that´s what your mother had excitedly told her friends could happen to be at a dinner party of hers.

You curtsied, bending down low just like your Governess showed you, but instead of lowering your gaze you dared to look up to Haruchiyo again, hoping to find something- anything -that would indicate of his excitement to finally meet you. But there was nothing.

The youngest Akashi didn't even look at you, his aloof gaze went right past you into the distance as if he didn´t even care about you.

In that moment you felt your fragile, young heart breaking for the first time.

In all these years of getting told how important marriage was, especially for a young Lady like you, you always imagined that it would still be out of love. That the person who would be your betrothed would make your heart beat faster, enlighten a firework inside your body and hang you the moon and stars the moment your eyes meet.

The rest was a blur of colors, greetings and meaningless conversation mostly lead by Duke Akashi and your father while your brothers tried to throw peas at each other without your mother noticing and Haruchiyo…ignoring you.

You realized you were lied to.

Over the years, you tried your best to appeal the youngest Akashi son; You were on your best behaviour, asked your mother to dress you in color matching gowns, started sneaking into your brothers’ rooms to read the more mature books about politics and war your father never allowed you to own and followed Haruchiyo and his friends around like a duckling, hopeful he would turn around and take your hand.

He was seated to your right but you didn't dare to peer over to him more than to his hands, which were gripping the silver cutlery until his knuckles turned white. Suddenly you were nearly glad for the distraction in form of a pea being sent your way by Rindou.

When you were ten, he seemed to be more annoyed by your presence with each sent letter, each visit. If it wouldn´t have been for his parents and the prince who was in his company, you were sure he would have started actively hiding from you.

“Oh my dear, look at that: Another present for you.”

Which made the gifts in his name sent to the Haitani estate each week much more confusing for you.

A big bouquet of white and pink flowers greeted you at the breakfast table, as well as a box adorned with a white bow and letter tied to it.

Ran and Rindou were already sitting at the table, grinning at the courting gifts with teasing looks.

“Another little something from your admirer,” Rindou said in a saccharine voice, “what could it be this time?”

“It must be personally hand-picked from Akashi himself, he is such an attentive young man” Ran joined in.

“Boys.”

You´re father looked up from the end of the table to shot your brothers a warning look before turning back to his newspaper.

You sat down, curiously smelling the flowers before gently loosening the bow off the wooden box and looking for it´s content.

It was, like usual, a small but expensive looking accessorie for your dress or hair– mostly golden pins with jewels or pearls looking like tears hanging onto silver bands.

Your jewellery had expanded into an excessive collection over the last years, overflowing with satin ribbons, necklaces, rubies and delicate looking tiaras– offerings that promised devotion, a good life and all of them oh so beautifully unpersonal.

You knew your mother and maids were all enamored with the gifts your fiancé sent you but he could have written any other name on it and it would still be an appropriate present loved by many. It was painfully obvious to you that he probably wouldn't even notice which ornaments were his if he would meet you wearing them.

Only the flowers seemed to be somewhat picked with thought. They matched either your taste or the weeks weather.

But what really got your interest were the letters hanging on the box. The only things that were surely Haruchiyo´s doing.

Still occupied with the jewellery, nobody saw when you let the envelope slip into your lap, hidden away by the layers of your dark red overskirt. This was your secret, not shared with your mother who was currently gushing over the pearls sewn onto the black veil, not with your father or your brothers. It was entirely yours.

You couldn't remember when it started, the letters from him, but you cherished every fast written and messy word on it.

The letters weren´t like the other things he sent, less formal and with sarcastic remarks and dramatic description in mean undertones. They were more outlet for him than a serious message, he probably didn´t think you would catch onto his little secret rant. But you did.

“Why do you smile so bashfully?” Rindou asked from across the table while Ran was still occupied with feeling up the fabric of the newest courting gift.

And you enjoyed every letter.

Your gaze shifted to your brother. His blonde hair was tied together neatly which meant he had classes today, something he hated with a passion you weren´t aware he could muster.

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do!”

“You must be seeing things.”

“You are turning red out of anger then?” He leaned further onto the table, his purple, tired eyes glinted dangerously. Teasing was usually Ran's speciality but when your oldest brother was busy Rindou faithfully took over the task of annoying you until you lashed out and tried chasing after your brothers with your petticoat and tightly laced dress slowing you down constantly.

“Maybe it is your fault I am reddening,” you shoot back.

“Your adoration flatters me, sister.”

“Oh, shut up.” You kicked back your chair and excused yourself before stomping out of the dining salon.

Dearest fiancé,

In your room you threw yourself onto your bed and let your body sink into the soft cover. You waited a few minutes if a maid or perhaps your mother would come in before you fumbled the letter out of your dress. Opening it swiftly with your nails you turned on your belly and eagerly unfolded the letter.

No uniquely dark-colored pearls from the deepest sea could match your smile,

no silk compares to your smooth, oily skin,

Still, I hope, no, I wish for you to cherish this gift,

which I humbly present you as my sign of love and devotion.

Yours entirely and in love

Because of your young age and the fearsome reputation of your eccentric brothers you didn´t receive many love letters and even less gifts and poems, unlike other girls like princess Emma who, at the tender age of eight already had a box full of discarded proposals from men across the country.

H.

When you met her for tea for the first few times, thanks to your brothers' connections to the second prince, she had shown you a few of them and you were mesmerized by the bold and devoted letters men twice your age wrote to the blonde girl.

“My brothers said I shouldn´t read them like a letter but a business proposition,” she had explained to you when you both were hunched over the pile of envelopes in her pink and blue bedroom.

“Why?”

“Because they lie. It´s not like they adore me like a lover does, my brothers said.”

“What do your brothers know of love then?” you had asked, scooting closer and smoothing the edges of your black and white flower dress.

“Oh, I do not think any of them knows what love is,” she had paused for a second to lower her voice, “even less how to talk to a woman.” And then she had fallen over in a fit of giggles which you had joined, rolling around the thick carpet until your tummy hurt.

After that, she had told you about a boy. A friend of her brother, a commoner of low status who caught Manjiro´s attention by sheer luck, always getting kind of awkward and looking out of place yet confident and kind when talked too. You had seen how she had blushed when she described him and you had hoped to maybe, one day, talk about someone with the same smitten expression as she had done.

Lying on your bed and thinking about a smart response, hopefully matching his undertone, wasn't exactly what you thought would be the nearest thing you'd get to the love you have seen in your friends’ eyes but nevertheless you were excited for them, for him.

It was a silly fantasy that you entertained yourself with, having his attention for yourself because he wanted to, not because his parents forced him.

And if you kept all the ill meant letters in a box under your bed fostering a strange attachment to the only honest emotions shown from the older boy, no one had to know.

Half a year later you moved them to your closet to read while the maids dressed you in the morning.

A final, formal letter wearing the akashi family crest callously cancelling your engagement was last to enter the flames. And so you were left humiliated and heartbroken, crying earnestly in the company of your brothers all still clad in ornate mourning attire from Shinichiro's death, and hosting a funeral of your own...

Another half year later and you burned them all, accompanied by your brothers.

#tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers x reader #sanzu haruchiyo #akashi haruchiyo #haruchiyo sanzu #sanzu x reader #sano mikey manjiro #mikey x reader #tokyo manji gang #tokyorev

[greenerteacups]

hi green!

just a quick wee question: you write your characters as (generally) very mature for their age. does it bother you that you won’t really get to explore the characters as fully grown adults?

Interesting question. My hope for the story is that the place where I leave the (remaining) characters will make it feel natural and conclusive, while also leaving ample space to imagine where the world may go next. So in that sense, whatever happens to the characters as adults will be beyond my scope; I love Lionheart!Draco as I have loved few characters ever written, but I set myself the task of chronicling his journey from childhood to adulthood, and when that task is done, I think I'll feel very happy with letting him go off and do as he likes in the boundless universe of readers' imaginations.

With respect to the other part of your question: there's parts to it. For one thing, the idea of "childhood," i.e. the idea that children should be treated differently than adults, is a recent innovation in child psychology (relatively speaking). So the idea that the kids would be "old for their age" is one part Watsonian purebloods-are-English-aristocrats-with-wands flavortext, and one part "the story requires these kids to go on adventures and make deductive leaps that real 11/12/13-year-olds probably wouldn't, and I can't do that unless I shove them up the growth curve a little bit," and then, finally, one part: "there are not many members of the fanfiction community who are interested in reading about realistically behaved 11-year-olds." so, bit of column A, bit of column B.

#greenteacup asks

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Do you think Bucky would have been okay in an extremely high security psych facility? Like, say he had access to genuinely good therapists and around the clock care in Wakanda, would he have gotten antsy and withdrawn, or would he have done well in that kind of environment?

Hmm... little from column A, little from column B? ¯_( :/ )_/¯

IMO Bucky has a sweet enough nature and sufficient mental fortitude to flourish in any circumstances.

But I do think he'd become restless, even if he made friends and got better in that kind of controlled environment.

A) Having been under the control of others, and survived on his own for so long, it would probably rankle him to have his life once again dictated for him; where he can be and what he can do -- especially after having a taste of freedom just prior -- even if the people doing it were well intentioned, this time.

B) I can't imagine he has a good opinion of doctors of any variety, which wouldn't help.

C) As a supersoldier he has a higher energy level than ordinary patients, so a pace which would seem merely restful to them would feel doubly suffocating and slow-moving, to him.

The real problem of course is how to treat Bucky in the first place.

As far as we know of this universe, all extant psychiatric treatment methods have been designed with non-enhanced patients in mind; to help people cope with traumas it is physically possible to survive (because if they weren't survivable then the patient would be dead).

...But Bucky has survived things it isn't physically possible for a normal person to survive.

So unless there has been some recent innovation in psychiatry specifically geared towards helping enhanced people, in this 'verse, there's no medical guidebook as to how to treat that.

And when you add up all the problems Bucky has simultaneously...

Losing a limb, losing all his family, all his friends, his home world, (arguably, the war), losing his memory, his partner, coping with long term brain-damage, having C-PTSD from the war, and from being tortured beyond the point of human survivability for 70+ years, the stress of being a fugitive for 2+ years, and the moral injury of what he was forced to do to both strangers and his sole surviving loved one?

Even suspending disbelief to suppose it is possible for someone in-universe to treat Bucky successfully, any one of those ^ things would be enough for a psychiatrist to treat on its own.

But all of them at the same time?!

#long post #toAyourQ #dat's me #hey nonny #bucky barnes #bucky meta #meta #mcu #mcu meta #bucky's the kind of patient where the shrink has to stop therapy because THEY don't have the spoons for HIM #(cue: Bucky's Shrink Is Hannibal Lecter AU) #thinking about it the most precious person in wakanda in terms of bucky's recovery #(apart from the royal siblings) #is someone we never got to see him interact with: #queen ramonda was married to an enhanced man for decades #who in turn suffered the moral injury of killing his own brother #what an absolute wealth of life experience that woman must have... #for how to cope as an enhanced man with trauma... #she's also much closer to bucky in terms of chronological age #if only ryan coogler was directing all bucky media... 😪 #yet each man queues the thing he loves